The Bullish Bitcoin Media Center (The ONLY Bullish Bitcoin News Thread)

[Fakhoury]

Excuse me sir, don't ever be sorry for me.

This is our thread, and I must thank you for reviving the thread again and all who participated in this as well.

Special thanks for JJG.

JJG : I will start posting again my friend, until then, you and all my friends over here are welcomed, again, it's our thread.[/b][/center]

Thank you very much for your kindness and friendship, Fakhoury!

You're welcome regarding reviving the thread.  This thread is too valuable IMHO to let it fall to the wayside.  You created a great forum here, Sir.

Thanks for making this "our" thread, Fakhoury!

Kind regards,

David

Excuse me, Sir.

I always call you Sir and Mr. David because your older and wiser than me, respect is a must here and I like to respect you, you are one of my Godfathers along a lot of people here, but you've a special place inside of my heart, really.

It's actually our thread because it's, I will never moderate the thread for any reason and under any circumstances, I only delete BS posts and trolls because I hate them.

I'm extremely happy to see you having a great discussion with JJG, JJG is one of my best friends and I like to kid with him

You are always welcomed here my dear Sir but PLEASE, I need one favor from you, when you've free time and able to visit the forum, pass by here and enlight our thread, it really makes so euphoric.

Thank you my dear friend.

Yours,
Fakhoury

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[JayJuanGee]

You might consider my investment of 40% of my available funds in crypto as ludicrous.  I'm not sure.  I know some people think I'm crazy.  However, I'm CRAZY about bitcoin.  I even mine bitcoin.  I used to mine it rather seriously for a home miner.  I have 400A service at my house.  I had 41 x S7's in my house at one time.  Now, I only have 6 x S7's.  I sold the rest on eBay the second week of March at approximately $820 each on average not including eBay and PayPal fees.  The buyers paid for shipping.  I absolutely LOVE Bitcoin.  I always will as long as it's alive and kicking.  I'm all in [so to speak] with everything bitcoin stands for!  It's part of my being.  My wife is witness to that.  She cannot keep me quiet about it around friends and family.  lol

hahahahaha... you seemed to have adequately described and disclosed your BTC bullish credentials, and sounds like you have quite a bit more investment in btc than me, and a lot of very decent BTC-related experiences that are going to continue to contribute to your insight into BTC and your various BTC trading strategies, whether you diversify into alts or not or use them as bitcoin building opportunities.

   I do my best to be bullish as possible.  Thanks!  However, as you know, we cannot always be a bull.  The more I think about it I'm probably more often in "short" mode.

Yes, all of this has been a learning experience.  I'm still learning all the time.  I'm about to get more involved with learning about eliot waves (EW) as soon as I get a couple of e-cig stores opened.  I got to get those on the move first.

Certainly, there are various trading strategies and perspectives.  Certainly, it would have been very profitable to short bitcoin throughout 2014.  I recall the end of 2014, there were many promotional training camps (how to short bitcoin), yet 2015 would have been much more mixed in the performance of shorts, and then certainly after August of 2015, you would have had to have been a lot more skillful to profit by shorting BTC, not undoable, but a lot more challenging.

So far I have not really employed any strategies that short bitcoin, instead my strategy has been to open and close longs, and yeah maybe I could be more profitable to learn how to short.. but in the end, I feel sufficiently bullish about bitcoin to bet towards its success... I am not sure about how I am going to feel when we reach mid $600s and then $800s and then $3k to $5k range.. 

You know my own feelings and strategies are in part going to depend upon how long it takes BTC to get to each of those price points, if at all, and then what are either the direct causes or reasonably inferred causes for such price rises...

At this time, I cannot see myself putting 100% of my coins on various exchanges  and then selling 100%, even if price shot up to $5k and selling seems like the right thing to do.. maybe in those hypothetical circumstances I could sell 80% or something like that?  In some sense it is good to think through these kinds of various hypotheticals in order to attempt to prepare oneself for what could be amongst the most practical approaches on a personal level.

When we are thinking about our own personal finances, we do not necessary become coin monagomists because the best thing for us may either be to diversify our finances or to completely pull out of a certain investment under certain market circumstances even though such action may not be good for the whole BTC infrastructure.  I am not talking about scamming anyone and stealing their coins or misleading them, just acting prudent and reasonable on a personal financial level and selling to people who are buying at the time that we are selling (it's the way of one part of capitalisms, no?)

[dmwardjr]

I'm ignorant when it comes to index funds, securities, derivatives, etc...

I'm no genius or anything when it comes to investing, and really I have been employing various kinds of investment strategies since leaving high school and then being on my own.  So I have always set aside as much as I could for various investment purposes which has tended to be between 10% and 40% of my income.. and then attempting to invest in various ways.. some paying off better than others, but over the years building up a considerable nestegg.

Maybe a bit more than 15 years ago, I had increased some of my exposure to retirement investments (kind of like 401ks) that are connected with employment, but allows matching and also limits in how much that can be put in.  Then within those 401ks there are limits in how I was able to allocate within them... but maxing them out also was helpful in building funds over a considerable amount of time.

I see...  Thanks for the being straight up.

It is nice to have some flexibility within a 401k to reallocate what goes where.  My wife had something similar with the oil and gas company she used to work for.  However, we did not realize or begin to exercise the flexibility they offered her to move investments around until around the last few months of the 17 years she was employed there.  I know, that's sad.  We did not even think to look into her 401k flexibility until we had serious threats of oil stocks failing the end of last year due to oil prices falling.

Yes, I imagine 2014 was a rough time when reallocating a portion of your holdings in other areas to BTC.  It appears you are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel in regards to BTC.

You know, towards the end of 2013, I was looking into various investment vehicles and reallocating various quasi0-liquid holdings that I had that were freeing up.  In August 2013, I had bookmarked some information about Bitcoin, and I kept putting it off, and then finally when I got around to it, it was mid-November 2013.  That was the first time that I had read anything substantive about bitcoin, and i was quite drawn into the whole idea... I mean really, I took it easy the first 6 months of investing dollar cost averaging low amounts, and then by mid 2014, I became more aggressive.. and anyhow, yeah, it would have been better to have held back a bit more, but who would have thunk (not me)....

