Over the last decade or slightly more I've slowly been buying silver. I have some special collectors coins I would not want to sell but have a few hundred oz of plain bars I wouldn't be afraid to get rid of. Silver seems boring and like it's never going to go anywhere.... I keep waiting and nothing.

I'm not wanting to throw much more $ out of savings or paycheck into BTC but thinking about just selling some silver to fund a few thousand dollars worth of BTC. I'm not planning to get rich, I just think it's all kinda fun but obviously I'm anticipating BTC to go higher.

Am I silly to sell silver at these crappy prices to buy BTC right now when it is up a lot?

Yes.

Feel like these threads only pop up after BTC makes gains and is in the news

If you have enough normal investments and want to sell some silver to fund a speculation in Bitcoin that would be a mild diversification, which is usually a good thing.

Fuck no.

Bitcoin is a Ponzi scam, and you’re not one of the first guys in line.

LOL, I remember my first crypto thread.

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You are just parroting the same thing that has been said here in GD for as long as I've been following Bitcoin.  We are coming up on the 10 year aniversary of my first Bitcoin purchases here in the next two weeks.  People said EXACTLY what you are saying now back then.  Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, Bitcoin is tulips, you are late to the party...ect.

Nothing has changed.

As to the OP, if you believe that Bitcoin cycle theory is going to continue to hold up just as it has held up since around 2014 when it was initially proposed, then it's a great time to buy Bitcoin.

There will be a bad time to by Bitcoin just like if you go into the main Bitcoin thread you'll find posts near the top where I was telling people that it was getting late in the cycle and another crypto winter would eventually come:

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Well, we've arrived at that time.  Maybe a little past it now as the bottom was at the end of last year but we have by no means fully exited that interim period between Bitcoin bull markets driven by halving events.  We've still got the next halving event coming in April 2024 and it's not really game time until after we cross the previous all time high which this time is $69,000.

If you go back to Page #1 of the main Bitcoin thread and follow along, you'll get a sense of the sentiment as we were approaching the prior all time high back in late 2020 before things had really kicked off.  I was there for it in 2013 and 2017 as well and I can tell you the hype cycle was about the same each time.

Take all that for what it's worth.  It all depends on if halving cycle theory holds up, which it has ever since I first was introduced to it back in about 2014.

I have a small monthly BTC buy. It's part of my dollar hedge strategy.

Silver is problematic as it takes a lot of space to hold a decent amount. At least with gold you can put $20k in your pocket pretty easily.

And when I say we haven't exited that interim period between bull markets, I'm talking about this:

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Conventional crypto wisdom says we remain in this interim phase until after the halving in 2024 but no two cycles have been exactly alike either even though they all seem to rhyme.

If there was going to be a better opportunity in the next 12 months, it'd be an external event kicking it off kind of like how COVID opened up a short window to buy below $5,000 for a few weeks.  Maybe this time it will be something relating to the recession that everyone expects in the next few months or maybe the SEC finding a way to further delay or deny a Bitcoin ETF.

Thanks for the info. Believe me this is just all fun money or nothing I can't afford to lose. I max out my IRA most years - that is what I consider my normal retirement investment.

Part of me wants to throw some real $ at it but I think I will stick to a few thousand dollars. Maybe throw in $10 a week every week as well. Wish I would have been buying a few months ago when I was thinking about it. If I can turn 10k into 30k I will feel like a winner lol. Although the more I am reading about BTC the more I think it would make sense to hold even if it goes way up.

Would you sell the silver at a loss to buy BTC?

I bought a bunch during the 2010-2011 run up.

By that time its too late to catch the pump. BUT still a win in the long run to get in any time under $50k IMO


So yes....sell silver/gold to buy BTC.  Or wait until fidelity, vanguard and blackrock to allow you to hold BTC in their ETF's in your 401k.

Just be sure to get in under $50k for best results with whatever you plan allocating to it.


*disclosure*- I am 99% in BTC with only enough dirty fiat for 3 months of bills at all times.

Damn, I have a little crypto and a little silver but mostly traditional investments.

I'd have trouble sleeping if my retirement was that volatile!

I've had swings that would make you physically ill.  

My 401k and IRA always get maxed every year though so I sleep at night.  Always a little bit better during crypto bull markets though and it's definitely nice to be on the starting line for one again after almost 4 years.  

