Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[JorgeStolfi]

what are your time lines for these various death of bitcoin predictions?  Is bitcoin just going to suffer a slow death, or will its death be sudden, at some point?

I don't know.

On one hand, there are many people who invested millions in ancillary business (exchanges, funds, payment processors, mining hardware, ATMS...) and many owners of large hoards who may be willing to spend some million USDs in marketing and creating factoids just to keep Bitcoin alive for years.  There are also many faithful who will probably stick to it no matter what.

I read that Warren Buffett thinks that Bitcoin will be around for 10 years still.  Maybe. 

On the other hand, there are many more BTC off market than on-market.  If their owners decide to dump, the price may fall so much that many of those ancillary businesses would fail, and miners may abandon BTC for greener coins.  Or the US government may decide that it does not like bitcoin (BTC specifically, or all private cryptocoins, or any cryptocoins).  Or the bitcoin scene may become so polluted with scams and crimes that the public will be turned off at the very name. Or whatever...

The most painful under your hypothetical scenario would be if the BTC price were to just slowly keep going down while sucking more and more of us bulls into buying.. and then all of our lives' savings would be in bitcoin, when it goes belly up? 

So you are here in this thread to try to save as many of us as you can, while there is is still hope to save some of us? 

I feel a moral and professional obligation to warn the general public about the risks of investing in bitcoin, and about the false or exaggerated claims that many bitcoin "salesmen" of all sorts are still making.    I would feel that my time has not been wasted if I can prevent at least one person from being scammed this way.

I am not concerned with adult and mentally capable people who still choose to invest in Bitcoin,  knowing perfectly well what they are doing (as probably is the case of most people in this thread).   They must know that there is no objective way to assign probabilities of "success" (by any definition) or expected future prices to Bitcoin, so that they are gambling in a game with undefined odds.  What advice or help could I give to those people?  What outcome could I wish for them? 

I was surprised to see on this forum (not this thread) people openly asking for "good Ponzi schemes" to invest in.  Well, as long as all investors are aware that something is a Ponzi, I suppose that it can be considered a kind of gambling, so it is their problem, their money, and their fun.  What is not OK is people who know it is a Ponzi trying to lure new investors without telling them that.

[JayJuanGee]

im supposed to not wire more fiat then i can lose but i might have to do it

A monetary loss cannot be measured just in dollars, you must consider what it could mean to your life, now and in the future.  If you have a few million $, losing 100 k$ is only an inconvenience, and you will probably recover those 100 k$ in a matter of months .  If all you own is a house worth 200 k$, losing 100 k$ is a big trauma, may even cost your family and you may never recover those 100 k$.  

If it helps you decide, I am going to change my signature from "rather skeptic" to "very skeptic".  I now put the chances of Bitcoin (specifically, not some future crypto-coin) becoming a significant currency of e-commerce at about the same level of myself becoming Pope.  And it has nothing to do with price evolution or recent news.

So you are saying don't just measure dollars but relative dollar, you can still measure in dollars.

As for your opinion I'm curious, what do you define as e-commerce?

In December 2012 I had finished my thought experiment and Bitcoin education of 20 months. (My skepticism was based on the fact my investment had over a 300% return. I could see no way for it to succeeded as a currency other than in black markets where there were greater inefficiencies. My conclusion was the velocity of Bitcoin couldn't justify the price (silk road accounting for approximately 80% of Bitcoin commerce.)

So I sold all but the fiew coins I mined. Needless to say over the following 12 months Bitcoin went from $10 to $1,000.
The shock (lost opportunity) made me reconsider my assumptions.

I finally reconciled my understanding with the fact Bitcoin could be used as a currency for e-commerce, if it's price collapsed.
But it's killer app was store of value and vertual commodity.

Since then my trading style has reflected that understanding.

I would love to know what it is about Bitcoin that has entrenched you skepticism ?

I swapped him on to my ignore as it is the same story with new vocab. I don't even know why he posts here per say...but we all arrived here somehow.

