U changed me into a bear

[bracek]

I was a nice little bull, and then I started reading this speculation board...

now all I am looking for are downsides.

the biggest two, imo, are :
collision between developers and miners about protocol change
and
http://bitcoinstats.org/count.html

The price has no chance to go up before this is sorted out...

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[Oldminer]

Yup, go short & win  

honestly, I reckon BTC is worth about $2 atm

[Timbo925]

Well I just don't turn on my bitcoin client when I don't need it. Maybe a lot of ppl are doing the same. 

[Costia]

why does it matter?
whatever they decide it will take a lot of time untill it has any effect
you should be looking at this:
http://bitcoinstats.org/versions.html
not many people are using the latest version. most are using a client that is ~6 months old

[Kluge]

Yup, go short & win  

honestly, I reckon BTC is worth about $2 atm

Probably less. I would not buy Bitcoin right now were it over $1.50/BTC right now.

[zby]

Yup, go short & win  

honestly, I reckon BTC is worth about $2 atm

Probably less. I would not buy Bitcoin right now were it over $1.50/BTC right now.

But it is over $1.50/BTC.

[Oldminer]

Yea cos people continue to speculate (or gamble) that the price will go against the trend. Its madness IMO.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Yup, go short & win  

honestly, I reckon BTC is worth about $2 atm

I'd say it's worth less than $2 at the moment because I still can't pay for anything I use in my real life with it. It's about as useful as WOW gold to me.

Enough speculating--- let's get busy on making ourselves more valuable so that we ourselves back it!

[Oldminer]

Yup, go short & win  

honestly, I reckon BTC is worth about $2 atm

I'd say it's worth less than $2 at the moment because I still can't pay for anything I use in my real life with it. It's about as useful as WOW gold to me.

Enough speculating--- let's get busy on making ourselves more valuable so that we ourselves back it!

Yea I wondered why one day I turned around & the value of BTC had jumped from $2 to $7.  Then I found it was all because of Bitcoinica. Pure speculation with other people's money.  It was (and is) a house of cards...

[old_engineer]

Funny thing happened to me today: I turned from a bear back into a bull.  It seems to me that new money is starting to trickle into bitcoin, possibly from the TV exposure, or perhaps it's just the Manipulator slyly buying back in.  In either case, I think that anyone that sells at or below $5 is going to regret it in a few weeks. 

I certainly agree that bitcoins aren't worth $2 right now, but speculation is not about just the current worth, but also the possible future worth, and on an arbitrarily long timeline.  They might be a better deal next week at $4.X, and they might not - about all that's for sure is that bitcoins are significantly cheaper now than they were a week ago.  Yes, I know the market is full of manipulation, but so is every other market - nothing new there.  As the saying goes, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

[Matthew N. Wright]

Funny thing happened to me today: I turned from a bear back into a bull.  It seems to me that new money is starting to trickle into bitcoin, possibly from the TV exposure, or perhaps it's just the Manipulator slyly buying back in.  In either case, I think that anyone that sells at or below $5 is going to regret it in a few weeks. 

I certainly agree that bitcoins aren't worth $2 right now, but speculation is not about just the current worth, but also the possible future worth, and on an arbitrarily long timeline.  They might be a better deal next week at $4.X, and they might not - about all that's for sure is that bitcoins are significantly cheaper now than they were a week ago.  Yes, I know the market is full of manipulation, but so is every other market - nothing new there.  As the saying goes, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

Probably everyone buying up in anticipation of the magazine's popularity. 

[Oldminer]

Funny thing happened to me today: I turned from a bear back into a bull.  It seems to me that new money is starting to trickle into bitcoin, possibly from the TV exposure, or perhaps it's just the Manipulator slyly buying back in.  In either case, I think that anyone that sells at or below $5 is going to regret it in a few weeks. 

I certainly agree that bitcoins aren't worth $2 right now, but speculation is not about just the current worth, but also the possible future worth, and on an arbitrarily long timeline.  They might be a better deal next week at $4.X, and they might not - about all that's for sure is that bitcoins are significantly cheaper now than they were a week ago.  Yes, I know the market is full of manipulation, but so is every other market - nothing new there.  As the saying goes, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

Yea but its all about people looking at what BTC will be worth longterm, & I agree, I think it will be worth a LOT more than whats its worth atm (I always have) but thats long term. In the meantime you have a lot of speculators trying to make a fast buck from its interim value (which isnt much).

