This may explain some of the recent movements. I highly recommend the video and discussion; very solid stuff.

(11-27-2015 08:19 PM)SunW Wrote:  This may explain some of the recent movements. I highly recommend the video and discussion; very solid stuff.

Sure that is a bullish article and video clip, yet a lot of these bullish circumstances have continued to exist for much longer than the past couple of years, yet bitcoin prices have remained fairly bearish and flat in the past couple of years.

Don't get me wrong. I surely expect that at some point it is going to become more and more difficult for the big bear whales to keep BTC prices down, and personally I have assessed that the trade volume increase since late august and the more or less upward price movements since then amounts to a trend reversal that is largely going to be difficult to bear whales to contain.

On the other hand I still maintain some worries about the extent to which btc is going to be able to achieve a new all time high and my own wonderings regarding how long such a process could take. Personally, I believe that the BTC infrastructure is ready and able to support $10k plus BTC prices - yet I question whether we will witness such price increases in a week, a month, a year or in 10 years? quite the range of possibilities and uncertainties remain in my own perspective.

Quote:Sure that is a bullish article and video clip, yet a lot of these bullish circumstances have continued to exist for much longer than the past couple of years, yet bitcoin prices have remained fairly bearish and flat in the past couple of years.

I think we're seeing many global products being built around bitcoin, like BitBank, which don't happen immediately, though the innovation in bitcoin is much faster than the fiat system. These products are also not recognized by the markets immediately. The speculators are slowly being replaced by the savers and investors, who are using bitcoin to generate returns through savings, CDs, loans, and bitcoin stocks. The major difference between the former and latter is the time horizon of the latter is much longer.

I'm looking to get into trading bitcoins, I'm wondering how long it takes to buy/sell bitcoins at will. My plan is to buy bitcoins and just wait until they go up 1.5-2 times the price (obviously this could time waiting), my question is when they are dramatically increasing/decreasing is it easy to get rid of them?

(11-28-2015 09:29 AM)SunW Wrote:  

Quote:Sure that is a bullish article and video clip, yet a lot of these bullish circumstances have continued to exist for much longer than the past couple of years, yet bitcoin prices have remained fairly bearish and flat in the past couple of years.

I think we're seeing many global products being built around bitcoin, like BitBank, which don't happen immediately, though the innovation in bitcoin is much faster than the fiat system. These products are also not recognized by the markets immediately. The speculators are slowly being replaced by the savers and investors, who are using bitcoin to generate returns through savings, CDs, loans, and bitcoin stocks. The major difference between the former and latter is the time horizon of the latter is much longer.

Actually, there is likely a lot of truth to both of your observations. Not only are the offering of bitcoin related products and bitcoin instruments becoming much more various and versatile, the population of bitcoin users are becoming more varied too in order to take advantage of the ever increasing variety of products and appeal.

Nonetheless, many of us watching the bitcoin space have also commented about how far these various products still need to go to become more user friendly to increase user adoption even more.

Nonetheless - about one year of driving BTC prices lower (which some may characterize as a correction), and then nearly another 3/4 of a year of relatively flat prices (and further attempts to drive BTC prices lower) have likely caused many to believe that the bottom is in, and the extent of the drop in this latest round has already been thoroughly tested. Yes, there are a few naysayers and a likely minority who are continuing to wait for sub $200 coins - which seems increasingly unlikely - as well as increasingly unlikely that we are going to experience sub-$250 coins.


I do get a sense that the base of coins is getting bigger, though I continue to wonder about the distribution of coins and whether there may be some big players who have shook the coins out of the hands of various weaker players - likely a bit of both going on.... and we cannot deny that in the past couple of years, there has been considerable international spreading of the word and utility of bitcoin (but still quite a bit more work to be done, and a lot more potential for such spreading, from my understanding).

(11-30-2015 11:13 PM)Independent1 Wrote:  I'm looking to get into trading bitcoins, I'm wondering how long it takes to buy/sell bitcoins at will. My plan is to buy bitcoins and just wait until they go up 1.5-2 times the price (obviously this could time waiting), my question is when they are dramatically increasing/decreasing is it easy to get rid of them?

Maybe we need to find out more about how you plan to execute your trading?

If you are in the USA, bitcoins are very liquid and very quickly liquid through services like Circle, Coinbase and even Gemini... .

There are a multitude of other liquidation options too, that seem to be relatively safe, as long as you are not too concerned about hiding your profits. If you want to hide your profits, then your liquidation options may be more limited, though not impossible if, for example, you were to find someone through local bitcoins or even some bitcoin meet-up or someone else who may be willing to have a relationship with you (like an agreement that they will buy or sell bitcoins from you within a certain market price range).