I'm a long time PLTR bag holder so I know a tiny fraction of those feels

Silver is supposed to be a hedge.  Think of it as insurence.

Just work more, eat Ramen and dedicate That money to BC?  

That said, I should throw $30k at it, just on the off chance that it strikes a home run.

Ive been in this game for 8 years now. From then....to now....all i do is zoom out and its all smiles  

BTC will be perfect for you then

It's called FOMO.

Bitcoin is down 15% since etf launch and I wouldn't buy now. Wait.

I have no crystal ball nor am I offering investment advice.

BTC will be making a higher low soom to around 46k and will most likely retrace from there to about  $39-36k this is considered a healthly pullback and is needed. It's entirely possible that it double bottoms back to $16k range. I don't think this is the case, but you really dont know. You have to wait and see how it reacts to supports and resistence levels.

If the retracment holds an forms support, I'll be buying again.

In the short term , If you bought  today you will see a short term unrelized loss in the coming weeks.

In the long term BTC is a strong buy. It's gonna hit a minimum of $100k in my opinionnin next 18 month.

Not that anything you are saying isn't entirely possible, but here's a post I made back in 2020 on the very first page of the main Bitcoin thread and I think it's still relevant today.  I wouldn't bet against a pullback to the $30k's either but trying to time your buys based on something that MIGHT happen misses the bigger picture of the upcoming halving event and Bitcoin's traditional performance post halving.  Maybe even moreso it misses the even bigger picture of where we expect Bitcoin to be in 10 years.

I bought my first Bitcoins 10 years ago and I can honestly say that any sleep I lost over the price I was buying at, which was at or near all time highs back then (~$200 each on my first order), was an absolute waste of worry.

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It will hit the 30's. Almost gaurenteed. Look at the range on purple box. Lower range is 30's. It will 90% revisit 30's on a
healthy pullback

This is where patients pays off. There's an old saying biy green candles get red dildos. ;)

A side note,  learning and understanding technical analysis is paramount an it allows you to look at the bigger picture through the lens of the big boys and their algorithms so you can compete. It's always about timing. When to put you feet in and when take your feet out is critical to making money.




https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0btgxkc0ppcpvkab66dvb/Screenshot_20240117_182530_TradingView.jpg?rlkey=1961ewcdv57l5smol6d8xdwwd&dl=0

I'm not sure you how can pitch it like that to someone who has been holding a significant quantity of BTC for more than 10 years with a straight face.  

Lol. Not really pitching. Just saying there are ways to make  money  in the stock and or crypto markets.  learning technical analysis puts you at a huge advantage over the average person who buys and sells based on emotion or based on what some guy in the bar said vs sound logicsl reasoning.

Holding BTC is not a knock at all.in fact over time you will gain wealth. That said,  if you had sold at 60K and used just half of that to repurchase at 20k, you woild be exponentially wealthier.

I'm not expert. I know enough to be a danger to myself . Seriously though technical analysis has really helped me understand markets and how they movenl as well as the individual stoks and cryptos. It's never 100%, and markets can sometimes shock you becasue it went against the TA, it happens but it happens alot less often because TA just works.

Ask yourself a simple question, do you know anyone who uses bitcoin regularly to buy things?  I'd put odds at near 100% the answer is no.  So it's not much of a currency, you don't see any adoption outside of the vampires at black rock and elsewhere looking to take fools money.  Coinbase just filed documents with the government stating that crypto is basically digital beanie babies - they used that exact term.  Last point, it's correlation is extremely strong with the nasdaq, which basically translates to the most speculative area in the market and is liquidity and hype (AI, blockchain, etc) driven.

It's simply a bet on what the sheep are going to do at any given moment since there are no fundamentals anymore.  There were in the early days of silk road, but now it's become what it's devotees claimed to hate.  The banking cartel even had to tack on a better transaction processing system (lightening network) so they could expand their fleecing.  Maybe there's a coin in development somewhere that's like bitcoin was in the beginning and it might make sense to throw a few bucks at that to satisfy the degen jones.

Lol. Back in the day the interwebs boom was dismissed as well by alot.

Today,  AI is being dismissed by many.

In the last decade BTC has been dismissed by many.... except the SEC, and BlackRock One Of The World's Leading Providers Of Investment, Advisory & Risk Management Solutions, Followed by some of the ither largest financial institutions in the world.....

Ya .... hmmmmmm .... ok.

