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

[Farmer Bill]

10 years ago i found bitcoin, and vowed i would ride this pig either into the ground or right to the moon. its allowed me to retire early already.

you and BJA too..   What a coincidence.

its a pretty good ride.

Not for BJA.. I think that he gave up around $500-ish.

err.. whats a "BJA" ?

i just knoooow ill regret this

BJA was billyjoeallen who has not been seen here for a long time along with stolfi. (who claimed to own no bitcoin - only academic interest)
probably for security reasons.

[Farmer Bill]

Thanks to Jay for marking my homework.
I'll take it as a C+ then.

[Farmer Bill]

To AverageGlabella - the only regret anybody has on this forum is that they did not buy more Bitcoin at (insert any date here)

I have my cold wallet stash which I add to periodically and use Bitcoin as my savings and deposit account adding spare fiat when available and only taking some out when absolutely needed. Loans are still cheap and the first call for unexpected day to day outgoings.
 

[JayJuanGee]

base cost of a coin should help miners to determine whether they are going to mine or not mine.... including help them to decide the extent to which they will expand or shrink operations or attempt to make their operations more efficient in order to attempt to be profitable.

While this is basically true, it's worth noting that mining expansion has typically been limited by equipment availability (once things got past the initial "anyone interested in this thing?" phase). This has lead to mining not quite following price which may partly explain the misapprehension of price following hash.

Sure... Even non-miners are aware of some of the supply chain issues and even some historical reliance on questionable hardware suppliers.. so for sure some of the miners have been considering ways to attempt to be become more vertically integrated.  

I do gather that you, richie, are inclined to follow the price follows hashrate nonsense, but you have found a reason for an exceptions, and there are all kinds of exceptions that pretty much swallow the price follows hashrate baloney.... whether we are analyzing from the price side or we get into miner behaviors in regards to how they manage their stash or how they manage their business.  we know in recent times, there has been quite a bit of influence of the ideas of Michael Saylor on the mining scene.. and I am talking about the use of debt in order to attempt to hold more coins.. which likely contributes to additional "artificial" (or would you call it an exception) upwards pressures on BTC price.

I appreciate your description, but seems that you would have already established a decently sized bitcoin investment over the past 7+ years that you have been a forum member, no?  

When I got into bitcoin in late 2013, I largely front-loaded DCA'ed for a year, and then at some point towards the end of 2014, I had contemplated cashing a portion of my 401k into bitcoin, and that would have largely doubled my BTC investment at that point.. and also brought down my average cost per BTC quite a bit.

After I considered the matter for about one or two weeks, I decided NOT to go through with such a large transfer of value into BTC, and part of my rationale was that I concluded that I had already established a pretty damned large amount of exposure to BTC - including considering that in relation to my various fiat related investments (which would have also included my 401k)..

I don't regret my decision.. even though I could have doubled the size of my BTC stash at that time because I made such decision based on my sense of my total situation and the information that I had in front of me at that time.

Of course, I have a lot of posts on this forum, so in some sense, members can see various ways that my ideas about bitcoin have changed over the year, and largely it seems to me that bitcoin is quite a bit of a better investment these days than it was in either late 2013 or late 2014.. even though we have had a whole hell of a lot of BTC price appreciation between late 2014 and present... so in that regard, whether you doubled your BTC stash or you increased it by some other amount - even 10% or 20%, there is some value in going through a process of considering the totality of your own financial circumstances. which surely would include considering your cashflow, your other investments, your view of bitcoin as compared with other possible investments, your timeline, your risk tolerance and your skills, time and abilities to learn along the way and to tweak your strategies along the way which may also include considering reallocating from time to time, trading and/or the use of financial instruments (including margin), and for me, I have never really been a big advocate of any kinds of gambling techniques, so I am frequently concerned about making any moves that are on the relatively BIGGER side of things.

Hopefully things go well for you, and I hope that your investment timeline for this additional injection is at least 4-10 years, and in that regard, I would have more confidence in the whole situation rather than if you might have been considering the possibility of turning much if any of your additional investment in less than 4 years.

