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Unbeatable

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SwissAustrian -



I think it would be more fair to say BC's supply growth is artificially pre-determined rather than artificially managed. (The 'certainty' and clarity about future supply growth is an advantage imo)

Imo PM's are not valuable because of their scarcity or the difficulty of mining of them. However these two factors are critical pre-requisites for something to be considered as a medium of exchange & have relational value assigned to it. (Rhodium for example is roughly 100 times more scarce than gold. Why not 100 times the price? Because golds value is also highly relational.)

The difficulty related to mining the set amount of BC's available annually also increases in direct relation to the total computing power directed at mining them. This is mathematically very pure.

I think regardless of your views on BC's as an alternative currency, it's pretty clear that people in southern Europe are realizing their bank deposits are at risk in a big way.

So I believe the likelihood of Southern Europeans moving 600 million dollars in BC's this month > than the likelihood of a major event happening that destroys the price of BC's this month.

Which mean the chance of my investment/gamble doubling is greater than the chance of losing it. So for me it's a positive trade.

You could invest $100, reclaim your initial investment when price doubles and leave $100 profit in BC's.
Now you have long term exposure to BC which was gained for what imo is relatively low risk.

(Note: I have many many reservations about the medium to long term viability of BC's)

The price when I posted in the Cyprus thread two hours ago was $54 let's see how long it takes to either get to $108 or crashes big time.
 
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I believe in the longterm appreciation of BCs, too.
However, I think they're a bad hedge against shtf scenarios:
1.) You need the internet to trade them, ie you need electricity, a computer, and a web connection. All of it is need by your counterparty, too, due to the p2p structure.
2.) The internet can be regulated / monitored
3.) BCs could be either taxed or even outlawed, e.g. in the name of fighting money laundering.

Besides, the general problem is obviously the limited market size. Bid/ask spreads are pretty high and exchange rates are very volatile. Short term I think BCs are in overbought mode.
 
I agree they are a bad hedge against shtf.

Though there are some scenarios where if you need to leave your country, getting out with PM's could be difficult but BC's not so much.

With regards being in overbought mode, I don't think so.

I ask myself in this world with trillions of dollars of bank deposits under threat how much money could I see moving into a digital currency that is in principal decentralized, anonymous, and can't be artificially inflated beyond it's current construct. I can easily see more than 10 billion dollars going in there this year. Which would mean the price could easily increase 10-15 fold.

Though I also ask myself could I see the powers that be attempting to shut down/disrupt/attack BC's? Definitely. Could I see some other event occurring regarding the code/software/bug that makes BC's vulnerable and even worthless. Definitely - in fact such an event happened just last week.

So two big sides to weigh up. My conclusion is that it is VERY risky but still worth putting a little something in.
 
Take a look at this longterm chart:
We're technically VERY overbought by any metric
1. Divergence between the 50 and 200 dma
2. MACD in insane territory
3. RSI extremely overbought



Sorry for crappy quality of the chart, here's a direct link:
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSza1gSMAzm1g50za2gSMAzm2g200zi1gMACDzi2gRSIzv

This looks like a blow off top similar to June 2011 to me.

Another indicator for a short term mania is google trends:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin
Bitcoin has gone vertical over the last weeks, similar to June 2011.

We're most likely to see a smilar long term correction like in late 2011.
New highs were not reached until about 4 weeks ago.
 
Thanks for posting the graph and discussing BC's.

For me the investment story is that more and more money will flow into BC unless there is a 'security event'. The significance of the security event will determine the size of the price fall and how long the price takes to recover.

For example the blow off top you mentioned in June 2011 wasn't something that could have been predicted using overbought/sold indicators and technical analysis.



Most recently there was major event on the 12th of March


I think traditional European banks have just experienced a 'security event' & that we will see a removal of funds from banks which if graphed would look similar to the fall in BC's during June 2011 and also take a similar time to recover. (Edit: If it recovers...)
 
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These types of issues are obviously also known to tptb. If BC were ever to become a real threat, their cyberwarefare departments would be able to cause similar events.
 
Definitely they would be able to cause similar events and they are already watching it closely from what I gather.

Another threat is evolution. Even though BC can itself evolve, it was the first major crypto-currency & as such it has many flaws, most of which are beyond my ability to understand. So it could be made obsolete by something which performs the task better.
 
