5 ms·

I am really really curious, who are selling the Bitcoins? If you see the price these days, the conventional wisdom is to HODL, but lo and behold, there are sell

I am really really curious, who are selling the Bitcoins? If you see the price these days, the conventional wisdom is to HODL, but lo and behold, there are sellers. Who are these people? How did they get so many Bitcoins and why are they selling?

waynesonfire 6y ago
Its a gamble at every price point. You're seeing the price go up because of what you're suggesting until it reaches a point where someone is happy to part with their coins.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  but isn't that price means there are people who sell on that price?
brokencode 6y ago
It’s funny calling the prevailing opinions on (I’m assuming) online crypto investment communities as “conventional wisdom”. These sites are filled with garbage information from teenagers. Many investors in the space will sell when it’s high, and buy when it’s low. This is a highly speculative investment, and shouldn’t be treated like stocks or other investments. You hold a diversified portfolio of stocks because companies on average will eventually will grow or pay a dividend. Crypto though? It could easily crash and never return at any time, and has crashed dramatically multiple times before.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  well I'm just generalizing about assets in general. I don't believe in Bitcoin but I want to know who are selling these Bitcoins in large numbers?
  - brokencode 6y ago
    As mentioned in my previous response, many investors will see the recent spike and decide to sell to lock in their profits, since the investment is extremely risky and could crash at any time. When an investment goes up hundreds of percent in a single year, that raises a lot of red flags amongst many investors about the potential for a crash. This type of gain is just not normal in investing.
    - shoshino 6y ago
      And when it goes up 1000% every 4th year, other investors notice too :D
thescriptkiddie 6y ago
Given the accelerated boom/bust cycle in cryptoland, selling while the price is still at all time high seems like a safe bet. You might miss out on potential gains if the price continues to rise, but it's better than waiting too long and panic selling when the crash comes.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  But who are selling in large numbers? Individual sellers won't have the capacity to absorb the demand.
fasicle 6y ago
Others who are happy with the gains they have made, and think it's too risky to keep holding. I've got a friend who sold his bitcoin recently to buy a house. Unlike companies which have revenue as a marker, the bitcoin price seems very speculative, and if you think others might sell at 40k, you might do the same.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  But who are selling in large numbers? Individual sellers won't have the capacity to absorb the demand.
  - tanseydavid 6y ago
    Have you not asked this exact same question multiple times already in this thread?
- nickjj 6y ago
  > Others who are happy with the gains they have made, and think it's too risky to keep holding. I've got a friend who sold his bitcoin recently to buy a house. Yeah I'm not surprised about moves like this. 35k+ is when things start to get interesting. A few years ago I grabbed one at $1,200 and then sold it like 6 months later for around $1,800 because I was like "cool a 50% gain". If I had held onto it, selling at 35-40k seems reasonable because even after 15% capital gains tax that's enough to live comfortably in the US for an entire year. That's a life changing amount of money.
  - brightball 6y ago
    That's the other factor. At what point do you decide it's gained enough and make sure to cash in? How many people have the discipline to buy something at $1,000 then watch it increase to $5,000 and not sell if it starts to come back down? Now imagine when it went to $20,000 previously and then back down to $6,000. There's nothing wrong with cashing out. Can't go broke taking a profit.
UShouldBWorking 6y ago
"hodl" is not conventional, it's a meme pushed by ponzi scheme operators. Bitcoin (BTC) was hijacked years ago by Blockstream and corporate interests to be a settlement layer for Blockstream's products. Smart people are selling for USD, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Monero
justinzollars 6y ago
I sold bitcoin to pay for Christmas. The downside risk was greater than my perceived upside potential. We might double our money at this point? Triple it? You could do the same with Silver with much less risk.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  But who are selling in large numbers? Individual sellers won't have the capacity to absorb the demand.
  - justinzollars 6y ago
    it's a market? A market exists to support large buy and sell orders
    - christiansakai 6y ago
      It is, but what I'm failing to understand is who are the source of Bitcoin. AFAIK the institutions are the biggest consumers now and also hoarding it, so who are the sellers? It can't be retail investors right, I don't think they have the capacity to absorb the demand.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        Presumably being unable to absorb the demand is why the order book is being depleted hard enough that the price is spiking.
microtherion 6y ago
Miners would be one party that get a regular supply of Bitcoins, and have regular bills to pay. And any other party interested in selling would be particularly loud in publicly exhorting others to HODL, so the conventional wisdom is inherently suspect.
Volundr 6y ago
I have a few bitcoins from back when GPU mining was possible. Personally I don't believe it's here to stay, but I know I could be wrong. I have several price benchmarks, as each is hit, I sell off some, locking in the gains. This way if bitcoin goes to zero, at least I've got something out of it.
chairmanmow 6y ago
I wouldn't invest in BTC at this point - although it's a safe long term position, the capital injection required to move the price is pretty high as I think the market cap's around 600 billion. I HODL for now with Ethereum because of the utility factor as I also built a dapp although it's pretty much unusable these days due to gas fees - once those come down I'll starting spending ETH again minting strange ERC-721 tokens for my own amusement. I've been watching the prices/news/volume recently on crypto generally - and it seems clear a lot of new people are entering right now with a poor understanding of the environment and that creates opportunity in the alt-coins. Look at something like Ripple which if people were informed about current news should be falling off a cliff but still seems to 3rd in market cap and sometimes having rallies that outperform coins that haven't been more or less labeled by the SEC as fraudulent. Although this seems irrational to me, I think understanding those newbie conceptions opens up opportunities for some bigger gains than on Bitcoin - yesterday I decided to buy something that was certainly the days winner on coinbase that went from 5 cents to around 15 cents overnight (tripled in less than 24 hours) and I wasn't totally surprised - it'll probably slow down a little - but still worth holding on. The reason there was quick money to be made? Investing in something with a low-market cap relative to the others (also easily available on coinbase) - and maybe also a recognition that new buyers might like coins at certain price points. I looked at that coin and I saw the market cap was 30 million dollars (about $50 million behind the next closest on Coinbase), wasn't a total dud and also looked at the volumes of transactions happening on the market as a whole to see there was action happening anywhere and everywhere. I said to myself, if Bitcoin has a market cap of 600 billion, then to move the price 1% requires an additional 6 billion dollars injected there. If you take 1% of that 6 billion, 60 million and it went into that alt-coin (which is just about what happened) - it's a 200% gain overnight. For that to happen with bitcoin it would require 1.2 trillion dollars going in, not likely. Now will I sit on this alt-coin until retirement age versus a BTC? Nope - but in the short term if you're looking for moonshot consider what it really takes to move BTC price.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the perspective.
- 6y ago

