(07-10-2016 01:56 PM)BBinger Wrote:  Happy halving everybody. The biggest action so far from this has been the revelation that Bitcoin is deeply fatshaming. Still the rest of the year should be a wild ride starting in September.

Don't forget to HODL!

Yeah. That fatshaming is an interesting kind of way of framing the situation.

I take it that you are using September as a kind of reference point for the next price increased based on how long you expect for the results of the lessening of the supply to be felt, or is there some other reason that you are projecting September for such?

Interesting recent development that seems to bring the Winklevoss ETF one step closer to realization... that is the opening up by SEC for public comment.. which could result in a SEC approval as soon as within a 45 to 90 day period.

http://www.coindesk.com/sec-winklevoss-b...c-comment/

Bullish?

Here are three more bitcoin bullish markets for anyone interested in articles discussing bullish bitcoin scenarios.


1) https://news.bitcoin.com/philippines-pay...s-bitcoin/

2) https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-...ated-game/

3) https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/coinapul...-colombia/

(07-10-2016 07:36 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-10-2016 01:56 PM)BBinger Wrote:  Happy halving everybody. The biggest action so far from this has been the revelation that Bitcoin is deeply fatshaming. Still the rest of the year should be a wild ride starting in September.

Don't forget to HODL!

Yeah. That fatshaming is an interesting kind of way of framing the situation.

I take it that you are using September as a kind of reference point for the next price increased based on how long you expect for the results of the lessening of the supply to be felt, or is there some other reason that you are projecting September for such?

That and looking at the last halving. Was in November gradually started being felt in price by late December, but broke loose February through March. Given that 3/4 as opposed to half of all Bitcoins have been mined as well as more and largely different players being involved now the supply squeeze could hit differently this time. Anywhere from August through January.

Sure Mt Gox is gone as a nexus of instability, but Bitfinex is likely to enter its death throes and play a similar role.

(07-12-2016 01:48 PM)BBinger Wrote:  

(07-10-2016 07:36 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-10-2016 01:56 PM)BBinger Wrote:  Happy halving everybody. The biggest action so far from this has been the revelation that Bitcoin is deeply fatshaming. Still the rest of the year should be a wild ride starting in September.

Don't forget to HODL!

Yeah. That fatshaming is an interesting kind of way of framing the situation.

I take it that you are using September as a kind of reference point for the next price increased based on how long you expect for the results of the lessening of the supply to be felt, or is there some other reason that you are projecting September for such?

That and looking at the last halving. Was in November gradually started being felt in price by late December, but broke loose February through March. Given that 3/4 as opposed to half of all Bitcoins have been mined as well as more and largely different players being involved now the supply squeeze could hit differently this time. Anywhere from August through January.

Sure Mt Gox is gone as a nexus of instability, but Bitfinex is likely to enter its death throes and play a similar role.

Yep... All of what you say makes sense and certainly we have a much more developed space (nearly 4 years later) with quite a bit of relative liquidity and various additional avenues to short bitcoin.

Even though we cannot know exactly how a smaller increase in bitcoin's supply is going to play out on the price, the most logical conclusion remains somewhat modeled on the past, as you suggest, and in that regard, I doubt that halvening can be completely priced in, as some like to argue, because such halvening impact becomes much less speculative when actual material impacts begin to be felt in a larger and more concrete way with the passage of time and with apparent increased adoption and use of bitcoin.

Seems pretty great to be a HODLer, at the moment.

The Russians seem to be lightening up a little bit in respect to bitcoin...


http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/13/russia...ty-rights/


They seem to be a bit of flip-floppers regarding bitcoin, and let's see how this current inclination plays out.

I sold off a large percentage of my coins. I was just looking at the charts. I don't know that it will reach back here but my personal feeling right now is I'm not comfortable buying back in until we get back to $580, if we do. I could be totally off base and it could continue rising from here but personally not comfortable rebuying my big position back in until $580

(07-14-2016 11:50 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  I sold off a large percentage of my coins. I was just looking at the charts. I don't know that it will reach back here but my personal feeling right now is I'm not comfortable buying back in until we get back to $580, if we do. I could be totally off base and it could continue rising from here but personally not comfortable rebuying my big position back in until $580

What kinds of percentages of BTC are you talking about selling, jamaicabound? From your description, it sounds like more than 75% of your holdings, no?

