Very helpful info JJG, Thank you. +1

(05-30-2017 10:32 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Very helpful info JJG, Thank you. +1

Thanks for the +1.

Here's a recent article discussing a $100k prediction for 10 years.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/bitcoin-p...years.html

Yes. Predictions are difficult because we have possibilities of both ups and downs and we could experience more down before up, and the up might not happen to the extent anticipated or anywhere near such levels. Still good to read some mainstream news reflecting such bullish predictions.

(05-31-2017 08:57 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 10:32 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Very helpful info JJG, Thank you. +1

Thanks for the +1.

Here's a recent article discussing a $100k prediction for 10 years.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/bitcoin-p...years.html

Yes. Predictions are difficult because we have possibilities of both ups and downs and we could experience more down before up, and the up might not happen to the extent anticipated or anywhere near such levels. Still good to read some mainstream news reflecting such bullish predictions.

I am a bit skeptical about those amounts as they rely on a 10% FOREX market cap for BTC alone.

With the proliferation of other cryptocurrencies, is it not likely that's a bit of a long shot?

(05-31-2017 09:02 AM)Noir Wrote:  

(05-31-2017 08:57 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 10:32 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Very helpful info JJG, Thank you. +1

Thanks for the +1.

Here's a recent article discussing a $100k prediction for 10 years.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/bitcoin-p...years.html

Yes. Predictions are difficult because we have possibilities of both ups and downs and we could experience more down before up, and the up might not happen to the extent anticipated or anywhere near such levels. Still good to read some mainstream news reflecting such bullish predictions.

I am a bit skeptical about those amounts as they rely on a 10% FOREX market cap for BTC alone.

With the proliferation of other cryptocurrencies, is it not likely that's a bit of a long shot?

Sure it is a longshot, and 10 years is a long time, too.

As you already know, Bitcoin has been around for about 8.5 years, and there are so many of these alt cryptos that have been around for 1-3months, and sure some have been around a bit longer, but there are so many of those alt cryptos that do not have any more development than a white paper.

Development and network effects take a lot of time, and I would not count my chickens too soon with reliance that money in the alt coins has any kind of solid grounding. Sure there could be a lot of money to be made in alts for several more months and even possibly the upcoming year or more, but I question how much such injection of money in the alt crypto space necessarily distracts from BTC's growth, overall.

Even though I published the bullish link, I take these kinds of predictions with a grain of salt, too, so maybe I give it long shot odds, too... but it does not hurt to consider such possibilities and what it would take to achieve such outcomes.

(05-30-2017 03:16 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 12:32 AM)Skank_Hunt Wrote:  I mentioned that a lot of the money that has gone into the alts would have otherwise gone into BTC and BTC would be much higher by now.

I agree though that the new bubble would have to be about $5k. BTC is only double the ATH from years ago and that was with a relatively slow and steady rise. We are yet to reach the euphoria spike wave.

If we can refer to your paragraphs above as point 1 and point 2, they do kind of play on each other, and provide some logical justification that instead of projecting this likely imminent and upward leg of $3k to $5k, and we may need to revise the imminent and upward leg and maybe $4k to $6k is not enough.. start thinking $5k to $8k.. and there seems to be enough fuel for such exponential upwards expectations.

We seem to be on the border of breaking through the upper ends of our current price range (as I initially typed my post the BTC price on Stamp had just moved to the upper $2,300s, but was bouncing between $2,350 and $2,390, and within 15 minutes of my original post broke up to $2,415 and seems to be heading more upwards in the near term), which earlier I had suggested such price range to be within the $1,950 to $2,350 arena, which seems to be causes to conclude that we may be done retesting lows which were $1,850.. and we may even be done testing the $2,000 to $2,100 arena, maybe?


By the way, regarding my assertion in the above quoted post, I have been in the midst of rethinking my assessment of where we are at in terms of price dynamics (areas of resistance and areas of support).

I am kind of gravitating towards $4k to $6k arena as the next arena of interest before we get another major correction. Sure there are no absolutes, and I am not very wedded to my assertion, but I am getting the sense that up is a bit more probable than down, and that another down is not necessary in order to proceed up.

I also understand that anything can happen and we are a long way from $4k.

In that regard, we still need to break through resistances that exist at $2,400 and at $2,600 and then at the ATH level of $2,760 and then in the $3,600 region in order to then get ourselves into the $4k to $6k price arena.

These are my new numbers, and I have not yet been pressed to assign probability numbers to each of those, but I can if anyone is interested in having such a discussion.