I do come here to gain a better understanding of other peoples sentiment and outside opinions to help me develop my own conclusions. Jorge focuses too much of the human aspects; exchanges run by shady char, faked volume due to 0% fees, sleeping Chinese traders, sociopaths who would take your fiat or bitcoin all the same. I invested in bitcoin ultimately because it is a technological revolution of financial accountability at its core, the many aspects of bitcoin that then stem off of this are equally impressive and innovative in my opinion.

This post can be interesting bc you get to know how people feel and sometimes you learn a thing or 2

Sometimes it makes me think about some aspect of Bitcoin that I didn't think of but I come here mostly for entertainment as I am not even trading BTC; I buy it when I can; if the price is lower I can buy more so I am happy

For how long have you been buying?  How frequently do you buy and how much, approximately?  How many BTC have you accumulated?

[ActualAdviceBTC]

So apparently huobi got attacked and are working on a fix. http://www.weibo.com/3495498135/AChBfyMeN?mod=weibotime

Also they did not handle the whole LTC margin call thing after the launch very well... can someone help translate this? thanks buds!
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_d05911970101hrhz.html

[JayJuanGee]

Bitcoin will fall until it's not falling anymore and no one can stop it or change that. I believed when Bitcoin finally got to $15 it would go up forever. Then I sat on my coins for months at $2 waiting for the rise.

You must admit that the fundamentals of bitcoin are much stronger, since 2011, 2012 and since mid - to - late 2013

[JorgeStolfi]

There are scumbags everywhere, and probably the ratios are NOT any worse in the bitcoin scene as compared with banking or other industries. 

It seems that I have not been clear enough on this point....

There are scumbags everywhere, in the banks and governments too.  What is different about making the Satoshi Blockchain into the basis of a crypto-currency economy is that a few thousand people, including many scumbags, will start out OWNING all the money in the world --- as oposed to just having the oligopolistic privilege of storing, handling, managing, and transmitting it.

I have not looked hard into Auroracoin, but from what has been said here it seems to be an improvement over BTC in this regard: It will distribute some of the money evenly to all Icelanders, instead of only to miners.  Of course, if some private individuals will still retain a large fraction of all the AURs, it will still have the same problem of Bitcoin or any altcoin: those people will end up grabbing a large slice of the Icelanders' total wealth, totally out of proportion to their contribution to the society.

[JayJuanGee]

Some big BTC holders are waiting for 2000$ 3000$ 5000$ or sometimes way more before they will sell, traders follow the trends and everyday tens of persons that didn't Bitcoin a few month ago are buying a few BTC or more in hope of a long term gain

I agree that there may be some liquidation of BTC at various price points; however, we are going to need to know how fast BTC gets to those price points before we can predict the behavior of people.  If it goes quickly, then maybe we are more likely to see some selling going on... but if it goes slowly, then there will be continued optimism regarding future potential of bitcoin.. b/c none of those price-points would be a bubble... unless going there too quickly... market cap at 2,000 would be less than $30 billion, and at 3,000 would be 45 billion and at 5k would be 75 billion.  It is very likely that there would be much more room for BTC growth from any of those market cap points - unless some other cryptos are taking some of the market cap that would have otherwise gone to BTC..   WE definitely would need to consider the whole BTC environment before predicting whether BTC investors would be selling or HODLING.

[byronbb]

The higher the price the more distributed ownership will become.

[JayJuanGee]

There are many reasons to be pessimistic but let me give you a few reasons to be optimistic :

More and more people are starting to understand that a big government is bad for them and protect the big corporations instead of protecting them; the freedom ideas are travelling fast on internet, everyone can get to understand them by watching a few videos of Stefan Molyneux : https://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot

For me, that is one of the most scary things: large numbers of people being convinced that governments and laws are bad, and therefore rejecting democracy and democratic politics.  Historically, those people have always been instruments of parties that overthrow democratic governments to install opressive dictatorships.