Yes I have been invested in Bitcoin for years but I have sold at times and missed out on the bull runs a couple of times. The main thing for me was changing circumstances in my personal life which led me to think f*ck it and go all in. I was sick of saving up money and then the adjustment of cost of living taking the benefit of saving up all these years paying into a pension which is not going to benefit me much because of the inflation of fiat. I came into Bitcoin thinking I could make a little but I never expected to be investing all of my savings into it. My opinion of Bitcoin like yours has changed over the years I was very excited about Bitcoin at 1st but over the years I have become less interested but I needed a waking up to reignite that passion and clarity that Bitcoin is special and could be the reason why I am not working at 75 years old because my pension is shit and inflation has f*cked me.

I hope to keep this investment in for at least 5 years I took my age into count and I have a number which I would take half out. I think I will look to keep a % of my wealth in Bitcoin at all times and only withdraw from it when I need to because I have seen how inflation is destroying my wealth in anything except Bitcoin.

I do not know if I have made the right decision yet and I guess I wont know that until I keep the investment for 5 years or I hit my target before then. I have been a slave all my life looking to make as much money as possible working overtime regularly so I will have a comfortable life when I am no longer able to work and my children will have a good start in life but the recent inflation and taxes because of covid and the adjustment to cost of living has proven I was living a pipe dream and the only way I will be able to provide for the future is if I take more risks.

I had a small amount of Bitcoin anyway but I would have had to hope for Bitcoin to hit a very price to become comfortable in later life. That is why I wanted to invest a large amount and hopefully bring that target price of Bitcoin down to a more realistic level. We are no where near yet but I hope in 5 years we will be or close.

Your way of discussing several of the matters and your trade offs does cause me a decent amount of concern - especially in terms of your ability to HODL through potential tough times.

For sure, there is a lot of empirical evidence to show that lump sum investing has tended to pay off even better than DCA - especially when the buying was upon dips.. but we can never really know the extent to which a dip is over.. so there tends to be some value in having some strategies besides lump sum, such as an ability to continue to buy on further dips... otherwise you just have to HODL  through the whole dip period, if it ends up coming and taking a long time to resolve...and hopefully you would not end up panicing in the meantime.

Personally, since you did a pretty decent lump sum investment, maybe you should plan to carry out a DCA plan at any time that the BTC price get's close to your buy-in price.. even if your DCA amount is ONLY $10 per week (maybe $100 per week would be better?).. it might give you some peace of mind if we ever go below your average buy price.

Usually the plan for having at least a 4-year plan would be that if you bought at the top of the cycle then you would still have pretty decent chances of at least being profitable after 4 years.. maybe not extremely profitable, but at least not in the red.. and there are no guarantees of that, either, even though BTC's investment thesis does seem to be quite a bit stronger now than it was 7-8 years ago.

Regarding cashing out, sure of course you might want to attempt to time tops somewhat, but you still gotta be careful about cashing out too much because where you going to put it that is better than BTC?  You could consider cashing out more incrementally such as quarterly, yearly or some timeline variation that is comfortable, but you might need to be careful that you might end up taking out at the wrong times.. but sure if you cash out a quarter or a years worth of expected expenses, then that would likely be reasonable.

You know about the 4% per year theory regarding cashing out too, right?  That has traditionally been the guidance for traditional investments, even though I do believe with BTC you could get away with larger percentages depending on how you value your holdings.  Also, if you are planning not to cash out any BTC for 5 years, you do have 5 years to figure out those kinds of matters, but you could attempt to project out values and cash out plans in terms of best case scenarios, worse case scenarios and even medium case scenarios.. and for sure there is value to give some serious considerations to the worse case scenarios, even though if they are not really very likely it is better to have a way of keeping in mind a range of scenarios while focusing more of your attention on more likely scenarios and perhaps revisiting the projections from time to time to see if you might need to tweak them.

Regarding your cold storage, you should check them a few times a year to make sure that you understand your access and your recovery and if you might have back up ways to recover.. and once you go through the process a few times, you might be able to just do it once a year.. depending on how complicated that you have made it for yourself.. ..but for sure both complication and too much simplicity could be enemies.. so some kind of balance is going to be preferred.

