Topic: PEAK MISERY (TM) (Read 504 times)

Fair enough. But Bitcoin is more than just market sentiment and price speculation.  It is fundamentally an emerging technology, first and foremost.

Times likes these when speculators take a major dump on the market is when developers tend to be heard and technical improvements made. And on that front, there is a lot of good news:

- Exchanges are bundling transactions leading to a major reduction in fees, a major issue that contributed to the price decline in the battle between Segwit/Legacy and Core/BCash.
- Segwit adoption is also increasing exponentially, further reducing fees and transactions times.
- The lightning network has been released to mainnet in Beta. There are already thousands of nodes. Onlines stores and microtransactions sites are beginning to appear.
- Sidechains, smart contracts and other layer 2/layer 3 improvements are being developed, competing directly with shitcoin features likely making many of them irrelevant.

On the financial front:
- The SEC is reevaluating Bitcoin's suitability as an asset class for ETP/ETF consideration.
- Shady exchanges are getting stricter regulations and in Japan, one of them is even being acquired by an established market trading leader.
- Banks and institutional investors are signaling entry into the Bitcoin market, in large part due to the price correction allowing a window of opportunity
- G20 summit has declared Bitcoin is not currently a threat and is recommending minimal interference and regulation at this time.

Bears cannot continue to suppress the price against all these good news items. The major FUD these days is centered around:

- Taxes. The deadline for US taxes will pass in another week or two, so this is a recurring, transient, explainable reason for a market correction this time of year.
- Mt Gox liquidation. The trustee has already liquidated all that is needed to pay back creditors. The remainder may be liquidated or dispersed in Q3 this year via civil rehabilitation. I have a feeling a lot of these creditors may just decide to invest their settlements right back into Bitcoin while the price is down, effectively counteracting at least a portion of the price decline due to liquidation over time.
- Country-wide bans. These come and go with the wind and previous bans have been shown to little lasting effect. Any country that attempts to ban an emerging technology will fall behind and be forced to join the circus late in the game to their own detriment.

These are all short term concerns that will expire with time. There is really no serious, lasting FUD affecting Bitcoin's fundamentals at this time. It all centered around speculative woes, which come and go with the wind.

Bitcoin is indeed a great buy right now in my opinion. There is aton of FUD being spread around the market regarding regulation and whatnot that doesn't even affect bitcoin's operations. People are panic selling just because a bear market hits.

Although there is definitely a chance for bitcoin to go even lower from this point, this price right now is probably going to bounce up to around $8.5k before any more downward movements come. So buy now and either hold for around 1 month, or for the long term.

IMO it's one of the simplest decisions to make and justify. You buy when everyone else is selling, because that means that you're getting a better price and the same people who dumps now will buy in as soon as bitcoin goes up again. You don't buy when everyone else is buying, as the markets are hyped up and the real winners are people who take their profits and leave others high and dry.

You are impatient because you obviously lack awareness. Awareness here means understanding how markets - and crypto markets in particular - work. It has been said numerous times already, by me and others, that price cannot be stable for long, and the longer it stays at a certain level or trades in a certain narrow range, the stronger will the next movement be. Market fools people like you who are bored into setting bigger orders at closer ranges and then eating them all in one huge swing, either up or down. It happens time and time again.

Well said. I do not completely believe this theory of wealth always tranferring from impatient to patient (I do believe it transfers from laziness to hard work, but there is a lot of similarity in that concept). There is too much social imbalance going on as well for this theory to work out. Generations of patient people in the developing world can show that this to be true.

But for Bitcoin, this is precise. Every year there are new people entering. People like me entered last year and can feel happy now a year later that our initial coins are worth many times more today.

You are right also about necessary evils. And for true decentralization, it means that the bad must be allowed to come with the good.

Yes, I know how much Bitcoin grew up since it had reached the bottom in 2015, in January and August, to be exact. But it doesn't mean a shit. Past performance is not indicative of future results or outcomes. So far we are sliding down, and this is what matters, right now right here. The future is widely unknown, so you can in fact interpret some news or even all the news pollyannishly positive. It is your choice after all, and that will likely make you feel good or better if you happen to feel bad - for some time, but that alone won't be enough to change the market sentiment which is still overall negative.

Though I don't believe we will go below 5k, at least not for long.

I prefer it going to $800 and then 2k and swinging for a time between this and 12k, then this boring 6k.

Yes, this boredom is horrible. I cant stand it. I check it everyday and its around the same price.

Too many bears out of the caves... so many bears, the market is now congested with these big, fat, furry bears, shorting and buying bitcoin all at the same time.

And while bulls always run together, bears operate alone, so they backstab each other constantly.

Man, that's a lot of shit.

One thing I find very interesting about market discussion is how rarely the boredom phases are mentioned, analysed or predicted. They can be much longer and much more dispiriting because they're, well, boring.