Personally, if your goals are as you stated to attempt to trade with 50% to 100% profits on those kinds of price swings, then I believe that you should start out much smaller and to practice a little bit.. and there may be periods that you are waiting a long time and such swing direction may not occur.

Yes, price movements in bitcoin can be quite violent and radical in either direction, which also seems to cause considerable potentiality of getting burnt too, when you are attempting to time and/or to predict the direction of BTC's price.

You could attempt to do both trading in smaller ranges and trading in larger ranges with different lumps of money.... but with any asset that you attempt to trade, it will be good for you to study some of the underpinnings, beyond merely the price history and the charts in order to get a better feel for what makes it tick.. Bitcoin is a bit of a special animal and even the ability to trade on a multitude of platforms 24/7 and even with very small and maybe even non-existent fees brings certain interesting price movements and potentialities to trade profitably in smaller price ranges (and even if you are not doing it, you gotta realize that others are) and your questions regarding liquidity ease suggest to me that you are really a "newbie" to the bitcoin space - and newbies can get burnt fairly badly if they do not realize or recognize certain unique dynamics in bitcoin's trading space (even though you may be bringing other trading and/or life skills to the table).

The Fed is claiming that they'll raise interest rates this month, and Mario's QE wasn't a big deal. The markets reacted with swings. As I posted in another thread:

Quote:Interesting: gold and silver are soaring with an interest rate increase on deck (US) and Mario not unleashing as much money as everyone hoped (EU). In fact, the Dollar is also up with precious metals.

Very odd.

Bitcoin didn't.

Solid market feedback here and it might indicate who's heavily using it more. I want to see if over this month this is confirmed.

(12-01-2015 01:02 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(11-30-2015 11:13 PM)Independent1 Wrote:  I'm looking to get into trading bitcoins, I'm wondering how long it takes to buy/sell bitcoins at will. My plan is to buy bitcoins and just wait until they go up 1.5-2 times the price (obviously this could time waiting), my question is when they are dramatically increasing/decreasing is it easy to get rid of them?

Maybe we need to find out more about how you plan to execute your trading?

If you are in the USA, bitcoins are very liquid and very quickly liquid through services like Circle, Coinbase and even Gemini... .

There are a multitude of other liquidation options too, that seem to be relatively safe, as long as you are not too concerned about hiding your profits. If you want to hide your profits, then your liquidation options may be more limited, though not impossible if, for example, you were to find someone through local bitcoins or even some bitcoin meet-up or someone else who may be willing to have a relationship with you (like an agreement that they will buy or sell bitcoins from you within a certain market price range).

Personally, if your goals are as you stated to attempt to trade with 50% to 100% profits on those kinds of price swings, then I believe that you should start out much smaller and to practice a little bit.. and there may be periods that you are waiting a long time and such swing direction may not occur.

Yes, price movements in bitcoin can be quite violent and radical in either direction, which also seems to cause considerable potentiality of getting burnt too, when you are attempting to time and/or to predict the direction of BTC's price.

You could attempt to do both trading in smaller ranges and trading in larger ranges with different lumps of money.... but with any asset that you attempt to trade, it will be good for you to study some of the underpinnings, beyond merely the price history and the charts in order to get a better feel for what makes it tick.. Bitcoin is a bit of a special animal and even the ability to trade on a multitude of platforms 24/7 and even with very small and maybe even non-existent fees brings certain interesting price movements and potentialities to trade profitably in smaller price ranges (and even if you are not doing it, you gotta realize that others are) and your questions regarding liquidity ease suggest to me that you are really a "newbie" to the bitcoin space - and newbies can get burnt fairly badly if they do not realize or recognize certain unique dynamics in bitcoin's trading space (even though you may be bringing other trading and/or life skills to the table).

I simply just planned on waiting for bitcoins to go to a price that seems on the lower end of the scale (according to price of the last 1 year), simply invest X amount of money during that time. Then just wait for the price to rise and sell when I want, I see this could take time and may not happen for a while.

(12-06-2015 10:53 PM)Independent1 Wrote:  

(12-01-2015 01:02 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(11-30-2015 11:13 PM)Independent1 Wrote:  I'm looking to get into trading bitcoins, I'm wondering how long it takes to buy/sell bitcoins at will. My plan is to buy bitcoins and just wait until they go up 1.5-2 times the price (obviously this could time waiting), my question is when they are dramatically increasing/decreasing is it easy to get rid of them?

