Are bitcoin owners making a crypto-exit?

But is it a legit store of value? What if all comes crashing down? I personally would acquire bitcoin as a store of value but only because of the hype and demand not just for the 'king' but for many other crypto coins out there. And hundreds of other crypto-failures that make the king reign forever more.

I do plan to buy it at 9k if it ever goes there. Are you going to get some? Or do you already have bitcoins in your possession?

Hi Alex;

I trust you’re well this morning & Thank You for taking the time to consider my correspondence.

You pose a rather succinct question concerning whether or not it is a legitimate store of value. I was actually hoping that the neuro pathways of your brain venture down that rabbit hole.

In order to answer that question, (factually off course) we need to examine the tenets of legitimacy in it’s entirety, not looking at crypto in isolation. After all, none of us are graced with the monopoly of correctness & therefore rely upon one another to share knowledge in order to enhance our understanding & order execution.

So then, to answer your question. I am of the view that it is legitimate within the broader context of it’s use case. You may have noted in my previous post I referred to an environment where Bitcoin & a few others; more especially Monero (XMR) are the USD & Euro of that world.

Our USD, Euro or any other fiat currency or any other normal “known to us” payment system such as credit cards, Skrill, Deel, Paypal. Wise or even EFT’s etc are not accepted for payment. It is just crypto, if you don’t have a crypto holding, you can’t transact business in that space, no negotiations.

Do those categories of businesses & platform I make reference to have sufficient demand? You bet your life it does. Does it have adequate supply of the goods that are being demanded in adequate & cohesive supply? Yes Sir, they do, so they’re all happy as larks transacting business with one another via strictly crypto only terms. Is this not then a factual store of value legitimization? You be the judge.

I would venture that pretty much solidifies & definitively ticks the sustainability box to ensure equilibrium of supply/demand. After all, in order for your supposition of it all crashing down to come to fruition requires that either the supply or demand end of the ecosystem develops a level of apathy which dislocates the equilibrium to zero & it being unable to restart.

Whilst the probability of that happening is possible, the chances thereof are exceptionally remote since the market is thriving & bustling with expansion at the rate & scale which even the most well performing corporates would envy. Here off course, just to underscore, crypto is the primary, well not really primary, since that comment suggests there’s a secondary, it is the only acceptable form of payment as mentioned earlier.

I will let you in on another key factor that not many people, except us traders will appreciate the marvel of. The exchanges CEX, DEX, custodial, non-custodial, cold wallets, trezo etc are all making a killing through the same market. You see they are scoring extreme levels of income through the rapid turn around seeing as the buyers are generally new to crypto & they’re buying the crypto with fiat just to legitimise their ability to transact.

They spend it almost immediately; to pay the vendor; whereupon the seller/vendor who they bought from funnels the BTC earning through tumblers which anonymise the transaction far out of the prying eyes of CEX type ledgers & anyone else for that matter. The levels of exactitude with which execution of this process is conducted is something to beholden if we reach the point where I take you beneath the iceberg.

I can assure you; you will be amazed & dazzled at the same time. Consider the spreads & commissions for each of these transactions. There are also miners fees, which mind you, can be boosted for impulse buyers where rates are tripled, quadrupled or even more if you want what you want to be processed “yesterday” & you don’t fancy waiting in ques. After all, most merchants will not even bother to start pulling/processing your order until they see at least 3 confirmations on the blockchain after you’re made payment.

You touched on failure of other cryptos which I really can’t go into in-depth with this reply in the interests of time & off course the length of this post but if you want to address that further; let me know. I will share the info I have on hand with you freely & as in-depth as you wish.

Not to make it a cliff-hanger though, I will just say this, the cryptos are not much more different than any other item which either has a use case or not in the physical realm. If something has a use case, it sells well & lives on (reaching a supply/demand equilibrium). If it doesn’t, it will die a premature & untimely death. It is evidenced in our normal day to day living with inventions, gadgets, applets, software or even service offerings, why would crypto be any different?

To give you the heads up if we get to it as discussed, cryptos such as Solana, Manna & Sand along with Monero will be very hard to fail (go to zero & stay there), even though it is possible. I have facts on hand to qualify my statement but as mentioned; we’ll cross that bridge if/when we get there since it will be its own wall of text to explain.

Now then, to your other comment/question of do I have it? Yes, I do & you can be sure that I have no intentions whatsoever of bothering myself with mainstream media, charts, central bank comments about regulation/legislation & all those other variables which mean nothing to crypto in the greater scheme of things.

You can be sure that every purchase I made was & is still done with the full acceptance that it could crash to low as it must; $1 if Peter Schiff’s wishes come true. I am at total peace with that outcome & therefore don’t even look at the BTC chart more than once a week on most weeks. In the market I observe I see real time price, with the extreme spreads each vendor loads, some of them right up to $2000 per Bitcoin & it does not suppress demand.

