Track Record Forum Members

[RationalSpeculator]

What's your proof that I am cherry picking when analysing your track record?

... you ignore all the "buy", "stick with it" or "hold" recommendations all the way up from 30 to 260 when we first had talked.  why don't i get +1's for those?  i gave you a very valid tongue in cheek argument that a daily right/wrong count of 855 to 7 could be applied to me since you believe me to be a permabull.  i say tongue in cheek b/c i actually think it's a stupid argument that applies very well to a stupid thread.

I'm not sure cypherdoc. I agree that your calls, even the bad ones included, overall made a lot of money. So I can see why your track record should be overall positive instead of neutral as it currently is.

But I think it's most helpful if the track record compares the performance of traders/investors here with a simple buy and hold. Because what's the point of making calls if not for outperforming a buy and hold?

You indeed did not outperform a buy and hold, so it's neutral.

But maybe I should neutralize those that have a positive track record currently as I'm pretty sure most of them did not outperform a buy and hold, and many of them likely did not even achieve a buy and hold performance, unlike you.

I'm not sure what to do frankly. What do you think?

[cypherdoc]

What's your proof that I am cherry picking when analysing your track record?

... you ignore all the "buy", "stick with it" or "hold" recommendations all the way up from 30 to 260 when we first had talked.  why don't i get +1's for those?  i gave you a very valid tongue in cheek argument that a daily right/wrong count of 855 to 7 could be applied to me since you believe me to be a permabull.  i say tongue in cheek b/c i actually think it's a stupid argument that applies very well to a stupid thread.

I'm not sure cypherdoc. I agree that your calls, even the bad ones included, overall made a lot of money. So I can see why your track record should be overall positive instead of neutral as it currently is.

But I think it's most helpful if the track record compares the performance of traders/investors here with a simple buy and hold. Because what's the point of making calls if not for outperforming a buy and hold?

You indeed did not outperform a buy and hold, so it's neutral.

But maybe I should neutralize those that have a positive track record currently as I'm pretty sure most of them did not outperform a buy and hold, and many of them likely did not even achieve a buy and hold performance, unlike you.

I'm not sure what to do frankly. What do you think?

i appreciate that you are trying to be helpful here.

all i'm trying to do is get you to acknowledge that a long term buy and hold strategy is just as valid and accepted an investment strategy as day trading.

we just have different viewpoints.

personally, i would just let the thread die b/c the +1/-1 system you're using introduces human error/bias no matter how fair you think you're being.

[RationalSpeculator]

let me ask you something.  at the time of that email the price was around 30 and i warned you clearly we were going to have a massive breakout.  which we did.  the price now stands @ 146.  my returns since that time using buy and hold are 146/30 or 487% (i know thezerg and dree will go off on this way of calc but this is for arguments sake).  what have your returns been with your day trading strategy?  

be honest.

I have always been honest.

I'm not sure how to calculate my returns on bitcoin since $30. I do know my exact returns on bitcoin since the start of the year when price was $13 and that is currently 1070%, using the current bitstamp price of $125. In contrast a buy and hold would have earned $125-$13 = $112 profit / $13 = 861%. So I succeeded in outperforming a buy and hold, but I admit, this can change very quickly. The price just needs to go up to about $160 and I am outperformed by a buy and hold because currently I only have half the amount of bitcoins that I started the year with. I also think I had some luck with trading.

(This is just my returns on my bitcoin investment, if I had followed your advice to convert my silver into btc then my bitcoin returns would not have been higher but my total returns of my portfolio, currently +50% for the year, would have been a lot higher. My biggest mistake was to invest only 8% of my portfolio in bitcoin at the start of the year. I am not satisfied with this +50% since I was right to have a tenbagger and wanted to at least double my capital with it. If I could turn back time I would follow your advise and sell the silver. I'm not willing to make another big mistake and am considering buying back all the coins I sold and switch to a buy and hold like you. My exposure would then suddenly increase from the current 20% to 40% of my portfolio. )

[freedomno1]

let me ask you something.  at the time of that email the price was around 30 and i warned you clearly we were going to have a massive breakout.  which we did.  the price now stands @ 146.  my returns since that time using buy and hold are 146/30 or 487% (i know thezerg and dree will go off on this way of calc but this is for arguments sake).  what have your returns been with your day trading strategy?  

be honest.