Regarding weekends, sometimes guys see patterns and want to believe that dumps occur on the weekends, and even though there may be a tiny bit of a correlation of dumps on the weekend, that kind of pattern is far from certain. We have also experienced pumps on weekend, especially during bull markets or bull trends. Do you recall in May of 2016, there were weekend pumps on 3 or 4 weekends in a row... by the time the fourth weekend came, bitcoin watchers were starting to expect a weekend pump and then we got a dump instead.. hahahaha...

Within about the past 24 hours there has been news that some of the major Chinese exchanges, including OKcoin were going to be permitted to resume crypto withdrawals.

In my opinion, previously China had received way too much credit for BTC price movements, and even with their previous exaggerated credit for such price movements, they are not going to be returning to their old glory days any time soon because the various PBOC interventions of late 2016 that have been lasting until today, have shed considerable light on the fakery of the Chines BTC trade volume and their real high levels of BTC margin trading practices that exacerbated Chinese BTC trade volume fakery.

Regarding the near future, I believe in the past, summers had a tendency to become kind of boring in cryptoland.. no activity, flat prices and even declines in prices. A kind of pattern; however, currently with so much attention to alts and even the simultaneous bullish behavior of BTC prices, there is almost no way that the current excitement level is going to drop off any time in the near future.. the excitement is way too high and way too much attention and way too much money flowing into the space that is not really letting off, whether that is in BTC and/or in alts.

Such excitement, especially when it involves the inflow of billions of dollars (at least on paper), cannot just precipitously dry up.

We have so much activity and craziness going on right now in BTClandia and in Altcoinlandia that is not drying up and to me it seems that it is going to take several months to simmer down the amazing and exciting dynamics of this current situation, even if there were some concerted effort to dry up such excitement - or some crazy events that facilitates such drying up.

Can anybody explain how BTC is going to be such a benefit to society. I can understand why the blockchain technology will be such a valuable asset but I am having trouble wrapping my head around BTCs value. I see value sure, but how much? Especially with so much competition/clones.

I had been thinking about this over the last few days and then heard some engineer from IBM say something very similar, they were not excited about BTC but the blockchain itself.

Anyway, just thinking, looking for answers if anybody has any thoughts.

(06-01-2017 11:28 AM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Can anybody explain how BTC is going to be such a benefit to society. I can understand why the blockchain technology will be such a valuable asset but I am having trouble wrapping my head around BTCs value. I see value sure, but how much? Especially with so much competition/clones.

I had been thinking about this over the last few days and then heard some engineer from IBM say something very similar, they were not excited about BTC but the blockchain itself.

Anyway, just thinking, looking for answers if anybody has any thoughts.

Yes, a lot of technical folks miss the point of bitcoin by suggesting that blockchain is good and bitcoin, the currency, is a vehicle of corruption. They try to separate the coin from the technology, and really bitcoin is both of those, and attempts to separate tend to result in inferior imitations that do not have the proof of work and around 5 petahashes of power striving to mine it and secure it.

Technical folks frequently miss the point because even though they may understand technology and code, they fail to recognize the true nature of proof of work and decentralization. Proof of work makes bitcoin truly decentralized rather than quasi-decentralized. Many imitation coins tout decentralization, but they are not.

Yes, there are a lot of imitators out there, and sure some of those might take over aspects of bitcoin's use cases, but so far bitcoin remains the most decentralized and the most secure and the most immutable...

Sure, bitcoin could fail also, and there is a lot of dispute about what is failure and what is success.

For example, if bitcoin were to be taken over through a hardfork and the consensus version were to make bitcoin 80% consensus rather than 95% consensus, then maybe at that point, bitcoin would not be distinguishable from the rest of the coins - however if there were a hardfork, in which the miners hardforked based on increasing the blocksize limit and changing consensus to 80%, then likely the 20% would continue as the decentralized and immutable bitcoin, and even 20% of the current hashing power would be sufficiently powerful enough to secure it. Anyhow, changing consensus to 80% would cause the other fork to be easily changeable by getting together a bunch of your rich buddies. So, part of the value of bitcoin is that remains difficult to change..

People whine about bitcoin is not flexible and not easy to change, and that bitcoin is deadlocked and stagnant and missing the point. Not changing easily is a feature, not a bug.

We will see how all of this plays out in the coming years, and really you don't need to believe that bitcoin will be the ultimate coin 100 years from now in order to have sufficient confidence that it has a great short to medium to long term prospect.

