Dreams affecting investment decisions.

[MatTheCat]

I wonder to what extent Bitcoin dream content affects a person's Bitcoin investment decisions?

I may also say to what extent instinct or 'intuition' affects Bitcoin investments, but I would imagine that many people mistake 'fear' or 'wish fulfilment' for intuitive thinking, which it aint.

I say this because every time since the last crash that I make a sizeable venture into Bitcoin, I am waking from my sleep on the back of dodgy Bitcoin dreams (dodgy if you have money invested). I perhaps spend too much time on this forum and whilst I like to think the messages of the Bitcoin Nutters' wash over me like water off a duck's back, there have been some good balanced posts from bullish members such as T.Stuart or dg2010, that kind of sway me into thinking that the waters of Bitcoin are now calm and settled, and thus safe. Last night however, I dreamt that these waters were infested with sharks. I woke up, went through to my PC and checked the charts....everything stable, went back to bed.

A couple of hours later, I dreamt that my buy-ins (I have some at low $700s for trading purposes) were triggered, but the price kept falling and falling, hitting $100 range. I woke up, for the second time and went through and checked the charts. Again, everything stable just as before but in order to get a decent sleep, I cancelled my $700 range buy in tranches. My heavy $100 - $250 buy-ins remain. I slept soundly after that.

Since the crash, the volume of Bitcoin trade has been very low. If China has indeed been priced out the market and Bitcoin does behave true to past form, then all rational analysis should point towards right now being a great buy-in point for Bitcoin investors, but nobody is buying in. I wonder to what extent investors subconscious instincts are preventing them from investing in Bitcoin.

I am putting my hands up and admitting that I am throwing all rational argument out of the window regarding Bitcoin. The reason for this is that I recognise that the human rational mind is a very limited faculty, whereas the irrational or subconscious mind, although it's messages can be vague and cryptic, is an infinitely more powerful processor of information.

Indeed George Soros once stated that he believed that the key to being a successful investors was more instinct than anything else.

[TERA]

China is not out, it is still leading.

[MatTheCat]

China is not out, it is still leading.

Volume is low, very low compared to pre Dec 5th.

However, I wonder what impact a headline in the Chinese media that went along the lines of:

Bitcoin Exchange Price Ramping Fraud (rampant bitcoin rise nothing but smoke and mirrors)

would have on the global market?

Or any other sort of headline or government statement of a similar nature.

[T.Stuart]

If we are talking short term - several weeks - then of course bad news from China would have a dampening effect. But not as much as before.

Things are beginning to show signs of progress in terms of "de-coupling" from China, but it's not done yet.

But to go back to my Facebook example (new thread) - the panic-sellers have just got to think realistically. Even if China went out 100% (which I think is unlikely) Bitcoin has vast spaces in which to grow much, much bigger. People need to Wake up to that.

It also doesn't help that those who badly want back in at half the current price will wave the China flag without hesitation or any concern for balanced argument.

[MatTheCat]

If we are talking short term - several weeks - then of course bad news from China would have a dampening effect. But not as much as before.

Things are beginning to show signs of progress in terms of "de-coupling" from China, but it's not done yet.

But to go back to my Facebook example (new thread) - the panic-sellers have just got to think realistically. Even if China went out 100% (which I think is unlikely) Bitcoin has vast spaces in which to grow much, much bigger. People need to Wake up to that.

It also doesn't help that those who badly want back in at half the current price will wave the China flag without hesitation or any concern for balanced argument.

I do actually like your reasoning T.Stuart, and one of your longer posts in another thread did have an influencing affect on my Bitcoin outlook.....

......but when I keep having these dreams (what I describe on OP is not the first time), then I feel compelled to bow out of this shit for now. Sure, everyone whether they be bears or bulls can cherry pick media items or stats to support their argument but ultimately the Bitcoin market is too vast and complex for any of our rational minds to fully comprehend, and even if someone devoted their life to understanding all the trends and currents, and what lay behind them, there are always going to be the hidden X-Factors that absolutely nobody can rationally account for. With a market so small, yet potentially so profitable, Bitcoin is going to have more than its fair share of X-Factors, 'whales' or 'sharks' or whatever label you care to use, that will force 'events' to occur, that nobody can fully explain, yet everyone rationlises as being totally 'predictable' with the benefit of hindsight.

