17 & Bitcoin Interested

[matty521521]

Hello Forum!

Sooo around the end of October I started to research about Bitcoin (price was still around $250) 

I started looking into charts and realized that Bitcoin was steadily rising in value, although not having access to Bitcoin online I was forced to looking on craigslist, which when living in a rural town is not so easy to find a Bitcoin seller. Being located In Canada close to Vancouver I was going to visit a family member and take advantage of the Bitcoin ATM downtown. Then obviously plans changed, prices soared and I was out of luck.

Now being able to access physical Bitcoin I'm trying to wrap my head around Bitcoin charts/understanding trading. I've been keeping up to date on news and been teaching myself slowly but surely...

Being 17 I'm now trying to save money for post-secondary education and I've hit a dead end. Do you think it's too late to invest after the latest correction, or should I take the risk of waiting for another drop? It's my mistake that didn't take the advantage. I'm hoping to go after school tomorrow to purchase Bitcoin If someone can help me deem worth it or not. (Current Price $933 Bitstamp)

Thanks A Bunch
-Matt

[raspcoin]

You can still risk your money on altcoins. Alternatively, you can offer services and be paid in bitcoins.

[bmoconno]

I would suggest buying what you can afford right now, don't spend more than you can afford!

Then move it to an exchange like BTC-e (just NOT MtGox).  Once you have it in an exchange, you can sell it off to have a cash balance at the exchange.  This will put you in a much better position to take advantage of fluctuations in the value of BTC.

Set up buy orders for a lower value to try to get more BTC during a dip, and setup sell orders to take advantage of spikes.  Continue the time tested tradition of buying Low and Selling high until you've got enough capitol to start taking more risks.

Good luck!

[matty521521]

Thanks for the reply's guys!

Maybe I should just invest in like .5 Bitcoin and glance at the charts every once in a while to see what's going on. In the best case scenario I comeback in the summer of 2014 I'll have my investment doubled.

Would anyone suggest any other ways of money making online for a teen? Should I dip my feet in the Stock Markets?


bmoconno - Thanks for the reply, I'm going to take a look into BTC-e!

[bmoconno]

If you're technically minded, I would suggest you start working on web sties/technologies that accept or take advantage of cryptocurriences.  They aren't going away, and there's certainly a lot of money to be made.

[madriss]

Hello!

I don't personally see Bitcoin as that volatile any more (relatively speaking anyway), and it could well still rise further. It crashed by something like $300 this week but that didn't bother me and it's making a great recovery back up to $1000. Just a bit annoying if you buy at the top and get to watch that happen!

Altcoins seems to be where to get bigger returns now especially for small investments though. The value of most coins generally goes up but it's still a bit of a minefield especially if you panic sell/buy, as the daily graphs can look a lot different to the overall picture. If you want to use those, get a bit of BTC first then check out http://coinmarketcap.com/ and what people are speculating and pick some coin to buy with it!

The main thing is not to put in anything that you're not prepared to lose, and never take any notice of what anyone says in the btc-e trollbox, seriously!

You could buy a well established coin like namecoin or ppcoin and try to forget about it for months/years and hopefully double up your investment, or daytrade to try predicting the up and downswings for more fun and more returns but of course more risk.

Personally I'm into Quark coin at the moment as I think it's got a lot going for it, but it is relatively new and unproven with some harsh critics so we'll see!

[bmoconno]

never take any notice of what anyone says in the btc-e trollbox, seriously!

^--- THIS, BUT NOT THIS ---v

Personally I'm into Quark coin at the moment as I think it's got a lot going for it, but it is relatively new and unproven with some harsh critics so we'll see!

[matty521521]

Haha sweet thanks

Hey bmoconno, would you saw BTC-e is better then Bitstamp?

[bmoconno]

I use BTC-e, because I like that it has more of the currencies that I think have a lot more potential.

A lot of people use multiple exchanges so that they can take advantage of arbitrage opportunities.  Arbitrage is when the same commodity (like Bitcoins) is available at different prices at different exchanges.  For example, if BTC is worth $903 on BTC-e and $933 on Bitstamp, you have the opportunity to buy BTC on BTC-e for $903 and sell them on Bitstamp for $933 immediately making a $30 arbitrage.