But yeah, I am pretty much in the green now, and yet my BTC portfolio has progressed into vary decent places after beginning to trade (but more credit to BTC's price going back up from it's long sustained mid-$200 doldrums).. 

I'm just happy to hear things are looking positive with your BTC investments after a rough couple of years.  

I was similar to you.  However, I first heard about it from Glen Beck on talk radio in 2010.  He suggested buying some if you had free cash.  He said he bought 1,000 BTC to put aside and see what happens.  I want to say bitcoin was about $1.70 then.  I went online and saw I had to get what was called a bitcoin wallet and sign up to an exchange to be able to purchase bitcoin.  I was like, "I don't have time for this."  So, I wrote it off and did not think about it again or even hear about bitcoin again until the end of 2013.  I was pissed once I heard it was over $1,000 because I had very fruitful years business wise from 2007 to 2011.  I was going to buy $5,000 in bitcoin minimum for the heck of it but got lazy.  I did not take it serious when it was $1.70.  Oh well...

I found bitcointalk.org the beginning of 2014 and began reading threads to learn about bitcoin.  I would listen to Andreas Antonopolus (sp) on youtube all the time.  I got involved with mining in August, 2014 with 18 x S3's, 15 x SP-20's, 5 x S4's and 7 x S5's.  I later sold those to assist in my purchase of 41 x S7's in total beginning in October of 2015.  I mentioned earlier I did not sell bitcoin to pay for power.  I used my own funds to pay for power and held onto my bitcoin mined.  There were a few months in the beginning when I first began mining that I sold bitcoin to pay for power costs.  However, I later determined it would be more beneficial to pay for my power out of pocket and make up for it later by selling BTC at a higher price.

Yeah, each of us are going to make different choices regarding this (diversification), and the extent that we may need to redistribute and at what times and also depending on our timeline.    Maybe 40% in BTC is too risky, yet that seems to be a question that you need to decide and maybe even reconsider from time to time depending on how the various markets play out, and your personal assessment of various markets in your total portfolio.

Yes, of course.  There are times I have sold ALL of my BTC due to an obvious dump and had a very large portion of my holdings in FIAT for weeks.  However, I feel quite comfortable with my percentage of holdings in crypto [Mainly BTC].  I feel as long as one stays on top of it to protect it as if it were their own son or daughter, there should not be much risk as one might think.

I think that we agree on some things, but you seem to be gambling a bit more than what is in my own personal tolerance.  I stagger and so far, and attempt to never go full anything.. too much gambling involved.  I would rather make a lot less and to slowly sell as prices go up (including possibly some larger moves along the way) and to buy on the way down, with possibly some larger moves a long the way....

To me, it seems to be less of a gamble to "work it" incrementally.

I can understand that.  To each their own.  I've always said one should only do or get involved with what they are comfortable with.  I do trade smaller amounts in BTC/USD most of the time.  However, I tend to go much bigger with the alts.  However, I try to do it in a way that requires a LOT of monitoring of the alt coin markets on my part to avoid any potential big losses.  When I do invest in an alt coin (LTC or ETH), I will choose only one exchange to do it on and use half of the BTC on that exchange to implement my LTC/BTC or ETH/BTC trades.

[dmwardjr]

Excuse me, Sir.

I always call you Sir and Mr. David because your older and wiser than me, respect is a must here and I like to respect you, you are one of my Godfathers along a lot of people here, but you've a special place inside of my heart, really.

It's actually our thread because it's, I will never moderate the thread for any reason and under any circumstances, I only delete BS posts and trolls because I hate them.

I'm extremely happy to see you having a great discussion with JJG, JJG is one of my best friends and I like to kid with him

You are always welcomed here my dear Sir but PLEASE, I need one favor from you, when you've free time and able to visit the forum, pass by here and enlight our thread, it really makes so euphoric.

Thank you my dear friend.

Yours,
Fakhoury

       Dude, you are cracking me up!     But thanks for saying, ".. you're older and wiser..." instead of "... you are old and wise."         

Yes, I've enjoyed my discussion with JJG.  I'm always eager to learn.  It's important to remain open minded.

I'll be happy to drop by from time to time to make a comment.  I just got back from New Orleans, LA Saturday.  I was there for 12 days playing in several WSOP Circuit events at Harrah's casino.  I had a much better outcome the previous three years than this year.  I did not cash in a single tournament this year.  Bummer     I dropped approximately $4,500 with meals, hotel, gas, and tournament buy-ins those 12 days.  Oh well.  Better luck next year.

I'm skipping Vegas this year.  I have too much I need to do here this summer with e-cig stores.

Thanks again for your kindness and consideration.

Warm regards,

David

[dmwardjr]

Certainly, there are various trading strategies and perspectives.  Certainly, it would have been very profitable to short bitcoin throughout 2014.  I recall the end of 2014, there were many promotional training camps (how to short bitcoin), yet 2015 would have been much more mixed in the performance of shorts, and then certainly after August of 2015, you would have had to have been a lot more skillful to profit by shorting BTC, not undoable, but a lot more challenging.

Yes, certainly after 2015.  The only BIG gains I had in BTC during 2015 was trading LTC/BTC just before the LTC block halving.  Trading BTC/USD by itself was certainly not something I could live off of at the time.  I still have not got to the point I can live off it now.  However, I'm working towards it.

So far I have not really employed any strategies that short bitcoin, instead my strategy has been to open and close longs, and yeah maybe I could be more profitable to learn how to short.. but in the end, I feel sufficiently bullish about bitcoin to bet towards its success... I am not sure about how I am going to feel when we reach mid $600s and then $800s and then $3k to $5k range.. 

I've learned how to short from colleagues on tradingview.com.  I've met a lot of kind people on there.  Yes, there is an occasional asshole.  But they are everywhere it seems.  It is good to surround yourself with people who think like you do and who have similar aspirations as your own.  I find this at tradingview.com.  There are several very kind people on there who are multi-millionaires.  Yet, they are very generous to try to help others to try to reach the place they are without expecting anything in return. 

