Can someone intelligent explain why looking at charts matter at all?

You’re telling me the past 10 months hasn’t changed the perception of Bitcoin?

You are willing to risk selling to make some profit at the risk that major companies don’t start adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets, while you are on the sidelines?

Seems like a horrible bet if you believe in the future of Bitcoin.

And if you don’t believe in Bitcoin’s future, then absolutely sell it now. Why would you try to squeeze out a little more ROI on something that just went parabolic that you don’t believe in?

Technical analysis just seems really really noisy and the more things change, the less you can look to the past for answers about the future.

In the history of hockey sticks straight up, most of the time if you sold you got rewarded. He's just playing dem odds.

Btw I hope we can resume all the moon memes soon. It's the second best part of being long.

Market cap is a really weird and minimally useful number to begin with. It is just the current price/coin x # of coins. It does not reflect how much money was invested into the ecosystem (that number is far less than the market cap) and it doesn't tell you how much you can extract from the system by selling (that number is also far less than the market cap.)

It's marginally useful as a metric to compare BTC to other things by order of magnitude, but I don't think that even if the precise number of lost coins was known for sure and published that "market cap" the number would be any more or less useful for anything.

Analyst: 1,500 Bitcoins Lost Every Day, Less Than 14 Million Coins Will Ever Circulate

Good for bitcoin due to reduced supply?

Or bad for bitcoin because it's kind of silly when 1/3 of the total money supply is gone and shows how ephemeral the whole thing is.

At the present about 5.5% of the total supply of bitcoin is owned by Satoshi. Whether or not the coins are "lost" or he is merely HODLing long term, either scenario doesn't sound good for the longterm health of the currency.

Jet or bust. Someone needs to make a meme of that.

Read an article today about some guy having over ~7000 Bitcoins locked in a hardware wallet he doesn't know the password to. ****ing sucks bro.

Side note, what do people think the cheapest way to move a large amount of crypto into cash in the US? Coinbase? Find someone privately, something else?

It should make the price go up all things being equal. It's only bad if the perception leads to people not wanting to use the currency because they are afraid of losing it.

Assuming the bitcoin thesis comes true and is widely adopted, it would just make your coins more valuable.

True, Cryptopia was always a small exchange and a shady exchange imo, they listed all the shitcoins in existence. If you were to go that route choose big reputable places.

There's always a risk though, make sure you understand it and I think it's wise to think that any money you decide to put into crypto is money already lost. Have 0 expectations of seeing that money again.

I think you are a new participant, so I would not recommend trading, if done incorrectly by inexperienced people it can become costly.

You should use a dollar cost average approach into bitcoin and ethereum and perhaps a few more altcoins that you think have potential. Do your research and simply buy into them with no leverage, just spot buys.

Hold for 1-5 years and hopefully retire.

Get a ledger or trezor, store them.

You could also look into coins (and stable coins btw) that have good staking rewards, some give like 12% apy, that alone is a great yearly return.

For example I can stake ICX from my cold wallet and receive 12% apy, this coupled with price appreciation of an asset could result in life changing money.

This is crypto, you can't just trust any old project, company or exchange. They can take your crypto and run. That's why I advocate to not put all your money in and be fine with the amount in case you end up losing it all.

There's no guarantees that coins go up, only expectations. Though I do think this is still a very very young and undervalued asset class. You just have to apply common sense and do what the big players are doing. Follow the money.

Exactly this, it was the 1st thing that came to mind.

So much fud that came out recently, meanwhile big institutions are buying everything up. Don't give them your cryptos...

You think there are people who won't buy in over 50k?

The 1st is seeing salty bears cry itt, best part by far...

My top tips, clearly the bulls in this thread should step back a bit. Realize you might be in a bit of a cult.

1) Don't take advice about Bitcoin from those with a vested interest in seeing its price rise. That's like listening to CDO dealer in 2006. When prices go up, critical thought go down

2) Bitcoin is fascinating from a tech perspective, but don't fall for the rhetoric of monetary revolution. I was among the early users of Bitcoin & actually tried to use it as 'money', but it's not a monetary system. It's a system of cyber-collectibles, priced in dollars

3) By all means pass your money to a seller of these collectibles, but don't do so under the illusion that you're engaging in rebellion, or that you're doing prudent investment. You're doing what you're doing, which is buying a collectible from someone who is taking your money

4) Unlike many other collectibles, Bitcoin has no actual features, other than the fact that it can be moved around. It has a highly innovative issuance & movement mechanism, but that's somewhat meaningless if the thing being issued and moved is featureless

5) In fact, its only feature is its logo and the language that surrounds it. Without that the tokens are basically just blank digital objects, the digital equivalent of passing around fragments of limited edition clear glass beads

