Quote from: MatTheCat on March 20, 2014, 12:36:55 AM

Quote from: windjc on March 19, 2014, 11:19:31 PM

This makes no sense. While one a micro level, Bitcoin is hampered for adoption by lack of applications making it easy to acquire, use, send, and locally remit, on a macro level it is hampered by being too small of a market cap.

In this way, it could be argued that MORE speculation is needed to drive up the market cap to make bitcoin more usable for large financial industries, including international trade.

Having a prolonged bear market will only lead to another HUGE bull market anyway. Its unavoidable. To get from $600 to $40k (Winklevoss' small bull cap prediction) means V O L A T I L I T Y. No way to avoid speculators.

What? Everyone is just going to be so afraid that bitcoin went down to $400 (or, OMG a $100 in your bearish fantasy) that they will avoid riding the train to $40k?

Ha. Its going to be become more volatile folks (not a % basis but on a dollar basis). Grab your seat belts folks.

If the key to having a successful unit of exchange (a.ka. currency) to facilitate trade and act as a store of wealth, was for its value to fluctuate +/- 1000% within the space of a few months, then central banks the world over would be ramping the fuck out their currencies and then crashing them to the floor as a matter of general practice.

There is a reason why 'ensuring volatility' isn't a stated policy of any central bank, anywhere.

Any asset that is driven purely by speculation has a limited lifespan. A very limited lifespan. This can be seen in the Alt-coins just as it can be seen in the penny shares, where both sectors are dominated by professional pump n dump sharks.

I agree that further down the line in the future, Bitcoin needs and will probably get greater volumes of speculative capital than ever before. But in order to entice fresh speculative capital in, some kind of solid foundations need to be established. Bitcoin needs widespread adoption where it is used for its intended purpose and for this to occur the volatility needs to be forced out the market. Bitcoin needs a long boring as hell bearish trend a la 2012 style and I believe that this is exactly what is on the cards for Bitcoin. If however, the wild volatility persists, then us traders get our dramas and opportunities to win or lose small fortunes, but Bitcoin remains a lunatic fringe concern of the financial world, used only by those looking to make off-radar financial transactions or in certain states of isolated emergency.

Anyone who actually 'likes' Bitcoin, would not just agree with me, but actively hope for a long boring bearish trend for the reasons I describe. However, most people I suspect are far more interested in seeing the nominal USD value of their holdings shoot through the roof than in the well being and wider adoption of Bitcoin per se.

Well. That's a cool story, bro.

And you make some valid points.

But, looking at the tea leaves (VC and WS) and a crap ton of EW analysis, I think before your scenario plays out we are going to have another large push upward. This 'ol 2011-2012 comparison is so wrong for so many reasons - the main one being that $32 in 2011 was so far beyond the real value of bitcoin (I mean, have you seen the log charts?!?). Going from $120 to $1200 is small potatoes compared to that rise. So before we could get that bearish for that long, I suspect we would need to go north quite a long ways first - way north - much further than the paltry $1200 we got to for a few days.

We are not going to go from here to $50. Aint. Going. To. Happen. Not with regulations coming and US exchanges and hedge funds and trading funds that "normal" people can invest in. There is more speculation coming over the horizon. Its arriving this year.

So don't get that fiat too cozy in that German bank of yours. Bitcoin isn't going to rest just because you would "like" it to.

If and when we hit the 300 EMA currently at around $450 and rising, you need to prepare yourself friend. Then maybe when we skyrocket to $10k, you can ease off the pedal for a year and a half and watch the eco-system catch up. Wink