I’d be on-board for it to hit $600, however the turmoil worries me.
Any comment about the bitcoin protocol split/in-fighting? And how that’ll effect the price?
I’m not familiar with dynamics in the protocol splits etc;
All things consistent though, post halving price will increase to new heights (as long as bitcoin remains bitcoin, 1MB block time etc, same capacity of coins etc)
1 Like
Pretty much no part of this next halving event will be “all things consistent” 
I sincerely hope the MaidSafe devs strategically release the testsafecoin network in late June/early July. If they do that, they’ll absolutely throw a massive peg in the spokes of bitcoin and draw a crap-load of press/media from the bitcoin turmoil towards the new protocol on the block… The SAFE Network 
Man, talk about a shit-show if they could pull that off.
3 Likes
Bitcoin also advances.
I don’t know a lot of it, but someone already heard of ‘Lightning Network’ (instant payments via Bitcoin)?
Looks like a symmetrical triangle has been forming over the last 24h and it is coming to a head. This suggests a breakout move one way or the other.
Looking back to the start of April, it looks like we have been passing through an inverse head and shoulders, with the right shoulder also reaching a conclusion.
With both of these and the fact that the market seems to have turned bullish in the short (weekly/monthly) term, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a decent move up in price. Ofc, news which comes out in the weekly dev updates could assist or impede this, but it could get interesting - especially if there is good news! 
3 Likes
Yes, I agree. I think too many people make the fallacious argument that just because the price went up at the last halving it must go up this time, too.
I actually do not think that will be the case.
In fact, we still have not tested a scenario where bitcoin hash rate is falling and this set of events makes for the perfect test.
JMHO
2 Likes
Traders gonna trade, they want the daily profit.
The trading is going to be interesting once Safecoin launches because from that point on there will be non-spec demand for it.
But if only (say) 30-40 BTC worth of Safecoin is used on the network every day, I wonder how much of an impact the real use would have.
Are you going to hold your BTC through the June/July shitstorm that will be the bitcoin community?
I don’t have enough BTC to be worried about it. I plan to “do nothing” because I don’t know which way it’ll move. I figure it’s good to have some BTC handy just in case. I also assume that people who really understand crypto-trading and manage large amounts of BTC for others or themselves have already started positioning themselves and that their answer is “do nothing”, too.
To hope that I have some unique insight that’s been escaping most full time traders would be delusional, wouldn’t it?
2 Likes
I think you’re right to ‘do nothing’. All of the academic evidence suggests there is a power law to trading: 90% of traders lose money. I also think you’re right when you say that the vast majority of the value that’s been created to date is speculative, but I also think that’s a good thing. Carlota’s Perez’s ‘Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital’ is an excellent read. In it she argues that all important technological revolutions are characterized by speculation and asset bubbles. The fact then that we are starting to see this in cryptocurrencies would suggest there is a lot of potential.
And I’m sure most here see this. You can do 3 things with information: store it, send it, and process it. Social media, the last big event in IT meant that sending information, or communicating has become decentralised. We no longer get all our info from the 9 O’clock news. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to imagine that the opportunity to decentralize the storage and processing of information will be huge. The part that the Safe Network will play in that is still uncertain, but I’m willing to ‘bet’ that it will play a part that’s bigger than the current $37M market cap suggests.
7 Likes
Last time I looked the number of nodes running Classic had dropped. Miners were not won over to anything like the degree necessary to see a hard fork. Segregated Witness should get implemented in the next few weeks and will open the way for the Lightening Network, which should also be up and running, maybe even this year. There also seems to be agreement on a block size increase to 2MB in 2017. So a roadmap has been drawn up and the drama has dissipated, at least for now. I’m sure some developers are unhappy with the choices that have been made, but that’s just life when the decision making is decentralized. Andreas Antonopoulis’ dragon is learning the breathe fire…
1 Like
Perfect test? Or perfect storm 
Not a unique insight, but perhaps a strategy: “If BTC drops below $350 I’ll sell half, then if it hits $300 I’ll sell the rest.” But as you said you don’t have much so holding is an easier than playing the market games.
That can’t be a real statistic. Maybe “90% of people who will ever try trading will lose money”. I don’t consider traders to be the layman, they have experience with their market. 90% of all traders do not lose money, that’s not logical.
Man they’re just throwing band-aids on top of band-aids as far as I can tell. Clearly the blockchain was not as thought out as we were all led to believe, and the underlying limitations are now glaringly obvious and will lead to its downfall.
SAFE Network technology is lightyears ahead than the bitcoin protocol. It’s not a matter of opinion as to which will win. Bitcoin is deprecated.
I am with MT on Bitcoin. SAFE doesn’t yet have a stable beta.