Maybe we need to find out more about how you plan to execute your trading?

If you are in the USA, bitcoins are very liquid and very quickly liquid through services like Circle, Coinbase and even Gemini... .

There are a multitude of other liquidation options too, that seem to be relatively safe, as long as you are not too concerned about hiding your profits. If you want to hide your profits, then your liquidation options may be more limited, though not impossible if, for example, you were to find someone through local bitcoins or even some bitcoin meet-up or someone else who may be willing to have a relationship with you (like an agreement that they will buy or sell bitcoins from you within a certain market price range).

Personally, if your goals are as you stated to attempt to trade with 50% to 100% profits on those kinds of price swings, then I believe that you should start out much smaller and to practice a little bit.. and there may be periods that you are waiting a long time and such swing direction may not occur.

Yes, price movements in bitcoin can be quite violent and radical in either direction, which also seems to cause considerable potentiality of getting burnt too, when you are attempting to time and/or to predict the direction of BTC's price.

You could attempt to do both trading in smaller ranges and trading in larger ranges with different lumps of money.... but with any asset that you attempt to trade, it will be good for you to study some of the underpinnings, beyond merely the price history and the charts in order to get a better feel for what makes it tick.. Bitcoin is a bit of a special animal and even the ability to trade on a multitude of platforms 24/7 and even with very small and maybe even non-existent fees brings certain interesting price movements and potentialities to trade profitably in smaller price ranges (and even if you are not doing it, you gotta realize that others are) and your questions regarding liquidity ease suggest to me that you are really a "newbie" to the bitcoin space - and newbies can get burnt fairly badly if they do not realize or recognize certain unique dynamics in bitcoin's trading space (even though you may be bringing other trading and/or life skills to the table).

I simply just planned on waiting for bitcoins to go to a price that seems on the lower end of the scale (according to price of the last 1 year), simply invest X amount of money during that time. Then just wait for the price to rise and sell when I want, I see this could take time and may not happen for a while.

Yes, but if you are waiting for up and down swings, then if you study the history of bitcoin's price movement, you may notice that certain price swings may never happen again.

For example after the first few years and I believe into 2011, bitcoin prices did not return below $2.

Then after September 2012, bitcoin prices never returned below $10.

Then after march 2013, bitcoin prices never returned below $60

And after November 2013, bitcoin prices never returned below $150

In other words, there are going to be swings in bitcoin prices, but it may not return to certain price points or price ranges (and it is possible that currently $200 or even $250 or even an outlier of $350 are some of those price points that will never come again.... unless there is some catastrophic bitcoin failure.

Don't get me wrong, I do have a sense that $350 is again possible, but I believe also that it is good to get some skin in the game right away, rather than waiting around for pie in the sky moments that may pass so quickly that it is difficult to time and to catch the falling knife.

On the other hand, if you personally believe that it is prudent for you to wait, then you are entitled to make that decision for yourself, and you certainly are the one who is in the best position to decide what is best for you.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-cr...an-genius/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-09...in-founder

Did they finally catch Satoshi Nakamoto?

If Australia seized millions in bitcoins, wow prices will skyrocket.

(12-10-2015 01:03 AM)DamienCasanova Wrote:  http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-cr...an-genius/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-09...in-founder

Did they finally catch Satoshi Nakamoto?

If Australia seized millions in bitcoins, wow prices will skyrocket.

There seems to be pretty decent evidence that Wright could be Nakamoto - though, at this point such evidence is still being questioned.

Regarding the stash of 1.1 million BTC, it would likely not be bullish for those coins to be either released into the BTC market or to be seized by the Australian (or any other government). The articles do suggest that the 1.1 million coins are tied up in a trust until 2020 - yet if they were to be seized by government officials, there could be a question whether such trust could be broken in the event that irregularities were determined to have occurred in the creation or perpetuation or honoring of such trust terms.

