I lost money in the last bitcoin crash because I bought right before it all went downhill.
It's obvious people aren't using bitcoin to shop, but instead using it as an investment.
In one quick moment heard mentality will respond by "cashing out" their bitcoins for money (something that is actually accepted and can be used to by things) and this will create a chain reaction. One by one everyone will flip out, won't want to miss out on their cash, and start purging their bitcoins for ever lower numbers until the currency is devalued.
There will be another crash, people will forget or think "things will be different this time", and will once again start building the next bitcoin bubble. I think I might actually buy some during the crash when they're real cheap. Every year bitcoin's popularity rises and more people get suckered into it.
You only lost money if you sold your bitcoins. If you bought bitcoins at the instant before the last crash, you'd still have more than doubled your money even now after the $30 drop. Bitcoin may crash to $1 tomorrow; who cares? The real question is where will Bitcoin be a year from now, and 10 years from now?
I don't think I can have 100% confidence that I would be able to cash out of bitcoins in an efficient manner 10 years down the line, so you have to discount for that risk (whether it be technology, new regulation, etc).
It doesn't have to be "revealed as a sham", it has to simply not be worthwhile to continue using. I see the speculators as being far more harmful to its long term viability than any nation-state.
As counterexample I bought bitcoins just before the previous crash. I haven't sold them an I kept them for nearly two years an I recently sold them with better profit then I could get anywhere besides actual casino.
I don't quite understand the reasoning here -- it seems like you're advocating a long-term buy and hold approach with bitcoins, based solely on the fact that they've recovered from every crash thus far? While bitcoins certainly have a lot going for them as a currency, I think it's the "bitcoins will keep going up, buy the dips" mentally of the true believers that makes this sound like a bit of a tulip craze.
I'm not advocating buying and holding bitcoins necessarily. I'm saying short-term buying and selling of bitcoins in an attempt to outsmart the market is a bad idea. If you're going to buy, do it because you think bitcoins are valuable over the long term, or because you want to pay for something with bitcoins. Otherwise, don't buy.
You could say the same re the stock market about various swings etc
In my opinion the current volatility is more a sign of the immaturity of the investors rather than the underlying concept being flawed (many markets are conceptually flawed and absurd from an independent viewpoint however human psychology maintains some weird interest in them that keeps them afloat)
The current volatility is clearly a bubble and the best explanation that I like is that all these computer nerds across the world who haven't been involved with stock markets before have dropped their cash on bitcoins and facilitated the bubble and are unaware of the law of bubbles; that is; that they pop
The stock market has at least some value in the equity owned, bitcoins are the ultimate castle in the air investment. That doesn't mean people shouldn't use them, but they're a pretty poor investment.
Bitcoins have at least some value on the Deep Web, the stock market is the ultimate castle in the air investment. That doesn't mean people shouldn't use it, but it's a pretty poor investment.
I continue to watch the Wall Street bubble unfold, fascinated, popcorn at the ready. In the end it'll be like sending herds of cattle through a cheese grater.
Observing the last about 1 year of data (N = 363), BTC/USD has had an annualised daily volatility of 6 880 bps (100 bps = 1 percentage point). This is more volatile than the most volatile U.S. stocks.
What does this mean, practically? A Gaussian distribution is a bad fit for the data. Using the more appropriate Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution [1], we find that this is an event that would be expected once every 3 1/2 years. Still seems high since just last August we saw a -24% day.
This is what I want to happen. I want to market to crash so I can join it. I want to use bitcoins in personal projects. I want to try it out shopping, see what can be made with it, play with the projects that have done something with it.
You can join the market with $1, or $10, or $20... nothing says you have to buy at least 1 BTC. If Bitcoin continues appreciating, it may be $1000 US per BTC next year. That won't stop people that only want to spend $5 from transacting in it; it's designed to be divisible. You can hold and spend a fraction of a bitcoin. We don't round transactions to the dollar even in USD.
yes, but if I was gonna do that, I might as well tap bitcoin faucet or take a cruddy graphics card I have laying around and join a mining pool for a week.
I want to try buying things. No one's selling for 0.6 µBTC
Yes they will, everyone selling actual goods in BTC sells at the USD equivalent, if you previously wanted to play with X dollars of whatever currency you use, you can still play with X dollars of whatever currency you use.
I think there are a lot of people like me, and therefore I doubt it can crash really hard. There is no panic moment because I can afford to lose all my "investements".
It's basically (at least given the current climate of EU periphery countries) an instrument to place bets on consumer/investor confidence in the Euro. Now similar speculative behavior exists in other markets including currency, fixed income, etc, but bitcoins have such low transaction volumes compared to other avenues that its Beta (basically the "gain" in engineering terms) is going to be sky high.
There's always a new entrant into any bubble, thinking this would be "the" ideal time :)
That said, I love the concept of BTC and could see using it at some point for some thing or other, the "investments" just give me such a sour taste that I don't even want to own any at any minor cost.
Price stability is the only way to lose the interest of the investment crowd. I think it will happen eventually, but it might be so far away that another similar currency might become preferred for exchange first.
A crash today would effectively DDOS Mt. Gox. I don't think Mt. Gox would be able to stay up for the next crash. Hopefully... they're preparing for it.
It's obvious people aren't using bitcoin to shop, but instead using it as an investment.
In one quick moment heard mentality will respond by "cashing out" their bitcoins for money (something that is actually accepted and can be used to by things) and this will create a chain reaction. One by one everyone will flip out, won't want to miss out on their cash, and start purging their bitcoins for ever lower numbers until the currency is devalued.
There will be another crash, people will forget or think "things will be different this time", and will once again start building the next bitcoin bubble. I think I might actually buy some during the crash when they're real cheap. Every year bitcoin's popularity rises and more people get suckered into it.