[T.Stuart]

... many people mistake 'fear' or 'wish fulfilment' for intuitive thinking, which it aint.

One thing important to remember as well, MatTheCat, is that after so many weeks of volatility the dreams really do swing both ways:

Some are dreaming of the long-term and some are dreaming (just as much) about grabbing coins at $300 right now: the "bargain-crash-of-a-lifetime-equalling-a-doubling-of-money-as-soon-as-the-bounce-comes-back!" dream.

I honestly believe we are now completing the move out of a period of time (bubble pop) in which the latter dream did have a few chances of becoming reality; it's time now to look at making an investment for a year minimum. It will still be good in my opinion, even buying at these prices! Again just look at the price after the previous bubble - supported much higher than ever before on lower volume than before. It's the norm for Bitcoin, and something hard for people to get their heads around because it is a new phenomenon that has not got a historical equivalent (not the same as tulip bulbs, not the same as fiat currency, not the same as shares in a company, etc.). By getting involved we are walking an extremely exciting line into unchartered territory, all the while knowing that so far so good, and that there is no good reason to panic (because even when everybody does things still get back to normal incredibly quickly).

Bitcoin has proven itself extremely resiliant. That's something you can rely on in my opinion. "Global blackout", "Global ban", "Global cash out", etc. are not realistic issues. They certainly sound bad, but the chances really are very, very small. Bitcoin does have a host of more realistic, smaller problems, but at the present time these are nothing more unusual than the day-to-day problems that people or companies might face such as: "How will I classify this income on my tax return?", "How can I ride a bike when I've never done it before", etc. Really, the big questions to do with survival have already been answered. Think about it.

If you disagree with anything I've said I'd love to hear why.

[T.Stuart]

I do actually like your reasoning T.Stuart, and one of your longer posts in another thread did have an influencing affect on my Bitcoin outlook.....

......but when I keep having these dreams (what I describe on OP is not the first time), then I feel compelled to bow out of this shit for now.

If you are dreaming about it then it's getting serious - don't worry, I know the feeling! 

All I can say is that the feelings of hope and fear have got to be greatly magnified because this is unchartered territory - "too vast and complex for any of our rational minds to fully comprehend" as you say. That's why we are getting wildly fluctuating opinions from financial experts as well.

But think carefully and it's not so unchartered as it might seem. It's a classic story of a fast-growing Internet company like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, etc. It's just decentralised! For want of a better example, it's like bacteria growth. It's viral. From this point you just have to try to work out whether or not we are reaching saturation. Unless I have some seriously messed up reading of the situation, we are nowhere near saturation point at all. We are still very early.

And it is this early bird feeling that also heightens fear. But I would argue that we are in a much stronger position than would be a normal company at this stage. The "early mover" head start has given a very clear advantage to Bitcoin. It has by far the biggest momentum and media coverage and why should that stop? Unless there is a serious conspiracy between media outlets, hedge funds, etc. to promote Litecoin or any other altcoin in a coordinated fashion, why would any of them take over from Bitcoin now? We've heard the ugly news, the controversy, the electricity required, etc. It doesn't matter. Bitcoin has sailed through, resiliant as ever.

I cannot tell you exactly why it is so resiliant, but all the signs are there. Personally I think that since 2008, the worst recession for nearly 100 years, the feeling and mental undercurrent - of resentment towards governments, but also the desire to break out of hopelessness and also, to put it bluntly, greed - has grown incredibly strong, and some of this has been chanelled into Bitcoin. And there is so much more of that feeling left! This is regardless of the fact that Bitcoin is really an ingenious technology and a superb payments system. It is just what is needed for the 21st century.

