Bitcoins

Conrad

csm888 wrote: »

Its gambling if you look at it using short intervals, minutes & hours. If you take weekly, monthly candles on a logarithmic chart, its not much of a gamble, there is tremendous short term volatility but over time the trend is unmistakable. The trend is orders of magnitude over years. The volatility is 50% over hours. Traders always manipulate small markets to their advantage, and this won't stop until the market deepens considerably.

You can speculate, invest, gamble call it what you will, on something that is without doubt gaining some considerable momentum. Or you can stand on the side lines, swimming in negativity, craving the status quo, and not believing that some radical idea can come along and significantly change world finance, and there is a small chance you might have the satisfaction of 'i told you so' in a year or two.

A swing of this magnitude in such a short period tells you this is a gamble pure n simple, another tulip paradigm.

One thing I've learned is that it's better to get rich slowly than risk a big proportion of wealth on a dice roll that no one on this Earth could predict.

Incidentally I could buy another property here and make 10% capital gain plus about 8% yield in the coming year, why would I want risky bitcoins when far more steady alternatives exist? Imagine the income on such a property over the coming 40 years........., whilst the capital sum on the mortgage gradually deflates to become a very modest debt in the future, all the while rents generally rising with inflation.

dryhat

Satoshi wrote: »

Lots of things have been currency sticks shells paper, only two things are money in and of themselves - gold and silver.

Historically, people used sticks, shells etc. as currency/money in the absence of gold or silver.

As soon as gold or silver becomes available, people use those instead because they are better forms of money.

Up until 5 years ago, there was no alternative currency which could tick all of the boxes that gold and silver does.

Now, not only is there an alternative, but something which is better.

JohnRo

Satoshi wrote: »

Currency and money have the same qualities but money is a lasting store of value over long periods of time. IE thousands of years.

Lots of things have been currency sticks shells paper, only two things are money in and of themselves - gold and silver.

For thousands of years the momentary cycle has repeated where montary systems go from money over to currency and back again. Bitcoin is like fiat just currency. The cycle will repeat again and monetary systems will sometime in the future be based on gold and silver money again this will kill bitcon.

Money is just a concept. Currency is the practical implementation of that concept. BTC wins this battle on just about all counts.

Unless we end up back in the stone age, gold and silver have had their day as a currency, though clearly not as a store of value.

paddyrg

csm888 wrote: »

Or you can stand on the side lines, swimming in negativity, craving the status quo, and not believing that some radical idea can come along and significantly change world finance, and there is a small chance you might have the satisfaction of 'i told you so' in a year or two.

My choosing not to invest in gold at its peak isn't causing me much pain now. I personally think the maths behind bitcoins is clever, but their valuation little more than speculation and due for a fall. You seem to disagree.

Time will tell, whether in 2 months, years or decades. You may be right and buy yourself an island, sell at a loss and keep schtum, or lose your shirt and sob wishing you'd cashed out at $900. For you I hope it's the first - I don't care enough to 'I told you so' if it goes the other way. I just think it's important to flag to people that free money comes at a price of significant risk, and that in one day their speculation not just could theoretically halve, but has near enough managed to so within a few hours.

Numbers seem to be rising again, but the market displays so many hallmarks of a bubble I choose not to go near it myself, and will stick to nice, safe tulip bulbs, pork belly futures and gold. All of those had plenty of good reasons cited as to why they weren't bubbles and that nonbelievers were fools.

dryhat

Conrad wrote: »

Incidentally I could buy another property here and make 10% capital gain plus about 8% yield in the coming year, why would I want risky bitcoins when far more steady alternatives exist? Imagine the income on such a property over the coming 40 years........., whilst the capital sum on the mortgage gradually deflates to become a very modest debt in the future, all the while rents generally rising with inflation.

I have made enough money from Bitcoin in the last 10 weeks to be able to buy a 3 bed semi in my area for cash.

Think of the income on that, should I choose to go down that route.

MercilessKiller

Hi All

I wanted to chip in my view as a network security guy, but also someone who's very business orientated.

Firstly from the technology standpoint, BTC is very secure and insecure all at the same time! The way the mining works along with the encrypted address system is fascinating, interesting, and makes sense - From a technical perspective, it seems solid...