waynesonfire 6y ago

Its a gamble at every price point. You're seeing the price go up because of what you're suggesting until it reaches a point where someone is happy to part with their coins.

christiansakai 6y ago
but isn't that price means there are people who sell on that price?

brokencode 6y ago

It’s funny calling the prevailing opinions on (I’m assuming) online crypto investment communities as “conventional wisdom”. These sites are filled with garbage information from teenagers. Many investors in the space will sell when it’s high, and buy when it’s low. This is a highly speculative investment, and shouldn’t be treated like stocks or other investments. You hold a diversified portfolio of stocks because companies on average will eventually will grow or pay a dividend. Crypto though? It could easily crash and never return at any time, and has crashed dramatically multiple times before.

christiansakai 6y ago
well I'm just generalizing about assets in general. I don't believe in Bitcoin but I want to know who are selling these Bitcoins in large numbers?
- brokencode 6y ago
  As mentioned in my previous response, many investors will see the recent spike and decide to sell to lock in their profits, since the investment is extremely risky and could crash at any time. When an investment goes up hundreds of percent in a single year, that raises a lot of red flags amongst many investors about the potential for a crash. This type of gain is just not normal in investing.
  - shoshino 6y ago
    And when it goes up 1000% every 4th year, other investors notice too :D

thescriptkiddie 6y ago

Given the accelerated boom/bust cycle in cryptoland, selling while the price is still at all time high seems like a safe bet. You might miss out on potential gains if the price continues to rise, but it's better than waiting too long and panic selling when the crash comes.

christiansakai 6y ago
But who are selling in large numbers? Individual sellers won't have the capacity to absorb the demand.

fasicle 6y ago

Others who are happy with the gains they have made, and think it's too risky to keep holding. I've got a friend who sold his bitcoin recently to buy a house. Unlike companies which have revenue as a marker, the bitcoin price seems very speculative, and if you think others might sell at 40k, you might do the same.

