Halving guide for noobs: Why it's not possible for halving to be priced in now

[solitude]

OPs theory is based on the assumption that miners are mostly capable and skilled people with large piles of personal wealth. I personally don't agree with that and think that most of bitcoin mining (except those who manufactured mining machines) is done by inexperienced kids in debt. Kids who think that buying equipment, turning it on and operating it with less then 10 commands made them industrialists.

I'm pretty sure you are mentally retarded.

You can type like you've at least graduated high school, but the words you type are simply retarded.  Do you seriously think that most of the bitcoin mining is done by children?  If the majority of bitcoin mining was done by children, why would they even have to worry about debt?  They're fucking children, they're not even old enough to own a credit card.

"Mervyn_Pumpkinhead", wow, what an original name.  Your name is retarded, what you type is retarded, and I wouldn't be surprised if you happened to impregnate a woman that your children would be retarded.

You basically wrote the most retarded thing I've ever read in the history of the internet, since I joined the internet in 1996. 

Get the fuck off this forum, you're worse than the third world trash who post here with their gibberish broken english looking for signature spam bucks.

[1713573909]

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[1713573909]

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[LMGTFY]

Most people in the speculation forum don't understand anything about Bitcoin mining.  The first thing you need to understand is, nobody running a current process node miner actually turns them off no matter what the price does.  You're either an ASIC dealer that spent millions on research and design to make it, or some random Joe that paid a big premium for one.  Turning them off makes no sense for anyone since Bitcoin is an asymmetric investment.  Unless you're mining with crazy expensive electricity, your current generation miner will either pay off eventually, or Bitcoin will go to 0.  There's no purpose in turning it off.  

If you're mining, you likely already own coins, and increasing hash power just drives the price up of the ones you already have as well.  Trust me, I've rented out like 80% of the hashpower of entire altcoins, I'm an expert on this from firsthand experience.  Since the amount of miners deployed increased a lot with the recent price increase, this means the floor miners will stop selling at raised too.  If the majority of the network is composed of ASICs that are supposed to be technologically viable, or even near their ROI period at all, but the sell rate is not favorable to that, they will simply stop selling, supply withers to nothing, then the price boom occurs.

Miners also tend to mine at a loss in hopes of future returns (being a deflationary system and all) long before turning their miners off.  If the miners do begin to mine at a loss ,they will then also go buy coins off the wall to dollar cost average because we've already determined they aren't turning the miners off.  It is 100% inevitable price increases after halving.  Post halving price is a function of what the market can bear pre-halving.  We've already seen the Mike Hearn R3 propaganda scare dumps where the market didn't drop that much then rebounded anyway.  There's not a problem with the market supporting this ballpark of pre-halving price of around a 410 floor.  

No matter how you look at it, post halving, in one way or another, through multiple dynamics, the supply will decrease propotional to demand.  Mining is a form of demand.  Mining is a decentralized exchange, Coinbase is a centralized exchange.  The price could increase 50%, it could increase 100%, or depending how elastic demand is, it could go much higher through a big shock in supply side distortion.  Around 75% of Bitcoin has already been mined, so the hard part, the putting money up front to capitalize the accumulation period, is already done.  Now the people who have accumulated just wait for inflation to drop, like it's about to do, then send the market higher.  The market will move through both predictable laws of economics and whale engineering at the same time.

OK, I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. It's been many years since I mined, and a lot has changed, but I recognise mining-at-a-loss - when I purchased my first <ahem> "rig" (known as a fancy graphics card back then) I knew I could spend the money on BTC instead, and - initially - have far more BTC. I knew that difficulty would push ROI back further and further. Despite that, I mined at a loss in the hope that - one -day! - BTC would be worth more than the few dollars it was then.

So - good analysis, interesting and thought-provoking discussion ensues.

What I don't get is - what does that have to do with the subject of the thread?

The big struggle I have trying to get people to understand that markets take known, future events into account is getting them to understand that traders don't live in a bubble, that they have access to the same data, the same analysis we have (not least because there's an overlap between "traders" and "us"). The premise here seems to be (1) we know that supply will reduce relative to demand, (2) ?, (3) Profit. What's step 2?

[JayJuanGee]

Although the layout of your first photo there is pretty cool, its currently only about $1000 or a bit less.

