Given that BTC was near $5k a few days ago, selling BITCOIN in reaction to a China ICO ban seems absurd. Weak hands are weak.

Of course, Eth losing its only use-case in China is a big deal.

The thing that is worrying some is a couple exchanges are interpreting the release as all crypto that isn't a state backed one is not legal to be traded sold bought ect. They also believe it makes the China bases exchanges themselves against the law.

The overreaction in terms of its affect on bitcoin may possibly be true.. But this is a big deal for the rest of the crypto world. Not so much if its only an ICOs ban and better regulation of new ones.. But if it's what some are speculating then it's going to be red for a while.

(Am quoting from the Alt-coin thread as well )


My venture into crypto has been kind of a fail


Guess at first, was trying to guestimate a market valuation - to try and figure out what part of the price was underlying value, and what part was bubble?


Was also trying to keep track of news, to try and figure out which way the price of Bitcoin might go next - and have been noticing that as well ... that even though China's supposed to account for something like 90% of all Bitcoin trades, every time they do a crack down, the price still winds up exploding a couple of months later??

And then with this new news - it almost sounds like it should have been a good thing for Bitcoin? Yet today the price is down??


Next, wondered if maybe it might work as a long-term investment, since it does have value that should cause the price to rise in the long-term. But went to take a look at gold, since people seem to be investing in it in a similar way - and wasn't there like a patch where the price didn't hit a new high for something like 30 years?


Then, finally decided that with the growth of Bitcoin being so explosive - finally tried just taking a leap of faith by investing as much as was willing to lose. Wound up buying in at $3k, then balked at $2.5k and sold everything ... and then it went all the way up to $5k, fml



Question: Guess Bitcoin's maybe a fantastic opportunity for investing amounts of money people are truly willing to risk losing ... is that how it seems to everybody?

Not sure what that amount truly is for me - may be too poor to truly be willing to risk much right now

Basically the entire "crypto" market is a place where if you can't afford to lose it, don't invest it there. I don't think anyone is capable of accurately predicting any of these markets. Bit coin and eth are the most stable but even then who knows what's going to happen.

Bitcoin either has +EV or it doesn't. If it does, you should be invested in it. How much? The right amount relative to your financial situation and risk tolerance. It's like a poker game where your Bitcoins are playing all the time. They might win some and they might lose some, but over time the +EV materializes into gains. If Bitcoin is -EV you shouldn't be invested in it.

Trading in and out makes no rational sense, unless you have the ability to detect when Bitcoins are +EV and when they are -EV. Do you have that skill? Probably not. So rationally you just buy and hold, or stay away completely.

Thanks


Wish my experience with Bitcoin had been better - but seem to have a real talent for screwing things up by buying high and selling low, so ...

Maybe if my timing had been better, and had managed to build up a 20% cushion or whatever, might have been a bit more willing to stick with it and weather the storms? But the -16% drop right off the bat really wigged me out

Am invested in BABA now instead - who knows, that could be even more speculative than Bitcoin ... guess all investing's a bit of a gamble, so GL to us all with whatever we choose to put or money on







Guess with long-term investing, maybe the goal might be to try and maximize EV for a given timeline?

So to be investing in Bitcoin as a long-term investment (irrespective of short-term variance), one might maybe want to believe it stands the best chance out of all the alternatives of having the largest returns over time?

maybe, i don't know

When you buy something you believe in and it drops in value, average down.

Be careful with Chinese investments, they manipulate every market they're in.

The last half is true for the entire alt coin market outside of the big ones. One whale with a stack of bitcoin can and will manipulate the hell out of the prices.

This stuff is so much different than traditional stocks. There's no rhyme or reason to the swings of the market a lot of the time.

Am multi-quoting from the various different crypto threads again



RE: Alibaba - yes, the fact that Alibaba's subject to Chinese regulations are a bit concerning - also haven't had the chance to use their services, so guess that's something else that maybe makes it different from Amazon?

RE: Bitcoin - was looking at the last drop in price back in June ... guess back then did the price drop 33% for no apparent reason? So if that's maybe a standard swing for Bitcoin, maybe there's a chance this time the price *might* drop as low as $3,350, even though the fundamentals look good (Like 66% of $5k)?



(the rest of this is mostly me just talking to myself ... out loud )

Like at around $3,350, guess in the unlikely even that China bans Bitcoin, or something else huge causes the price to drop all the way down to like $1k, would be okay with that (although that seems unlikely)? Although more probably the price would likely go back up to $5k - and decently soon, especially with Russia warming to crypto, etc?


