Does this forum have bears?

[cypherdoc]

The biggest BTC bear has to be pirateat40; however he defaulted on his massive BTC short position six months ago.

I posted this in mid-July. Within two months the bear pirateat40 (well, more likely his business and trading strategy) had been shot, skinned, gutted, grilled and eaten for lunch.

and look at my post, right under the OP.

overpay? 

[fcmatt]

I am a bear.. But i am also a miner so i am conflicted sometimes. I do not understand why the price is so high. Gambling? Hording? Seems like a lot of btc is one the sidelines right now not apparent in current asks that will show up in an amazing fashion some day soon.

[oakpacific]

I think I am a bit more neutral than many people here, does that make me a bear? I still believe it's entirely possible that the market could crash right around the corner. But unlike some daydreaming bears here, I am not going to keep my hopes up high that I will have the chance to buy single digit coins simply because I didn't buy more at the time.

[Melbustus]

I think Cypher's list probably comprises close to all of them (at least the ones who are still around and post with any frequency).

Generally, I think people are not likely to retain significant interest in bitcoin if they think it's going to fail. And they if they don't think failure is inevitable, it's hard to be long-term bearish. That said, I think lots of us long-term bulls still think, at times, that the price has gone too far too fast, but that's really just a mostly-irrelevant short-term consideration.

(emphasis mine)

This.

Long-term, BTC almost has to be worth either a heckuvalot or diddly squat. Not much room in between, IMHO.

I'll happily be short-term bearish, however. Add evolve to the list of known Bitcointalk bears.

bitcointip Melbustus +BTC0,0025

Awesome - my first tip - thanks! Been on the board since June 2011 and I just got around to actually putting one of my addresses in my sig today!

[mp420]

I think I'm slowly becoming bearish, since I can't really see how the network can agree to the block size limit fork at this point. It really should have been done in 2010 when Bitcoin was not as important as it is now.

OTOH, I think the price may dip far below current level even if we don't hit the transaction limit.

[nrd525]

I wrote my first blog post about bitcoin and how it was a bubble when it was at $17.  I sold my short position at around $2.10.

I stopped being a bear once the price settled down (and wrote a bunch of posts saying Pirate was likely a ponzi), but have now regained faith.

One of my original arguments (that nobody else seems to use) is that Bitcoin is not unique and faces an infinite (or at least very large) number of competitors (anyone can create an alternative currency).  So I feel the whole limited supply / necessary deflation view that most people hold is wrong.

I don't think that will cause the current bubble to crash.  But I do think we're obviously in a bubble.  The price is going up too fast (compared to the growth of Bitcoin economy).  There is too much speculation and not enough real community/production.  And the fact that people are borrowing money at 150% APR (on Bitfinex) to go long is absurd.

On the other hand, I'm surprised at how resilient the Bitcoin economy has been in the wake of scams and hacks. So I think it will survive the ASIC meltdown.  That is to say most people who buy ASICs will lose money, as will most ASIC companies - due to the dangers of a low marginal cost of production.

Possible causes for the bubble bursting
-people realizing it is a bubble
-ASIC financial losses
-shutdown of Silk Road
-US/SEC crackdown on Bitcoin
-creation of better alternatives (possibly from people that have nothing to do with the current bitcoin economy, possibly sponsored by governments or large corporations who can build a network/community dwarfing bitcoin's overnight)

[zvs]

i would *sell short if there was some place that offered it where i didnt have a 50/50 chance of being swindled

[TraderTimm]

I'm expecting a retracement, myself. The only problem is - you don't short into an uptrend. When it breaks my trendlines, then it is time to bail.

Any good trader looks at both sides.

[DobZombie]

Does this forum have bears?

HERE'S A COUPLE!

[Vandroiy]

Well. It might be getting another bear if this continues.

Relying on Mr. big money and/or a horde of newcomers to keep a gigantic rally running? I'm generally confident in Bitcoin, but it is getting excessive again. I'm drifting between balanced and bearish lately, haven't felt super bullish in a while.

The reasoning is quite simple: fundamentals aren't clear, and the surge in price is at least supported -- maybe even dominated -- by people who don't seem to know what they're doing. Check out reddit and the likes, posts like "I told my bro how much profit I made so he bought too!!!!" are not rare. So yaaa... pro traders at work.

[Seth Otterstad]

I do not understand why the price is so high. Gambling? Hording?

The price is going up too fast (compared to the growth of Bitcoin economy).  There is too much speculation and not enough real community/production.  And the fact that people are borrowing money at 150% APR (on Bitfinex) to go long is absurd.

Thanks for the analisys nrd525.  There are good reasons for a price increase this time. Here's whats different from a year ago:

Silk Road is doing at least 2mil/month.  Forum usage up hundreds of percent over last year.