You can buy bitcoin now, and change your mind about it 1 year from now. You can wait 1 year, and maybe the price will be lower and maybe not. You don't need to know everything about bitcoin and all the alts in order to figure out whether to invest or which investment to make. You can invest slowly and learn as you go and then reallocate if your opinion changes with the passage of time and with your continued looking into the matter.

Certainly there are folks who are much more articulate than me to argue these kind of points regarding how bitcoin is distinguishable from other coins, yet I think that there is a lot of disinformation and misinformation out there that bashes bitcoin and makes a lot of assertions about how coin x, y or z coin is better than bitcoin and suggesting many ways in which bitcoin is supposedly defective, while at the same time missing various points about the essence of bitcoin's secure decentralized immutable value storage and transfer. So far, no other coin competes in any kind of meaningful way, even if they might currently have greater short term price appreciation, and you might get a lot richer from other coins..

So you can decide allocation and which other coins might be a good investment as compared with bitcoin.. Seems like several RVF guys have decided to invest their total crypto into other coins, rather than putting some into bitcoin, and that could be the more prosperous route, depending on your goals, finances and the time that you have to research and keep up with some of the features that the other coins supposedly offer.

This about 1 hour interview with Trace Mayor from about a week ago has a lot of interesting and timely information pertaining to bitcoin happenings including the UASF and discussion of some how some altcoins compare with bitcoin in this ongoing exciting, and seemingly money-making market

(06-01-2017 03:27 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  This about 1 hour interview with Trace Mayor from about a week ago has a lot of interesting and timely information pertaining to bitcoin happenings including the UASF and discussion of some how some altcoins compare with bitcoin in this ongoing exciting, and seemingly money-making market


[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUpf2Lxgf10AjzBT4GIIgDJw&v=QjZk7N7RXfA[/video]

I want to write to supplement my post regarding the above video, and to assert that it kind of seems that we are in the early stages of breaking upwards, except yeah there was a bit of a sticking point in the $2,350 to $2,450 price range - and in that regard, there could have been some uncertainties regarding where to put your money - in bitcoin or into a variety of these alts and vaporware ICOs that are being pumped.

This could actually constitute a bit of a moment of truth and even punishing moment for those who have been undervaluing in the upside potential of BTC. I had even been coming across quite a few posts expecting and hoping for a weekend dump - and in that regard, a weekend pump would be quite the punishment and quite the way to call those shorts.

I really have no idea, even though I am getting the sense of upwards for the weekend, and I am not even sure whether breaching $2600 or next the ATH (at $2760) is realistic in such a short period of time.

Regarding the kind of cautionary bearishness of Trace Mayor video, I am getting the sense that we could possibly have a kind of pump into the $4 to $6k territory before August 1, and then the August 1 news will cause a certain amount of justification for a crash and even ongoing uncertainty that will likely get resolved in September October and cause a pump into the $10k territory and possibly beyond. I have not really thought this through too much, but if I were to attribute odds of 25% or greater to such a scenario, then I would consider that to be bullish and a reason to hang on to some of your coins or at least to follow a strategy that allows you to potentially profit if such a scenario were to play out - even if it is not exactly on the rough timeline that I am thinking could be possible.

So, yeah, at the moment, it seems that up is really seeming to have better chances than down... we gonna go 60/40-ish in order to avoid future scolding of me in an attempt to suggest that I am giving investment advice?... hahahahahaha.. And, by the way, most guys should already realize that I sell on the way up.. at this point about 1% of my holdings for every 10% rise in price... but if you don't have any BTC, hm, buying now might not be a bad idea if you did not buy any in the past week while prices were between $1,850 and $2,450). .. on the other hand, we are likely to dip at various points, possibly before $2600 and then before previous ATH of $2760 and then again around $3,600 before moving in the $4 to $6k territory, which is probably around 35% chance, at this point.

JJG, have you thought of any major speed bumps BTC could hit?

I've been trying to run through some of the negatives and I believe that federal governments around the world(led by the USA) could still shut this thing down. Similar to the way the US Government shut down internet poker. Of course things like that would be unlikely to happen with the current bickering going on in Washington, they could wake up to a 100k bitcoin.

What do you think?

Even beyond external issues there are several internal issues right now that need to get resolved.

Right now there is a backlog of 70,000 Bitcoin unconfirmed transactions. The increased amount of Bitcoin transactions has pushed Bitcoin up against its hardcoded block size limit. That is completely unacceptable. How can it be the money of the future when nearly a hundred thousand transactions are getting held up?