I think an indifference index would be scarier and more informative.

it was you !!!

thank you very much, I would like to apologize for my initial reaction... sorry.

thanks again for all your explanations, it's very gracious of you .

It's already taken a giant shit. It doesn't have another $12,000 shit to give, frankly. The best it could do is maybe another $2000 or $3000 shit. That's baby shit.

People have been latching onto one thing to another for the last 8 years, but that hasn't stopped it yet. It only needs nine good days on average each year to continue exponential/hyperbolic growth. Who gives a shit the other 356 days?

I don't know who I should thanks to have explained the concept of bmi, bitcoin misery index, at first I was shocked by the term, but now that it was explained, I find it interesting... I prefer the term capitulation, it's funnier .

Have you even looked at a long term chart? Bitcoin is up 600%, more than $5000, from a year ago this time. Bitcoin has doubled in price 11 times since 2012!

Bitcoin breached $6000 on Feb 5. It's come close, but it has not dropped any lower since then.

Every single person who has bought and held Bitcoin anytime in the last 8 years up until last October has made a profit. That even includes everyone who bought at the peak in 2013 for $1100, only to watch the price plummet more than 90% to $150. Yes, even those fools are still up 600%.

Corrections are an integral part of price discovery for a new asset class. They allow new investors an entry point and build confidence by establishing floors.

I was being somewhat facetious regarding exchanges; they are a necessary evil for what is supposed to be a decentralized peer-to-peer asset. The order books are so thin right now, selling anything substantial would only drive the price down further. OTC or P2P would avoid slippage on such thin books.

If Bitcoin can't evolve to cope with regulation, taxation, futures, bankruptcies, scaling, etc., then it isn't fit to survive. To go mainstream, truly mainstream, it has to learn to play nice with the big boys too.

I have every confidence it can and will, lending it even more legitimacy and further building investor confidence. The only beggars being born are those who SODL out.

Bitcoin remains one of the largest transfers of wealth from the impatient to the patient.

I don't think it's being suppressed. It wants to take a giant shit but hasn't fully committed to it. There's always something people point to to fit the narrative they want. If this passes then they'll latch on to something else.

If this is all good news as you claim, then why is the price still going down? You can't fool the market all the time, right? Other than that, without the exchanges ostensibly controlled and manipulated by the cartel, the price would likely still be in single digits and the whole cryptoverse virtually unknown to the wider public.


Or more beggars are being produced.

That may be true, but as long as people's perceptions hold, the outcome is the same. Potential tax obligations are yet another piece of over-inflated FUD suppressing the market price.

The true test is whether his prediction comes true: will price suppression ease off late April?

It does, does it not? But let us not forget that no one could have predicted anything back then, just as no one could predict what will happen in our immediate future. Cannot blame people for feeling miserable then. Although now is a very different scene and crypto plus blockchain are so much more recognized today than in those days.

Hoping we all feel silly a year from now!

The foundations of that geezer's calculations are fucking laughable. I'll bet the real windfall will be 1% or less of that figure. A supposed bitcoin player appears to be using market cap. Even my hamster with cancer wouldn't be that dim.

Taxes. Taxes are good reasons. $25 Billion owed for 2017 in just the USA.

Cryptocurrencies Could Be 20% of Capital Gains Tax Payments This Year

The IRS has upped its ante with its Coinbase aggression. Misleading or ignoring the IRS is a whole hornet's nest of trouble. Bitcoin's history is rife with prosecutions and asset seizures for those who did not pay their taxes. Often, taxes gets them in more trouble than the illegal goods and services they might have been trading in the first place.

Anyone who thought BCash was just free money? Well, guess what, taxes. Every fork claimed in 2017 is taxable income, whether you sold it or not. If it was worth more than $1000, you need to pay taxes in the quarter you claimed it. Otherwise, guess what? Even more penalties and interest owed on top of your taxes.

Already spent your windfall during Christmas/New Year? Well time to unspend it.

So what we have here is a bunch of people owing taxes and back taxes and penalties/interest on taxes owed for maybe more than just 2017 and a whole bunch more people just waiting for them to further liquidate to pay their taxes. So the price will continue to drop, and all the smart traders and whales and investors and institutions are just twiddling their thumbs, waiting, accumulating on the dips, waiting.

Patiently.

Just like every Q1.

Do not underestimate the power of a sovereign nation to duly collect their taxes and to instill enough fear into motivating people to pay their taxes.

The very foundations of sovereignty rests upon the ability of a nation to collect taxes. And inflict punishment on those who do not.

i don't mean to be off topic but all of this chart is a great buy that i feel silly just looking at it!
lets take the first "misery point" price was what? 20 dollars at the peak of it? that is so silly right now and it is only 6-7 years ago and the speed is only increasing so it is safe to assume that the current $20k peak and start of the "misery" will soon look like a dumb price when we are at 100 times higher!