I reckon the relatively sudden move into bitcoin is a strong indicator that confidence in fiat is dissolving and as people wake up and look around for a relatively safe alternative, bitcoin actually becomes a consideration.

Just imagine how much more pm's would benefit right now, if not for the frantic suppression using paper gold.

ps. sorry ive been a bit low profile recently, Ive been adventuring in France and doing a crash course in eerrr cultural stuff ..........

and a warm welcome to those whove recently joined us (-:
 
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Hi Rblong2us,

Yeah definitely.

The huge price drops in the past were the result of people hacking sites but nothing being fundamentally wrong with BC itself. However the security event I quoted that happened on the 12th of March really calls into question the entire integrity and safety of BC.

Yet the fact that it didn't crash, on the contrary more money seems to be flooding in, just shows not how great BC is, but just how pretty much anything is better than fiat right now.

So as you said, just imagine how much fiat must be flowing into gold right now.
(As I mentioned in Cyprus thread the UK based Bullionbypost had their biggest trading day ever on Mon.)

They have a real problem because they can print Euros but they can't print gold.
 
Anyone else notice that the only thing that hasn't increased in price over the last year is Gold and Silver. BC is being used as a proxy to try and stear money away from precious metals just like platinum is/was. :wave:
 
stockjockee said:
Anyone else notice that the only thing that hasn't increased in price over the last year is Gold and Silver. BC is being used as a proxy to try and stear money away from precious metals just like platinum is/was. :wave:
Click to expand...

With a lot of countries going after PMs with taxes, tariffs, and export/import bans, BitCoins are seen by some as a better way to sneak your wealth out of a repressive country. On the other hand, there are many who are merely speculators trying to make a quick profit.
 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-...onsider-virtual-transactions-money-laundering
 
rblong2us said:
I reckon the relatively sudden move into bitcoin is a strong indicator that confidence in fiat is dissolving and as people wake up and look around for a relatively safe alternative, bitcoin actually becomes a consideration.
Click to expand...

but you have to put it into a proper perspective, guys... I mean, the market cap of BitCoin is really TINY, so ANY, even minuscule flow from paper -> BC, makes huge spikes in BC demand -> BC's price rise, even meteoric, DOES NOT equal to "confidence in fiat is dissolving", in a broad sense. I reckon, it is maybe .0000000(0)1 % of disillusioned paper owners, or people who scramble to get their money over borders like Argentina's, at the moment (anecdotally, pickup of BC Wallet applications from Argentina's IP addresses has recently spiked hugely), that might cause more interest in it, also BC has been hyped much recently on alt media/alt finance sites - so I hope I'll see some drop in their prices again, to load up a bit (coins)

EDIT: currently, ~11,000,000 bit coins is in existence (source: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins), @ $73 approx., gives what, ~$803millions in total market cap. It doesn't exactly take someone of JPMorgan's size, to pump & dump or do whatever they really please to that chart, up, down and sideways - and with their both hands tied in the back, and blindfolded.

Actually, knowing the predetermined rate of increase of the number of bitcoins, and the price rise, we can calculate, how much money was put into the bitcoin over a given timeframe, right? So there was approx 10,500,000 BCs in the beginning of 2013, @approx $15, so market cap at the beginning of 2013 was approx. $158millions.

So subtracting Jan 2013 market cap from the current market cap, gives a "whopping" ~$640 millions cash inflow into BitCoins (if I am correct in my thinking, somebody with a proper actuarial background please laugh at me, if I am making some stupid logical error here), so, lets say, ~$250millions inflow/month. Nothing to sneeze at, if your market cap was ~150millions at the beginning of the rally (eeek! Have I just heard some popping sound? :flail, but certainly, not the kind of "the minions have figured out, that the sky is falling, and they are all all-in into BitCoins" kind of inflow - by a mile.
 
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Granted the money in BC is tiny in the grand scheme of things.
But bearing in mind there is on average only $750 million of physical investment (non-industrially used) silver available every month (300 million ounces a year at $30 spot price) & we've just had nearly $500 million dollars go into BC in the last 30 days. I don't think that is insignificant.