Wow, mr. hot shot "World Class Cryptonaire" hit the nail on the head.

You're absolutely right, I don't think my bullion is worth much more than a grand. 

Come on hot shot World Class Cryptonaire, show us your wealth.

Although to be honest, with a stupid picture not much more impressive than our reality tv friend Chef Ramsay, and a dumb name "World Class Cryptonaire" underneath it, I'd say you were more of a bullshitting retarded poser than anyone holding any serious wealth.

Although I'm waiting here for you to convince me you were the real deal.

I doubt that it really matters too much regarding how much BTC posters in these speculation threads are holding.  Surely claims seem a bit more realistic when they are working with more than 5 or 10 coins, and surely it helps to make profits a bit greater when working with a larger stash of coins.  Sometimes when the reference is to a stash of less than 1 coin, then it becomes more difficult to take the person seriously (especially if making claims about trading BTC)

Between late 2013 and mid-2014, my goal was to build up a personal holdings of about 30 coins, yet when BTC prices dropped from $1,000 to $600 then to $400 and finally to $200 and below, 30 coins became a lot more attainable, well within my budget, and I ended up exceeding that initial goal. 

Frequently, after I had attained my initial 30 coins, I would begin to talk more in hypotheticals, and not discuss too many specifics regarding my exact quantity of holdings; however, I frequently like to use 100 coins as easy reference point when discussing BTC accumulation and trading strategies and techniques..

Whether I personally hold 100 coins, 100 coins seems like a good round number that could be easy to digest and fairly within grasp of a lot of people who have been at this accumulation and trading of BTC for a while.

On the other hand, it seems that in the coming years, and once BTC prices may likely 10x in the coming years (possibly even this year), it may become more practical to talk about accumulating and/or trading 10 coins, for illustrative purposes.   

[solitude]

Most of the hashrate does indeed come from large companies with good capital funding. I would consider them to be rational financial actors.

Following the bitcoin mining business model is far from being a rational financial action.
At first, it's technologically very simplistic, meaning that having skill and experience can't give you a edge in the field over the competition. Meaning that bitcoin mining has always been unattractive for the skilled and experienced, and attractive for those who found the simplistic nature suitable for their own abilities.
And like I said, those who actually designed and built the equipment are different kind of people and that's why the majority of them stayed away from making money by mining themselves. They are smart enough to know that you can't build a solid business plan on top of mining bitcoin. It's just too unstable and unpredictable, and that makes it a blind gamble, that is a big no-no among educated entrepreneurs.

Regarding their funding, it mostly comes from creditors who have no emotional attachment to bitcoin whatsoever. They won't "wait a little longer, because Satoshi may soon descend from the sky and save bitcoin before destroying all the evil banksters". When the clock hits, then they will not hesitate to just bankrupt those companies, stripping their assets dry and selling them on the market. That's the main thing that makes bitcoin value so fragile to my perspective. The piles of accumulated coins are rising and there are plenty of disgruntled creditors whose patience is wearing out. In my eyes, it's just a time bomb waiting to go off.

It's like you're the dumbest bankster in the world trying to convince die-hard bitcoiners that bitcoin sucks.

You're the type of fucking retard who probably earns a median income, but is obviously mentally retarded.

I hope Satoshi descends from the sky, grabs you by your neck fat, and drops you in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you retarded fucking faggot.

[solitude]

Although the layout of your first photo there is pretty cool, its currently only about $1000 or a bit less.

Wow, mr. hot shot "World Class Cryptonaire" hit the nail on the head.

You're absolutely right, I don't think my bullion is worth much more than a grand. 

Come on hot shot World Class Cryptonaire, show us your wealth.

Although to be honest, with a stupid picture not much more impressive than our reality tv friend Chef Ramsay, and a dumb name "World Class Cryptonaire" underneath it, I'd say you were more of a bullshitting retarded poser than anyone holding any serious wealth.

Although I'm waiting here for you to convince me you were the real deal.

