Topic: Do not sell bitcoins for fiat unless you really need to (Read 4029 times)

its the first coin with "NET" in the name, signifying its marriage to the internet.

 

what makes Netcoin different from the other dozens of alt-coins out there?
just a bitcoin clone or a coin with real improvements?

Some say a lot of coins moving through the block chain means a crash is coming.

Keep an eye on CampBX. It's a small market now, but next week when ACH transfers are supported getting funds in and out should be pretty good.

Half move them to exchange and half move them out of exchange. :-)

There's not really any exchanges for folks in the US that allow both trading AND moving coins/fiat out in a timely manner.

So you are claiming most of the increased activity is due to people moving their own funds around?  I find that less likely, but you are welcome to believe what you want.

Yup, the value of bitcoins will continue to go up and the value of fiat will continue to go down. I would advise the opposite and sell some fiat for bitcoins

This really only tells us that more Bitcoins are moving through the blockchain.  That doesn't tell us that actual spending is increasing.  With the rise in prices and plentiful press, it's logical that "transactions" are up because Bitcoins are moving to and from wallets.  So "transactions" being up really only equals increased activity not necessarily increased spending.

Never, ever used coinbase, there's no option to set sell orders or buy orders?

That's definately not the place to be a trader if that's the case.

Too bad Coinbase doesn't have that option.

I've lost a lot of money selling and being forced to buy back in higher, even panic sold in my early days. I have no problem admitting that.

But if I just sat idle and held forever on my original investments I'd have a lot less coins, I have about 5x the coins I originally had, in the long long ago...

and  my coins x 5 x $440 is a lot more then my coins x 1 x $440


You just have to trade without emotion, and especially without panic when you see it going way higher then where you sold, or way lower then where you bought. Set your orders and forget them.

They are certainly paying attention.  We'll see how they feel on Monday when they have the senate hearing on Bitcoin, but it is called by the Homeland Security Committee, so I doubt it will be about taxation.

I doubt that the US government is particularly concerned about bitcoin at this point, aside from figuring out potential ways to regulate and tax it (which I think is what the hearing on November 18 will be about?) I'm not sure why they would want to "take it over", but if it reaches a point where they feel it's a threat in the form of money laundering, I'm sure they would just close the exchanges down or forbid banks from allowing bitcoin transactions, which would essentially destroy it.

They can mine the hell out of it, if they dominate the BTC economy they can keep their printing machine going. Governments clearly understand this, that's why the US deposits all their golds in Fort Knox rather than sell them, even at times like now.

I'm not sure the government can take over BTC.  In order to buy it up they'd have to give out USD or accept bitcoin for some ... service?  They can only buy directly what people want to cash out for, and after a certain point nobody's going to want USD so they'll be giving thousands of dollars away for each BTC, so if the government wants to crash Bitcoin at that point they'd be sinking their own ship because they own so much BTC.

Looks like people are spending bitcoin:
http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?showDataPoints=false×pan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

Bitcoin days destroyed is up too, so old coins are moving.

LOL, I meant like jump to 480, 520, I meant around 500, before it gets higher

I would say even if you have to, don't sell everything, at whatever price, at least keep a few coins stored somewhere.Should the governments decide to buy as many coins as possible and mine the hell out of it, they could in some timeframe took control of a significant percentage of all bitcoins, if they control the majority of coins we would be enslaved, your hoarding of coins is an essential safeguard to our liberty.

Case in  point back in May I had run out of fiat due to my job and an injury that kept me from work for a while. Needed about $1000. I could have sold 10 coins but I decided to borrow from the bank. It's cost me about $6 a month and those 10 coins are now worth $4000+.

kinda like this?


yeah, that's exactly how these things go.

I speculate that bitcoins will rise to 500 and stay their for a few months, before getting even higher. Maybe it will even suffer a crash, but it will recover anyway.

Well, guess i gonna save up that half for bitcoin friday and see what i can actually get instead of selling for fiat. Probably need to invite a couple of friends around for pizza as far as i can see ...
I mean, a pizza doesnt cost 10k btc anymore.

Yeah, I saw that after.  That's why I added that quote.  Should have just deleted that first part.   

Already wrote that earlier. I sell half the bitcoins i mine (not that thats much, but well, only started fairly late). Could get huge, could fail miserably, so i´m placing a conservative bet.

So you disagree with the OP?  No wait, this is your quote right?


There you go...

Well, i mean, why sell something that could be worth a lot more tomorrow? I mean, nobody would ever consider selling shares in a company, right? A bitcoin is basicly the same as a share in the usefullness of the bitcoin network, since it directly correlates with the maximum transaction amount the network can move around.
That said, given current usage i consider it highly overvalued, but given potential value highly underrated. The actual worth of a bitcoin is basicly irrelevant for a transaction that completes within a day (unless you assume that huge changes within a day are the norm).