[Technomage]

I'm glad you people explained how useless of a statistic it is to look at the amount of active nodes. I for one am a fairly active Bitcoin user but I never keep the clients open unless I use them. And over half of the wallets I use have a server side these days. Regular clients are falling out of fashion slowly but surely, that is one of those reasons why the active node count is dropping.

For more accurate statistics on how Bitcoin is used one can look at the transaction count graph which shows that we basically bottomed out during the fall and we've actually had a significantly increased usage in recent weeks. This could be in part because people are panicking and sending coins to the exchanges but it doesn't explain everything. The count has stayed fairly high every single day for the last 2 weeks. The usage of Bitcoin is not declining, there is no evidence of that.

Raw: http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions
7-day avg: http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&timespan=&daysAverageString=7&scale=0

There are other indicators that are at healthy levels as well, one of them is how much people read the Bitcoin article at Wikipedia. The Good Wife episode boosted that stat very significantly and it's still showing it a little.

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest30/Bitcoin

One of the confidence breakers we've seen right now is the fact that there have been very little news after the episode, which was mostly priced in. I was disappointed with that as well but I think it's only a matter of time when there is major news again. Solving the issue with P2SH would be big, at least Slashdot would definitely post an article if we added multisig-features.

[bracek]

Funny thing happened to me today: I turned from a bear back into a bull.  It seems to me that new money is starting to trickle into bitcoin, possibly from the TV exposure, or perhaps it's just the Manipulator slyly buying back in.  In either case, I think that anyone that sells at or below $5 is going to regret it in a few weeks. 

well, I think that too, but we have to go through those few weeks...

[bracek]

Probably everyone buying up in anticipation of the magazine's popularity. 

just like there was expectation before good wife episode

[bracek]

active node count is dropping,
tho explanations seem very valid, the chart still don't look good,
it doesn't scream : buy, buy, buy

the only thing I am bullish about
is number of my posts

[Matthew N. Wright]

Probably everyone buying up in anticipation of the magazine's popularity.  

just like there was expectation before good wife episode

Ah yes, but that was unfounded speculation related to "what could happen" if people saw the episode. We all know what will happen when we get our own magazine-- party! Not to mention, this 'community' of ours will finally start looking like one.


EDIT: And another thing-- The good wife is a TV show, and that's fine, but the kind of people who are looking for Bitcoin will find it through reading, not through watching dramas. It's also very hard to ignore something when it's no longer digital. Even when our magazine is laying in the street soaking up rain water, someone will pick it up because they've never had the chance to find anything out about "Bitcoin" or weren't interested enough to remember to look. People are busy creatures these days. They like everything summarized, and shows like "The good wife" don't ask questions, they give answers and pacify people to that summary (hence why Americans are mostly idiots these days). Our magazine will deliver Bitcoin as a culture, make it sound interesting (because it is!). All that show did was make it look like another complicated thing no one would understand unless they're a nerd. Pff.

"Oh. So that's Bitcoin. Next drama!".

[Technomage]

the chart still don't look good,
it doesn't scream : buy, buy, buy

Well I think that looking at charts we are in a neutral zone, they don't scream buy buy buy but they don't scream sell sell sell either. Bitcoin was heavily oversold at $2 and the situation is clearly healthier right now. It's possible that we'll go down from where it is now but I can pretty much guarantee that it will stop closer to $5 than $2.

The only thing that screams sell sell sell is the fear. Fear that others have fear and they will sell. To me there is a lot of this going on right now but not enough fundamentals to back it up. We might already be oversold but at $4.x we will be for sure.

[N12]

fundamentals

Also, if you can "pretty much guarantee" it’ll be closer to 5 than 2, you probably can also pretty much guarantee price will rise and that it won’t go below 2. In that case, I suggest you take all of your Bitcoins to MtGox and buy more Bitcoins with them as margin. Possibly you could also use 2.5 leverage if you are confident it won’t go below 4.

[Technomage]

I'm not doing anything, just like I said. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.