How does that grab you???

After all, I have observed the market I spoke of with keen interest over the last 3 years or thereabouts & when I run the numbers from an accounting perspective, I understand definitively, that it will continue to expand & accelerate which will no doubt at some point; whenever it is does, is of no concern me at all from a timeline perspective.

If you don’t mind me asking, what is your motivation behind $9k as a buying point?

Is it that you’re willing to handle drawdown from there to $1 without puking out or is the current point still looking like an accumulation zone where you think a shake out to clear out dip buyers will run down to around $9k before it kicks off hard upward?

If I were to venture my comments which you may wish to consider as follows:

· What happens if a hard & rapid kick off from right here happens? Will you buy the next pull-back zone around $22k or will you look on in anger/regret/sadness that you didn’t get in where it is now. After all, you no doubt know one of the old adages, this particular bus (market trends that is) always leave the station empty.

· Will you try to chase it if/when it kicks off hard & will you build resilience to not be shaken out. After all any break-outs in whichever direction are almost always followed by at least a few H4 or sometimes even D1 creeping pull-backs to shake out all the nervous & over-leveraged peak of that expansion run. When they’ve all puked out or got stopped out is when the market resumes the next leg & the next & the next, you know the good old rinse & repeat; if it begins to “trend”. I don’t use that term often & found it odd to even type it after all these years hence placed within inverted commas.

· Are you planning to sell at some point or have you identified use cases for it in your own personal space which will result in you buying to hold (or as crypto till we die crew calls it (HODL). If you’re planning to buy & flip that is, turn your $9k into some other value, there are numerous other instruments where you could achieve far greater outcomes. Consider this; for you to 10x your $9k outlay with BTC requires it gets to just around $170-$200k; which the S2F (supply to flow ratio) suggests it may very likely do, sooner or later but will you be able to hold through the peaks & throughs? If you wish to flip your capital you should seriously consider the ones which are bound for easy 20, 30 or even 50x gains not long from now since the cost to get in on the ground floor is much cheaper & you can scale out rapidly with the range expansions, banking portions of the gains at 10x ranges whilst keeping some ground floor purchase orders running to the Moon.

· If you have use cases for it for the long term i.e. 20 years & beyond you could consider the BTC maximalist stance on it, i.e. “The best time to buy BTC was before the 2013 kick off when it costed ten dollars, the second best time is NOW’ I for one, am not polarised either way with BTC or any crypto. I am just a trader who familiarises myself with instruments which offer opportunities for profit, I don’t bother with the noise & who’s slinging mud at who. If I profit by an instrument, it’s fine, if I take a body shot & lose it’s also fine since it will bring with it learnings for the future. As the golden rule of trading I fully accept that the transaction I am participating in could incur a loss & I am at total peace when I pull the trigger on the trade.

The method of how you’ll buy, Alex, is a topic for another day but I urge you to not press the buy button until we’ve chatted.

I will not influence your decision as you know but I will present you all the facts if you don’t already have a 360-degree view of the facets & intrinsic specificities of crypto since this segment of the market thrives especially on ignorance & impulse as it’s cornerstones to relieve persons of their hard-earned monies.

The bottom line is, for someone who has the requisite knowledge base, if you merely want to profit by it & not get drawn into polarised sentiment & screaming contents, you can profit hand over fist.

The opportunities are extensive & factual so we can disregard fleeting & emotively charged opinions on the matter.

It’s how you go about it is when the tyre hits the track is what’s vital.

I wish that I have adequately answered some of your questions & apologise in advance if I have been ambiguous, deficient, or created any confusion.

May I be granted this opportunity to wish you & all others on this thread a wonderful day ahead.

Off course, finally, may the markets go with You!!!

When did the crypto winter start? In other words, how much time is left?

Talked with an miner company owner in August 2022 regarding this.

So according to him the depreciation of crypto-currencies should continue till the end of the year 2023?

I think there is no black-or-white answer here they just gradually cashing out hoping for new highs to get more profit on the rest of their holdings, just as regular BTC speculators just more sophisticated. We are talking about average Joe in cryptoholders, of course there are HODLers that expect BTC to rise to 1mln etc.

And wasn't that the case with bronze and silver coins until being replaced by fiat money?

Legitimacy? Some merchants accept bitcoin on top of conventional systems like debit cards and credit cards. Receiving BTC as payment is really unattractive to merchants as they have to wait up to 30 minutes for full confirmation of funds availability and transfer. Bitcoin, as it is, will never be a better means of payment than fiat money in electronic format.

