Topic: Old hands, what is your current engagement level? (Read 2096 times)

The million BTC whale analyzed the theory.

I'm thinking the same thing. I just can't bring myself to spend any real bitcoins on alts, but I might be able to convert some bitcoin cash into some alts.

Does mid of 2013 count as an old hand ?

I kind of feel like afbitcoins.


These numbers are somehow decoupled from reality. Most of the day I am running around with a smile or shaking my head in disbelief. I am full in Bitcoin and am still buying every month with the same amount of fiat. Never change a running system I guess ?

Other than that I am writing my master thesis on cryptography/blockchain scripting related topics. I'll try my luck in a bank company doing hopefully crypto portfolio management for clients. A weird career change for a rocket engineer, but what can you do when you are infected by the crypto virus?

He stated that Bitcoin will never get SegWit, which he seems to maintain is still the case.
He claims the SegWit fork is an altcoin which is going to die a fiery death as the SegWit transactions that have accumulated will eventually be stolen by the miners when they reorganize the chain and enforce the Satoshi's protocol which enables stealing SegWit transactions.
He has even positing a wild theory that perhaps BCC/BCH is a Trojan horse that enables Bitmain to surreptiously steal back all the BTC that being gained from trading BCC/BCH for BTC.
In his theory, this would finance the massive long-range chain reorganization, making it profitable and attractive.

Afaiu he claims that TRB will be Satoshi's 1MB no SegWit (real) Bitcoin. Thus, you only think that BTC has Segwit.
And afaiu TRB might accept SegWit but so that miners can spend all SegWit to themselves.
Also relevant topic: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/of-whales-and-forks-1959633

So don't spread lies if:

Joined the community in early 2012, have been sort of disengaged since early 2015. More watching-from-a-distance than anything. But now that a malleability fix (SegWit) is finally landing I've started to pay more attention again.

My BTC are still in a "long-term storage" mode. I could theoretically earn more profits by putting them on an exchange, but I don't want the counterparty risk; when shapeshift.io supports Tether, or when a proper distributed market appears (thus allowing BTC/USD market making without having to leave my coins in someone's webwallet), then maybe I'll get into it again. But even then, a big chunk of that stash is destined to sit quiet until I can spend them at the grocery store's NFC terminal. "Current money or bust", right?

That said, the BitcoinCash split has been a wonderful opportunity for me, since now I have what amounts to a 10% dividend to use for diversification. I'm planning to buy into Ethereum, mostly. My comment above about a "malleability fix" should clue you in that I'm extremely bullish on the potential of blockchain-enforced business logic, and there are a couple killer apps in that space that Ethereum contracts can support but Bitcoin scripts can't. That said, I've got no interest in direct ICO investment; why try to pick the best individual product, when you can invest in the platform they all use? ^_^

Like many others on this thread, I don't post much and have ridden on the back of the honey badger since 2013 - getting a hell of a ride and being scratched to pieces.

First bought 60 btc @ $32 and was reselling to the UK for a 20% premium. Was mainly making easy money as I was getting the resell mark up + the rising price. Weathered the  $266 peak and crash but didn't time it well. Kept a few coins, and then totally mistimed the market again and managed to buy high and sell low. Lesson learned, I don't have the temperament for trading at all.

Ended up with a few coins that were worth a quarter of what I paid. Lol! I was almost the first person to reply to the hodl thread! The legendary one! I did exactly the same as him and was going to say that I would join him in hodling. I typed the post in but had logged out and it didn't submit. Now I am more gutted about not being the second hodler ever than any millionaire bitcoin pipe dream.

It will take btc to go $100k plus to make any big difference to my life, I just don't have that many. But I'm waiting for that. Shit or bust!

For the entire investment office, our total traded volume for a 24-hour period is anywhere between 3 to 5 Bitcoin. And our personal portfolios sit in the range of .75 two 1.5 Bitcoins in a 24-hour period.

Does 2010 qualify ?   

First fired it up in dec 2010 after reading about it on Freshmeat.  Tried CPU mining.  lotta noise, no results
Did some GPU mining in Feb 2011..  still got the poclbm_py2exe_20110204.7z files
Made some small gains in one of the early mining pools (Slush ?), but got sick of the screaming fans after 2 weeks
Decided to "Buy Shares" in this new Interesting geek-run project instead (feb 2011)
Got bored, threw hard drive out   Just kidding     I was there when a few people did though.