It's unlikely that Satoshi has been discovered (I still think it's multiple people, but whatevs). From the blog they link:

Quote:Needless to say, Craig S. Wright did not fit the bill. The Internet has gone to town on his purported credentials and mile-long Linked-In profile, now wiped. His PhD theses cannot be located, the supercomputer he claims to have built cannot be found, and the support letter from SGI doesn't read like any other support letter I've seen. He is in trouble with the Australian tax authorities, allegedly for having received tax breaks for R&D work that seems not to have taken place. None of this matches what he told me about his background, which was that he was the CTO of an overseas gambling operation.
...
The Wired story itself pointed out that the entries in his blog that discussed Bitcoin, dated 2008, were inserted in 2013. They contain words like cryptocurrency which were coined in 2010 at the earliest. The PGP keys that were leaked contain references to crypto constructs that were not incorporated into PGP until 2010.
...
I'm suprised that some of the journalists noticed that there were potentially forged portions of the leaked data, and chose to ignore them. Surely, everyone must know how easy it is to forge emails. But, ironically, timestamping services such as the Internet Archive (and also, Bitcoin) are harder to fool. In this case, the Internet Archive seems to have caught the backdated blog posts, which point out a clear attempt to deceive. There's a big difference between a case that has weak evidence versus a case where the evidence contains forged elements. The latter requires a full explanation of the forger, their relationship to the story, and should put the entire story at risk. You can't just look past that inexplicable problem and focus on the rest. The story changes the moment a piece of the evidence is forged.

Great read and I've added his blog to my reader (his twitter: https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/). This guy did more research than all the "paid journalists" did. The real reason for discovering the bitcoin founder is to smear the idea - that's what they really want. Look how many media stories now are writing "He invented bitcoin to avoid taxes" or "He created bitcoin because he's bankrupt." None of them realize the idea's value; these people are completely incapable of thought.

And for my current take on bitcoin's price, especially this month:

Quote:Let's assume that the markets are pricing in an interest rate increase and have priced in the ECB's disappointing depth of QE this last time, meaning things are going to get tighter. The USD and EURO have kind of bounced around and many people may flee to cash if things get too squishy.

What about bitcoin? According to Bitstamp, since December 1rst bitcoin is up almost one hundred dollars, and yet things have gotten "tighter" in December (from the ECB) with an expectation of more tightening from the Fed.

I don't know if this trend will continue, but if it does, it's over for central banks. If bitcoin rises, as things get tighter, it means a portion of the markets have given up on central banks. The Fed and ECB better hope any interest rate increase lowers the value of bitcoin; otherwise, they've lost a ton of power and a decentralized system is on deck.

The below mainstream article in Forbes, is really bullish on bitcoin.... giving us 10 reasons to like bitcoin as a December 2015 investment.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/20...mber-2015/

The bitcoin news has been really great lately, which probably also affects the price.

hang on boys!!!! The rocket (or is it train?) seems to have pretty decent momentum... that may even fuel growth passed the previous ATh - into the $3k to $5k territory as I have been continuing to suggest is the approximate arena for the next BTC bubble - and also frequently BTC overshoots expectations, whether that be upwardly or otherwise.

hopefully, some RVF guys have jumped back into BTC in the past few months; however, I am thinking some of RVF guys may have become a bit bearish about BTC over the past couple of years and may not be jumping back in this time around until $600 or so, which still may be o.k. if BTC prices go into the $3k to $5k territory for the next bubble.

In other words, investing in BTC still seems to be pretty early if the $3k to $5k theory plays out.

Actually, just to be fair regarding a ballpark of my own BTC investment, as I type with prices in the $460s my personal portfolio of BTC is still approximately 6% in the red (that's including various fees and related expenses that I folded into my BTC expenses)

Very good JJG on how close you are to being in black. I think it's just us two who've been in bitcoin for a while. From the other pages, most other members threw in the towel. I'm targeting my cost basis of bitcoins to be less than $10 per bitcoin two years from now by earning more bitcoins through BLC. If I don't do as well as I want, I still should be in the $20-25 range.

Since inflation has received some attention, I wanted to see how well bitcoin has done in high inflation/hyperinflation countries:

BTC to UAH
BTC to RUB
BTC to ARS

Bitcoin does very well in periods of high inflation/hyperinflation according to the graphs I looked at.

(12-13-2015 12:16 PM)SunW Wrote:  Very good JJG on how close you are to being in black. I think it's just us two who've been in bitcoin for a while. From the other pages, most other members threw in the towel. I'm targeting my cost basis of bitcoins to be less than $10 per bitcoin two years from now by earning more bitcoins through BLC. If I don't do as well as I want, I still should be in the $20-25 range.

Since inflation has received some attention, I wanted to see how well bitcoin has done in high inflation/hyperinflation countries:

BTC to UAH
BTC to RUB
BTC to ARS

Bitcoin does very well in periods of high inflation/hyperinflation according to the graphs I looked at.

I believe that bitcoin is poised for some real explosive times in the very near future.

