when should i sell a bitcoin?

[superkawaii]

i moved a bitcoin to btc-e in order to sell it ,and buy litecoins with it once the price of litecoin goes down

the thing is its soo hard to know when it the best time to sell

would 900usd be a good price to go after?

[1713999299]

1713999299

[divenvy]

Trade that thing for a LTC now.  I'm waiting on another of my BTC to arrive to get me some more.   LTC is leaving the station get onboard.
 

[superkawaii]

the thing is litecoin usually piggy backs off of bitcoins so if there is a brief crash with bitcoin then litecoin will follow

[URSAY]

You never sell bitcoin.  You hold it forever and end up on the show called Nerd Hoarders on A&E.

[Fiyasko]

You sell when the market "bubble" is about to pop, After it pops, you buy more at the lower rate, and BAM
you make out like a bandit, carrying some bonus money and the same # of coins you started with

[balanghai]

Hey only sell if you have at least 1 BTC so you could do something really significant with it. Like upgrade to solar powered mining.

[toy4lov3rs]

the thing is its soo hard to know when it the best time to sell

would 900usd be a good price to go after?

If it was such easy, every trader would show profit. 

[humanitee]

The price a moment ago was more expensive in dollars than it was in a direct bitcoin to litecoin trade.

[revans]

i moved a bitcoin to btc-e in order to sell it ,and buy litecoins with it once the price of litecoin goes down

the thing is its soo hard to know when it the best time to sell

would 900usd be a good price to go after?

Why would you ever sell man? I mean Bitnomics 101 says that the more you spend Bitcoin, the more you lose.

[ChanceCoats123]

i moved a bitcoin to btc-e in order to sell it ,and buy litecoins with it once the price of litecoin goes down

the thing is its soo hard to know when it the best time to sell

would 900usd be a good price to go after?

Why would you ever sell man? I mean Bitnomics 101 says that the more you spend Bitcoin, the more you lose.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty bullish, but if you only ever hoard, you don't necessarily win either. You'll never realize your profit if you never exchange them, and moreover, Bitcoin loses it's usefulness as a medium of exchange if no exchanges are ever made.

[shmadz]

It sounds like your primary goal is to increase your litecoin holdings. btc-e is a very volatile place and very fun for gambling, I sold 2 btc for somewhere around 250-300 ltc a few weeks ago, but I just went straight from btc -> ltc.

What it sounds like you want to try to do is call a top in usd/btc, then wait and try to find a bottom in usd/ltc. I think that's incredibly risky, especially on btc-e. That place is full of sharks, the btc price in dollars is notoriously low compared to other exchanges and I feel you would be hard pressed to get a good price on btc-e.

The most dangerous part is the waiting. I would suggest, actually I can't suggest you do anything, you have to do what you feel is right.

I can say that I think litecoin is pretty cool. Some people say that it's exactly like bitcoin, but because it's so similar is what will make it so easy for people to adopt. I think it can actually be silver to bitcoin's gold. I think the absolute bottom is around .01 btc - kinda like a bit-penny. The absolute top would be at .25 bitcoin - a bit-quarter if you like, as there will be 4 times as many created. A more realistic top could be .1 btc, the bit-dime.

I would avoid the transfer into fiat and just make the straight transaction though. The time of fiat is coming to an end.

(*edit, not trying to derail the thread, but I thought I should put up a disclaimer of some kind. I am very bullish on alt-coins. I'm not sure which ones are going to make it, but litecoin seems pretty solid. I hear a lot of people say that BTC won't have a problem with deflation because you can just keep splitting it up, but dust transactions are already a problem, and we haven't even reached the second halving of the block rewards yet... I think the inflation has to come from alt coins. Which ones are accepted and which ones are rejected is anyone's guess, but I think there will be a big place for them in a bitcoin future.

[Crazy]

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty bullish, but if you only ever hoard, you don't necessarily win either. You'll never realize your profit if you never exchange them, and moreover, Bitcoin loses it's usefulness as a medium of exchange if no exchanges are ever made.

I think you missed his sarcasm :\

At least, that's how I took it.

[BitcoinTraderFX]

I agree with @Chancecoats. I mean having a few gold or latinum bars sitting around is cool and stuff, but taking a girl out to dinner, that's pretty cool too. It's meant to be spent.

If on the other hand you are trying to speculate (make money from your money) then you are asking a different question.

The "Buying and holding" return on investment is called Alpha (by stock trading nerds, which is not me, but might be me if you saw me with glasses). So alpha for bitcoin is pushing 1000 if you bought and held.

