I know it sounds corny, but it's clear case of supply and demand. If everything remains neutral in BTC, it will fall. It needs money to constantly be flowing in to cover the cost of newly mined coins which at the moment is $3600 coins/day @ $270 = $972,000/day or almost $30 mil a month. Doesn't take rocket science to figure out this is going much lower.

There may come a point where miners start hoarding, but the problem is they have massive electricity bills they need to pay so they still have to sell enough to cover that. Anybody wanna run an estimate on what the cost of electricity is each month?

Obviously it's supply and demand. But a ~60$ price drop in a day is pretty dramatic and is usually triggered by something. It's not like people woke up yesterday and realized 3600 coins were going to be mined.

Cost of electricity is free on an absolute basis for a number of the mining operations, as they incurred expenses to purchase renewable energy making it a sunk cost. There's a mining farm in China that is purely solar powered thanks to how cheap their government made it. Still, the bulk of mining has to pay some amount of electricity cost, but I guarantee it's cheaper than most estimates seem to suggest. The farms that are large and still in operation are in areas where it is extremely efficient to do so.

That said, the price drop is strange onemoretimes. It's far less likely, based on every historical statistical data set you want to look at in bitcoin's history, for price to have a huge sudden drop during a long trend (aka post bubble crash not included). It is far more likely to see that kind of swing on its way up. I will grant you that it's still somewhat expected though because the only people still thinking bitcoin's price should go up are those who are naive to the current market dynamics. Still remains difficult to short from a risk/reward basis but maybe I'm wrong and it should be shorted. However, I strongly disagree that $30 (or whichever number you mentioned) will be its bottom barring some specific significant event causing it to tank that far.

So; is it a good time to buy; on this dip..??

No.. give it a few years

enjoyed this read. bitcoin did come a long way this past year.

http://www.coindesk.com/mike-hearn-b...advanced-2014/

anyone buying butterfly spread?

a few months ago i posted about my friend who made 6 figures trading bit coin. think he lost it all last night going long futures 20x when i told him to go butterfly. gg

I'm speculating the big selloff recently is insider information on bitstamp problems but who knows. https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/05/bitst...address-issue/

Yea, Bitstamp crashed today.

Last year I made 4 deposits on Bitstamp and they went fine. I did one earlier this year, and they made me get verified again, and ask a 7 question form with some ridiculous questions about my intentions for their exchange... I explained I was only looking to buy some coins.

Something about it seemed pretty fishy. They might be blocking buyers because they did not have enough coins to meet the demans for cash-outs.

I am not buying the explanation generally that miners are responsible for the current crash... I think much more likely that the stolen MT Gox coins are slowly being sold.

For the lolz:

In early 2014 Bitcoin experts predict what Bitcoin price will be now:

http://foundersgrid.com/bitcoin-price

From reddit:

18,864 coins stolen from stamp?! that doesn't look like a hot wallet!

https://blockchain.info/address/1L2J...set=0&filter=0

Looks like it might indeed be a hack. From the comments:

this.

Bitstamp is fine. They lost maybe 18k coins? Now all they have to do is crash the price so they can replace them super cheap!

I currently have my coins (15) stored on my exchange. Mainly because I trust my exchange more than I trust myself, my computer, with them. Just went to log in and notice they are closing in 1 month and I have to withdraw my funds.

Guess I'll go cold wallet...

bip-38 from bitaddress.org

Not sure if I want to spread it out, or just have 1. I figure just going 1 I would be much more likely to just sit on it...which is good.

Saw that today aswell. To bad I liked VOS service and even bought from there last week. I withdraw my coins as soon as I buy them though. Trezor seems alot easier if you don't trust yourself or computer.

I just use it offline on a laptop that basically I never connect to the internet anymore. It's too old to do anything worthwhile.

I generate the wallets, and plug my printer in.

it's that easy!

Ya I know it's easy. I've done it before.
First time with an impossible to remember password that I wrote down, but can't remember my own tweaks to what I wrote down, so 2 coins lost.
Lesson learned. Shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a 100% memorizable secure password that ideally is uncrackable.

Another method I use for colder storage is I have electrum installed on my mom&dads imac over the holiday.

They basically use their imac to read news, check email, pay bills, and other general internet stuff. The likelihood of them ever picking anything up is basically zero. Now combine this with the likelihood of me ever typing in my password to conduct transactions on their imac= zero, and if/when i do; it will be for all the coins.

I cant get a security deposit box where I live anymore, but I just generated regular paper wallets and put them in my parent's box.

I think though if you're going to have them printed out and around your house/apartment it's a good idea to use bip38. I think it's generally harmless to have a picture/polaroid of your password and to hang it up somewhere or to keep it in a book. No one who finds it is going to be able to figure it out.

What about if the imac crashes. Do you have backups?

yeah i have the seed written down; so i can recover it whenever i wanted to.

Bitstamp Claims $5 Million Lost in Hot Wallet Hack

http://www.coindesk.com/bitstamp-cla...t-wallet-hack/

Ouch.

Someone needs to develop a handshake protocol. I message my exchange with something like "OK to send to <address>". Exchange replies yes in a message signed with <address>'s private key, and indicates that address is linked to my account. Only then do I send coins to that address. Could be automated by wallet software. The communication channel needs to be secure even in the event the private key to <address> is stolen, such that the hackers cannot spoof a reply.

Sounds like someone compromised the servers at their physical location at which point you are screwed no matter what protocol is used.