I have always been honest.

I'm not sure how to calculate my returns on bitcoin since $30. I do know my exact returns on bitcoin since the start of the year when price was $13 and that is currently 1070%, using the current bitstamp price of $125. In contrast a buy and hold would have earned $125-$13 = $112 profit / $13 = 861%. So I succeeded in outperforming a buy and hold, but I admit, this can change very quickly. The price just needs to go up to about $160 and I am outperformed by a buy and hold because currently I only have half the amount of bitcoins that I started the year with. I also think I had some luck with trading.

(This is just my returns on my bitcoin investment, if I had followed your advice to convert my silver into btc than my bitcoin returns would not have been higher but my total returns of my portfolio, currently +50% for the year, would have been a lot higher. My biggest mistake was to invest only 8% of my portfolio in bitcoin at the start of the year. I am not satisfied with this +50% since I was right to have a tenbagger and wanted to at least double my capital with it. If I could turn back time I would follow your advise and sell the silver. I'm not willing to make another big mistake and am considering buying back all the coins I sold and switch to a buy and hold like you. My exposure would then suddenly increase from the current 20% to 40% of my portfolio. )

I would ignore captial fiat conversions and just measure it as total bitcoins increasing or decreasing on a monthly basis.
Example price went up from 80 to 120 and if you lost 10 btc but made a Fiat gain it is still a loss over holding the bitcoins.

[RationalSpeculator]

This is a bubble.

Anyone saying otherwise has ulterior motives (they probably still own a lot of stock).

It's clear as day. Look at the parabolic trajectory. Consider the lack of short selling. Have you guys already forgotten Bitcoin in March? People were saying much the same things about Bitcoin then as they are saying about ASICMiner now.

Everyone is quoting the "26% APR" as a validation of ASICMiner's share price. First off, 26% APR is not that great a return for a super-unstable security traded with a super-unstable currency.

But, more importantly, ASICMiner's current dividends are inflated for three reasons.

One: because people will pay more per terahash while the difficulty is low. That's kind of obvious: your potential return is a lot higher per terahash while the difficulty is low, so therefore AM can charge a lot more. That effect is quickly subsiding, as evidenced by AM's prices.

Two: there is no serious competition yet. Beyond the organic competition anticipated from Avalon, BFL, KncMiner etc getting their shit together, at this point the sales volume of miners is large enough for an established mid-size electronics manufacturer to mosey on over here and embarrass AM price-wise.

Three: electricity cost. Believe it or not, the location of AM (Guangdong province, China) is not the cheapest place for electricity. Don't quote this figure, but I believe it comes out to about $0.06/kWh. As competition ramps up, money getting in on a piece of that 26% APR will launch huge farms in places like Washington state or Siberia where the price is $0.01/kWh - and they will do so by licensing the BitFury chip, for example, not by buying expensive AM hardware. AM will have trouble competing.

I've sold all my shares. I'm now buying puts with the sole intention of playing the downside. Just like at $266 with Bitcoin, there will be a hiccup - probably a bad dividend week - and this bubble will pop, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, very very fast.

Great call by Vycid!

On July 3th 2013 when ASICMINER was valued at 4.52 btc per share (when 1 btc was $83, so $375 per share) Vycid predicts a collapse, liquidates all his shares and continues to buy put options. (AM had just seventeen folded in value, coming from only 0.65 btc per share (when 1 btc was $35, so $22 per share) when it first started trading on bitfunder just 4 months earlier on March 4th 2013.

AM reached it's peak valuation only 2 days before his call on July 2nd 2013 at 4.93 btc and started falling month after month to only 0.61 btc per share ( with 1 btc = $152, so $92 per share) as of today October 18th 2013, losing 75% of it's value in only 3 months.

He continued to vocal his contrarian opinion, even though he was scolded quite intensively for it, and helped several investors get out in time.


He made another call recently, too soon to be judged:

Wow.

That is worse than expected.

I am resuming a very bearish outlook. 1-year PT 0.3 BTC/share.

Friedcat blew his chance and his first-mover advantage. Now he doesn't even have competitive Gen2 positioning.

Retrospectively I'm not surprised, they aren't professional chip designers and the competition largely is.

[molecular]

Have been tangentially following this thread for a while now, because I think the declared goal is interesting at least: to create a history of predictions (and track record of posters).

