Some Bearish Observations.

[RyNinDaCleM]

Yeah, that's great. But if what I'm reading lately is correct, that he has 13 coins and lost $5k trying to trade, that means that instead of having twice as many as me he instead has slightly more. How long until I'm ahead, being in denial all the way down and buying a bit every month?

Is a man's merit measured by the number of Bitcoins he has?

Agreed! Many people here and more so in the future, will never own a full Bitcoin.
Besides, 10% is 10% whether it's of 1,000,000 BTC or .01 BTC. The gross profit will be smaller, but you still gain 10% on what you were willing to invest. You don't have to be a whale for trading to make sense.

[Ibian]

Is a man's merit measured by the number of Bitcoins he has?

No but his wealth is. If you are here for some other reason then disregard.

[birr]

Hold the coins you own now, Mat; don't sell them.
Buy more if you like,  if you can do so knowing you won't have to liquidate in order to meet living expenses.
Chill.

[Melbustus]

The only way to win at this game is to have more information that the ones you're playing against. When you HODL, you win because you are playing against the large chunk of humanity who have not yet focused their attention on bitcoin. They're going to buy one day, and you and I know it, but they don't. We're not necessarily smarter than they are, we just got here first. When you play the short-term fluctuations, you are playing against people who have immersed themselves in all publicly available information on bitcoin, and may even be privy to information that the rest of us don't have. The odds are that you and I can't beat them!

Fantastic point.

Agreed. Well put.

[nrd525]

Bitfinex available USD swaps will rapidly increase so long as the rate is above 0.2%/day.  And quite possibly they'll rapidly increase with a 0.15%/day swap rate.  If high swap rates are maintained, I'd expect the USD available swap to increase by (a very rough guess) 5-20%/week.

Between Nov 1 and Dec 1, 2013 - the swaps doubled from $2.4 to $5 million.  And then they doubled again by Jan 1 (from 5 to 12.5 million).  And by February 1 it hit 18 million.

I think it'd take a swap rate of under 0.10% to cause a decline in total available swaps.

Bitfinex supply of swap has been increasing at a rate faster than the price of Bitcoin and this is bullish.

[segeln]

The only way to win at this game is to have more information that the ones you're playing against. When you HODL, you win because you are playing against the large chunk of humanity who have not yet focused their attention on bitcoin. They're going to buy one day, and you and I know it, but they don't. We're not necessarily smarter than they are, we just got here first. When you play the short-term fluctuations, you are playing against people who have immersed themselves in all publicly available information on bitcoin, and may even be privy to information that the rest of us don't have. The odds are that you and I can't beat them!

great Point !

[oda.krell]

Hope no one here expects a comment to be taken serious that contains the word "HODL".^{mine included}

[Raystonn]

Hope no one here expects a comment to be taken serious that contains the word "HODL".^{mine included}

Oh HODL, oh HODL, have I made a match for you...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=59Hj7bp38f8#t=111

[YipYip]

Eh. I'd cut Mat some slack. He had the right intuition all throughout the bear market, when a lot of bulls were still (or: again, and again) in denial. And despite what some people like to say, intuition is a big part of trading profitably.

My advice: develop some basic trading system that works for you, filter out everything that is not part of that system, and see if he can make it work better than his previous trading attempts.

What PERMA BEAR was right in a bear market ...wow

He was telling peopel to short at ~480 FFS

Still crapping on about sub 300 prices up until 550+

Yeah a broken clock is right twice a day ...good luck to him

Locking a loss from 660 ....is not a good move ..we may be in this 600-700 consolidation zone for the next 6 weeks... who cares the market says btc is XXX for now

Lets consolidate ....to say we are going back down 500..400 prices I dont see it... to just say it because we are having a pause and all the bears are no coming out with doom and gloom its a joke

You need just as much energy to go down as u do up 

[percocet]

Some great info in this thread! While a short term correction is definitely possible, I firmly believe that later this year truckloads of VC and wall street money will come pouring into BTC and the price will be back in the 4 digits. When that happens, it won't really matter whether you got in at a $50-$100 per BTC discount 

[zby]

Some great info in this thread! While a short term correction is definitely possible, I firmly believe that later this year truckloads of VC and wall street money will come pouring into BTC and the price will be back in the 4 digits. When that happens, it won't really matter whether you got in at a $50-$100 per BTC discount 

No matter how much it grows the one buying with discount will have about 10% more.

By they way - I think it will drop much more than that.

[T.Stuart]

Looks like we were right to close our long positions Mat!

Although I am still holding my Bitcoin - just glad I'm not still holding on to that leveraged long.