Asia is developing and parts of Africa too

China and Southeast Asia seem to be improving, not sure about the rest.  Parts of Africa are getting worse...

Big government has nothing to do with democracy; a big government is an opressive dictatorship that steal your money and your freedom

Such a huge portion of humanity has left poverty in the last decades

Dont get big government mixed up with big corporations... b/c you may think that government is taking your money when in fact the rich are failing and refusing to pay.. .which causes it to seem as if you are paying too much b/c you are too busy getting stolen from by big businesses, such as banks and oil companies and insurance companies... as several others that are getting subsidies rather than paying their fair share of taxes to contribute to the infrastructure..  and to various public goods that should NOT be given to the rich to benefit for free for these various public resources

[JayJuanGee]

There are many reasons to be pessimistic but let me give you a few reasons to be optimistic :

More and more people are starting to understand that a big government is bad for them and protect the big corporations instead of protecting them; the freedom ideas are travelling fast on internet, everyone can get to understand them by watching a few videos of Stefan Molyneux : https://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot

For me, that is one of the most scary things: large numbers of people being convinced that governments and laws are bad, and therefore rejecting democracy and democratic politics.  Historically, those people have always been instruments of parties that overthrow democratic governments to install opressive dictatorships.

Asia is developing and parts of Africa too

China and Southeast Asia seem to be improving, not sure about the rest.  Parts of Africa are getting worse...

Big government has nothing to do with democracy; a big government is an opressive dictatorship that steal your money and your freedom

Such a huge portion of humanity has left poverty in the last decades

Thing is: Big corporations bribing and holding hostage the referee. Then telling people, the referee is a bad guy.

Endgame: Referee gone, big corporations rule, people loose even more.

That is exactamente correct.... NEED anyone say more than this?  I doubt it... Well said, Eiskalt!!

[podyx]

thought this was fitting

[Protoverse]

I'm kind of on the fence about buying any right now. Should I? At current price, it'd take me 2 months to buy 1 BTC.

[JorgeStolfi]

The higher the price the more distributed ownership will become.

Hm, how exactly?

There does not seem to be any data about concentration of BTC ownership and how it is evolving.  The early miners and investors probably did not spend much of their hoards buying things or services.  It is not clear whether speculative trading at the exchanges distributes or concentrates BTC wealth.  Bitcoin enterprises like funds, banks, and ATM networks should create relatively large holdings for reserve and from fees. 

[cbutters]

thought this was fitting

I'm bullish, but wer'e down a lot of percentage so far this year, and its Almost Q2, so I don't see how this is fitting.   Now... talk to me in July and it will probably be accurate.

[JayJuanGee]

I expect a slow/steady rise in price until April 2, after that it could go further up past ~650 or go back down. Enjoy the ride.

What's happening on April 2?

[JayJuanGee]

Finally he said, "But..." and there was a long pause as he was out of arguments. I interrupted and said, "What you're realizing in this moment is the paradigm shift. Western Union, out of business. Credit card companies, out of business. Banks? Well, we will see."

He recognized it could change all payments, credit, cash, checks, international, and that it could possibly put a hurting on bank fees. He held onto the fact banks still make loans. I didn't have the heart to tell him that might wane if they couldn't make absurd money from fees. He'll figure it out.

Credit cards aren't going anywhere. People live on credit.

NEVER say NEVER>  I would say that it would take a minimum of 5 to 10 years to transition out of these kinds of credit institutions...   but most likely in the 20-30 year time-frame... if we get success of crypto currencies.

[byronbb]

Finally he said, "But..." and there was a long pause as he was out of arguments. I interrupted and said, "What you're realizing in this moment is the paradigm shift. Western Union, out of business. Credit card companies, out of business. Banks? Well, we will see."

He recognized it could change all payments, credit, cash, checks, international, and that it could possibly put a hurting on bank fees. He held onto the fact banks still make loans. I didn't have the heart to tell him that might wane if they couldn't make absurd money from fees. He'll figure it out.

