Can someone please get things moving again

[enmaku]

If everybody would just mine and hold or buy and hold until they can't get out at a profit, the price would always go up.  

That's the definition of the suckers in a pyramid scheme.

Indeed, this is prisoner's dilemma meets free market.  As long as everyone hoards and nobody sells artificial scarcity means everyone looks wealthy on paper.

Problem is, right NOW this pyramid is starting to wobble.  2/3 of the mining capacity is less than 30 days old.  We newbies aren't the faithful, we've got power bills to pay and hardware to re-invest into if we want to catch up to you old fogies.  With [H]ocp possibly even more "easy money" miners are coming in.  This means that while in the past the vast majority of mined coins were hoarded that's definitely not true now.  We really could have most of the mined coins being sold within a week of being produced.  In which case, without fresh injection of funds, you'd see action much like what you see in the market -- someone stabilizing the buy side with fake buy walls (and notice how other 'buyers' are too timid to step far away from that wall) while they themselves slowly cash out.  I saw a 400+ coin buy taken out quickly, while the tiny orders were left alone.

Short term bear, long term bull is my take on it.  Trees don't grow to the sky.

I can't agree more:

60-day SMA on a log scale with my best estimate of a trendline drawn in. I imagine a self-correcting market oscillating like a sine wave around a trendline and so far that's what I see.

More charts and full writeup at my site.

I'm certainly not claiming to have the whole thing figured out but as someone who is in this thing for the long haul, the long-term trend is still looking good enough that I'm sticking around to see where it goes. Short term bear while we're under the trendline, probably another big rally to get us back over it followed by another bear and so on until we reach peak market saturation, which is quite some time off yet.

[grod]

Grod, I like your posts so I'd thought I'd ask you. Why do you see a bull market in the long-term? You perfectly describe the current market, but see a different long-term result. I'm curious as to why...

Because nothing like this has ever been done before.  There is definitely intrinsic value in a commodity that is not controlled by any central authority, can not be easily counterfeited or subverted and can be sent in real time to anyone in the world with internet access.  The promise of bitcoin is very real, and if this service was provided by a company I could see not just myself but plenty of others investing in such an outfit pre and post IPO.  

This being a distributed grass-roots effort rather than a corporation doesn't change things.

But that is still a possible future.  The current situation is now.  One is potentially bright, the second not quite so much.  Sometimes even promising companies make poor short term investment opportunities and excellent shorts.

I think of this as a brilliant tech startup where the founders have 90% of the stock, and the investors providing 100% of the capital have 10%.   With the stock price determined completely by the company cash on hand (which is 100% infused by investors) and currently at a near all time high, several thousand % higher than a few months ago.  Oh yes, the founders able to sell their shares at any time.  With more stock being issued at a steady rate (albeit a smaller and smaller fraction of the float).

Would you be one of the investors now or wait for a better opportunity?   I'm not. Of course there is risk of never getting on board -- but then, one of the major cannons of trading (if not investing) is to never fall in love with a stock.

[enmaku]

If everybody would just mine and hold or buy and hold until they can't get out at a profit, the price would always go up.  

That's the definition of the suckers in a pyramid scheme.

If you've been in the game for half an hour and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.

DRINK!

Bitcoin don't need an ever-expanding pool of suckers. We need the software that makes them more useful. It's coming, but I don't know when.

Agreed, to an extent. Value is driven by scarcity and scarcity per capita increases when the demand pool is growing faster than the supply pool, so an ever-increasing pool of users increases value proportionally. The difference is whether we're calling them "suckers" or "users" and that's a pretty fine line right now. Bitcoins admittedly have no value other than what we agree they do as a market, but of course the same can be said for the US Dollar and any other world currency - what CAN'T be said about them is that they're hard to use and few people accept them. Apparent legitimacy and ability to use as payment regularly is what pushes us over the line into "user" territory. That said, we're an android app or credit-card-like embedded system away from being equivalent to an early paypal instead of an early eGold (y'know, minus the centralized shut-down-able nature of eGold).