Whether actual explosive times materialize is certainly a question of several factors playing out, and possibly that we are not being played by some of the big bear whales. I understand that over the past couple of years a lot of BTC investors, including myself, have become very skittish regarding the future price direction of bitcoin and real fears of being dumped on... because such dumpings have happened so many times in the past couple of years, especially when sentiments begin to turn and BTC investors begin to believe that we are leaving or that we have already left the bear market. Sooner or later it is going to be irrefutable that we left the bear market, and by that time, it will become much too late to extrapolate awe inspiring profits from being "in" bitcoin.

Regarding my own BTC portfolio, I remain very happy with it overall, but it is certainly nowhere near the average price per BTC ballpark as yours. So, yep, different dynamics at play with me, that is for sure. Just to assist you to follow my discussion, my current BTC average price is about $500.

I do believe that my average price per BTC is going to continue to come down and to come down considerably once my portfolio gets into the black; however, let me outline some reasons why I believe average price per BTC is not my perception of any kind of controlling indicator of the health of my BTC portfolio (even if that were my only investment).

As I mentioned, through 2015, I had been able to accumulate quite a few BTC below $300 (and even quite a few below $250); however, in the first several months of 2015, I experienced some mostly non-btc related cashflow issues that interfered with my abilities to accumulate as many coins as I could have and to better bring down my average cost per BTC.

In any event because of my overall continued accumulation of BTC through that period, I was able to come to a reasoned determination to put fiat into my BTC-related accounts and to begin (selling/trading at $250 and above).

Accordingly, my BTC selling was designed to provide some insurance for me in terms of potential future price drops, but it also had a side effect of causing my overall cost per BTC to go up a bit. Anyhow, I believe that I described enough of my particulars to give a pretty decent idea of my situation, and my BTC trading remains ongoing with various staggered dollars in my account along the way and prepared in case the price comes back down. – which is seeming less and less likely while this BTC market is continuing to appear to steam up and good and great news is continuing to flood the space – but never say never in bitcoinlandia.

Regarding RVF’ers participation in the bitcoin buying/selling/investing market, I believe that there may be a few closeted RVF investors that do not really want to chime in on this thread and they may even reasonably fear jinxing any kind of BTC investment that they may have made because such changes in BTC price trends have already occurred so many times in the past two years.

On the other hand, there may be a few RVF’ers who come out of the woodworks and proclaim in various ways about how they “killed it” in the BTC space in various ways.. and “I told you so,” etc, etc. RVF’ers are not the only guys who are prone to such desires for self congratulations – even though sometimes it seems that there may be a bit more tendency towards that in the RVF space.

I am looking forward to more bitcoin discussion, at some point soon, though.

SunW,

You are making BLC (Blakecoin) to convert to bitcoin?

A couple years ago I looked to try and make some cryptocurrency but ran into a few issues (hardware).

Is it attractive to do so now?

(12-13-2015 08:26 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  SunW,

You are making BLC (Blakecoin) to convert to bitcoin?

A couple years ago I looked to try and make some cryptocurrency but ran into a few issues (hardware).

Is it attractive to do so now?

Thanks Sam for highlighting a portion of SunW's earlier post.

I had not really pick-up on the significance of SunW's mentioning of BLC (Blakecoin) in connection with his interest in Bitcoin until after you mentioned it.

Certainly, a variety of alts have some relationship to bitcoin both in terms of some of their copy cat nature, but also in terms of their contributory aspects, in that in the future, bitcoin may be adopting some of the more successful features of some of the alts.

In various bitcoin forums, alts tend to be distractions from the bitcoin conversation, and tend to lead astray of the bitcoin conversation.

If you look at coinmarketcap,

http://coinmarketcap.com/all/

you will see nearly 700 alt coins, and blakecoin occupies 238 - and in other words, there appears to be nearly 700 alt coin ways to get off topic.

If you recall about 1.5 years ago, there were zillions of alt distractions after some programs that came out allowing very easy making of alts. IN recent times, creating alts seem less prevalent, and currently institutions are creating or imitating "blockchain" which could be characterized as other kinds of alts... which will likely in the end bring many of them back to bitcoin.

I understand your question was more personal and individualized in regard to creating alts and embarking upon implementation and the practicality of it all, so it may be interesting to hear about how some of this could relate to bitcoin.

BLC = BitLendingClub

It's the bitcoin form of lending club, and it allows you to set your own interest rates that you think are reasonable (someone might out-bid you).

You kids and your Bitcoins.....

I just feel bad for those of you who are using Bitcoin to save for "retirement".