A $10mil company will be releasing the BitcoinCard this year at the Vienna Bitcoin Conference. The Russian founders say 5 years of research have gone into this technology allowing a super-low-power credit card sized device to send texts, bitcoins, login info, and consumer data through an ad-hoc network instead of cell towers, at a card cost of only $10-$25

The block reward has halved, decreasing the supply of new coins to 3600 coins/day

Network transaction fees per day are up 1100% from 4 to 48

SatoshiDice has shown the potential of the bitcoin gambling market by earning $600k, including 17,266 bitcoins in December

BitInstant lets you buy bitcoins at walmart, 7-11, and CVS

Explosion in p2p exchanges for cash or bank transfers on sites like localbitcoins

There are many different bitcoin wallets for android and iPhone.

Many companies in the bitcoin community have gone public.

Coinlab and BitPay each got 500k in venture capital.  Coinbase got 100k.

Wordpress signed up with BitPay, the 20th largest website in the world.  BitPay then doubled their number of merchants in three months.

Somewhere around 3000 merchants accept bitcoin, up several hundred percent.

Bitcoin Foundation Launched in September 2012

Bitcoin can be traded on forex exchanges

New bitcoin based businesses are announced every day due to zero barrier to entry

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I do not understand why the price is so high. Gambling? Hording?

The price is going up too fast (compared to the growth of Bitcoin economy).  There is too much speculation and not enough real community/production.  And the fact that people are borrowing money at 150% APR (on Bitfinex) to go long is absurd.

Thanks for the analisys nrd525.  There are good reasons for a price increase this time. Here's whats different from a year ago:

Silk Road is doing at least 2mil/month.  Forum usage up hundreds of percent over last year.

A $10mil company will be releasing the BitcoinCard this year at the Vienna Bitcoin Conference. The Russian founders say 5 years of research have gone into this technology allowing a super-low-power credit card sized device to send texts, bitcoins, login info, and consumer data through an ad-hoc network instead of cell towers, at a card cost of only $10-$25

The block reward has halved, decreasing the supply of new coins to 3600 coins/day

Network transaction fees per day are up 1100% from 4 to 48

SatoshiDice has shown the potential of the bitcoin gambling market by earning $600k, including 17,266 bitcoins in December

BitInstant lets you buy bitcoins at walmart, 7-11, and CVS

Explosion in p2p exchanges for cash or bank transfers on sites like localbitcoins

There are many different bitcoin wallets for android and iPhone.

Many companies in the bitcoin community have gone public.

Coinlab and BitPay each got 500k in venture capital.  Coinbase got 100k.

Wordpress signed up with BitPay, the 20th largest website in the world.  BitPay then doubled their number of merchants in three months.

Somewhere around 3000 merchants accept bitcoin, up several hundred percent.

Bitcoin Foundation Launched in September 2012

Bitcoin can be traded on forex exchanges

New bitcoin based businesses are announced every day due to zero barrier to entry

Do you keep a list or do these just pop up in your head?

[adamstgBit]

I do not understand why the price is so high. Gambling? Hording?

The price is going up too fast (compared to the growth of Bitcoin economy).  There is too much speculation and not enough real community/production.  And the fact that people are borrowing money at 150% APR (on Bitfinex) to go long is absurd.

Thanks for the analisys nrd525.  There are good reasons for a price increase this time. Here's whats different from a year ago:

Silk Road is doing at least 2mil/month.  Forum usage up hundreds of percent over last year.

A $10mil company will be releasing the BitcoinCard this year at the Vienna Bitcoin Conference. The Russian founders say 5 years of research have gone into this technology allowing a super-low-power credit card sized device to send texts, bitcoins, login info, and consumer data through an ad-hoc network instead of cell towers, at a card cost of only $10-$25

The block reward has halved, decreasing the supply of new coins to 3600 coins/day

Network transaction fees per day are up 1100% from 4 to 48

SatoshiDice has shown the potential of the bitcoin gambling market by earning $600k, including 17,266 bitcoins in December

BitInstant lets you buy bitcoins at walmart, 7-11, and CVS

Explosion in p2p exchanges for cash or bank transfers on sites like localbitcoins

There are many different bitcoin wallets for android and iPhone.

Many companies in the bitcoin community have gone public.

Coinlab and BitPay each got 500k in venture capital.  Coinbase got 100k.

Wordpress signed up with BitPay, the 20th largest website in the world.  BitPay then doubled their number of merchants in three months.

Somewhere around 3000 merchants accept bitcoin, up several hundred percent.

