BITCOIN

Exodi

DannyCarey said:

I could have just disappeared and said nothing but I thought I might as well be honest and post this for no other reason but to tell people to be careful... 

One of the most self aware posts I've ever read - we could all learn a lot from this.

Enjoy the new home theatre system!

Scottex99

Test Test Test 

Scottex99

DannyCarey said:

I have been meaning to post this here for the last week or so...

Confession time... I have been selling my Bitcoin throughout the last number of months and I have approx 25-30% of it left. This is not the first time that I have bought and sold bitcoin. However it may soon be my last. 

The slightly comical thing is that most recently I have sold Bitcoin and spent that money on 100% guaranteed deprecating assets, such as a lovely new TV, a sound system and other home theatre technology, amongst other home improvement things to the immediate benefit of my family. 

Bitcoin investing to me has always been the "fun" / WGAF portion of earned income (I am mostly investing in FTSE Global All Cap Index, boring!). A small (but certainly not insignificant) percent of money each month was thrown into Bitcoin. Selling recently and buying this stuff which my family love feels like a win over a long wait of "maybe it will go up again" and I'll have even more fun money that I am not making any meaningful use of. 

Over the last 2 years, I got really sucked into the Bitcoin matrix. I read approx a dozen books on the subject and listened to endless podcasts, which was exciting and deeply fascinating, as many books and podcasts go deep with philosophical debates and a deep investigation on how the world economy works. I felt like I knew something others didn't, or simply could not see. 

There is no doubt some brilliant innovation going on by bitcoin core developers, as a techie, I can appreciate it. I bought the cold card and learned how to put bitcoin into cold storage. So secure and pretty amazing, but at the same time, its a faff and so easy to screw it all up if you are not super careful. There's just no way that would work or be acceptable to modern society.

I started to lose interest in all honesty. Was it all a play thing? It didn't feel like it at the time. 

Over time, I noticed the same conversations and points from the "bitcoin thought leaders" go round and round in circles. I observed the defensiveness and censoring that went on for anyone who raised questions / "FUD" that didn't go along with the agreed narrative.

This thread maybe had some of that too, although now I seem to be on the other side of the fence, and that's ok. I don't mind being wrong, as long as I end up in the right place.

The biggest champions of bitcoin are on twitter every day parroting the same stuff, trying to promote it because they need to promote it. Their retirement depends on it. It's scary how many of of these people seem to be all in. Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme, as there is no central figure running it, but it absolutely needs new money piling in to keep the price up. 

A few months ago, I took the decision to disconnect from all blogs, YouTube videos, tweets and just about anything to do with Bitcoin to have a mental break. I was consuming far too much and I knew it was not healthy.

In that time I didn't miss it, or seek it out and now I am debating whether to sell the remaining BTC or wait and see if it goes up a bit more.... I don't know if I can be arsed to wait to the halving. I genuinely wonder if 60k is the absolute top, it happened when we were all locked up during covid and bored. Maybe that is its run. Old me would say you don't understand bitcoin, but I know I do. I understand very well the value proposition, I just don't think it can defeat any large government fiat currency, as depressing as that sounds, we are all stuck on that hamster wheel of inflation for the foreseeable. 

Note I have been wrong and will be again, many times, so Bitcoin could very well moon again... 

I could have just disappeared and said nothing but I thought I might as well be honest and post this for no other reason but to tell people to be careful... 

Very honest, I’m sure plenty of people felt the same.

Did you sell the rest then and do you just not check the price now?

ETFs are a very interesting angle, plus halvening and possible money printing. I’ll 100% admit it really is boom or bust in terms of interest and that is very often price related too. I’m back on the podcasts and newsletters and still work in the industry, but also not getting carried away either.

i did hear an interesting fact yesterday. If you’d bought at the very top ($69k) but then bought every single week since then and now, you’d be +38%

Hexane

But Scott, for those of us that found this interesting, it's all a bit quiet. What should we do now? Keep searching dead threads like this one? Or do I need to sign up to "podcasts and newsletters" to follow what you guys are up to?

tbh I've just sunk another 10K in an HSBC fund.

DannyCarey

I am still holding my remain stack yes Scott, I am comfortably the black again so it is somewhat tempting to sell it all.. but its not a life changing amount now so I am happy to let it ride the waves a little more. If it gets to around $55,000 I will likely sell it all. 

boingy

In my one and only dabble in Bitcoin I managed to buy at a really bad time about 18 months ago and it has only just returned to the black this week. So I've sold up and after costs I've made a handsome profit of about a tenner. That's probably the end of my Crypto adventures. 

Aegis

boingy said:

In my one and only dabble in Bitcoin I managed to buy at a really bad time about 18 months ago and it has only just returned to the black this week. So I've sold up and after costs I've made a handsome profit of about a tenner. That's probably the end of my Crypto adventures. 

You did quite well compared to some others. It's always worth remembering that bitcoin is a zero-sum game.  What that means is that you can imagine it a bit like everyone chipping in £5 in coins, putting them all on a table, then saying to the room "take what you can" and wondering off.  The average "return" for all investors is zero, but the dispersion of those results changes enormously depending on whether you get to the table of coins first or last.

Scottex99

How is that different to gold or stocks, aside from dividends and “gold can be used to make watches”

I don’t think it’s zero sum at all. 

I’ve bought at every possible price between $3k and $60k.

I bought at ~$17k in Jan this year when whoever was on the other side was happy to sell to me.

And I’ll sell sometime next year, hopefully in the $60-80k range. When someone will happily buy too.

its a free market, nobody that got in super early needs to convince people to push the price up, the market, hard money and economics does that job well enough 

Scottex99

Hexane said:

But Scott, for those of us that found this interesting, it's all a bit quiet. What should we do now? Keep searching dead threads like this one? Or do I need to sign up to "podcasts and newsletters" to follow what you guys are up to?

tbh I've just sunk another 10K in an HSBC fund.

Yeah I don’t mind keeping it going, just can’t be bothered with all the arguments like last time.

Even though I’ve worked in Crypto since 2018, the bear markets are boring and I tend to cut out the newsletters and podcasts, but I’m back in them now, haha.

It’s pretty interesting to see the psychology.

”oh it’s dead, it’s going to 0”
”wait a sec it’s come back a bit”
”it’s doing pretty well now”
”I can’t believe I didn’t buy loads at the bottom, please will it go down in price so I can buy more”

On the Margin is really good. Nice mix of Crypto, Macro and Rates.

Markets daily by Coindesk is a good daily 10 mins too.

Johnjdc

Scottex99 said:

How is that different to gold or stocks, aside from dividends and “gold can be used to make watches”

I don’t think it’s zero sum at all. 

I’ve bought at every possible price between $3k and $60k.

I bought at ~$17k in Jan this year when whoever was on the other side was happy to sell to me.

And I’ll sell sometime next year, hopefully in the $60-80k range. When someone will happily buy too.

its a free market, nobody that got in super early needs to convince people to push the price up, the market, hard money and economics does that job well enough 

It's different from stocks because companies do other things to make money, and grow their underlying assets and/or pay out dividends, so it is possible for the amount of money taken out of shares in a company in the long term to be greater than the amount that was put in, with that difference being made up of the company's net profits. That's a fundamental difference not a minor "aside from".

It's not that different from gold in that it's a thing that only has value because enough people agree it has value, and can only really be traded profitably by finding someone else who believes it has a greater value. The main differenceis that the agreement about it having value arose more recently than the invention of the iPhone, rather than at about the same time as the building of the Pyramids.