Today's a Special Day.

~> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.0
"Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
April 16, 2013, 10:32:22 PM
Wall Observer
A free service brought to you by the bitcoin community"

 Happy 1-Year anniversary, Oh Great Thread of my eternal amusement thru the endless cycles of watching charts move.

<sub>I feel so excruciatingly dumb, so embarrassingly inept. I mean this is ultra-basic internet/computer use 101. You DON'T save a giant email or forum post content w/ tons of data, merely in clipboard. You keep saving it to HDD in notepad or w/e, every 5min. But I just did, & then forum had logged me out, & when I came to log back in I forgot I only had this WHOLE post text only in clipboard, hadn't hit preview, hadn't saved a draft..so I had better not CTRL+C some other sht, but indeed I did, then immediately realized it & wanted to break the keyboard on my witless head =/

 Now it's all gone. Lol o.o Hours wasted. Not that anybody shld giv a fk 'cept for me, just thought I'd share ;9</sub>

 As far as you've any trading skills and aren't resigned to purely just buy-&-hodl, all you really have to do to be at least moderately successful (which translates to millions $ profit in a span of a few years..from any starting capital point..) is to be patient, balanced, adaptive.

 You don't want, as a speculator, a short-, mid-, or even longer-term trader, to be hoping, praying, that price will reach X or Y, other than 'academically'. In other words, don't enter or exit, or stay in negative -$ trades, because of your 'hopes'.

 That's because hoping won't control the market. So you'll simply get crushed more often than not, and harder than your wins, statistically. You don't need to hope. You need to make money, regardless of where the price goes. The minute price moves against your trade significantly, you can reasonably exit take the loss & re-enter at better position. Why? Because that's 2 pro's vs 1 con - You're now safer, AND will gain back what you lost the minute you later re-enter & price goes back to where you took loss, and beyond, vs the downside that, yes there's always the risk price turns around right then & there at the point at which you were cutting loss.

 It goes like this, say you bought at 513 (like I just did yesterday), & decided to hold on seeing if 510, 505, 500, even 495 will hold, before cutting loss to re-buy in lower (like I just did), you have to ask yourself, "How much can I reasonably project to gain from buying in lower than this..?" If you think it's looking to have comfortable odds of reaching down to 450-480's, that's a good deal then, cut & buy back down there. If on the other hand you waited allllll the way to 475 to ask yourself do I cut & lose by now, well, it's getting to be a bit late, to the point where it might not even go further down after this point, so you might as well just keep it open & hold for the best.

 I know right.. makes me puke at the thought. No moar weekend/off-hours trading..? Wtf.


 Looool @ slaves, and yes, couldn't be more truth to this, you can a) Raise a riot over their control of the current exchange markets, or ; b) You can make $$ off their backs by being smart. Can always do both I suppose, but most here just don't realize/think about this clearly.

 Martingale is viable for pure gambling games, but in trading, where you can specify your odds w/ even more control, it becomes a gloriously sound strategy, actually. Trade reasonably small, 1) It worked? Ok, pocket your gains quickly, but not too quickly, and next time around, Take the same small trade, do NOT take bigger trade (reinvest gains) because then that's REVERSE Martingale - BEST way to lose $$ and precisely why I've been failing in forex, BTC & stocks since 2005. 2) It failed? Ah, then take the loss, & next time, take an even BIGGER trade. This is because, not only you have a bit less chance to fail twice in a row than fail just once, but the odds are even better than 50/50 now that price is further close to oversold/overbought & thus a better place to take your new position from.

 Of course all this implies you're being contrarian. Which means, to focus on buying low, selling high, (Ranging) being safe about things & getting the hell out of your trades soon as you got moderate gains to pocket, instead of trying to ride longer-term trends (Trending).

 See, many small, intelligently placed/managed, compounding gains over time, is better than just 1 big risky trade that tries to ride the trend long-term. Unless you're unleveraged. My advice here is for leveraged BTC/LTC & FX. This is because :

1] You don't know where the price really will go in any but the shortest relative timeframes, it simply gets too hard to account for every factor in the world, the longer you try making projections ;
2] Added to that is the exponentially (? or linear..?) increased risk every hour/day that yet another round of bad rumors/news will unexpectedly come out of nowhere & skew all your projections ;
3] There is so much more money to be made riding as much ups & downs as possible (safely, not all the way for each candle/whatnot - nobody except the biggest insider cheat could predict that accurately and thus it just means you'll get crushing losses sooner or later) than there is to be made just riding allllll the years-long way until new ATH/ATL or near it.

 It's absolutely true that most traders lose money. That's because it's difficult to trade profitably on a consistent basis. So of course most fail. That suits the people in power/behind the curtain, financial freedom on a mass scale would make populations much harder to herd & control/govern. In addition, it benefits greatly whale investors, manipulating institutions, and market-making brokers, that pocket all those losses & spreads from their poor bad traders.

 It's a fight. I'm boxing against my broker. In BFX, I box against other traders' perceptions of price movements & their projections. Is competition bad..?? Isn't it a valuable, fun thing to fight..?? Are all sports, races, games, etc all stupid & useless because 'most players/racers will lose'..??  The entire point is that even though a small few win, ALL had the possibility of a fair chance to win (as long as they do their homework & stack the odds in their own favor) - and THAT is valuable in itself.

 That's why trading is valid. Doesn't mean hodling is bad. It's pretty sound actually. One can easily do both. Doesn't mean all traders have to be degenerate gamblers or that no one ever can have the skill to profitably trade. It's proven wrong.

The CFO of Bitcoin should just ban the Yuan.

LOL for some reason this makes me laugh

~> http://bitbet.us/bet/804/obama-will-mention-bitcoin-before-2015/

I know, it's just so simple & effective to forget about it & hodl for years.

 ..

 ..But, I don't have years. I already spent 9 years (I'm still in 20's so it's mostly fine) losing money to a not-so-expensive-but-still 'variable-rate' learn-the-hard-way tuition fee. I need to make each slice of $$ within days, maybe weeks at most, not months nor years. And I'm not the only one. It's just difficult, not impossible. Some are making it.

 And +, there's always that half of my capital that's sitting in low-priced alts for long-term. That's a sufficient hedge against any trading loss.

 Hmmm  And how well I know, about them. Their posting, and trading/thought patterns, are predictable, at this point.

 ..What I haven't revealed so far is that I've read this thread almost exclusively, 15-30hrs a week on average, since Jan 11th this year. I literally read every page (good bit of skimming at times, admittedly - no other way, if going through that much..) since back when we were at the 3900's of posts & Arcas, Empowering, Luno, 'Doc' Holliday (I miss his wry humor..) & Goat/Loaded were still seen posting in here.

 I just made the acct not because I just 'discovered' trading or crypto/etc, but because I simply don't like to waste people's time w/ yet more repetitive dribble, there's already 6k of it in here ffs.. lol. If I'm gonna post, I want it to have some effort put into, so there's a small chance at least 1 person might find it of any value, instead of moar spam. So.. that effort? THAT is why I waited that long to make this acct. I procrastinated. The Activity:5 is a lie.. xD

 But, I love this place. I truly appreciate it, esp. TER, BJA, Keyser, Adam, Amino, Blitz & even Jorge & Fonzie's trollishness. And I did learn some tricks from it. Nevertheless, I find myself rolling my eyes knowingly, with a faint smirk, to all these ignorant grand proclamations of 'sUingle d1gitz dAwq' '$9.99' & '7-50k within 2014' from the same amused cognizance that all you veterans experience ;p  I just did it as a 'Guest', until yesterday.

 As for BTC itself, I didn't know it existed until Sept '13. In Oct. I knew about prices weekly. By Nov., I knew about them twice a day. In early Nov. I bought my very first BTC. In very late Nov., after some epiphany of curiosity & googling, & came upon Cryptsy. I sent them .01 only, thinking they may easily be a scam. After couple test trades & withdrawals went through fine, only then did I send moar in.

 I missed the wave. Could've been a thousandnaire like you guys by now had I got in most of these small-time alts back in Oct-to-Mid-Late-Nov at the latest. But by the time I was familiar w/ it all, it was too late. Nov 18 Congress 'endorsement' & all the crazy Cryptsy/alt price explosions had mostly taken place already, it was dumping time, and I indeed lost a good portion of the equity I had been lucky enough to make.


 I do panic-buy, and short, and sell. Too much in fact. But I've done too little before, too. A balance is crucial. Here's an example : The last time Stamp was around 533-537, that was a great time to get out. I didn't. I knew I should've, but held. The 540's high was not able to be reached again. It had to not only reach it, but BREAK thru it in order to be safely confident about a greater high, the new bull minitrend continuing, etc. It didn't even have the fuel to reach it. Obviously Huobi & Co are desperate to not correct further, and keep going up, but it's just not happening. The correction has to occur, and at least a moderate bit farther than merely 3020/481.

