It feels to me like we're back in an accumulation phase with this sideways movement. I'd be extremely bullish but there are a few factors to consider.
1) We are at the point in the cycle where another drop is to be expected.
2) Mtgox coins are still hanging over the market's head.
3) Leveraged long positions on bitfinex are at an all time high meaning a lot of selling needs to take place to cover those positions.
Those are 3 factors that shouldn't be ignored by anyone looking to invest. It is still quite likely that there's another big drop in store, even if the market is feeling particularly bullish.
#3 is the worst one... I think we might be just about to see those things closed out one way or the other...
I think #2 is the worst one. There are a whole lot of coins that will be dumped on the market. That would likely trigger #3 and only accelerate the downturn. Without an ETF to soak up some of that liquidity, it might be a bad time for the BTC price. With so much leveraged action on the long side, it will be difficult to see another big leg up without first seeing a capitulation drop.
I think this is a very good reason to have 20-30k or more in cash ready for a drop under 20k.
I laddered 2k at 21,20,19,18,17
and 3.3k at 10,9,8
Oh gawd Philip...
You might be showing us exactly why you have already had troubles acquiring BTC between 2012 and 2017.. You seem to have troubles figuring out how to make some of your plays.
Maybe I know too much regarding your situation..? and I am not trying to pick on you or to attack you personally, even if it seems like that and I am using some of your personal details against you to suggest that you made bad decisions in the past and you continue to make bad decisions.. but still.. even if we attempt to consider your plan on its face, it seems pretty weak.
I have no problem that you had been shaving small amounts of BTC while the BTC price was going up, including your seeming to have had done that all the way up into the $60ks...
I also have no problem with your having had dollar bought all the way back down to where we are currently at, including that you had some DCA buys. Actually in your case, when you were doing daily in the $50ks, that seemed too frequently to me, but if you have ongoing cashflow, it might not even be any kind of bad idea to do that.. a kind of set-it and forget it approach. In other words, I don't have any real objections to even ongoing daily DCA whether the BTC price is high or low, so long as your investment timeline is at least 4 years from the time of any of your purchases.. and you can have a shorter than 4 year timeline too and still engage in DCA, but that might cause adjustments in the amounts rather than completely eliminating such DCA practices. Last year, you said that your timeline was at least 5 years.. which does seem pretty bold for a 65 year old... but hey.. you do you... especially expecting to live into your 90s.. which I hope you end up being correct to longevity (even though we know that's uncertain too..
But at least you are not projecting to live into your 100s and even having any kind of possible quality of life or need to have money besides no one probably wants to become any kind of burden on others.. maybe not even a burden on the state.. but surely some elderly people might not be as concerned about getting put into some of those care facilities if there is some dignity and even autonomy that is allowed to continue.. but we hear about some of the bad treatment in those kinds of facilities, too.. so maybe people want to avoid that if they believe that could be one of their life-time/life-quality calculations....
Maybe one of the angles that irritates me with some of your posts, Philip, is that sometimes you shift from one thing to another.. .which seems somewhat inconsistent as if you had been putting too many resources in planning in one direction, and then you compensate on the other end and seem to put too many resources for planning for the other direction... These should not be the kinds of things that either a more experience bitcoiner or even someone with 65 years of life under his belt should be doing.. ..
Sorry.. I am getting into lecturing my elders again... .. but I cannot help it.. this is a public thread. We are talking about ideas here.. you just happen to share a lot of details which ends up giving a lot of hooks for attackenings. I am doubting that I am being too mean.. but I would at least like to recognize that there are meanie considerations that guys might have to make.. and I am not purposefully trying to be cruel or anything like that, either.
So, yeah in terms of continuing to ladder on the way down.. no problem. I am presuming that you stopped daily DCA'ing which might be even a better thing to continue (even if you might have to lower the amounts or spread them out to weekly).. so part of my point is that if you still consider yourself to be in a BTC accumulation phase, then buying on dips should be a supplement to DCA.. .. but I can appreciate that if you have already acquired a decently large stake in bitcoin and the BTC price goes down rather than UP (or sideways), then there might be some kind of concern that you are running out of money.. and maybe your cashflow is either drying up or there is not as much excess since you had been mining (would that be enabling) those shitcoins known as Ethereum, Doge coin, LTC.. and maybe some others.. and yeah.. maybe this part is an attack on you because I recall you making some kind of stupid-ass bullish statement regarding the future of doge coin or LTC or some other nonsense like one of them having greater UPside potential than bitcoin.. so yeah, maybe I should personally attack you regarding those kinds of statements.. and maybe you still believe them because both LTC and Doge coin are becoming even more and more and more discounted relative to bitcoin in the past few weeks.