See here for the latest numbers: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Also bad and related to the above is how high the Bitcoin transaction fees are. For a medium transaction, the transaction fee is 0.0008136 BTC (US$2) according to this site: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ . I just saw someone send money to two other addresses in the amount of $41.25 and the fee was $2.71.... about 6.5%. (transaction: a1a05a5d67f5f6759107ed5291aacb0fd82ac8454a7fe7a7cdd9d50e5948f07c) Again, how can this be the money of the future when 6.5% of your transaction is going to fees? How can it be the money of the future when low value transactions can't take place because fees are more than the amount of money sent?

I love Bitcoin and hold some so this is not a haters post. This is a post of someone concerned with issues and wants them fixed.

These issues need to be resolved or Bitcoin will get passed by altcoins who move money faster and cheaper.

(06-03-2017 02:27 AM)username Wrote:  Even beyond external issues there are several internal issues right now that need to get resolved.

Right now there is a backlog of 70,000 Bitcoin unconfirmed transactions. The increased amount of Bitcoin transactions has pushed Bitcoin up against its hardcoded block size limit. That is completely unacceptable. How can it be the money of the future when nearly a hundred thousand transactions are getting held up?

See here for the latest numbers: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Also bad and related to the above is how high the Bitcoin transaction fees are. For a medium transaction, the transaction fee is 0.0008136 BTC (US$2) according to this site: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ . I just saw someone send money to two other addresses in the amount of $41.25 and the fee was $2.71.... about 6.5%. (transaction: a1a05a5d67f5f6759107ed5291aacb0fd82ac8454a7fe7a7cdd9d50e5948f07c) Again, how can this be the money of the future when 6.5% of your transaction is going to fees? How can it be the money of the future when low value transactions can't take place because fees are more than the amount of money sent?

I love Bitcoin and hold some so this is not a haters post. This is a post of someone concerned with issues and wants them fixed.

These issues need to be resolved or Bitcoin will get passed by altcoins who move money faster and cheaper.

Agree 100%.

The internal drama within the BTC community is getting really tiring, with still no clear consensual scaling solution in sight.

ETH has already reached 50% of BTC's market cap. Personally I'm investing more into altcoins now because the potential for gains simply looks greater.

(06-02-2017 08:21 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  JJG, have you thought of any major speed bumps BTC could hit?

Of course there are all kinds of major speed bumps and obstacles for BTC, and I have given thought to a lot of scenarios.

In other bitcoin forums I get in arguments all the time with posters who are way more bullish than me, and I consider myself to be fairly conservative in a lot of ways - even when push comes to shove, in recent months, when I got into some discussions with Skank Hunt in this thread, and we were going over my then listing of probabilities for UP versus DOWN - we were discovering that Skank was putting higher probabilities on UP than me, yet he also seemed to be placing higher probabilities of down too..

So in the end, I hate to get ahead of myself, and at each price range, I feel like I have to reconsider my considerations of probabilities of up versus down.. and we have been on a fucking roll with UP.. we keep going up more than I expect, and that seems to be part of the explanation for the ongoing excitement in my tone... I say, fuck, looks like we are going up again.. fuck looks like we broke through resistance and up we go, and this has been happening over and over and over. I am not really predicting in as bullish of ways that the BTC market is actually over performing each of my predictions... so I end up being wrong for being more bearish than the actual market... and we remain in exiting times, at least for guys who are holding bitcoin.

(06-02-2017 08:21 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I've been trying to run through some of the negatives and I believe that federal governments around the world(led by the USA) could still shut this thing down.

Sure these kinds of scenarios can come to pass, but there just does not seem to be enough coordination and passion for this - and if anything there are a large number of cryptos that are coming into the space that are easier targets and sure maybe some governments could do some one fell swoop to attack multiple cryptos, but some of this crypto stuff seems a bit beyond any kind of ability to easily put it into control - and the more decentralized, the more difficult to control some of these matters, and likely bitcoin is amongst the most decentralized.. even though there are differing scales of decentralization amongst other crypto coins too.

I am hardly even close to any kind of expert in trying to figure out the various ways that the thousands of coins differentiate themselves from bitcoin including the extent to which they are decentralized, but I doubt that any of them have any kind of semblance of the hashing power that is behind bitcoin... and that hashing power contributes, as well to the extent to which it can be controlled by any government. For example governments can attempt to shut down miners, but they are going to keep popping up, and there is also considerable evidence that there is an additional abundance of hashing power that is not even being used, and could be used in bitcoin or in some related matter if some aspects of the mining and hashing power were to come under attack by one or some consortium of governments. So in some sense the exponential and outrageous growth in bitcoin hashing power has caused a considerable amount of confidence and cockinesss that governments don't really fucking know what to do or how to attempt to control bitcoin and I think that is part of the reason that they attempt to employ various covert methods.. that may not be successful either to actually break bitcoin.