 I do over-invest, it's easier to be on the safer side of trading when one has more capital to play with. But that will come in due time. A good thing about smaller sums is that, well, if you do get wiped out, you can find the same small sum to invest again within a month or a quarter's wages. I've done it before, sadly, and it's far from people here's mortgages money & life savings etc

 Too desperate and you lose. Too complacent/long-term and you lose too. I've lost since 2005. (stocks & FX, not crypto....) Some years w/o any trading, some w/ holding on to bad practices, 'holding on' for 'long-term' in various ways. Balance is key, speaking from experience.


 No question. Too bad I was doing FX & not crypto, back in '11-'12 & most of '13.


 Claiming to glean anything of insight on 7 posts made over ~24 hrs is like trying to predict the price trend over the next few weeks by looking only at the 1-minute chart on 'Wisdom 

 ..So! Thanks for your attempt, it was actually very entertaining ;p  Seriously, no offense taken, you could've have truly known I was that far from a newbie. I appreciate the intention to help, I trust it is genuine. And what you said is absolutely good advice ..which I already knew. Just have hard time applying the knowledge. Discipline, & capital.

Epic guile in sarcasm. Lolol BT Goddess. Anyhow, while it's true that b/c crypto is such a groundbreaking innovation, a necessary, long-coming idea, that it's no wonder the last 3-4 years have been a rocket launch for both market price & economic adoption, advocating 'long-term' near-blindly is only fine & dandy until you realize you're not a vampire or multicentennial android or alien - and so, do you really want to wait possibly decades..??

No because the masses of 'newbies' causing volatility, if any, are located in the Middle Kingdom by the Yellow Sea.. 1,000,000,000 population to have bitcoiners from....

LMAO!!!!!! Ohh I just had a grand realization - that notorious 'Final Lesson' Jorge has been warning us about in ominous terms since months now must be a candid pic of his decrepifying behind scantily clad in a hula skirt while doing a literal round of the 'spinning' he'd always been accused of doing here - a sight sure to indeed leave even most internet-hardened veterans scarred for life  Prof., you must show mercy ahahaa

Noo.. I'm short, but I'm def out @ 450-460's.. dat huge support range for an 'eternity' during early Apr., & again for 1 day on 4/14.. b4 we had our run-up to 495 Stamp..? Gonna be hard to break thru that, all the way from 548 already, just b/c of old news that the 18th(done), 20th(..right? but..it's a sunday.. what a weird deadline/closure date.. ), 21st(?!?), 24th(>?!) are [supposed-to-be-] known btc-xchange bank acct closing times.

Of course there's always some freakish Unicredit failure minute-chance nightmare scenario, but we can't count on that, & as for those lollygagging aussie bankers coming up w/ their apparent May 2nd btc-related-bank-acct-closure deadline as well, that's far enough from now that it's reasonably safe to long or buy from 450's & wait to see if it can pierce through ~548, or if it's time to exit out the airlock, on the next launch attempt before Australia bankers open their foul mouths next month.


You can. You don't trade.

But traders have to care. Or be stupid not to. Until & unless China's somehow fully driven offshore/underground.


Nahh, we may yet title him 'Prof.' merely as a tongue-in-cheek address in much the same way one humors a disheveled old homeless street joker in the Brooklyn subway  

(Sorry Jorge I don't intend to be so mean - it's just teasing you is so irresistible  ;p)

 Guys I think I spawned a wave of newbie acct creation. See all these folks w/ 1-10 posts suddenly popping up in more frequent regularity than before..? ;o

 Also Billy, don'tcha know, that the great rise from 340.. (which caught me by surprise, I had made SO much shorting dangerously, from 408, all the way down to 350's, when it showed it couldn't even climb back pathetically to 416, but then, I thought it'd keep going to 300's-320's so I re-shorted at 360..and held it far too long.. Only got convinced to go long way past that, around 460's.. =/)

 ..was obviously caused by some individuals/agencies enterprisingly taking the bull by the horns & asking the PBoC themselves, on Apr 10th, what exactly was really up w/ them 'hating on' & rumors of 'wanting to ban' bitcoin, to which they absolutely shocked the world (a shock that exacerbated how violent the bounce from 339/2200's was) by responding "..What? Bits of coins? Coin bit fermented tea leaves..? Ohh right, those tokens. We don't care about those, they're just an internet nerd joke play-money type-thing like collectible stamps, or antiques etc. 'Banning' something like that doesn't even enter the realm of considerations."

 Then, on TOP of that, OKCoin told everyone how proud they were of their brand new plans for deploying the very first Bitcoin ATM in mainland Sinaland, along w/ some others yammering something about software Point-of-Sale 'ATM'-functionality being designed as well. So, that's what made the entirety of chinese bitcoinland to cream their pants in a collective 'Stamp-BTCe-dominating' '2H-chart-price-rise-stairway' frenzy that could not reach a zenith of relief until all the way @ 3450's.

 So looking back, one can definitely attest this was not a groundless bull run. It nevertheless caused a major shift in sentiment all around, and makes it most probable that dropping below 390's again is a shrunkenly tiny possibility, while also indicating a break above 610-615 to be rather unlikely at this point, until the next major news/events are able to propel the trend beyond a ~400-600 channel in either direction.

 Yeaa, the more I think about it the further confident I feel about this short I'm in, even though that's Finex only, my BTC.sx is neutral of positions till lower price (gawd that spread.. =/). Another G0xxing by any of these relatively fledgling exchanges has indeed always been within the specter of possibilities, whether from europe and russia, to asia, or even north america.

 This, in addition to the steadily decreasing collective trust of bitcoiners for letting exchanges hold their funds, over the past several months, indicates an overall bearish sentiment is right at the door in reality ; Especially if various PRC branches continue to persecute BTC & shut down bank accts all over the place, or even, as is actually eerily plausible, if they somehow impose further restrictions on ATMs/soft PoS use to the point of unviability. The minute that happens, all positive sentiment would be virtually erased & revisiting last April's ATH would become a solid prospect.

 Of course, all that would under any realistic projections require several weeks at the very least to take place, so, as we're nearing May, there would only be close to 60-75 days for everything to crash & capitulate abysmally, before the 'CCMF' bundle of Summer '14 good news that's been so often forecast - NY legislature/institutional backing, SecondMarket, etc, which, if added to a far lowered BTC price, would make it an absolute no-brainer BUY then.



 Ahh, I trust you are speaking to us in Jovian, then? Excellent, I lov me some foreign linguistics, the more arcane the better 



 Nice. That face even looks like that trollish/playful type of personality ;p  This adds to mounting positive evidence such as the active twitter acct, the political activist/speaker/academic conference event links, the wikipedia article (and they are strict about notability..if not substantially googleable, almost any article is swiftly deleted)..

.. ;o  The Ice Cube Crumbles..!~~@!!@!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD0g_oEDs3o

WB dearest spheniscidae, how was Antarctica..?



  

 I think we're gonna go up from here by sunday mid-evening GMT at the latest. I should close my shorts soon.

 But.. just can't bring myself to do it yet.. It's dangling over this small cliff.. to ~482, or even a stairway to ~466.. I whant it.. ahh =/

 'Someone' has already invented such a prediction-validating mechanism. In fact, this very thread was originally created for speculators who engage in such predictions.

 It occured in very rudimentary forms since ancient times, saw a further sophistication during Roman rule, disappeared during the dark ages (obviously), reappeared in the late middle ages mostly around Italian city-states, & finally, emerged in its modern financial trading market form in ~1602 in the Netherlands, as the Dutch East India Company's shares were first traded among investors.

 Later, the ~1880's featured the advent of something yet closer to current currency/crypto trading exchanges - world currencies began to be backed by gold, and the first large-scale retail forex trades started taking place.

 It wasn't until 1996 that the Internet gave these foreign currency exchanges the capacity to run the entirety of trading electronically. Various digital new currency projects such as e-Gold/etc were soon undertaken excitedly by a series of hopeful entrepreneurs.

 ..Sadly, in large part due to vulnerable centralization & the absence of math-based strong encryption systems as core features of these innovations, they ended up failing & dimming public opinion of any digital currency concepts as irreedeemably flawed Ponzi schemes. Nevertheless, amongst the ashes of these unsuccessful experiments, a different, vastly more sound, secure & viable project came to light : Bitcoin.

 It is thusly that in early 2011 the very first bitcoin exchange markets were founded, bringing us full-circle to the present day as we find, with the warmth of serene satisfaction, that exchange markets indeed offer the best mechanism through which to filter the least skilled from the most skilled predictors, by comparing traders' accounts' initial investments with their net equity several months or years later.

^{(Sorry, I just love history xD)}

As I understand it, P2P transactions such as between users of LocalBitCoins are definitely on-blockchain, for buy's & sell's ; While on the opposite end of the spectrum, Coinbase internal transactions (when users buy btc using bank acct funds & sell/convert btc to send fiat to their bank accts) are off-blockchain ; I was under the impression that the blockchain did not record every single trade executed on bitfinex, bitstamp, btc-e & co., am I mistaken..?