So, even if you feel that you are running out of money.. I have trouble with stopping DCA (if you had been doing it at $50k why not continue now?.. yes, I partly know the answer.. your cashflow from both bitcoin and the various shitcoins that you had been mining has largely dried up).. and even if we say that you ONLY have the money that you listed.. those are a lot of low-ball orders.. and what do you consider the odds for BTC prices to continue to go down if it has already corrected 63% (from $69k to $25,401)?
I don't have any problem preparing for possible worser case scenarios, but we still should be attempting to apportion the level of our preparations towards how probable do we consider the BTC price to get to various price thresholds... and sure, we are not going to assign probabilities in the same kind of way, but still I question how well your proposed buy orders are really proportioned to actual realistic odds (and yeah, I will agree that sometimes you likely get into a bit of a fantasy, so you way overly assign odds, which seems to be gambling to me). I still think that you should reflect on your numbers in order to attempt to recognize how much you are gambling and to figure out if you really believe that your target numbers and your allocation of actual resources (limited dollars in this case) reflect your assignment of probabilities.. I have the sense that the reality of the matter is that you are engaging in a kind of yolo gambling that goes beyond what you really should be doing.. but maybe you cannot help yourself..? so I am sorry about that level of personal psychological analysis..
For sure, I am not proclaiming to be any kind of BTC forecasting genius, but you can see my May 19 attempt to assignment downside probabilities at the bottom of
this post. My point is not so much about whether I am correct or not, but if you truly go through such a drill, you should be able to better hone in upon how high of probabilities are you assigning to various DOWNity price points, and if you are coming up with higher than my 0.5% assessment for sub $10k, then sure it could make sense to allocate $10k to those sub $10k price points.
By the way, an assignment of $10k to sub $10k prices and assigning a 1% probability to that possibility would mean that you have right around
$100k $1 million in cash that you are allocating over all of your probability assignments.
I really doubt that you have $1 million in
cash, but I do agree that it is quite probable that you have assigned higher than 1% odds towards the possibility of sub-$10k prices (which I disagree, but those are validly ways that guys could reasonably disagree). You have stated that you have $10k assigned to BTC prices between $17k and $21k.. so you have stated that you have at least $20k..
**after noticing my calculation error, I edited the above paragraphI might be getting some of the exact calculations wrong regarding how to possibly apportion whatever cash that you have left in your coffers in accordance with your assignment of how probable you believe that the BTC price thresholds might get crossed, but I doubt that I am getting wrong the idea of trying to attempt to adequately apportion your cash that you have already authorized for BTC buys and your anticipated cashflow that might end up allowing you to add to your various positions.. whether such BTC crash were to happen right away.. then fill all of your BTC buy orders right away or if such a crash would take 3-24 months to play out, then there would be an anticipation that you may well have additional cashflow coming in during that time that you would be able to potentially allocate to further BTC buys.
I personally believe that when we set our BTC buy or sell allocations, we should be anticipating that the BTC price could quickly move to the prices to fill our orders.. and therefore, the passage of time allows us to make adjustments, but when we set our buy or sell orders, we should be considering that we are feeling that we need to set such buy orders now (at this time) because we anticipate that there is a possibility that they could end up getting filled in a relatively expedited manner. If we have pretty strong beliefs that there would be certain time periods that would drag out before certain time thresholds are even possible to be filled, then we may well decide to NOT actually set those buy/sell orders and to lock up our capital for those matters that we believe are not possible to happen... so in that regard.. if we were to get down to $10k.. and then get stuck there.. then it might be the case that guys would start to set buy and sell orders in different places merely based on the BTC price getting to a place that had opened up possibilities that currently seem like they are not even remotely possible.. but once we were to get to $10k (presuming that we get there), then we might want to consider setting orders down to $5k. or whatever.. just talking in the hypothetical here. .since my own assignment of probabilities puts sub $10k at only 0.5% odds, but if we were sitting at somewhere sub $10k in August, then my whole assignments would have to be adjusted to account for that set of events having had become 100%.. as opposed to my currently assigned odds of 0.5%
(and I try not to be even emotionally/financially attached to whatever numbers that I might end up assigning or reassigning (these kinds of things happen all the time).. once the thresholds are crossed, my responsibility is to reassess and just reassign to the extent that I believe the changed circumstances have caused the need to reassess and reassign)... 
Poll