Some do want something in return.  I can respect that.  Knowledge is power.  I have a great deal of knowledge about the local telephone loop.  That's how I made my living from 1991 to 2015.  However, their stock market price has fallen considerably the last couple of years and they cannot afford to pay contractors like myself to come in to do technical training like they used to.

You know my own feelings and strategies are in part going to depend upon how long it takes BTC to get to each of those price points, if at all, and then what are either the direct causes or reasonably inferred causes for such price rises...

Yes, it will be interesting to see what the markets will be like if and/or when it is in the $600's, $800's, $3k's, $5k's, etc...

Yes, know the "cause(s)" for each rise in price could provide considerable inspiration as to how we invest and how much we invest at each price point mentioned in the future.  Maybe we can discuss those aspects if and/or when they come to fruition in the future.

At this time, I cannot see myself putting 100% of my coins on various exchanges  and then selling 100%, even if price shot up to $5k and selling seems like the right thing to do.. maybe in those hypothetical circumstances I could sell 80% or something like that?  In some sense it is good to think through these kinds of various hypotheticals in order to attempt to prepare oneself for what could be amongst the most practical approaches on a personal level.

I totally agree about not having 100% of one's coins on one exchange.  As for selling 100% of my coins, I've done this many times with alts but not as often with bitcoin.  It's rare doing so was not the correct decision for me at that particular time.  Most of my BTC was accumulated through mining and trading alt coins to accumulate BTC.  You accumulated yours quite differently.  I can understand your approach as well.  Your approach is pretty much similar to how the big banks trade currency pairs on FX.

When we are thinking about our own personal finances, we do not necessary become coin monagomists because the best thing for us may either be to diversify our finances or to completely pull out of a certain investment under certain market circumstances even though such action may not be good for the whole BTC infrastructure.  I am not talking about scamming anyone and stealing their coins or misleading them, just acting prudent and reasonable on a personal financial level and selling to people who are buying at the time that we are selling (it's the way of one part of capitalisms, no?)

Agree.  We have to consider our lively hood while participating with our investments with the BTC infrastructure.  If someone buys bitcoin we have up for sell on an exchange when it was not the best time for them to purchase is not our fault.  It's part of trading.  It's part of capitalism.  We have winners and we have losers.  Usually, more losers than winners.  Everyone cannot win all the time unfortunately.

[JayJuanGee]

There are a couple of ways to lessen concerns about bitcoin volatility:
        1) your bitcoin portfolio moves so far into the green that it does not really matter so much to you if BTC prices change by 10 or 20% or even more.  Personally, I still believe that these kinds of BTC investors can still profit from BTC trading, but I recognize that it is less of a concern when most if not all of the investment is pure profits.  

        [2) .......]

It's hard for me to fall into the #1 category.  Maybe it's my age (49) and concerns about retirement with a desire to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible.  Every little bit over time adds up over time.  Especially, if one considers compounding growth.  If one always traded in small amounts [5% of their BTC bankroll for example] with the majority of trades being big winners with small losses, their BTC bankroll increases.  Which means that 5% of their BTC bankroll on trades is increasing as well.

I kind of made up these two categories, and of course we may have a bit of variation in our thinking in terms of these categories, but initially I was thinking about someone who got a 10x return and then another 10x return (which is 100x) in 2013.  Now if that person had a decent stake in the game, such as $100k, then probably that person would not be too concerned about volatility thereafter, so long as he is able to take some capital out.  One of the problem with the 10x and then another 10x soon thereafter scenario, is that guys were kicking themselves for not having invested enough early on and then sometimes taking out too much money too soon, but anyhow, there still could be variations in which guys profit considerably enough in order not to worry about volatility.  I am similar to you, at least for now, in that I am largely reinvesting almost 100% of my gains because I had never put into bitcoin money that I needed to live upon, and also I have a fairly optimistic outlook regarding upward bitcoin price possibilities.  I have gone over some of my probability viewpoints with Fakhoury - but in the end, the summary of the matter is that I am largely reinvesting a lot of my profits until probably the $3k to $5k territory - though I may reneg a bit and take some profits out in around the $2k territory, if we get there, but my strategy in regards to whether I reinvest or diversify will likely be a result of some analysis regarding how fast we get there (if we do) and what seems to have caused us to get there (if we do).

There are a couple of ways to lessen concerns about bitcoin volatility:
       [ 1).........]

        2) the market cap of BTC rises to such a degree that manipulation and volatility becomes much more costly to achieve.  This is almost so far into the future that we cannot quite imagine it.  I personally believe we need at minimum about 100x increase in the market cap, but 1000x would be quite a bit safer in terms of lessening bitcoin's volatility.  Yeah, sure I could be wrong, and possibly we could achieve 100x in a couple of years.. though I am thinking 4 years or more would be more likely - if it does occur (I hope to be wrong about my 100x BTC timeline idea, here).

As for your #2 category; I totally agree with you.  There will come a time where manipulation will become impossible.  Just as hacking the bitcoin network to double spend is not worth it.  As for volatility, I believe that will always be there.

Can you Imagine the following:

If bitcoin was 1,000 x the market cap what it is now, that would be approximately 7,000,000,000,000 USD.  If we were to say we have 17,000,000 BTC in circulation 4 years from now with a 7 Trillion market cap, this would put each BTC at $411,764 USD.

Do you realize it would be common place to have $2,000 USD swings daily with BTC at that amount?  Could you imagine how many people would be on exchanges trading with those kind of swings?  I cannot imagine what kind of stress may or may not be involved with those kind of swings.  

Actually, I was kind of with your hypothesizing, until you got to this $2k daily swings.. and I am thinking that we are seeing the situation a bit differently here.

Let's just say hypothetically that bitcoin is worth about $7trillion market cap in today's dollars (sure there are going to be some other issues with the dollar's valuation.. but anyhow, some of those kinds of dynamics are difficult to know today).. but anyhow, I think that you are getting something wrong in a kind of suggestion about $2k daily price swings.... ... Anyhow, I am kind of typing as I think, here, if each bitcoin is approximately $400k, then yeah, that bitcoin's price could easily fluctuate by $2 or $3k in a day, but we would be dealing in thousandths of a bitcoin, and that value may only change by $2 in a day... so in the end, it seems that we agree that the overall currency is much less volatile and more difficult to manipulate, and yeah if the price goes up 1,000x  from today's price, we may have only half or less than half of our current BTC holdings... but that does not mean that we are poor, it just means that we may have chosen to diversify somewhat and for whatever personal reasons.