There could be some government actors and funding and contributions to the ongoing spam attack on bitcoin's network too. . and even that does not seem to be successful as evidenced by the ongoing upwards price pressures that continue to be amazing..

(06-02-2017 08:21 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Similar to the way the US Government shut down internet poker.

They really shut down internet poker? I think I understand what you are saying that if there are centralized entities that can be identified then the USA Gov can go after them; however, Internet poker is going on extensively in bitcoinlandia, no? including USA citizens and residents being able to access such gambling.. I don't do it, but I think that it is not difficult using bitcoin to access a large variety of gambling sites, if that is your wish to throw away your bitcoins in such practices.

(06-02-2017 08:21 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Of course things like that would be unlikely to happen with the current bickering going on in Washington, they could wake up to a 100k bitcoin.

What do you think?

I think that you are correct about some current level of distraction with the current administration that may likely make it more difficult to go after bitcoin.. but it is possible for segments of the government to still function, even if there are various current USA leaders that are trying to dismantle government matters, so admittedly there could be some lack of focus, as you seem to suggest.

(06-03-2017 02:27 AM)username Wrote:  Even beyond external issues there are several internal issues right now that need to get resolved.

Right now there is a backlog of 70,000 Bitcoin unconfirmed transactions. The increased amount of Bitcoin transactions has pushed Bitcoin up against its hardcoded block size limit. That is completely unacceptable. How can it be the money of the future when nearly a hundred thousand transactions are getting held up?

See here for the latest numbers: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Also bad and related to the above is how high the Bitcoin transaction fees are. For a medium transaction, the transaction fee is 0.0008136 BTC (US$2) according to this site: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ . I just saw someone send money to two other addresses in the amount of $41.25 and the fee was $2.71.... about 6.5%. (transaction: a1a05a5d67f5f6759107ed5291aacb0fd82ac8454a7fe7a7cdd9d50e5948f07c) Again, how can this be the money of the future when 6.5% of your transaction is going to fees? How can it be the money of the future when low value transactions can't take place because fees are more than the amount of money sent?

I love Bitcoin and hold some so this is not a haters post. This is a post of someone concerned with issues and wants them fixed.

These issues need to be resolved or Bitcoin will get passed by altcoins who move money faster and cheaper.

I don't mean to be a naysayer, because in recent times, especially the last couple of months, I have become increasingly frustrated by some of the transaction times and fees - however, these matters do not seem to be affecting the current price and the current ongoing likelihood that we are heading into the $4k to $6k territory in the near term and possibly into the $10k to $15k territory within the next year or two. I am not sure about whether these matters need to be resolved in order to have the next upwards bounds, but they do not seem to need to be resolved in order to have the first push into the $4k to $6k territory.

Recall also that alts are providing some differences from bitcoin, and I am not sure about whether they are direct competitors, even though the matter is framed in that way on a frequent basis by various alt coin pumpers.

Also, like you suggest, at this time, bitcoin may be much better for larger transactions, and maybe also some of this could be resolved by August.. difficult to tell, but does not seem disputable that there continues to be strong ongoing and upwards price pressures in btclandia.

(06-03-2017 04:16 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(06-02-2017 08:21 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Similar to the way the US Government shut down internet poker.

They really shut down internet poker? I think I understand what you are saying that if there are centralized entities that can be identified then the USA Gov can go after them; however, Internet poker is going on extensively in bitcoinlandia, no? including USA citizens and residents being able to access such gambling.. I don't do it, but I think that it is not difficult using bitcoin to access a large variety of gambling sites, if that is your wish to throw away your bitcoins in such practices.

They killed it for Americans who want to live in America. They also dried up the games big time.

I don't know where you were going with "throwing away my bitcoins with such practices" but many people as well as myself made a living for many years and many millions of hands each. I was simply talking about playing online poker from within the USA, nothing to do with using BTC to play.

Basically, what happened was the government first stepped with some legislation in 2006ish in and created a grey area which caused a couple of the bigger and more reliable networks to leave the US market and also making it nearly impossible to transfer money onto the sites still operating in the US. A standard debit or CC would not work. Most Ewallet type sites would also decline. It was a constant hassle for Americans to get money on the sites which dried the games up a bit.

Fast forward to roughly 2011 and the US government was able to pass more legislation which forced any reliable poker network out of the American market. Many Euro countries were also finding ways to crack down.