I can kind of recognize what you are saying, when you are looking at some of the charts and the rate of bitcoin's price growth, and in that regard, maybe $580 would be a bit more reasonable place to be, based on a kind of traditional assessment of the asset, or at least another test of $580 before either continuing upwards price movement or even flat.

On the other hand, bitcoin is not really any kind of traditional asset, and has a very decent potential to experience another exponential upwards price spike at any moment, that could take us 5x, 10x or maybe some smaller stepping stone before making such movement, and in that regard, I have difficulties selling any significant amount of my BTC holdings at these mid-$600s prices, and my holdings remain a bit bias stacked in favor of upwards. I have projected ranges of holdings for myself at various price points, which currently is 85% to 96%, and my current BTC to fiat is a bit over 95% (which is very near the top of the range, which could be a bit too exuberant) .

I continue not to really know short-term price directions either, especially the shorter the term of prediction the more difficult it is to know.

Part of the additional difficulty in predicting either price direction comes when we are continuing to experience a relatively low level of trade volume (which I think remains the current case, in spite of little volume spikes here and there, they are not sustained for more than a day or so), so if there is some kind of desire by either side to push BTC prices upwards or downwards, they could likely do it in the short term and even achieve a 5% or greater movement in either direction without much difficulties.

I was telling my GF yesterday that I thought that over the previous few days since price had moved up from the $640s to $678 and then back down to the mid $650s on relatively low volume, that there was pretty decent momentum to at least get into the $640s, especially if there were just a pick-up spike in volume for the shorter term, but instead the price bounced back into the $660s.. and remains in the lower $660s as I type.

I would say currently (looking back at the last month and a half of so) that BTC prices are largely unpredictably floating in about a $550 to $750 range, and they could bounce around quite a bit in that range and to still stay in that very large range.

I mean it seems that we have a bit of a low volume battle here. Bears would like prices to go back below $500 and bulls would like prices to go above into the $800s at least. It also seems that whenever there are spikes in volume, those spikes remain attempts to push the price down, and then come all at once to attempt to make such downward price pushes, but the prices trickle back up on relatively lower volume.. and accordingly, it seems that Bulls have a bit of an advantage overall because of the upward dynamics and because the bears really would have liked to have kept prices below $500 for a lot longer, but they lost control of that situation and seem to be having difficulties even getting prices to go below $600 for any extended period of time.. take the last push to $540 on 6/22.. the prices were below $600 for only about 1 day total, and there were several unsuccessful attempts thereafter to try to bring prices below $600.. .

Accordingly, our previous range for about the whole beginning of 2016 up until the end of May was $360 to $460.... and we broke out of that range... and kind of seemingly no return absent some really major negative situation.

So, sure it is possible and within possible reason to go down to $580 or lower, but I certainly would not hold my breath for such to occur.

Hypothetically, if I were to sell any significant percentage of my BTC holdings in the mid $600s today, I would probably be buying back about 20% of what I had sold for every about $20 drop, just to be safe, because like I mentioned, there have already been several unsuccessful attempts to go below $600, and whether this next attempt (if such an attempt comes) would be successful to go below $600 remains quite unclear and even seems to be a bit against the odds...

Any further explanation or assessment from you jamaicabound would be appreciated, or from anyone, even if the assessment goes contrary to what I am asserting, which is a bit more on the bullish end of things.

Also, Since we are on the topic of bitcoin...

The news is that MTGOX CEO Mark Karpeles is out of jail in Japan on $100k bond.

Interesting.. click on the video linked in the reddit thread, he looks very thin and very different with about a 50lb weight reduction.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4s...translate/

http://cointelegraph.com/news/mt-gox-ceo...han-before

(07-14-2016 02:53 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 11:50 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  I sold off a large percentage of my coins. I was just looking at the charts. I don't know that it will reach back here but my personal feeling right now is I'm not comfortable buying back in until we get back to $580, if we do. I could be totally off base and it could continue rising from here but personally not comfortable rebuying my big position back in until $580

What kinds of percentages of BTC are you talking about selling, jamaicabound? From your description, it sounds like more than 75% of your holdings, no?

I can kind of recognize what you are saying, when you are looking at some of the charts and the rate of bitcoin's price growth, and in that regard, maybe $580 would be a bit more reasonable place to be, based on a kind of traditional assessment of the asset, or at least another test of $580 before either continuing upwards price movement or even flat.

On the other hand, bitcoin is not really any kind of traditional asset, and has a very decent potential to experience another exponential upwards price spike at any moment, that could take us 5x, 10x or maybe some smaller stepping stone before making such movement, and in that regard, I have difficulties selling any significant amount of my BTC holdings at these mid-$600s prices, and my holdings remain a bit bias stacked in favor of upwards. I have projected ranges of holdings for myself at various price points, which currently is 85% to 96%, and my current BTC to fiat is a bit over 95% (which is very near the top of the range, which could be a bit too exuberant) .

I continue not to really know short-term price directions either, especially the shorter the term of prediction the more difficult it is to know.

Part of the additional difficulty in predicting either price direction comes when we are continuing to experience a relatively low level of trade volume (which I think remains the current case, in spite of little volume spikes here and there, they are not sustained for more than a day or so), so if there is some kind of desire by either side to push BTC prices upwards or downwards, they could likely do it in the short term and even achieve a 5% or greater movement in either direction without much difficulties.

I was telling my GF yesterday that I thought that over the previous few days since price had moved up from the $640s to $678 and then back down to the mid $650s on relatively low volume, that there was pretty decent momentum to at least get into the $640s, especially if there were just a pick-up spike in volume for the shorter term, but instead the price bounced back into the $660s.. and remains in the lower $660s as I type.

I would say currently (looking back at the last month and a half of so) that BTC prices are largely unpredictably floating in about a $550 to $750 range, and they could bounce around quite a bit in that range and to still stay in that very large range.

I mean it seems that we have a bit of a low volume battle here. Bears would like prices to go back below $500 and bulls would like prices to go above into the $800s at least. It also seems that whenever there are spikes in volume, those spikes remain attempts to push the price down, and then come all at once to attempt to make such downward price pushes, but the prices trickle back up on relatively lower volume.. and accordingly, it seems that Bulls have a bit of an advantage overall because of the upward dynamics and because the bears really would have liked to have kept prices below $500 for a lot longer, but they lost control of that situation and seem to be having difficulties even getting prices to go below $600 for any extended period of time.. take the last push to $540 on 6/22.. the prices were below $600 for only about 1 day total, and there were several unsuccessful attempts thereafter to try to bring prices below $600.. .

Accordingly, our previous range for about the whole beginning of 2016 up until the end of May was $360 to $460.... and we broke out of that range... and kind of seemingly no return absent some really major negative situation.

So, sure it is possible and within possible reason to go down to $580 or lower, but I certainly would not hold my breath for such to occur.

Hypothetically, if I were to sell any significant percentage of my BTC holdings in the mid $600s today, I would probably be buying back about 20% of what I had sold for every about $20 drop, just to be safe, because like I mentioned, there have already been several unsuccessful attempts to go below $600, and whether this next attempt (if such an attempt comes) would be successful to go below $600 remains quite unclear and even seems to be a bit against the odds...

Any further explanation or assessment from you jamaicabound would be appreciated, or from anyone, even if the assessment goes contrary to what I am asserting, which is a bit more on the bullish end of things.

Hey buddy, yeah honestly my moves with Bitcoin are more gut decisions than based on any type of hard numbers, although I feel like historically just from looking at charts as well as kind of taking into consideration current events and just overall support for BTC that I'm fairly decent at predicting or guessing trends.

I had kind of touched on it in a previous post but I was swing trading bitcoins back in the 2015. Prior to Novermber 15 bought in a little over 300 sold for 400. Waited for the drop back to 350 then in december sold for like 440 or so. Bought back in in the 380 range in Jan, etc.

Honestly prior to the recent runup prices had been kind of stagnent and I kind of got busy with other things and totally forgot about Bitcoin. I heard about the price spike and decided to selloff like 90% of my holdings.

Looking back I wish I hadn't because it's kind of stupid selling off taking gains just to buy back in but I guess I was anticipating or hoping for another dip/buying opportunity and wanted to take some profits and get back in with a bit of extra money to buy a few more coins.

I'm a believer in Bitcoin for the longterm. I really have any concrete numbers in mind but honestly in the next 5 or 10 years I could see it being back to the $1200 days or even something crazy like 20k a coin, I just really don't know so for that reason always wanted to keep a pretty good stock of coins as I think it's only going to continue to go up.

Everyone hates merchant processors, bitcoin solves that problem. The marijuana industry is another example, they are locked out of banking and there's a solution to processors refusing to work with that and other "high risk" industries. My current business is paying almost 7% in merchant processing because were high risk despite not having had a chargeback in over 3 years while doing thousands of transactions a year over 2.5 million. Recently a processor told me I'm high risk because I had one chargeback of $157 out of like hundreds of successful transactions totaling over 2 million. Now banks like Chase are getting all finicky over international wires, closing down the ability of small businesses to wire money. The lack of someone being able to control bitcoin has so many applications for business we just need more people to use it so it becomes a practical platform for payments.

Honestly I kind of broke my own rule by selling off as much as I did. I basically said I never wanted to fall below 20 btc min.

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 02:53 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 11:50 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  [edited out]

[edited out]

Hey buddy, yeah honestly my moves with Bitcoin are more gut decisions than based on any type of hard numbers, although I feel like historically just from looking at charts as well as kind of taking into consideration current events and just overall support for BTC that I'm fairly decent at predicting or guessing trends.

I'm planning to respond to you in two posts, therefore maybe a bit easier to read?


Here's response part 1:


Probably it does not matter too much regarding how you arrive at your BTC trading decision(s), so long as you are comfortable with the decision or have some kind of exit strategy that is reasonable in the event that your price predictions do not play out as you were anticipating.

I think that I am doing something similar to you, and at the same time, I do attempt to provide some explanations for my position(s) to the extent that either RVF guys may be interested or that I believe attempting explanations would be helpful for me in attempting to figure out why I have such inclinations and approaches (self-therapy.. )

Sure we know that each of us are acting on incomplete information (or possibly difficulties explaining why we have certain hunches or inclinations), and sometimes we are just going to have to act on whatever information that we have at our disposal at the time that we act.

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  I had kind of touched on it in a previous post but I was swing trading bitcoins back in the 2015.

Overall, 2015 was not too good of a year to swing trade BTC because as you know it was mostly not moving too much and largely in the mid $200s.. but yeah, nonetheless, I am sure there would have been several opportunities within those price ranges, as well.... namely spike to $317 in the middle of the year and then second spike to $502 in late October / early November.

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Prior to Novermber 15 bought in a little over 300 sold for 400. Waited for the drop back to 350 then in december sold for like 440 or so. Bought back in in the 380 range in Jan, etc.

Definitely there were probably reasonable profits in what you did, and ways you could make more profits or ways that you could have screwed up and made less profits.

In this regard, there are quite a few ways to trade BTC and to be profitable - even when some methods may be more profitable than others.

Each guy needs to customize his own approach.

By the way, I am kind of curious regarding how you appropriate your BTC trading profits. Do you attempt to fold those profits back into your BTC trading fund, or do you take them off the table and buy some consumer goods or do you diversify them into other investments? I'm sure that there is probably a mixture regarding what you do and your cash flow and how you perceive other kinds of investments.

For me, I have kind of attempted to keep track of a pool of funds that I designate as my "BTC trading portfolio", even though some of it is in fiat and some of it is in BTC. I have been slowly (little by little) increasing my quantity of funds in my trading pool through the last three years, so in essence, my BTC investment is long term whether it is held in BTC or not, but I have not really removed any funds from that pool in the past nearly three years, so far.

One of my concerns about removing funds from my BTC trading pool is that it potentially creates a taxable event, and surely creating a taxable event is not necessarily the end of the world, but something that I am attempting to defer for a while, to the extent that it seems reasonably feasible to defer.

Here's response part 2:

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Honestly prior to the recent runup prices had been kind of stagnent and I kind of got busy with other things and totally forgot about Bitcoin. I heard about the price spike and decided to selloff like 90% of my holdings.

Looking back I wish I hadn't because it's kind of stupid selling off taking gains just to buy back in but I guess I was anticipating or hoping for another dip/buying opportunity and wanted to take some profits and get back in with a bit of extra money to buy a few more coins.

I appreciate your self-reflection and self-criticism, yet we know that nearly every BTC trading strategy is going to have it's ups and downs and "I should have ____".

BTC trading is a risky business, and none of us regular people are really going to be able to time the tops and bottoms of the prices on a consistent basis unless we are either lying or extremely lucky.

I certainly attempt to preach my BTC trading strategy as being good, but really, I understand that mostly I am working on my BTC trading strategy for myself and frequently tweak my strategy on an ongoing basis and I also understand that my particular strategy is not going to be suitable for some people in terms of their own personal finances, risk tolerance and/or time line.

I kind of have variations of this battle concerning how to trade (strategies for trading) with folks in other bitcoin forums and also with my girlfriend...

Let's take my girlfriend, for example, I try to get her to follow some reasonable variation of my system, which is to sell as the price goes up and to buy as the price goes down while always keep some bitcoin in her BTC portfolio and always keep some fiat available, and on an ongoing basis, the price would out run her, and she would frequently run out of one or the other... So bitcoin prices would be going up, and she would not have any more BTC to sell or bitcoin prices would be going down and she would not have any fiat left to buy. In both cases, she would sell or buy too early and too much.... but similar kinds of problems could be true, if we attempted to wait too long before we either buy or sell and we try to time the bottom or the top too much... So, in my strategy, we have to continue to buy in stages as the price is going down and continue to sell in stages as the price is going up, but not too much and to plan ahead somewhat.

I am no angel in figuring out these kinds of price points and amounts for myself because I am also frequently having to adjust my buying and selling strategy in order to be better prepared for large price movements in either direction.

No matter how we tweak these trading allocation amounts, there is going to be room to learn, but then also, likely, some regrets, too.

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  I'm a believer in Bitcoin for the longterm. I really have any concrete numbers in mind but honestly in the next 5 or 10 years I could see it being back to the $1200 days or even something crazy like 20k a coin, I just really don't know so for that reason always wanted to keep a pretty good stock of coins as I think it's only going to continue to go up.

In this regard, it is not necessarily a bad thing to trade and take profits at reasonable intervals, but your description of your thinking here seems to justify also that you should always hold on to some BTC - even if BTC prices go quite high - never sell all of them because you are never going to be 100% sure that the upwards BTC price run is over, correct?

As compared with me, you seem to be quite a bit more tolerant to get rid of some of your BTC on significant price runs, and maybe, for example, I would still hold onto 40% of my coins if in an extreme bull run, but maybe you should still consider holding onto at least 20% of those coins (or whatever other percentage might suit you) in an extreme bull run.

I think that it is good to consider these kinds of extreme price run scenarios in order to give ourselves guidelines regarding our own personal trade limits... but yeah, maybe you are more willing to sell 95% or even 99% of your BTC... I think that selling anywhere above 60% is too extreme for me, but each of us is gonna have a different amount in which we are willing to go. And, under certain scenarios, I may even be willing to go beyond my limit, if I really believe that prices are going down by 10% or more.

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Everyone hates merchant processors, bitcoin solves that problem. The marijuana industry is another example, they are locked out of banking and there's a solution to processors refusing to work with that and other "high risk" industries. My current business is paying almost 7% in merchant processing because were high risk despite not having had a chargeback in over 3 years while doing thousands of transactions a year over 2.5 million. Recently a processor told me I'm high risk because I had one chargeback of $157 out of like hundreds of successful transactions totaling over 2 million. Now banks like Chase are getting all finicky over international wires, closing down the ability of small businesses to wire money. The lack of someone being able to control bitcoin has so many applications for business we just need more people to use it so it becomes a practical platform for payments.

Actually, the above are very good examples to show the power of bitcoin and its potential to empower individuals while also having the potential for exponential price growth, and your examples are likely just scratching the surface of bitcoin's potentiality.

(07-14-2016 03:35 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Honestly I kind of broke my own rule by selling off as much as I did. I basically said I never wanted to fall below 20 btc min.

Well, maybe you broke your own rule because your rule was not quite suitable to how you are really going to act when push comes to shove?

I don't think that it is necessarily bad to break your own rules if you think that there is a good justification for breaking it, but then again, if you broke your rule, and then you realize that you should have stuck with the rule, then you can go back to the rule... or at least figure out some reasonable way to get you back to your original and maybe more suitable position, correct?

Sometimes, I have found that I have either sold too much BTC or bought too much in terms of my own guidelines - either I have to rethink my own guidelines or I have to figure out a way to get back in compliance with my guidelines.

One of the good thing about being the master of your own rules is that you can change them if you think that making such changes is a good idea or figure out strategies to attempt to be more compliant with your rules - especially when the pressure is on.. and when the BTC market is moving fast, we then have to think fast, too or to have some kind of set up in which we already have a pretty good idea what we are going to do in such circumstances ... even when the situation may play out a little bit differently than we had anticipated or planned for...

And, in the end, even if we do not follow our plan exactly and we kind of screw things up (in respect to our plan), that does not justify NOT having a plan... What I am saying is that it is better to have a plan and then deviate from it rather than not having a plan...

You know the statement: failing to plan is like planning to fail... hahahaha.. Let's at least try some kind of planning.

Jeezus, 7% merchant services?? I have a restaurant, and luckily most of the customers pay with debit cards when they're using plastic so the aggregate fee is like 1.14%... What kind of business is it if you don't mind sharing?

(07-14-2016 05:44 PM)booshala Wrote:  Jeezus, 7% merchant services?? I have a restaurant, and luckily most of the customers pay with debit cards when they're using plastic so the aggregate fee is like 1.14%... What kind of business is it if you don't mind sharing?

Are you sure that you are getting 1.14%?

I understand 7% is high.... and jamaicabound had said something about a high risk business (which could be drug dispensers or something like that).

Anyhow, a lot of the regular merchant services will advertise low rates, and even advertise rates that are below 2% etc; however, a lot of that is bullshit because by the time you add up all the various other bullshit and hidden charges and monthly charges and all the other random and difficult to decipher shit that they throw into your monthly bill, you are lucky to get out of there with a 4% to 6% charges in compared to the amount of items charged. I think that is why some merchants will not take certain credit cards, and American Express is one of the notorious additional charges... But, anyhow, maybe a business that is doing higher volume of transactions will achieve some lower on the spectrum of charges, maybe?

I think that square has become so competitive in the merchant service space because they charge a flat 2.75% fee for everything and any kind of card whether debit or credit, everything is the same, so I would be surprised if you are actually achieving merchant service fees that are beating out square's flat rates...

(07-14-2016 06:38 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 05:44 PM)booshala Wrote:  Jeezus, 7% merchant services?? I have a restaurant, and luckily most of the customers pay with debit cards when they're using plastic so the aggregate fee is like 1.14%... What kind of business is it if you don't mind sharing?

Are you sure that you are getting 1.14%?

I understand 7% is high.... and jamaicabound had said something about a high risk business (which could be drug dispensers or something like that).

Anyhow, a lot of the regular merchant services will advertise low rates, and even advertise rates that are below 2% etc; however, a lot of that is bullshit because by the time you add up all the various other bullshit and hidden charges and monthly charges and all the other random and difficult to decipher shit that they throw into your monthly bill, you are lucky to get out of there with a 4% to 6% charges in compared to the amount of items charged. I think that is why some merchants will not take certain credit cards, and American Express is one of the notorious additional charges... But, anyhow, maybe a business that is doing higher volume of transactions will achieve some lower on the spectrum of charges, maybe?

I think that square has become so competitive in the merchant service space because they charge a flat 2.75% fee for everything and any kind of card whether debit or credit, everything is the same, so I would be surprised if you are actually achieving merchant service fees that are beating out square's flat rates...

Yeah it's roughly 115 basis points after everything... for example if my gross monthly CC revenue is $200k, my merchant fees come out to around $2500-$3000 all in after the garbage fees.

My current provider gunned hard for my business and gave me rock bottom rates to make me switch. After a few months, there were some server shut downs and they felt obligated to cut a lot of the PCI and junk fees out as well. The fee is also very low because 90% of the plastic that comes through is debit which has a very low surcharge.

Square's rates are terrible for my business, I'd never even consider them unless I had some low grossing business like a small cafe or food truck.

(07-14-2016 08:03 PM)booshala Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 06:38 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 05:44 PM)booshala Wrote:  Jeezus, 7% merchant services?? I have a restaurant, and luckily most of the customers pay with debit cards when they're using plastic so the aggregate fee is like 1.14%... What kind of business is it if you don't mind sharing?

Are you sure that you are getting 1.14%?

I understand 7% is high.... and jamaicabound had said something about a high risk business (which could be drug dispensers or something like that).

Anyhow, a lot of the regular merchant services will advertise low rates, and even advertise rates that are below 2% etc; however, a lot of that is bullshit because by the time you add up all the various other bullshit and hidden charges and monthly charges and all the other random and difficult to decipher shit that they throw into your monthly bill, you are lucky to get out of there with a 4% to 6% charges in compared to the amount of items charged. I think that is why some merchants will not take certain credit cards, and American Express is one of the notorious additional charges... But, anyhow, maybe a business that is doing higher volume of transactions will achieve some lower on the spectrum of charges, maybe?

I think that square has become so competitive in the merchant service space because they charge a flat 2.75% fee for everything and any kind of card whether debit or credit, everything is the same, so I would be surprised if you are actually achieving merchant service fees that are beating out square's flat rates...

Yeah it's roughly 115 basis points after everything... for example if my gross monthly CC revenue is $200k, my merchant fees come out to around $2500-$3000 all in after the garbage fees.

My current provider gunned hard for my business and gave me rock bottom rates to make me switch. After a few months, there were some server shut downs and they felt obligated to cut a lot of the PCI and junk fees out as well. The fee is also very low because 90% of the plastic that comes through is debit which has a very low surcharge.

Square's rates are terrible for my business, I'd never even consider them unless I had some low grossing business like a small cafe or food truck.

I am quite surprised by what you are saying, but yeah if you have taken into account all of the various fees, and that is what you are getting, that seems to be quite low, and maybe really big venders are also able to negotiate those kinds of rates. I think for average venders or even small business venders that may be processing anywhere between $50k and $1million a year, they are likely paying in the 3% to 6% arena... Maybe I am wrong, but whenever I have spoken with any small business owners, they seem to be experiencing those kinds of numbers and even thinking that square is a pretty good deal at 2.75%...

No need to go on about this except maybe to wait for jamaicabound to explain his credit card fees situation a bit further, if he wouldn't mind doing so... .which I do think that his various points stand regarding how regular individuals and even some sectors are either unbanked or they are getting screwed royally in various kinds of banking fees.. whether it is payday lenders, payment processors, remittance or other financial services for regular folks - and bitcoin is going to likely provide a lot of competition in respects to those kinds of various fees. You know another point regarding bitcoin fees and savings, I think that first world folks, whether in the USA or other financially advanced places, are likely not to benefit as much from the personal banking as compared with other places around the world, in which people are likely getting screwed more by their money devaluation and other banking inaccessability issues.

Really want to buy some Ether on Ethereum, but can never get the chain to fully download. Not using an SSD, so that might be the problem. Anyone else run into this?

I generally enjoy listening to Joe Rogan on a variety of topics, and he has recently invited Andreas Antonopolis to appear again (for the fourth time) on September 7.

Will be interesting, since it will have been about 10 months since AA's previous appearance on the show, and Joe tends to get into considerable detail - his podcasts tend to be between 2 and 3 hours, so likely they are going to get into a view interesting areas of discussion.

https://news.bitcoin.com/joe-rogan-excited/

(07-14-2016 11:12 PM)nmmoooreland20 Wrote:  Really want to buy some Ether on Ethereum, but can never get the chain to fully download. Not using an SSD, so that might be the problem. Anyone else run into this?

I think that I may have heard of Ethereum....

It's one of those crypto currencies, no? Kind of like bitcoin, but not?

I kind of recall that there could be some kind of relationship to bitcoin.

(07-16-2016 06:17 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 11:12 PM)nmmoooreland20 Wrote:  Really want to buy some Ether on Ethereum, but can never get the chain to fully download. Not using an SSD, so that might be the problem. Anyone else run into this?

I think that I may have heard of Ethereum....

It's one of those crypto currencies, no? Kind of like bitcoin, but not?

I kind of recall that there could be some kind of relationship to bitcoin.

I found a relationship between Ethereum and bitcoin.

Ethereum is going to do a hardfork, and bitcoin remains very reluctant (and difficult to do hard forks).

Several exchanges will be blocking ethereum withdrawals and deposits for many hours around Ethereum's hardfork implementation, which is scheduled for sometime around next Tuesday.

https://news.bitcoin.com/ethereum-hard-f...t-bitcoin/

Finally got a little bit of price movement action in bitcoin, today (a 2-3% jump, so far).


Maybe we can question whether there is going to be any sustained upwards BTC price movement, and even though ETH had also experienced a bit of a price jump in the past week (maybe due to the announcement of the planned hardfork), it may be time to either sell or short ETH, The DAO and maybe even Steem... but what do I know, but the hardfork is not likely a good thing for ETH, except maybe for people who already own it and some DAO in the very short term.

