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Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

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Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#91
post #87

Just buy Bitcoin Today and hold it for a year. Then hold it for another year. Buy it with money that you don't ever need again. Don't do so much that you feel like you woud be in trouble if you lost it all and don't do it with so little that doubling that money in a year would not be worth the rollercoaster that is bitcoin ownership. The week after I bought mine, it dropped nearly 30% and now it's up nearly 90%. Ther…

Yeah that's a good sign that Bitcoin is not an investment its a lottery ticket, or more realistically an entry in a pyramid scheme.

Can you elaborate on why you think Bitcoin is a 'pyramid scheme'?

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#92
post #90
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's a good sign that Bitcoin is not an investment its a lottery ticket, or more realistically an entry in a pyramid scheme.

How is Bitcoin a pyramid scheme as opposed to USD?

Is that a joke? Show me the USD swinging as wildly as Bitcoin does in any time frame. There's a reason it's the standard across the world.

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#93
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Bitcoin a pyramid scheme as opposed to USD?

Is that a joke? Show me the USD swinging as wildly as Bitcoin does in any time frame. There's a reason it's the standard across the world.

I don't believe there is any conceptual correlation between X being a pyramid scheme and the price of X fluctuating wildly. "Pyramid scheme" is an actual term with a fairly widely-understood meaning. It doesn't just mean "any thing I don't like."

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#94
post #64

Is it true that the vast majority of all Bitcoin mining happens near hydro plants in China? If so, regardless of anything else, doesn't that expose Bitcoin users to significant state actor risk?

The only state action that poses a huge risk is if Chinese miners totally have >50% of the hashrate and the Chinese government took control of the miners to mess with transactions. Other than that the worst risk is them shutting down all the miners which would mainly just slow down transaction clearance which would drop the price but not catastrophically.

Nope, actually the most significant risk to Bitcoin specifically from the Chinese government would be an effective block of all Bitcoin-related traffic between China and the rest of the world. This would lead to about 50% of mining power being in China and about 50% being outside of China, both "networks" happily continuing to mine blocks (albeit a lot slower) without knowing about each other, thus confirming entirely different transactions. The market would effectively be crushed by such an event, since the whole point of the blockchain is to have a stable, worldwide consensus about the ownership of every single Bitcoin, which isn't the case anymore if there are two independent networks which both claim to be the "real Bitcoin" (important to note that this is entirely different to the situation between BCH and BTC, where the forked BCH chain is clearly considered to be a "different" chain from BTC by all relevant market actors and also by the software due to different rules for block validation).

If the resulting havoc doesn't let Bitcoin prices fall to zero, the chaos produced by the inevitable blockchain reorganization after the government lifts the traffic block would definitely kill it. Depending on which chain was lucky enough to get more blocks, one or the other suddenly becomes irrelevant, and thus all transactions approved within it are purged from history. If the traffic block is timed intelligently, people and/or organizations that rely on the immutability of the chain have already performed actions as a result of Bitcoin transfers, such as crediting user accounts on an exchange, which effectively enables double-spending of these coins on a large scale. This could only be prevented by immediate ceasing of all Bitcoin-related action in case of such a "net split" event, which isn't easy to do and which in itself is a huge market disruption.

I consider the likelihood of such an event to be rather small, as I assume the Chinese government to have a vested interest in Bitcoin (indeed I assume that certain parts of it have been active participants in the game of cryptos for quite a while, and even without this, there are the proven interests of the Chinese mining economy, whose participants hold large sums of coins and physical values tied to their mining operations). But nevertheless this is a possible threat with much worse consequences than simply having a little bit slower block times.

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another problem with DCA is that it's a classic case of "timing the market". If, over the course of those 3 months, the value of the asset you're purchasing consistently increases, you'll 'lose' money in the sense that your dollar will have less and less purchasing power toward the end of the period. There's a good discussion of this strategy on the Bogleheads wiki: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averagi…

Thank you, this is a great insight. > A better rule, however, is: do not try to time the market. Just invest when you can. I'm not sure if I understood this one correctly. Is it like, instead of trying to find the best time to invest, like waiting for something huge to happen, just invest every now and then when you are able to do it. Is that it?