Credit cards aren't going anywhere. People live on credit.

NEVER say NEVER>  I would say that it would take a minimum of 5 to 10 years to transition out of these kinds of credit institutions...   but most likely in the 20-30 year time-frame... if we get success of crypto currencies.

Success of crypto = no more credit? Or do you mean crypto loans will eventually be extended?

[JayJuanGee]

Fuck me, i blame it on those 350ug acid tabs, but i´m feelin bullish for BTC again.
I hope i won´t get burned for all that love about BTC(price).  
Just bought 30 new coins.
If we go below 490$ i will never post again, promised.

better get your last posts in quick bud : -)

I am sure that there would be many more posters here, who would be willing to take a bet that we will NOT breach $490 within the next two weeks.  Personally, I am ON THE FENCE about whether I would make such a bet. I am inclined to think that if we do breach $490, such a breach would be NO more than a few hours, and such breach would only come as a result of some major news or even some fake news that allows a certain level of panic and/or manipulation.  I have considerable difficulties even with any belief that we would breach $510 in the next couple of weeks, without something dramatic occurring.

I don't know if we will brake the 510 or the 490 resistance but it doesn't seem that far away

But I think that the lower we go with the BTC price, the more and more difficult it will become to convince BTC holders to sell their coins.. absent some major news (whether real or NOT)...   So, even though it does NOT seem far, the BTC holders resistance to sell becomes ever increasing as the price gets lower.

[JayJuanGee]

He nailed one thing for sure:  the no volume part, which is concerning for bull at least. If the coins are really dat cheap, why no volume?

The distributed P2P federal reserve (that is the Bitcoin speculators) have exhausted there fiat canons.  
We need a new QE type plan metaphorically lets not call it bond buying but investing in Alts. Instead of buying fiat.

Nope. Our cannons are aimed squarely at the bears. If the price drops just a little bit more...BOOM! Got yer coins. Go ahead and sell. Just try it. You'll see how much fiat we have left.

That's the problem... The bears have squeezed about as much out of us as they can... They gonna have to come up with some more tricks, fud  or false news to get us to stop squeezing our BTCs.  I do have some fiat in reserve just in case the price drops more.. .my next buy point is at below $550 on Coinbase... and I question whether we are going to get to that price point... maybe I will have to panic buy at $570, instead?

I'd love to get another crack at sub $550, but I don't need to. I'll do just fine if we never see that level again. I try to position myself so that I am happy to go up down or sideways. It's a lot easier if you have a bunch of coinz that you've had for years. Otherwise I'd be panic buying now.

Yeah... I do NOT have the luxury of having old coins... especially since I started buying BTC in the end of November 2013.  Nonetheless, I try to think strategically about this to keep buying as the price drops... and to a level that I perceive that I can afford.    I suspect that at some point, hopefully soon, I will be in the black again.

[Adrian-x]

The issue I see you describing is with a finite number of monetary units (divisibility being ineffective because it results in asymmetrical distribution of wealth) how can the units be equitably distributed so an economy can effectively distribute resources and maximize participation?

More precisely, the problem that the world will face by adopting THE Bitcoin as the global currency is that the system will start out with ALL the money in the hands of a few thousand people and the "bankers" (miners).

Even if those "bitcoin barons" are generous and spend half of their BTC hoards in exchange for trifles, just to get the bitcoin economy started, they will still hold half of the money supply in the world.

What are the chances of the world being OK with that?

What are the chances that the world will be OK with a small group of central bankers controlling the money supply? Look, if people find Bitcoin useful and saves them money, then they are likely to use it, the same way people shop at Walmart even though the Waltons are extremely wealthy, pay low wages and buy stuff from China.

Jorge the real situation is at a point somewhat similar to the worst case Bitcoin scenario. Have you read the Oxfam wealth distribution report. even the likes of Larry Summers are showing concern.