It's 100% ok to be dismissive if you understand it. Not understanding it and being dismissive of it is just foolish and missed opportunity. Your comment leads me to believe you have zero comprehension on the subject, yet are dismissive, which is fine.... it's like your blind opinion, man.

As far as you Beanie baby comment.... it's completely used out of context. You grabbed a headline and ran with it.

Here is the exact quote

Coinbase argued against classifying cryptocurrencies as securities by saying that the digital coins are like Beanie Babies, more akin to collectibles than stakes in a company.

“It’s the difference between buying Beanie Babies Inc and buying Beanie Babies,” said the Coinbase lawyer William Savitt".

Shame on you for being misleading

Another note, the SEC vs. COINBASE is about Altcoins..... not bitcoin. Again you should understand the difference because one is certainly not the other.


Regardless,  Bitcoin has appreciated and will appreciate more than Silver ever will.

And when has betting on Sheeple been a bad bet?

Hell, we had this exact same discussion about Bitcoin a decade ago in this forum and in GD.  

You're argument isn't new.  The sheeple bet has been a rock solid bet.

The bottom line is that Bitcoin has all the characteristics of money (in the same way that Gold does) and the new supply is getting nothing but tighter over time.  It doesn't make sense that Gold is $2,000 per ounce either but it's rare, portable, indestructible, and divisible so humans in their collective wisdom have decided it's a store of value.  Bitcoin is no different in that sense.  It doesn't appear to matter that it sucks as a currency for daily transactions.

Beanie Babies are the worst analogy because they aren't rare, they are highly destructible, and they aren't divisible.  

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And I'm not even really disagreeing with anything you are saying to make the case for Bitcoin as a speculative investment.  Nothing you are saying is necessarily untrue, we just have a different conclusion.

I did a couple buys of fbtc a few weeks ago when it was new.  
It's up over 19% in less than 3 weeks.  

These new ETFs are going to get a lot of normies into the market through their 401ks/IRAs and drive up prices at least initially. The volatility is going to be insane however since there is no HODL loyalty or understanding of the cause like with your typical crypto bros with wallets and getting in during the FOMO runup and getting out when the herd gets spooked and panics is as simple as Suzy Soccermom and Joe Sixpack touching the buy or sell buttons on their phone. Repeat often. Throw in your institutional levered hedge funds whose sole purpose is to manipulate the markets at will for their billionaire clients and we're now cooking with gas. If you're into swing trading buckle up and enjoy the ride.

To the OP: I'm sitting on some silver in various forms (small % of my wealth) and if you are expecting it to shoot up in value you're holding it for the wrong reason. Might as well sell your tools, guns/ammo, and anything else that just sits around until it's needed and use the money to buy crypto. Having said that if you want to sell a few bars to scratch the crypto itch there is nothing wrong with diversifying. I personally would use new "play" money for speculation purposes and keep the stack but everyone's finances are different.

You are the dumbest of moths, always in search of a flame (reality bursting your bubble).  Bitcoin has failed as a currency, hence why it's rarely used as such.  Ironically it was killed by speculative retards that wanted to get rich rather than have something that competed effectively against traditional currencies.  But you can't expect much from degen gamers that have little knowledge of history, economics, psychology or finance.  Instead they turned it into the equivalent of beanie babies and as such the analogy holds perfectly.  It's especially hilarious to hear of older people who know nothing about crypto who think the space is "the future".  People are manic and act in herds, hence the whole Stanley mug frenzy.  

With crypto failing to succeed as a currency, you are left with the argument that it's a store of value.  But without it's lure to fools that it's value is going up there is no incentive for outsiders to want to invest in it.  It pays no dividend, isn't anonymous as many claimed and offers no tax benefits.  It's just a ponzi scheme with no practical use.

Please explain what makes you think Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme.  It doesn't look like a Ponzi scheme.  It doesn't act like a Ponzi scheme.  It doesn't meet the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme.

Carlo Ponzi ran a Ponzi scheme, he wasn't the first, but he got his name on it.  Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme.  Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme.

I agree with almost everything you are saying other than your misunderstanding of the elements of a Ponzi scheme.

So with no argument on those facts, why do you think Bitcoin has defied death for so long even after multiple major bubbles and crashes in 2011, 2013, 2017, and 2021?  Most financial assets or schemes purely built on nothing but fiction don't survive their first test like that let alone several of them.