christiansakai 6y ago
But who are selling in large numbers? Individual sellers won't have the capacity to absorb the demand.
- tanseydavid 6y ago
  Have you not asked this exact same question multiple times already in this thread?
nickjj 6y ago
> Others who are happy with the gains they have made, and think it's too risky to keep holding. I've got a friend who sold his bitcoin recently to buy a house. Yeah I'm not surprised about moves like this. 35k+ is when things start to get interesting. A few years ago I grabbed one at $1,200 and then sold it like 6 months later for around $1,800 because I was like "cool a 50% gain". If I had held onto it, selling at 35-40k seems reasonable because even after 15% capital gains tax that's enough to live comfortably in the US for an entire year. That's a life changing amount of money.
- brightball 6y ago
  That's the other factor. At what point do you decide it's gained enough and make sure to cash in? How many people have the discipline to buy something at $1,000 then watch it increase to $5,000 and not sell if it starts to come back down? Now imagine when it went to $20,000 previously and then back down to $6,000. There's nothing wrong with cashing out. Can't go broke taking a profit.

UShouldBWorking 6y ago

"hodl" is not conventional, it's a meme pushed by ponzi scheme operators. Bitcoin (BTC) was hijacked years ago by Blockstream and corporate interests to be a settlement layer for Blockstream's products. Smart people are selling for USD, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Monero

justinzollars 6y ago

I sold bitcoin to pay for Christmas. The downside risk was greater than my perceived upside potential. We might double our money at this point? Triple it? You could do the same with Silver with much less risk.

christiansakai 6y ago
But who are selling in large numbers? Individual sellers won't have the capacity to absorb the demand.
- justinzollars 6y ago
  it's a market? A market exists to support large buy and sell orders
  - christiansakai 6y ago
    It is, but what I'm failing to understand is who are the source of Bitcoin. AFAIK the institutions are the biggest consumers now and also hoarding it, so who are the sellers? It can't be retail investors right, I don't think they have the capacity to absorb the demand.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Presumably being unable to absorb the demand is why the order book is being depleted hard enough that the price is spiking.

microtherion 6y ago

Miners would be one party that get a regular supply of Bitcoins, and have regular bills to pay. And any other party interested in selling would be particularly loud in publicly exhorting others to HODL, so the conventional wisdom is inherently suspect.

Volundr 6y ago

I have a few bitcoins from back when GPU mining was possible. Personally I don't believe it's here to stay, but I know I could be wrong. I have several price benchmarks, as each is hit, I sell off some, locking in the gains. This way if bitcoin goes to zero, at least I've got something out of it.

chairmanmow 6y ago

I wouldn't invest in BTC at this point - although it's a safe long term position, the capital injection required to move the price is pretty high as I think the market cap's around 600 billion. I HODL for now with Ethereum because of the utility factor as I also built a dapp although it's pretty much unusable these days due to gas fees - once those come down I'll starting spending ETH again minting strange ERC-721 tokens for my own amusement. I've been watching the prices/news/volume recently on crypto generally - and it seems clear a lot of new people are entering right now with a poor understanding of the environment and that creates opportunity in the alt-coins. Look at something like Ripple which if people were informed about current news should be falling off a cliff but still seems to 3rd in market cap and sometimes having rallies that outperform coins that haven't been more or less labeled by the SEC as fraudulent. Although this seems irrational to me, I think understanding those newbie conceptions opens up opportunities for some bigger gains than on Bitcoin - yesterday I decided to buy something that was certainly the days winner on coinbase that went from 5 cents to around 15 cents overnight (tripled in less than 24 hours) and I wasn't totally surprised - it'll probably slow down a little - but still worth holding on. The reason there was quick money to be made? Investing in something with a low-market cap relative to the others (also easily available on coinbase) - and maybe also a recognition that new buyers might like coins at certain price points. I looked at that coin and I saw the market cap was 30 million dollars (about $50 million behind the next closest on Coinbase), wasn't a total dud and also looked at the volumes of transactions happening on the market as a whole to see there was action happening anywhere and everywhere. I said to myself, if Bitcoin has a market cap of 600 billion, then to move the price 1% requires an additional 6 billion dollars injected there. If you take 1% of that 6 billion, 60 million and it went into that alt-coin (which is just about what happened) - it's a 200% gain overnight. For that to happen with bitcoin it would require 1.2 trillion dollars going in, not likely. Now will I sit on this alt-coin until retirement age versus a BTC? Nope - but in the short term if you're looking for moonshot consider what it really takes to move BTC price.

christiansakai 6y ago
Interesting, thanks for the perspective.
6y ago