You treat well informed members here with very little respect. You said you work in IT and yet you speak of "retail" as though you are a PM. Make up your mind. Post a short or long entry if you want some respect and stop trolling the BTC longs here.
also, seems some of the money that came out of btc went into gold, now at 87% long...I am also retail of course, but you don't have to behave like the average retail, if you know where to look and how to distinguish yourself. I trade equities, but the same principles apply... retail (as a whole) think and behave in very predictable ways... the dumbest money (as a whole), no doubt... so don't feel victimized. The professionals actually have the good the bad and the ugly... but retail, you can put a perpetual dumb money label on it and will never be too far off.. because retail is ill-informed... they don't have the right information... they read articles that were meant to brain wash, and they get tips from their uncle. I am also retail, so I don't have information either... I rely on very bare basics - the price, and sentiment. and, still no answer to the fact that longs are now crowded.
You provided us the facts that retail longs are now crowded and that retail is dumb money and is always wrong so what answer are you now expecting?
If it's a different answer, then I'd like to hear; If it's still no answer, then I give up; If it's the same answer, then perhaps you are married to a position?
When it comes to Bitcoin I fully admit that I am married my position in it. At 25K or higher I will sell 40% or so but the rest will still be in my estate when I die. But that is the beauty of it. It won't be in my estate.
One more thing, the biggest short term price factor in BTC is the interest and action of the whales. They play the CME futures game then make it happen with their large coin positions. They have a huge money machine that they can manipulate. They pushed the price up so fast in Dec that it created a massive Retail FOMO and it peaked when the Futues opened. The first futures trade was over 20K. Now, it is not in these whales best interest to allow BTC to go into a nuclear winter and destroy all the pawns, and potential new pawns, that they hope take advantage of. All the ETers that think BTC is going to zero are (to say it politely) wrong. I am just a pawn that believes in the long term prospects of the BTC blockchain and refuse to be emotionally altered by the short term price action. I made a post in another thread awhile back in response to the question "Why would anyone want to buy Bitcoin? My response was this: Because in some years out people will say I remember when you could buy a whole Bitcoin for $2,500. Now what is the price of Bitcoin today? That is how I view Bitcoin.
This is going to be a long trip...at least there is not a cost of carry..other than the cost of funds tied up. "adding to" during the trip is a little intimidating to me. ES P.S. Why do I always convert everything to cash (dollar). I got to get away from this thinking. If bitcoin only would be used more like a debit card denominated in bitcoin.
You are talking about Bitcoin whales but they already had bitcoin so they weren't in the position pushing it higher without selling first. Now if you meant by just big money, maybe. I think tether free money coming in was a bigger factor and it was just a plain old world wide mania. Everybody and their mother wanted in, that is it. No need to look for conspiracy when simple psychology explains it. Now if manipulation both ways were so easy, we would just see Bitcoin stuck in a price range, because manipulators don't care about ideology, just profits. The danger of manipulation is that another whale might be playing the market the opposite way canceling each other's effect out. All in all, it was and still is a mania with a shallow order book. You get the price going vertical than a 60-70% collapse. Look up similar stocks or short squeezes. Very similar charts, like VW in 2008. From 200 to 900 in a few weeks and back... For weekend reading: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/silver-thursday-hunt-brothers.asp Chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday#/media/File:Silver_price_in_USD.png By the way, after the collapse, silver's price went sideways for 20 years but it does have fundamental value and can not be copied or easily replaced.
Your story exists already for decades but then for other investments. These investments had real activity, real profits, real investments and acquisitions. These investors also told: Watch how cheap I could buy these stocks? Eventually what looked cheap appeared to be expensive. Same can happen with BTC and other coins. Many coins already disappeared and all these investors lost money although they were all thinking just like you to make huge money . Same story for Refco, American Airlines, Pacific Gas & Electric, Thornburn Mortgage, Chrysler, MF Global, Conseco, Enron, CIT Group, General Motors, Worldcom, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, ... The probability that you will lose your total investment is much higher then the probability that you will make a tenfold of your money. Just like daytraders have a higher probability to lose everything then to make money in the long run.. You are NEVER sure about any profit or loss as long as you did not cash in the complete investment. Only after selling all your coins you will know if and how much money you made. The accounting principle of putting everything in the books at market price will never help you if the prices crash later. The only price that matters is the one at execution of you position. "What will be the price in a few years out?" Anywhere between ZERO and ETERNAL. Nobody knows but you apparently know it already...
then I wish you happy marriage hehe.... if you are willing to overlook the facts (flashing red lights).. I wonder what is your average cost? in the money or out of? not that it matters much... in the money maybe easier to sell, but most of retail in the 2000 bubble didn't end up with any profits, because they watched their instant riches when NAZ reached 5000, and on the way down they kept telling themselves - if it goes back to 5000 they will sell.... like I said the scammers played this out very well.... that 20k high water mark is now looked at by every retail, regardless in or out of the money. regarding naz, 17 years later it did get back to 5000, but qqq did, individuals stocks.. who knows.... by that token, if there were a block chain ETF, you will likely be ok... individual coins... who knows. your 'gold and silver' argument.... only gold and silver is... remember yhoo? aol? they were the 'gold and silver' in 2000.... so it is actually no surprise that retail is now 87% long in gold and 80% long in btc.... real gold does 'feel' more secure at this point. You have position in silver.. even though I look at this as under a similar death sentence, at least this is stuff that has industrial use, and you will likely come out ok if you don't get shaken out in the next sell down... the next BIG move, on gold and silver, will be down. also I wonder what your profession is.... to me an IT guy, this block chain stuff is so volatile... you can have a rapid shift like all the mySpace users migrated to Facebook. I also sense some conflicts here - on one hand you seem to imply there is massive manipulation in btc.. on the other you have faith in it to be a hedge against that eventual day when the dollar is manipulated into collapse.... so the btc manipulation, by the whales, unregulated, faceless and nameless, mainstream in the underworld as payments for drugs and sex trades.... this is better than the US dollar manipulation? backed by the US government, the productivity of the US, a group of seasoned economists in the Fed, with much better transparency? doesn't make logical sense here. but I guess when you are committed to a marriage, logic is out of the window.