This is what I also believed before jumping in to be a full time market analyst. But with decent excel skills it is possible to model many situations where it makes sense to have less than 100% in bitcoins, or trade.

I have so many lines of data and charts, for example I have analysed the bottoms of the recent crashes to 5 minute precision in all of the exchanges to find out where I get the coins cheapest and in largest quantity, and how quickly it falls, how quickly it bounces back, what volume is reasonable to expect, so what size of orders are best to use. From next week I have a new half-time assistant doing mainly the analysis of exchange behavior, so that the capturing of tops and bottoms should happen with even greater precision.

Why I mentioned limit orders is that unless you have 24/7 trading (which I don't know if anyone has), it is reasonable to have quite a lot of fiat parked in the range 20-50% below the current price. The crashes are so deep and in a sense so predictable (not possible to know when they will happen, but play out quite the same every time) that the exact placement of orders can net you BTC10s easily. For example the Silk Road crash was an actual opportunity to buy at $90 in October. Yes, December-November-October. So many things happen in Bitcoin which cannot be predicted but can be captured with limit orders. Not being in Bitcoin is risky, but cutting your # of coins in half by insisting to buy now is not too smart either.

It is a shame that only stupid people tend to reply to my analysis, you know the ones who only want to know if the market will go up this afternoon (which in fact is the thing I could influence the most, thus nullifying the actual predicting) and cannot comprehend an advanced prediction such as "with 70% certainty we visit $450 before hitting $1,100 which makes it a wildly profitable +32% EV play after fees".

I am sorry if any person in any standing whatsoever has been offended because of my hard speech towards the trolls who don't know how to behave respectfully.

Besides there are some strawmen arguments that I have been wrong with market calls. There is one that I remember (quitting yelling "crash" when we had climbed to the top) but every other call since the start of the October bull market has been correct afaik. If you want to say that I was wrong, please post the wrong call in context and explain why it was wrong. Or refrain from lying.

$800+ on Gox currently, nice buy orders in the last few hours for decent jump.  I still see this as a bull trap but at some point the train will leave the station and these prices jumps won't always be traps...

Sell now before we hit 650 @ btc-e.

Sell now before we hit 650 @ btc-e.

Please do. I haven't been wrong about a specific call I've posted on here yet.

I would bet we don't end the year more than $20 up or down from where we are today.

I do not see a lot of investment coming in during the holidays. Certainly not to push us up another $55-60 in the next 2 months. Especially since there are still some people who would just be happy to break even from the April crash, even more so during the holidays.

I don't think we will see ATHs until 2014.

It will be institutional investors that eventually get us to $1000+.  Mom and pop can get us to new highs, but the BTC markets need billions of new capital investments into its coffers to get to 4 digits and beyond.

[...]

I still think this is probably at least over a year away.

I would not expect us to break above 266 before mid December or into the new year. If we do, we are probably headed for another sizeable dip.

There really is no resistance for a loooong time after $1000. $1500 maybe, but $2000 really is the next resistance after that. And 10000 cyn which is about $1630. Have some serious resistance there.

So all of you hoping for $400-$500 coins better prey some big hands come in and bust resistance downward. Otherwise, $600 is probably the best you will see in this rally.

After studying these markets daily, I believe I have a pretty good pulse on where things are going. Here are my 2 cents currently.

There is a groundswell of buying pressure sitting off to the sidelines and its growing. Its growing for 2 reasons. First, most traders are not 100% bitcoin at the moment. Just look on this mostly bullish forum. Most of us are partly fiat right now. We have $$$ sitting on the sidelines. Second,
there is a lot of new money coming into the exchanges that are not buying right away. That is why the bid sum is increasing. People want to invest, but do not necessarily want to invest if the price is going to go lower.

So every possible mid term scenario (minus a catastrophic one, which always exists) has one final result - an strong upswing in which the money is forced to come back into the market. This will eventually cause another large rally. To where, I do not know. But it is coming.

I think there are 3 near/mid term scenarios. I will list them most unlikely to most likely.

A.  Incredibly bullish news spurns the market upward suddenly forcing the money on the sidelines back in causing a new huge rally. 

B. The market consolidates where it is (around $900) for 1-4/5 weeks. This would be the most bullish scenario and would be similar to the consolidation around $120-$130 a few months ago.

