Quote from: DiamondHunter on May 10, 2018, 07:25:48 PM

Quote from: ivomm on May 10, 2018, 01:14:54 PM

If this is not bullish, I don't know what is:

Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are warming up to bitcoin, a virtual currency that for nearly a decade has been consigned to the unregulated fringes of the financial world.
The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange has been working on an online trading platform that would allow large investors to buy and hold bitcoin, according to emails and documents viewed by The New York Times and four people briefed on the effort who asked to remain anonymous because the plans were still confidential.
....
Goldman will initially only be trading futures contracts linked to bitcoins price. But Goldman executives said they were looking at moving in the direction of buying and selling actual bitcoins.
The Intercontinental Exchanges effort, if it pans out, could make bitcoin available to a much wider and more influential customer base, including other financial firms.
...

Read the whole NYT article at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/coming-soon-bitcoin-trades-on-wall-street/articleshow/64076979.cms

I am bullish and all for Wall Street warming up to bitcoin and getting in the game, but what are your thoughts on them manipulating the markets through the futures short and the regular trading for keeping bitcoin in a desired band yoyoing for months and years defeating the purpose of HODL for the regular folks?

Genuine question, this is my worry for the near future

What is your timeline? If your timeline is long term, such as more than 5 years, then any attempts at manipulation are probably not going to matter in such a way to negatively affect you, unless you really believe that BIG money can be successful in manipulating in such a way to keep bitcoin in a trading band, and actually trickle the price down for years and years. Sure, they can be effective for short term and even for a couple of years to keep the price down, and one of the problem these days is that people who invest are expecting 5x to 10x returns in a short period of time, and the reality of the matter is if you are getting better than 10% annual returns over the long term, your investment is doing very well..... even though it may take a few years to average out above that 10% annual rate.

It is quite possible that bitcoin is going to perform well into the future, but of course, there are not any guarantees... furthermore, there is a hard supply issue coming up in bitcoin in less than 2 years, which is the next halvening from the mining of 12.5BTC per block to 6.25BTC per block. In the past, it seems that manipulators attempted to manipulate the price down during the past halvenings in 2012 and 2016.. and surely that hard supply issue kicks in several months later, and the reality of less supply is difficult to manipulate down when there continues to be upwards price pressures, including developments and adoption that forces the price up and sometimes causes upwards explosions that are beyond the manipulators abilities to hold the price down.

You can invest a lot into bitcoin and leverage somewhat, or you can merely take a more modest approach and just invest 1% to 10% of your quasi-liquid assets into bitcoin. Even those folks who take a modest approach have been able to profit handsomely historically, and are likely going to profit handsomely into the future. One of the problems of leveraging or putting a lot of money into bitcoin, is that such actions could cause you to become too emotional or not to be able to weather the realities of cashflow issues and you end up selling at times that are NOT good for you or you get scared into losing position. I certainly remain an advocate of the practical approach of ongoing and modest investment into bitcoin, even though it is quite possible that you could make a lot more profit by risking greater asset investment into bitcoin, but that just has not been my approach in the past, and surely my portfolio is doing quite well with what I consider to be a more modest and seeking towards longer term investment approach, which I believe will continue to work, in spite of various future likely attempts at ongoing downward bitcoin price manipulations.