I doubt that it really matters too much regarding how much BTC posters in these speculation threads are holding.  Surely claims seem a bit more realistic when they are working with more than 5 or 10 coins, and surely it helps to make profits a bit greater when working with a larger stash of coins.  Sometimes when the reference is to a stash of less than 1 coin, then it becomes more difficult to take the person seriously (especially if making claims about trading BTC)

Between late 2013 and mid-2014, my goal was to build up a personal holdings of about 30 coins, yet when BTC prices dropped from $1,000 to $600 then to $400 and finally to $200 and below, 30 coins became a lot more attainable, well within my budget, and I ended up exceeding that initial goal. 

Frequently, after I had attained my initial 30 coins, I would begin to talk more in hypotheticals, and not discuss too many specifics regarding my exact quantity of holdings; however, I frequently like to use 100 coins as easy reference point when discussing BTC accumulation and trading strategies and techniques..

Whether I personally hold 100 coins, 100 coins seems like a good round number that could be easy to digest and fairly within grasp of a lot of people who have been at this accumulation and trading of BTC for a while.

On the other hand, it seems that in the coming years, and once BTC prices may likely 10x in the coming years (possibly even this year), it may become more practical to talk about accumulating and/or trading 10 coins, for illustrative purposes.   

Dude, Juan man, I see you post in the Wall Observer thread all the time and you clearly weren't shy to reply to my post.


I hope you're making big bucks writing for some website, you clearly enjoy writing, and from I've read recently, you make logical coherent points. 

If you're not writing about bitcoin for some website making some cash I suggest you look into it.  It's not for me, but it seems like the thing for you.

[r0ach]

R0ach what would you predict for bitcoin price just before the halving, 1 month after and 6 months after? This is a speculation sub-forum and I'd like to hear your opinion.

I won't pass any judgement if your actual $ amount predictions are wrong. But I will give you cred for them if they are correct   I agree that the price will go up as well and the full price cannot be "factored in" before the actual supply/demand changes have affect.

Nobody can really give a good estimate on that because there's way too many variables.  For instance, the upswing always tends to overshoot, so even if you weren't optimistic and believed the price could only hold stable at $800, it would probably still reach 900-1000 for a while.  But once it broke $1000, the media would unload about 5 million Bitcoin stories that would FOMO it higher.  The second you break both old ATH and gold price, here comes more media stories and it happens all over again, then up to like $1400-1600 you go.  

There will obviously be some people shorting at $800, and there will obviously be people trying to short squeeze them there.  Anyone shorting there is pretty much an idiot since there's plenty of entities with 100 mil in the bank in Bitcoin that may or may not attempt to strongarm you at that point, so you might as well be throwing darts at a dartboard.  Never try to short a breakout trend.  God, shorters are idiots.

So yea, I figure there will likely be an attempted short squeeze to $1000 or more, and if BTC manages to break ATH, then all bets are off and you can get into just insane numbers.  For the most bearish scenarios, I think it will still go over 800.  It's just too hard to call when all you have to do is break old ATH for literally one nanosecond, either through the normal market or a short squeeze to put you into an entirely new ballgame.

The real question to ask yourself is, at what levels do you think the market would be overextended and you would want to temporarily dump at?  The answer to that question is, there would be no point to do so at 800. At 1000, the media is pumping it for you and you're in easy striking distance of ATH and insane FOMO, so still no point in selling anything.  If you hit 1200, well, at that point the press coverage is going to be so big it will be forcing central bankers to consider adding it to bank reserves again like so:  http://www.coindesk.com/barbados-central-bank/

All I can say is, keep holding unless you see a triple top that's far above $1200 - shout out to In-Q-Tel, Larry Summers, and the Chicoms who will be helping pump.

[kehtolo]

All I can say is, keep holding unless you see a triple top that's far above $1200.  Shout out to In-Q-Tel, Larry Summers, and the Chicoms who will be helping pump.

Nice one r0ach... I agree with every word, esp. the sentence i've highlighted.. Once a rise/rally starts in earnest strap yourselves in and hold on because as you've rightly pointed out, this thing (bitcoin rallies) takes on a life of it's own. Momentum and pressure builds and it starts to rise like crazy.. FOMO and greed and hype all play a part. It's a feeding frenzy...just don't get bitten by the sharks..

Regarding halving. My own thoughts are that we will only see a modest rise before and at first a modest rise after.. for some weeks and then things will start to pick up speed.
Price-wise, to speculate..I'd say up to around $600 pre halving.. then gradually up to 800 in the 6-10 weeks after it.
After that, hopefully we will be gearing up for a proper rally.

