Quote from: Rampion on May 09, 2013, 02:29:30 PM

Quote from: RationalSpeculator on May 09, 2013, 01:56:57 PM

Quote from: Rampion on May 09, 2013, 11:24:01 AM

Quote from: tutkarz on May 09, 2013, 09:13:17 AM

who really cares? If bitcoin will fail its value will be 0 if it will succeed then value will be very high. As long as you are not daily trader (or gambler) then its not important what is in between. The worst thing you can do is to sell too cheap (i mean right now). And you should not invest more than you can afford to loose anyway.

words of wisdom.

I care about short term future price.

I'm not sure I agree with the words of wisdom.

1. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

If I follow such advise I end up investing only a few percent of my capital in anything. Losing more then a few percent means I need to reduce my lifestyle.

However, investing only a few percent will not allow me to increase my lifestyle if it works out. Basically investing a few percent won't make a difference for me, when it goes down, or when it goes up.

I think this is generally true for most people.

Just to check. Do you follow that advice yourself? How much percent of your capital is invested in Bitcoin today? Can you really afford to lose this? What would be the impact on your life if this were to happen?

2. The worst thing you can do is to sell too cheap (i mean right now).

If bitcoins become cheaper in the future this statement will have empirically proven to be wrong, not?

I follow my own advice.

And I will demonstrate you something empyrically: on 10th, September 2010 you could have bought BTC52,361 for $5,000 (the price per 1BTC was $0.095).

One year later, that amount of BTC was worth $210k dollars. If you could afford to lose $5,000, you might have followed my advice and HOLDED. I know many who did. If you couldn't afford to lose $5,000, and as in September 2011 we were in the middle of multi-month bear market, you would have sold to secure your "amazing" profits.

Now make the calculations with the current price, and you will realize how much money you would have lost in just one year and a half for not being cold minded enough to hold onto your BTC53,361

The following statement was just empirically proven wrong in the recent past:

Quote

However, investing only a few percent will not allow me to increase my lifestyle if it works out

As I said earlier, BTC is a gamble - and the real winners will be the ones with the balls to hold till the last minute. If you invested an amount you cannot afford to lose, from one side you are a fool because Bitcoin is beta software, and it can go south at any minute. Not acknowledging this is plain and simply delusional. And secondly, I can guarantee that you will not be one of the real winners, because you will have trembling hands as soon as a deep crash puts in danger your investment, and thus you will not be able to hold till you are really set for life.

While I generally agree that holding is the better strategy, it is incorrect to say you could've bought 52,000 BTC for $5,000. In the real world, as soon as you start buying, you push the price up. This is a common misconception for all the arguments that start with "back in 2011, if you had bought X number of BTC"... the fact is, the price was low back then because nobody was buying 50k BTC, and not the other way around.

Nevertheless, buy and hold is a MUCH better strategy than trying to predict market swings where the number of unknown variables is as high as it is with Bitcoin.