[AlcoHoDL]

To AverageGlabella - the only regret anybody has on this forum is that they did not buy more Bitcoin at (insert any date here)

So very true. That's my only regret too. Had I invested what I could have invested at the time I bought my first BTC (2015), I would now own about an order of magnitude (10x) more coins than I currently own.

This is a lesson for all Bitcoin noobs that read this: don't hesitate, invest a generous amount. Don't make the same mistake many of us did...

I have my cold wallet stash which I add to periodically and use Bitcoin as my savings and deposit account adding spare fiat when available and only taking some out when absolutely needed. Loans are still cheap and the first call for unexpected day to day outgoings.

The highlighted part is the most important for a HoDLer. Never sell any amount of BTC, unless you will immediately use the fiat to pay for something you absolutely need. Few understand this. Selling your precious BTC just to fill a bank account with fiat is a stupid move in the long term. You may feel you have "locked in some profits" in the short term, especially when there's a dip (like now), but when Bitcoin reaches and exceeds 6 digits and beyond, you will realise the stupid mistake you've made.

[goldkingcoiner]

Well, it finally happened. I am Corona positive.

This is almost as much of a bummer as BTC not reaching 100k last year.

[cAPSLOCK]

Well then.  Here we are again...

Two things of note, to me.

1.  We are knocking on the top of this trough as long as you ignore the crazy woowoo candle that happened on Stamp (I guess some leveraged positions swept)

2.  The price is rising enthusiastically but the volume is NOTHING compared to the drop.  This says to me AGAIN that the DROP was participated in by retail investors.  But it is most likely that the recovery has been happening over the counter.  This means OTC desks are where the buying is, and there is at least more retail involved in the selling.  Par for the course.

[cAPSLOCK]

Aren't we already at moon?

Yup.  We have gone to the moon, and come back a couple times now...  base is under construction.  Next expedition is to Mars or Venus, I will guess.  And we will probably launch that journey from the moon.  Wonder when?

[OutOfMemory]

Well, it finally happened. I am Corona positive.

This is almost as much of a bummer as BTC not reaching 100k last year.

Search for some advice from the Covid Thread.
Get yourself some nasal spray containing more than 1,2% of carrageenan extract. Use it also for the throat.
It reduces viral load quite efficiently, saves your immune system a lot of (hard) work.
Stay hydrated. I mean 4 liters per day, like half a glass in about 15 minutes throughout the day.
Wish you the best!

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[El duderino_]

Aren't we already at moon?

Yup.  We have gone to the moon, and come back a couple times now...  base is under construction.  Next expedition is to Mars or Venus, I will guess.  And we will probably launch that journey from the moon.  Wonder when?

Curious if we have seen the bottom or not....

exciting period imo

[dragonvslinux]

Two things of note, to me.

2.  The price is rising enthusiastically but the volume is NOTHING compared to the drop.  This says to me AGAIN that the DROP was participated in by retail investors.  But it is most likely that the recovery has been happening over the counter.  This means OTC desks are where the buying is, and there is at least more retail involved in the selling.  Par for the course.

Are you sure about that? Looking at the CB 3 day chart (as well as BLX index), the ~10% rebound actually had slightly more volume than the ~15% drop, as well as the highest 3D green candle since May 2021 



I'm not one to look at the 3D chart very often, but I'm aware that instiutions quite like it as a split between the Daily and Weekly charts, especially for mid-week analysis. The yellow line is otherwise the 200 MA, that's rising bullish, on this time-frame things looks fine - pretty good even ironically. Looks to me more like retail selling / short liquidations followed by institutional buying into strong liquidity, just as they like it.

But hey, this is just my opinion. I remain bullish at these levels, but I'm also very biased as price remains in a bullish structure of higher highs and higher lows within a macro sized bull flag of consolidation.

Yesterday I saw a video on Tiktok from this Pablo guy (thinks he is Bitcoin Jesus). He is saying that Michael Saylor bought almost all of his Bitcoin in leverage, that he is only the CEO of Microstrategy and that if the others want, they can panic sell all Bitcoins without MS agreeing to it and that he lost trillions in the dot com bubble. I was always suspicious about Michael Saylor, but then again, I never trust rich people.

