Topic: This week has given me pause: I'm getting out of BTC - page 2. (Read 5121 times)

+1 have to agree on this one.

When in doubt I just imagine bitcoins aren't worth anything. Some random guy on the forum will post his offer for buying a couple of pizzas with 10k of them in short time.

Those are good comments and hit upon a central point which IMHO is the error of the OP.  It isn't the PRESENCE of adversarial events that imacts the longevity of Bitcoin, but how the bitcoin and it's market responds to those events. 

"Punch back twice as hard."
"In the morning the flag was still standing."

...and so forth.  It is the seeing of a product withstand the events that establishes it as other than a fly by night, or a dot com bubble, etc.

I still remember the "crash" of 2011 and all the hair-pulling about the death of bitcoin.  I don't have my life savings in or anything like that, but I decided back then just to ride this train out for the fun of it and it's been a lot of fun.  Things were looking a whole lot more dire back in June of 2011, let me tell you.  Back then, something like the blocksize bug/forced hard fork or Mt. Gox freeze might have set Bitcoin back a decade or more.  While I have no idea whether owning bitcoins will make my life easier in the long run and I have no idea what the price will be in a month, I am very confident that the Bitcoin network will be around for many years to come, and I'm interested to be a part of it.

check again the number of countries bypassing the USD for trade

You are underestimating greed.

Do you think 6 digits of profits are cool?

No.

+8 digits of profit are cool. Then you can retire. Otherwise - what's the point?

I understand your sentiment and if I had 4 or 5 digits of profit rather than 3 I might be tempted to do the same.

I am reasonably confident BTC will not die in the next year.

If it doesn't then the spread of values we can expect range from $10 all the way up the high hundreds.

I certainly would like to be part of the bounce from low double digits and I wouldn't ever want to be out of the market completely on a long-term basis.

I'm a firm believer that the bigger risks are to be taken at the start of any venture not at the end.

It's clear you don't see anything like a similar profit from hereon in so your plan makes sense.

Edit: yes it's the US government departments who will try to kill off BTC but that will be its chance to break free of its relationship with a dying currency. Non-USD exchanges are the future.

Some of my projection:

This summer, when ASICminer/Avalon/BFL pushing tons of hash power to the network, if the bitcoin price stay the same, there will be tens of thousands of GPU miners forced to mine at a loss, at that stage it is much wiser for them to purchase bitcoin, (there are no ASIC devices ready for delivery), that will in turn support the bitcoin price, so I think the price will still rise until autumn

But by October, most of the miners will finish their upgrade to ASIC devices, and ASIC devices will become widely available for purchase, there will be less and less buying support for bitcoin, until ASIC devices have been driven to a low profitability level that it barely pays the electricity, that will happen much later next year, so price might fall during that period

In a word, when ASIC devices is still profitable and becomes readily available for delivery, a large amount of capitals will flow to that direction thus reduce the bitcoin buying support

FED is going to end its QEI sometime during this year, that will also impact the available risk capital in the market

I'm a bit of a newbie. I've been peripherally aware of bitcoin since it launched, but due to personal issues didn't pay much attention.

Stupid of me. I would have made a mint, and it's interesting to boot.

I've spent the last several weeks researching the idea and the implementation of crypto coins. I do NOT think now is a good time to get out, though profit taking is probably a good idea.

The USD is under fire from every imaginable direction, whereas bitcoin, so far, has a few regulatory hurdles to be a viable currency WITHIN the USA, and has jumped a lot of those hurdles or bypassed them altogether outside of the Empire. I'm definitely an Austrian when it comes to economics, and I don't see the dollar surviving it's own cheering squad. When "the Maestro" was in charge of the fed, maybe. Or Volker. But Bernanke? He's a one trick pony, and that trick already failed. He's out of ammunition, both intellectually and actually. Right this moment I see the dollar as a more dangerous investment than the bitcoin.

