Topic: The money is not disappearing (Read 2083 times)

Intersango still haven't cleared their backlog (ie; my money) so their problems continue  On a positive side, the btc market has had a sort of a double bounce off approx £1.71. Maybe this indicates a decent resistance point and the bottom of the price collapse and a good time to buy? Where I live, property speculators are buying again big time on the reckoning that the burst has gone as low as it will. Wealth warning: I know sweet f.a. about currency speculation

In hindsight, I agree with this assessment.  It sure didn't feel like it on the way up, though.  I, for one, could not tell that it was in a bubble above $10 until it was well over $20.  These things are not clear except in retrospect.

Yeah, confirmed. Intersango having banking problems. Won't be seeing my money for an unknown period of time. Maybe someone with full status might want to warn others not to deposit with them until it's sorted because they won't  be able to convert their money or get it back until they get new banking facilities and records of deposits to their old account. Really pissed off with this....

Yeah, confirmed. Intersango having banking problems. Won't be seeing my money for an unknown period of time. Maybe someone with full status might want to warn others not to deposit with them until it's sorted because they won't  be able to convert their money or get it back until they get new banking facilities and records of deposits to their old account. Really pissed off with this....

People holding thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousand bitcoins, can definitely make the price go up. Until they found their 1000% profit is enough and start selling, and the price starts dropping. I guess that is what happened by the end of July, accompanied by the mtgox password leak, mybitcoin going down and losing coins, and that polish exchange accidently deleting 17k BTC.

A lot of people are talking about how the falling bitcoin prices is making money evaporate, as though Bitcoin is somehow eating up life savings. The only thing that is evaporating is electricity and overheated GPUs, everything else is just changing hands. If you draw an imaginary boundary around all of the people playing the bitcoin exchange game and consider all of the real dollars that they have put into it, there is no sinkhole where dollars are disappearing into. It's just they have redistributed there wealth between the players. It's like playing poker at your buddies house, you came to the table, made a bet, and someone lost and someone won. The people who bought at $30 lost, and the people who sold at $30 won.

Similarly, there was no money tree when the price was ramping up. If you made money, that was late adopters putting cash into your hands. A purely speculative commodity trading environment (which is pretty much what Bitcoin is if you get rid of mining and the constant flux in how many people are playing) is just another type of poker. You are gambling on the actions of other individuals who in turn are gambling on the actions of you and everyone else. In a sense it's more pure than poker because if there is no fundamental value then the game is purely psychological. There is some data to be studied in looking at how many people are joining in based on media attention and whatnot. But I think that the sheep are the minority, and most players are out to make personal profit.

Also, why can't I post anywhere else yet. I've been stuck in this stupid forum for too long.

feel free to suggest another useful measure and then we would have a reasonable argument, but my hypothesis is just that a hypothesis, it needs better data. I never said it was definite just that it seems reasonable based on the data available.

Taken from your own post...


FYI, most people would consider the above excerpt to be an assertion by the author that the words following "Also the fact" to be a fact, not an assertion of likelyhood.

It is impossible to be sure, but if a large amount of capital is leaving the system it implies a large amount of people are leaving and as those most exposed could reasonably be assumed to be those who most believe in it then it would be a fair to say that it is likely many of this group are leaving. I never said it could be proven for definite just that it was likely.

Also the fact the currency is falling in value and many of the original investors who felt most strongly are leaving

"I'm right, therefore I'm right (I said it so it must be true)!"

I count believing strongly as investing strongly in terms of dollars, anything else is very hard to measure. As large amounts of people are selling they must be less invested in the currency and as of such are leaving in the way that matters... with their capital.

Which is exactly the point I was trying to make.  You don't have any evidence that any "original investors who felt most strongly" are actually leaving the community in any fashion whatever.  You're simply making an assumption based upon projection of your own perspectives.  That's an opinion, not a fact, as you implied.

I count believing strongly as investing strongly in terms of dollars, anything else is very hard to measure. As large amounts of people are selling they must be less invested in the currency and as of such are leaving in the way that matters... with their capital.

I couldn't have moved them, that was my first reply in the thread.

You did in fact shift the goal posts, in two ways:

many of the original investors who felt most strongly became people who invested thousands - you're talking about two different groups of people

are leaving became [not]stay fully exposed - you're talking about two different actions

Actually you moved the goal posts when you asked me to point to "one person" who left bitcoin and the community I was just refuting your argument and showing that by your target of "one person" I am correct.

Also later I describe how a fall in price suggests a flow of capital out of bitcoins, this therefore means that by logic a large percentage of the funds are moving out of the system.