If we pass the current ATH - watchout. I wouldn't even like to hazard a guess where it would go then. But some signs that the rally is exhausted are double/triple tops.. high RSI (90+) and when the value increases 100% in a week... you should be thinking of selling under those conditions.
There will be a killing to be made when the first drop happens. It will drop.. and it will drop by lots... selling at or near the top and catching the bottom of the first big drop will be very profitable for those who manage it right.

[bargainbin]

...
"Mervyn_Pumpkinhead", wow, what an original name.  Your name is retarded, what you type is retarded, and I wouldn't be surprised if you happened to impregnate a woman that your children would be retarded.

You basically wrote the most retarded thing I've ever read in the history of the internet, since I joined the internet in 1996. 

Get the fuck off this forum, you're worse than the third world trash who post here with their gibberish broken english looking for signature spam bucks.

You sound a little upset, solitude. There's no need to be upset.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

NLC your trolling/bearishness has gone into over drive lately. Are you or your master(s) concerned about a potential price increase?

[bargainbin]

... Are you or your master(s) concerned about a potential price increase?

In the text below, find the following:
 >Your name is retarded
 >what you type is retarded
 >if you happened to impregnate a woman that your children would be retarded.
 >You basically wrote the most retarded thing I've ever read in the history of the internet
 >Get the fuck off this forum
 >you're worse than the third world trash

But it's me... I'm the one who is trolling. Because pointed out that there's no need to be upset

...
"Mervyn_Pumpkinhead", wow, what an original name.  Your name is retarded, what you type is retarded, and I wouldn't be surprised if you happened to impregnate a woman that your children would be retarded.

You basically wrote the most retarded thing I've ever read in the history of the internet, since I joined the internet in 1996.  

Get the fuck off this forum, you're worse than the third world trash who post here with their gibberish broken english looking for signature spam bucks.

You sound a little upset, solitude. There's no need to be upset.

[dooglus]

If the price is guaranteed to rise significantly after the halving, why aren't you buying as many coins as you can now so you can make a guaranteed profit when the price rises? Why wouldn't the smart money buy up all the cheap coins now, up to the post-halving price, and therefore pricing in the halving jump in advance?

I put it to you that this has already happened.

Because small traders are agile traders that have advantages in markets.  If someone is a billionaire, they're not going to go all in on Bitcoin because...they aren't going to go all in on anything no matter how good it sounds.  You have some rare exceptions like Soros, but he's an insider trading financial terrorist benefiting from government connections and should be in jail.

I am trying to understand why you think that is it impossible that the halving is already priced in.

I am not suggesting that billionaires should "go all in" or that Soros is in any way involved.

I am suggesting that since the halving and corresponding reduced supply are already known, they have already influenced the market.

How do you counter that argument?

[classicsucks]

Most people in the speculation forum don't understand anything about Bitcoin mining.  The first thing you need to understand is, nobody running a current process node miner actually turns them off no matter what the price does.  You're either an ASIC dealer that spent millions on research and design to make it, or some random Joe that paid a big premium for one.  Turning them off makes no sense for anyone since Bitcoin is an asymmetric investment.  Unless you're mining with crazy expensive electricity, your current generation miner will either pay off eventually, or Bitcoin will go to 0.  There's no purpose in turning it off.

While I like your thinking in general, this is a false dichotomy. You're forgetting that miners can and will SELL THEIR HARDWARE. We all know that mining becomes half as profitable overnight when the reward splits. Then likely the price of mining hardware will drop. If the price of mining hardware drops, couldn't the price of coin drop also, despite the decrease in supply? Do we have a good handle on demand? And what percentage of cash for coin exchange is just miners SELLING TO THEMSELVES to keep the price up?

When I look at exchange traffic and charts, it looks like automated trading to me.

I've bolded your last two sentences, above.

You are likely engaged in a bit of fiction thinking if you believe that miners buying/selling to themselves would have any meaningful impact on price or that it is any kind of widespread factor that affects price in any significant way.  Further, in recent years, most legitimate exchanges (that affect prices) have various kinds of fees that would cause disincentives to trade with self.  The extent to which some of the Chinese exchanges have no fees also cause a dramatic increase in volume, and they tend to not be much if anything of price leaders in recent years (and yes those exchanges are likely heavily employing bots that trade on very tiny spreads).