Now if Americans want t play they have to either move out of the USA or play on unreliable platforms that have player bases too thin to multi table games at decent stakes and make any sort of living.

Not to get into a big talk about online poker but similar things could be done to crypto exchanges and banks who transact with them. Long term it may not work but it would be a short term major hit. Reliable and easy to use sites such as coinbase could not be funded by Americans.

Also, this type of law would be passed inside a "must pass" budget bill and hit everyone by surprise. Or maybe it would matter as the genie is already out of the bottle.

I'm just looking into the negative possibilities to balance out all of the positive information I have found in guys like Andreas Antonopoulos and Trace Mayer.

Bitcoin price rebounding now, gonna be at 3k soon.

Still going sideways around $2500.

Buyers seem to have a problem with 2600, at least over the last couple days. It's gone to 2599 on coinbase twice, then back down to as low as 2446 before going back up again.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  

(06-03-2017 04:16 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(06-02-2017 08:21 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Similar to the way the US Government shut down internet poker.

They really shut down internet poker? I think I understand what you are saying that if there are centralized entities that can be identified then the USA Gov can go after them; however, Internet poker is going on extensively in bitcoinlandia, no? including USA citizens and residents being able to access such gambling.. I don't do it, but I think that it is not difficult using bitcoin to access a large variety of gambling sites, if that is your wish to throw away your bitcoins in such practices.

They killed it for Americans who want to live in America. They also dried up the games big time.

O.k. Fair enough. I hadn't really kept track of that kind of thing because it is not an activity that I person do.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I don't know where you were going with "throwing away my bitcoins with such practices" but many people as well as myself made a living for many years and many millions of hands each.

I was only referring to suggestions that the large majority of gamblers are not able to win, and that is how come casinos tend to be very profitable businesses and the odds are against regular people to make money in those kinds of ways.

On the other hand, I will not deny that there are likely a minority of folks who have systems in which they can make money gambling, and surely you could be one of those small minority who are able to accomplish such.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I was simply talking about playing online poker from within the USA, nothing to do with using BTC to play.

As far as I understand, bitcoin (and maybe including VPNs) has allowed for some defiance of the dictates of some jurisdictions, such as USA prohibitions.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Basically, what happened was the government first stepped with some legislation in 2006ish in and created a grey area which caused a couple of the bigger and more reliable networks to leave the US market and also making it nearly impossible to transfer money onto the sites still operating in the US. A standard debit or CC would not work. Most Ewallet type sites would also decline. It was a constant hassle for Americans to get money on the sites which dried the games up a bit.

That is understandable, and I think that I heard about some of that.. surely not in the detail that you would know if you are actively interested in the online gambling topic.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Fast forward to roughly 2011 and the US government was able to pass more legislation which forced any reliable poker network out of the American market. Many Euro countries were also finding ways to crack down.

Now if Americans want t play they have to either move out of the USA or play on unreliable platforms that have player bases too thin to multi table games at decent stakes and make any sort of living.

o.k.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Not to get into a big talk about online poker but similar things could be done to crypto exchanges and banks who transact with them. Long term it may not work but it would be a short term major hit. Reliable and easy to use sites such as coinbase could not be funded by Americans.

It seems like I have heard some of these arguments and analogies made regarding bitcoin, and it seems that there are differences that i have already attempted to explain. Yes, they could make it difficult in some areas to own or conduct business in BTC.. and so that is a risk factor, but I doubt that they could make it completely obsolete because of the nature of what bitcoin is and the fact that mining is very powerful and spread throughout the world. In fact, you only need a minimum of two computers mining for bitcoin to exist.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  Also, this type of law would be passed inside a "must pass" budget bill and hit everyone by surprise. Or maybe it would matter as the genie is already out of the bottle.

I think that the more likely of these scenarios is that the genie is out of the bottle. Of course, there could be some collective and coordinated effort to get cryptos under control including bitcoin, but even legislative and other various regulatory efforts can take time , especially when we have cross jurisdictional issues and questionable weight to be given to each governmental player and a lack of world-wide coordination from governing and financial institutions.. at least so far. Bitcoin is designed with these kinds of expectations and like I continue to say, it is getting really big and more and more difficult to control - even if like wack-a-mole you are able to knock down some parts.

(06-03-2017 10:09 PM)Jaydublin Wrote:  I'm just looking into the negative possibilities to balance out all of the positive information I have found in guys like Andreas Antonopoulos and Trace Mayer.