Probably there's a good chance the price won't ever drop as low as $3,350 again - but if the price does drop that low, probably it'd be crazy not to buy when there's so much hype?


SUMMARY: Would like to buy back into Bitcoin - this time around, am going to try to buy low, and not high Although it's so hard to know where the low is - maybe it's at the low *right now* and am missing the boat ... again???




(Gosh, am such a fish ... eeeh, who knows )

LOL at BABA over BTC. You obviously don't understand or believe in your investment to get shaken out so easily. You need to learn about the stuff so you can make an informed decision.

Am always open to learning more - if you have any links you'd care to share, that'd be appreciated, thanks

This was not much of a drop when compared to previous trends. At least 5-6 times it has skyrocketed to an all time high, and then proceeded to drop 60-70% immediately after.

Trusty, if you are seriously bothered by a 15-20% drop then investing in a single instrument, either BTC or BABA, is probably not a good idea for you, if we're being realistic. You're almost certainly going to get more utility from putting your money in a Vanguard ETF like VOO.

You need to have been in this game a few years to realize China has "banned" bitcoin like 5 times and the first 4 times it took a big hit then recovered, then on the 5th time it didn't even take a hit because people wised up. This market has a bunch of fresh sheep, and they will learn their lesson the hard way. Everyone's gotta learn though. China "banning" **** has presented the best buying opportunities.

ETFs are just a bundle of stocks - holding more than one is no hedge against drops - in fact any ETF that was tracking the market in 2008 would have in fact dropped 50%. It's a common misconception that ETFs are 'safe' ... hopefully you're not holding any, based on the impression that they're less volatile?

It's also actually unheard of for quality stocks to drop 15-20% based on market volatility alone - and they don't even drop that much without warning based on market performance or credit crises, because the market will pause trading before there's that much of a crash.


Bitcoin IS more volatile than stocks, because the price has already dropped over 30% *for no apparent reason* - that just doesn't happen with big name stocks. Anyways, it's not the size of the drops, it's knowing what's common for a particular investment - and at the time, wasn't aware that 30% drops were common ...

Maybe worth noting that the price could drop another 20% in the coming days, if 30% drops are common - not sure anybody's ever that comfortable with that amount of volatility while it's happening ... like who's comfortable with downswings in poker? They suck - it does seem like things should turn around, if the price does in fact drop that much again this time, which it might not?

Quoting for posterity. Thanks for explaining it to me, you seem to have it all sorted out. Good luck with BABA.

Ps,ft,pp,888 will start accepting bitcoin soon not to mention wsop etp

The time has come , its time buy more bitcoin as a steady-long-time investment with favourable return

)

It actually doesn't sound like you wish me well - it sounds more like you wish I would fail so you can feel right.

But that's your right - it's just not honest.

Sorry, didn't realize you really were into ETFs.

Kinda crazy, does PS really not take bitcoin currently?

Idk, in US can't use PS.

Trusty, you're correct thinking that average volatility for bitcoin is about 20x that of regular large cap stocks. search bitcoin volatility index. since you seem familiar with the topic, you probably should have done some reading up before you bought in.

after 6 yrs of this, i'm pretty used to the swings.

I've been following for years I know what China has done.. I've also added to my investment of alts during this drop. I get the Chinese bans don't affect much long term.

If you've been invested since the start, you must have kept notes of the date and magnitude of all the swings, with possible reasons why the swings occurred - if it's not too much trouble, probably a lot of us would find it a huge help if you'd just take a couple of seconds to list them all out.

It's hard to really see what's happening with historical charts, because the past is dwarfed by the present - so thanks!!

if you plot price vs time using a log scale on the price axis, then it will become clear the the price movements in the past were actually larger as a % change. volatility (edit: as % change) has been decreasing since the beginning.

i can't list the news of the day for all price movements since the beginning. perhaps if you have specific examples i can probably relate a story about what was happening around that time, but in my opinion its a bit of a lost cause to try to pin every price movement to the news of the day. When the price is undervalued for some time, good news is responded to with price rises and bad news ignored. Vice versa when overvalued. I consider the price undervalued when it is at or below the marginal cost of mining, and overvalued when its about ~10-20x of that. Historically, trading on that info alone would do pretty well.