Or is it indeed, that for the blockchain to record any one trader's profitability/loss over time, they would have to withdraw funds from their exchange trading wallet, into their private storage wallet so the new, net amount of funds now possessed gets recorded on blockchain..?



Yea I'm wondering that too.. Might just be a whale that needed some $ for something. There's always that 'April 20th chinese bnk acct closure' rumor that accompanied the Apr. 18th one.. Could be that, even though it's Sunday over there atm o.O

 While some folks admittedly have a single-minded assurance in TA/waves/line indicators & patterns that indeed verges on the superstitious, that doesn't mean all TA is useless & baseless. There has got to be some evidence from forex & bitcoin forums that at least a few skilled traders have seen TA give them some successful entries & exits on a mostly consistent basis, I guarantee it.

 But more to the point though, why after countless hundreds of posts debating this & that person's predictions accuracy or lack thereof, it hasn't occured to nobody yet to simply bring about the weapon that ends all doubts - SCREENSHOTS or it didn't happen..??

 If I ever got the slightest curious inquiry about one of my bets/calls I immediately, gladly produce some screenshots of exchange accts' trade history logs while MS-Paint-blanking away the sensitive/private details.. o.O?

 Yeah, more liquid, a bit more randomized, arguably just as manipulated as cryptomarkets, and, you get up to 1:1000 leverage for it, versus .sx's 1:10 & 'Finex's 1:2.5.. that can be incredulous free-&-clear profit should one find the discipline to only trade during the release of events like the FOMC Statement & NFP Economic Report ; Not to mention ..increased funds security from all that cavorting w/ Big Brother ;p..

 Emotions are a trade killer. Our worst enemy.


And the 1000 point, once 510 or even 600 becomes the new "340".



 It's funny, I hadn't thought it through, actually. Mostly b/c of being so used to the common idea that screenshots are oft asked for in forums, games & even by admins/gamemasters to resolve disputes or proove/disprove hacks, misconduct, etc.

 Makes one wonder.. why is it that there has been such a culture of taking camera or computer screenshots as evidence of anything in the era of ubiquitous digital editing..? Or even video footage, which can also be tampered with a minimum of know-how..? Goes pretty deep when you think about it. All those accepted practices & protocols about using video cameras for criminal investigation =/  Guess they're fine with it because at that level, they have well-trained experts who will spot nearly all the little signs showing modification.

 But, on forums, as informal proof shared between peers, we obviously can't rely on such experts to lend a hand on the spot. Thus, I must rephrase my statement   :

 If I ever got the slightest curious inquiry about one of my bets/calls I immediately, gladly produce some screenshots/imgur links of my exchange accts' trade history logs (while of course edit-blanking away the sensitive / private details) ; As well as screens/links of the TrxID's & locations of the relevant transactions as visible in the blockchain ; Along with any other reasonably acquired proof (my technical knowledge of cryptocurrencies' inner workings is lacking ;p) that would strengthen my claim not because one must proove anything to anyone but rather because it is beneficial to all users of a forum when truth, ugly or pretty, is sought-after & bullsht is eradicated to halt the diseased spread of delusions.

 As for TA, the strongest inalienable rationale for its legitimacy comes from an uncanny effect : Traders desperately want an edge. The tantalizing mirage of somehow being able to robotically follow a price-based, mathematical prediction system and making bank on almost every candlestick has obvious low-hanging fruit appeal that explains its huge popularity next to fundamental analysis. This widespread use, is precisely why it works. The greater the number of TA speculators expect the price to do X at Y point based on converging technical price indicators, the greater the probability that they collectively make such price action happen, in an impromptu consensus with each other.

 That being said, there's a difference between buying|selling at low|high technical points because it's less risky, more patient & smarter ; And placing trust in Fibonacci Lines, Elliott Waves & Ichimoku Clouds. I trade charts 'naked' and have always disliked the latter more advanced indicators, because at the end of the day, you want to manage risk until your trade entry ends up being profitable or until you can cut loss at a better exit to make more money another time. That comforting feeling one gets playing Nostradamus & seeing your EW/Fibo/etc predictions being 'proven' correct by the markets, is in reality awkwardly close to the relief a priest gets when events unfold as to 'prove' his faith right..

 Daim, now I'm hungry for some pasta & french bread..

 Yep, $526 is pretty much bagged at this point. However, beyond that, longs begins stepping into risk territory, with a break beyond last high of 548 difficult to rely on given this is the weekend -and- a holiday period, which is why the best way to get in these trades in this kind of environment is to not jump in reacting to movement, instead wait out for the next 1H/2H candle retracement and enjoy a ~90-95% guarantee of a more advantageous position opening up.

 That way you can have your moon cake & eat it too while smothering your cheeks with it like a hungry toddler.

+1

This is what happens to me when you guys start talking about encryption security & technical engineering :

HA HWAH HAWAHAA - Nice one, giving that joker a taste of his own coin-trolling medicine ;p

Not a week goes by without this farcical clown bringing us yet another dose of hilarious entertainment w/ his inane XRP-pumping rhetoric 

And sorry but daim that Athey woman was such a perfect milf babe in some of the longer-haired younger pics.. whoah ;o

..Bilder oder nicht passiert.

^{(LOL just messing w/ Keyser  )}

 BTCe is a ghetto 'sideline/secondary option' exchange & the prices reflect it (their website's GUI looks pretty uninviting as well =/) - guess people dump harder on there to be on the safe side from near-anonymous owners.

 Folks here'd do well to be aware that these manipulators have enough resources & income to keep this rodeo going on for months if not years.. One doesn't handle this intelligently by 'waiting it out' & relying on 'hope' ; Keeping at least a small portion of your stash into a trading acct to buy around high 300's & 200's, and sell around 500's & 600's, is how one keeps making some very respectable, safe profit month after month, increasing total crypto net worth over time while using this activity churn as a psychological bulwark to responsibly handling the loooong potential wait before next ATH w/o depression or panic.

 Selling @ relative highs & buying back in at absolute lows (200-300's) every few months or so doesn't even register as 'trading' to be honest. The majority of this thread's non-permahodlers are doing just that as we speak.

 And you don't need to have insider info on what the whales will do specifically, to know that buying non-leveraged @ 20%+ (aka ~$100) below current price has 98%+ chance of not ever causing you to have reason to panic, realize a loss or have to weather that specific trade being in the 'red'/underwater for any longer than several weeks in the worst scenario.

 Financial market prices have momentum, quite like physical objects affected by the natural Laws governing motion, velocity, etc. The momentum is caused by the fact that the market isn't a perfectly balanced equilibrium, where sellers share an exact consensus with buyers about when & at which prices to transact, change trends, etc. If it was so, it would be because there is no greed, no fear, no psychology involved in the market's trades - as soon as asset prices reached the 'agreed-upon' level, there would be a massive sell-off, propelling prices down to agreed-upon lows where everyone would buy back at in freakish harmonious sync.

 But as we all know, that's not how markets work. So thanks to human psychology, price movements exhibit what appears as 'inertia', 'momentum', causing a successful trader to require judicious patience & balance when trying to time when to exit & enter positions - you can't just press SELL the minute it's reached a decent high price. It won't stop there. Chances are it'll keep going back & forth in a small range, as people who get scared (of missing out on locking-in their nice profit then & there) get off the bus, yet are balanced by other, late-comers who suddenly wake up to the scent of "OMFG the price moved so much I wanna get on the bus too WAIT FOR ME". Then, after a variable length of time, it will finally retrace, where you would expect to make your profit (having sold high). When buying, same concept, it'll take some time to 'slow down' after having dropped for a while, as more & more people panic and/or get in on some greedy shortsell positions, in a price-fall-accelerating effect before it can finally run out of bear steam & retrace up.

 What this means is you don't actually, in fact, want to buy when 'it's going down' & sell when 'it's going up'. You can have more trust in the self-evident price discovery mechanism of traded markets than that. Rather, you'd want to buy after it's mostly done going down as can reasonably be expected from market conditions, and sell after it's mostly done going up. One should not need to stagger trade entries & exits THAT much, which I find to be more of a hindrance on important 'clarity' (to be able to make the most clear, effective decisions) of acct / trading management than anything. Ideally one could stagger 1-3 buy entries  & 1-3 sell exits, seperated by relatively large price %'s, given that price movement momentum will cause them to get hit more often than not. In investment management, it is more valuable to spread out your diversification & risk losing on 'price opportunity' & 'focus of investment opportunity' both in terms of the variety of assets invested into, and of the price of entries/exits taken on them, than it is to try to unrealistically maximize one's profit potential by being too greedy/too hasty in the spread of staggered price points which dramatically raises risk.

 It's also essential to make the distinction between market price fundamentals and bitcoin infrastructure/technology fundamentals. All those great news about ever-expanding merchant services & integration don't really affect the exchange price. It's announcements about legal/tax/developments regarding the exchanges themselves that have been near-singlehandedly affecting the exchange prices, as well as news in general from china ; and not all the 'Crypto is the Future of Money' headlines.

