What are your thoughts on BitCoin?

[Kozmos]

The new hands are invested emotionally, a seasoned friend called the December-January events pretty spot on well in advance. I don't mind the increased flow of capital in the market, but the born-again market geniuses at work and family were getting tiresome.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The new hands are invested emotionally

Yes, this is worrysome. Everyone is, to some degree, aware of "the bubble" hence why so many people sold at a loss yesterday and screwed themselves over. A market full of highly emotional investors is problematic because a mundane dip can evolve into a full blown crash due to snowballing. I genuinely don't know what I would prefer -- more money flowing into crypto or more market stability. Hard to say.

 

[Archbob]

Well, I don't think its the manipulation that is causing the markets to crash, its the news out of Korea. They seem to not want people to speculate so they are thinking of making it illegal and close down all the exchanges. Its not a few people or a group of people manipulating that is bringing down the price. Its a government(probably influenced by bankers and the traditional finance industries who stand to lose money, power, and influence, if the new economy takes off) that is threatening to shut down something because they don't like this new shiny thing.

This whole "speculation: excuse is utter BS to me honestly. Its my hard earned money. If I want to put it safely in a bank, I should be able to. But, if I want to piss it away in a poker match or in Crytos, I should be free to do so also.

Mark Cuban also plans to accept bitcoins next year for Dallas Mavericks tickets so there are going to be new ways to spend Cryptos in the future.

 

[Narz]

That's total market cap from https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/ . Not sure how reliable the source is, but that drop is pretty scary. Maybe not unprecedented? But still pretty big. Personally I'd say that "this time it's different", and actually the market will level off well below it's previous peak.

I disagree that it's scary & am not selling.

There is alot of people trying to destroy the crypto market & so far it's taking it's licks and keeps bouncing back. If I'm wrong I don't lose anything (I've made back my initial investments & then some). To me it's all Monopoly money til I cash out & I have no intention of cashing out even after it recovers back to pre-crash levels. Waiting for my portfolio (bits, lites, etheirum, ripple and a few others) to at least double before I start cashing out.

 

[Narz]

Yes, this is worrysome. Everyone is, to some degree, aware of "the bubble" hence why so many people sold at a loss yesterday and screwed themselves over. A market full of highly emotional investors is problematic because a mundane dip can evolve into a full blown crash due to snowballing. I genuinely don't know what I would prefer -- more money flowing into crypto or more market stability. Hard to say.

It's crashing cause everyone is p****ing out when their family/friends/coworkers/media make fun of them & tell them to sell,sell,sell. Selling at a loss is just dumb, if you're gonna do that why invest at all?

 

[Archbob]

It's crashing cause everyone is p****ing out when their family/friends/coworkers/media make fun of them & tell them to sell,sell,sell. Selling at a loss is just dumb, if you're gonna do that why invest at all?

They are selling because they are weak... weak-willed fools that listen to their weak-willed friends and family. Such weakness must be weeded from the pool.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Hodling bitcoins and a number of alts here since a 3 o 4 months ago. Tried trading as a noob at first and of course lost money. Lesson learned and i am holding against wind and tide now and considering mounting my own GPU mining rig with profits. Now It is the perfect time to buy before price goes to the moon again, not to sell. Buy and HODL at least till BTC reaches 20000 or so, after a bearish week the rise has already begun it seems.

 

[Mise]

So, how many of you who currently hold (or have held in the recent past) BTC or other cryptocurrencies have now cashed out or are planning to cash out in the near future?

And how many of you are holding (or buying more)?

Is there any way of doing a poll in a post???? Otherwise I'll just note it down here for numbers. (I'm not interested in people who aren't playing the game at all...)

Buy/Hold

1. Narz
2. Thorgalaeg
3. Archbob

Sell

1. yung.carl.jung (but buying other altcoins)
   
2. Kozmos (but buying other altcoins)

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I don't see much point at all in holding BitCoin. It's going to be one of the bigger losers in 2018, transaction costs and speed are horrible, and even if it DOES grow, BTC going up 1000$ is only like a 10$ increase. BitCoin going up to 20k at this point would only double your initial investment. Completely marginal. Might aswell invest in Amazon stocks at that point, it's safer and might make you more money. The best way to make "safe" money I think is to swing trade BTC whenever there is a crash and to convert it back to FIAT once the market recovers. But for that a decent amount of money is needed to make it worthwile, so for me being poor that is not an option.

Personally I put some money into promising altcoins that I think will do well in 2018 and also put ~100USD into two total noname coins with extremely low market cap. One of them has almost doubled my investment in a matter of two days, regardless of crash. However that is pretty risky. I also think buying ETH on the next crash and holding it long term can make a decent amount of money.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Investing in incipient altcoins is part of my strategy too. But BTC leads the way to the other currencies. Take this crash for instance. Most alts have crashed deeper than bitcoin itself. BTC, Eth, LTC and such are the "safe" option, minor alts are very risky but by choosing the right ones you can literally get rich in a couple of weeks. However being too ambitious can lead you to lose all your money. So i think it is better to put more money in the ten big coins and then a smaller part in some interesting little alts. Anyway, doubling your investment in a year is not a marginal thing but an amazing feat to achieve.

That you describe in your first paragraph however sounds much easier that it really is. It is pretty, pretty, preeetty hard in fact. Nobody really knows what the market is going to do in the next minute. I avoid any form of short term speculation. It is the safest way to give your money to the proffesional traders that has a deeper knowledge of the market than you do or worse, to the whales trying to control it. Instead i try invest wisely and wait to see what happens.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's crashing cause everyone is p****ing out when their family/friends/coworkers/media make fun of them & tell them to sell,sell,sell. Selling at a loss is just dumb, if you're gonna do that why invest at all?