EDIT:  The reason I say BTC will always be volatile; I consider $2,000 USD swings volatile.  Yet, the price of BTC is so high, those of us with holdings of BTC in whole numbers and not decimal points will not be as concerned about the volatility.  Those with decimal points would be more concerned.  Those with decimal points would consider $2,000 USD swings as volatile while those with multiple whole numbers will not view it as very volatile.

I think that you lose me here, too, because less volatile and less manipulatable goes throughout, and I think maybe that either you are thinking about this a bit differently from me, or you are assuming a higher level of volatility.

If you hold 50BTC or something like that, and those BTC are worth $20million.. but maybe as we discussed earlier, the value of your total portfolio may fluctuate by $100k in a day, but the fluctuation of the value of the portfolio of someone holding $20k in BTC may only fluctuate by $100... It's the same volatility as a percentage but may be reasonably manageable for someone who is holding a lower value of BTC, and yeah that's not really taking into account the various ways that a person may chose to diversify, if he thinks that volatility is too risky.

[JayJuanGee]

I'm extremely happy to see you having a great discussion with JJG, JJG is one of my best friends and I like to kid with him

I have no real problem with kidding and disagreement... which kind of reminds me of one of our first intense interactions, Fakhoury... hahahahahahahah.. how soon we may forget. 

I can't remember exactly the details, but you were pretty pissed off at me and said that I was too mean to Jorge and that I was not treating him well and that I should give him more credit and be nicer to him, etc etc...  and then you and I had a few back and forths and then took our conversation to PM and worked it out to figure out that we did not really disagree as much as we had originally thought.

Anyhow, that is fine and sometimes we may disagree about either substance or tone, and then sometimes concepts can be either miscommunicated in text or misunderstood by one or both parties, including the politics and frustration of possibly losing money in a financial investment... anyhow, I don't necessarily believe that we need to agree about things, but I do agree that there is likely way too much tolerance of trolls in some of the other threads...

and yeah, I probably agree with the idea of a bullish thread to potentially eliminate (or lessen trolls) to allow for a bullish dialogue.. .and maybe even some degree of tolerance for non-bullish dialogue that is backed up by either decent reason and/or evidence.. sometimes the trolls are difficult to spot, too... and not always easy to figure out when some of the information is based on real faulty or misleading premises (some of the XT/Classic and blocksize debate matters contain some of this madness and difficulties to decipher the good, the bad and the ugly, as the expression goes).

Anyhow, thanks Fakhoury.. and, yep it will be great to see the resumption of some of your ongoing bullish bitcoin article postings.. and sometimes those kinds of articles can spark dialogue, too.

[dmwardjr]

I am similar to you, at least for now, in that I am largely reinvesting almost 100% of my gains because I had never put into bitcoin money that I needed to live upon, and also I have a fairly optimistic outlook regarding upward bitcoin price possibilities.  I have gone over some of my probability viewpoints with Fakhoury - but in the end, the summary of the matter is that I am largely reinvesting a lot of my profits until probably the $3k to $5k territory - though I may reneg a bit and take some profits out in around the $2k territory, if we get there, but my strategy in regards to whether I reinvest or diversify will likely be a result of some analysis regarding how fast we get there (if we do) and what seems to have caused us to get there (if we do).

My main purpose for investing in bitcoin is to prepare for retirement.  I honestly believe bitcoin to be the best investment going above any other to date.  Could something better come along in the future?  Maybe in another 20 years.  Bitcoin is one of those kind of things that rarely occurs in a lifetime [Maybe once every 200 years] with the opportunity for those who are investment savvy.  If you think about it, something like this has got to be rare for so many people to be able to significantly increase their net worth over a relatively short time.  That's if things play out the way we hope with 1000x or even 100x what it is now about 4 to 6 years from now.  Most people spend their entire life to earn enough in savings of some sorts to live off of in their retirement years.  Bitcoin has the potential to do it quite handsomely in one fifth of that amount of time.  I'm talking about from this date forward.

I'm quite certain I'm not cashing out any of my bitcoin for the next 4 to 6 years unless I absolutely had to for whatever reason.  I'm sure it would be tempting at times but I will try to refrain.  I've always wanted one of these since they came available:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d29IN7UQACo  That's one material thing many of us older people covet.   

[JayJuanGee]

I'm ignorant when it comes to index funds, securities, derivatives, etc...

I'm no genius or anything when it comes to investing, and really I have been employing various kinds of investment strategies since leaving high school and then being on my own.  So I have always set aside as much as I could for various investment purposes which has tended to be between 10% and 40% of my income.. and then attempting to invest in various ways.. some paying off better than others, but over the years building up a considerable nestegg.

Maybe a bit more than 15 years ago, I had increased some of my exposure to retirement investments (kind of like 401ks) that are connected with employment, but allows matching and also limits in how much that can be put in.  Then within those 401ks there are limits in how I was able to allocate within them... but maxing them out also was helpful in building funds over a considerable amount of time.

I see...  Thanks for the being straight up.

It is nice to have some flexibility within a 401k to reallocate what goes where.  My wife had something similar with the oil and gas company she used to work for.  However, we did not realize or begin to exercise the flexibility they offered her to move investments around until around the last few months of the 17 years she was employed there.  I know, that's sad.  We did not even think to look into her 401k flexibility until we had serious threats of oil stocks failing the end of last year due to oil prices falling.

Yeah, it is good to attempt to be proactive, when you can, and I had a similar situation for like the first 6 months of one of my investments, and I thought that I had sufficiently allocated within the fund.. and I guess I had made a mistake and got confused about it.  Lucky I caught it after about 6 months, and was able to reallocate in a more diversified manner.. My investment was pretty low during those first 6 months anyhow, so it didn't really make any kind of major difference in the whole scheme of things, but it could have made a major difference if I had not caught it for 6 years or something like that... hahahahaha

I was similar to you.  However, I first heard about it from Glen Beck on talk radio in 2010.  He suggested buying some if you had free cash.  He said he bought 1,000 BTC to put aside and see what happens.  I want to say bitcoin was about $1.70 then.  I went online and saw I had to get what was called a bitcoin wallet and sign up to an exchange to be able to purchase bitcoin.  I was like, "I don't have time for this."  So, I wrote it off and did not think about it again or even hear about bitcoin again until the end of 2013.  I was pissed once I heard it was over $1,000 because I had very fruitful years business wise from 2007 to 2011.  I was going to buy $5,000 in bitcoin minimum for the heck of it but got lazy.  I did not take it serious when it was $1.70.  Oh well...