That's right. If you have $100 sitting in your chequeing account to invest, better to invest it now.

Most people get paid biweekly or twice per month, so it would make sense to just invest when you get paid.

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#96
FWIW, this is a feature on coinbase-- you can just have them ACH charge your bank account a fixed amount each day, each week, each month, etc (each hour maybe?).

Unfortunately the better deal is moving that money to GDAX and buying there... which is a bit hard to do at $11 a day.

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, this is a great insight. > A better rule, however, is: do not try to time the market. Just invest when you can. I'm not sure if I understood this one correctly. Is it like, instead of trying to find the best time to invest, like waiting for something huge to happen, just invest every now and then when you are able to do it. Is that it?

That's right. If you have $100 sitting in your chequeing account to invest, better to invest it now. Most people get paid biweekly or twice per month, so it would make sense to just invest when you get paid.

Which means, taking say $100 out of each paycheck and investing all of it on that day. You're not timing the market then, the money wasn't available prior to that. You're not paying attention to the price, you're just getting the price on that day.

This is what dollar cost averaging usually means... assuming prior money was already invested.

But when you have a lump sum, instead of putting it all in on that exact day you can DCA over a short period of time, like 2-5 days or 3 weeks. This is basically averaging over that period which is better than the chance of just happening to pick the wrong day to buy.

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#98

The example says they want to invest $1000 over the course of 3 months, so 1000 / (3 * 30) = 1000 / 90 = ~11$ / day. But aren't the transaction fees (at least for Bitcoin) something like ~$2 per transaction? So you'd end up only investing ~$820 instead of the target of $1000 and losing the rest. Am I missing something?

You're somewhat missing something. Take the Exchange Gemini: I send USD to Gemini and then I purchase BTC on Gemini and am charged a 0.25% fee on my purchase. So far I haven't paid any transaction mining fees and it's because Gemini isn't actually settling these transactions on the blockhain. Now, if I were to move these coins off Gemini, then I would pay the mining fee of $2. However, I could just wait 5 weeks and o…

If you create liquidity on GDAX (any maybe Gemini too) you don't pay a transaction fee. (Though you still pay mining fees.)

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#99
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes you should add a cron to automate it daily

How do you automate money transfers?

Simple. Just add your bank account details to your exchange account and then your exchange can draw money from there automatically.

Re: Show HN: Bitcoin investing using Dollar Cost Averaging strategy

#100
post #87

Just buy Bitcoin Today and hold it for a year. Then hold it for another year. Buy it with money that you don't ever need again. Don't do so much that you feel like you woud be in trouble if you lost it all and don't do it with so little that doubling that money in a year would not be worth the rollercoaster that is bitcoin ownership. The week after I bought mine, it dropped nearly 30% and now it's up nearly 90%. Ther…

Yeah that's a good sign that Bitcoin is not an investment its a lottery ticket, or more realistically an entry in a pyramid scheme.

Bitcoin is the first technological form of money. This means it is going thru the normal technology adoption cycle like a high tech startup does, yet its' a form of money. It's a new thing.

Every time the user base expands a bit as more people become aware of it, then the price goes up.

At the same time, every 4 years the rate of emission is being cut in half... so, more people want bitcoins but there are less new bitcoins being made.

That's not a pyramid scheme but it's also not going to produce a perfect %0.2 appreciation per day type schedule.

It is an investment. With a lottery ticket your odds of winning are very small and you will likely lose almost all the money. With a pyramid scheme, the early entrants are paid with money from the later entrants as part of a scam-- and it's unsustainable-- but bitcoin is perfectly sustainable, it's simply an asset that happens to be appreciating.

What is it when you buy an asset whose demand is going up and you think it's going to appreciate?

Investing.

At worst you could call it "speculating" but speculation is just a word for "high risk investments" and risk is in the eye of the beholder.

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