Sure, take all of these bullish opinions with a grain of salt, but we have to be realistic too in terms of understanding which folks have greater knowledge of the topic that they discuss. In that regard, we look at the counter-arguments and attempt to understand if the person really knows the topic, and what kinds of assumptions are being made, and in the end, we should not be relying on the ideas of a few folks - except I do understand that there may be some folks that each of us trust more than others.

Here, I'm going to respond to the last three price related posts, and I understand that any post is a kind of snapshot, and a guy can come to another conclusion 2-3 hours later, because the price dynamics may have changed.

(06-04-2017 01:00 AM)Olav Wrote:  Bitcoin price rebounding now, gonna be at 3k soon.

I think that overall this is a fair characterization. A bit more than a week ago, we had a correction down to $1,850 - note referring to Stamp prices for consistency purposes and also with the ongoing assertion that Stamp remains one of the best price barometers - even though sometimes (and usually for short periods) Stamp may be a bit out of wack with the rest of the markets.

So, it seems that after the $1,850 correction, we hovered into about a $1,950 to $2,350 price range - with a few further attempts at downwards but largely an ongoing trickling upwards and even when there have been break throughs at $2,350, $2,400, and $2,500 the break throughs have not caused an upwards spurt - which tends to be a kind of bullish sign... that further up is a bit more likely than down.. maybe even approaching the 60% probability range... but even if up seems to have the more likely chances, each time we are facing resistance levels we have to account for how long it takes to break through each of the barriers.. and i continue to think that this kind of slow trickle back up is bullish to allow for buyer support to follow the upward price movements... and at some point, it seems that we are going to experience an ongoing and irrational upwards price spurt that may last for several days and maybe into a couple of weeks - and I don't conclude that our earlier run to $2,760 represents such an irrational upwards spurt, because we have subsequently experienced what appears to be a reasonable correction with continued upwards buy pressure and a seemingly inability for bearwhales to drive the price down further.

So, in that regard, $3k seems to be almost a given and $4 to $6k seems to be a fairly reasonable target in the coming nearterm.... like I said in an earlier post.. maybe giving about a 35% likelihood to reach the $4k to $6k range in the nearterm (what is that maybe within a couple of months at most - maybe even six weeks being on the outside of the time range)

(06-04-2017 01:58 AM)CleanSlate Wrote:  Still going sideways around $2500.

Kind of... I mean, we had a step up over the weekend that seemed to be a bit against a large amount of dominating opinions that were predicting a downwards BTC price correction over the weekend from the lower $2,400s... and to go down from there.

Yet, instead of going down from $2,400s, we went up.. So, in that regard, I have a bit difficulty characterizing $2,500 as sideways.... because we should be accounting for getting to a place that was not really anticipated.

This is a price place where no one really wants to be.. Seems like, we have too much ongoing pressures here.. even over the weekend a bit higher volume and we have bears trying to get us to go down, and support ensues.. so sure, we have to go up or down... and ongoing sideways in this price range of $2,450 to $2,580, just does not seem to be any kind of ongoing phenomenon...

(06-04-2017 01:53 PM)Stun Wrote:  Buyers seem to have a problem with 2600, at least over the last couple days. It's gone to 2599 on coinbase twice, then back down to as low as 2446 before going back up again.

First, I don't think that it is good to use coinbase (or GDAX - which is pretty much the same) as any kind of meaningful barometer of BTC price points.

Second, I believe that understand what you are saying about $2,600, but it seems that you are a bit off about your characterization, no?

As I described above, we have a situation in which we are just returning to this price range from an area in which we were not expected to get here.. so sometimes it can take a bit of time for the market to follow - especially on the weekends when people frequently expect dumps to be more likely than pumps, and instead of experiencing a major pump, we experience a kind of baby pump.

We are back into all time territory, especially if we look at the daily weighted average. Look at yesterday's daily weighted price, $2524.85... That is number one, EVER...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=...sg19364830

Sure, we could possibly go down from here, but you seem to be way too premature if you are concluding that buyers have a problem with this price range .. or even going up from here.

Even though we have not quite gotten beyond $2,600 yet in this recent rebound ($2,584 on Stamp), it is not out of the range of expectations to have some resistance in this arena before returning to testing the ATH of $2,760. We have to cross the resistance of each of these areas one at a time, but at the moment, the odds of crossing both of them in the coming days, maybe a week at most, seems pretty decent.

^ I don't mean to say it won't go above 2600 tomorrow, only that it was a barrier this weekend. Buyers twice paid 2599, but wouldn't go above that and the price subsequently dropped.

Why is Bitstamp a better indicator of the true price than coinbase?