That's part of the thing... Really difficult to invest in early days, so really, I have been a fairly frugal and conservative investor, so I am not sure whether I would have invested earlier.. and so some of the earlier investors were probably just lucky to have the right friends to sufficiently explain the situation to them.. because anything like $1000 or even $5k in those early days would have been quite profitable if the investor would have also had enough patiences to not sell everything as soon as the price went up 5x or whatever smaller increment.

I found bitcointalk.org the beginning of 2014 and began reading threads to learn about bitcoin.  I would listen to Andreas Antonopolus (sp) on youtube all the time.  I got involved with mining in August, 2014 with 18 x S3's, 15 x SP-20's, 5 x S4's and 7 x S5's.  I later sold those to assist in my purchase of 41 x S7's in total beginning in October of 2015.  I mentioned earlier I did not sell bitcoin to pay for power.  I used my own funds to pay for power and held onto my bitcoin mined.  There were a few months in the beginning when I first began mining that I sold bitcoin to pay for power costs.  However, I later determined it would be more beneficial to pay for my power out of pocket and make up for it later by selling BTC at a higher price.

To be honest with yourself, I hope that you have some fairly detailed records of those costs in order that you can attribute all of that to your costs per BTC.

Even though I did not get into mining, I had some financial costs and money transferring costs and some other costs that I wrote into my total BTC costs in order to provide myself an accurate rendition of my costs per BTC.

By the way, a few months ago, someone contacted me through local bitcoins, and I agreed to transfer BTC to his account after I received various payments through venmo and then after those venmo payments were transferred to my bank.  Anyhow, I thought that I adequately protected myself and I transferred him bitcoin, and then two days later Venmo reversed most (not all) of the payments... I went back and forth with venmo and the guy and in the end, I was in a predictament that ended up being a loss for me.. to send bitcoins and not receive payments... the fucker... anyhow... lesson learned.... I hope.. but those costs (and losses) went into my total costs per bitcoin.. and raised my average cost per BTC by a few dollars.

Yeah, each of us are going to make different choices regarding this (diversification), and the extent that we may need to redistribute and at what times and also depending on our timeline.    Maybe 40% in BTC is too risky, yet that seems to be a question that you need to decide and maybe even reconsider from time to time depending on how the various markets play out, and your personal assessment of various markets in your total portfolio.

Yes, of course.  There are times I have sold ALL of my BTC due to an obvious dump and had a very large portion of my holdings in FIAT for weeks.  However, I feel quite comfortable with my percentage of holdings in crypto [Mainly BTC].  I feel as long as one stays on top of it to protect it as if it were their own son or daughter, there should not be much risk as one might think.

I think that we agree on some things, but you seem to be gambling a bit more than what is in my own personal tolerance.  I stagger and so far, and attempt to never go full anything.. too much gambling involved.  I would rather make a lot less and to slowly sell as prices go up (including possibly some larger moves along the way) and to buy on the way down, with possibly some larger moves a long the way....

To me, it seems to be less of a gamble to "work it" incrementally.

I can understand that.  To each their own.  I've always said one should only do or get involved with what they are comfortable with.  I do trade smaller amounts in BTC/USD most of the time.  However, I tend to go much bigger with the alts.  However, I try to do it in a way that requires a LOT of monitoring of the alt coin markets on my part to avoid any potential big losses.  When I do invest in an alt coin (LTC or ETH), I will choose only one exchange to do it on and use half of the BTC on that exchange to implement my LTC/BTC or ETH/BTC trades.

Possibly a decent experience. 

It sounds like you have a decent approach to attempt to monitor your trading situation and then to focus on it, once you are doing it.  So, in that regard, I think that if you are going to do it, you have a strategy in which you can attempt to learn by it.  Some day I may give something like that a whirl, but for now, I feel sufficiently entertained, occupied and satisfied in monitoring my BTC/USD trading...     

 

[dmwardjr]

Actually, I was kind of with your hypothesizing, until you got to this $2k daily swings.. and I am thinking that we are seeing the situation a bit differently here.

Let's just say hypothetically that bitcoin is worth about $7trillion market cap in today's dollars (sure there are going to be some other issues with the dollar's valuation.. but anyhow, some of those kinds of dynamics are difficult to know today).. but anyhow, I think that you are getting something wrong in a kind of suggestion about $2k daily price swings.... ... Anyhow, I am kind of typing as I think, here, if each bitcoin is approximately $400k, then yeah, that bitcoin's price could easily fluctuate by $2k or $3k in a day, but we would be dealing in thousandths of a bitcoin, and that value may only change by $2, in a day... so in the end, it seems that we agree that the overall currency is much less volatile and more difficult to manipulate, and yeah if the price goes up 1,000x  from today's price, we may have only half or less than half of our current BTC holdings... but that does not mean that we are poor, it just means that we may have chosen to diversify somewhat and for whatever personal reasons.

1.0 BTC = $411,764 USD with a $7,000,000,000,000 market cap on 17,000,000 BTC in circulation.  0.00485715 would be $2,000 USD

WOW!  I already see right now the exchanges would have to make some changes regarding the minimum amount of btc allowed for a trade.  

I hope to still have all of my holdings by the time BTC is worth $411,764 each.  It's possible I could get SOME out but I don't plan on getting out too much.  I've found, as I get older, I don't require a big house with a lot of material things.  I would be content living in an RV traveling the US and Canada.    That would be 1.44 BTC for the Realm RV I want.  That still leaves me quite a bit left over.  If BTC was $411,764 each, I would have well over $100 million USD worth.  Nothing wrong with dreaming.  