No, I'm not saying how many I mined/bought/sold/still-have. 
Yes, I know this forum account isnt that old. 
I forgot the password to my old forum account, and decided it probably wasnt a bad thing to start fresh.

I remember the start of the Alpaca Socks, Proudhon, the craziness when it *surpassed 1 US Dollar (Gasp) !
The cries of "Insanity" when it hit $32, the "Told you so's !" from everyone when it went back to $9
The "OMG, Bitcoin is not dead !" recovery to $266, the crash back to ~$90 (Oh hang on, yes it is..)

Everything since then has been a yawn by comparison to those days   
Wake me up when something *exciting happens. 

Do I get my senior citizens card yet ?

that guy categorically stated segwit would never be allowed to happen on bitcoin and litecoin would soar. litecoin did pretty good. segwit arrived.

next guru please.

An old hand who advised @rpietila to buy at $10 in early 2013, has expressed his engagement level in a warning and prediction.
One of the predictions was already realized.
The warning remains.

We have no land taxes in Australia if it is your home you live in.

In the main capital cities, the median house price here is well over a million (1.5M in Sydney) as it is. Our house prices have gone through nearly as much inflation that bitcoin has. People have been calling the housing price bubble to pop for years now and it just isn’t stopping. Smart people have been loading up on investment properties, leveraging themselves to their eyeballs and claiming all the costs, interest and losses on tax while the land value just goes through the roof.

Lucky I have no interest in living in the capital cities. Too much traffic. Give me land out in the countryside.

Nice thread! I guess I'm an old hand by now. Mostly I'm quite disengaged which is quite strange when I stop and think about it, maybe the numbers on my spreadsheet are becoming too abstract? Probably the real reason is bitcoin is becoming too political and centralised for my taste and looks like becoming more so. These days I'm more in for profit than idealogical reasons, which is a shame even though profit is obviously good. 

There've been setbacks along the way, I lost 99% of my first stack on the Bitcoinica exchange when it was hacked. But bought back in not long after, still early, Bitcoin and Dash have done  well for me. I sometimes trade between the two with a small portion but mostly have hodld both. Don't like etherium at all and doubt I ever will. I'm planning to also hodl bitcoin cash though. Its a bit of a wildcard. If I'd bought into bitcoin the same way I bought into Silver I'd probably be one of the ones with a castle now. But no regrets on that score

I'm in ballsdeep, just the way I likes it!
Feeling quite gentlemenly indeed
$13,800 in February is getting closer to reality but don't forget to hodl because the real moon will be in 2020 around the next halving...
Not less  than 50k, I'm calling it now boys!  

@dothebeats, I hope you are careful with your analysis, because most of the ICOs are snake oil. You get out in time, fine. You wait thath the scheme collapses, you're toast.
https://www.coindesk.com/icos-dumb-money-ethereums-ethical-dilemma/

I'm definitely not that old of a hand but a portion of the coin I hold I've ad since it hit the $190s a couple years ago..

I have never bought BTC or any altcoin with fiat but I got 0.01 BTC for free a long time ago and have since put a MASSIVE amount of time and effort into trading and making it grow.. Not that it was all "work" because I have enjoyed myself doing it but my holdings now are just about becoming worth the time I put into them..

I don't really have a whole lot, not a life changing amount really, but it's a nice security blanket incase anything in my life goes terribly wrong I could fall back on it and survive..

I sold some BTC once and greatly regret it, I have also lost a lot trading this or that and made a bad investment here and there but I don't really regret those because all in all I'e done pretty well and you just can't win em all.. In trading I find that if I take almost as much losses as I do gains then I am doing well because my gains are bigger than my losses..

I'm just going to pretty much keep holding my BTC, if it falls back down to $1500 from here I might be a bit sad I didn't short because I don't have the time to keep up with it constantly these days, but another rise will eventually come in a few years if it crashes now..

I have been saying "BTC to $10k" for years and right now it may finally be coming true, who knows.. Maybe back to 1-2k it goes..
It's been a hell of a ride..

I don't consider myself an old hand since I bought my first coins in 2014. The stash I have had back then was sold for a hefty profit, bought back in the latter part of 2015 and sold most in May which enormously boost my money in the bank (lol). Right now, I'm still trying to check out some decent ICOs that may break the records once more and hopefully make a decent amount out of it.

