Re: drop, rise? 2011 old guard vs newbies vs speculators - the game is on
So here's how I read the current sentiment around this forum: most people who watched 2011 happen here are now expecting a dump. Most newbies aren't.
2011 bitcoiners are mostly middle-class geeks not pro investors. Their fun-money has suddenly become something you can buy real estate with. At that level there is little point for them in buying more coins with their monthly spare cash - it's like adding a few dimes to a million.
Most of them were true believers at the beginning, yet now I'm not sure most of them still are - to the point they'd actually spend their coins.
Their stash's potential worth keeps oscillating between "decent car" and "financial empire", depending on the news of the day.
So much at stake doesn't make you sleep at night. Turns you into a zombie checking tickers and watching walls.
Newbies - they are coming late to the party and are likely in for the get-rich-quick hype. They don't have the 2011 bias. It's like fathers vs kids. Fathers have cognitive bias so they are uneasy to adapt to new conditions. Kids have inexperience bias so they are likely going to make the same mistakes again.
And then there are speculators. Pro speculators. Likely silent lurkers here. Maybe we are all being played by a few pro's of them who just need to get all the coins for their own play, and are ok with burning some serious amount of fiat in the process. I don't know.
I think BTC price is like Schroedinger's cat. The simple act of us observing walls and talking about them makes it so that they move in the opposite direction of where the most of us expect them to. And yes I think the dump will happen. But only when almost nobody is expecting it anymore. Which makes it hard for us to get profit on the way up.
2011 bitcoiners are mostly middle-class geeks not pro investors. Their fun-money has suddenly become something you can buy real estate with. At that level there is little point for them in buying more coins with their monthly spare cash - it's like adding a few dimes to a million.
Most of them were true believers at the beginning, yet now I'm not sure most of them still are - to the point they'd actually spend their coins.
Their stash's potential worth keeps oscillating between "decent car" and "financial empire", depending on the news of the day.
So much at stake doesn't make you sleep at night. Turns you into a zombie checking tickers and watching walls.
Newbies - they are coming late to the party and are likely in for the get-rich-quick hype. They don't have the 2011 bias. It's like fathers vs kids. Fathers have cognitive bias so they are uneasy to adapt to new conditions. Kids have inexperience bias so they are likely going to make the same mistakes again.
And then there are speculators. Pro speculators. Likely silent lurkers here. Maybe we are all being played by a few pro's of them who just need to get all the coins for their own play, and are ok with burning some serious amount of fiat in the process. I don't know.
I think BTC price is like Schroedinger's cat. The simple act of us observing walls and talking about them makes it so that they move in the opposite direction of where the most of us expect them to. And yes I think the dump will happen. But only when almost nobody is expecting it anymore. Which makes it hard for us to get profit on the way up.
I'm probably the greenest noob posting in speculation, so here's some first-hand info:
Learned about Bitcoin on a hardware site a while back. I was building waterblocks, and someone mentioned mining as an alternative burn/bench app
Read about it again last summer on a mainstream tech news site, found this forum & started lurking. And i still have no money in Bitcoin, though if getting in on an impulse was as easy as getting out, i'm sure i would be pretty heavily in by now (for better or worse, i play-traded to a small profit, but so many variables ignored).
Buying into Bitcoin seems pretty dicey. The buyer expected to account for variables one expects in a street drug deal, not exchange of currency. Mt. Grox, escrow, reputation systems etc. lower the risks, but these are not available to an impulse buyer (Mt. Grox requires a wait period & documentation, the rest imply time spent in the Bitcoin community, thus != new impulse buy-in)
As far as dumping on the horizon -- sure, but how much & when
And (i think) i agree with your Schroedinger's cat analogy, but if i'm reading you right (not sure how deeply you mean it to be followed), it applies to most markets, unless you feel that some things have intrinsic value, immutable by demand, decree, speculation etc.