But in the end,  I have to agree  with cypherdog and thezerg, the methodology of RS is very much lacking and nothing useful is being created here unfortunately. It's cherry picking quotes, without any attempt to put them into a context (of price at the time, contrasting them with general forum sentiment at the time, etc.)

Yes, it would be good to have a clearing house for "intentional predictions" where they can be tracked.  There is lots of informal supposition that can be construed as prediction.

The oracles that want accountability should have a place to get that, with a clear methodology.

We could also be betting on the performance of the oracles.

[NewLiberty]

Have been tangentially following this thread for a while now, because I think the declared goal is interesting at least: to create a history of predictions (and track record of posters).

But in the end,  I have to agree  with cypherdog and thezerg, the methodology of RS is very much lacking and nothing useful is being created here unfortunately. It's cherry picking quotes, without any attempt to put them into a context (of price at the time, contrasting them with general forum sentiment at the time, etc.)

Yes, it would be good to have a clearing house for "intentional predictions" where they can be tracked.  There is lots of informal supposition that can be construed as prediction.

The oracles that want accountability should have a place to get that, with a clear methodology.

We could also be betting on the performance of the oracles.

Now there's an idea worth money.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Would be interesting to have a website where people start with an equal amount of fake USD, then they can do pretend trades based on the exchange prices, just like a stock market competition, only continuous.  And of course there would be stats (all-time scores, best performance this year, ...).

[thezerg]

I would appreciate being removed from the first post since I am unconvinced at the methodology or accuracy of these assessments.  Thx!

[RationalSpeculator]

I would appreciate being removed from the first post since I am unconvinced at the methodology or accuracy of these assessments.  Thx!

I'm not willing to do that.

That would destroy my work and people would not get my opinion on your track record anymore.

I'm sorry.

[RationalSpeculator]

So if you anticipate BTC appreciation, you should buy BTC. The more BTC appreciates, the worse bet mining is, because difficulty increases. If it stayed the same, mining would be proportional to direct holding of BTC. To add insult to injury, it does not even scale the other way round making mining better if the BTC fiat price dropped - in this event the hashrate declines only slowly, making it punitive to sell BTC to cover the cost of electricity. In any event, the ASIC manufacturers would likely lower their prices for existing equipment, and develop more power efficient technology.

Currently at $12 per BTC, the 7,200 BTC bitcoin miners earn each day are worth $86,400.  That amount is distributed among all the miners proportionally based on the amount of hashing work performed.  

Exactly. It is a novel concept, but extremely important to realize, that no matter how much hashpower is connected to the network, the number of BTC per day stays the same. For this reason, we are entering a low, not high profitability age for mining. ASIC technology makes all previous equipment outdated, and it is projected that the price of new ASICs will enter a steep decline, making it necessary to buy more and more every month just to keep the output constant (because others are also entering the game).

Good for Bitcoin network. Bad for the miners. The more bitcoin rises, the better it would have been just to keep the bitcoins, instead of investing it into mining.

How many BTC did people invest in BFL preorders? Let's say $5M, it was 1 million BTC back then. How on earth are they going to mine 1 million bitcoins with such equipment, as:
- there is no more than 10 million bitcoins more to be mined, ever
- it's realistic to assume that the equipment price per hash will be slashed 90% in 12-18 months following the launch, and network hashrate will rise accordingly
- electricity & other costs
- equipment will become outdated (hash/watt-ratio)

Great call by rpietila.

In October 2012, when many were ordering lots of ASIC mining equipment, he predicts ASIC mining to become a low profitability investment, physically unable to make back the amount of bitcoins it costed.

Today one year later ASIC miners have made back - on average - barely 20% of the bitcoins they originally invested, losing 80% of their bitcoins*.


(*This is a rough estimation, the first to market, for example ASICMINER, made back 6 times more bitcoins as originally invested, most however made back not even 10% of their bitcoins.)

[notme]

ASICMiner has paid out 6x their IPO in dividends.  Their customers, OTOH, have not done as well unless they were in the first wave of blade sales.

[RationalSpeculator]

ASICMiner has paid out 6x their IPO in dividends.  Their customers, OTOH, have not done as well unless they were in the first wave of blade sales.

Thanks for clearing that up. Included the number.