6) It's precisely this featurelessness that leads to the volatile price swings. The token is essentially hollow, which means there's no real-world tethering. Even CDOs were eventually 'anchored' to the real economy, but Bitcoin is largely driven by media-induced network effects

7) The rising price of Bitcoin does not signal its 'success'. It just means that another cycle of media-driven speculation has kicked in. The US dollar doesn't notice Bitcoin any more than it notices any other object priced in dollars, whether that be motorbikes or lipstick

8) The key difference with motorbikes or lipstick, however, is that we have intuitive ways of working out if their price is reasonable or not, by comparison to the prices of other goods. Given the Bitcoin is a featureless object, it escapes this same scrutiny

9) Ten years ago Bitcoin was highly important in spurring creativity, but now it's largely settled for being a means to make speculative investors rich, which is fine, but not deeply profound. If you're interested in crypto as a way to change the world, look beyond Bitcoin

All v solid, BTC being worthless is a big part of what makes it so valuable

Yeah, I've only recently come across the world of Technical Analysis. I'm not sure yet if it's 99% bollocks or just 98% bollocks.

I wonder how much of the gambling industry bitcoin has captured. I know I do almost all of my gambling transactions on the blockchain. Sites which don't accept btc are much more difficult for me to get money on/off so I typically avoid them.

Can't wait till 42k

The FOMO is real here.

can see no difference between investing in smalls coins and buying penny stocks.... yeah it can be a life changing experience, but odds are really bad.

Not sure I fit your criteria but I'll give it my best shot.

First of all, there are 2 distinct groups in the markets, those that invest and those that trade. I'd agree for the most part that those that invest don't really need to look at charts but even they should have a basic understanding imo.

You point out that bitcoins fundamentals have not changed so why even look at the technical side if things, why even bother when it's going to moon.

The thing is, what if it doesn't? What if some new fundamental news comes out, then what are you doing? Do you know when it will be a good time to sell, or buy back in?

What if you aren't in the market yet, should you of bought the 42k top? Or would of been better to buy 30k?

The fundamentals are strong right now, but what about in 3 months time or 9 months from now?

To finish this off, even long term investors could benefit from TA, the reason being is that they could sell and buy lower a few times over the course of a bull run and multiply their bitcoins. I know you are already thinking nobody can predict the markets but that's because you haven't got any TA skills.

Generally if you don't have the experience or time, and you are a holder, there's no reason, just buy in, wait, wait some more and when you are happy sell higher. Bitcoin literally only goes up, if you look on a macro level, so why even bother.

TA is actually more for traders, I think this is the mistake you are making when thinking about Technical Analysis. They use it because they are in and out of the market constantly, without TA we won't know where to enter and when to sell.

You can't trade without TA, it's like thinking you can play poker and win, without actually studying actively. It can take many years to become good at TA. There's a ton that goes into it, and then you have to combine it all and make it work, it's no easy feat, hence why so many fail or give up.

Your point regarding bitcoins fundamentals holds true though and as a technical analyst you should understand FA as well and know when to let your trades run, especially when FA is so strong.

Markets don't just go straight up though, did you know that the markets go sideways more than they trend? TA would help greatly in those conditions.

I could show you many many examples of key inflection points with very little downtime and had you bought in at those times with low leverage you'd of smashed any hodler 10 times over.

If TA actually worked over long periods of time then all the trading bots with TA fundamentals programmed in would make everyone a millionaire.. but it doesn't. Following basic TA principles to a T results in loses over time because it simply does not work over long periods of time.

You sound like someone who watches youtube ta experts

TA is mostly for traders, I pointed that out already and traders aren't looking at long time frames, they are in and out of the markets constantly.

So in essence you actually agree with me.

I'm also not sure what you are talking about regarding bots. I also didn't say "basic" TA would work over long time frames. I pointed out fundamentals can change and that will mess with your TA over a longer period.

TR hearing footsteps.

One good pump away from gg

The problem is that it is a relative landscape, and it can be hard to know how long the handle is...

TA is *mostly* voodoo hogwash being sold by people who traded before you, and want to encourage you to trade the same way after them.

"TA" might be used to support a trade that had another primary source of edge.

Think about this: anyone constantly telling you "X trade is free money" or "the market is going to go to 42k then 28k then 51k" is generally full of ****. If you think drawing lines on charts is the key to riches in a market that is now full of large, professional algo shops (Galois, CMS, Alameda, etc), then I have a bridge to sell you.

Think about this: 1% a day for 2 years is 1427x. Does your bud or random forum guy telling you how big these edges are run 9-10 figures? Even a modest $100k start 2 years ago would get him there with that kind of edge ($100k*1.01^730).