Here's that RV:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d29IN7UQACo

[dmwardjr]

EDIT:  The reason I say BTC will always be volatile; I consider $2,000 USD swings volatile.  Yet, the price of BTC is so high, those of us with holdings of BTC in whole numbers and not decimal points will not be as concerned about the volatility.  Those with decimal points would be more concerned.  Those with decimal points would consider $2,000 USD swings as volatile while those with multiple whole numbers will not view it as very volatile.

I think that you lose me here, too, because less volatile and less manipulatable goes throughout, and I think maybe that either you are thinking about this a bit differently from me, or you are assuming a higher level of volatility.

If you hold 50BTC or something like that, and those BTC are worth $20million.. but maybe as we discussed earlier, the value of your total portfolio may fluctuate by $100k in a day, but the fluctuation of the value of the portfolio of someone holding $20k in BTC may only fluctuate by $100... It's the same volatility as a percentage but may be reasonably manageable for someone who is holding a lower value of BTC, and yeah that's not really taking into account the various ways that a person may chose to diversify, if he thinks that volatility is too risky.

As for someone with $20K in BTC fluctuating $100; lets have a look:

BTC worth $411,764 each with a $7,000,000,000,000 market cap on 17,000,000 BTC in circulation.

$20,000 USD in BTC at that price would be 0.04857151.

If the price dropped $2,000 in one day from $411,764 to $409,764, they would now have $19,902.86 USD worth of BTC.  WHY?  Cause they still have the same 0.04857151 BTC.  It's just that the BTC is worth less here.

I see what you mean now by a loss of $100 in a day for this individual.  I suppose it depends on the individual as to whether this is acceptable to them and is considered too volatile for them.  Some people [Like my wife] can be quite thrifty.  That's a good thing in my case though.

[dmwardjr]

It is nice to have some flexibility within a 401k to reallocate what goes where.  My wife had something similar with the oil and gas company she used to work for.  However, we did not realize or begin to exercise the flexibility they offered her to move investments around until around the last few months of the 17 years she was employed there.  I know, that's sad.  We did not even think to look into her 401k flexibility until we had serious threats of oil stocks failing the end of last year due to oil prices falling.

Yeah, it is good to attempt to be proactive, when you can, and I had a similar situation for like the first 6 months of one of my investments, and I thought that I had sufficiently allocated within the fund.. and I guess I had made a mistake and got confused about it.  Lucky I caught it after about 6 months, and was able to reallocate in a more diversified manner.. My investment was pretty low during those first 6 months anyhow, so it didn't really make any kind of major difference in the whole scheme of things, but it could have made a major difference if I had not caught it for 6 years or something like that... hahahahaha

A lot of her 401k was company stock.  It was given to her automatically every month by the company.  Since her company she used to work for was in oil and gas, fluctuation in oil prices also affected her company stock price.  If we had known about the ability to sell all of her company stock and put it into other investments, we would have moved it to those other investments when her company stock price was at $92 instead of doing it when we did at $57.     We could have had another $80k approximately in her 401k.

[JayJuanGee]

Trading BTC/USD by itself was certainly not something I could live off of at the time.  I still have not got to the point I can live off it now.  However, I'm working towards it.

Yep.. that's quite the gold standard.. "to live off of it"  My thinking is to keep building the next egg, and yeah, there could be either luck in the sense of trades that pay off or just merely the appreciation of the value of bitcoin that allows a person to "live off of it" combined with whatever other income sources that are available or produced by other assets.

Yes, it will be interesting to see what the markets will be like if and/or when it is in the $600's, $800's, $3k's, $5k's, etc...

Yes, know the "cause(s)" for each rise in price could provide considerable inspiration as to how we invest and how much we invest at each price point mentioned in the future.  Maybe we can discuss those aspects if and/or when they come to fruition in the future.

Yep.. agreed... Part of the reason for participating in this kind of forum is to brainstorm with knowledgeable persons, and even if we do not agree with their perspective or approach, there may be ways that we can learn more about our own approach, why we do it and whether a change may be more prudent.... so yeah, we may face some dilemmas and even disagreements about what we want to do.. and maybe some of that may be fruitfully shared publicly, and I have traded some other discussions in PMs... if some of the details may be a bit too personal for either person.

I can understand your approach as well.  Your approach is pretty much similar to how the big banks trade currency pairs on FX.

In some threads, I have provided some fairly detailed disclosures concerning how I stack my intended trades, and I have even argued with some that my approach is nearly foolproof... possibly a bit of an exaggeration, but currently the approach seems to be working pretty good for me, and so far, I have not minded providing some of those kinds of details from time to time..

We have winners and we have losers.  Usually, more losers than winners.  Everyone cannot win all the time unfortunately.

Actually, yes... It becomes so easy to get emotional and to do the wrong thing.. so in that regard a lot of people can get tricked into buying high and selling low... and so I agree, probably more people lose than win because it remains tricky, even when it seems simple.

  I get tempted into such myself when the market is going up, it is very tempting for me to buy and make a little on the upsurge when I should be selling and sometimes it is very difficult to sell on the way up because I want to make more and more and more and to time the highest point when I should probably continuously have been selling as it goes up because the price trend can reverse at any time and for no reason..  and the same happens to be true when the price is going down.. sometimes I want to sell on the way down and I have a tendency to get greedy on the downward trend when I should be buying and in the end, I don't want to get caught selling at the bottom of such an awe inspiring dip when I should have been buying at that time in the dip, and I sometimes have to coach some people (in the real world who I attempt to help with this) over and over and over  about not getting tempted to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.. and it is very difficult to help people to fight off the temptations to do the wrong things at the wrong times..  so if you build systems, you can stick to your plan and do only what you are supposed to do buy on the way down and sell on the way up.. 

[JayJuanGee]

I am similar to you, at least for now, in that I am largely reinvesting almost 100% of my gains because I had never put into bitcoin money that I needed to live upon, and also I have a fairly optimistic outlook regarding upward bitcoin price possibilities.  I have gone over some of my probability viewpoints with Fakhoury - but in the end, the summary of the matter is that I am largely reinvesting a lot of my profits until probably the $3k to $5k territory - though I may reneg a bit and take some profits out in around the $2k territory, if we get there, but my strategy in regards to whether I reinvest or diversify will likely be a result of some analysis regarding how fast we get there (if we do) and what seems to have caused us to get there (if we do).