Why do you think Bitcoin has kept going until now, despite the crashes, corruption, controversy, etc. ?

[MatTheCat]

If you disagree with anything I've said I'd love to hear why.

Cos my subconscious mind is not at all happy about me having any substantial amount invested in Bitcoins at the moment and I am waking up in the middle of the night because of it.

Now that is not a rational answer. But that is exactly my point.

Either I will be proven correct in my near term reticence in getting involved with Bitcoin and will breathe a sigh of relief as the price either plummets or gradually grinds out towards the basement, or I will be proven wrong and will just have to consider that for some other reason, my subconscious instinct is pushing against me making money with Bitcoin...perhaps I just don't like myself? But I doubt that. I have experience of this before with investing in Silver. I have quite a bit of physical metal in my possession which I am underwater on across the board on the 2010 prices that I paid for it, but in late 2012, I had around 10K worth of sliver in allocated vault. All the media and rational that I immersed myself in was telling me it was a great investment: multiple industrial uses, supply shortages, store of value in era of QE to infinity etc etc. Silver of course had lost about 40% of its nominal value from it's 2011 high, but had found stability in the $30 region and could only go upwards to $500 from here, right? To cut to the chase, this was another example of a bad investment that I pulled the plug on due to getting bad signals from it in dreams that I had. I took a loss of a few hundred quid on the chin. Had I held, I could have made a few hundred profit at one point, but had I held for the long run, I would now be almost 40% underwater. Considerably worse off than just keeping it in the bank, or under my mattress for that matter.

I cannot tell you exactly why it is so resiliant, but all the signs are there. Personally I think that since 2008, the worst recession for nearly 100 years, the feeling and mental undercurrent - of resentment towards governments, but also the desire to break out of hopelessness and also, to put it bluntly, greed - has grown incredibly strong, and some of this has been chanelled into Bitcoin. And there is so much more of that feeling left! This is regardless of the fact that Bitcoin is really an ingenious technology and a superb payments system. It is just what is needed for the 21st century.

Why do you think Bitcoin has kept going until now, despite the crashes, corruption, controversy, etc. ?

All this anarchist sentiment fuelling the rise of Bitcoin may have all been true once upon-a-time, but that time has past. Now it is all about being on a fast track to wild riches and I don't exclude myself from that. What keeps Bitcoin going regardless of its price is its irreversible use for certain types of transactions where anonymity is paramount. The largest Bitcoin marketplace I believe is still Silk Road, but its prime black market use is for shifting wealth around off the radar of the banking system. Bitcoin can do this task just as well at $100 per coin as it can at $1000, or even $10 for that matter.

For transactions that don't require the level of anonymity that Bitcoin can provide, Bitcoin is far too volatile a unit of account to be given serious consideration.

[byronbb]

A lots of recent bitcoiners are fully aware of the early adopters and how they have made fortunes relative to their initial investment. The key here is those early investors put down small sums which were basically fliers on the potential of a nice return. More recent investors are not in this same position. They should be limiting their investment to the same dollar figure they would have been willing to commit if they had come across bitcoin in 2010-2011, NOT "If I had bought 1000 bitcoins in 2010 I'd be rich, time to buy 1000 bitcoins to make up for that missed opportunity." Going from $1 to $800 is WAY different than $800 to $6400.

[Wilhelm]

A lots of recent bitcoiners are fully aware of the early adopters and how they have made fortunes relative to their initial investment. The key here is those early investors put down small sums which were basically fliers on the potential of a nice return. More recent investors are not in this same position. They should be limiting their investment to the same dollar figure they would have been willing to commit if they had come across bitcoin in 2010-2011, NOT "If I had bought 1000 bitcoins in 2010 I'd be rich, time to buy 1000 bitcoins to make up for that missed opportunity." Going from $1 to $800 is WAY different than $800 to $6400.

+1

You have two types of investors. Those who invest sensibly with money they can afford and those who are gamblers and go all in.