The bustling world of crypto is what motivates more and more people to get in, but that doesn't mean that it will more further than the dimensions of a volatile security. And if you cannot trust powerful Governments to give you a stablecoin and privacy then why would you trust a group of programmers and marketers? What safety do you see in the 5k-10k member communities behind crypto coins like bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and others?

So why should anyone exchange their hard-earned dollars for crypto if death is probable?

It is because I feel that demand would balance supply around that level. It would be a starting point for investing in bitcoin; imagine if the price goes as low as 7k then you could buy another bitcoin and then the average price of investment would be 8k in this situation.

I am not sure how you got to this number.

Thank you again for your extensive reply. I'll read it once more during the weekend.

ps: If you buy something online then the merchant would have the time to confirm your transaction as long as you yourself want to wait 30-60 minutes. But how much electricity is being consumed in the process? Is it sustainable?

Hi Alex;

Thanks for your feedback; no doubt you some extremely valid points. I wish to state for your peace of mind that I value your thread & have taken care to detail the points which I thought were alternate views to consider.

As is the right thing to do; I will include the information hereunder & then only contribute if you require any feedback from me. After all, you’re doing great with it & being your sandbox you should be front & centre with your posture on it.

Perhaps there is an element of talking past one another; which generally happens with written exchanges, more especially when there are layers of complexity such as the topic we are trying to speculate upon.

All the same; the main thing I wish to convey is how I got to the 10x & $170k-$200k point.

The basis for my calculation was based on you purchasing $9k Bitcoin where the current price is; not when it reaches the low water marks you anticipate.

Perhaps that may assist you since having a crypto holding of $9k implies for you to 10x your capital outlay requires the BTC price to increase 10x commensurate with your outlay value.

If it’s confusing don’t bother too much about it since the numbers will make sense when you re-read the message as you advised over the weekend.
So far as fiat currency replacing bronze & silver it is true but that comparison to crypto is perhaps somewhat misplaced. It is similar to how crypto detractors liken the crypto boom to the tulip bubble.

I am by no means someone who can be considered an extreme crypto advocate; neither am I a detractor but I wish to state that there are some areas of the blockchain which you may wish to look into further since I detect there is some dated information in your current assessment.

My purpose in the entire thing is I am glad to have identified an arbitrage opportunity within the ecosystem I made reference to & able to exploit it. This is since unlike conventional merchants you referenced, these “merchants” will wait however long they need to for confirmation of their sale since they are uninterested in processing turn around time.

Their motivation is anonymity ;completely different angle from the logic you’re applying.

As for the buyers in that market, you will find it funny perhaps. One of their primary FAQs is, what is bitcoin & how do I buy it. They wish to make their purchases with fiat currency but the market doesn’t accept it so they are forced to buy bitcoin at ultra premium rates, to sell it instantly in the form of payment for their purchase.

Think of the multiple layers of spreads alone in the transaction I just called to your attention. The merchant also needs to then convert their Bitcoin earnings into fiat; which creates yet another income stream.

Thank You again & I wish you & all on the thread a pleasant evening ahead.

It goes without saying but well worth the repetition, May the markets go with you...

And yet, you haven't answered all my questions. Would you trust a community of programmers more than the US government?

The logic of 9k is indeed to increase my capital by 10 times, and that is because I don't really think it will go higher than $100k in value.
However, the trading opportunity I see in the crypto market is trading against those few new crypto-coins listed on exchanges like Binance. I noticed that the coins get a temporary hype around them and a temporary increase in value until the hype is over and they are forgotten, moving gradually down to a tenth or even a hundredth of their maximum historical value.

You are right to suspect me of having dated information but also not much understanding of the blockchain.

On the other hand, I always knew that there can't be more than let's say 26 million bitcoins out there, which means that scarcity will always generate value around the crypto-coin especially if there is constant or ever-greater demand. But somebody did say that that could change, after all, something that was programmed can also be reprogrammed.

Also, you said that the silver and gold coins concept is somewhat misplaced. But why? Can there not be a better crypto-coin to nullify the value of all the others? And what about those who bought the bitcoin when it was valued at $50k. How much did they lose in their investment already (if we are to have this narrow vision)?

I think it's time they were banned, for decades goverments all over the world have implemented deregulation after deregulation, causing bubbles and crashes and massive welath gaps in populations, the situation in the UK is quite dire at the moment, primarily suffering from speculation on energy markets after the Ukraine war, we had a miassive price spike going into the war, and yet nearly 12 months later nothing has really fundamentally changed but fuel prices have dropped around 40%, we are still seeing artificially high prices due to the pure speculation going on, with marketeers pocketing millions by doing exactly what we're all trying to do here, make money out of nothing.