The thing I take away from this is that BC is very risky but I am damn sure the silver paper market has to explode soon. With all this Banking malarchy and $500 million moving into a new extremely volatile digital currency (that none of my IT/Finance friends have heard of and my PM friends are highly sceptical of) I am sure there is at least $500 million of new money going into physical silver this month.

Edit: I can't get the pic to show up but this is the URL of the market cap of bitcoins.

http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap
 
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Bitcoin worries me since it seems to be so easily corruptible. What is to prevent someone from writing a program that simply allows them to pop in to existence out of thin air?
 
ancona said:
Bitcoin worries me since it seems to be so easily corruptible. What is to prevent someone from writing a program that simply allows them to pop in to existence out of thin air?
Click to expand...

As I understand it -

51% of 'the network' that mines the new coins & processes the transactions would have to agree to the change.

'The network' is the thousands of people around the world mining and processing bitcoin transactions on their PC's. (This is what makes BC hard for govt's to shut down because you can't shut down a single source.)

It would never be in a miner's interest to agree to create more coins than the current construct, because it would devalue their existing coins and the credibility of BC. (Only centralized power wants the ability to make new coins out of thin air because they can spend it or pass on to a small elite. But in the BC construct there is no such advantage.)

Edit: The threat is that a malicious entity changes the program and is able to get enough computing power behind to get to the magic 51%. Apparently there is A LOT of processing power behind BC already and the bigger it gets the harder it would be for a government to pull off. (However the incident I quoted on the 12th of March above is an example of where the network nearly shot itself in the foot by updating to a new version which processed things slightly differently and inadvertently created the type of 51% attack that a malicious entity would try do on purpose.)
 
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ancona said:
... What is to prevent someone from writing a program that simply allows them to pop in to existence out of thin air?
Click to expand...

I'm far from an expert on this subject, but my limited understand is that the "bitcoin mining" is exactly what you described - computers crunching numbers to create more bitcoins.

The issue is the mathematical process for deriving the bitcoin requires a certain amount of computing power. Folks are already trying to pop out bitcoins as fast as they can. It's the nature of the algorithm (and limits on computing power) that are setting the bound on rate of increase.
 
that's quite correct, PMBug - mining BitCoins, is not materially different from brute-force cracking cryptographic ciphers. As we know (or know from now on), every cipher is possible to crack by trying every possible password (in layman terms), only it might take a "little" time, for even the fastest computers, to try all these possible combinations for passwords. And once correct "password" has been guessed correctly, it is very easy to verify, that it is a correct password indeed - so once a "miner" sends a message "hey I've found one, here it is, check this out!", the other P2P nodes on the network can quickly verify it is indeed a "genuine" find - and if >50% nodes confirms the find, it is awarded to the miner who's cracked it.

BitCoins block cracking algorithm, is designed that way, that it ensures some specific "difficulty" in cracking these ciphers. The beauty of it is, that as the computing power increases over time, the algorithm is getting "harder to crack", to be awarded a new BitCoin. So there's a scarcity built in (quite like the gold's concentration in Earth's crust - it is getting harder & harder to mine it)
 
Maybe I'm missing something because it's late on a friday but there seems to be a no lose trade running on Bitcoin right now.

An online betting service Paddy Power is offering 10-1 on BC being @ $100 or below on 31st Dec 2013.

http://www.paddypower.com/bet/novel...ing/Bitcoin-value-at-end-of-2013-4993413.html

The Bitcoin price right now is $65.

So if I buy $1000 of BC and hedge it with a $100 on bet on Paddy Power how can I lose?

If BC is less than $100 on 31st Dec or goes bust, my $100 hedge at 10-1 on Paddy Power gives me a $1000 pay out so I BE. If BC is more than $100 a coin then my $1000 investment in BC is going to be worth at least $1500 so I'm in profit?
 
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Ok looks like odds have come down just in the last 20 minutes.

Just to show wasn't making it up here is the post that brought it to my attention.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156613.0

What's worse is I didn't take advantage, I jumped in the shower and thought I'll do it afterwards once I'm clearer I'm not making mistake or seeing if there's fine print etc.

Edit: Now I see their site reads 'Sorry, we currently do not offer betting on Bitcoin value at end of 2013' - must have been a lot of money going on real fast.
 