I think lower myself. And after despair comes total indifference and that could be the longest phase. My pure guess is the real action won't happen again until after the next halving but before is more than welcome too.

You sure $4300 is a despair mode?
People around here are still pretty confident! That makes me feel we have a long way to go before stabilising............

My technical analysis shows a possible downfall to $4300 ish as a despair mode, but then again, the fundamentals tell me the panic selling is reaching ludicrous levels. These indicators are very interesting tho, I also like the Mayer multiple indicator:

https://twitter.com/tipmayermultple

There's just no reason for such low prices, other than a bunch of idiots handling their coins to Wall Street which are the ones buying all the cheap coins before institutional money and other whales come in. They will not do it before all the weak hands are shaken.

It will sure happen if we can only see the bottom for these, And I will keep on adding up my bitcoin every time I see a pinnacle that it will dip, And I really think that if we reach the $5000 USD mark it is still a good decision to buy, But my opinion never change that it will stay in the $6500 that is the bottom that I am thinking right now, But if it fall down further the $5000 mark then It is still OK and a good buy for sure.

Me too! I do recall wishing it'd stay a while below 10k and I guess I got my wish. It moved up way too soon for me, having entered "late in the game". Some minor mixed feelings whenever I sell coins at my regular-ish intervals but overall, padding up my wallet at greater "efficiency" now.

As OP says, we're all out of capital. Am still earning as much as I can, so that's still happening, but yeah. No more spare cash lying around, not for alts, and definitely not for Bitcoin.


Not alone then! Shall we all remind each other this time next year or in 2020 about how long ago this seems? Kinda like all those guys from 2014/15 with their dark tales of deserters.

And yeah, I'm not for the phoenix rising out of the ashes rhetoric either. Not sure I'd enjoy a death of Bitcoin before the second coming.

Excellent reply.
Indeed markets always like to punish both sides.
I guess you're indirectly predicting an ultra long consolidation period where price would hover around $5K - $9K zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Can you believe it? Its worse than 2011.

How they measure this index? Because in 2011 the fall was 94%, more than the 70% of the current crash. Certainly theres more to it than lines in a chart.

I wouldn't say I'm perky as I'm never comfortable holding all cash.

The thing about the 2014-2015 comparisons is, we really don't know if we are in a similar part of the cycle or not. What I dislike most about the 2014 redux calls is that it seems far too easy. Markets don't just repeat and each bubble (and correction) was notably different. Most people (aside from the newbies) seem too prepared for it.


The interesting thing from studying charts from 2012 and 2013 is that despair can be reached at a higher low, like an Adam & Eve bottom. I'm not ruling out the $1,000-$4,000 bear dreams, but I'm just not convinced. The market likes to punish both sides, and it's been quite a while since bears were punished.

I feel perfectly perky myself. And I haven't seen all that much screaming. The real misery came in early 2015 after well over a year of falls. But everything was so shit that I suppose most were beyond misery.

Considering every modest rise is still leapt upon, there's a a ton of hope that hasn't been extinguished. I'm not one that believes we have to die before being reborn, but equally the bad stuff may not have even warmed up yet.

People see issues where there aren't any. I have been accumulating as many coins as possible below the $10,000 mark, and I'm quite pleased that I have the opportunity to do so well under that level.

I am firm on the $6000 bottom, making me want to accumulate even more at current levels, but I have no endless bag of money that I can fall back on. My next purchase will be at the end of this month.

If the price by that time still hovers around current or even lower levels, then it's all in my favor, but just like there is no bag of money you can endlessly fall back on, the price won't be around currently levels endlessly.

Congratulations, Ladies and Gents:

We have achieved PEAK MISERY! We're talking UNPARALLELED MISERY, not seen since Sept 2011. People actually had a valid reasons to be miserable then. Their Bitcorn only worth two dollar.

Now, we're just a bunch of whiny instabears worried about such terribly frightening issues as futures, taxation, regulation, hacks, bankruptcy settlements, and for fuck's sake, the tanking stock market?

Seriously people, if you can't see these issues are all GOOD NEWS for Bitcoin going forward, then GTFO. Sell your coins to someone worthy of sweetly CODLing them, for years to come if they have to. (OTC or P2P, of course. Don't you dare touch the Cartel's manipulated exchanges.)

This is the moment of truth. This is when baby lambonaires are born.

The last four of Bitcoin's MOST MISERABLE MOMENTS showed positive returns after 1, 3, 6, and 12 months. Even Sept 2011's bag-holders showed 20% returns after one year!

I know none of us have any capital left. But think of all your easily manipulated grandmamas, parents, teachers, aunts and uncles! You've likely already hacked into their accounts anyway, so get in there and BTFD on their behalf so that they, too, can share in this glorious MISERY!





The Bitcoin Misery Index, BMI, Is Flashing A Buy Signal