In short the world is enslaved to the central banks of the BIS, and the Islamic outliers who reject there model on religious grounds are dealing with conflict that will result in adopting that model. This process of enslavement is called the Cantillon Effect it is not just from Central Bank monetary inflation but also from monetary inflation through fractional reserve banking.  

To get to the answer to your question the world doesn't have a choice, the people who have a choice are the ones playing with our economy the likes of the BIS members who were given a get out of jail card free when there martingale mortgage backed securities failed. While they are reforming with Basel III, when implemented we'll see intrest rates rise and lots of failures and further wealth accumulated at the top and more people enslaved as a result of globalization. The central bank model will fail regardless because it relies on exponential growth, and relative consumption of finite resources, many corporations will fail too because they are depend on the FRB credit that facilitates malinvestment in infrastructure that accelerates consumption for profit.  

Fiew see it the ones that do will buy into something just like Bitcoin I'm betting it will be Bitcoin untill something more promising comes along. The Bitcoin nouveau riche will sell there coins to them, and governments will support this as there will be a big 1 time tax boost at a time when they need it most. (So just buy that 1 Bitcoin it is a bet on a sustainable future) and if the Bitcoin nouveau riche never sell there coins because the demand never materializes, we will have a long bear market and Bitcoin depression untill the coins find an optimal way to distribute.

Your fear that early adopters get disproportionately wealthy is only viable if we have price controls on the value of Bitcoin. Without controls the risk of failure is huge, you are betting those who have lots of coins won't cash out, and will hold untill they collapse the system, I'm betting they are so greedy they will cash out before the system collapse.

That $5 (a mokate latte) investment in 2010 that would net you over $1,000,000 in 2013 is an insane redistribution of wealth yet it didn't deter me or many others, and I'm betting won't deter future investors as we see similar growth. To add there are fewer than a handful who made the investment then and still hold today, they are smart enough to know why when and to whom to sell there coins.
 

[JayJuanGee]

He nailed one thing for sure:  the no volume part, which is concerning for bull at least. If the coins are really dat cheap, why no volume?

The distributed P2P federal reserve (that is the Bitcoin speculators) have exhausted there fiat canons.  
We need a new QE type plan metaphorically lets not call it bond buying but investing in Alts. Instead of buying fiat.

Nope. Our cannons are aimed squarely at the bears. If the price drops just a little bit more...BOOM! Got yer coins. Go ahead and sell. Just try it. You'll see how much fiat we have left.

I think the first major resistance will be in the $530 range: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526445.0

After that the daily 300 EMA is in the 470 area. Anything below that to $400 is going to be a major dogfight.

I expect the bulls to start putting up a real fight soon. This could continue lower for another month or two, but I think we are going to be running out of steam for the bears shortly.

If we see anything below $380, then I will celebrate with joy, because I have about $200k in fiat ready to go all in at any prices that gets that low.

The chances seem pretty high that you are going to be left behind if you are waiting for such pie in the sky numbers that are in the below $400 range.  I will grant you that it is possible to go into the 400s.. possibly down to $470... but it is likely that the bulls will be fighting before it reaches $470.... unless it just happens to be a flash crash based on hyping news.

If you think that 450$ is a great buy and that the price will go up to high 4 digits within a year you are better off buying as much as much now

I don't have much BTC and I am afraid the price will jump up too soon before I can get more BTC

I started buying at $1,200 in late November 2013.  Accordingly, I have been buying little by little over that time, and trying to buy as the price is dropping, rather than when the price is going up. 

I started feeling much better about having sufficient skin in the game, once I had accumulated 10 BTC.  Though of course, I would have felt even better if I could have acquired those first 10 BTC at a lower average price.... but I continued to invest, even after I had gotten the first 10 BTC. 

Currently, I have about 39 BTC and my average buy-in price is $685..... so I feel fairly comfortable that I have even more skin in the game.. but surely it would be better to be in the black rather than the red... but personally, I do NOT feel any need to rush anything or to significantly change my investment strategy... of HODL and buy periodically.