Employing bots on fee bearing exchanges does not delegitimize the trades, and the exchanges that maintain fees tend to be the most likely to be the price leaders... and even when exchanges allow for a large amount of leverage trading, those kinds of practices can take away (or at least discount) their ability to be price leaders.  Yet, in the end, the price is driven by the combination of the actions on the exchanges, which supply of "actual" coins will factor into how much the price changes in one direction or another.

I have no proof that people are selling to themselves, but it's LOGICAL that miners would be. Selling coin to yourself can preserve profits, if it's keeping the price up. Paying the fee to the exchange is trivial, furthermore the exchange could be part of a scheme to keep prices up, and simply refund the fee (or double it). Of course you could also sell to yourself at a LOWER price - I suspect some are doing this as well. These markets aren't regulated, so there is nothing illegal about moving millions of BTC back and forth between sock puppet accounts all day.  That's what this market looks like to me. If you control sufficient volume, it's possible even to move the market one way or the other, then buy low/sell high and profit. I know there are big players in the space who have the ability to move the BTC price, fortunately for this ecosystem, most of them favor the upside...

[classicsucks]

How are the miners going to get a good price on equipment if the market is flooded with miners?  they might aswell just keep mining at a loss vs having to sell equipment at a loss? both outcomes seem the same but if they sell they have to do more work.

I guess when you say "miners" you mean hardware? if one is faced with a financial loss, one chooses the least damaging path. If running a miner and paying electric bills is more expensive than simply bailing out and selling the hardware, you sell the hardware. Selling hardware seems like LESS work than maintaining it, but I guess it's a matter of opinion.

[JayJuanGee]

Most people in the speculation forum don't understand anything about Bitcoin mining.  The first thing you need to understand is, nobody running a current process node miner actually turns them off no matter what the price does.  You're either an ASIC dealer that spent millions on research and design to make it, or some random Joe that paid a big premium for one.  Turning them off makes no sense for anyone since Bitcoin is an asymmetric investment.  Unless you're mining with crazy expensive electricity, your current generation miner will either pay off eventually, or Bitcoin will go to 0.  There's no purpose in turning it off.

While I like your thinking in general, this is a false dichotomy. You're forgetting that miners can and will SELL THEIR HARDWARE. We all know that mining becomes half as profitable overnight when the reward splits. Then likely the price of mining hardware will drop. If the price of mining hardware drops, couldn't the price of coin drop also, despite the decrease in supply? Do we have a good handle on demand? And what percentage of cash for coin exchange is just miners SELLING TO THEMSELVES to keep the price up?

When I look at exchange traffic and charts, it looks like automated trading to me.

I've bolded your last two sentences, above.

You are likely engaged in a bit of fiction thinking if you believe that miners buying/selling to themselves would have any meaningful impact on price or that it is any kind of widespread factor that affects price in any significant way.  Further, in recent years, most legitimate exchanges (that affect prices) have various kinds of fees that would cause disincentives to trade with self.  The extent to which some of the Chinese exchanges have no fees also cause a dramatic increase in volume, and they tend to not be much if anything of price leaders in recent years (and yes those exchanges are likely heavily employing bots that trade on very tiny spreads).

Employing bots on fee bearing exchanges does not delegitimize the trades, and the exchanges that maintain fees tend to be the most likely to be the price leaders... and even when exchanges allow for a large amount of leverage trading, those kinds of practices can take away (or at least discount) their ability to be price leaders.  Yet, in the end, the price is driven by the combination of the actions on the exchanges, which supply of "actual" coins will factor into how much the price changes in one direction or another.

I have no proof that people are selling to themselves, but it's LOGICAL that miners would be. Selling coin to yourself can preserve profits, if it's keeping the price up. Paying the fee to the exchange is trivial, furthermore the exchange could be part of a scheme to keep prices up, and simply refund the fee (or double it). Of course you could also sell to yourself at a LOWER price - I suspect some are doing this as well. These markets aren't regulated, so there is nothing illegal about moving millions of BTC back and forth between sock puppet accounts all day.  That's what this market looks like to me. If you control sufficient volume, it's possible even to move the market one way or the other, then buy low/sell high and profit. I know there are big players in the space who have the ability to move the BTC price, fortunately for this ecosystem, most of them favor the upside...

