Post
Topic
Board Speculation (Altcoins)
Re: [XMR] Monero Speculation
by
ArticMine
on 16/06/2016, 21:12:41 UTC
...
Ummm, I never even had an opinion on why BTC is on the rise so how can you say you agree with him and by extension not me when I never presented an opinion on the btc rise? I stated I would rather have my holdings in fiat for the bubble burst where you state you would rather have it in an alt which basically is us all agreeing that holding BTC is the foolish move. I disagreed on whether getting out of xmr is a good thing or not and I postulated that it depends on the market share you are holding.

I see the market at this point as very complex and I can see why a simple commnet  such as:
I am with americanpegasus here. ...
can lead to a misunderstanding.

The question that comes to my mind is are we going in to a Bitcoin bubble?

If the answer is no then this is a scenario where moving into fiat with the idea of buying Monero in the future at a lower price in fiat terms than now may make some sense. Still even under this scenario there remains the risk of significant improvements in Monero such as the GUI and RingCT, keeping the fiat price of Monero above the current levels.

If the answer is yes then my take is that we can learn from the past behaviors of alt coins in the 2013 Bitcoin bubbles. Litecoin is a good example; however this market behavior was by no means limited to Litecoin. I will start with both the LTC/XBT and LTC/USD charts going back to 2012.
https://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/ltc/btc/btc-e/alltime
https://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/ltc/usd/btc-e/alltime
Now compare this to XBT/USD also going back to 2011
https://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/btc/usd/bitstamp/alltime

The salient points I see are:
1) Litecoin spikes with respect to Bitcoin at the same time as Bitcoin spikes with respect to USD. In effect Litecoin acts as a leveraged play on Bitcoin during the Bitcoin bubble.
2) The pre March 2013 Litecoin lows with respect to both USD and even XBT were not reached in the subsequent bear markets. Yes Litecoin fell from close to 50 USD to just over 1 USD in 2015, in a brutal bear market. This bear market, however, was not brutal enough to bail out a  Litecoin "short" who sold LTC for USD in say February of 2013 with the intent of buying back into LTC after the bubble burst.
3) The Litecoin lows with respect to XBT and USD  after the April 2013 and November 2013 bubbles were comparable. One possible scenario is that the April 2013 Bitcoin bubble brought a new awareness to Litcoin since it was the first bubble in Bitcoin after the creation of Litecoin. This could be relevant not just for Monero but also for those coins that were created in 2014 or later.

Are the markets the same now as in 2013? Of course not; however I see the differences as possibly magnifying this effect in the case of Monero. We have Bitcoin suffering with the blocksize debate and is already driving money into the alt-coins, with Ethereum being the most clear case. There is also of course the chance of some of the pending development work in Monero being completed in the interim. With all of this in mind I find the idea of holding fiat with the idea of buying Monero at a later date, creating an effective short position, an extremely risky proposition. It could work but it could also backfire badly.

Of course this must not be construed as investment advice and any long or short position in crypto currency should be considered extremly high risk and only undertaken after obtaining appropriate professional advice.

Disclosure: I do currently hold XMR, CAD and smaller amounts of XBT, NMC and USD.