I have no clue about all this and wonder what you all think about this? Will MS be the new MtGox who will cause the next Bitcoin crash at some point?

Yes.. UnDerDoG81..you seem quite intent upon selling your BTC at the bottom..   and looking for reasons to do so.

Lol. A possible mindrust in the making here 

[JayJuanGee]

So when I say 'moon', I'm interested in what price we stabilize at.

Do stability exist? Can a currency realize stabilize?

Even EURUSD pair is quite crazy sometimes.

Even BTC stabilize, USD will never be stable. Crazy events in the world will make the price go up and down.

The life of btc holders will always have huge up and downs. Volatility will become smaller, but we will see at least some 20% up and down in a year for sure, just like gold and other assets and currencies.

I will speculate that you are correct that there is likely NOT going to be a lot of stability in BTC until price gets to some place higher than 10x of gold, and sure it may need to get quite a bit higher than that.. but somewhere in the territory of 10x of gold to 1,000x of gold bitcoin is going to become quite a bit more stable... so that seems to be a ways off.. at least 6 years minimum.. but more likely greater than 12 years...and a lot can happen between now and 12 years from now in order to inform the thinking on this matter and also the extent to which progress is being made passed the 10x of gold and towards the 1,000x of gold arena... 10x of gold is $5 million per coin.

10 years ago i found bitcoin, and vowed i would ride this pig either into the ground or right to the moon. its allowed me to retire early already.

you and BJA too..   What a coincidence.

its a pretty good ride.

Not for BJA.. I think that he gave up around $500-ish.

err.. whats a "BJA" ?

i just knoooow ill regret this

You should not regret this kind of a thing.

I cannot quote from the post because the thread is closed:....

but here is a link to the June 4, 2011 post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12156.msg169810#msg169810

Here is the relevant BJA quote contained therein:

>>>>>
"I don't care about the busts. I am riding this pig wherever it takes me. If it tanks, I'll have a helluva story to tell. I'm sick of half measures. I'm swinging for the fences and If I strike out, so be it.  I won't be some mediocre drone living a life of quiet desperation. I believe in bitcoin and I'm going for broke, knowing the risks. "
<<<<<<<<<<<

[jojo69]

This is almost as much of a bummer as BTC not reaching 100k last year.

[Farmer Bill]

Yesterday I saw a video on Tiktok from this Pablo guy (thinks he is Bitcoin Jesus). He is saying that Michael Saylor bought almost all of his Bitcoin in leverage, that he is only the CEO of Microstrategy and that if the others want, they can panic sell all Bitcoins without MS agreeing to it and that he lost trillions in the dot com bubble. I was always suspicious about Michael Saylor, but then again, I never trust rich people.

I have no clue about all this and wonder what you all think about this? Will MS be the new MtGox who will cause the next Bitcoin crash at some point?

A man on the internet (ie a random fuckwit) said "any old shit"     so it must be true.

As Jay said just sell all your coins now you don't need an excuse

But it wont make you any less stressed out as your fiat will have devalued 30% over next 4 years while you will never afford to buy those bitcoin back.

DYOR on MSTR the NASDAQ listed company.

[Hueristic]

Well, it finally happened. I am Corona positive.

Isolate and as others have stated stay hydrated and keep those sinuses flushed.



Shaking off the last of it the last few days, almost got rid of the lung fluid.

Was down for a few days and a couple nights without sleep do to breathing issues.

This new variant was similar to the flu for me (I'm vaxxed with pfizer).

[JayJuanGee]

[edited out]

Hmm, i don't even believe in any "miner costs control price" dynamics. It can only have a tiny fraction of influence on the price, i'm not that dumb
Seems like the good ol' misunderstanding, but i am not too surprised, because i picked out a wee aspect of a complex system, where one output parameter results in the property "price".
But the initial thought was quite simple and might have mislead you in believing that i look at the market in a simple way. Well, sometimes i do, when i try to explain bitcoin to noobs (rarely) but that's a whole different story. To be honest, my understanding of market details and their dependencies is very limited, but every now and then some new understandings click into place, and your detailed posts about the matter also contribute to this more often than not.