Sure, each of us is free to believe what we like based on the evidence of what we see and what we consider to be logical. 

I understand and even believe that a certain amount price manipulation is taking place in the bitcoin space; however, your outline of a mining scheme to manipulate price for its own benefit and worth the cost of doing business seems to attempt to minimize the number of players in the bitcoin scene and the expanding bitcoin market.  Your attempt to simplify and to minimize aspects of the bitcoin community is much more complicated than the more likely reality that there are a variety of players and miners are not significantly selling to themselves in any widespread way.

I agree that bitcoin remains a relatively small market (with a small market cap); nonetheless, I place quite a bit less weight on your description of influential bitcoin players because I  believe that you are putting too much weight on the manipulation aspect whether you are talking about miners or other big (and likely manipulative) players.  They exist, but so what?  There are also a growing widespread of additional non-manipulating players.

There are quite a few theories out there that attempt to minimize the paradigm changing reality of BTC including ones that attribute a considerable amount of weight to the Gox willy bot in late 2013.. surely these price manipulation practices are factors that in fact affect bitcoin's price; however, even though bitcoin is currently relatively small, it's growth potential is considerable and likely, even if it may take a few years to evolve and to develop a larger grassroots base..

So even if there is a little bit of truth to your theory regarding some miners attempting to manipulate BTC prices, the practice is likely small in the whole scheme of things.. and anecdotal rather than systematic. 

[r0ach]

NLC your trolling/bearishness has gone into over drive lately. Are you or your master(s) concerned about a potential price increase?

The Koshers that be are definitely accelerating their shilling lately in fear of price increase.

[UngratefulTony]

NLC your trolling/bearishness has gone into over drive lately. Are you or your master(s) concerned about a potential price increase?

The Koshers that be are definitely accelerating their shilling lately in fear of price increase.

They can shill all they want, the volume lately is decidedly towards the upside. There simply aren't many sellers left, only institutional buyers remain, and, as we know, their supply of fiat is basically limitless.

There's no stopping this halving moon train, so let it be written, so let it be done.

[Chalkbot]

I am trying to understand why you think that is it impossible that the halving is already priced in.

I am not suggesting that billionaires should "go all in" or that Soros is in any way involved.

I am suggesting that since the halving and corresponding reduced supply are already known, they have already influenced the market.

How do you counter that argument?

dooglus, you're way too intelligent of a guy to be wasting your time trying to understand why this guy believes this thing.

[lissandra]

If the price is guaranteed to rise significantly after the halving, why aren't you buying as many coins as you can now so you can make a guaranteed profit when the price rises? Why wouldn't the smart money buy up all the cheap coins now, up to the post-halving price, and therefore pricing in the halving jump in advance?

I put it to you that this has already happened.

Because small traders are agile traders that have advantages in markets.  If someone is a billionaire, they're not going to go all in on Bitcoin because...they aren't going to go all in on anything no matter how good it sounds.  You have some rare exceptions like Soros, but he's an insider trading financial terrorist benefiting from government connections and should be in jail.

I am trying to understand why you think that is it impossible that the halving is already priced in.

I am not suggesting that billionaires should "go all in" or that Soros is in any way involved.

I am suggesting that since the halving and corresponding reduced supply are already known, they have already influenced the market.

How do you counter that argument?

There is no counter argument lol.

Case closed. If a person needs a long block of wall text to explain the supportive argument or debate, they just dont understand it enough is how I usually go with people.

I deal with people all the time, if a person can explain in a few 3-4 simple sentences, I just move on.

[solitude]

the media would unload about 5 million Bitcoin stories

Don't you mean 6 million stories?  oy vey!  Remember the six trillion, goyim!

[bargainbin]

NLC your trolling/bearishness has gone into over drive lately. Are you or your master(s) concerned about a potential price increase?

The Koshers that be are definitely accelerating their shilling lately in fear of price increase.

They can shill all they want, the volume lately is decidedly towards the upside. There simply aren't many sellers left, only institutional buyers remain, and, as we know, their supply of fiat is basically limitless.

There's no stopping this halving moon train, so let it be written, so let it be done.

Don't let me interrupt.