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It looks like there may already be some attempted manipulation of BC.
Well it seems a bit suspicious as there was no security event and it is probably one of the quietest trading times.

https://mtgox.com

(Click on the graph icon to view graph)

From what I can gather from the graph, an incredibly high volume for BTC - 70 000 BTC was traded over a 3 hour period between 5am-8am on a Saturday morning (Obv. a very quiet trading time) this drove the price from 68 to a low of 52, almost a 25% drop, the price has already recovered in the last 3 hours to $67.

In one hour nearly 39 000 BTC were traded, even on the 12th of March when they had the biggest security event of the year it didn't reach that volume.

Maybe some attempt to bring down the price with all the bad Cyprus news going on?
 
It comes from illiquidity. The market is not able to absorb big orders.
There is a mania going on in BC, just read this in addition what I've already written in this thread:
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blog...5706957--abc-news-savings-and-investment.html

Other news from some 400 years ago:
http://www.thetulipomania.com/

If you have invested a big chunk of your money in BC, take profits now.
 
Perhaps I am just old-fashioned, or perhaps I am simply a cranky old man, but I'll take cold hard silver over a "virtual currency" any day of the week. While I think I understand the idea and the principle behind Bit Coin, I do not trust it. All it takes is a system crash or a denial of service wide-spread attack and the system grinds to a halt. I guess I just prefer having the ability to hold a genuine bit of metal in my hand.

Either way, I am resisting this movement because I think the world would be a better place with a simple gold standard. There would be far fewer wars without fiat regimes because without resources immediately at hand, they would be too costly to wage, and the populations affected would not allow the heavy taxation required to fund war without extreme justification and the approval of the citizenry.

JMHO
 
For me Gold & Silver are the only real money & form 80% of my 'base' but even then I think that you can't have it all in one place, you have to spread it out because risk is everywhere.

Governments and the powers that be seem to have the ability to make paper markets for gold and silver, suppress them, confiscate them if needed, and will use propaganda effectively against 'hoarders' & also make it very difficult to leave the country with them. Even previous safe havens like Switzerland feel a little less safe these days from the mighty reach of foreign governments.

This does not deter me from the idea that Gold & Silver are the only real time tested money. But on top of that I feel it's also logical for me to keep some in cash, some in items for barter & for me it makes sense to put some into a digital currency. Even though it is very new and very risky. The risk-reward and advantages/disadvantages stack for me.

I also want to believe in a better future with greater peace and more personal freedom, but when I look around me I see even now, most people seem dumbed down and asleep. So I ask myself where are the most intelligent people in the world and what are they doing right now? Personally I believe a lot of the smartest people in the world are computer geeks/hacker types. Luckily these really bright people also happens to be the most aloof, work possessed, anarchist group of guys in the world. With BTC they've found something they can all believe in and can direct their combined efforts towards. I wouldn't bet against them and I also don't want to.

I'm a liberal myself not anarchist but I support the idea of competing currencies with as little government intervention as possible.
 
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...

I wish Bitcoin well, but chalk me up as holder of physical precious metals over crypto-currency...

If Bitcoin presents any threat to the system THEY WILL take it down! If it remains a tiny niche, maybe THEY will just ignore it. But, I am not putting my money in it...

I do like the idea of putting some Bitcoins on a flash drive and flying them on down to Peru... But, what could I buy in Peru with Bitcoins? And whatever (imported into Peru) products would just get stuck in Peruvian Customs anyway... Customs there holds EVERY incoming package, even by mail.
 
I see Bitcoins are trading at $108.50 atm


Looks like it took 14 days to make a 100% return.

Tulip manias are great if you sell before it bursts

(Personally I actually believe bitcoin does have some utility but very, very risky. I bought in @ $36 and not planning to sell any till $150, so I might still lose my initial investment/gamble.)
 
:clap: Good Job, unbeatable!

Re: exit strategy, why not start selling now in batches, if it is only for trade? Say, divide it into 4 tranches, sell one now (you will be almost even on your initial investment - so you can hardly loose from that point on), and sell the rest dollar-cost-averaging on your way out, as you reach your target prices? Works well for stacking, will work well for exit scenario, too - instead of trying to pick the exact top.

my $0.02

As for BC$ "fundamentals" , keep in mind that in recent weeks Mtgox has been overwhelmed with new account requests, they had a few thousands backlog with new account requests - I suppose most of that herd is rushing to buy "before it is too late". I don't see it continuing for very long, but I might be wrong of course.