I hear you, but it depends on the place to live.
In TX, you would pay around 22K/year in taxes on that $1mil house plus HOA fees, say 3-5K, plus maybe 3-5K insurance=$30-32K outlay/year even with the house fully paid for. It is expensive to maintain any property around here.

Hi guys,
I purchased my first coins in the spring of 2012, for $7 each. Since then I constantly lurk here but write seldom.

I made a small fortune and lost a large part due a bad trading. But the stash grew by now and became nicely fat again. I claimed BCH's, sold them, bought some more BTC and some ZCash. I think the latter is one of few altcoins with good future because its advanced anonimity, something that BTC should also eventually implement.

I am as turned on as ever and maybe even more so now than I was when I started getting involved early 2013. I started with a long term position in BTC and also tried to make more coins day trading like almost everyone else who just got into Bitcoin. The first couple of years I was only losing coins trading, but I didn't give up and the last year I've started to become better at it and now it is my full time job. I trade a few shitcoins as well, but I have no long term position in them. Except for Litecoin, I plan to keep some of them around for a few years. The large bulk of my money stays in Bitcoin however, not Bitcoin Cash, or Bitcoin2x garbage.. only the real Bitcoin. I buy and sell all the time when I trade, but most of my coins are staying put in my Trezor and I'm not planning to sell those any time soon. I don't want to hold onto much paper fiat, bank money just isn't my cup of tea.

Sucks that you lost most of it through bad trading, I did the same thing from when I first got into bitcoin, but I guess we both learned holding is better unless you happen to be very good at trading!

Still you have a great amount of bitcoin, you have a couple hundred thousand dollars of it already, that should be a few million dollars in a few years! Great job!

Holder since 2011  

When I first bought in, I was a poor uni student and I put in pretty much all my savings I had at the time.

Sat through the slums from $32 down to $2 thinking I had lost it all.

Worked out that trading is not my forte, dropping down to 30% of my initial buy in from then.

I’m now in pretty well paying job, have a wife, kid and a mortgage on an ok house in a decent regional town.   My bitcoin holding have no bearing on how I live my life. We save what we can and pay off the house as much as possible with our normal pay cheques like normal slaves, doing the normal smart middle class money things. If my bitcoins dissapearded, while being a heartbreak, it would have no bearing on how I live my life currently. I could turn around today and pay off our mortgage and still have have enough for a Porsche as well with my bitcoins, but that is not my end goals.

I’m up nearly 100x on a $2.8k buy in back then, but I’ve never put in anything since my first buys.

My plan is to sell 80% when I think this cycle is done and maybe buy some back for BTC gains on the bounce, or walk away and build myself a family house. The goal is to be a 30something family man living in a million dollar house on a sizeable piece of land completely mortgage free.

10BTC is my final holding amount to leave to retirement for when they are >100k each.

It's nothing to do with the quantity of coins, and the older the hand you are the more likely you are to have been scammed, wiped out, gone insane or sold too early.

It's anyone who's been around long enough observing the multiple changes in attitudes and conditions.

At 100s of coins if not 1000s of coins would be old hands. They saw reason with difficulty level and investment into the whole deal.

Anyone not dumping all they got into coins right now will regret it like nothing else in their life.

I was just going through my post history and saw this gem:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.520108

I will not follow through on that promise, sorry! 

Been around since the June 2011 bubble. Heavily invested in October 2011 at the $2.65 mark. Lost almost all of my coins to various scams / GLBSE shitty investments (think ICOs 1.0) during the 2012 doldrums, and poor trading. Sold almost all of the remainder of my coins in 2015 near the end of the dip from the 2013 highs.

I am now successfully trading (finally!) on multiple exchanges and continue to have significant interest in the goings on in crypto.

For shits and giggles, I still have a link to the largest transaction I ever sent (in Bitcoin terms). I think it was about $30k USD at that time.

https://blockchain.info/tx/dbe60d7e1db7df25808d04f3ee62fe7ea8a1d47b61fe68c50f17617e9eba0f7a

Good luck to everyone!

Mined my first BTC end of 2011 -I think around 200 maybe.
Then invested in KNC and got a good return on that. Sold the Jupiters for more money I originally paid after mining heavily with them. Remember cancelling 3 Neptune orders and getting 66BTC as a refund. These were good times.