C. The market ebbs sideways and downward over the holidays as the holiday season wins the news cycles and people hold off on investing and sending more funds to markets.  In this scenario, we DO NOT reach another low past the $600ish already established. This would be very similar to the April rally where people expected it to test the low of $50s but it only got to $66, because everyone wanted to buy low.

I think C is most likely given the holidays. We will trend sideways to down, we will start a slow upswing sometime before $600. Somewhere from Dec. 30th to Jan. 31st that upswing will gain momentum and by sometime in February we will be in full fledge rally mode again. I also think this scenario could happen before February as well.

The best you can hope for is a sideways to downward movement lasting 2-6 weeks, but never going below $600. Thats best case scenario for you.

Just like I said, we may go lower but we are not going lower than 600 because everyone is watching there.

And the underlining mood of this market is bullish.  Eventually we are going to hit a price where the money on the sideline says this is low enough. Then after the holidays when more institutional money comes in away we will go.

Or alternately we will go up anytime because honey badger don't give a SHIT.

If you see a downtrend that gets heavy resistance before $600 you should buy.

There is way too muchl money sitting on the sidelines for the market to fall far. And when it comes back in he market will have established its floor.

Most people are looking at 600 the same way they did 50. So on a down trend I would expect the buying to start between $620-$700.

Look. I hear you. I actually agree with most of what you said. However, as much as it gets blasted TA is very effective in calling patterns. And technically speaking we have at least 1 more leg down. I might not make new lows, but still, it would be shocking if it did not happen.

I think we hang out in a $20-$40 range for a bit before testing the ATHs early next year, but that doesn't mean even 2014 want see some days (or hours) under 150.

We are already seeing an issue with people not wanting to invest at $200. I think the psychological challenges of the cost of a single bitcoin for a potential new investor will dampen the market to a degree. Unless we see the exchanges moving to a lower denomination than BTC, I think our growth from here on out will not be exponential. I could see us at $500-$1000 next year best case scenario. However, as the price rises, the growth curve will be dampened, no doubt.

As Hyphymikey's posts show, people can take what is said here seriously and base their investment strategies on users comments

False. People have REPUTATION to gain. Never underestimate how powerful praise can be if you are deemed a demigod of trading (or predict anything ahead of time for that matter). I can give you a very specific, recent, and pertinent example:

 Rpietila said there would be a drop to low 400s in December. I held my fiat and waited. Sure enough, my phone started blowing up with notifications of falling BTC price. I waited, it hit 400, I bought, and it immediately rose hundreds of dollars. I said thank you to Rpietila for his advice. I am now up over 100%. Some fool I am...

False. People have REPUTATION to gain. Never underestimate how powerful praise can be if you are deemed a demigod of trading (or predict anything ahead of time for that matter). I can give you a very specific, recent, and pertinent example:

 Rpietila said there would be a drop to low 400s in December. I held my fiat and waited. Sure enough, my phone started blowing up with notifications of falling BTC price. I waited, it hit 400, I bought, and it immediately rose hundreds of dollars. I said thank you to Rpietila for his advice. I am now up over 100%. Some fool I am...

We are going to correct soon, imo. This is unsustainable. Unless masses of new fiat hit the exchanges tomorrow, there is going to be a snapback. If we blow through ATHs like butter, I will be as shocked as anyone.

I think Zynga may have something to do with it

Just torrented turbotax, my state taxes are higher than my federal... OUCH

It seems pretty obvious that someone is cashing out big time on Stamp. Over the last days , each time the bidside got filled someones dumpin between 100-300 coins, due to the help from the bots itīs pretty hidden. They keep fillin the book with tiny buy orders after each dump.Also someone bought 268,xx, coins on Gox and nearly the same amount gets dumped on Stamp within a range of 2 minutes.
Huobi and Gox as "market leaders" are used to keep the price high/steady. I donīt know if thats bullish or bearish :-D

Can someone please give me the skinny on what went down and why I see 102 as the low from 7 hours ago?

I hate to brag, but I caught the knife on stamp to the cent

hell yeah mofo

edit, and that bid was placed over a month ago.

I CAN HAZ GIFT OF FORSITE PLZ

The depth range on Stamp is interesting - 5% takes us back to 635 but only down as far as 585 suggesting there is still broad support for this price level.

Bitcoin cannot fall 300% unless you are leveraging. This is extremely basic algebra

Lol at that dude that transferred $50k into Gox a couple days ago...