We already had a whole thread in the main section of this forum and not one shred of definitive proof so, just because a "Bitcoin" company says it, doesn't make it true.  And this thread certainly doesn't help that argument either.  Just saying.  I personally agree though.  Why spend something today that could be worth a lot more tomorrow?  I regret every Bitcoin spent.  Maybe Bitcoin will defy logic and then again...maybe we'll just make as much money as we can before it implodes.  Only time will tell.  In the end, don't be mad at me, I didn't write the article.

Electricity is becoming more expensive in Germany because of transition to renewables. Online shopping becoming extinct.
Ok, i might have made up the last part.

You can start here:
http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/04/bitpay-eclipses-silk-road-in-bitcoin.html

There are other, probably better articles, but I really don't care to prove anything to you when you can do a little legwork yourself.

FTFY  

Seriously though, others have made that same statement but there seems no actual proof.

I disagree. I don't regret any purchase I've made with bitcoins or any exchange for fiat that was used to make a purchase.

Case in point. I sold about 1.1 bitcoins recently at $280 USD/BTC to buy a transmission jack and a few other handy things. I was low on fiat at the time and needed some dough quick. My clutch is fuxx0red and I don't want to pay someone $900 to fix it. And if I didn't fix it I wouldn't be able to drive to work, and make money with which to buy more bitcoins and watch my net worth increase exponentially. So I'm not sitting here banging my head against the desk thinking "No, that could be worth $445 now! Or $5000 in a month and a half! Nooooooo I've squandered away my retirement fund!" No, I'll just put a few hundred back in BTC in a couple weeks, sure there will be a comparable loss, but not compared to if I was rendered immobile and couldn't go to work.

So you see? No regrets at all.

I bought some gold and silver a while back. Sure, it's in a bear market. But if there was an unknown bug and the bitcoin procotol broke, I'd still have far more than my initial BTC investment. And if I kept cash I'd just end up spending it. Still no regrets. Of course, I'm not buying any more gold or silver right now, but I have just enough so that I wouldn't be jumping off a bridge if Bitcoin broke tomorrow.

Different strokes for different folks. I hope you stop regretting your bitcoin purchases and exchanges! I buy things with BTC when my need for something in the present moment is greater than the potential gain of holding out for the period of time it would take for me to re-invest that same amount in BTC. Simple as that.

They're waiting for it to "stabilize" before they start spending.   Seems obvious it's not going to stabilize as long as people keep hoarding it, but somehow this fact seems to escape many around here...

Merchant reports claim that spending goes up when price increases.

So many of you confirm this writers theory as to why Bitcoin will fail as a transaction currency.  The more expensive it becomes, the less you spend.  Interesting.   

http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-believe-in-bitcoin-you-should-never-buy-anything-in-bitcoin-2013-11#ixzz2kM39YlIJ

Imho there are still far to many variables out there.
Lets take a weird constructed example.
Day 1: The Fed gives out a press release they bought 50 PH/s worth of miners and $your_favorite_asic_supplier confirms this. The fed can now do a 51% attack any time they want to. PANIC SELL.
Day 7: The Fed announces it will indefinately buy BTC at a value of $2000 (or any arbitrary value) each giving it a minimum value and announces it will be official currency for (whatever transactions need to be transparent, e.g. would obsolete something like the US-EU Swift Treaty). And bascily screws everyone that sold.

I mean, you can replace Fed with any institution with appropriate financial means, as well as the reason for the "purchase". Startups have already been bought for more than the current value of all BTC combined.
And well, even if the day 1 scenario ever happens there is no guarantee the day 7 scenario happens.
Well, long term sustainability of btc is a fair bet, but definately not guarenteed.

I didn't say I do not - "Unless you really need to". For me, until I would need to spend my reserves, bitcoin is a pure store of wealth, an amazing financial experiment to participate in, and a source of several years of entertainment thus far. It also serves very nicely for international transactions, but that is a rare occasion and I also would not call it smooth as educating the other party takes more time than going to a bank, for now.

Actually its even worse. If you dont use it, it will eventually become worthless. A block (25BTC) is generated every ten minutes. Daily average for transaction payments doesnt seem to be worth more than 50BTC, or 20 minutes of block generation in other words. Unless bitcoin gets used the network will collapse and no one will be mining (which isnt anything different from signing transactions). And what do you expect a bitcoin that cannot be moved will be worth? So well, i´m pretty sure that old principle that "money must flow" will apply to bitcoin as well. But well, its still like 20 years until all the bitcoins have been mined ...

