nrd525 Market Tracker

[nrd525]

I didn't buy in (day trading is risky). It is now $584.

[nrd525]

Price fell to $525 and recovered to $545.  It is impossible to say if this is the medium-term bottom or if the price will go down further, but if you are planning on increasing your BTC holdings this is a good time to buy.  If you're cautious you should only buy 1/4 or so of the BTC you want.  You might also place some bids in the 505-530 range.

I'm not buying as I'm saving my money for a new roof.

[RyNinDaCleM]

I'm not buying as I'm saving my money for a new roof.

My company accepts BTC!   

[nrd525]

I'm placing some low-ball bids on BFX and some mid-ball bids.  If it falls to $100, I'll be both very poor and own a lot more BTC!

[nrd525]

Price continues to fall.  Flash crash on BTC-E down to $310.  There doesn't appear to be any negative news that would impact the value of Bitcoin and actually the larger declines of most alt-coins should be a long-term boost to Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a natural monopoly (like Ebay).

So it's a good time to buy. It's also very hard to know when to buy as volatility is up.  It is possible that Bitfinex and BTC-E could flash crash due to forced liquidations. Bitfinex has a system to slow this down, but it has only been tested once in live trading.

[nrd525]

I bought 1 BTC for $451.

[nrd525]

I've been watching the price fall without any major reason.  Unless it is falling due to expectations not being met (ex. Wall Street isn't buying into Bitcoin) or possibly due to bitcoin miners becoming less profitable (and possibly lots of miners losing lots of money).

Positive news: Paypal subsidiary considers using Bitcoin. This could be huge.

Negative news: scams continue.  Recently <a href='https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=716312.1040'>Dicebitco.in</a> either had a rogue employee that made their betting system unfair, or it was an inside job.  Also Bitcoin Trader (ponzi) continues to grow.  The problems with gambling website scams/hacks could make it hard for that sector of the bitcoin economy to grow.  Probably we'll see some professional bitcoin gambling websites in the future (and the US may legalize them) that are run by corporations with greater transparency.

Pending: the FBI is still sitting on a very large number of bitcoins from Silk Road, the MtGox bankruptcy is not settled, and the NY state regulations could set the state for the entire US (or be heavily modified and/or vary by state).

[nrd525]

Yesterday I spent several hours trying to figure out whether to short the TH1 mining contract at Bitfinex.    I should have taken the risk, but there wasn't enough information and it didn't make sense why the contract was trading at 2 BTC when it was probably worth 1.2 BTC or less.

Today the contract fell to 1.15 BTC - which is what it will mine if the difficulty only increases by 10% per period.  The difficulty will probably increase by 10-15%/period - but that's a total guess on my part.

[nrd525]

Bitcoin is at some kind of technical support level at $440.  If it falls below $430, it could get very interesting in the short-term.  But is also a great time to buy for the long term.

If the stock market has a correction this should have a negative impact on Bitcoin due to the wealth effect (people will feel poorer and thus want to hold/buy less Bitcoin).  Though it is also possible that Bitcoin has a larger percent of investors who don't trust standard financial investments (the dollar, banks, stocks, etc) than in other areas of investment (other than gold) and that they'll increase their investment in Bitcoin when they see economic problems.  However I don't think these skeptical investors have more money than the non-skeptical ones.

[nrd525]

Bought 1 BTC $433
Bought 1 BTC $413

[hodlmybtc]

Very nice thread, good analysis!

Definately subbing this, would be nice if you could post a little more consistently tho 

I'm also in a buying mood at these prices, bought 1 near $450 today and 3 near $430.

[vipgelsi]

Bought 1 BTC $433
Bought 1 BTC $413

Hopefully in a few months you will be a very happy camper.

[nrd525]

Very nice thread, good analysis!

Definately subbing this, would be nice if you could post a little more consistently tho 

I'm also in a buying mood at these prices, bought 1 near $450 today and 3 near $430.

Well mostly I'm very puzzled at what is going on and don't do much trading.  I could briefly mention how I managed to sell my DOGE at the wrong time (around 27 satoshis - now worth 65 satoshis), or how my small Litecoin short is only barely profitable (and that is only if you don't count the swap payments).  I turned negative on alt-coins, but Litecoin has actually done better than Bitcoin since I shorted it.

The only good news is that Bitfinex swap rates are up for both USD and BTC.  I highly recommend lending out swaps if you can get good rates.

[hodlmybtc]

Very nice thread, good analysis!

Definately subbing this, would be nice if you could post a little more consistently tho  

I'm also in a buying mood at these prices, bought 1 near $450 today and 3 near $430.