Currently trying to be a trader, but with not much success.
Mostly hodl.

Well yeah that's what I do now. Just buy and hold and buy more and I'll continue buying at least through the end of 2018. I learned my lesson back in 2013/2014 that I'm an awful trader haha. If I had just held my coins from back then they'd be worth over $60k now. I did do a few trades this year with a small amount of bitcoin and did well on those trades but I was only trading with like 2% of my total. Everything I buy now I'm holding for when it gets up around $100k.

I'm not in suspended disbelief or anything, just quietly thrilled about my financial standing compared to those around me in my daily life. These people all knew/know about me and crypto but I'd never give them any ballpark figures. Divested double digit coins to pay off student loans and I'm currently messing around w/ modest stacks of populous and veritaseum in addition to my originals.

your hands are fucking ancient, my friend.

keep your faith about the btce shutdown. I have a theory about this; suffice it to say you will get your money back, but very laterish. the upside will be that bitcoin will have gone up a bit. take that as an indication of how long its going to take. but, allow the lawyers to do their job. the majority of users have no criminal complicity in whatever happened there, and can prove it. this means the US has caused you damages, esp if you live outside the States. If you can prove you are a good faith user, and complied to the TOS, you essentially have had your money stolen by the US. I dont think im the only one that realizes this, so allow it to sink in for the rest of the world. The lawsuits will come. And they will come like a wrecking ball.

And eventually, just maybe, you will be reunited with your fundage.

Stop trading and just buy and hold and you may have another chance. Continue with this mindset and you will again be telling this story at $50k/btc.

I was here before the second bubble in 2013 and that was a wild ride.

Edit: Bubble

yes exactly haha. i started buying during the late-2013 bubble until summer of 2014. day traded away most of my bitcoins, finally sold the few i had left at bitcoins lowest point in 2015. Basically I did everything wrong haha.

Didn't think about bitcoin much from then until this year, started buying again the past few months, starting from zero , and I've already well over doubled my investment this year. very happy! I'm not old hands, but I plan on continuing to buy some monthly until the end of next year.

Not too many joined bitcoin when things looked dead. The current golden children are now, more so than 2015. Who has the balls to buy in 2017 and hold for 3 years, and there will be a lot of them, will be the golden children.

What? What the hell have they been up to?

I assume more than a few who started dabbling 3-4 years ago gave up in despair during the great trough. And people who got in after them are actually considerably further ahead in terms of buy in.

The current golden children would be anyone who loaded up in 2015 - 50c ETH, 25c XMR, $250 BTC. They cut out all the shit and went direct to an endless orgasm.

gentlemanland your assumption that everyone who saw and started dabbling in crypto 3 years ago is now rich is really fucking flawed. But, if you are reading this and haven't jumped in it's not too late.

I've sold a some to try and keep my crypto holding around 80%, holding a little ETH, ZEC and DASH on the side, and shopping for land. Good times

Selling dribs and drabs but holding 90%. Absolutely loving 2017.

can you suggest a simple trading formula to increase BTC count?

I raised my cane to that, LOL.

Nice thread topic gentlemand!

Even though I've been around a while, I feel weird thinking I'm an old hand since when I started posting there were still people in the spec subforum posting regularly from 2011. Now most of those accounts went silent.

I like to stay involved with the discussions here so it's really the only reason I still post. In terms of how I feel, I've pretty much been a Bitcoin permabull and maximalist from the beginning, because to me Bitcoin meets all the criteria for the attributes of a sound, decentralized form of digital money and store of value and that is why it has stayed so popular. I am not really at all interested in investing in any of the other so-called digital currencies because I feel they don't fundamentally fit the criteria of what a true 'digital currency' should be. Perhaps "speculative tech tokens" is a better term for them.

This amazing Bitcoin rise does feel surreal to me, but for some reason it still feels 3 years late from when I though it would take off like this. Fundamentally Bitcoin has not really changed at all since I became involved in 2013, so why the sudden popularity and massive increase now?

Plenty of people knew about it back then, but mostly just scoffed and laughed. I seriously doubt they are laughing as much now. But I believe that one thing has changed. In the early years, Bitcoin was purely a speculative-based trade, something for traders to pump and make a few bucks. Now I believe something more ominous may be at work.... a fear-based trade as a hedge. When the price hits $5-10K and the Average Joes find out that deep pocket Wall Street and banking hedge funds are pouring massive amounts of money into bitcoin as a safe haven, then Average Joe better quickly start asking themselves why.... and why now? They just need to look on the immediate horizon in the next 6-12 months, and they should find their answer.

