My position

[naima53]

I personally do not intend to sell more. Why? Because the growth can earn more than the reduction ... Who feels the same way, or vice versa, and why? ..

[zby]

I personally do not intend to sell more. Why? Because the growth can earn more than the reduction ... Who feels the same way, or vice versa, and why? ..

My entirely unscietific Elliot Wave analysis tells me we are half way through the correction.  During this time I prefer to keep USD, just like I did in the Autumn - but on a shorter timescale.

[M4v3R]

I personally do not intend to sell more. Why? Because the growth can earn more than the reduction ... Who feels the same way, or vice versa, and why? ..

My entirely unscietific Elliot Wave analysis tells me we are half way through the correction.  During this time I prefer to keep USD, just like I did in the Autumn - but on a shorter timescale.

+1. I keep seelling every time price goes above 5.4.

[M4v3R]

I'm mostly a short term trader. Long term, I'm still a bull, but right now there's hardly any evidence that we're back on rally track.

[naima53]

I'm mostly a short term trader. Long term, I'm still a bull, but right now there's hardly any evidence that we're back on rally track.

only a short trader - you are very, very risk ...

[adamstgBit]

when i saw the drop the other day, i was depressed....

but now I'm confident bitcoin will go above and beyond 7$ because

1- its worth more then that (the market just doesn't know that yet)
2- all you bears are going to have to buy back when the game changes
3- This is Bitcoin, expect the unexpected


 

[zby]

A lot of traders think they can beat the market, even though very few will be able to do so over the long term. Staying long will be the best strategy for the vast majority.

I don't know - so far I don't regret that I sold when it was at $15.  Before that I was mostly losing on my moves - but this single one spared me a lot.

[Otoh]

A lot of traders think they can beat the market, even though very few will be able to do so over the long term. Staying long will be the best strategy for the vast majority.

+1

because I believe the BTC has great potential & hence upside so I'm long term long, the one time I tried a speculative short was when there were heavy predictions of a fall due to the holiday season in late 2011 - that didn't exactly end well, but luckily I took a hit & had gone back to full on long after Thanksgiving so caught the Giftmas & New Year's booms which more than covered that loss & then some, my main concern about not being full time long & steadily adding to my position when able would be missing the, as I see it, inevitable leap up when some main stream adaption finally gets announced - I've no idea of when it may happen but I'm happy to risk a lot that it will be some day & it will probably be at the moment many think it's best to be waiting on the sidelines in $ or shorting even with leverage, I wouldn't be surprised to see a tripling of the price at some stage over a fairly short time frame & bar the obvious short term profit taking/speculating that would cause, then for it to become a salutary new price floor with much higher growth expectations, I'd rather that it took a while too as I'd like to add to my position beforehand as much as I feel comfortable risking when the flip side = 0

[zby]

A lot of traders think they can beat the market, even though very few will be able to do so over the long term. Staying long will be the best strategy for the vast majority.

I don't know - so far I don't regret that I sold when it was at $15.  Before that I was mostly losing on my moves - but this single one spared me a lot.

That kind of illustrates the problem... That of random reinforcement. Without a system that a.) works, and b.) moderates emotional decision making, you are bound to fall into a money loosing trap eventually. There are lots of amazing stories about the 'one good trade' but this is not the basis of a winning strategy.

Since then I've started reading about the various techniques, subscribed to the S3052 newsletter and it kind of works so far.  Much better then I thought it would.

[naima53]

There is one more reason not to sell - by the way, this forum is Russian, they write to me in Russian forum "write simple sentences, you Americans do not understand" 

[cbeast]

Here's the problem with selling. Let's say you sell and have an amount sitting on an exchange. Right now we're just speculating and fluctuations are pretty small. Some folks claim they trade their entire wallet for probably relatively small profits. One of these days there will be a major announcement like happened in May 2011. The price will jump quickly and bubble, but who knows what the peak will be? All these small profits from trading will be lost in one single stroke. While I'm sure there are Bitcoin insiders that will know about these announcements before the rest of us, I would hope they don't exploit that fact whether legal or not. In fact, Bitcoin may just blow up and not bubble at all until those people holding large wallets decide they want to live a little.

[zby]

A lot of traders think they can beat the market, even though very few will be able to do so over the long term. Staying long will be the best strategy for the vast majority.

Buying now and staying long is also about beating the market - if you speculate you are trying to beat the market by definition.  There are long term risks as well - for example government crash on bitcoin, or a better solution (maybe one not using so much electricity).  Now there is also a midterm risk that there will not be any more bitcoin speculators and the money in the  system will only oscillate the price back and forth between two numbers.  I am a little bit disappointed by the bitcoin google trends impact resulting from that 'Good Wife' episode.  Maybe the mainstream adoption of bitcoin will be much slower then we imagine.

[arepo]

snip

Google trends tends to follow price, I have not found anything that shows me that it drives price.

+0

what baffles me is that this needs to be reiterated so much around here...

[zby]

A lot of traders think they can beat the market, even though very few will be able to do so over the long term. Staying long will be the best strategy for the vast majority.

Buying now and staying long is also about beating the market - if you speculate you are trying to beat the market by definition.  There are long term risks as well - for example government crash on bitcoin, or a better solution (maybe one not using so much electricity).  Now there is also a midterm risk that there will not be any more bitcoin speculators and the money in the  system will only oscillate the price back and forth between two numbers.  I am a little bit disappointed by the bitcoin google trends impact resulting from that 'Good Wife' episode.  Maybe the mainstream adoption of bitcoin will be much slower then we imagine.

