Is Bitcoin the Next Big Thing?

[Edwin]

Over 20% up in last 24 hours, sold half my btc to usd now.

Congrats. Hope you have a beer as you contemplate your haul...

 

[ausername]

Over 20% up in last 24 hours, sold half my btc to usd now.

Probably wise, but do you have a number in mind RE: buying back in?

So if you had $100,000 BTC today, now have $50,000 in USD and $50,000 in BTC..... would the price halving when the bubble pops tempt you to buy back your BTC stake for $25,000, leaving you with the same number of bitcoin but $25k in permanently withdrawn cash, in anticipation of another bubble in the future?

Or do we think that this bubble is going to pop so hard that its going to scare a hell of a lot of Joe Public off permanently?

^^^ There's me talking about this definitely being a bubble, which means $17k is probably the new floor based on my BTC trading history

If this is a bubble, and there is a major contraction, I may take a little punt on 'buying in'. I'd personally consider a recovery in the Bitcoin price to be more likely than another LLLL.com mania in the near future.

 

[Edwin]

BTW I’ve seen some optimistic posts about Bitcoin, but this one takes the biscuit (actually, the full packet of hobnobs!)
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4130926-bitcoin-reach-142000

I love how the writer “justifies” the crazy predictions in his 3rd model by basically saying “well, they’re much lower than models 1 and 2, so...”

 

[ausername]

Our government has not yet confirmed.

https://www.coindesk.com/bulgarian-government-sitting-3-billion-bitcoin/

Wasn't btc-e based in Bulgaria before it was raided and shut down?

It came back under a different name, but don't think the bitcoin was ever returned? Coins related to that could be included in that number?

Nice boost for the public coffers of a country which sure needs some money, although you'd have to rely on the government not being corrupt for any of it to result in real infrastructure improvements.

 

[ausername]

BTW I’ve seen some optimistic posts about Bitcoin, but this one takes the biscuit (actually, the full packet of hobnobs!)
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4130926-bitcoin-reach-142000

I love how the writer “justifies” the crazy predictions in his 3rd model by basically saying “well, they’re much lower than models 1 and 2, so...”

Bloody hell Edwin, I'm about to go to the shop on an empty stomach.... I know what I'll be coming out with now, trying to watch the waistline

 

[ausername]

Had quite a scary email from somebody claiming to have a video of me masturbating on cam (taken through the camera on my PC) and demanding $350 in bitcoin for them to not publish it and send a link to all of my friends and relatives. Not Nigerian either, clearly written by somebody with an excellent command of the English language, university educated native English.

Might have been a bit scarier if not for one simple fact, I don't even have a webcam

Could imagine them getting quite a high success rate though, particularly from those who live in the type of communities where such things bring shame upon the family. My mates would find it hilarious and remind me of it every week for eternity, and my family would just say "meh, you did a lot worse at 15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23 (select any year)"

 

[Edwin]

Wasn't btc-e based in Bulgaria before it was raided and shut down?

It came back under a different name, but don't think the bitcoin was ever returned? Coins related to that could be included in that number?

Nice boost for the public coffers of a country which sure needs some money, although you'd have to rely on the government not being corrupt for any of it to result in real infrastructure improvements.

It’s not a boost unless they sell it.

If they try and sell US$3,000,000,000 worth it will be worth nothing.

I suppose they could flog the occasional coin here and there to pay for tea and cakes (see what I did there?) but there’s absolutely zero chance they would be able to dispose of the bulk of the asset in any sensible timeframe*.

(*unless they find somebody daft enough to take their holding off them off-market, thus preserving it in Bitcoin.)

 

[ausername]

Didn't Ross Ulbricht's coins get sold off in bulk? Think somebody purchased 50000 in one go. Although that was when they were worth $48m, not $850m.

Still, you'd think $48m once every quarter would make a huge difference to a country like Bulgaria, assuming that the mafia aren't in government in which case they'd probably start dishing out the contracts where a mate gets a $25m contract to build a road worth $1m and the politicians get a $10m kickback, that's often how it works!

