BTC for "investment" and speculation

[samten]

While I am still in newbie jail, let me ask this directly:

I believe in the future of BTC as an asset in the long term if it survives security and market issues, however I am willing to take the risk.

I want to trade intraday BTC like forex. How to do it ? Where to start ? Which exchange to trade ?
Any exchange or way to trade with escrow that anyone can recommend ?


Strategies, advices and tips for trading through and exchange with anonymous, reliable, fast and cheap transaction fees are most welcome.

I dislike Mt Gox, taking high fees for withdrawal, deposits, and verifying accounts, plus higher exchange rate than other exchanges.
The only good thing seems to be that they are reliable, although someone tries to hack them...

Ripple sounds promising.

[thefendall]

btc exchange is good, annoying troll box on side... but low fees .2% is negligible to profit taking.  I am told it is hard to get us cash there, but transfer of btc is quick and they offer many alt coins..... good place to play and learn.  just buy elsewhere are transfer there

[saddambitcoin]

Buy and hold BTC.  Forget about it for a few months if you can.  Then come back next year with your 1000% profit and start balling.  Start an altcoin.  Buy some fucking Litecoin FPGAs (in 2014).  Buy a goddamn Feathercoin ASIC.  Who the fuck knows what will happen but I guarantee if you buy and hold you will be rich beyond you fucking wildest dreams

[Ashaman]

I recommend against Mt. Gox simply because they're the biggest exchange, and thus, a single point of failure.
BTC-e can be a lot of fun, and has a good deal of variety with alt-coins, however getting USD into BTC-e is rather difficult, unless you're in Russia. The exchange fees are low over there, but their withdrawal fees also kind of ridiculous - .01 BTC, .5 LTC. I don't have much experience with other exchanges.
It wouldn't hurt to look into #bitcoin-otc on Freenode, and localbitcoins.

If I were you, I would also consider selling goods for BTC on Bitmit - commerce makes for a much more sustainable growth model than everyone trying to buy coins to resell them for more money down the road.

[soniq]

Bitfinex is a exchange a lot like a forex exchange, you can make money lending out your money to other BTC traders there too

Like the previous poster mentioned, diversify, buy shares( I own Asicminer)   sell/barter BTC for goods and save some away for a rainy day

[Aleksei Richards]

I don't think any of the exchnages do escrow, so you have to trust the exchange. Mtgox is the most liquid.

Bitstamp is good, but trades don't always fill due to the lower number of users.

[chanba]

Definitely keep some around long term. Years, not days.

I've divided my holdings between keeping some for (much) later and some walking-around-coins for fun and to help with circulation.

--chanba

[illusiveman]

Check out the exchange me and my team are building crypto.st....its a meta exchange which uses the liquidity of the other exchanges in order to full fill orders. It will have all the tools you would expect on a professional platform including things like positions and shorting. We also plan to have margin in the future. Because we are using many exchanges will even have some built in arbitrage.

Check it out and sign up for a our beta. We plan to be up and running for beta testers in the next week or so.

[illusiveman]

also feel free to ask any questions.

[psionix]

localbitcoins is really good if you don't mind actually meeting people and you are in a large metro area.

I'd kinda prefer that to using an exchange, if you live in the right area, however I would like to know the answer to this question as well, because I only really know of MtGox and BTC-e.