[Lone Wolf]

Here's a simple rule of thumb I learned from stock market trading.  If you are literally losing sleep over a position, then that position is too big (meaning you have too much money invested in one thing) and you should reduce your position so you can sleep at night.

But of course its your money and you should invest/trade/gamble as you see fit.

[MatTheCat]

Here's a simple rule of thumb I learned from stock market trading.  If you are literally losing sleep over a position, then that position is too big (meaning you have too much money invested in one thing) and you should reduce your position so you can sleep at night.

But of course its your money and you should invest/trade/gamble as you see fit.

I like to tell people that I never started investing in Bitcoin until mid November, and as far as I am concerned, this is true. I did however have 15 coins that I had bought in September at around $120, that had almost trebled in value by November.

Noticing this, I sold them thinking that I had done great. Later that night, I was awoken from my sleep by a dream of Bitcoin going through $600 on MtGox. I knew immediately that selling those coins was the most idiotic thing I have done all year and immediately went about getting set up to trade on Bitstamp (refusing to pay the 20% premiums on LocalBitcoin in order to enter market). Whole process took around 11 days to complete, but I still got a good slice of upside action and got a nice slice of profit out of it.

So, that was an instance of me being kept awake due to not having any skin in the game.

I really don't think that it is due to 'worry' that I am having Bitcoin 'going 2 da Underworld' dreams, but because my subconscious mind knows something that my conscious mind does not. This is a repeat dream theme that has occurred whenever I mellow on my bearish stance and start moving funds back into Bitcoin.

Rather than dismiss this all as just irrational mental babble, past experience has taught me to pay heed to these sort of things.

Conscious rational thought is very good at precise and directed thinking, but only capable of dealing with between 7-12 factors involved with a particular issue at any one time. The subconscious mind on the other hand is very poor with precise and directed thinking, but capable of processing millions of factors involved with a particular issue at any one time.

Global electronic marketplaces are vastly complex things and totally overwhelming to the rational mind. There is just too much to consider. I really think that those who have the most success (who aren't privvy to insider information), will allow their instinct/intuition to form the ethos of their stance towards a particular asset, leaving their rational mind to give 'reason' to their stance. What most people on here seem to do (myself included at times), is allow emotions to form the ethos of their stance on Bitcoins and then cherry pick facts and figures to give reason to their emotional bias. This is a very different thing to what I am describing and also much closer to 'just fkn gambling'.

[Miz4r]

How do you distinguish between your subconscious fears and its intuitive sense? I'm sorry but I think you can't. It's subconscious, therefore your conscious mind can not determine whether they are mere subconscious fears and worries or some kind of real intuitive sense of what it knows is going to happen. I believe intuition can be a powerful tool, but I wouldn't fare on it blindly and follow every little dream like it's God himself speaking to you from your own subconscious...

[chesthing]

Bottom line is it really sucks to have missed this boat, coming to grips with missing an opportunity of a lifetime isn't easy. Can't let that cloud the judgment, $750 is way too much to pay for 1 btc right now. I wouldn't be able to sleep getting in now either, and it's got nothing to do with putting myself in financial peril - I don't want to feel like a chump if this shit tanks (like I think it's going to do, at least temporarily).

[MatTheCat]

How do you distinguish between your subconscious fears and its intuitive sense? I'm sorry but I think you can't. It's subconscious, therefore your conscious mind can not determine whether they are mere subconscious fears and worries or some kind of real intuitive sense of what it knows is going to happen. I believe intuition can be a powerful tool, but I wouldn't fare on it blindly and follow every little dream like it's God himself speaking to you from your own subconscious...

You can't ever be sure....

.....a short while ago two nights running, I had dreams of my brother's gf being some kind of freaky witch vampire. I woke up thinking, "shit, I had better warn him". I didn't of course, cos it all just seemed so silly, but I did tell other family members about my weird dreams. Up until that point, there was no reason at all to consider his gf who on the face of things seemed like a terrific catch, to be a complete fkn psycho fruitcake.

