Serious thread - Betting In Bitcoin

  • Thread starter Thread starter SlimChance
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"Counterparty risk" - As I said I often use directbet.eu bookmaker and never had any issues, they pay faster than standard bookies. I have the winnings in my wallet in less than 1 minutes after the results are official(2-3 minutes after the race is finished). From my bitcoin wallet I either keep them in there for next day/week rollout or cash them out in old-money(euro).
 
With all this talk of restrictions on Twitter at the moment betting in Botcoin may never have been so relevant.
 
Of only small relevance to the thread maybe, but I feel the urge to tell a little yarn about Bitcoin and me.
It's the story of how I blew what was/is a fortune to me in Bitcoin in the space of a few weeks.

I was interested in Bitcoin since its float in 2010 when the price was $0.05 per unit. I wtched its price rise steadily and in Sept 2013 with some winngs from the horses I bought 50 Bitcoin for $35 each on the old Mt Gox exchange. By October the rate had risen to $110 which I thought had to be the ceiling for it. I sold all 50 coins at that price. Within a month the price had risen to $1,100 per Bitcoin. I had effectively "lost" $45,000 for being too safety-minded and cautious. It's a sum I will never again see in my lifetime, and I would have had it if I had waited for just four weeks.
I posted about it at the time on FinalFurlong forum:
________________________________________________________________________
"I hold me hands up; just a week after posting the above, I admit to having sold all 50 Bitcoins this morning at $110 each.
Motivated of course by the FBI's closure of The Silk Road yesterday and the arrest of its owner Ross Ulbricht. The termination of Silk Road -- in which transactions are conducted in Bitcoin -- will undoubtedly propel a plummeting in the Bitcoin exchange rate.
Will buy them back if and when the rate drops to around $30".
_______________________________________________________________________
　
"Tell me about it, Joe !!!
I've succeeded in burning over €40,000 by getting out too early. Disgusted wiv meself, I am.
But, you know, you make a judgement call .............. and you have to man-up and live with it.
I honestly thought the Fed's busting of Silk Road would crash the value of Bitcoin. Instead, the reverse has happened; The U.S. Treasury will possibly legitimise the Bitcoin, and the Chinese have dived into it driving up the exchange rate to unprecedented levels.
Still, I suppose it is some consolation that I bought mine at around $30, so still resolved a decent profit. (But it could have been so much more)."
______________________________________________________________________　
"On that figure, I am now looking at the dissipation of a profit of $44,500. !
Bought 50 Bitcoin @ $35 = $1,750
Sold 50 Bitcoin @ £110 = $5,500
Now, 50 Bitcoin@ $1,000 = $50,000"
______________________________________________________________________　
"Thank you both for your comforting words. It helps.
I'm genuinely trying not to dwell on it; down that road lies only madness -- especially if the Bitcoin value rises even further.
But it's hard not to do so. However, time to "man up" and accept the situation. Worse things happen at sea.
(Still, at the moment, it's preying on my mind that in the short space of little over a month I have burned an amount substantially more than my entire life savings)."
______________________________________________________________________
http://www.finalfurlongracing.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=14936&hl=Bitcoin
　
　
All this adds absolutely nothing to this thread, and proves nothing either except that I am probaly the worst investor ever to walk this earth. :o





 
Not a healthy mindset, Ice, if you don't mind me saying so. You made in excess of 200% profit on your investment in a month and that's where your interest should end with the warm glow of a good original investment. To me, it's rather like having an ante post bet at 100/1 that goes off 5/1 favourite and you decide to lay off the bulk of it while preserving a decent profit. Do you feel bad when the horse romps in or are you just satisfied with the profit that you ring-fenced?
 
icebreaker I had about 900 btc bought at $10 in 2011, a year later, end of 2012 I had a urgency and I had to sell most of them at $13, only kept 50, and just few months later it went up to $120. I did calculate when it reached $1000 last year how much I would've had, in around a million... I don't think about this too often though as I'd go crazy :-) We'll make them back via betting heheh :-D
 
archie said:
Not a healthy mindset, Ice, if you don't mind me saying so. You made in excess of 200% profit on your investment in a month and that's where your interest should end with the warm glow of a good original investment. To me, it's rather like having an ante post bet at 100/1 that goes off 5/1 favourite and you decide to lay off the bulk of it while preserving a decent profit.
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What you say is 100% logic, Archie.
It's probably a case that I am angry at myself for a character flaw that makes me overly cautious and risk-averse rather than the "loss". It means that I always get out too early in a trade, rather than wait for the peak of the rise. I do it all the time.
Really, there's no excuse for bailing when the graph is still on an upward curve; should wait until the graphline reaches the top and turns. Then is the time to get out -- not when the line s still climbing. But still I do it.
 