My main purpose for investing in bitcoin is to prepare for retirement.  I honestly believe bitcoin to be the best investment going above any other to date.  Could something better come along in the future?  Maybe in another 20 years.  Bitcoin is one of those kind of things that rarely occurs in a lifetime [Maybe once every 200 years] with the opportunity for those who are investment savvy.  If you think about it, something like this has got to be rare for so many people to be able to significantly increase their net worth over a relatively short time.  That's if things play out the way we hope with 1000x or even 100x what it is now about 4 to 6 years from now.  Most people spend their entire life to earn enough in savings of some sorts to live off of in their retirement years.  Bitcoin has the potential to do it quite handsomely in one fifth of that amount of time.  I'm talking about from this date forward.

I'm quite certain I'm not cashing out any of my bitcoin for the next 4 to 6 years unless I absolutely had to for whatever reason.  I'm sure it would be tempting at times but I will try to refrain.  I've always wanted one of these since they came available:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d29IN7UQACo  That's one material thing many of us older people covet.   

The investment opportunity does seem to be rare, but I am having my doubts about whether it is a once every 200 years type proposition.. even though it could play out to be that rare..

But yeah, it is probably at least comparable to the telephone, internet, automobile... etc.  paradigm shifting innovation.

Regarding that mobile home.. I did not see the price, but probably starts out at about $150k or so, and maybe gets 4 miles per gallon - the diesel version?   

[dmwardjr]

To be honest with yourself, I hope that you have some fairly detailed records of those costs in order that you can attribute all of that to your costs per BTC.

Even though I did not get into mining, I had some financial costs and money transferring costs and some other costs that I wrote into my total BTC costs in order to provide myself an accurate rendition of my costs per BTC.

By the way, a few months ago, someone contacted me through local bitcoins, and I agreed to transfer BTC to his account after I received various payments through venmo and then after those venmo payments were transferred to my bank.  Anyhow, I thought that I adequately protected myself and I transferred him bitcoin, and then two days later Venmo reversed most (not all) of the payments... I went back and forth with venmo and the guy and in the end, I was in a predictament that ended up being a loss for me.. to send bitcoins and not receive payments... the fucker... anyhow... lesson learned.... I hope.. but those costs (and losses) went into my total costs per bitcoin.. and raised my average cost per BTC by a few dollars.

I have very detailed records because my rigs were purchased and owned by my telecommunications training business.  I had it set up by my lawyer to do any kind of business I wanted to under the company name.  I have made sure everything is in order in case I was ever audited.

I would say I've done quite well for myself with the mining rigs.  Especially, when I first got involved with mining in 2015.  I paid approximately $5,500 for 15 x SP20's ($366.66 each).  Can you believe I sold each one of them at an average of approximately $370 each before eBay and PayPal fees?  This means I came very close to getting back what I paid for them.  Same thing with the Bitmain S5's.  I did quite well with the S4's as well when I got $620 on average for them.  I paid approximately $940 each for them with shipping.  So, not so bad for them.

The following is a screen shot to give an example of what I sold Spondoolies SP20 for back in August last year before the S7 was up for sell in September on bitmaintech.com:



Sorry that mishap occurred with Venmo.  Sounds like a lot of stress and headache was the order of the day to get all of that panned out.  Geez.

Thanks for sharing that.  I always try to learn from other peoples mistakes.

[JayJuanGee]

Actually, I was kind of with your hypothesizing, until you got to this $2k daily swings.. and I am thinking that we are seeing the situation a bit differently here.

Let's just say hypothetically that bitcoin is worth about $7trillion market cap in today's dollars (sure there are going to be some other issues with the dollar's valuation.. but anyhow, some of those kinds of dynamics are difficult to know today).. but anyhow, I think that you are getting something wrong in a kind of suggestion about $2k daily price swings.... ... Anyhow, I am kind of typing as I think, here, if each bitcoin is approximately $400k, then yeah, that bitcoin's price could easily fluctuate by $2k or $3k in a day, but we would be dealing in thousandths of a bitcoin, and that value may only change by $2, in a day... so in the end, it seems that we agree that the overall currency is much less volatile and more difficult to manipulate, and yeah if the price goes up 1,000x  from today's price, we may have only half or less than half of our current BTC holdings... but that does not mean that we are poor, it just means that we may have chosen to diversify somewhat and for whatever personal reasons.

1.0 BTC = $411,764 USD with a $7,000,000,000,000 market cap on 17,000,000 BTC in circulation.  0.00485715 would be $2,000 USD

WOW!  I already see right now the exchanges would have to make some changes regarding the minimum amount of btc allowed for a trade.  

I hope to still have all of my holdings by the time BTC is worth $411,764 each.  It's possible I could get SOME out but I don't plan on getting out too much.  I've found, as I get older, I don't require a big house with a lot of material things.  I would be content living in an RV traveling the US and Canada.    That would be 1.44 BTC for the Realm RV I want.  That still leaves me quite a bit left over.  If BTC was $411,764 each, I would have well over $100 million USD worth.  Nothing wrong with dreaming.  

Here's that RV:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d29IN7UQACo

Wow, I very much underestimated the price of the realm.. and you are suggesting that it runs over half a million for that vehicle.. whoaza...

[dmwardjr]

The investment opportunity does seem to be rare, but I am having my doubts about whether it is a once every 200 years type proposition.. even though it could play out to be that rare..

But yeah, it is probably at least comparable to the telephone, internet, automobile... etc.  paradigm shifting innovation.

Regarding that mobile home.. I did not see the price, but probably starts out at about $150k or so, and maybe gets 4 miles per gallon - the diesel version?   

The reason I'm saying it's so rare is mainly because everyone could not buy into telephone, internet, automobile, etc... and expect that kind of return on investment.  I could be wrong but I don't think so.