A couple of weeks later, my bro was locked up in a police cell facing a rape charge, due to a big pile of bullshit that his gf had told the police after they had a domestic dispute. (no, the 'case' never went to court, yes he is still 'with' her, with things getting increasingly 'Jerry Springer' by the week)

Of course, most of my dreams consist of bullshit that I struggle to make any sense off. It takes experience and dare I say 'practice' to learn to sort the grain from the chaff. If I thought these repeat 'Bitcoin 2 tha Basement' or 'There be Sharks Under them Calm Waters' dreams were merely chaff or simply the result of unfounded subconscious fear, I would not be allowing them to inform my Bitcoin investment decisions and I certainly wouldn't be talking about them on a public forum where real world events could unfold in such a way that proves me to be a fkn donkey idiot clown who has missed out in a huge upside move due to 'superstition'.

[T.Stuart]

I may also say to what extent instinct or 'intuition' affects Bitcoin investments, but I would imagine that many people mistake 'fear' or 'wish fulfilment' for intuitive thinking, which it aint.

It's interesting also because as an early adopter you may be more likely to feel fear and hope regardless.

This will be there ALONGSIDE your capability of making an informed decision to the best of your ability. It won't go away by magic. You've just got to accept it and let it carry on in the background.

But like the others say, it may well be a sign of being over-invested (mentally as much as financially, which is very relative depending on the investor) so perhaps its best to take a step back and think of something else!

[T.Stuart]

Bottom line is it really sucks to have missed this boat, coming to grips with missing an opportunity of a lifetime isn't easy. Can't let that cloud the judgment, $750 is way too much to pay for 1 btc right now. I wouldn't be able to sleep getting in now either, and it's got nothing to do with putting myself in financial peril - I don't want to feel like a chump if this shit tanks (like I think it's going to do, at least temporarily).

If you really think you've missed the boat then I suggest you look again. The chances are you can still run down the gangway and leap aboard!

[Kaiji]

I had a dream that a certain altcoin would fall to $10 which I took as a sign to buy in. Lo and behold a few weeks later it happened but for an instant and I missed out on doubling my money in a matter of 24 hrs.

While thinking logically back in Oct. I thought that BTC would fall or stay at around the $200 after the customers on gox bought coins to get out of the exchange for their refusal to give up fiat currenct. Lo and behold BTC went all the way up to $1200! Seeing as how low prices were all summer it was really unexpected. I never expected it to go beyond $300.

I still haven't figured out what makes people go bullish or bearish yet; its something beyond what the mind can comprehend.

[Kaiji]

You can't ever be sure....

.....a short while ago two nights running, I had dreams of my brother's gf being some kind of freaky witch vampire. I woke up thinking, "shit, I had better warn him". I didn't of course, cos it all just seemed so silly, but I did tell other family members about my weird dreams. Up until that point, there was no reason at all to consider his gf who on the face of things seemed like a terrific catch, to be a complete fkn psycho fruitcake.

A couple of weeks later, my bro was locked up in a police cell facing a rape charge, due to a big pile of bullshit that his gf had told the police after they had a domestic dispute. (no, the 'case' never went to court, yes he is still 'with' her, with things getting increasingly 'Jerry Springer' by the week)

Man that is some dangerous situation your bro put himself into. I remember reading in some confessions website about some girl who put a guy in federal prison by falsely accusing him of rape. Tell your brother to read about narcissitic personality disorder, narcisstic abuse relationships etc. By what you wrote it seems like she has some of those traits. A good test is to criticize her about something, if she goes into a rage then she is definitely a narc.

[MatTheCat]

Man that is some dangerous situation your bro put himself into. I remember reading in some confessions website about some girl who put a guy in federal prison by falsely accusing him of rape. Tell your brother to read about narcissitic personality disorder, narcisstic abuse relationships etc. By what you wrote it seems like she has some of those traits. A good test is to criticize her about something, if she goes into a rage then she is definitely a narc.

lol

Yeah, that describes her well from what I can make out......that with a pinch of Bipolar personality disorder.