It seems that we are all guilty of this to some degree... I mean for sure a considerable amount of analysis likely needs to be done in order to really discuss the various influences upon BTC price and how those influences might both be traded off and even manipulated in the short term. Frequently, simplified explanations will end up playing out, whether we are talking with a newbie on the street (and trying to build up to what we might be trying to describe), or even if we might be dealing with someone who is more sophisticated but is coming to the opposite conclusion.  For sure people involved in bitcoin mining have some decent knowledge about bitcoin technicalities, but if start to make proclamations about the price based on an incomplete set of facts or logic, one possible retort back might be to use the same superficial information and just assert that they are full of shit.. without really backing up the claim regarding why they are full of shit.. because sometimes none of us have time to be getting into detailed backing up of counter-claims when the first claim was poorly backed up in the first place.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

To AverageGlabella - the only regret anybody has on this forum is that they did not buy more Bitcoin at (insert any date here)

So very true. That's my only regret too. Had I invested what I could have invested at the time I bought my first BTC (2015), I would now own about an order of magnitude (10x) more coins than I currently own.

This is a lesson for all Bitcoin noobs that read this: don't hesitate, invest a generous amount. Don't make the same mistake many of us did...

These days, I like to label such actions as being sufficiently aggressive within your means... so the better that you understand your situation, the more you will understand how aggressive you can be without transgressing too far into a kind of gambling (rather than investing) mode.

In the good ole days, maybe $10 per week might be aggressive.  These days gotta at least start at $100 per week (absent some real cashflow lim limitation issues).

Also, I moved my recommendation for the allocation range for getting started from between 1% and 10% up to between 1% and 25%... of course, the more you study the matter, the higher you might be able to go within the range or even might be able to graduate to levels above the range.

I have my cold wallet stash which I add to periodically and use Bitcoin as my savings and deposit account adding spare fiat when available and only taking some out when absolutely needed. Loans are still cheap and the first call for unexpected day to day outgoings.

The highlighted part is the most important for a HoDLer. Never sell any amount of BTC, unless you will immediately use the fiat to pay for something you absolutely need. Few understand this. Selling your precious BTC just to fill a bank account with fiat is a stupid move in the long term. You may feel you have "locked in some profits" in the short term, especially when there's a dip (like now), but when Bitcoin reaches and exceeds 6 digits and beyond, you will realise the stupid mistake you've made.

Lot's of truth there.. You can also consider the spend and replace method.. which allows you to sell to get what you need... and then to attempt to replace what you sold within a reasonably expedited fashion.. and surely it may take a long time to do the replacement, especially if the amount was high.. and maybe you will never be able to completely replace what you spent, especially if the BTC price ends up moving up in the meantime.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[d_eddie]

AFP News Agency
@AFP
#BREAKING IMF urges El Salvador to remove Bitcoin as legal tender
7:59 PM · Jan 25, 2022·TweetDeck

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1486051087736094729


EDIT: IMF seriously legitimating our lil fiend. This is big^TM.

[Richy_T]

I do gather that you, richie, are inclined to follow the price follows hashrate nonsense,

Let me stop you right there. That is by no means the case and I don't believe I have ever stated anything that could even be construed as such.

As far as I'm concerned, we're in a process where Bitcoin is trying to find where its price matches its value (and I believe we are quite a long way yet) via the market discovery process. Along the way that will be moderated by a variety of mechanisms which I won't go into here but a little logic shows that this can only be accomplished via a volatile process (how volatile it needs to be is an interesting question but the actuality is that it has been violently volatile). This process seems to be fairly well divorced from the hashrate.

Now, the mechanism for hashrate seems to be "If Bitcoin is profitable, buy more equipment". That does potentially link hashrate and price (but not in the direction that the opinion you incorrectly ascribe to me would suggest). However, as Bitcoin as near as dammit always been profitable, the restricting factor has been equipment availability which has lead to a total divorce between the two concepts. I will say that on at least one occasion, miners have surprised me by being willing to be patient for future profits rather than following pragmatism but they surely had good reason and that doesn't really affect things much.