Quote from: MatTheCat on February 12, 2014, 12:37:05 AM

Come on, I did start with a 'What If'.

true, my apologies.

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Bitcoin now seems to be entering a stage of high uncertainty, during a clear bear phase of the market. With this in mind, I am preparing myself to accept that perhaps my subconscious mind is smarter than my conscious mind. I am abandoning any attempts at deploying my TA 101 skills to turn a buck on Bitcoin, such as playing the rather obvious $380 support. I shall now be sitting right out on the sidelines either until Bitcoin proves it has overcome the recent technological uncertainties and most importantly, confirms that the bottom is in and the trend is reversing; or until some of my outrageously low buy-in levels have been triggered on Bitstamp due to everyone's worst fears coming to be realised, and Bitcoin finding itself standing at death's door.

Neuroscientifically speaking, your subconscious will come up with a solution before your conscious one will finish thinking. You are probably correct in trusting your intuition. At the same time though, your subconscious is a reflection of the primal, core emotional being. It understands concepts in symbols. I don't know what your experience and history with Bitcoin is (are?) though, or investing in general. Some traders by trade that have entered Bitcoin see it markedly different than "investors" do. Sometimes they miss a few fundamental ideas such as the power of anti-fragility, they emphasize on speculation and not the philosophy. that's perfectly fine, we need that. investors tend to disregard short-term non-black swan events. You just have to know thyself.

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I miss the bottom and some good volatile trading opportunities in between, but get in as trend reversal is confirmed (most likely)
Panic and fear overcomes market and Bitcoin crashes to the point of death or novelty posterity significance, in which case I lose all my chips (entirely possible)
Panic and fear overcomes market and Bitcoin crashes to the point of death, at which point big Wall St money swoops in and buys it up at pennies on the dollar, in which case I cash in big time...providing my buy-ins are allowed to be triggered by the corrupt system, and/or Bitstamp doesn't go the same way as many Bitcoin exchanges before it (stranger things will have happened)

or

panic and fear overcome the market when bulls capitulate, waiting bears buy in, and you get your first point

they say bitcoin is a good investment because it has binary outcomes, yeah, but your second two points don't make sense to me. Panic and fear do not cause Bitcoin to "crash to death". A fundamental and irreparable point of failure will cause bitcoin to "crash to death". We don't have that. The bears that are waiting, and trust me, they're there on the sidelines and will be the source of the impetus up when the trend is confirmed to reverse, will prevent those last two scenarios. so dreary mat!!