[billyjoeallen]

Would you be one of the investors now or wait for a better opportunity?   I'm not. Of course there is risk of never getting on board -- but then, one of the major cannons of trading (if not investing) is to never fall in love with a stock.

1. Bitcoin isn't a stock. It's a commodity. it can't go bust because it can't take on debt.
2. it's "canon"

[grod]

pure art

You know, usually I smirk and repeat the old saw about log charts showing anything you wish to see.   But that was just pure art.  It's hard to find fault with the way you've drawn the trend line, nor the staring me in the face pattern.  I'm in awe.  That makes my crude charting look like bison drawn on cave walls with feces.

There you have it, technicals and fundamentals seem to agree.  Now is not the best time to buy.

[grod]

Would you be one of the investors now or wait for a better opportunity?   I'm not. Of course there is risk of never getting on board -- but then, one of the major cannons of trading (if not investing) is to never fall in love with a stock.

1. Bitcoin isn't a stock. It's a commodity. it can't go bust because it can't take on debt.
2. it's "canon"

Tulips in Holland were a commodity too.  Bust happens.
And you are right, I deserve to be fired out of one for that brain-o.

More serious answer: bitcoins are not a stock, they are one of the products produced by the bitcoin community (company).  When you invest in BTC you're investing in that ecosystem/community/company.  The block chain is worthless on its own, I can create one myself and mine it all I want.

That community (company) does have debt and operating costs in various forms, although the former is harder to quantify.  That community can absolutely become defunct and disappear, rendering the products worthless.

Edit: I keep editing this back and forth.  BTC are the stock as well as the product, to some degree.  The founders cashing their stock can re-invest back into the company, making this analogy really really stretched.  So yeah.  We'll go with something I've never seen before.

[enmaku]

pure art

You know, usually I smirk and repeat the old saw about log charts showing anything you wish to see.   But that was just pure art.  It's hard to find fault with the way you've drawn the trend line, nor the staring me in the face pattern.  I'm in awe.  That makes my crude charting look like bison drawn on cave walls with feces.

There you have it, technicals and fundamentals seem to agree.  Now is not the best time to buy.

Edit: also, when 1 BTC was a third of a cent would have been the best time to buy. Now is good but then was better 

[grod]

I assure you, quite serious.  I'm now going back and trying to do MACD on a log scale over the same time period to see if I can confirm or deny your crossover indicators.  I suspect there will be quite a bit of confirmation.

[billyjoeallen]

Would you be one of the investors now or wait for a better opportunity?   I'm not. Of course there is risk of never getting on board -- but then, one of the major cannons of trading (if not investing) is to never fall in love with a stock.

1. Bitcoin isn't a stock. It's a commodity. it can't go bust because it can't take on debt.
2. it's "canon"

Tulips in Holland were a commodity too.  Bust happens.
And you are right, I deserve to be fired out of one for that brain-o.

More serious answer: bitcoins are not a stock, they are one of the products produced by the bitcoin community (company).  When you invest in BTC you're investing in that ecosystem/community/company.  The block chain is worthless on its own, I can create one myself and mine it all I want.

That community (company) does have debt and operating costs in various forms, although the former is harder to quantify.  That community can absolutely become defunct and disappear, rendering the products (which are also the stock!) worthless.

It's not a perfect analogy.  a community is not a company. There is no CEO, CFO, COO, board of directors or even a management org chart. Liabilities of individual participants are not transferable.  

Tulips were overvalued relative to other commodities, but because of their lack of fungibility (their are many different types), they never had the hope of becoming money. There is at least a possibility of BTC becoming money and having a value independent of it's commodity value.

[enmaku]

I assure you, quite serious.  I'm now going back and trying to do MACD on a log scale over the same time period to see if I can confirm or deny your crossover indicators.  I suspect there will be quite a bit of confirmation.