Over the last 40 years we have seen all wealth transferred and locked up in assets which provides no economic benefit in the long term, only devastation and extreme poverty and extreme wealth. Goverments are bad enough at understanding economies and are at the mercy of the markets for example when Liz Truss and cronies annnounced the famously disastrous budget a few months ago. If crypto was to grow as big as national currencies we would be at is mercy at this totally unregulated finance market, it's time Goverments took proper control of their economies rather than hand it over willy nilly to financiers.

TIME THEY WERE BANNED BEFORE THEY CAUSE ANY MORE DAMAGE.

Apparently this year below 15 will not fall.

I am not op, however, i want to respond here.

The reason I like bitcoin is because it is TRUSTLESS. You don't have to trust anyone. not programmers, not marketers and most importantly not a government!
The "government" are not there to help and protect you. So forget about trusting them.

Another example - do you know how difficult it is to get fiat money from a bank to an exchange? It can be very difficult, they made me jump through lots of hoops, my bank put lots of barriers in the way.
there is no one that has to approve my btc transaction. not the bank, not the po-lice, not the corrupt government, no one.

I found this thread and thanks to Alex for creating it.
If you don't like it, Alex, you can block me.
I want to say my opinion formed in over 6 years of information.
I want to tell those who have no idea what crypto means...not to be influenced by those who wash their brains...


Eisode 1

Let's do our research...
The crypto phenomenon is very recent,
so it is relatively easy to trace his history.
The story begins with the economic crisis of 2008,

in which banks used automated algorithms

to invent complex financial products
which no one knows
and then they started betting on them.

The few people who understood
what are these invented financial products
they bet that they will lead to an economic collapse
and by this bet they became dramatically rich.

In the ruins of this greed rises,
in early 2009,
as a solution,
Bitcoin.

Merry Christmas to everyone and God bless everyone!

Episode 2

The technology behind crypto is called blockchain.

To call it technology... sounds a bit grandiose... but all the terms surrounding this phenomenon give off a revolutionary thrill and self-importance... so that you get the feeling that crypto is the future.

Saying blockchain technology is a bit like saying Microsoft Excel technology.

Blockchain is software... a code by which a database is organized.

It's an innovation in the way you can store a database... but that's about it. What the blockchain can do is what a database can do, only that he does it a little differently.

We had these before...


God bless everyone!

Might the cure be worse than the disease ?

You speak as a person who lives in a country that deals with political corruption and poverty, am I right?
On a personal account, I have only positive experiences related to services provided by a bank (except the unarranged overdraft fees charged in UK lol). Mixed experiences related to the councils and gov agencies in the UK. And somewhat sad experiences related to Police.

By all means, I have not created this thread to block FF members' opinions.
Please do contribute with anything you see fit.

Episode 3

The extreme optimism about this new technology is based on the idea that the way you solve the world's big problems is through a software change...

That's the notion being pumped by entities trying to sell blockchain-based things...

This (blockchain) optimism is also a marketing product in itself.

The ideas for how blockchain works have been around since the early 90s ... but no very useful purpose has been found for it.

These ideas were picked up and adapted by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 for Bitcoin functionality....

It is not known who or what Satoshi Nakamoto is.... the name is a pseudonym that can stand for a person or a group of people...

In any case, the Satoshi Nakamoto entity comes along and creates a database management system based on cryptographic principles...

The purpose of this database is to keep track of who has how many bitcoins...

Note that all of these things have nothing to do with real world money or values.

I can today create a blockchain whose purpose is to distribute myFFCoins and keep track of who has how many myFFCoins.

God bless everyone!

Episode 4

Which is why so many cryptocurrencies have sprung up overnight that they essentially don't mean anything, they're just a database.

To generate your own myFFCoins you need to mine them.
You must become a myFFCoins miner.

How does this work?

The specific thing about blockchain is that it is a database to which new data can be added only at the end...

There is no way to modify the already existing data... they are nailed down...
Everything new is added... in order of arrival... at the end of the list....

Furthermore...each new block of information added is named after the previous block.

The names of these blocks are called hashes, and they are the crypto in cryptocurrencies.
These names are codes generated by an algorithm based on the information inside the block... which is why the crypto world looks like this:

But that matters less.

The idea is that block 5 is named after block 4... which was named after block 3 ... and so on...
So block 3500 will always be directly linked to block 3... and any change you make to block 3 should change the entire chain...

That's what blockchain stands for...chained blocks of information...
through this dependence of each block on the previous one...

God bless everyone!

yes I’m from a country where political corruption and poverty are rife - I’m from the uk.

don’t even get me started on the police= the biggest criminal gang in the country.

only the very worst type of people would want to be a policeman (power hungry, bullied as a child etc) .