 The price of 1 Bitcoin on April 22nd 2014 A.D. is already over $2000 since I happen to have some BTC & will not sell at under $2500 per 

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??

 Seriously, merchants don't need to keep 'reserves' of 'BTC change' in their 'digital money registers' like stores do w/ fiat. They aren't interested in speculating in BTC future price rises either. They're in fact wary of it - they just want the extra potential sales & rep from bitcoiners. That's why they use services like BitPay. Payment re-processors such as BPay also are not interested in hoarding or buying crypto. They just facilitate things by accepting a cryptopayment from end users, dumping it at market (or pretty fast in any case), giving the merchant their proceeds in fiat & keeping their cut in fiat.

 Those customers, the end-users of all these crypto-friendly merchants & services. THEY are the ones implyingly expected to cause higher prices, by buying moar BTC now that they can shop at a greater variety of places w/ it. But who are the vast majority of cryptocustomers..?? ..BITCOINERS. Enthusiasts. Folks who -already- had their stash & don't mind spending out a little of it here & there. Whatever extra BTC they may buy to shop with will be compensated by what they spend - given that the merchants & payment processors will be dumping the BTC thusly received as payment.

 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

 Thanks, although as had been mentioned before, I've been lurking on here getting to know everyone quite well (just in a 1-way fashion, until last week xD) all the way since Jan 11th this year.. & first discovered crypto's months before that.

 Appreciate the link ; The detailed, well-theorized information contained at that thread, along w/ Aminorex's intriguingly sound concept of 'a cryptocurrency merely has to be in the air in between transactions/uses for its market supply to be decreased as a result', compels me to give you guys the benefit of the doubt regarding the perennial question of whether it's a myth, that transactions, adoption, end users, increase the EXCHANGE PRICE of a currency (of course they increase the value, the utility, the infrastructure, make an economy more robust & varied - no question about that - but the market price is something else).

 If you can answer me one last question however, Reptilian, irregardless of its relevance to this thread's main topic or not, I would have to begin paying regular visits to your temple ; If a market exchange (speculative) price increases because an ASK order gets moved up, taken down, or bought into, it stands to reason that in order for an underlying economy's userbase & transactions expansion to indeed raise this price, each added user/transaction has to help get sellers to MOVE or take down their sell (ask) orders, and/or increase demand pressure for buyers to eat into these ask walls?? Now if the vast majority of users, due to obvious demographic factors, already had any BTC they needed to participate in the economy, they won't be pushing any demand on these ask orders, so how will that cause sellers to raise their price..? Especially when -merchants- will then dump proceeds on the market thus increasing supply & definitely not getting these ask/bids higher..?  

 Is there more chinese deadlines in the air or is all the planned/rumored stuff behind us yet..? In early may, australian banks are supposed to shut off some bitcoin-related businesses' accounts. Other than that.. that's it for anything that isn't a nasty (unknown-yet) surprise right..?

 So, that means, 2 things are most likely to happen, quite like donkey stated :

This can be a repeat of not only March 3rd-18th 2014's low-mid-600's price range (which immediately followed the post-G0x-meltdown final euphoric $710 needle caused by a couple whales getting a mental volcano from the UK BTC-Taxation-Law Review announcement) ; but also replicating the slow lull period between April 4th-9th 2014, where prices hovered between $440-465, which had immediately followed the PBoC's Reign-of-Terror triple-bottom crash to $416 on late Apr. 2nd.

 We all know what happened after those latest low-volume plateau's - they represented a slow & steady erosion of demand & hope, stepping closer & closer to the precipice until finally slipping off the cliff for a vertiginous fall. In this case, that would indeed imply a sluggishly accelerating slide down to the 420's or 440's as the next bottom before a potential rise to 550-600's.

 [ -OR- ]

I am also noticing how uncannily similar this entire pattern is to the long-term chart from 2013. That, in combination w/ the fact that China's planned/announced enforcement deadlines are basically past us, makes it a legitimate possibility that 470-483 could be the lowest dips on the horizon for the short-term future and that we would continue slogging in this narrow range until the creeping rise post-mid-July is reproduced and Mission Control elatedly announces that the Ship is well on its way to the Oort Clouds*

<sup>Which of course is figurative given that if 'Da Moon' is colloquially estimated to mean several thousand & 'Mars' to refer to 10-20k, then literally reaching 'outer solar system' price points that therefore actually exceed Winklevoss Grandeur would not be conceivable in any shape or form until at least 5-8 years from now. The green-coloured scenario above is to be read as predicting $2650-3700 coins nearly a year from today, a figure which, like other price estimates in this post, has actually been calculated logically ~ by dividing previous ATH's w/ their respective preceding build-up periods' price level averages & then adjusting for diminishing returns on each new major ATH due to the linear economic realities of such significantly higher prices.

For instance, even though an average price level of the 2012 latent period was ~$11.75, w/ the following ATH reaching 22x that amount (@ $259 on Apr. 8th), the next price explosion cycle would not produce such a vertiginous 20x+ result, indeed clocking in at 11.4x using a $1163 ATH divided by a ~$102 avg. Notice the multiplication factor to the next ATH falling nearly half, @ 51.8% of the last. We can then take that magnificent .518 & apply it to last year's cycle factor of 11.4 = ~5.9, and use that as the higher end (to be realistic) of the next ATH's projection's range, while presuming, for the lower end, that economic diminishing returns would actually accelerate w/ each cycle thus resulting in a lower coefficient than .518 to be applied to the last cycle's factor - e.g. 11.4 x say, .375? = 4.275. Hence, 4.275 x an average of $620 as the lower bracket, & 5.9 x an average of $620 as the higher bracket.</sup>

 I'll play too.

#7. Making 98% net gain in -7 real-time days- using BTC to trade forex, gold & stock index CFD's on 1broker . com

^{..What..? This is blasphemy, madness against the cult & our dogmatic values..? The Adamist Inquisition is coming..?? No, actually. It is not against the bitreligion IF one makes tons of $$$$$ (using fiat- [on regulated brokers..not on 1broker . com.. lol..] or crypto- deposits, doesn't matter) thereby INCREASING the amount of BTC one has xD, or, increasing the amount of fiat, & thus be able to buy MOAR BTC w/ it xDD}

xDDD

 ..& In other news.. Yea. What. A. Bulltrap. At 505 just like I used to believe in (-being a trap). Until I didn't, at 499. It actually caught me offguard..they pumped it while frontrunning the Caixin news ; They knew.

 This means PBoC not only doesn't like 3rd party payment processors as always, & indirectly hates 'recharge cards, ATM's' etc, but especially hates on all direct -AND- indirect bank/BTC relationships. This means an inevitably confirmed full China exit between now & June, time to make $ from buying dips, but dump quickly after, shortsell a lot, for we will be seeing ~$277.

 Just sell your coin immediately for $455-467, as high as you can but without risking/waiting too long. Once price inevitably falls to 410's-420's or even further, down to low 300's (China has just admitted they completely refuse to tolerate -ANY- bank/payment processor loopholes to fund to & withdraw from chinese exchanges - game over) ; & Use your $950++ to buy at that price, down there.

 Ignore any 'moon' ($600-$7000) rocket-launch hysterics you see around here, even when the price appears to rise fast at times - it's a trap - The launch is only gonna happen -AFTER- China is completely moved offshore, Huobi, OKCoin, BTC38, BTCChina, etc, ALL shut down completely or moved off Chinese mainland.

 What a joker, rofl. Single-digits haven't been anywhere remotely close to being a 'real possibility' since the day Obama was re-elected for a 2nd term in office.

 That being said, I'm looking forward to some major crashes between now & the new May 2nd & May 10th 'deadlines' from PBoC, 1 australian bank, 5 major chinese banks, and countless exchanges, newspapers/magazine shills & payment processors, that certainly, realistically may not even be able to pierce through $300 support or even through our good ol' $340 of last time, but that nonetheless -definitely- have to bring price below the current levels at least touching $400 in a cheerleader-skirt-flash.

 -THOSE- prices will be some great floors to buy at.. Certainly better than $445-500 (not that the latter are terrible, just not optimal given how badly chinese officials have revealed they have it & still have it against -all- crypto-related deposit/withdrawal loopholes whatever they may be, all accounts must be shut down, and quickly too.

 You can't get any clearer bearishness than that, even though admittedly, yes, that bearishness only goes so far, for there is indeed mad bull money hidden down there especially past $400 and even more in the late $200's/early $300's, yet that doesn't mean that smart money's gonna be desperate enough to buy in the mid $400's w/ that kind of chinese repressive climate.