Or, to put it more simply. If you have goods that can be bought via bitcoin, do so. You dont have to spend bitcoin. Just keep re-buying the bitcoins you spent on your pruchase with fiat. That way the network will grow in importance. And quite possibly, increase the price of bitcoin at the same time, since there are only so many bitcoins that can flow at any given time.

Miners have to recoup (half of) their costs.

But if you hadn't spent those coins thus spreading them out amongst more people, we wouldn't be where we are today.

Imagine if Satoshi had never told anyone about his creation. He'd have all the coins but they'd be worth sweet fuck all.

When you think about, it doesn't really matter. So if you didn't use BTC, you would use fiat to pay for these purchases, if they were really necessary. And that fiat could've been converted to bitcoin! Every non-bitcoin money you have on your accounts is a future loss

Buying with bitcoin supports its adoption, so it's all good. I would even say that if you need to buy something and you have an option to pay with BTC, convert your fiat money to BTC and pay with it!

So if you don't sell bitcoins for fiat and you don't buy goods or services with bitcoins, what kind of value does bitcoins have for you?

Yeah I actually have more LTC in $USD than BTC, mostly because I bought a ton when it was pennies. People think BTC's rise has been meteoric in 2013, they should look at what LTC sold for back in Jan/Feb  

I think there is space for more than one coin, but until Netcoin launches I wont get involved in anything else.

Nevertheless, the amount of bitcoins sold will always be equal to the amount of bitcoins bought. So if everybody stops selling...

You know, i may be simple, but i wouldnt care if a yacht has 80m or 160m. Or if someone else bought a larger island or whatever. The only thing i can realiably buy so far in bitcoin here (Germany) is pizza, or whatever from a food delivery service. So yeah, i wouldnt starve with bitcoins only (well, actually i would also need electricity and internet access as well to order that), but i´m not so convinced this is going to take of that big. Sure, it might, bitcoins are even considered legal private money here in Germany. But well, once i can order computer equipment from a normal webshop and pay normal bills with bitcoin i would probably break the rule about selling half the btc i mine for something as ordinary as fiat currency.

Great example to confirm my post from few days ago that spending is same as selling. Thx.

Moving between Bitcoin and Litecoin is a pretty good play, rather then selling for fiat.

Fiat is always going to be worth less next year.  Both Bitcoin and Litecoin are on long-term upward trends.  But of course they'll go through bubble cycles during that upward trend.  But, usually when Bitcoin is in a bubble cycle, litecoin gets comparatively cheaper.  All the stupid money moves out of litecoin to chase the Bitcoin train.... which makes a perfect play for someone who's watching the charts to sell some overpriced bitcoin and pickup some underpriced litecoin.

Your son would ask you one day "Dad, how come our yacht is only 80 meters long and not 160?" And you will say "Son, I had a simple rule back in 2013..."

Kidding, this might be good if you need the fiat to pay operating and living expenses. If you don't and just store value in it, you are doing it wrong I think.

I bought a used olpc for ~200 btc back in the day. Don't regret it at all. It was the price back then.

I regret every purchase I have ever made with bitcoin. Some highlights:

used ipod: 30 XBT, now around $12,000
27" computer monitor: 18 XBT, now $7,200
cheap no-name digital camera: 6 XBT, now $2,400
50% share of a BFL Little Single, still on backorder: 5 XBT, now $2,000
5 BTC to a Pirate Pass-Through: $2,000, and the whole thing went bust 4 days later

On the other hand, when I quit mining I sold 3 5880's for $80/each, used that to buy 18 BTC, now worth $7,200

With a deflating currency you always have to consider your buying decisions carefully. But hey, prudent people have been doing that long before bitcoin arrived.

Dunno, i stick to a simple rule.
Sell half the BTC i mine and keep the rest. If it crashes i wont look like a complete fool and if it really continues skyrocketing that wont be bad either.

It's a sure sign of the top when the sellers are going on strike.  

Of course, the big fishes aren't going to announce their real strategies on an internet forum, lol.

Yeah there were some people who sold all at $15 back in Feb *this year* just because they wanted to triple their coins once it hits $5 again. I wonder how they do feel now, must seriously suck.

Everyone should move some large portion of the coins into a cold storage that is not readily accessible, to save from panic, greed, stupidity. We do inflict most of the damage to ourselves


Right, crash to whatever they were one week ago. Revisit this thread in a year.

When I read something like this my first thought is that a crash is right around the corner.

There is always a risk in not selling as well. But the one thing I'm sure of is that I surely do not regret buying BTC.  

And if you do sell, don't ever, Ever, EVER sell everything. Again, you've been warned.

Thanks.

Just thought of this - at this moment, I regret every exchange of bitcoins for fiat that I ever performed, "locking profit", "dollar cost averaging", etc - had all the good reasons back then at $29, $99, $230. You will, too, eventually, if you sell now. So don't. You have been warned.