I'll point out again, bitcoin is not an investment. Buying bitcoin creates no productivity and provides no employment. Bitcoin is a commodity, and you're a speculator.

I know it's pedantic, but one of the greatest modern economic ills is people misunderstanding what an 'investment' is. Now, obviously I hope that you will get money from your playing in the market - and even more importantly, I hope you use that money wisely to improve your life. I think of you as a good egg, so I am not worried about wishing you the best. But I'll just point out, you're not investing, you're speculating. You're providing price support for a commodity that is mostly hoarded, with the hopes that it will either be increasingly hoarded or will be used as a type of money eventually.

 

[Kozmos]

I cashed out the majority before the recent dip, but I reinvested part of it into some of the more mundane crypto-prospects that I think will lead somewhere in the far, far future.

 

[Bamspeedy]

It's crashing cause everyone is p****ing out when their family/friends/coworkers/media make fun of them & tell them to sell,sell,sell. Selling at a loss is just dumb, if you're gonna do that why invest at all?

Some are worried the market will never recover. Better to lose 10-20% than to lose 100%. It may well indeed recover, and if it does then you are right, it is foolish to sell now. Stock market is the same way. Historically, the stock market always recovers from a crash, the problem is that sometimes it may take a few years. Some people don't have the luxury of waiting a few years, and crypto currencies don't have the historical reliability of the stock market (BTC may have eventually always recovered up to this point in it's existence, but it's life span is very short compared to the stock market).

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I think we should look at the big picture. Less than a couple of months ago bitcoin was at 6,000. Now it is 12,000. If all crashes were like that...

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Investing in incipient altcoins is part of my strategy too. But BTC leads the way to the other currencies. Take this crash for instance. Most alts have crashed deeper than bitcoin itself. BTC, Eth, LTC and such are the "safe" option, minor alts are very risky but by choosing the right ones you can literally get rich in a couple of weeks. However being too ambitious can lead you to lose all your money. So i think it is better to put more money in the ten big coins and then a smaller part in some interesting little alts. Anyway, doubling your investment in a year is not a marginal thing but an amazing feat to achieve.

That you describe in your first paragraph however sounds much easier that it really is. It is pretty, pretty, preeetty hard in fact. Nobody really knows what the market is going to do in the next minute. I avoid any form of short term speculation. It is the safest way to give your money to the proffesional traders that has a deeper knowledge of the market than you do or worse, to the whales trying to control it. Instead i try invest wisely and wait to see what happens.

In that case - and you are 100% correct, alt coins tanked much harder than either BTC or ETH - I would just put my money in Tether. Because then instead of losing 20% you lose nothing, or close to nothing. You could of course do it like Kozmos did, but then you'd have to trade all your alts to ETH or LTC, send them to GDAX or Coinbase, trade them for FIAT and you've already lost a lot of time and payed a lot of trading fees.

I don't really see how it is hard to make money swing trading. You anxiously wait for the dip to occur and watch GDAX, you try to figure out roughly where the bottom/support is and then you buy market order, instantly set a stop-loss order and you're safe from losing more than 1% or 2% of your initial investment, even if you decide to walk away from the screen. The real problem with this is that you are likely not making more than 5% or 10% of your initial investment, minus fees, which are much, much higher for swing trading compared to holding.. Therefore it is way less effective than the hold strategy, especially if you have less money available.

I cashed out the majority before the recent dip, but I reinvested part of it into some of the more mundane crypto-prospects that I think will lead somewhere in the far, far future.

Smart move. Either cashing out or switching to Tether was by far the best thing one could have done to benefit off the crash. Of course the real deal is buying for cheap while the market is collapsing. It takes some balls and some degree of wishful thinking, but in this case it would've made you a lot of money.

 

[Kozmos]

Can't really credit it to me. I just listen to a very good friend who has been all over this market for several years now. I made a few good calls on my own, but I can't match the breadth and length of his knowledge and experience and I'm too strapped for time to do more thorough investigations and tracking of the market gestalt on my own.

 

[Commodore]

It's crashing cause everyone is p****ing out when their family/friends/coworkers/media make fun of them & tell them to sell,sell,sell. Selling at a loss is just dumb, if you're gonna do that why invest at all?

This sounds like you are getting upset that Bitcoin is crashing and are looking for someone to blame to avoid looking foolish for having so much confidence in it. It's like you are saying "No, no, no, I was right about Bitcoin, it's just all these other fools that ruined it for everyone else!"

Also I have to ask: If you've already made your money and don't stand to lose anything, why are you getting so upset that it's crashing? If it's all "Monopoly money" to you, then this shouldn't bother you at all. The quote above are not the words of someone who isn't worried or upset. Nor are they the words of someone who is confident in their investment/speculation.

 

[Narz]

I don't feel foolish.

Sounds like you're more upset than me. Why?

 

[Birdjaguar]

A lot of one's attitude will be based on the actual value of the gains or losses rather than just percentages. Losing 40% of $500 is one thing, but if it's 40% of $30,000 one might think differently. Also, it is important to consider what portion bitcoin is of one's overall investment pool.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Did I just read someone claiming a 100% gain on invenstment was "completely marginal"?

I did! With clear indication that the poster meant a 100% gain is too small.

Jesus Christ Dunning Kreugerrands are a hell of a drug.

That said I hope all of you got filthy rich, legit.