Keep in mind that what I posted was a moving average with a very large number of days. If you're looking for something accurately representing the real time at which the crossovers occurred, here's an SMA 60, EMA 20 and daily median price plotted the same way: http://bitcoinreference.com/sites/default/files/u1/6-month-log-trends-all.png

[error]

Surprise to the upside!

[grod]

It's not a perfect analogy.  a community is not a company. There is no CEO, CFO, COO, board of directors or even a management org chart. Liabilities of individual participants are not transferable.  

All analogies break down at some point, which is why they're analogies.  Still, we humans use them to wrap our heads around strange concepts, and for that use I think my analogy is apt enough.

Tulips were overvalued relative to other commodities, but because of their lack of fungibility (their are many different types), they never had the hope of becoming money. There is at least a possibility of BTC becoming money and having a value independent of it's commodity value.

Again, BTC isn't the thing with value.   The service, the ability to send funds securely using the internet with no central authority is the valuable part.  I can create my own BTC on my own block chain, and they will have zero value because it's the company (in this case community) that's backing the service.  It's the same reason my credit card is usable as money.  If I were to draw my own credit card on a piece of plastic with crayon I'd be rightfully laughed at.  People buy into Visa's ability to shuffle money around.  People are starting to buy into the BTC community's ability to shuffle money around.  Visa stock has value to stockholders and potential stockholders.  BTC has value to BTC holders and potential BTC holders.

The big question is: how quickly is the stockholder equity growing?  Can we project revenue (that being fees on transactions in the Future) and how likely it is to grow?  Is our customer base (in this case synonymous with stockholders) growing or shrinking?

I view the company as very healthy at the moment with bright future outlook, but currently overbought.

[Oldminer]

OMG the price has jumped 10c - Rally!

[CurbsideProphet]

Because nothing like this has ever been done before.  There is definitely intrinsic value in a commodity that is not controlled by any central authority, can not be easily counterfeited or subverted and can be sent in real time to anyone in the world with internet access.  The promise of bitcoin is very real, and if this service was provided by a company I could see not just myself but plenty of others investing in such an outfit pre and post IPO.  

This being a distributed grass-roots effort rather than a corporation doesn't change things.

But that is still a possible future.  The current situation is now.  One is potentially bright, the second not quite so much.  Sometimes even promising companies make poor short term investment opportunities and excellent shorts.

I think of this as a brilliant tech startup where the founders have 90% of the stock, and the investors providing 100% of the capital have 10%.   With the stock price determined completely by the company cash on hand (which is 100% infused by investors) and currently at a near all time high, several thousand % higher than a few months ago.  Oh yes, the founders able to sell their shares at any time.  With more stock being issued at a steady rate (albeit a smaller and smaller fraction of the float).

Would you be one of the investors now or wait for a better opportunity?   I'm not. Of course there is risk of never getting on board -- but then, one of the major cannons of trading (if not investing) is to never fall in love with a stock.

We share very similar viewpoints on Bitcoin.  Since you brought up counterfeiting, I thought I'd get your thoughts on one of my other big concerns with Bitcoin in the long term.  We currently have an argument over what exactly Bitcoin is, is it a currency, a commodity, an asset, a store of value, etc.  I happen to believe it's intellectual property.  Here's the kicker that really concerns me, it's intellectual property with no patent protection.  Not only does it not have patent protection, it's open source.  With very low barriers to entry.

You mention that if this idea were done by a company you could see yourself investing in the IPO.  The thing is, there's really nothing stopping a company or any individual from copying Bitcoin's model.  Some will argue that Bitcoin has the advantage of being first to market.  While that's true, Bitcoin is still very much in its infancy and hasn't built up much of a reputation in the mainstream to rely on this time advantage.  Besides, first to market doesn't really matter when one can take a concept, tweak it, and make it better.  Ask MySpace.

What are your thoughts?
 