 I've discovered (or merely re-confirmed, in some of these cases) that :

 ~> I hate high prices.
 ~> Hate Low-Volatility & 'Retail-Friendly Price Stability'.
 ~> Hate regulation/integration w/ existing fiat-based economies.
 ~> Hate reliance on widespread merchant adoption & VC investment.
 ~> Hate the idea of crypto moving away from its anarcho-libertarian roots.
 ~> Hate big government (especially the PBoC's bs ).

 No breakouts, 99% chance.. simply $430-460, ad nauseam, till Huobi/OKC or one of their banks/providers says "Oops" between now & May 15-20th & at THAT time there'll be a huge dump.

 I know, right.... Leon, Star & Bobby will continue their profitable craven tactics alllll the way until chinese authorities either arrest them or they're finally out of deposit/withdrawal options & mainland china can actually exit the markets.

 And so, in continuing w/ my earlier post..


 I also had a brief moment of contempt for miners & PoW as a whole given they're mostly interested in get-rich-quick regardless of what it does to infrastructure, prices, community/project, or economies, but then I realized, not only does PoW (even though it's kinda wasteful) show as much if not possibly more design advantages than PoS or other methods ; But more importantly to us traders, these miners, are what would allow the prices to stay low, by dumping (& seldom buying - aka, one-way flow) more than any other groups [merchants/customers][traders/speculators], the latter having some relatively balanced upward & downward pressure on prices.

 Now why in the worldly hell would anyone want such one-way, constant dumping..? Much harder to reach ATH that way no..?

 ..But that's exactly what the problem is. We're stuck in narrow-channelled limbo's for months precisely because of these two opposing forces - those wanting an ATH & ever-higher prices, and those just wanting to dump & run w/ the money -now-. If this actually damaging concept of an ATH was dropped, we'd all win. The dumpers would make the bank they always have, unopposed.. ..until we reach a 'recent-memory'-ATL. There, the buying pressure from investors/speculators would be so high, it would balance out the dumpers, ideally in waves for maximum % volatility (trading profitability).

 Can you imagine that..? A complete blood bath, a China exit, a BTC-e crash/arrest, followed by years of $0.50-$125 price ranges in an exuberant climax of joy for any leveraging trader..?  Endless mountains upon valleys upon mountains of insane tri- or quad-digit-% profits, bitcoin itself returning to its roots, everyone who isn't too dumb to trade able once again to get another chance at those glorious days of 2011-2012 single-/double- digits..? Everyone here would get a Second Coming, this Divine Intervention granting each faithful bitcoiner another chance at becoming a Supernode..!!!

 You'd want to first worry about ~

1] How a european war would affect the lives of europeans, and eurasians, the middle east, and to a lesser degree most of asia and north america.
2] What it would do to global stock prices, many commodity/futures markets, real estate, retail sales & consumer/producer price indexes, and most importantly, fiat foreign exchange rates..
3] THEN, you may start wondering, how it would or wouldn't affect BTC (least relevant/least chance of effect) ;p

 Btw Adam, very interesting poll, one of the best in months

 +1 that judicious, discerning & productive moderation isn't easy or clear-cut at all, and that heavy moderation is digressive, censory & stupid.

 I can attest that Oct. is not the only person skimming some people's posts.. JJG's in particular, given the excessive wordiness often encountered, albeit admittedly made using excellently articulate language.

 What's actually ridiculous, JJG, is for you to be repeatedly distraught that people "[..] definitely don't know enough about you to make such statements/claims..", while at the same time alleging that Octaft is disingenuous & imply that he could not possibly be 'coming from a place of higher knowledge..' when anyone of good cognizance who's been following his posting will definitely substantiate that he's one of the more erudite minds around here who don't get biased easily & are diligent in their intellectual approach.

 And since we're on this topic, I'll add that it strongly appears to my perspective that these 'scandalized defensiveness' conversational tendencies and your apparent need to insert vulgar language here & there, are transparent symptoms of the insecurity you feel with some of the obsessive patterns you use when communicating, such as your characteristic capitalized 'NOT' inserted every few sentences or so ;p



 Absolutely not ; I agree, once 'all the coins' (;p) belong to serious unshakeable hands, price would not drop afterwards.

 ..And that is precisely why, although it isn't a bad time to buy unleveraged right now, and hold, for the majority of the needed longterm retracement/correction has most probably already been priced in w/ our several-months downtrend ; that waiting all the way until it at least touches the 2300-2400's/360-400's & load up in (optionally max-leveraged ) longs/buy's from that most profitable entry down there, is the smartest course of action right now, as my next post shall illustrate clearly

 Bitcoin is beautiful.

 ..That doesn't mean it's prevented from revisiting 300's or even breaking previous lows.

 Rather, it means it'll bounce even more voraciously, from any lows, regardless of how much more potentially dire, final, 'G0x-Feb-19-like' the next round of bad headlines are to be, than it even did back on Apr. 10-11's reversal from $340.

 It just means that it's a -beautiful, invaluable, lucky-we-finally-have-it- piece of technology, that has nothing to do with its exchange-listed price-to-fiat ratio...!!!!!!!!!!!!

 You can love bitcoin (& all crypto..? xD) as I do regardless of being a trader or holder, short or long, buying or selling, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HODL ALL YOUR COINS UNSHAKEABLY JUST TO 'PROVE' / MAKE A STATEMENT THAT YOU BELIEVE IN BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY..!!!!!!!!!!

 Speaking of which...


 +10.

 [Whoa, such female wit & cognizant perspective, much rare..??! WTB moar xDDDDD]



 +5 for truth on the matter of the peculiar bird-dog mutant ;9



 In Soviet Russia, bitcoin speaks engrish.

 &, xaxa @ the UserName ^^



 +5    

 I see. Thanks for clarifying, it makes a tad more sense now, so I'll just pass the benefit of the doubt.. I just think the term 'disingenuous' per se doesn't apply for the meaning you intend to convey - perhaps something like 'uninformed' or even 'ignorant' would be far more accurate [does not/can not know the posters that well, from a distance].


 I'd like to believe that ; however, there's a problem :


 Emphasis mine. Promoting more/better policing, moderation, elimination of what is to be classified as a 'troll' and 'trolling'. I think it's fair to say that the ^ above represents 'heavy moderation' which my statement qualified as being 'digressive, censory, stupid' ; a statement which you claimed to consistently agree with, when it's actually in dire contrast with what you've stated you'd prefer, before. =/

 The reason it's generally a bad idea in the end to 'censor & police trolls' is because nobody knows what a troll is.

 It's so subjective, so ill-defined. There's no reasonable consensus on such definitions. Literally takes a Ph.D-level of sociological insight into behavioral psychology, cognitive biases, human nature & internet culture to make an enlightened, substantive, quality assessment of what's to be classified as trolling and what isn't.

 Look at mah87's Ripplespam. The kid truly believes this stuff. Or at least does a damn good job fooling everyone that he's as dense as he appears. No matter the 'bear-with-me' efforts by none other than Blitz at confronting his madness w/ XRP-concerning facts. I think in all common sense almost everybody in this thread would agree there is virtually zero loss of any kind in the prospect of banning/censoring him, at least until he demonstrates convincing willingness to change his inane, devoid-of-substance, spammy ways.

 And yet, I'm pretty sure that's not the only 'troll', or level/obviousness of trolling/useless unwantedness, that you would see curtailed. People of your opinion, which the likes of Octaft & I are wary against, almost invariably mean 'extremely but subjectively disruptive, annoying, controversial, unpopular, and/or politically incorrect views' in your definition of 'troll'.

 See that's where the core of the problem lies. According to this broad, biased yet genuinely shared (among a vast majority of internet population) view of what quantifies as trolling, I'm a troll. Blitz is a troll. Mat is. Fonz & Jorge are. TERA is. Even WindJC & Risto have been admonished as such. Our perspectives are fresh, fringe, unpopular. We disrupt, annoy, raise controversy. We may even be politically incorrect. So, this is trolling..? Hmm? This is what we shove in the same basket as mah87 & chromosoma's irrational, fatuous, asinine repetitive garbage, the prima facie characterization of 'spam'..?



 FTFY..? Or did you actually mean that you find the rather concise stuff I've put out in the last few weeks (as much as I could make it) to be a bunch of overwordy text-wall drivel.. And so, were implying, from the reference to who Jay was '..having wall of text battles with..' that I'm just a troll..? (Whatever the definition of..

 In continuing w/ my earlier post..


 We wouldn't need altcoins anymore. Their insane volatility ranges would come to bitcoin itself. All. thanks. to. LOOOOOOW PRICES. You can't have this awesomeness w/ $400-2000 prices. Needs to be double-digits at the most. Where whales could utterly tsunami the markets daily. And whoever has the balls & the brains to buy at the lowest of these ranges (not too low, and miss it) & sell at the tops (not too high, and miss out) just like BitcoinBuilder & the Goxcoin insane-% days, becomes filthy rich. And unregulated. True to cryptoanarchist roots, where this truly belongs. Because the added benefit of such a scenario, is you don't need widespread adoption. The masses are the plague. They are weak, contrived, buggered, lazy, uneducated, complacent, conformist, devolved, unwashed, drivel-swallowing, excellence-envying/shunning, mediocrity-wallowing fools devoid of personal unbiased integrity & proud moral fiber.