I think, if your profit taking is good enough, that you would be wise to diversify far beyond the dollar. Physical precious metals, other currencies, ag futures, land if you can find it at market value (I.E. not in the USA), and yes, cryptocurrency. Not just BTC.

Well, that's my take on it anyway. YMMV.

I am holding enough for transactions but nowadays I don't really accumulate Bitcoin and also stopped mining with my Bitcoin rigs as it is no longer profitable to do so.

I think a large part if not most of bitcoin trades are done off exchanges.  Look at LocalBitcoins and bitcoin-otc.

Also there are services like Coinbase which makes it relatively simple to use a US bank account to buy Bitcoins. 

That's where I think you are absolutely wrong.  LR and Dwolla were a tiny portion of the USD funding for MtGox.  Wires have always been how the big money funds their accounts.  Dwolla might have had quite a few individual transactions, but they were only used for smaller transactions.

Maybe it is my experience with local, in-person OTC trading, but being locked out of digital fiat doesn't scare me one bit.  In fact, it will likely raise prices if Bitcoin is anything like the other industries where trade was restricted by law.  If the Bitcoins are in my encrypted wallet that is backed up in several locations, no government can touch them.

I actually think the government going after MtGox has more to do with them breaking the law on how exchanges should work than bitcoin itself.  Personally, I think MtGox is not long for this world - but I honestly don't think they'll take bitcoin down with them when they eventually go down as an exchange.  What I suspect will happen is this: the price will crash temporarily, and either the other exchanges will pick up the slack, or someone will create a new exchange that follows the rules and it'll eventually go back up again to its current price, or higher even than it is now.

But I can understand wanting to get out.  I don't have a lot of money in bitcoin right now, so if it fails, I'll lose nothing more than a bit of time.  It sounds like you've been in it a lot longer than I have.  I only wish I had bought bitcoin back when the price was a dollar or two, I'd have made a huge profit if I could have predicted these prices.

So funny, I thought the article "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin" was so bullish (the title cleverly didn't contribute to the hype) so I bought in, I sold out on the same sentiment as the OP in December last year, diversifying into gold coins, and an education fund for my kids. Talk about good intentions going wrong.  Glad I saved a few.  

The OP's concerns to me are well founded, Bitcoin is disruptive and uncertain that is for sure, but as a society we have to choose, economic regeneration or repression, selling out is good it provides opportunity for others.   But Bitcoin needs strong hands, so while the OP is concerned the "repression side" is gaining strength, he is taking self preserving actions. If I had any influence I would encourage some profit taking, over the coming weeks, but I discourage selling below $120.  

There is logic behind your reasoning so can understand your decision for the most part.  I do think there is a strong risk reward factor for staying in and riding the waves potentially to come.  IMO u should take most of the profit out(60%-70%).

Yupp - Keep your original investment and walk away with your head high. There are other stuff you can invest in, and you can always come back.

No matter what - you'we got a good profit.

If you are lucky, you will find that the BTC's have risen a lot in value in 5 yrs, or they may have gone bust. Either way you win.

you know how it goes:


that pretty much works all the time, especially with Bitcoin. Remember that Wired article, "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin", sentencing it to death? That week was the best time to buy, $2 per coin, less than two years ago.

Please hear me out too.
Just wait now the meassures that Germany asks from French to do.
BitCoin's price will skyrocket like the days with Cyprus.
Then, Cash-out on the high Demand.

Ok, i am accepting donations after this post. I am really very usefull imo. (hahaha  )

If you feel uncomfortable holding that much in BTC then by all means cash out. Like others have suggested sell 90% and maybe keep around 10% in BTC just in case you are wrong - you never know with all the current VC interest and investment in bitcoin.

Going forward, the most import thing you can do to support bitcoin is to use it whenever you reasonably can to buy goods and services. You simply buy the amount of BTC you need and then immediately use it to buy the good or service - no risk to you as you are not holding it.

Stay thirsty my friends - For Bitcoin!