Re: southern Europeans: for the Cypriots, getting your money out of the fecking bank in the first place, is the main issue, so the BC$ are of no help here. At the withdrawal rates they are allowed to, IF it was even going into BC$ in any significant amount, I don't think we would see such a crazy spike. For other southern Europeans/PIIGS - it is not difficult to move money across the borders (where BS$ would be extremely useful) - I can (still ) wire transfer online to any of the bank in Europe, no hassle at all, no need for BC$ for that.
 
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Yes you have a point.

My goal is pretty arbitrary $150 because that = +- £100
(& it would still be a tiny 1.5 billionish market cap for Bitcoin)

I intended to sell enough at that point to recoup my initial investment + a 50% return. (This would let me get a great return (to buy moar silver) and keep 60% of the coins I initially purchased in Bitcoin)

But there's no reason I can't break it up over 4 trades to avg. a $150 sell price. Yes that would make sure I dont lose everything if it crashes before $150.

Thanks, good advice!

Edit: Yes, but I think we're getting to the point where no bank is safe, so they're splitting up their savings between multiple accounts, & also buying gold & silver. But at this point Bitcoin doesn't seem much more risky than a traditional bank and they might get a great return to boot. So I can see a lot of younger people putting 2.5% of their savings into Bitcoin.
 
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Shorting BTC with a 6-9 month timeframe could be a great winner.
I couldn't find a proper vehicle, though. I'm reluctant to do it outside of an exchange with a peer who I don't know.
 
I tend to agree SA. There's regulatory risk out the wazoo on these for one thing.
For another, while the coins themselves are very difficult (effectively impossible?) to fake, the attacks on the sites that allow exchange are pretty serious (and who knows who is doing it? .gov? Who has a motive?).
 
If I was .gov and worried about BTC, I'd push this parabolic move the best I can, ie be a buyer via the PPT. The inevitable crash is going to scare so many people out that they're not going to return soon.
 
I was planning to sell a little @ $150 but haven't sold yet as I became aware there was a huge 10 000+ backlog of accounts waiting for verification on the main exchange, and a lot of big players in there.

In the last week they've taken on more staff, beefed up security etc.
So a lot of new approvals early this week hence the price rise.
But still a big backlog from what I gather.

Mtgox handling most of the trades is a major centralised weakness but the old tactic of selling coins and then attacking the exchange to cause a panic sell-off is almost expected now, so less likely to have the same effect.
 
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I think people are saying "he who defects first, defects best" on this.

While I'm interested in bitcoin as something not fiddled with by the fiat PTB so much, I'm waiting for more maturity in it before I mess with it. I often miss some of the huge spikes in new things because of that, but I do fine catching the "middle of the big moves". It's a way to ride along with and profit from the manipulation moves the big boys create.

When I get huge profit right off - a "too good to be true" situation in my judgement, I get out, as often as not - it WAS too good to be true, and goes right back down (or up if I'm short). Despite the likely unsafety of cash in the bank, it's still safer than a lot of other things for now. No one gets broke banking the profits (so far).

But that's me and my trading style. It's not the only valid style by any means, just the one that suits me personally.
 
Despite the difficulty of shutting down Bitcoin, it is also very hard to for the Fed to overtly target Bitcoin unless they do very effective 'terror'coin type PR first.

If they target Bitcoin without doing that first, then many people will realise what we already know - if they are targeting tiny markey cap digital currencies then they are definitely suppressing Gold & Silver too.

Also at the moment I believe the silver market is so tight & with the Tax haven info released etc. Cyprus etc. It might be in their interest to divert interest away from PM's in the short term.
 
swissaustrian said:
Just take a look at google trends:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin
The first spike in June 2011 corresponded with a parabolic price move, too.
Click to expand...

And that parabolic price move would have continued if the exchange wasn't hacked.

For me it's a game of are the odds that 'they' can crash/shut it down in next 2 weeks >50%? If the odds are less than that it's a buy imo because the price will double+ in that time otherwise.
 

Such a hack is just trigger. BTC is due for a massive correction by any metric.

 
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