In the meantime, I'm just curiously watching it all and feeling surreal. I'm sure that feeling is going to get crazier over the next 12 months.

Take those pert burns and youthful enthusiasm elsewhere. This thread is for people in their rocking chair by the fire with their dog wrapped around their ankles. And their prostate in a glass on the table.

Buy OMG if you can, NEO has no future.

If you didnt make decent topics, I wouldnt have anything to respond to. If i have to explain "why bitcoin important in your life" or "when will bitcoin be legal" again I will divest. Good work, gentle sir.

Here is the strategy for a day trader/long term holder:

the shitcoins are wonderful nowadays. the volatility is free money essentially; one day everyone will understand these market are pure manipulation. i look for eth icos with promise; that is they show me a real world use for the blockchain and the ability to generate value (shameless shill plug; bitJob.io). ICOs want your money, for scrip. Since they are willing to give you a 40% bonus in scrip for early adoption, you could do worse than buying into a decent project and waiting. despite token values as of late (the mini eth crash took alot of cap from the markets)

look at high cap coins that are cheap. if its been in the top 20 for more than a few weeks, but has been around for more than 1 year, it will go up. not really a reflection of the value of the asset, some idiot will pump it because its a valid strategy in this sphere. To be specific, i deem ripple, doge, ltc and xmr/zcash undervalued. i will make a specific point about DOGE; simply observe the doge/btc chart(meta). Look at that pattern. Duh. Now plan accordingly.

dice based eth tokens are a sure winner. you probably remember satoshidice. again, plan accordingly. this would include skin coin, and by a stretch wings, as it is essentially a gamble/prediction market.

look for icos that have issued, but have nt achieved their first dev milestone. investor confidence plummets after the initial interest/fomo spike; its basically half off the ico price about a month after it issues. if its truly a shit token dont bother, but if you missed out on the ico its a golden oppurtunity.

there are a few independent blockchain coins that are worth it. I cant give that away look at the team, not the concept. valuation doesnt reflect utility here, it reflects trust. barely, LOL.

and lastly, hold. if you have not educated yourself (talking to the board) about how to trade (take a class at your cc, I did, and read all you can on the webs), you probably shouldnt trade. yes, there is op cost in holding and not following the dips. but time has proven unless you are an educated trader, the rare spike you see wil be offset by so much hurt. take it from me. i have lost more crypto that most people on this board have held.**

and I kick myself in the ass about it every morning I wake up and check the prices.

i treat eth/btc as primary value stores. that is, when I take profit, it gets converted to 25% native token/75% eth or btc. has never failed me yet.

additional shameless plug:

ChipMixer Because they mix your coins, and pay one of my utility bills

** i went all in on NEOBEE. and if I see Danny Brewster in the streetz, Im gonna stomp on him.

As admitting to that buy in level would make most here cream their knickers, that certainly makes you venerable in my book at least.

I prefer to trade with safe coins and good pairs just like eth/btc xmr/btc or just in case some rare altcoins that are profitable.
i dont put more than 5% of my portfolio into one operation.
at the moment i am buying some fancton and ark. looking for buying some NEO but i dont know if it will be profitable or not.

Not sure if I fit in the category of old hands (bought my first coins between $20-$25 back in early 2013), but I am mainly focusing on trading my coin count up, as I have always been doing - nothing changed in that regard. Bitcoin is the only asset I have in my crypto portfolio, and that's more than enough. What do I need shitcoins for, when I have the Gold on top of the Gold already. I swallowed a large loss due to the BTC-E shutdown, but I am destined to gain everything back with trading in the coming years. For now, that's my only priority.

Now that every single person here is quite stunningly rich, at least for tonight, has your level of engagement with crypto land plateaued a little or are you as turned on as ever?

Are you increasing your portfolios with wonderful shitcoins, staying put completely, selling like mad or too busy with ladyboys wiping their posteriors on your faces?

Speaking for myself the prices are now so far beyond where I began and there are now so many projects that I'm just sitting there and observing more than anything. The social science side of it is more interesting than ever, but the market bit feels a tad surreal now.