The potential is there but it must be proven in production over a period of time, before bold claims can be taken seriously.
And considering the relatively minor impact of Bitcoin on governments so far (even terrorists don’t find it user friendly), SAFE could actually be targeted by state actors (the most resourceful attackers, who have left bitcoin alone so far) so it could turn out to be difficult or costly to run the network.
Good thing it’s fully decentralized, end-to-end encrypted, and only requires easily-accessible mass-produced consumer hardware 
3 Likes
SAFE is practically/rationally already here. Nobody continues working on something for 10 years based on an empty belief. It’s straight up confidence, fueling the belief – and, the blueprints, facts, flowcharts, whitepapers, etc. (and they in turn charge the belief further). Even if everyone has to wait for 2017 until 1.0 (not even just Beta… but one step further, though it’s fully possible for Beta to continue being the norm at that time, until 1.0 is finally done), it’ll be based on bugs, i.e. normal snags for any project.
The more likely offender of delays is not getting the word out more quickly once it actually is live. However, I remember hearing about Bitcoin in 2009 and trying it out, and not understanding a thing about it, holding that complexity in my heart all the way to 2013. Yet here I am before SAFE is even out, and I feel like I already know everything about it. Almost nobody seemed to be able to explain Bitcoin to a layperson back then. But with this much preparation time, hopefully people fully grasp SAFE enough to help people out, without confusing the poor saps. With so much power and game-changing behind the invention, it’s immediately readily inherent ahead of time (i.e. now) that it is deserving of an entire class session, in the future—devoted to teaching, working with them, saying it’s as important as HTTP was.
Regarding competition, they would have to spend 10 years themselves working on something equivalent, or at least 5 years or 3 if they’re super-geniuses. It’s too late in the game, for that.
13 Likes
@Audity, nice post. This discussion was getting kind of pessimistic. Too much analysis and too little appreciation of great expectations has been taking place.
2 Likes
The vast majority of day traders lose money. At least according to this academic study:
““More importantly, we found that if you were to look at the past performance of these traders, only 1 percent of them could be called predictably profitable,” says a co-author, Brad M. Barber, a finance professor at the University of California, Davis.
Everyone else, it seems, was on a short-term winning streak. Even those
who did modestly well found their that profits were wiped out, and then
some, by transaction fees like commissions and taxes.”
I used to work for an investment bank in the 90s. Just about all of them had proprietary trading desks. Now none of them do.
“90% of all traders do not lose money, that’s not logical.”
Why not? Trading seems to follow a loose power law principle where around 10% of the participants get 90% of the wealth.
“Man they’re just throwing band-aids on top of band-aids as far as I can
tell. Clearly the blockchain was not as thought out as we were all led
to believe, and the underlying limitations are now glaringly obvious and
will lead to its downfall.”
I think they’re just adding more layers to the stack. They have bitcoin ie TCP/IP now they are building SMTP and HTPP etc.
4 Likes
The more likely offender of delays is not getting the word out more quickly once it actually is live. However, I remember hearing about Bitcoin in 2009 and trying it out, and not understanding a thing about it, holding that complexity in my heart all the way to 2013. Yet here I am before SAFE is even out, and I feel like I already know everything about it. Almost nobody seemed to be able to explain Bitcoin to a layperson back then. But with this much preparation time, hopefully people fully grasp SAFE enough to help people out, without confusing the poor saps. With so much power and game-changing behind the invention, it’s immediately readily inherent ahead of time (i.e. now) that it is deserving of an entire class session, in the future—devoted to teaching, working with them, saying it’s as important as HTTP was.
Someone, I’m actually looking at people like @Audity , should create an ELi5 for Safe. Basically a way for potential investors who may be used to trading, or at least having an interest, in blockchain based technologies.
If something like this, not the FAQ, does indeed exist, then I apologise.
1 Like
Is there some sort of distinction between “day traders” and “traders”?
I’ll defer to you to define that seeing as you have the background knowledge.
Day traders are supposed to unwind all their positions at the end of each day. ‘Trader’ is obviously less well-defined as a term. Although I’m sceptical about the success rates of traders and consider myself an investor, I also think the question about how long of a holding period does it take for a trader to become an investor is legitimate. Anyway, I try not to look at the price or get too excited/disappointed when there’s a big up/down move, but it’s difficult! Until recently it was impossible for the little guy to get involved pre-IPO in a potentially revolutionary technology project. Not now. It’s difficult not to get excited about that!
3 Likes
I wonder if those 1% are not the just ones who are going through enough of those short-term winning streaks in a row by chance that it looks like they are “predictable” 
If you look at enough examples, some of them are bound to behave just like that…
1 Like