(06-04-2017 10:11 PM)Stun Wrote:  ^ I don't mean to say it won't go above 2600 tomorrow, only that it was a barrier this weekend. Buyers twice paid 2599, but wouldn't go above that and the price subsequently dropped.

I could be that largely we are saying the same things, but I still don't think that characterizing $2600 as any kind of barrier serves as an accurate description of the dynamics... even though technically, it is not an inaccurate statement.

Otherwise, I think that I explained why I would characterize the situation differently.. and we are floating at the top with ongoing price pressures...and sure at some point, the price may break through resistance points, such as $2600 - even though at this time, there seems to have not been sufficient time to verify the extent to which $2600 may present any meaningful amount of resistance or merely to melt away like butter, and I am getting the sense that the latter is more likely - even though none of these kinds of predictions are asserted with high degrees of certainty.

(06-04-2017 10:11 PM)Stun Wrote:  Why is Bitstamp a better indicator of the true price than coinbase?

I think that I already answered this, and maybe in the end there is not really any way to argue the point except to assert that many folks use Stamp as the barometer and it is good to just stick with the common reference rather than employing another reference in order that we can all know what we are talking about instead of having to specify on an ongoing basis regarding which exchange we are referring to.. when the exchanges might be all over the place in terms of price and even more than $100 dollars differences at various times... .. .. so in sum that is the ease of reference argument and bitstamp just works as an ease of reference.

So, if we are just referring to price generally, then it is good to have one agreed to reference point... Stamp seems to serve that purpose pretty well, currently.

But yeah, if we are discussing various prices of exchanges then pointing out such difference is the topic of discussion.. like say.. "whoa fuck did you see blah blah blah buy 5000 bitcoins on x exchange for $4200?" or something like that.

Further, Bitstamp has not been employing margin trading, and for a bit of time. bitstamp seemed like it had been losing some of its barometer status to Bitfinex last year, but seemed to have become the fallback barometer again after Bitfinex's fiasco's in August 2016 and thereafter.

Bitfinex is still losing some credibility in the scene because of its August 2016 situation, and coinbase / gdax has also had a considerable amount of its own political consequences in the bitcoin space that seems to have caused some disincentives to use it as a price barometer.

Like I said also, GDAX does not seem to be in line with the overall market as much as Bitstamp, and it just is not part of the broader practice to refer to it as a price barometer.

Just broke through $2,600... and several exchanges simultaneously.. kind of following bitstamp.. seems to me.

Next resistance stopping point seems to be $2,760...

How long will it take? a few days? less? 48 hours?

Martin Shkreli does a weekly livestream called "This Week In Investing." This week's episode featured a 22-minute dive into bitcoin.





My biggest takeaway was this very interesting analysis by Martin regarding "money velocity," which is defined as GDP/monetary base (GDP:M1).

We start by defining GDP as all transactions, and base as the aggregate value.

Examples:
US - 4.76
Euro - 1.56
Gold - 4.7

With this we can reverse engineer a hypothetical price for bitcoin.

Current GDP:M1 for gold:
2016 national traded value of gold = $36.5T
Aggregate gold wroth = $7.7T
Ratio = 4.7

2016 value traded BTC = $196B
Divide by 4.7
Aggregate BTC worth = $41B = $1,973/btc which it was a few days ago

Next we assume traded value BTC continues to grow to $1T, has same ratio of 4.7, this gives BTC price of $10,046. Boom.

Other Notes:

Martin is very bull bitcoin. He sees value in the ability to send money internationally, anonymously, and QUICKLY.

Fiat has no intrinsic value, but bitcoin's bartering value is high due to the freedom attached with it.

Martin talks some about how bitcoin is affecting the banks. A good move could be short JPM, BAC, C, WFC as they lose actual cash and long GS, MS. On the other hand you could short PVPL as people realize it's useless.

Martin suggests diversifying well and never putting >5-10% porfolio into bitcoin (whoops).

Threats:
-Ethereum - but he doesn't think many want an altcoin. The people want the gold standard, which is still bitcoin.
-Legislation - he even mentions online poker which was mentioned days ago in this thread.
-Coinbase transaction fee is high (so use GDAX instead)

(06-05-2017 01:49 PM)redbeard Wrote:  Martin is very bull bitcoin. He sees value in the ability to send money internationally, anonymously, and QUICKLY.

Great post, will definitely check out the video, but had to point out that Bitcoin is NOT anonymous, it is pseudonymous.

That may change in the future, but in the meantime I expect the privacy coins (like Monero, Zcash, Particl, even Ethereum once they add zk-SNARKs) to continue holding a significant portion of the crypto market share.