Beta is the ups and downs it makes while on that path to 1000. Yup, lots of beta.

Investors HATE beta. It scares the crap out of them. Heart attack, happy, heart attack, happy. On and on.

Traders LOVE beta. It's the stuff dreams are made of. If you could buy at every turn perfectly, your single bitcoin would be worth a lot more. So fund managers (professional traders, which doesn't always mean good - traders), are tasked to OUTPERFORM alpha.

So if a hedge fund manager said he turned 1 bitcoin into $1000, he would be laughed at, or fired. Because he made 0 in excess of alpha. So his boss would say, "Idiot, I could have done that by doing nothing."

So hedge funds are measured by their excess of alpha. How much better than just plain-old buying and selling.

What you gotta do is ask yourself what kind of person you are. Do you love volatility, or hate it. I can't tell you how many traders have lost their mind to volatility. They can't handle it. They should have been investors.

Then there are traders who look at a chart, see all those ups and downs, and begin to salivate. And let me tell you, when a trader starts to salivate -- it ain't pretty. Goo everywhere. But the bottom line is they see opportunity, not fear.

I'm not advocating either one, but I am advocating knowing what kind of person you are. EVERYONE wants more money, but the methodology has to match your personality.

What you can do is sell .01 bitcoin. Then try to buy it back on a dip. Not to make money, but to see how you feel. The investors among us will start to have stomach problems (even with .01 or $10 of bitcoin). The traders among us will suddenly see more opportunities.

If you do try the .01 experiment, do it once. Don't do it again. But then take a moment and ask yourself how you felt.

Based on that, you can ask different questions.

: )

cj

[Anon136]

bitcoin is such an abstract cocnept, no one knows what the right price is for it. i would recommend looking for any and all indicators OTHER than price to figure out when to sell. I.E. walmart.com accepts bitcoin, on multiple occasions you overhear people you have never talked to about bitcoin talking about how they bought some bitcoin, people start asking you to explain bitcoin to them, ect... you know ANYTHING other than price.

[BitcoinTraderFX]

Now @Anon, I have to ask. Are you talking about contrarian indications, or uncontrarion (is that even a word.) Because you brought up a really interesting point.

By that I mean, remember when everyone was talking about bitcoin being dead from the Silkroad shutdown, etc, etc, then boom. $900. That's a classic contrarian investment.

Most believe that markets are driven by psychology, not economics. When I used to trade news reports on the futures market, you would think good news means up, and bad news means down. When I first started trading, that's what I though. But nope.

: )

cj

[JekyllIsland]

Why sell it when you can spend it?

30% capital gains? lol fuck the IRS buy a house or an island

[glendall]

Sell at the all-time high, buy back at 80% of that price is a reasonably safe and effective method that I have use myself, anyways.

You guys pay capital gains taxes in the States? Man that sucks.  For a country that's economic policy is effectively set by Goldman Sachs employees you guys sure get boned. Do you know most major corporations, such as Apple and Starbucks, pay less than 2% tax on their earnings? You guys should do the same (in a fair world).

[Sindelar1938]

Don't sell btc, keep adding on dips

[Anon136]

Now @Anon, I have to ask. Are you talking about contrarian indications, or uncontrarion (is that even a word.) Because you brought up a really interesting point.

By that I mean, remember when everyone was talking about bitcoin being dead from the Silkroad shutdown, etc, etc, then boom. $900. That's a classic contrarian investment.

Most believe that markets are driven by psychology, not economics. When I used to trade news reports on the futures market, you would think good news means up, and bad news means down. When I first started trading, that's what I though. But nope.

: )

cj

No im not talking about contrarian stuff. I try to remember to know my limitations and i try not to trade on technicals, what i know are fundamentals. Some people know how to trade technicals and my hat goes off to those people, but most of us are not those people, and OP is probably not one of those people either. Assuming im right in that assumption he should be focusing on the fundamentals, and with bitcoin that all boils down to adoption and awareness. Thats why my advise is essentially to find ways to get a finger on the pulse of the adoption/awareness rate of bitcoin. Other than just generally keeping your ear to the ground, google trends offers a pretty good tool for that. Compare bitcoin to angry birds, compare it to south park, compare it to furbies, compare it to anything you can think of because every data point will give you a frame of reference to understand the macro trend of bitcoin awareness, and THAT is how you will figure out when it is time to use your bitcoins to buy things.

of course this is just my opinion take it lightly.

[thetopham]

I sold coins at 200, don't do it!