 This is why.

 Think about it.

 On Apr. 24th, after some very acute sleazy frontrunning manipulation that fooled me & many others big time, news broke out that the PBoC would -not- tolerate any more of these evasive tactics & rules loopholes the chinese exchanges had taken advantage of to keep their operations going pretty much as they had been since last year.

 In classic asian state doctrinarian fashion they sternly admonished everyone involved, warning that they definitely had to stop any & all deposit -&- withdrawal methods using renminbi, whether with 'deposit voucher' systems, ATM's, banks or payment processors.

 This dropped the price rather fast from 500's to a range of 420-465 that would last weeks, reminiscent of the 8-10 day early Apr. period. During this time the Western (mostly) good news kept pouring in steadily as always yet instead of propping the price up, this instead merely kept the morass of doom sentiment pervading China from crashing us all the way back to 400 & beyond. A couple further banks closed more accounts w/ chinese exchanges, while the Beijing 2014 Expo got censored by the PBoC.

 Because of all this I posted some pics back then about Huobi/OKC guys getting arrested. That's why I & many others thought things would get worse. I mean, if you researched their profiles, they seemed to be so 'maverick' and rebellious-minded, those founders. Ready to handle things as to end up being 'hailed as martyrs for their cause'. Sounded like that's what was in store.

 ..But that was ONE possible outcome. It didn't have to happen this way. The opposite of further alienation & repression could always occur. And the exchange owners knew precisely how. We didn't think of this because we aren't familiar w/ this very distinct cultural asian mindset. All they had to do, was to appease the PBoC, who, like all oppressive state agencies, are absolutely starved for public recognition/support. You don't bribe them with money ; the majority of them, even as individuals, aren't susceptible to it. You give them raw political & cultural power, through making them look legitimate, validating their regime & decisions as 'wise and for the good of the people'.

 And that's exactly what that group of 5 exchange owners focused on feverishly, mostly behind the scenes, for weeks on end. While negotiating w/ the central bank & related agencies, pleading with them that they understood & approved of their decisions, and were desperate to do anything needed to find a way to work with them, make their operations acceptable in the officials' eyes ; They released the famous statement that they would not show up at Beijing 2014, and would close down all leveraged trading shortly.

 ..And it all turned out a massive success. As the the current price explosion has shown since May 19th, the results of these appeasement efforts dangled before the PBoC's eyes an irresistible opportunity to gain massive popular support (among tech geeks & finance types at least ;p), by virtually doing a 180" on their earlier policies - establish a state-endorsed, 'special banking unit' that would oversee & regulate cryptocurrencies there using Chinese Offshore Yuan for trading, w/ the exchanges eventually to move offshore in officially supported fashion.

 This raised the prices precisely back to the 500's level we had been at -before- PBoC released their stern warnings about reg. evasion.. Around which, the overall longer-term momentum from the run-up since $340 kept the enthusiasm bullish enough to buoy things way out of the 500's-540's range, up to where we are at today ; With likely more to come still, because, this is Chinese officials being in tacit crypto SUPPORT instead of opposition.. It changes -everything- quite like how apprehensive people were, during all of 2012-2013 & especially in the wake of the SR crash, about the US Gov just pulling a LibertyReserve on bitcoin & shutting down / criminalizing everything they can, ..until the infamous Monday, Nov. 18 Congress report that truly put the bull in the chinese' pants as all those fears of US antagonism got suddenly relieved.

 So do you understand now..?

 THAT.  is.  why.  all.  this. happened.. !!

Church what time tomorrow..?

 A perpetually self-damaging frustrated contrived & compromised mind such as Shroom's cannot be reasoned with. The basic trading insight & common sense you continually proffer cannot possibly reach & enlighten the closed, damaged thought routines of such an individual. You look foolish in even attempting to do so and/or defending yourself & your trading strategies =/



 ..Can you see the gigantic corny dildo obviously wedged tightly inside this constipated loser's sphincter..?!?? He gives off a 100% boot-licking bought-&-brainwashed shill vibe of the highest order.. o.o

 This man^  I submit to your attention that this man here has 1000% of my post count, yet does not know who {B}illie {J}oe {A}llen is.

 Oh & btw, the log trend won't hold. Not past 2016-2017.. It'll obviously slow down in short order, in all reasonable common sense as Stolfi implied (if continuous log trend.. what happens then in cir. 2027...), for quite a few good reasons..

 But that doesn't mean in any way whatsoever that buying now, or especially back around 340-500's, was a bad idea, specifically in so far as the log trend expectations are concerned - ~140%-980% per ~year, is still a spectacularly good investment opportunity =/

 1:2.5-margin-bought @ 642 ;o

 Price has to reach May 24th levels for me to get wiped.

 Will hodl on through this storm like a pirate capt'n.

 On to 682, matees

 Indeed, all I was missing this afternoon to enjoy this gigantic red dildo of doom was some popcorn, & for my BTC balance to be inside BFX instead of, you know, MPal, where :

1] [SPA] (80-1000% every minute 2 days ago it's not a joke go check it out I tripled my acct that night..) ;
2] [ITC] (~60% up & down continuously) ;
3] [ENC] (35-50% buying the dips) ;

 ..as well as VRC, XC, DRK & CINNI's price explosions make BTC's look like a pathetic elderly quadriplegic's attempts at exertion, honestly =/

 He already explained a hundred times (barely exaggerated at this point) what precisely it would take to conform w/ his definition of 'ok I'm sorry guys you were right in the end - I have to admit bitcoin is now finally successful' ~>

1] Widespread, government-sanctioned (or even promoted) adoption by the public in at least several countries.

2] ^ Due to actual, tangible, John-Q-Public-relevant benefits of using a blockchain-based currency that are OVER and beyond the economical, security, privacy, speed and convenience of use benefits afforded by traditional payment systems & infrastructure..

3] ^ To such an extent that above-referenced general mainstream public now has a NO-BRAINER choice in naturally & easily using a cryptocurrency as payment system.

 Yes all those not blind can tell he's obviously biased & gov-devoted if that's what you mean.

 Regardless, I personally don't like the middle ground, the place where crypto finds itself so far, as much as I would like, more extreme adoption/obscurity scenarios.

 I know how needed & revolutionary blockchain technology is. I admit bitcoin has been and is successful to many definitions.

 But it hasn't been widely, critically successful yet, for lack of meeting the criteria laid in post above^.

 Therefore, until such time that crypto achieves that, I notion that I'd rather it either : a] Went back to being underground, all 'dark' w/ 0 regulation possible, 0 taxes, 0 socialized risks/losses, and ever more massive wild west volatility/opportunities for the competent trader, -Or- b] Achieve the other extreme, a massive adoption supercycle penetrating irreversibly deep into every facet of modern societies.

 I most amusingly approve this long list

( Because obviously, the blockchain concept is not 'done' or valueless until & unless some revolutionary new thing that's entirely better comes out to surpass it categorically ^ )

 ..Just finished reading the last 66 pages. Took over half a dozen hours. When I saw the persistent dumping carry onward past 573, then 560's, 540's, even 525, I knew I needed to come back here & help myself to a large serving of this ever-so-familiar endearingly hysterical drama. I'd missed this thread, my first, legendary home & cradle to my introduction into this community ;p

 The raging bird-dog's spectacular about-face was something I never thought would actually come, where the entitled kid finally capitulates right onto raving bear mode ; a popcorn-worthy momentous event where he suddenly realized that HAVING PATIENCE before entering a trade position & buying decently low, then selling as high as realistically possible is how you make good money, not by holding idly for a thousand million years (bull) or waiting for impossibly low prices to finally dip your toes in (bear).


 One statement of his is correct, though. Not only will this blood continue to flow at least to $500 if not straight past, to $450-70's ; But more relevantly, this trend of deeply wishful, irrational, cultish bubble-frenzy that religiously holds 'when btc moons..!!11!!1!' as a dogmatic certainty has been growing at a dismaying rate lately ; Now it seems it's reached critical mass, with yet another 'faithful believer' uttering the words every other post - as far as these delusional church-flock hopefuls are concerned cryptocurrencies were created to make them rich, save them from the abyss of their unfulfilling shallow lives & mindsets =/

 BTC mooned for years because its price was an uncertainty. That's how market prices work. More information about something's value - less price arbitrage & trading volatility. Less information about something's value - more violent volatility as participants scramble to make money while contributing to the 'price discovery' process.

 For example last year, nobody knew what to do when bitcoin surged after Silk Road, then CONGRESS of all entities, whom EVERYONE HAD BEEN FEARING FOR SO LONG (before China, it was the US itself people were afraid might 'ban btc'), actually says something entirely bullish & supportive of crypto, something that was totally unexpected of them, what do you think happens..? Add that to WillyBot's antics etc, of course we mooned, even if a 2nd time within the same calendar year.