 

[dee]

Had quite a scary email from somebody claiming to have a video of me masturbating on cam (taken through the camera on my PC) and demanding $350 in bitcoin for them to not publish it and send a link to all of my friends and relatives. Not Nigerian either, clearly written by somebody with an excellent command of the English language, university educated native English.

Might have been a bit scarier if not for one simple fact, I don't even have a webcam

Could imagine them getting quite a high success rate though, particularly from those who live in the type of communities where such things bring shame upon the family. My mates would find it hilarious and remind me of it every week for eternity, and my family would just say "meh, you did a lot worse at 15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/22 (select any year)"

If they'd been Nigerian it would have said

"we are calling from de wank"

 

[Admin]

Probably wise, but do you have a number in mind RE: buying back in?

So if you had $100,000 BTC today, now have $50,000 in USD and $50,000 in BTC..... would the price halving when the bubble pops tempt you to buy back your BTC stake for $25,000, leaving you with the same number of bitcoin but $25k in permanently withdrawn cash, in anticipation of another bubble in the future?

Or do we think that this bubble is going to pop so hard that its going to scare a hell of a lot of Joe Public off permanently?

^^^ There's me talking about this definitely being a bubble, which means $17k is probably the new floor based on my BTC trading history

If this is a bubble, and there is a major contraction, I may take a little punt on 'buying in'. I'd personally consider a recovery in the Bitcoin price to be more likely than another LLLL.com mania in the near future.

For me a good scenario would be a 30-40% drop to 10-11k. I'd buy back in. Then I'd hope to be selling some permanently in Q1 2018 at a better price.

 

[aZooZa]

Had quite a scary email from somebody claiming to have a video of me masturbating on cam (taken through the camera on my PC) and demanding $350 in bitcoin for them to not publish it and send a link to all of my friends and relatives. Not Nigerian either, clearly written by somebody with an excellent command of the English language, university educated native English.

Might have been a bit scarier if not for one simple fact, I don't even have a webcam

Could imagine them getting quite a high success rate though, particularly from those who live in the type of communities where such things bring shame upon the family. My mates would find it hilarious and remind me of it every week for eternity, and my family would just say "meh, you did a lot worse at 15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23 (select any year)"

Yes, I had that one too - ends up on a paid appraisal lander I think...

 

[Edwin]

Had quite a scary email from somebody claiming to have a video of me masturbating on cam (taken through the camera on my PC) and demanding $350 in bitcoin for them to not publish it and send a link to all of my friends and relatives. Not Nigerian either, clearly written by somebody with an excellent command of the English language, university educated native English.

Might have been a bit scarier if not for one simple fact, I don't even have a webcam

Could imagine them getting quite a high success rate though, particularly from those who live in the type of communities where such things bring shame upon the family. My mates would find it hilarious and remind me of it every week for eternity, and my family would just say "meh, you did a lot worse at 15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23 (select any year)"

You could have replied: “Got $350 and a webcam to send me? I can send you a video in return...”

 

[Edwin]

I wonder what's to stop a trader building up a position of a few thousand BTC piecemeal, split into many wallets, then taking out futures contracts betting against the price of Bitcoin, then dumping their position of actual Bitcoin in one fell swoop?

Until the futures came along yesterday, it didn't make sense for anyone to want to see the price of BTC drop (except perhaps for certain spread-betters). But now, with the option to bet against Bitcoin (in the form of futures) on the table there's incentive to encourage downward price movement as well as upward.

Added: that could be a way for any of the Bitcoin whales to have their cake and eat it too. They could take out (via various intermediaries) futures contracts betting on a fall in the price of Bitcoin, then dump their significant BTC holding and reap both the sales profits and the profits accruing from the "successful" futures bet.