Well mostly I'm very puzzled at what is going on and don't do much trading.  I could briefly mention how I managed to sell my DOGE at the wrong time (around 27 satoshis - now worth 65 satoshis), or how my small Litecoin short is only barely profitable (and that is only if you don't count the swap payments).  I turned negative on alt-coins, but Litecoin has actually done better than Bitcoin since I shorted it.

The only good news is that Bitfinex swap rates are up for both USD and BTC.  I highly recommend lending out swaps if you can get good rates.

Too bad to hear about your alt-coin trading.

I'm myself not really a trader, I just buy BTC whenever I can, buying increasingly more at lower prices.

I never even bought BTC trough an exchange, only via a Dutch broker and with deals on this forum.

I bought and traded Monero (XMR) for a while and now only buying and holding because I already made some profit in BTC and have good faith in the future of the coin.

The rest of my BTC I invest in the house of a BTC dice site.

I'm unfamiliar with shorting coins and swaps on Bitfinex, I know you can lend out your BTC there but never read into it yet, how much profit can you make with let's say 10 BTC on there? Thanks!

[nrd525]

Bitfinex BTC lending rates have typically been very low (typically 2% APR).  It is only worthwhile to lend out in extreme bear markets.  That said I recently managed to lend out several BTC for 0.19%/day for 8 days.  I was very lucky that the borrower didn't cancel the loans and get cheaper rates as they could have easily done.

The USD lending rates have historically been more attractive.  Typically 40% APR - but recently as low as 10%.  Currently back to around 20% APR due to market instability.

---
In other news - bought 1 BTC at 393. 

I'm buying on the "3"s with the theory that there is more price resistance at each ten dollar mark - and also at the one dollar and two dollar above the ten dollar mark (as a reaction to the resistance at the ten dollar mark).  So if it breaks through the ten dollar mark - it will often end up in the xx1-xx4 range.  Though this strategy will have limited effect if there is sizable non-US dollar demand, or if there are differences between US exchanges (like the BTC-e 1-3% price gap)

---
I'm surprised that neither BTC-E or Bitfinex have done forced liquidations of long positions and flash crashed.  This is always possible, and if you are on BTC-E it might make sense to place some very low bids (in the 100s and 200s).  It makes less sense at Bitfinex as they are likely to reverse the trades. 

[nrd525]

I closed my LTC swap with a small profit (or probably breaking even after swap cost).

So far this year, I've made a 26% return on swap interest at BFX - and lost 95% of this amount trading (mostly holding).

BFX was on-schedule to return more than 40% APR, but then the swap rate fell to 0.04%/day.  It is possible that the annual return could still reach 40% as there is a lot of variance between months - a 5% monthly return is possible (though not probable without a bull market).  Unfortunately the swap return for USD is correlated with the investment return on Bitcoins which means my risk is also correlated.

[nrd525]

I'm shorting TH1 mining contract on Bitfinex. 
Price: 1.15 BTC.
Estimated Mining Value: 0.9-0.95 BTC (based on a 16% difficulty increase, followed by 10%).

Estimated Swap Value: unknown.  Currently 0.2%/day (or 0.023 BTC) but might approach zero as Bitfinex issues more shares.

And fortunately for me Bitfinex just issued another 100 shares.  I've started a short TH1 musings thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=794060.new#new

[nrd525]

So I sold my Dogecoin at very near the bottom.  I'm amazed that it recovered from 22 and just peaked at 110.

In other news, I'm focused on shorting TH1.  I'm puzzled why it isn't going down and why there is such a strong bid wall. 

[nrd525]

TH1 continues to be over-valued. The price is up over the past 10 days - when it should be declining each day.  The difficulty outlook is good (next increase might be 0%, but I'd expect 7% increases afterwards).  I expect a sharp correction within the next 0-40 days.

I started a TH1 speculation thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=802718

BTC is slowly falling and approaching the year all time low.  I think it's a great time for a new investor to buy.  It's a decent time to buy if you are fine with increasing your BTC asset allocation.  For me, I'm just sad about all the money I'm losing.  As another user wrote, the fundamentals are good but the technicals are bad. That said, I prefer to use fundamentals - so I'm optimist. 

LTC is doing well given these circumstances.

Do you think BTC will have a dramatic mini flash crash (high volume, loss of 5-10% in maybe 1-2 hours) before it reaches the bottom?  Or will it just have a small bounce that reverses the long-term slow decline, and then turns into a slow recovery?

[DieJohnny]

OP can I ask why you were a bear on Bitcoin in 2011/2012/2013??

You have to be kicking yourself...., and what made you switch to a bull?