[billyjoeallen]

It's not a perfect analogy.  a community is not a company. There is no CEO, CFO, COO, board of directors or even a management org chart. Liabilities of individual participants are not transferable.  

All analogies break down at some point, which is why they're analogies.  Still, we humans use them to wrap our heads around strange concepts, and for that use I think my analogy is apt enough.

Tulips were overvalued relative to other commodities, but because of their lack of fungibility (their are many different types), they never had the hope of becoming money. There is at least a possibility of BTC becoming money and having a value independent of it's commodity value.

Again, BTC isn't the thing with value.   The service, the ability to send funds securely using the internet with no central authority is the valuable part.  I can create my own BTC on my own block chain, and they will have zero value because it's the company (in this case community) that's backing the service.  It's the same reason my credit card is usable as money.  If I were to draw my own credit card on a piece of plastic with crayon I'd be rightfully laughed at.  People buy into Visa's ability to shuffle money around.  People are starting to buy into the BTC community's ability to shuffle money around.  Visa stock has value to stockholders and potential stockholders.  BTC has value to BTC holders and potential BTC holders.

The big question is: how quickly is the stockholder equity growing?  Can we project revenue (that being fees on transactions in the Future) and how likely it is to grow?  Is our customer base (in this case synonymous with stockholders) growing or shrinking?

I view the company as very healthy at the moment with bright future outlook, but currently overbought.

That's like saying oil isn't the thing we value. it's the energy we get from it.

[grod]

That's like saying oil isn't the thing we value. it's the energy we get from it.

I'll bite.  A synthetic gasoline, were such a thing possible would be just as useful to me as one refined from crude as long as it had the same performance characteristics.  So yes, it is the energy and form factor we value.  It just so happens that oil is the best and cheapest way of getting it.  In the future it may well geothermal or tidal or fusion (ok, probably not) that ultimately results in vehicles moving, materials refining and homes heating.  Oil in and of itself is not hugely valuable -- do you think someone living in pre-industrial times would rather have a gold mining claim or rights to drill for oil?

[netrin]

That's like saying oil isn't the thing we value. it's the energy we get from it.

If you could copy-paste oil as well as the extraction machinery and sites, then yeah, it would be analogous.

[billyjoeallen]

That's like saying oil isn't the thing we value. it's the energy we get from it.

I'll bite.  A synthetic gasoline, were such a thing possible would be just as useful to me as one refined from crude as long as it had the same performance characteristics.  So yes, it is the energy and form factor we value.  It just so happens that oil is the best and cheapest way of getting it.  In the future it may well geothermal or tidal or fusion (ok, probably not) that ultimately results in vehicles moving, materials refining and homes heating.  Oil in and of itself is not hugely valuable -- do you think someone living in pre-industrial times would rather have a gold mining claim or rights to drill for oil?

Depends on how near the industrial revolution was. Bitcoin will become useful for throttling within months.

[grod]

Ok, having been inspired enmanku's excellent and clear long term trend charting I got to looking for oscillators with any usefulness whatsoever in confirming or denying short term price movements.  Here's what I've found:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg90zvzpsztgTzm1g10za2gTMAzm2g25zi2gUOzi3gCMFzi4gMFI

This pretty much backs up my gut feel (and my gut is currently full of excellent Chinese food, so I'm not sure I'm getting correct trading signals at this time).  Two of those indicators signaled a sell on the 10th at $20 (and a buy on Jun 3 at $11, fwiw), the third a sell on the 26th at $16 (and a buy months ago at like, $0) -- confirming the down trend, and haven't turned bull yet.

Check out the Chaikin Money Flow one in particular.  Notice how it was consistently above the zero line during the long term up trend, but has been well below during the recent down trend.  If you draw a support trend line on the oscillator betwen the 4st and the 11th we may even have a divergence where the indicator slope is slightly down, yet the price trend is up.

TL;DR: I have no worries about missing a massive upside trend just yet, no worries about intra-day Brownian motion and no regrets about being in dollars rather than BTC.