It's not a rhetorical question.  I think your answer to that question is really where I want to start the conversation rather than just have you reiterate points back to me that I already agree with or atleast fully appreciate.

I keep pumping money in anytime fbtc is down and it keeps going right back up.  

I've tripled my investment over the last week and am now up 12% total with my original position up by 1/3 in one month.  
The "play money I can afford to lose" phrase is vague, but I'm well past the point of throw-away money so I set a trailing stop loss so I can ride it... to the moon?  

I assume a lot of these increases are due to so many people diving in to these new ETFs.  

Yes, ETF inflows are dramatically exceeding the rate of new Bitcoin production by the miners.  The miners are making about $47 million worth of Bitcoin per day at current prices and yesterday alone for example the ETFs had net inflows of $630 million.

If your whole idea is to trade it rather than hold it then stop losses make sense but if you are trying to hold it through the entire bull market you will probably get stop lossed out in the next few months.  Bitcoin routinely has -25%+ corrections during bull markets.  

Using the 2017 bull market as an example, every single yellow circle on this chart below is a -25% or greater correction.  I use that example in particular because when you zoom out, 2017 just looks like a constant upward curve until the end but at the ground level it absolutely wasn't.  Bitcoin is just a ruthlessly volatile asset.

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Well that would explain a lot of it.  I think the ETFs will gain a lot in the short-term due to money flowing in and I have money riding on it.  Thankfully that money is already guaranteed to not turn a loss so it's zero-stress for me.  

I am curious about the bitcoin funds though - There are now billions of $ in these ETFs trying to buy up finite bitcoin.  No doubt that will make upward pressure on bitcoin, but how will the ETF prices be determined?  Will there be announcements about how much bitcoin an ETF holds and the etf price will fluctuate with those announcements similar to earnings releases for corporations?  "We planned to buy 10 bitcoins but the bitcoin price went up so much we could only buy 8" and then the ETF price tanks?  

It's not monday, but for the doom crowd imagine if a big bitcoin ETF loses control of their bitcoins!  I read the fbtc documents and they are actually buying bitcoin and holding it off-line.  They explain in detail their physical access control to the "cold" bitcoin wallets no doubt in an effort to reduce concerns about theft.  

I recently have retained the services of a fiduciary advisor(see other thread in here) who is an engineer like me.  He explained his math model in detail and it supports, for the purpose of reducing the variability of outcomes, making a small fraction (a few %) of your total investments in highly volatile things as long as those things do not correlate to the stock market as a whole.  Bitcoin is one of the few things that fits that niche almost perfectly.   I have no desire to hold actual bitcoin myself, so these ETFs arrived at the perfect time for me.  

Doing some reading at lunch and came across the below tweet...  
Apparently the ETFs already hold a few percent of the maximum bitcoins that will ever exist.  As you noted, the ETFs are buying bitcoins about 10x faster than they are being created.
I found details for IBIT - it more than doubled the bitcoins it holds in the first two weeks of February.

What will give first?  Or will the bitcoin price simply grow unbounded in response to demand?  

fbtc is barely negative today so I bought some more.  
In the short term bitcoin is meeting my need for a volatile asset that has no correlation to the stock market as a whole.  
In the long term I'm starting to lean towards keeping it.


[tweet]apparently I don't know how to link a tweet[/tweet]

I think 2024/2025 are lined up to be really good years for Bitcoin but I don't think it will be unbounded.  There is a maximum number of Bitcoins but there isn't an unlimited amount of value on the planet and certainly not an unlimited amount which can be tied up in Bitcoin.  The BTC block reward rates are fixed whereas the price is not.  As the price goes up, it takes more dollars to chew up the new BTC mined every day without the market price giving way.

For example:

- At $25,000, the miners were in theory putting $22,500,000 worth of Bitcoin on the market per day presuming they sold everything they mined.
- At $50,000, the miners are now putting $45,000,000 worth of Bitcoin on the market per day presuming they sold everything they mined.

There is going to be a price at which ETF inflows can't keep up with miner production.

It's obviously not that simple as pre-existing Bitcoin gets bought and sold every day for a million different reasons.  When we talk about the ETF inflows and mining, we are kind of talking about them as if they are in a vacuum alone with each other which they are not.  There's also no reasonable expectation that ETF inflows will stay at current levels indefinitely either.  There will be negative days, weeks, and at some point even years.

In the near term though, it's a huge tailwind for Bitcoin just we expected it would be.