(12-14-2015 07:26 AM)whateverfuckit Wrote:  You kids and your Bitcoins.....

I just feel bad for those of you who are using Bitcoin to save for "retirement".

Are you not involved in BTC?

If not, then why are you here? Do you want to patronize?

Doesn't sound as if you have a question, but you may have some ill-found perceptions, since you seem to be taking such patronizing and perceptibly trolling tone.

maybe an explanation could be helpful?

I will provide you a hint. Bitcoin does NOT equal Linden Dollars.

(12-14-2015 06:52 AM)SunW Wrote:  BLC = BitLendingClub

It's the bitcoin form of lending club, and it allows you to set your own interest rates that you think are reasonable (someone might out-bid you).

Thanks for the clarification.

Maybe illustrates a danger in using unexplained acronyms.

(12-14-2015 10:37 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-14-2015 07:26 AM)whateverfuckit Wrote:  You kids and your Bitcoins.....

I just feel bad for those of you who are using Bitcoin to save for "retirement".

Are you not involved in BTC?

If not, then why are you here? Do you want to patronize?

Doesn't sound as if you have a question, but you may have some ill-found perceptions, since you seem to be taking such patronizing and perceptibly trolling tone.

maybe an explanation could be helpful?

I will provide you a hint. Bitcoin does NOT equal Linden Dollars.

We've all had disagreements, but we've done so in a respectful manner without the trolling. User whateverfuckit is the "swine" in the phrase "don't cast pearls before swine." I don't know of any user in this thread who advocated bitcoin as a retirement plan - really? I think most of us are using bitcoin as a form of insurance in a way, and it's doing very well actually!

As for the acronyms, I totally agree. I need to stop using them as it's causing some confusion. I did that with ZeroHedge last time, using ZH. My bad.

(12-14-2015 01:56 PM)SunW Wrote:  

(12-14-2015 10:37 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(12-14-2015 07:26 AM)whateverfuckit Wrote:  You kids and your Bitcoins.....

I just feel bad for those of you who are using Bitcoin to save for "retirement".

Are you not involved in BTC?

If not, then why are you here? Do you want to patronize?

Doesn't sound as if you have a question, but you may have some ill-found perceptions, since you seem to be taking such patronizing and perceptibly trolling tone.

maybe an explanation could be helpful?

I will provide you a hint. Bitcoin does NOT equal Linden Dollars.

We've all had disagreements, but we've done so in a respectful manner without the trolling. User whateverfuckit is the "swine" in the phrase "don't cast pearls before swine." I don't know of any user in this thread who advocated bitcoin as a retirement plan - really? I think most of us are using bitcoin as a form of insurance in a way, and it's doing very well actually!

As for the acronyms, I totally agree. I need to stop using them as it's causing some confusion. I did that with ZeroHedge last time, using ZH. My bad.

I believe that there is a considerable variety in perceptions about bitcoin and how to use it, including people who consider it as their "retirement plan."

Certainly, many of us would consider such a narrow expectation of becoming very rich by investing a little to be risky (and maybe even putting too many eggs in one basket).

I consider myself to be included in the camp of diversified investing; however, I would not assert that the BTC as a retirement plan thinkers(believers) to be totally unreasonable.

In fact, I believe that if we research back into bitcoin's relatively short history, we will see at least 4 previous bubbles in which some people could have become rich by strategically in investing in just one of the pre-bubble time periods.

It seems that the odds are becoming increasingly better that we are going to have at least 1 more bubble (possibly within the next 1-12 months), and there are even fairly decent odds that we could witness two more bubbles within the next 6-18 months.

Yes, each of us would likely calculate different probabilities for the likelihood of each of these possible bubbles, and our predictions would vary also in terms of how high we expect any bubble to go, and the timeline that we would assign to our varying expectations.

I don't really feel like going through my own thought process about how to calculate expected value because I believe that others can chime in to provide such possible calculations of expected value.... but for example if you consider that there is even a chance that BTC could go to $3-5k, then you should have at least a little bit (a few hundred dollars) invested in it.

In fact, people sometimes get so caught up on framing expected value in terms of price per BTC and conclude - "OMG $1,000 is so fucking high for 1 BTC, which is NOT tangible... blah blah blah." Someone who has researched a bit more thoroughly into bitcoin understands that bitcoin's market cap is a much better indicator of whether the utility that btc brings is reflected in its price. Accordingly its current $6-7 billion market cap should shed light on a very undervalued asset, and multiply by 15 will bring you to a much more reasonable number in my humble bumble opinion. That's about $7k per BTC, by the way.