 So because btc does this (at much lower nominal price values) a few times in a row, they get fervently convinced it will automatically repeat such a bubble 'right on schedule' the next year and at around the same exact price gain %'s too..??!? Since when do things happen like this..? Everyone expects some grand, awesome thing to finally come to pass and it does so perfectly on cue..? Barely ever. Especially since crazed asset price bubbles are caused precisely because of a lack of information - lack of a mass-shared expectation that it's coming - Now that every 'true believer' and their mother believes in 'the next moon', it won't happen. You might even say it can't happen, by design.

 That's why the price is dropping now. It's the only direction the market finally realized it's able to go. Until capitulation & sentiment shift occurs where a large portion/majority of bitcoiners start screaming for the end, and drop their wild moon-rocket dreams. When a huge debt/budget/monetary controversy erupts in a G8 country, or even a systemic fall/collapse in public confidence of gov-issued fiat, traditional banking / payment systems, and central banks. When a direct, non-geeky, fundamentally powerful & undeniable incentive to use cryptocurrencies emerges leaving most people no other practical alternative to simply breaking out of their ignorant complacency and jumping at last onto the cryptosphere. Then, is when the next bubble can begin in earnest, being able to catch more by surprise, as well as through sheer force of exponentially increased user adoption.

 I don't wanna see a single Loose left uncut..!!!!!

 Precisely. People here respond to drivel, but not to pertinent, insightful, intriguing or important thoughts. Would take too much work

 Lol. His spirit got sooo terribly demolished by the depraved zero-integrity flagrant book-talking bear/bull trolls around this community that he just gave in at the end and simply does exactly as they do, since then xD

 Poor birddoggie.

 But what's gonna happen when it truly goes into rocket-train-mode one day..? Will you start posting bullish predictions..? Or still stay bear and risk losing credibility as the corrections/downsides during the rise keep getting vastly outweighed by the upsurges..? xD

( Btw, Of course I believe we can test 445-470's again, I'm not delusional about that at all..'Finex, Stamp & Huobi price action & books clearly illustrate this as very plausible ;p )

 ..BJA is back. Nice ;o  Guess all the ruckus caused by volume/price volatility lately woke up the sleepers ;p

 Whoever shorted this is delusional. You don't short bitcoin, unless it's in an absolute pure gold overbought parabolic-spike entry. In fact you basically don't short anything in general, not when it's screaming downward to abyssal Pacific crevice depths like that BTC-e $309 cascade. Of course you also don't long when it's panic-rising meteorically a bit like it is now. You actually have to be careful shorting problematic-future-at-best shtcoins like DRK & LTC. Imagine with BTC o.O

 Didn't expect $520+, this soon. Guess market really wanted to revert back as close to that $560 median as soon as possible. You know, the one you get when you average the early-May prices of ~$445 with the ~$680 recent highs of early-June  That tells us $550-565 is solid target.

 Damn. w/ 10x leverage on BTC.SX someone could make 14-18% (from low 400's to current prices) x 10, minus that ginormous spread they have there, that's 140-180% in under 48hrs. O.O  Actually competes with the highest-volume twitter-manipulated 800BTC altcoin pumps' worth of %.

 As for LTC, w/ 3.33x leverage on BFX someone could've made ~240% in under 48hrs, from $3.3 to $5.7 per litecoin.

 What.

 Lol.

 It takes this much of a once/twice-per-decade equities event to lurch you guys out of your cryptobubble stupor..?

 

 Wake up. Fiat assets have VOLUME. As many orders of magnitude more than BTC markets do, as BTC/USD markets themselves have in comparison to BTC/Altcoin ones. This means even though it's all old, musty, bankster-smelly & regulated, all that volume is able to MOVE prices every day.

 And they offer -LEVERAGE-, real leverage, from 1:15 to 1:50/100 to 1:500 & even 1:1000 (beyond that much means it's scam brokers/websites though so be wary). This means see that $75-77 per FB share up there, 2 weeks after it hit a temporary bottom of $62..? You can multiply that ~20% gain by 15 at 1:15 leverage. Plus500, AvaFX & InstaForex offer 1:20 to 1:50 for individual stock CFD's, and up to 1:100/300 for Stock Index CFD's like Dow-Jones, British FTSE, NASDAQ, etc. 15 x 20% is 300%. 50 x 20% makes 1000%. Just because of one predictably good Quarterly Earnings results that everyone & their mother expected to be.

 The 3 services mentioned above offer BTC withdrawal/deposits. The one I've used since early this year, 1Broker, uses ONLY instant BTC deposits/withdrawals & thus has users trade in btc-denominated positions, and profits / losses / account balances, not an ounce of fiat anywhere except in the fiat-priced traditional forex assets live feeds, of course.

 Crypto is awesome, but cryptotrading has done nothing but lose me, and a larger-than-average % of leverage traders, our money, while, for leveraged trading at least (aka the only way to really make bank without waiting a decade), fiat-asset trading offers a lot more leverage and volume, giving us small-timers the opportunity to close positions with small profits every day, compounding to consistent wealth over time, without idling for months and years in the dark waiting for 'a miraculous bitcoin moonbubble just one more time'.

 Fella' here might be on to something..   Hard to dismiss/not get distracted by those curiously telling sharply lower registration numbers for Dec. '12 - Feb. '13, Sept-Oct '13, & Aug-Sept '14.. =/

 Which leads to :


 I did vote for 'We can definitely see 300's again [this year]' in the poll because this is pretty much entirely fueled by only 1 piece of news - PayPal. That alone certainly may not be enough, as many here have voiced, to counteract the hugely built-up negative sentiment from the majority towards cryptospace.

 However, Prof. here nailed the other possibility right on the head. That's what should be deeply concerning to any bearish view - 1] We are in active, higher-volume, fall season. 2] We're fresh off last fall season's tremendous influx to the crypto-economies and development in everyone's memories - and psychologically, people's expectations & pattern recognition routines tend to look for & reinforce perceived similarities, symmetries, equivalences (aka everyone wants to b-elieve history repeats itself). 3] We've been particularly lower-priced (cheaper/closer to bottom) for a good little while now. 4] It seems eerily possible that the recent constant dump pressure over the summer might've actually been mostly artificial, caused by insiders who knew to a far greater degree than most when exactly the ETF's will be coming online this year and of course knew about PayPal's announcement to come today - which would put a near-term bearish outcome in serious trouble, and lend solid credence to Stolfi's theory that this could indeed be the start of a new 'stairway-pattern' mid-term small bull run back to 600-800's.

 Indeed, that was definitely 1 entity, aka inorganic. Doesn't definitely preclude any final short-term outcome towards bullish or bearish however - there's more variables that need to play out yet.



 +2



 

 'Normal people' think PayPal is a ponzi or related to terrorism.

 Go into an Enterprise Car Rental center, and ask about paying with/accepting PayPal. Let alone any other internet ePayments service provider. See what looks you get.




 LOL!! To me there's no difference between these two^ - both equally ridiculous xD



 Fattie or Fattie-Wannabe, when you're rich and have all the means to be healthy..? That's terrible



 Yes, all aboard once more when we revisit that nice round $400 level again.

 Can you imagine how dire it is if the previous years' bubbles were mostly just caused & accentuated by Willy & Markus bots.

 It would mean the 2012 price of $13, the early 2013 price of ~$58 - That's what the real, uninflated, current fair market price of BTC would be at today.

 With the way PayPal news' rise was crushed like an insect, because of zero demand, it's hard to not give some weight to that theory^ - Prices have behaved as if drawn down to a plausibly true fair market value in the $70-130 range, just like most of last year.

 Bubble patterns happen.

 Then they break. A different pattern emerges.

 Your dreams, your hopes, your delusions, have killed your profitability, for 9 months now.

 Just like they crippled me, until I woke up, in May.

 Very true, Adam, absolutely. However, it is quite obvious to me the argument for BTC to be undervalued is significantly more outrageous than it is for it to be overvalued.

 I've always said bitcoin is beautiful, and was needed. Blockchain is an invaluable technology, and it's core currency itself has been tremendously useful in streamlining & simplifying online payments - What would we do without it.

 That being said, unfortunately, great value does not automatically equate great price. For price is fundamentally derived entirely from supply & demand, whether or not those last two happen to be affected by market manipulation, good/bad news, external unusual circumstances, asset allocation, or hashing developments/crypto-economics.

 And thus, one shouldn't buy BTC because they perceive it as 'more useful' and sell it when seen as 'useless'. I can 'believe in bitcoin' & use it to make money seamlessly, yet still expect further price drops and hold no hope for some grand bubble to rescue bagholders. The market's ebbs & flows from 2009 up to 2013 were quite natural/organic for the most part and justified by the budding crypto-economic ecosystems springing up everywhere. Starting w/ the Goxbots' 2013' antics, however, that statement starts becoming tenuous to make.