(It's worth remembering that in other markets, the amounts being wagered on futures and other derivatives often far, far outweigh the size of the primary markets themselves.)

 

[dee]

The price just got "stuck" for over 3 minutes because there was a seller wanting to sell 60 Bitcoin at US$15,600 and a buyer wanting to buy 21 Bitcoin at US$15,599. Since most of the transactions on that exchange seem to be for 0.01-0.2 BTC, those 2 big trades blocked things up like a traffic jam. Once they cleared (I couldn't tell if both completed, or if one or both were taken down unfilled) the price suddenly leapt $250 in about 10 seconds before fluctuating like crazy.

Do you think it was really that one transaction that bunged up the system? I would have thought thats a miniscule amount on the grand scheme of things. I know its not as liquid as the forex market, but it wont last long if it grinds to a halt at that level.

On a side note, headed up to 17.5k today. Wow. Good skills all those with coins.

 

[Edwin]

No, I don’t know for sure. But spend 10-15 minutes watching the exchanges on the ticker site, and you should see the same sort of hiccups I noticed. You may have a better explanation - I have zero inside knowledge...

 

[dee]

No, I don’t know for sure. But spend 10-15 minutes watching the exchanges on the ticker site, and you should see the same sort of hiccups I noticed. You may have a better explanation - I have zero inside knowledge...

I dont really with bitcoin, so was was a genuine question. Although I think someone on a forex trading site mentioned one of the first futures purchases this morning was for 35 coins. Would seem it would implode pretty quickly if it did fall over so easily. I wonder how it will cope as the market get larger. Doesnt it take a while to confirm transactions on the ledger ? Guess it stops any scalping

 

[Edwin]

The futures are traded on a separate market. They have nothing to do with the Bitcoin exchanges other than that they take their price cue from one of them.

It’s like cryptocoins such as Bitcoin are horses in a race, and the futures contracts are bets on a horse. You can have a hundred or a thousand or a million bets open on a horse yet their existence doesn’t influence the horse itself. (It doesn’t run faster just because more people are betting on it, nor can the existence of bets guarantee that the horse will stay healthy enough to race.)

It’s an imperfect analogy, but it gives an idea of why the futures market doesn’t need Bitcoin except as a source of pricing info to determine which contracts are winners and losers.

 

[ausername]

However in a volatile market I can't do that because the buyers and sellers (there will be far more of them and far more active) reach a spread that I can't sit in between to fix a price. These exchanges are sharks.

There is always arbitrage. People use multiple exchanges and there will often be a disparity between prices on each. Some people sell their BTC on one exchange, and buy back in on another. Nobody is limited to switching between BTC/USD on one exchange. I can remember when i dabbled the BTC price on btc-e always used to be significantly lower than on mtgox, and people used to buy BTC on btc-e, transfer crypto to mtgox and then convert into dollars... rinse and repeat.

I always used to have more success playing the BTC/LTC market to build up the amount of BTC I had when the BTC price was rising, and then converting that BTC into cash. Nobody is limited to just switching between crypto and fiat. That was when LTC was the 2nd biggest crypto by market cap. When BTC rose LTC did too, but the LTC price would often take a little while to catch up when BTC rallied so plenty of opportunities to win. This was 2014, so BTC/USD has never been the easiest to day trade.

 

[martin-s]

I've been reading about how much electricity each transaction takes to process - and it's insane. Something like 200 kWh+

That has to change or Bitcoin is going to fall foul of the environmental brigade pretty damn quickly.

 

[Edwin]

I've been reading about how much electricity each transaction takes to process - and it's insane. Something like 200 kWh+

That has to change or Bitcoin is going to fall foul of the environmental brigade pretty damn quickly.

If Bitcoin were a country, it would be the 61st greediest in the world in terms of power consumption...
https://hacked.com/power-consumption-for-bitcoin-mining-is-now-ranked-61st-in-the-world/

The Bitcoin network already uses over $1.6 billion worth of electricity a year...
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption