Bitcoin giveaway! :)

[portart]

Big drop today as China smacked it down.. A lot of unhappy people who bought at the top.

[edsanville]

Bitcoin has fallen about 60% from the highs a couple weeks ago. Anyone who feels confident about bitcoin's future should be loading up. Is anyone doing here doing that? No judgment here (I'm about 30% in gold mining stocks now so.....imagine that beating). I'm just curious if people think it's riskier now than they did at higher prices.

I bought my first bitcoin a few days ago when it was at ~$750.  My plans are to buy a fixed dollar amount of bitcoins each month.  It will be a small portion of my monthly income.  I was waiting for this correction to buy some.  I'm guessing I'll be back in the positives within 6 months to a year (at most).

[edsanville]

Now that I've said it, being in a bubble does not mean bitcoin will not survive.  It could be like Amazon.com--it crashed along with the dot coms, but recovered and flourished even more with most of the riff raff cleared away and excess valuations evaporated.

Excess valuation for AMZN evaporated?  When did that happen?

[fishdrzig]

Marc

Are you still doing the giveaway if we have a wallet?
My 16 year old son has been bugging me about starting a Bitcoin wallet and I was thinking it may be a good experience for him to follow this.  I just read this thread and thought  "boy that is nice of this guy to do this" and I could tell my son to set one up.  Just asking - not beggin' - yet.

Steve

Sure Steve, happy to get your son started What's his btc address?

I'm feeling less rich now that bitcoin is tumbling so the give away is coming to a close.

Thank you all for participating, it's been great fun and always remember the fundamental value of bitcoin is what no other can do: buy outlawed goods online: only with bitcoin! Hold tight!


edit: and ofcourse the supply is more limited than gold and you can hold it yourself and hide it better than gold so some will prefer to use it as a store of value as well, even when outlawed. Buy and hooooold!!!

This is not investment advice, just my opinion, every investment has risk, especially those that are printed or produced in excess, etc etc

Marc  thank you so much for the generosity, he will be grateful  and I am much appreciative  16q7Nf5nxmXX6TKJQRXZscqG7etvFyhUjH

[portart]

I have to believe that Bitcoin psychology is more powerful when stocks are rising and investor's appetite for risk is higher. Right now, with the market under pressure, people are holding on their cash fearing to lose more on anything. The exception is gold which has more feeling of security by far then a bit coin..just saying

[dualstow]

wow, pastexpiry, I've seen people ask for money and I've seen people plug their business, but I've never seen it done in a single post. The only post no less, LOL.

[craigr]

wow, pastexpiry, I've seen people ask for money and I've seen people plug their business, but I've never seen it done in a single post. The only post no less, LOL.

He's banned and deleted.

We have had people join because of this thread and do some bitcoin begging. Marc has already said he won't give bitcoin away to new users.

[dualstow]

No good deed goes unspammed.

[Kshartle]

Anyone buying after the sell-off?

Is anyone eyeing a price that they will buy at?

[edsanville]

Anyone buying after the sell-off?

Is anyone eyeing a price that they will buy at?

I'm buying about $500 in bitcoins each month.  I have no target price, I'm just dollar-cost averaging.

[HB Reader]

Anyone buying after the sell-off?

Is anyone eyeing a price that they will buy at?

I'm buying about $500 in bitcoins each month.  I have no target price, I'm just dollar-cost averaging.

Yeah, I just bought a similar small amount for the first time in about eight or nine months.  I'll probably DCA every few weeks if the price stabilizes north of $600 or rises slightly.  If it declines much from here, I'll just stand aside and watch.

I've quit paying much attention to prices posted by Mt Gox.       

[Kshartle]

Down to $325.

Is anyone bullish on bitcoin still? It's down now about 70% from the highs so if you believe in it's potential this is another major buying opportunity.

For the people who are buying a fixed amount per month.....are you going to continue? Has anyone sold?

*Note - I'm not poking fun. I bought and sat through a horrible 2013 for gold miners. Some of my positions were down 50% so I know losses are not fun. I'm interested in the psychological state of the people who think bitcoins have value and if they still think these things will go up in price?

I love the idea of free market currency. I just disagree that crypto-currencies are a viable alternative to fiat. They seem to have all the disadvantages and none of the advantages.

[kka]

Down to $325.

MtGox is not the place to find the current price.  In the past it was above the average exchange price, and recently it's been way below.  http://www.coindesk.com/ is more accurate and showing around $620 USD right now.

[Kshartle]

You can't buy them on Mt. Gox?

[Kshartle]

Down to $325.

MtGox is not the place to find the current price.  In the past it was above the average exchange price, and recently it's been way below.  http://www.coindesk.com/ is more accurate and showing around $620 USD right now.

So weird. When I got up CNBC was showing that the price had crashed to $325.

So if there are significantly different prices in different places.....why aren't people now buying at Mt. Gox and selling in other places? Why weren't they selling at Mt. Gox when the price was higher than the others and re-buying elsewhere?

[kka]

You can't buy them on Mt. Gox?

My understanding is that there may be difficulty withdrawing coins from MtGox, which may be causing the discrepancy in pricing.  I have a small fraction of a bitcoin in Coinbase to use for purchases where a vendor offers a bitcoin discount, and I noticed that for most of the last 2 months, the MtGox price was up to 10% higher than coinbase, but now it's 35% lower.  coinbase prices have consistently been within a few percent of what's reported on coindesk.com, which I believe is an average of the top exchanges (and they no longer include MtGox).
http://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin-price-index/

[Kshartle]

You can't buy them on Mt. Gox?

My understanding is that there may be difficulty withdrawing coins from MtGox, which may be causing the discrepancy in pricing.  I have a small fraction of a bitcoin in Coinbase to use for purchases where a vendor offers a bitcoin discount, and I noticed that for most of the last 2 months, the MtGox price was up to 10% higher than coinbase, but now it's 35% lower.  coinbase prices have consistently been within a few percent of what's reported on coindesk.com, which I believe is an average of the top exchanges (and they no longer include MtGox).
http://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin-price-index/

Hmmm.

I've been under the impression that Mt.Gox was the big player, #1 exchange. So you can send them money and "buy" bitcoins there but they are stuck there? So they will take money and you get nothing in return right now? What is going on? Does anyone know?

[kka]

I've been under the impression that Mt.Gox was the big player, #1 exchange. So you can send them money and "buy" bitcoins there but they are stuck there? So they will take money and you get nothing in return right now? What is going on? Does anyone know?

I guess they were the #1 exchange, but not anymore.
http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-first-bi ... ange-dead/

[HB Reader]

I've been under the impression that Mt.Gox was the big player, #1 exchange. So you can send them money and "buy" bitcoins there but they are stuck there? So they will take money and you get nothing in return right now? What is going on? Does anyone know?

I guess they were the #1 exchange, but not anymore.
http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-first-bi ... ange-dead/

Since the middle of last year when Dwolla dropped Mt Gox from their US$ transfer service, it has become increasingly difficult to transfer US$ to and from Mt. Gox (which is in Japan).  I think they are honest and their exchange services (executions, limit orders, etc.) worked pretty well until recently, but I dropped them and went to Coinbase (based in San Francisco) last year.  I left a very small amount of BTC at Mt Gox last year when I left and had no problem transferring them out just two weeks ago.  I've always stored most of my BTC in a wallet on a removable encrypted thumb drive at home and transferred in the small amounts I intend to sell fairly soon, regardless of who I've dealt with.

The fact that you are seeing most of the news in the press in recent months continuing to quote prices from, and news related to, Mt Gox suggests pretty superficial research and little personal experience by the commentators.  I suspect most serious US players have long since abandoned Mt Gox.  I've found Coinbase, which has a business model somewhat similar to PayPal, pretty good to deal with although I hope we eventually get enough regulatory clarity in the US for truer "exchange" models to develop.  As I write this, BTC is trading around $684 on Coinbase.         

[edsanville]

I've been under the impression that Mt.Gox was the big player, #1 exchange. So you can send them money and "buy" bitcoins there but they are stuck there? So they will take money and you get nothing in return right now? What is going on? Does anyone know?

I guess they were the #1 exchange, but not anymore.
http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-first-bi ... ange-dead/

Since the middle of last year when Dwolla dropped Mt Gox from their US$ transfer service, it has become increasingly difficult to transfer US$ to and from Mt. Gox (which is in Japan).  I think they are honest and their exchange services (executions, limit orders, etc.) worked pretty well until recently, but I dropped them and went to Coinbase (based in San Francisco) last year.  I left a very small amount of BTC at Mt Gox last year when I left and had no problem transferring them out just two weeks ago.  I've always stored most of my BTC in a wallet on a removable encrypted thumb drive at home and transferred in the small amounts I intend to sell fairly soon, regardless of who I've dealt with.

The fact that you are seeing most of the news in the press in recent months continuing to quote prices from, and news related to, Mt Gox suggests pretty superficial research and little personal experience by the commentators.  I suspect most serious US players have long since abandoned Mt Gox.  I've found Coinbase, which has a business model somewhat similar to PayPal, pretty good to deal with although I hope we eventually get enough regulatory clarity in the US for truer "exchange" models to develop.  As I write this, BTC is trading around $684 on Coinbase.       

+1 on this.  If you want the current bitcoin price, I'd check bitstamp, as they have the largest volume of all the exchanges (right now):

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstam ... 10zm2g25zv

[Kshartle]

Pretty decent chart feature there.

[Kshartle]

Buyers keep coming in to defend $550 but the bounces keep getting lower. At some point if these $550 buyers step out of the way the price could collapse quickly.

Is anyone selling the rips at this point?

Is anyone buying at $550?

[edsanville]

Buyers keep coming in to defend $550 but the bounces keep getting lower. At some point if these $550 buyers step out of the way the price could collapse quickly.

Is anyone selling the rips at this point?

Is anyone buying at $550?

I hope it stays low at least until my monthly bitcoin purchase this Friday.  I might be able to get an entire bitcoin this month .

I'm enthusiastic about the long-term prospects of cryptocurrencies, but bitcoin is actually only ~0.5% of my entire portfolio.

[Kshartle]

Buyers keep coming in to defend $550 but the bounces keep getting lower. At some point if these $550 buyers step out of the way the price could collapse quickly.

Is anyone selling the rips at this point?

Is anyone buying at $550?

I hope it stays low at least until my monthly bitcoin purchase this Friday.  I might be able to get an entire bitcoin this month .

I'm enthusiastic about the long-term prospects of cryptocurrencies, but bitcoin is actually only ~0.5% of my entire portfolio.

Is there a price where you will stop buying? I suspect there is but I'd like to hear what you're thinking, and any other people buying bitcoins as well.

While I find economics interesting and fundamental analysis as well, I find investor psychology fascinating.

Obviously I have my opinion on bitcoin's long-term prospect so I haven't bought....but I still want to hear from the owners what they're thinking at different stages of this ride. It is the wildest I've ever seen since I started observing markets.

[dualstow]

Is Mt Gox finished?