Google trends tends to follow price, I have not found anything that shows me that it drives price.

I treat that as coincidence - or more precisely a too way feedback loop that just happened to show only one side.  And it is not exact - the episode, for example, did generate quite high peak - the popularity though did not last.  The main idea is that without more popularity I don't see much chances that bitcoin will rally for an extended time period, the prices can lead for some time - but if popularity lags too much - then prices have to go down as well.

[naima53]

I think if there is no special "big news", "PR Company" bitcoin price can not see $ 30 again in short term ... But it's also $ 2 is not reached bottom ... When this happened the first time - no one could even suggest some range of prices. People learn from their mistakes. It was like a "pattern" prices. Imagine for a moment that we have a "rally" ... When it will be closer to $ 30, will be massive profit-taking ... Conversely, in the fall, we will have a very strong support in the range of $ 2. Whatever wrote various "analysts", more and more people realize, analysts only have the goal - "to lead as many sheep to the slaughter" When I wrote the post "Protect the money", I was wondering "what the market response to these post". And it turned out BIG. This shows that, too much influence "guiding hand". This is bad. Many may suffer the losses due to the fact that many people do not build their own strategies but instead relies on "authority analyst" Such wonderful people as Goomboo help it survive Bitcoin Project. I also tried to draw your attention to a long, weekly fluctuations in the indicator Inverse Fisher Transform RSI. I agree - "market should breathe", but not "euthanasia and follow use defibrillator"

[Technomage]

Well, the Good Wife episode itself had a massive impact. The surprising thing was that it hasn't yet caused a new wave of articles. But it's only a matter of time before we have a new wave of articles. Solving the P2SH issue and finally implementing it would definitely cause a significant amount of articles at least in tech-related sites.

I don't know what zby refers to as our "expected time of mainstream adoption", according to some polls the majority think that it will still take many years before Bitcoin reaches a market cap of 1 billion. I believe this will happen somewhere between 2013 and 2017. It's difficult to predict this accurately because with Bitcoin it works like this: it's very difficult to reach a larger adoption rate in the beginning but once it truly starts, it can be very fast.

Rick Falkvinge is expecting this to happen in 2019, which is the speed in which new technologies usually get adopted. 10 years is what it takes. I'm a little more optimistic than that, but not much. We are still walking baby steps but once something starts happening, it can be fast. That something could be PokerStars accepting Bitcoin as payment or major news sites starting to release more articles on why people should send money using Bitcoin instead of Western Union. Or it could be a major merchant that starts accepting Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has only had one big news success that is based on something real, tangible. That is Silk Road. Everything else is small time or just hype. But we might only need one big success, or a few at most, and the whole thing will explode to a whole other level. It's just a matter of time, but it could take a fairly long time. I'm fully prepared for this, I hope you guys are as well.

[BadBear]

I think if there is no special "big news", "PR Company" bitcoin price can not see $ 30 again

Why not? Not short term, probably not mid term, but it's not gonna crash and burn spectacularly, I think it's rebounded quite well. I mean, 3,5, 7 years from now don't you think it's conceivable that more internet businesses are turning to electronic currency? I mean even if a big name corporation didn't, there are a lot of small businesses out there that would benefit from it. And they are just gonna hear the word bitcoin more and more often.  It's already proven itself invaluable among the black market, they aren't gonna just stop using it. Don't get caught up in the short term, and don't burn your ass trading.

It could crash and burn though, there are dangers. People get greedy and fork the chain, to make it more "acceptable" to the masses is probably the biggest threat (barring a critical flaw).

Edit:  All bets are off short term though, I'm not trading in this volatility, I'm just sitting it out and waiting.

[naima53]

I think if there is no special "big news", "PR Company" bitcoin price can not see $ 30 again

Why not? Not short term, probably not mid term, but it's not gonna crash and burn spectacularly, I think it's rebounded quite well. I mean, 3,5, 7 years from now don't you think it's conceivable that more internet businesses are turning to electronic currency? I mean even if a big name corporation didn't, there are a lot of small businesses out there that would benefit from it. And they are just gonna hear the word bitcoin more and more often.  It's already proven itself invaluable among the black market, they aren't gonna just stop using it. Don't get caught up in the short term, and don't burn your ass trading.

It could crash and burn though, there are dangers. People get greedy and fork the chain, to make it more "acceptable" to the masses is probably the biggest threat (barring a critical flaw).

Edit:  All bets are off short term though, I'm not trading in this volatility, I'm just sitting it out and waiting.

Yes, I was referring to short-term trend of course ... totally agree with you

[N12]

Edit:  All bets are off short term though, I'm not trading in this volatility, I'm just sitting it out and waiting.

I wonder sitting it out in BTC or USD?

[Technomage]

I agree that as long as Bitcoin doesn't experience so called serious issues (major technical or legal problems) the growth can also happen based purely on small businesses. That way we won't see explosive growth but slow, ever increasing awareness of Bitcoin which causes more and more small businesses to get attracted to it. Even this route will eventually lead to a bigger business adopting Bitcoin which would cause a larger chain reaction etc. In any event it's important to keep expectations reasonable. Bitcoin is a long term project.