This is a lot easier said than done, since it's hard to get cash in/out of exchanges at a hasty speed.  Which is why it's helpful to already have money in the exchanges to take advantage of these situations.

[matty521521]

Obviously If I'm on BTC-e I'll be constantly looking on my phone, only thing that scares me is the process time on orders and the price of Bitcoin (I guess it's all just apart of the game)!

[matty521521]

I use BTC-e, because I like that it has more of the currencies that I think have a lot more potential.

A lot of people use multiple exchanges so that they can take advantage of arbitrage opportunities.  Arbitrage is when the same commodity (like Bitcoins) is available at different prices at different exchanges.  For example, if BTC is worth $903 on BTC-e and $933 on Bitstamp, you have the opportunity to buy BTC on BTC-e for $903 and sell them on Bitstamp for $933 immediately making a $30 arbitrage.

This is a lot easier said than done, since it's hard to get cash in/out of exchanges at a hasty speed.  Which is why it's helpful to already have money in the exchanges to take advantage of these situations.

Do you think Litecoin would be good for DIP/Spikes? Or stick with Bitcoin?

[bmoconno]

BTC and LTC have been moving together lately (when one goes up/down, so does the other).  LTC can be a better play if you're willing to be a little more risky with your money, since the value is lower, the swings are a greater percentage of the overall value of the coin.  This makes it easier to "double" your money, but also easier to lose "it all" if you play the swings incorrectly.

[DrG]

Word of caution:  No exchange is really regulated or enforced by government entities.  If CampBx, Bitstamp, BTC-e closes up shop in 1 hour and runs with the money there's probably nothing you can do.

Only keep money on an exchange that you would be willing to gamble with.

Anything you are not willing to lose place in an offline wallet and store it.

[wolf95]

Right now I'm pretty much in the same situation, but I started with Primecoin.  Looking towards Dual L5420's as those should in theory pull 3400-3600 Primes/Sec.  Currently with the 6500Primes/sec I use I pull about 0.08XPM/hour.  Figures are depressing, but totaled up with the L5420 lot I'm looking at I could see about 500$ profit, that's granted my rough calculations are correct.  That's the most profitable way I see it now, other than trading. Primecoin seems to piggyback heavily off of BTC, as I use BTC-e.  So it fluctuates with that, or so it seems.  Recently it shot up and made mining alot more profitable.  I plan on sticking with Primecoin for a while.  (CPU mining seems to be most profitable, in terms of mining.  At least in my eyes.)

[bmoconno]

Woah, I didn't think about this till now...

How are you supposed to make money off Spike/Dip on BTC-e with the fees involved... Doesn't that mean you can only trade small amounts of bitcoin to actually make it worth it?

Cause I mean if BTC is at 950 and you bought one, you'd have to wait until the price is 969 to even make it worth it?


Sorta confused haha

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers.  BTC-e charges a flat 0.2% fee, which on $950 would only be $1.90

[matty521521]

Holly smokes didn't even realize I was putting it into the calc wrong evertytime :x

Thanks for the correction! I will be starting this up fairly soon (after my little Vaca). It would be awesome If I could keep you guys on hand incase i have any questions 

[BTC_GHD]

I would say it's still a good idea to get some Bitcoin. I would get them sooner rather than later though, that way they don't go up even more.

[DrG]

Woah, I didn't think about this till now...

How are you supposed to make money off Spike/Dip on BTC-e with the fees involved... Doesn't that mean you can only trade small amounts of bitcoin to actually make it worth it?

Cause I mean if BTC is at 950 and you bought one, you'd have to wait until the price is 969 to even make it worth it?


Sorta confused haha

As noted above the fee is only 0.2% per trade, so 0.4% on a buy-sell cycle.

But to make $ you need to take risk.  Most successful people had to take risk sometime.  The only people who can make $ without taking risk are crooks (who risks other's money) or people so intelligent they don't frequent these forums 

[matty521521]

Yeah good Idea, before I head out for 1 week without the computer I better go get myself a piece of this... Still waiting on this Dip

[epivitoras1]

I would suggest you start working on web sties/technologies that accept or take advantage of cryptocurriences.  They aren't going away