As for the price on the Realm RV:  http://www.rvtrader.com/dealers/Motor-Home-Specialist-Inc.-726707/listing/2016-Foretravel-Realm-FS6-Luxury-Villa-3-%28LV3%29-Bath-%26-1--115076294

[JayJuanGee]

EDIT:  The reason I say BTC will always be volatile; I consider $2,000 USD swings volatile.  Yet, the price of BTC is so high, those of us with holdings of BTC in whole numbers and not decimal points will not be as concerned about the volatility.  Those with decimal points would be more concerned.  Those with decimal points would consider $2,000 USD swings as volatile while those with multiple whole numbers will not view it as very volatile.

I think that you lose me here, too, because less volatile and less manipulatable goes throughout, and I think maybe that either you are thinking about this a bit differently from me, or you are assuming a higher level of volatility.

If you hold 50BTC or something like that, and those BTC are worth $20million.. but maybe as we discussed earlier, the value of your total portfolio may fluctuate by $100k in a day, but the fluctuation of the value of the portfolio of someone holding $20k in BTC may only fluctuate by $100... It's the same volatility as a percentage but may be reasonably manageable for someone who is holding a lower value of BTC, and yeah that's not really taking into account the various ways that a person may chose to diversify, if he thinks that volatility is too risky.

As for someone with $20K in BTC fluctuating $100; lets have a look:

BTC worth $411,764 each with a $7,000,000,000,000 market cap on 17,000,000 BTC in circulation.

$20,000 USD in BTC at that price would be 0.04857151.

If the price dropped $2,000 in one day from $411,764 to $409,764, they would now have $19,902.86 USD worth of BTC.  WHY?  Cause they still have the same 0.04857151 BTC.  It's just that the BTC is worth less here.

I see what you mean now by a loss of $100 in a day for this individual.  I suppose it depends on the individual as to whether this is acceptable to them and is considered too volatile for them.  Some people [Like my wife] can be quite thrifty.  That's a good thing in my case though.

yeah but the volatility includes ups and downs and just ongoing volatility, but less as the market cap gets greater. 

I mean it may be down $100 one day and then up $200 the next and then back down to where it started and maybe even kind of trickling upward on a yearly basis it may be up 2% or something... , I think that we should be able to handle such potential volatility that would become more and more predictable as the thing is in existence for a longer period of time ...

Such volatility too, would also be a bit better than some of the artificial and unseen volatility that is caused by quantitative easing and various wasteful practices employed by governments and banks controlling current fiat systems.

[JayJuanGee]

The investment opportunity does seem to be rare, but I am having my doubts about whether it is a once every 200 years type proposition.. even though it could play out to be that rare..

But yeah, it is probably at least comparable to the telephone, internet, automobile... etc.  paradigm shifting innovation.

Regarding that mobile home.. I did not see the price, but probably starts out at about $150k or so, and maybe gets 4 miles per gallon - the diesel version?   

The reason I'm saying it's so rare is mainly because everyone could not buy into telephone, internet, automobile, etc... and expect that kind of return on investment.  I could be wrong but I don't think so.

As for the price on the Realm RV:  http://www.rvtrader.com/dealers/Motor-Home-Specialist-Inc.-726707/listing/2016-Foretravel-Realm-FS6-Luxury-Villa-3-%28LV3%29-Bath-%26-1--115076294

Wow... ... so then yeah, you consider that to be a good investment, and others consider a boat that could sail the world, but probably a boat would cost more, especially if you want it to be sufficiently safe in an ocean bound and international sense... Hm?  I'm not quite into thinking about those kinds of things, even though my mom had suggested some kind of RV type situation to me, I am kind of more inclined towards international travel but without buying big items and attempting to stay more mobile.. but I'm currently still working out some geographically tying me down business details, so cannot start anything like that until i get some of my geographically tying me down business matters in a more settled place or maybe liquidated.. hahahahaha.

[dmwardjr]

We have winners and we have losers.  Usually, more losers than winners.  Everyone cannot win all the time unfortunately.

Actually, yes... It becomes so easy to get emotional and to do the wrong thing.. so in that regard a lot of people can get tricked into buying high and selling low... and so I agree, probably more people lose than win because it remains tricky, even when it seems simple.

  I get tempted into such myself when the market is going up, it is very tempting for me to buy and make a little on the upsurge when I should be selling and sometimes it is very difficult to sell on the way up because I want to make more and more and more and to time the highest point when I should probably continuously have been selling as it goes up because the price trend can reverse at any time and for no reason..  and the same happens to be true when the price is going down.. sometimes I want to sell on the way down and I have a tendency to get greedy on the downward trend when I should be buying and in the end, I don't want to get caught selling at the bottom of such an awe inspiring dip when I should have been buying at that time in the dip, and I sometimes have to coach some people (in the real world who I attempt to help with this) over and over and over  about not getting tempted to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.. and it is very difficult to help people to fight off the temptations to do the wrong things at the wrong times..  so if you build systems, you can stick to your plan and do only what you are supposed to do buy on the way down and sell on the way up.. 

I've found what helped me get out of reacting on emotions is to stop looking at any chart lower than the 30m.  I remember I used to look at the 15m, 5m and 3m all the time.  I would get caught up "in the moment" (15m, 5m and 3m charts) instead of having a plan based off information gathered to make a logical decision.  I've had to force myself to exercise patience with trading to allow TIME for things to play out the way I previously determined they may play out based on the information I've gathered.  Sometimes, this may take days and in some cases weeks to play out.

I remember when LTC was heading on a downward spiral.  I told everyone they should wait to get in around .0065 in about 6 to 8 weeks.  I have many witnesses on BTC-e about this.  Paul (a moderator on BTC-e) is a witness to this.  I provided charts for those who were interested.  Sure enough, about 8 weeks later it hit an ATL of .0065 and I bought a slew of it to prepare for the LTC pump and dump due to the LTC block halving I knew was coming about 3.5 months later.

The swings are not broad enough to do any swing trading in my opinion.  It's not worth my time to be near the computer to swing trade at present.  Back in late 2013 and first quarter of 2014 it was nothing for you to have $50 swings almost every day.  Now THAT is worth staying near the computer to get involved with.

Most of my trades lately have occurred over a 2 to 4 day period where I would enter and exit.  I know some who may make only 2 trades a month (one entry and one exit) but they were big trades.  I suppose it depends on the person and the amount of time they have to invest in front of computer screen to trade.