Anyhow, I don't play around with those alts because they are even more difficult to know the extent to which they are going to be pumped or dumped, yet sometimes we are going to see simultaneous price movements with some of the alts and bitcoin....

For bitcoin, it has been a couple of weeks since Bitcoin has been in the $680s and it would be nice to break above $700, yet I am not sure whether the whole bitcoin space is ready for that price, yet.. and then if we get significantly above $700, then the next target would be getting into the upper $700s, again (which has been about a month since we visited those upper $700s price territory).

With the about 2% upwards BTC price bump in the past several hours (prices currently floating in the $678 to $680 territory), I was kind of in the mood for some bullish news, and maybe the below article (linked within the reddit thread) will need to be sufficient, at least in that the article discusses manners in which governmental and financial institutions are having to consider various strategies in respect to the categorization and treatment of bitcoin.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments...nks_hands/

I'm not sure if the below link should be related to bitcoin, or maybe to gold/silver...

Naw.. maybe I am a bit biased? for a variety of reasons bitcoin seems best, anyhow.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-17...wiii-stake

(07-16-2016 06:17 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 11:12 PM)nmmoooreland20 Wrote:  Really want to buy some Ether on Ethereum, but can never get the chain to fully download. Not using an SSD, so that might be the problem. Anyone else run into this?

I think that I may have heard of Ethereum....

It's one of those crypto currencies, no? Kind of like bitcoin, but not?

I kind of recall that there could be some kind of relationship to bitcoin.

There is a cryptocurrency component to it ("Ether") but it's also a whole platform for decentralized contracts, and applications overall. I wanted to investing half of my cryptocurrency allocation to Ether, for the larger upside (in my view) and half in bitcoin, but haven't been able to load Ethereum completely on my computer. Did just purchase my stash of BTC though (unfortunately after the bump, since I got busy yesterday).

(07-18-2016 08:25 AM)nmmoooreland20 Wrote:  

(07-16-2016 06:17 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(07-14-2016 11:12 PM)nmmoooreland20 Wrote:  Really want to buy some Ether on Ethereum, but can never get the chain to fully download. Not using an SSD, so that might be the problem. Anyone else run into this?

I think that I may have heard of Ethereum....

It's one of those crypto currencies, no? Kind of like bitcoin, but not?

I kind of recall that there could be some kind of relationship to bitcoin.

There is a cryptocurrency component to it ("Ether") but it's also a whole platform for decentralized contracts, and applications overall. I wanted to investing half of my cryptocurrency allocation to Ether, for the larger upside (in my view) and half in bitcoin, but haven't been able to load Ethereum completely on my computer. Did just purchase my stash of BTC though (unfortunately after the bump, since I got busy yesterday).

O.k. fair enough. I am glad that you were able to get some stake in bitcoin, and frequently there are ways that you can dollar cost average over time into bitcoin, and likely do o.k. in the long term, which is kind of a recommended methodology rather than investing balls to the wall and hoping for a pump.

On the other hand if you are in bitcoin merely for the pumps then it can be pretty difficult to time those kinds of upward price movements, because sometimes bitcoin is dumped right when it appears that it is going to be pumped.

Anyhow, I have considered bitcoin to be more of a longer term investment rather than a get rich quick vehicle, even though bitcoin does have that kind of upside potential too, which could be 5x, 10x, 100x or some other variation - that in no way is guaranteed but still within the realm of possibilities.

Regarding getting into Ethereum and discussing it here, you may have sensed some sarcasm in my comments mostly because I understand that Ethereum is not bitcoin, and over the years guys frequently bring up various other cryptos in this thread in order to pump them in various ways, here - maybe in the guise of "educating" us about them or to attempt to differentiate these various other cryptos or to categorize them as a kind of bitcoin 2.0, which is well known to be one of Ethereum's talking points, and surely the commentary of RVF guys on other cryptos here would be more acceptable in my view if there were at least some kind of connection made to bitcoin... but yeah, personally, I am not so much an advocate of other cryptos (such as Ether), but I understand that some of these other cryptos can be pumped on a short term basis in ways much greater than bitcoin (especially in the shorter term), but the downside potential of some of those other cryptos, including ether can be pretty great, too, and even if guys on this forum do not really seem to discuss these other various cryptos in other threads, there are likely useful ether threads outside of RVF to engage in more detail about some of these ether ideas and strategies.