CASE STUDY - I bought in at 235. Pure greed. Before I even understood what bicoin truely was.

stop loss sold on the way down, luckily played the bounce from about $77 - $159... lost money in Bitcoin-24 fiasco, lost some profit in continued crashes after the $165 high.

BUT I'm not about to leave the market now that I know what bitcoin is... it's not about leaving the market and cutting losses... as far as I'm concerned once you are in you are in, once you understand bitcoin you have no real reason to totally leave the market. It's too much of a mental investment as well as financial.

After a month of chart watching, following news and learning more and more about the past and potential future of bitcoin, I decided that trading is not for me, it's a small part of the game. I just took 1/3 of my (now 25% up) money out of Gox via coins to Bitstamp and hopefully fiat in my account next couple weeks. The rest is all in, for the mid/long term. If Bitcoin-24 resolves it's banking issues and the market continues to price bitcoin lower, I'll use that money to buy more coins lower (as many people definitely want to do).

To me, unless you really think it's worth day trading bitcoin in the long term (which is probably the case for many in this subforum I know), that's the sort of thing anyone who's recently got involved with Bitcoin should be doing, making an investment and holding onto it, allowing the next 6 months to take it's course now that the world is paying attention and the infrastructure truely starts to develop.

Personally I'm emotionally and physically exhausted from my bitcoin discovery but there is no way I'm leaving the market, and this price seems fair... even if it drops to $50 it will most likely go up again anyway (touch wood). Even if it's not legitimised and the regulatory grey area resolved in the next 6 months, I'm sure there will be some use for it in the long run. But given the strength of the community and it's word wide nature, bitcoin will not fade away and I think many people should recognise that after having invested the time to understand what they are investing money in.


excuse the long fairly off topic post

what do you expect from an unregulated market populated with a fairly large number of intelligent members? EDIT - I mean: populated by a decent demographic of early adopters with large number of coins, who, if they decided they wanted to manipulate the market probably have the brains and the skills to do so.

how much manipulation do you think goes on in regulated markets?

As far as I understood this, your problem is the psychological barrier of "one unit for over 100 dollar", right? But does it really matter? I don't care if I get 1 BTC for 100 $ or only 1 for 1000 $, all that matters for me is the relative value and it's change: 20 % value gain is 20 % value gain, even if I pay 300k $ for "one unit", isn't it?

But I feel with you. I support that mBTC "movement".

lol, are you different ?  Do you want to buy high and sell low ?
1. if you believe in Bitcoin buy and hold.
2. if you want more btc/usd then trade but some win and other must lose.  
3. wait until price rise high enough and will be stable and hard to manipulate it ( maybe 5-10 years )

4. Wait for a price drop to justify buying in, or else leave it behind.

I agree with about the oxymoronic use of 'slow' panic   ... that don't make much sense ...
However, I dont agree that anyone who wants to buy in at a lower level than this is trying to get in at a discount. There are a lot of assumptions in that. I know that is not exactly what you said, but similar things have been said by many people, so I am just pointing it out that it ain't necessarily so. I am sure there are people running round trying to scare people so they can buy cheaper something they believe to be worth more (I see them!). Some others amongst us just don't want to buy at these prices and see too much risk here and now.

^^ This
As I said in my original post re my sentiments right now

In a bubble collapse, there are often bag holders who are wary to sell at a big loss so hang on for a while and those who attempt to double-down. I got involved in one once (on the advice of someone else. I should have known better) and watched as it took about four months for my shares to drop from 40c to 1c or so after the bust.

I don't think that's what's happening with Bitcoin at all but it's simply not necessarily the case that the deflation after a bubble burst is all that quick.

The point is to get the cheapest coins possible in a certain time frame. But in absolute terms,  $115 coins is super cheap. If you really believe that these are expensive coins, it can only be because you think that Bitcoin will never develop further potential -  this was its peak in use.  

ATM, that looks as a foolish statement - if you really understand Bitcoin, you will see that you really cannot afford to lose the opportunity to invest in it.

I think you are pointing out the difference between 'panic' and 'hold and hope' ... quick vs slow deflation being the differing outcomes. No idea how this applies to Bitcoin right now, but I agree with the point you are making