This is my first post on this forum, but i'm lurking in the bitcoin world since some time. Like many others, i found the motivation to buy some bitcoins (still waiting for bitstamp validation - awfully long times in my opinion) thanks to one of the worst possible motivation: greed. Because it's crystal clear to me that this bitcoin-thing is a revolution, and seems to me not too late to make some cash out of it in a relatively honest and easy way.
I really appreciate all the polytical and pratical correlates of bitcoin: decentralization, anonymate, speed... it's like gold, better also than physical cash in my opinion. But, speaking honestly, that's not the reason why i'm going to buy some btc.
So... i'm not rich and i'm not an expert in informatic or finance, neither i have access to cheap electricity or hardware. And i have a full-time work that takes a lot of my time. Seems there are no much easy ways to me to make a decent profit, but i have some ideas and want to share them to see what more expert people think, and maybe to recive some advice:
1)MINING: no more a good business if you have not a lot of technical skill and money, but may still be if you take some GH/s contract, correct? What's the best provider for such contracts?
2) ARBITRAGE: seems an easy way to make money, but the fees are too high and times of fiat-money transerfs are too long. Maybe a good idea if you have a lot of money to invest, that's not my case
3)INTRADAY TRADING/SCALPING: difficoult due to low volumes and the lack of a trader that offer leverage. No way to make cash without leverage
4)"INVEST" ON JUSTDICE: i didn't still figure out what are the expected risks and profit, but i think it would be a good bet (althought a form of betting rather than investing, i know). If i "invest" 1 BTC in a pool of 62000 btc i will have 0,0000161% of the pool, will my capital move a lot up-down or (as i expect) remaing roughly the same over time?
5)BUY BTC AND KEEP: will the price go up? Down? This seems to me the most important dilemma: when all the "professional" miners will come to play (i think roughly at the start of 2014) will the price go up or down? We will have a huge difficulty, so more difficoult-to-obtain btc, but also a huge hashing power, so more btc to sell. And without the possibility to mine at home, will the people remain interested in btc and continue to buy them? Because if the answers is not, all bit-coin will become simply bit in a blinking time. If otherwise it's the money of the future, we'll expected to be paid in nano-btc and who owe an entire btc will be rich. So what's the most probable future of btc? It's a bubble or it's going to grow exponentially over time?
Thank you to anybody who will find the time to answer my questions
Hi erre and welcome to the forum
There's quite a range of answers to your questions based on a number of factors, mostly subjective perspective and that you're asking questions about what will happen in the future and I don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen, we all just try to make sense of it and hope that our ideas play out.
So for what it's worth, here's my two cents on your questions:
1)MINING: no more a good business if you have not a lot of technical skill and money, but may still be if you take some GH/s contract, correct? What's the best provider for such contracts?
You don't need that much technical skill to mine, I'm not technically minded and there's plenty of people on these forums who can help you with whatever you need, so feel free to ask. You do need some money, how much money depends on how much you want to commit. Many people would suggest that you forget about buying hardware unless you're going to buy big. There are a number of contract type mining arrangements available and maybe they'd be suitable, you'd need to investigate them closely to figure out if it is worth your time and money, the same with any purchase. I have a physical mining rig and I use cex.io exchange to buy and sell GH/s which has the advantage of being able to buy any amount, even small fractions of a GH/s, so you can get started mining immediately and increase or decrease your GH/s as often as you like. At least take a look, as far as I know there's nothing quite like it and it's very flexible, I build up my hashing power by reinvesting my mined earnings back into more GH/s, but you could choose to have your mined coins sent to a wallet, that's entirely up to yourself. [that's my referral link embedded there]. Take a look also at cloudhashing.com some people like their service, I haven't used it, but it doesn't hurt taking a look and the more research you do, the more you'll find what might work for you.
2) ARBITRAGE: seems an easy way to make money, but the fees are too high and times of fiat-money transerfs are too long. Maybe a good idea if you have a lot of money to invest, that's not my case
You seem to have ruled this option out for yourself. Your comments are pretty accurate and in my opinion, the extensive delays with some exchanges make this problematic if you don't have enough money to work multiple trades across multiple exchanges.
3)INTRADAY TRADING/SCALPING: difficoult due to low volumes and the lack of a trader that offer leverage. No way to make cash without leverage
Leverage doesn't make trading any easier, you still have to be right on the trade, leverage just magnifies your gains and losses and quickens the process. You can still trade unleveraged and although it might take longer, if your capital protection and money management skills are good - and you make winning trades - there's no reason why you cannot grow your cash stash. I sometimes use btc-e.com for this, at least when the market isn't moving you can laugh at what some folks say in the troll box there.
4)"INVEST" ON JUSTDICE: i didn't still figure out what are the expected risks and profit, but i think it would be a good bet (althought a form of betting rather than investing, i know). If i "invest" 1 BTC in a pool of 62000 btc i will have 0,0000161% of the pool, will my capital move a lot up-down or (as i expect) remaing roughly the same over time?
Someone else is better placed to comment on this. As far as I know this is just gambling, it might work for some people, but it's not something I'm interested in, so hopefully other people with more knowledge in this area will offer their opinions to help you with this.
5)BUY BTC AND KEEP: will the price go up? Down? This seems to me the most important dilemma: when all the "professional" miners will come to play (i think roughly at the start of 2014) will the price go up or down? We will have a huge difficulty, so more difficoult-to-obtain btc, but also a huge hashing power, so more btc to sell. And without the possibility to mine at home, will the people remain interested in btc and continue to buy them? Because if the answers is not, all bit-coin will become simply bit in a blinking time. If otherwise it's the money of the future, we'll expected to be paid in nano-btc and who owe an entire btc will be rich. So what's the most probable future of btc? It's a bubble or it's going to grow exponentially over time?
You've been up-front and said that you're motivated by greed, so with that in mind, I'm sure you are aware that bitcoins are not the only means of speculation or investment. Buying and holding BTC seems to be one of the most popular things that people recommend on this forum and I can see the attraction of that as the price of BTC has risen historically and there is no fees for storing coins in a wallet. It's not the most exciting thing to do but it gets you exposure to the price action and if you're interested in the swings of the market, you could also consider trading some BTC or buying more coins as and when you have the funds available. Be conscious of the fact that the historical landscape of bitcoins is riddled with scams, so be very careful what you do with your coins. Exchanges, trading websites, so-called investment funds and the like have often contributed to people losing BTC and you only have to read the pages of this forum to see that it's still happening and it's going to continue happening. It will even happen if and when bitcoin gets more regulated as scammers and ponzi merchants don't exist only in bitcoinland, far from it. So take the time to do the research, figure out what's the best thing for you, think for yourself. Your ideas are the most important ones to consider when thinking about what to do with your money.
Good luck with it all.