BUT - No one knows who created it (if anyone replies to this saying otherwise, they're wrong and guessing using whatever "facts" are out there. Unfortunately, there is no official confirmation of who or what created BTC). This is a big red flag, as while the intention may be good, who knows what potential blockers BTC may hit in the future. Mining is set to get harder as time goes on, and who knows what this could release into the BTC world... There could be some surprises, we just don't know.

The reason the price has fluctuated so much is because it is a "true" market, in which the price reflects what people are willing to buy and sell at. This isn't happening because the currency is verified as secure, but because Joe Bloggs is offering Mike Smith £x for 1 BTC. That's it!

With my network security hat on, the currency excites and scares me at the same time. Which not many things do these days.

Now the business hat - I decided to invest £2k into BTC when the price was at $60 many months back. I used an alternative to MTGox as that one seemed to be down quite a lot, but worryingly, my entire £2k disappeared when I made an international bank transfer. My bank confirmed it had been sent, but the trader confirmed it hadn't been received.... Not a good start to my BTC experience.

After months of battles with various banks, I finally did recover the money incredibly. The price had now risen to $150 so the value of my £2k in BTC had considerably lowered. Due to being VERY angry at this, I decided to refrain from investing afterall and kept my money in my pocket.

Thus, now, everytime the BTC Ticker on twitter shows up in my feed with a higher price than the last time, I feel a slight sinking feeling in my stomach as it seems $150 wasn't a bad price in comparison to what we're looking at today... That's the magic of investing though - The opposite could have happened and I could be pretty happy today!

Either way, this is a risk of epic proportion... It's a huge risk. It can be a VERY rewarding risk, but there's a high change it could crash at the same time. If you have spare money, go for it - Go crazy! You'll make a killing. You may lose a lot (the people that invested at $900 aren't feeling too good right now), but the chances are the price is going to keep rising forever seeing as there's a limited amount of BTC to go around!

I've taken a back foot on this one so just watch everyone else going crazy about it.. Just wanted to share my thoughts

MercilessKiller

dryhat wrote: »

I have made enough money from Bitcoin in the last 10 weeks to be able to buy a 3 bed semi in my area for cash.

Think of the income on that, should I choose to go down that route.

Just because your risk paid off doesn't make the risk necessarily "+EV", which is a poker term for plus expected value (i.e a profitable move).

If that was a justification, anyone that took any risk and succeeded would do it everytime! That's a recipe for disaster. If the odds aren't known, this can't be used as an argument.

Marazan

Incidentally, is Bitcoin still limited to 7 transactions per second?

csm888

paddyrg wrote: »

My choosing not to invest in gold at its peak isn't causing me much pain now. I personally think the maths behind bitcoins is clever, but their valuation little more than speculation and due for a fall. You seem to disagree.

Time will tell, whether in 2 months, years or decades. You may be right and buy yourself an island, sell at a loss and keep schtum, or lose your shirt and sob wishing you'd cashed out at $900. For you I hope it's the first - I don't care enough to 'I told you so' if it goes the other way. I just think it's important to flag to people that free money comes at a price of significant risk, and that in one day their speculation not just could theoretically halve, but has near enough managed to so within a few hours.

Numbers seem to be rising again, but the market displays so many hallmarks of a bubble I choose not to go near it myself, and will stick to nice, safe tulip bulbs, pork belly futures and gold. All of those had plenty of good reasons cited as to why they weren't bubbles and that nonbelievers were fools.

Wise words.
I've been through a couple of Bitcoin bubbles and there are always people telling you this time it's different and the price will hold. This time there are different features, there is huge interest from china and there is a partial green light from the US government, but do these have any enough weight to hold the price at current levels, and will the traders attack a weakening market depth with huge sells to start a panic with the newbies.

To be honest, since the rise in price, the percentage of my net worth in Bitcoin is already way to high for comfort (40%) and I need to re-asses the risk and decide if I went to stay in or take some profit. But greed is a nasty beast......

dryhat

MercilessKiller wrote: »

Just because your risk paid off doesn't make the risk necessarily "+EV", which is a poker term for plus expected value (i.e a profitable move).

If that was a justification, anyone that took any risk and succeeded would do it everytime! That's a recipe for disaster. If the odds aren't known, this can't be used as an argument.

Bitcoin's price rises (both recent and generally) are based on solid fundamentals.

Risky, maybe. But gambling it is not.