2013 survivors club

[EuroTrash]

Starting a thread for future reference!

Share your experiences here if you feel inclined to do so.

[EuroTrash]

[Le Happy Merchant]

Didn't sell, won't sell. Didn't buy, will buy.

[600watt]

Didn't sell, won't sell. Didn't buy, will buy.

+ 1

[HowGudAmI]

Didn't sell, won't sell. Didn't buy, will buy.

Bought 3 for £13.30 each on Feb 1st 2013. Could have sold at the top for £175 each.
Didn't sell, wont sell. Didnt buy, wont buy unless >£25 .

In for the long run and not out to speculate on the peaks and troughs (although I do speculate between LTC and BTC).

[kjj]

When we passed $75 for the first time, I was expecting a correction down to ~$50, so I sold a few coins.  When we bounced off of $260, I sold a few more for $250.  The total between the two was about 10% of my holdings at the time (after paying for some Avalons).

I have a standing buy order between $50 and $60.  If I see a solid turnaround towards higher prices before we hit my goal, I'll buy for higher if I need to.

When I first learned about bitcoin nearly 2 years ago, I thought it was cool and had potential.  For the last year or so, I've felt pretty strongly that bitcoin was the future of money.  For the last month or so, I've thought that the rest of the world was coming to that conclusion as well.  This crash did nothing to change my long term views.  From what I'm seeing in the press and from people that I talk to, bitcoin is still gaining acceptance, the crash did nothing to slow that down.

I don't consider myself to be a particularly skilled trader (notice that 50% of my recent trades were unprofitable), but I am occasionally willing to risk a small portion of my precious bitcoins when I feel like I can acquire more in the short term.

My only regret at the moment is that I don't have the time to contribute more work to the software.

[HappyBitCoinUser]

[yokosan]

None of us are survivors yet, this is only the beginning of the crash.

[flaab]

I bought 433 coins at 11USD some months ago as a trend trade. This is how I got out:
- Sold 333 for Gold and Silver Coins at 30
- Sold 75  for USD at 48.8
- Holded 25 BTC.

I got screwed by the bubble, which took place when I was sleeping. I wanted to sell at 120 (when I got  up) but MtGox was already on "market cooldown mode". I ended up selling them at 80. So, I neglected to nail the top and missed 7K and got screwed by f****** MtGox and his bloody cooldown mode.

But overall, I made a good profit. Can't wait to see BTC in single digits again to get back in.

PS: I HATE MtGox

[HappyBitCoinUser]

I had a shit ton of them given to me for free about a year ago or so when they were worth $5 each. Then I put it on external hard drive, and forgot about it. Start seeing BTC on the news and like omg I gotta dig out my external hard drive and sync up my wallet.

Got out at $138 being confident it was going to crash soon, should have waited to around $250

[rograz]

Cashed out completely at 92 euro just after mtgox came back up, would have sold earlier but I always seem to be busy with something when we reach the top of each bubble, was out fishing when the 2011 one happened -.-

Still quite heavily invested in BTC tho trough my BFL and Avalon orders.

[im3w1l]

Did some arbitrage and lending to speculators.

[RodeoX]

Thanks guys. I'm buying right now. A bitcoin crash is an opportunity.

[Photonfrog]

Had allmost all my coins stuck "pending" at bitcoin-central through the major part of the drop. Thats a misstake I wont make again...
Bought them at an average of about 40 euro so its closing in on being a loss for me soon. I'll probably keep sitting on my coins anyway.

[And1]

I realized crash is imminent at night before crash, like 16 hours before. But i didn't knew when exactly, hoped the price will double again till this saturday. Was totally uprepared, BTC was in cold storage. At work i had unusally busy hours, couldnt prepare anything. Went home and bum - price started to drop, my market (Bitcurex) went down completely with few bitcoins burried there. In next hour I opened few accounts on markets (BUT NOT ON f... GOX) learnt interfaces, transfered BTC with 11x minimal provision. It turned out that BTCDE is totally bad but i luckily transfered just 1,5BTC over their withdrawal limit. Bitstamp crashed both price and itself, i had to move BTC from there too. All sooner or later landed on BTCE - Russians made amazing market, it trades all stuff at once, can even exchange fiat, and there was few minimal lags overall. Start sell from 220, than BTC from Bitstamp for 180, last came from BTCDE and sold for 140, but last sell was bad move.
Felt bad after all but now feel like a bladerunner, happy when look how much others lost.
2BTC left. Will not buy anytime soon.

[Ella]

Didn't sell, won't sell. Didn't buy, will buy.

+1, I didn't sell, I used them. By buying in BTC to a seller. I spent half, I kept the rest.  

[A_Free_Man]

Proper actions would have been
Sell at $250+
Buy back now that its lower, even if it drops you still made profit.

[ruski]

Sold mostly-out at 240, tried to buy back at $170, got goxxed into buying at $130.

Still holding.

($62 AUD as of writing this post. I still have fiat ready for large buys if it dips below a certain point.)

[EuroTrash]

Didn't sell, won't sell. Didn't buy, will buy.

Respect.

I felt I need to go away from this emotional rollercoaster - but have no intention of leaving the building. So I got to a compromise.
I reduced my exposure to heart failure by taking out, in fiat, 126% of my initial investment (bitcoins and GPUs).
I still have 252% of that initial investment (at current rates) in BTC. This is going to be my savings wallet.
The wallet's private key has been exported and stored in a secure place which is not easy for me to access. Then I removed it from the client. So I am not tempted to panic sell.

I'm also keeping a separate BTC wallet for petty cash. Possibly when this shitstorm is over I'll use it to buy stuff that - unfortunately - currently is still priced in fiat.

[ZephramC]

When I learned more about bitcoin about half a year ago, I was fascinated by the underlaying principles of its working. Mathematical certainty, cryptography in the place of trust, decentralization, ability to express freedom and independence on goverments, banks and single-ponit-failures. I am interested what inherently deflationary currency will do.
I also like the ideo-economical climate surrounding early adopters and enthusiasts, ideas of free-market, libertarian ideas and at the same time possibilities to develop and run "social projects" based on bitcoin in the environment of unreliable trust. I mean projects like shared resources (multi-signed wallets), fund-raising campaigns (with provable assurance of funds return in the case of failure), shared and smart property, microtransactions, and even some advanced concepts like colored coins. On the other hand even the ones doing "socially unpopular things" like gambling, speculating, hoarding, financing ideocrimes, buying drugs cannot be hindered just because majority disagrees about how others should run their lives. I regret that I am unable to process all information and knowledge about bitcoin and I greatly admire Satoshi's genius for designing such well-balanced system.
So I tried bitcoin faucets (most were closed), tried mining (only to find that several yers old GPU won't do) bought a few (too few in a hindsight!) bitcoins when they they were about $12 each... Later, when I witnessed rapid increases and decreases in BTC value (expressed in something called fiat currency :-]), I started thinking about actually making some "real" money, invested a little bit at about $75 leveland then at $180 level, experienced ups and downs, cashed out a little by buying some tangible useful stuff (small knife), I even managed to order one or two Casascius coins. However, I do not consider bitcoin as investment into fiat currency. Primary reasons why I keep and intend to keep some bitcoins are ideas stated earlier. It would be unwise to invest more than you can afford to lose.
Currently, considering last several days, I am at net loss in USD, I did not expect the value to fall bellow $100. Withdrawing all BTC and USD from MtGox (I lost my confidence in this centralized juggernaut) was more important for me than speculating with bigger amount of BTC de facto under MtGx control in the hope of minimizing loss. I transfered something to LTC and I am preparing for other ways to trade.
I thing that bitcoin will eventually recover and emerge stronger. Maybe (but just maybe) recent volatility is a very beneficial to refine bitcoin community and postpone mass adoption by less informed big players focused at speculation and thinking in fiat. How long until situation stabilizes... that is hard to tell. But these are definitely interesting times :-].
Bitcoin is hashing, doing mathematics and still alive...