Holy crap! BTC (bitcoin) plummeted hard... wondering why?

Obviously I am amongst those who regretted not having stocked up on BTC when it was sold for $0.50

And obviously, rather than being jealous and feeling stupid, today I feel glad because I did NOT lose 60% of my investments. So I don't know what to think.

Those extreme fluctuations make it seem as if trading/investing BTC would be extremely stressful.

Last week or so I looked at Litecoin because Litecoin is one of those currencies which COULD still be mined reasonably...and it looked appealing...but now I see they ALSO dropped significantly...last week they were $31 and now $13...I think at that point I'd be a nervous wreck trading with any of those currencies

In theory, the idea of mining, as a nerd and hardware freak seems VERY appealing to me..except that here in Europe utilities are extremely expensive. It could cost a lot to build a rig with say 4-5 or more radeon cards and mine 24/7.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


That's the bad thing and also I think, the good thing about it. It's such an unstable thing that anybody who does buy in from greed or sell out from fear IS going to feel the heat psychologically... and those who buy in from the knowledge that they will make money, and sell out for tangible assets (gold, silver, titanium, palladium, rhodium) are going to be the ones who truly prosper from this... I think.
Those are my plans, anyway ...

PhoenixOD
reply to post by shaneslaughta

 

Even with second hand hardware it still costs more to mine than you make. you are running at a loss. Not only that you not contributing to the value of bitcoins by doing it.

That's not true. The Avalon ASICs for instance use 600-700 watts depending on the batch and will do at least 60 gh/s. If you figure power costs of $0.12/kWh, even at current prices and difficulty that comes out to be a $6,000 a year profit.

As far as Litecoin goes, it's all about choosing the right cards. 25x Radeon 7950s will get you ~16 mh/s and each card uses about ~280 watts. At current litecoin prices and difficulty and assuming a power cost of $0.12/kWh, you get a profit of around $24,000 a year. The cost of the hardware new for 5, 5 card rigs would run you about $10,000.

The above happens to be the setup of the Litecoin mining operation I'm part of.

Buy buy buy, now's the chance cause there's going to be a bounce

The way I go about investing, if I don't fully understand something I stay away from it.. Bitcoin falls under that category....

I bet it fell because of this story that broke yesterday...

Treasury Cautions Bitcoin

Zcustosmorum
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

Well, whoever is right. The point of the thread wasn't the Tor Network.

I still maintain the power lies with Bitcoin

One thing we agree on. I would actually wait a bit till just before xmas to buy in again. I think Phoenix is correct in that assumption.

reply to post by theantediluvian


Thanks , ill look into it.

Maybe it was the talk of wall street stepping in and buying bitcoin... IF you thought bitcoin could be inflated, here it comes but for now, people are bailing before the bubble?

jaws1975
reply to post by shaneslaughta

 

I disagree with btc being fiat currency. There are only 21 million coins that can be mined, and the value of the coin is in the service offered (super low transaction fees, open source, alternative to inflated dollars,etc.). My question is what will quantum computers do to the encryption of the currency. This is a major threat to centralized banks around the world, that's why China shut btc down.

only 21 million coins???....that's what the website shows you at all times...geez, a program can be written to lie, and to publicly show anything the programmer wants you to see....

jimmyx

jaws1975
reply to post by shaneslaughta

 

I disagree with btc being fiat currency. There are only 21 million coins that can be mined, and the value of the coin is in the service offered (super low transaction fees, open source, alternative to inflated dollars,etc.). My question is what will quantum computers do to the encryption of the currency. This is a major threat to centralized banks around the world, that's why China shut btc down.

only 21 million coins???....that's what the website shows you at all times...geez, a program can be written to lie, and to publicly show anything the programmer wants you to see....

No. It's a product of the diminishing block reward (the number of coins) from solving each block (mining). From the Bitcoin FAQ:

New bitcoins are generated by the network through the process of "mining". In a process that is similar to a continuous raffle draw, mining nodes on the network are awarded bitcoins each time they find the solution to a certain mathematical problem (and thereby create a new block). Creating a block is a proof of work with a difficulty that varies with the overall strength of the network. The reward for solving a block is automatically adjusted so that roughly every four years of operation of the Bitcoin network, half the amount of bitcoins created in the prior 4 years are created. 10,500,000 bitcoins were created in the first 4 (approx.) years from January 2009 to November 2012. Every four years thereafter this amount halves, so it will be 5,250,000 over years 4-8, 2,625,000 over years 8-12, and so on. Thus the total number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21,000,000.

Keep in mind that the current level of precision for bitcoin is eight decimal places. Currently, $1 USD is worth about .0017 BTC. I think eventually, there will be commonly used terms for denominations of BTC less than a whole. So it's really an issue of semantics. Comparing BTC against the dollar, .00000001 would be like a penny, the smallest unit of currency. If we called 100 of these, .000001 BTC, a "Bit-dollar" then there would be a total number of 21,000,000,000,000 "Bit-dollars" which is something like 20x the amount of USD in circulation.

Did mining for a while, just not worth the equipment, expense and time now. The way to make money is trading BTC , and certainly not long term holding, but Day Trading. Experienced day traders have, and continue to make a killing in BTC.

Trading BTC is not for amateurs. You need to be able to hold your own in other day trading venues like penny stocks and turbulent tech stocks, before investing in the now high stakes of BTC. It is not as simple as it may appear.

Anyway, the answer to why BTC is on a waterfall plunge presently has all to do with BTC China.... Read about it.

money.cnn.com...

It's crazy fun to watch - but the only thing I would like to invest in right now (only if I know how lol) would be 3D printing.

I've been watching BitCoin for a while now and far as I can tell this is just it's normal boom-bust cycle. There's no inherent value in Bitcoin and no market controllers so it tends to fluctuate very wildly. There's no long term investment with Bitcoin, it's basically all day-trading where you stand to make or lose money very quickly. Give it a week (if not a few days) and it'll jump back up to around the $1000AUD mark...just wish Mt Gox hurried up with my identity verification so I could snatch up some coins, the price is unusually low atm.

reply to post by LordGoofus


I KNOW! I'm waiting on verification from mt gox as well as cavirtex... i wanted so badly to buy this morning when it was at 409... and ltc was at 7 dollars...

so much lost profit.....
so much...

HOLY crap! DAMN the btc-e site keeps going down, people in the trollbox keep saying it's getting DDoS'd, lots of people are saying they lost BTC, as well as LTC... Not sure if this is all true or not, but I can see the panic, could practically cut it with a throwing knife. Wow. Gox also went down for a bit. Those are my main resources to see where it's at, so this is a real shock to me.

Surely, my confidence is shaken a little bit, but somehow, since I don't have any money invested, and I do own an offline wallet to store btc, i'm not really 'scared'...though I might be if I had money in it...

These last few days that I've been observing btc-e have been crazy.

And to think I had close to 30 bit-coins this time last year which I bought for 400. I'm kicking myself in the head for not holding on to them

Laxpla

And to think I had close to 30 bit-coins this time last year which I bought for 400. I'm kicking myself in the head for not holding on to them

edit on 18-12-2013 by Laxpla because: (no reason given)

Don't kick yourself for not holding Bitcoin. If you had bought in early when it was $10.. you would have sold them when it went over $100... You find the valleys and the hills and play them continuous. Holding them for a long time is not advisable and you only win on luck. Don't think of the value of the coins, think in the amount you will invest in your local currency. It's about locking in percentage gain, not the value of the Bitcoin.

if you have any questions about BTC feel free to PM them to me. I'm on and off here, so thread responses may be few and far between.