This worked for me.  I started at $16 and ended at $2, but with vastly more BTC than I anticipated ever hodling.  I sat in the red for perhaps a year IIRC.  That was fine because from the get-go I anticipated the strong possibility of a total loss.  So, no inclination to do anything but hodl and see if I eventually received a pay-out.

I'm only really comfortable buying anything when the price is falling, and conversely, selling anything when the price is going up.  Doing so will pretty much guarantee that one buys at the bottom and sells at the top.  Unless one runs out of ammo or the system collapses or the valuations cease their undulations.

Back when I was a buyer, or near the end of that time at least, I felt that by buying I was making an important contribution to mop up excess BTC liquidity.  This incentive no longer applies since Bitcoin is vastly more widely recognized at this point in time.

There are only two times that the price ever meant anything to me.  Namely, when I bought and when I sold.  Between those two it makes zero difference whether the price dipped to near zero or when to to some ungodly high value.  Zero.

I got myself into this mode of thinking from a nearly a decade of dicking around with precious metals before I ever heard of Bitcoin.  It served me well.

I don't think 'the whales' have used exchanges for about 2 years now except in unusual cases.  There are much better venues for trading in quantity (so a little birdie told me.)  More than one or two whales makes a crowd on a public exchange.  The step on one another's toes generally, and eat one another's lunch when manipulation operations are attempted.

As for 'the smart money' dinking around with local bitcoins it seems laughable to me.  Possibly there are agents working generally on their behalf trying to scrape up BTC wherever they can find it but these would be autonomous actors who have nothing better to do than to run around to various Starbucks and stuff money into envelopes and such.

True about the different times.  I did pay attention to the price fairly keenly when I was in buying mode.

I only started buying at $16-ish because I was doing something else when the 2011 spike happened and the price had dropped from around the $20 level by the time I got exchanges figured out and funded.  So, I was kind of lucky in a way.  I got a little frustrated and decided to put more in fiat terms at risk the deeper I got into the red.  I had one more 'double down' planned if we got well below $2.00 but we never did.  I told myself that the $2.00 was a 'second chance' for us newbies.  In the end it looks like I was right though it was more incidental than a result of some special insight.

From the get-go I planed my exit to be magnitude based rather than time based.  Get back my initial outlay if/when I hit 10x and get back some fun-money if/when 100x.  We did hit those targets which was fun so I cannot say I didn't spend the years watching the charts.  Again, though, I was careful to never get into a situation where I was forced into taking a particular action so I was more relaxed than I might have been.

Sounds like the SID chip in my old commodore 64.

Here's what we used to play when fishing was good (commercial fishing in Alaska):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEZtII8rt_Y&feature=kp

The spot price comes from the markets in total through various types of arbitrage.  People who have visibility into other more opaque markets probably do dabble on the exchanges for fun and profit so the exchanges are an actual reflection of the total market.  But they have enough lag such those who have only public exposure (a majority of participants by body count) end up getting skewered over time.  When the tide is rising it is not noticed so much.  When the tide is going out is when the impacts are felt most significantly.

Oh, I've always taken it as a near certainty that the exchanges themselves are completely corrupt in terms of spot price.  I also expect that they do favors for their insider friends.  Some exchanges may not, but I assume it anyway.  Bitcoin exchanges really are the 'free market' in that they are unencumbered by any form of regulation or ethics.  Most of them are (demonstrably) just waiting for the best opportunity to have a 'hack' and walk away with people's money.  I had a relatively high degree of confidence in Tradehill-I back in the day, but I still bent over backwards to limit my exposure.

If you are good at reading the tea leaves, this innate corruption in the Bitcoin ecosystem (Libertarian utopia that it is) might be able to be read and played upon.  In a similar way I figure there is probably some truth to the assertions that the gold and silver markets are artificially depressed with paper instruments.  That's awesome as long as I'm a buyer (only physical in my case) and I've yet to need to switch sides and need to sell.

Beijing resident.  You can tell by the stained teeth.

Former.  The staining doesn't go away with the issuance of a H-1B visa.

Here's a rare call from moi,

I made a call after the early 2013 $250 spike for something testing the $30-is 2011 highs, and I made this call after the initial post-spike low ($60-ish)?  I was dead wrong.  That call was based mainly on my read of sentiment and my judgement of 'capitulation'.  That is, we saw nowhere near the level of hopelessness that I expected, and my expectation was as someone who was around in late 2011 and watching things fairly closely...being one of the few who was still putting skin in the game...and blathering on about doing so publicly...

My current quasi-call is based more one the global supply/demand balance which tends to seem (to me) to be the most reliable indicator, with the caveat that I mostly look at the public data from a single exchange (and switched from Mt. Gox to Stamp.)  I, nor most others here, have visibility into the dark pool type markets which are very likely a huge and growing part of the equation.

My call is that we are not out of the woods yet.  I'm anticipating sub-$200 prices an at least one more down-leg and probably several.  I've been wholly fooled by this indicator in the past, but it still remains my most reliable indicator.  Hopefully I am wrong in this call as I was in 2013.

I do hope that there is a recover and at least one more spike artifact.  In fact my 'hope' is closer than an 'expectation' than I've ever been so far.  The fundamentals which I base this hope on are associated with the growing recognition that Bitcoin could serve as a logical 'reserve' and 'balancing' solution and the growing interest in 'sidechain' work with the likes of Adam Back applying his efforts to the problem.  Also, of course, that it Bitcoin proper has still not been undercut yet in spite of the best efforts of core dev to make it susceptible to a wider variety of failure modes (e.g., x509 and associated centralization problems and such.)

I never had much love for Bitstump after they told people "You remember those funds you sent us?  We're going to need an identity theft kit from you if you want them back."  IIRC, even Gox gave people fair warning.  I was all done with exchanges before Bitstump came on-line so I was only watching from the sidelines.

Well, it's looking like some of their customers did anyway.  It's probably not the 'first time' for many of them.

All of these funny bull/bear graphics and what-not always remind me of a permutation of a classic corny TV show theme that we used to get a kick out of back in my grade school days:


ref:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdMA2spF0Bg

Things were somewhat less politically correct back in those days, and being and Oregonian I'm not sure I was even aware of what a 'nigger' was at the time.  The visual was funny to me though.

I know for a fact that 'uncorrelated financial asset' was in play before it shows up on the chart.

In 2008 things were very close to locking up, and one of the cause/effect feedback loops were that 'letters of credit' upon which much of the global commerce system operates were about to fail.  Should that happen today, Bitcoin (or more generally crypto-currency) could rapidly take over in that role.  I would guess that values could go insane under such a scenario.  Of course crypto would be attacked mercilessly by some, but some of the would-be attackers would also be heavy users.  Not clear how things would play out, but it could be a spectacular fireworks show.