 Keep in mind though, BTC offers unparalleled opportunities for altcoin pump events, pseudonymous leveraged trading, and gambling - All of which I use to a major extent, so I actually would love nothing more than to be wrong. For yet another 1000% to come save us, right out of Wonderland.

 But I can't responsibly have the cognitive dissonance of warping my reasoning to project, place faith in, pray for, more clockwork repeats of the same pattern, yet at far higher nominal price points which make it a lot harder to accomplish, which is why the Willy/Markus bots were even needed in the first place for the last run-up.

 That's because the price is denominated in, and raised by, fiat currency. You either have to fractionally fake users' fiat balances on your exchanges, or find more and more money to reach buywalls in order for it to rise. Those dollar bills/euro's/RMB's aren't %-based, and they're not infinite, except to the banks and governments, who generally have no need to bother with cryptocurrency, when they already hold the power of money creation. That means looking at old patterns that happened at price & adoption / manipulation levels orders of magnitude lower than now, and expecting the same % gains in 'the next bubble', is a logical fallacy - money functions according to a linear, geometric basis - it is not exponential, not %-based.. !!!

 And that, is why it's so much harder to go from $300-700 to $2500-7500, than it is to reach 10x from $116.

 Which forms the basis of my actual expectations for the years to come : Unless the equities (stocks etc) markets experience another shattering collapse (a mere shock, a predictable solid correction to the multi-year bullish US Index & global Stock Indices, is not enough to qualify) ; Unless a major financial, geopolitical (major war), environmental (asteroid collision, zombie/ebola apocalypse) or technical (absolutely fundamental engineering / development changes in bitcoin or crypto) event seriously damages public perception & reliance on fiat currency in a long-lasting meaningful way, forcing huge numbers of non-adopters to not merely be interested / intrigued by crypto, but truly need to make it a permanent, critical part of their daily lives ; There cannot be a big bubble.

 A $4k-100k price dream requires something to give in the crypto/fiat status quo. Until such an extreme series of events comes to pass, I foresee many small mini-bubbles, quite like the one from $400's to $600's in Q2 this year. Coupled with the possibility of a larger one, just once, to perhaps $1525-2175. Then the experiment is matured. The rocket has landed.

 Because money is nominal, not exponential.

 Yep.

 Since it's that simple, you'd think us cryptosphere enthusiasts would've figured this out by now, hory shet, right..!??!

 Had to make a big wall because people do forget that it WILL take those things to make another bubble, and because those things aren't a certainty, why would 'the mythical bubble' be..? Just because rpietila wants another pink luxury car to go w/ his pink panther tuxedo..? Just because Loaded is getting bored, and Peter R. thinks the pattern must repeat itself?

 I hate to be too verbose. It's nice to have time to read & dwell on information, I'm an intellectual after all, but ffs, life is busy, people have other things to do than read 4309625 pages of 342095749573 words each ruminating verbiage over & over. So I'm definitely cognizant of how wasteful it can be to wall it up.

 But to be fair, I'm usually a lot more terse than e.g. our dear friend, JJG. So, this was something that needed to be explained comprehensively. I'd been holding back on some of this stuff for almost a year =/

 Thank you  /bow. I've always found you've been one of the rare few enlightened minds around here ;p

 Awesome, precisely what I was getting at - I'm far from another 'Cut your loose' fanatic like 'falllling' just hoping for a $0-Crash - I just want people to stop deluding themselves in a blind religious haze while going to BitCoin Church with BitChick, and like you said Adam - Actually contribute towards putting into place, or at least understand, the groundwork that's obviously required before another gravity-defying bubble.

 Regarding your argument BitChick, the thing is with every passing previous bubble and subsequent cooling phase, it's ironically also gotten exponentially more difficult for the cynics to be proven wrong yet again by a follow-through epic bull-run.

 One thing I forgot to mention though is, the legacy Gox's bots left us with is one of 'Fake it 'till you make it' such that with last year's exploding limelight came hundreds of millions $$ poured into all facets of crypto-infrastructure & the underlying economies so thanks to that, it's very plausible to think the true fair market price of 1 BTC may be more than double 2013's mid-year average in the low $100's.

 So in the coming months $245-270 sounds like a good bottom, from $360-410. The infamous +1000% 12-18month figure, from a ~$250 price point, would lead right up to $2500 - Exactly where my 'off-chance moderate bubble' estimate was at ;p

..Omg!!!!!!!!!!!!!  You're =BACK= !!!!

 /bow

How has FX and/or stock trading treated you for these past 18 months' hiatus..? ;p

Still prepping for the apocalypse..? Hehe

Dall bulltardism, always a treat.

This is siq necromastery.. Amazing <3

No, Jorge's analysis is spot-on.

One simply has to eye those sharp dumps from $490's to $320 a month back, & the $485-400 dump from last night, to see it is clearly a few players, and still, in late 2015, 2 years after China's BTC involvement starting in 2013, the prices remain completely driven by chinese speculation, russian/chinese ponzi activity, & capital controls paradigms.

My hero, right next to the other swampland legend <3



We don't merely derive satisfaction being contrarians, as well as mocking fee-market-deluded miner-biased networth-snobbish small-blockians.

We also get trading profit.

It's important that a distributed ledger (blockchain) network not get spammed / be vulnerable to wasteful, spammy, or malicious transactions/requests. So, this argument, in favor of small blocks, is very legitimate and must be considered.

It's also important that a distributed ledger (blockchain) network be allowed to grow in userbase, feature set, adapt to new functionalities and processing capabilities, to match the ever-evolving needs and demand from a diverse userbase, particularly in the midst of the rapidly changing technological landscape of modern societies. So, this argument, in favor of larger blocks, is also very legitimate and must be considered.


..But implementing solutions that address either, or ideally, somehow, both of of these main issues, doesn't solve bitcoin's ACTUAL biggest problem as the premier [theoretically] decentralized payment system & store of value we need it for.

Why? Because as Mike unceremoniously put it,

As long as China controls Bitcoin, it has failed it's most cardinal mission as a decentralized trustless system.

To save Bitcoin we must execute a benevolent, temporary 51% attack on Chinese pools and/or vote to change Core to blacklist them (or use any similar method, I don't know - I'm not a programmer ;3) to 'force' Chinese monopolistic miners OUT OF THEIR DDOS'ING, SELF-INTERESTED, CHINESE-WALL+AUTHORITARIAN-REGIME-PROBLEMATIC MAJORITY.

Beyond dreams of a fee market, beyond issues with full blocks ~ If Bitcoin is to succeed, CHINA MUST GO.

No - ironically, it's to counter the prevalent teenager crowds' '16 yo' lack of attention span and general apathy, that I try to use varied font sizes, wanna make sure I get them page views y'know, my time not wasted, and what not ;3




Your honey badger doing good af atm : Was propped up & overbought for too long, at last it's shown itself in the price action, much to the teary dismay of degenerate bulltards galore <3





^Perfect question - One of the main issues facing this proposal which would have to be debated and solved on technical & philosophical/ideological merits. Not gonna pretend I have all the answers, in a heartbeat ;p





You are right. Of course..I should have known that ;/

So, what if millions of users/miners do this vote? I know this wouldn't be practical in our current world - just theorizing about the concept itself.

They wouldn't get blacklisted - it's more the protocol would dynamically detect any given pool is amassing too much hashpower, wallet users &/or miners that are reasonably detected to not be likely to be affiliated w/ this pool, get to do a 'consensus check trigger' that, if successful, starts limiting this pool to a lower % so it's held in check? The minute users stop being in general majority agreement about it - it stops limiting the pool in question, so it's both non-draconian and consensus-based + decentralized-control-mechanism?





Such an activist, loving it xD  *Picturing him w/ cowboy hat & silver-star-heeled leather boots <3*

Hurry up - there isn't much time left to make your Hearn, and cut your loose.

Lol.

So, some folks want a strong Bitcoin, that can do what VISA can't do - to be a decentralized, trustless, censorship-resistant digital currency, a store of value with its own sovereign monetary policy - with additional functions such as faster payments & smart contracts being layered-on-top future options.

While some other insensibly covetous folks (as should unfortunately be expected from a community filled with too many short-sighted greedy degenerates.. ;3) would prefer a fast Bitcoin, that strives to copy what VISA has already been doing for decades - attempt to be a competitive, mostly centralized payments processing platform.

..Why do you want BTC to be another credit card? What makes you so confident BTC price suddenly pumps to heaven because a majority voted for bigger, bloatier, spammier blocks and fewer, larger, blackhat-DDoS-cartels-enforced mining node farms that government agencies around the globe find much easier to LibertyReserve down..?

You can focus design towards a strong sovereign-monetary decentralized trustless censorship-resistant digital currency ; Or towards a fast less-decentralized digital currency + non-trustless censorship-vulnerable payments network.

Choose.

Can't prioritize both - as the ol' bearded coder explains, there are 'engineering trade-offs' that need to be made when working with reality.