Bitcoin Foundation Launched in September 2012

Bitcoin can be traded on forex exchanges

New bitcoin based businesses are announced every day due to zero barrier to entry

Do you keep a list or do these just pop up in your head?

well done, I think this captures all the reasons for the price rising...

most Bitcoin Bears will cover a short with 5-10% profit and count themselves lucky... so in reality most bears are really long term bulls that believe price will go down for a sec   

[Seth Otterstad]

Do you keep a list or do these just pop up in your head?

I really should have made a new thread.  I started that list a while ago and I just adjust the data and add/subtract from it every now and then.


EDIT:  actually, I will start a new thread.

[Vladimir]

Being a long term bear on bitcoin is about the same as being long term bull on fiat. Both could be classified as a form of insanity.

[BIGMERVE]

[World]

[nrd525]

Seth gave a great list of good developments for bitcoin.  Now obviously not all bitcoin projects will succeed (I'd bet against Coinbase and the bitcard), but that is true of any economy. So long as enough projects succeed, bitcoin may be in good hands.

In the past bear market, I thought that there was a good chance (say 1/10) that BTC could go down to zero.  I felt that the bear market would cause people to lose so much money that the community would be destroyed and it wouldn't recover.  However now it is pretty clear that won't happen.

I'm still skeptical because with a market cap of $250 million, if we have a money velocity of 4 - then we should we be doing $1 billion (or 43 million BTC) in trade each year. I don't see that happening yet.  Instead we have a lot of money sitting around and speculation that doesn't do anyone good.

I'm not sure what monetary velocity makes sense. If BTC was mature, my guess is the velocity would be 4-10 (as it is easy to transfer).  However in an immature and rapid growth economy you just need to have an expectation that the velocity will reach 4+ in the near future.

...

Another possible cause for a BTC price decline is that interest rates in developed economies could return to historical levels thus encouraging investors to move their money from BTC into bonds that provide a low-risk and positive rate of return.  Currently if you have your money in a US bank or ten year treasury you get paid less than the inflation rate (and lose even more money after taxes). 

[cypherdoc]

Seth gave a great list of good developments for bitcoin.  Now obviously not all bitcoin projects will succeed (I'd bet against Coinbase and the bitcard), but that is true of any economy. So long as enough projects succeed, bitcoin may be in good hands.

In the past bear market, I thought that there was a good chance (say 1/10) that BTC could go down to zero.  I felt that the bear market would cause people to lose so much money that the community would be destroyed and it wouldn't recover.  However now it is pretty clear that won't happen.

I'm still skeptical because with a market cap of $250 million, if we have a money velocity of 4 - then we should we be doing $1 billion (or 43 million BTC) in trade each year. I don't see that happening yet.  Instead we have a lot of money sitting around and speculation that doesn't do anyone good.

i don't agree.  at this stage of the game, its important to have a smoothly rising price from speculation to encourage more merchants to enter the fray.  i don't understand why alot of ppl expect/expected Bitcoin to have all elements of a successful new currency in place from day one.  its an evolutionary process of which all the components will come together with time.

I'm not sure what monetary velocity makes sense. If BTC was mature, my guess is the velocity would be 4-10 (as it is easy to transfer).  However in an immature and rapid growth economy you just need to have an expectation that the velocity will reach 4+ in the near future.
...

Another possible cause for a BTC price decline is that interest rates in developed economies could return to historical levels thus encouraging investors to move their money from BTC into bonds that provide a low-risk and positive rate of return.  Currently if you have your money in a US bank or ten year treasury you get paid less than the inflation rate (and lose even more money after taxes). 

it seems to me you're out of step with one component of that process.  for interest rates to rise, bonds have to sell off, liberating a huge sum of fiat money.  where might that go?  a good chunk of that could go to Bitcoin to fuel further price rises.  of course, at some point, as the Bitcoin prices and interest rates top out together, then you might get the shift back into bonds from Bitcoin.  but that could be a long time from now and at much higher Bitcoin prices.

[byronbb]

Possible causes for the bubble bursting
-ASIC financial losses

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/300138033590718464

9 days to recoupe outlay.

-shutdown of Silk Road

TOR has been surviving for longer than SR, and not going anywhere. So if SR itself gets busted, someone replaces it. I fully expect cartels to wake up and amazon.com the SR eventually.

-US/SEC crackdown on Bitcoin

Perhaps. The US has waaayy bigger problems right now than bitcoin. The bitcoin network itself is a p2p network that moves crypto-hashes. It breaks no laws in itself, unlike perhaps that possible with bittorrent, which accounts for 30%-40% of Internet traffic.

-creation of better alternatives (possibly from people that have nothing to do with the current bitcoin economy, possibly sponsored by governments or large corporations who can build a network/community dwarfing bitcoin's overnight)

And maybe China lands on the moon by 2050.....