[maker88]

Yeah, that's great. But if what I'm reading lately is correct, that he has 13 coins and lost $5k trying to trade, that means that instead of having twice as many as me he instead has slightly more. How long until I'm ahead, being in denial all the way down and buying a bit every month?

Is a man's merit measured by the number of Bitcoins he has?

yeah sort of. if you're here talking about trading, your either trading to accumulate more coins for free, or as you put it, just getting free money and blowing it on nothing. i would say the men trying to build their store of coins have infinitely more merit than the guys who are just blowing their profits. trust me i know where you're coming from i did the same things last year. id sell around 300$ thinking it couldn't stay above ATH for long, then be forced to buy back in at 450, when it finally started dropping i got in around 600 and it kept going down. i lost a third the value of my coins, so i had a choice; cement my losses, or just wait for history to play its course. now my old coins are profiting again and i grabbed more around the bottom. id say my strategy holds significantly more merit than your strategy of try and predict a move, fail, and panic sell at a loss just to buy in higher.

[MoreFun]

OP can buy back he received his news (Expedia).

[MatTheCat]

Looks like we were right to close our long positions Mat!

Although I am still holding my Bitcoin - just glad I'm not still holding on to that leveraged long.

Yep so far so good. Still to see how my re-buys pan out in relation to the price action though (None of my rebuys have been triggered yet).

You were long on Bitfinex I presume?

A very peculiar price decoupling thing going on recently. Bitfinex has been wanting to take off as has Huobi, but Bitstamp  isn't buying into it. Selling pressure on Bitstamp is pushing the market down, even though the volume on Bitfinex is about double what it is on Bitstamp and volume on Huobi is multiple times larger. With Bitstamp currently at $631, and Bitfinex, at  $647, why isn't somebody taking advantage of the arbitrage on offer? Is this the beginning of another Gox situation where the fake volume exchanges race way of ahead of the real volume exchange? (have I mentioned before that I don't trust Bitfinex?). Are there issues with moving fiat out of Bitfinex?

Most peculiar is that Bitstamp (trustworthy, reliable) has reached parity with BTC-e (oo-er). This makes me think that there is a battle going on between leveraged traders and undiluted capital. If traders on Bitfinex think that Bitcoin is worth between $15-$20 more than it is going for on Bitstamp, then why aren't they snapping up those 'cheap' coins on Bitstamp? Because Bitstamp don't do no leverage and Bitfinex traders are already maxed out? Because Bitfinex's version of Willy bot is holding up the price there? Also, Bitfinex route some of their orders through Bitstamp for liquidity, yet as the prices indicate, this seems to be a selective process. Why is it selective and why aren't Bitfinex buying up cheaper Bitstamp coins to fill their own customers orders?

[segeln]

A very peculiar price decoupling thing going on recently. Bitfinex has been wanting to take off as has Huobi, but Bitstamp  isn't buying into it. Selling pressure on Bitstamp is pushing the market down, even though the volume on Bitfinex is about double what it is on Bitstamp and volume on Huobi is multiple times larger. With Bitstamp currently at $631, and Bitfinex, at  $647, why isn't somebody taking advantage of the arbitrage on offer? Is this the beginning of another Gox situation where the fake volume exchanges race way of ahead of the real volume exchange? (have I mentioned before that I don't trust Bitfinex?). Are there issues with moving fiat out of Bitfinex?

Most peculiar is that Bitstamp (trustworthy, reliable) has reached parity with BTC-e (oo-er). This makes me think that there is a battle going on between leveraged traders and undiluted capital. If traders on Bitfinex think that Bitcoin is worth between $15-$20 more than it is going for on Bitstamp, then why aren't they snapping up those 'cheap' coins on Bitstamp? Because Bitstamp don't do no leverage and Bitfinex traders are already maxed out? Because Bitfinex's version of Willy bot is holding up the price their?

continue reporting (or supposing) about Bitstamp and bitfinex. Interesting

[BTCtrader71]

Hope no one here expects a comment to be taken serious that contains the word "HODL".^{mine included}

Oh HODL, oh HODL, have I made a match for you...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=59Hj7bp38f8#t=111

Au contraire, mon frere. Around here, HODL is a very serious ... TRADITION!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw

[JimboToronto]

Time to buy.

Yes.... and hold.

Selling now would be like selling last August when the price was hovering in the 100-140 range and some fools were still clinging to their futile hopes of sub-$100 coins. Some particularly deluded people even talked about 30-40 just as some today dream of sub-$400.

We all know what happened last fall. This summer should be fun.

[cryptosoma]

SAR sell signal
https://twitter.com/cryptoinvestor/status/476037630820618240

[oda.krell]

SAR sell signal
https://twitter.com/cryptoinvestor/status/476037630820618240

Remember what happened last time when the daily SAR said sell?