Aughex,
your stake in the cryptocoin was far bigger than mine, and you have my sympathy.
I think if it was me I would be thinking about slitting veins.
 
I bought my first Bitcoin the other night. 0.78 cost me €192.72 after commission. Its now worth €181.94! I now see the problems as pointed out to ,e by the lads on this thread. It won't stop me messing around with it for a while though.
 
I bought my first Bitcoin the other night. 0.78 cost me €192.72 after commission. Its now worth €181.94! I now see the problems as pointed out to ,e by the lads on this thread. It won't stop me messing around with it for a while though.
 
SlimChance said:
I bought my first Bitcoin the other night. 0.78 cost me €192.72 after commission. Its now worth €181.94!
Click to expand...
That 0.78 is down to a worth of €157 this evening.
I post this not as a gloat, sincerely, but as a demo of the underlying volatility of the cryptocurrency.
 
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icebreaker said:
What you say is 100% logic, Archie.
It's probably a case that I am angry at myself for a character flaw that makes me overly cautious and risk-averse rather than the "loss". It means that I always get out too early in a trade, rather than wait for the peak of the rise. I do it all the time.
Really, there's no excuse for bailing when the graph is still on an upward curve; should wait until the graphline reaches the top and turns. Then is the time to get out -- not when the line s still climbing. But still I do it.
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Firstly I had no idea that Bitcoin existed I've found the whole conversation a mind blower.

Your point Ice that you are overly cautious what is the alternative ? What has overly cautious brought you ? Well from what I heard from you on FF you make your living full time doing what you want to be doing IMO you can't be richer than that and being overly cautious has kept you that way and probably will keep you that way for a very long time.You could be the other way (like myself ) and be completely reckless and that doesn't come without that feeling of, what if ? My biggest win is only 4k although I've had plenty at around that level that's as much as you've made by what ? Investing in something most people didn't know existed.O.k if you'd have held on a few weeks you'd have made 40k but Jesus Christ if I made a list of horses that if they'd had a longer nose would have made me similar sums then it'd be quite a long one.

Risk-averse v's completely reckless both come with heartbreak and what if's but the major difference is at the end of yours you were still a full time punter with an extra 4k and the end of mine I go to a 12 hour night shift and the only thing I feel in my pocket is my leg.

Of course somewhere in between there is that perfect zone but I'm yet to meet anybody who resides there.Next time your beating yourself up about being overly cautious sit back and look at the bigger picture and what that "character flaw" has brought you.
 
icebreaker said:
TBH, Slim, I just think it is too much of a risk, mate. (But then, I'm a risk-averse guy in the extreme, as you well know). :)

Risky on the financial front for two reasons :
1) The very real danger of the bookie scarpering with the bitcoin. Consider for a moment that Bitcoin transactions are irreversible ........... once the transfer is made there is no chargeback available if fraud is at play. Bitcoin are also untraceable, so your lost Bitcoin are lost to you forever.
2) Bitcoin price fluctuation is highly volatile for the past 6 months. Tonight's rate on BTC-E is 258 Euro. Say you bet 1 Bitcoin tonight on a 4/1 horse; how would you feel if tomorrow's rate has dropped to 220Euro? Your 1,032 euro winnings have suddenly become only 880. That, or worse, can easily happen. So now you have the double whammy of a fair ol' loss of winnings on top of the 25% disadvantage in the odds you took.

I dunno, lad, it's your moolah, your decision. I don't want to put you off what your head and heart might want to do ........... just tread carefully is my tuppenceworth. :)
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Wish I had kept going with this project. I bought one coin and lost it on a "will win" message. They are now worth €422.34 per coin which is 63% more than when I started this thread. That's 13/2 about the 4/1 shot Icebreaker mentioned.
 
icebreaker said:
That 0.78 is down to a worth of €157 this evening.
I post this not as a gloat, sincerely, but as a demo of the underlying volatility of the cryptocurrency.
Click to expand...

Just bringing this post back up to balance the argument. I can't help thinking I'm really missing a trick not having some of my tank in Bits. Have you seen Cloudbet Icebreaker? It looks different gear to the other bitcoin books.
 
I didn't think it needed balanced Slim, I may have done a bad job at it. But bringing it up to date, EU as of October officially sees bitcoin as a currency, unlike US who still treats it as a commodity like gold/silver. And that 0.78 is now worth around €300. I think I've argued before that it is volatile (for a few years old currency) but it can go either way. As for cloudbet I don't see horse racing, directbet.eu is still the standard setter in that regard.
 
Aughex said:
I didn't think it needed balanced Slim, I may have done a bad job at it. But bringing it up to date, EU as of October officially sees bitcoin as a currency, unlike US who still treats it as a commodity like gold/silver. And that 0.78 is now worth around €300. I think I've argued before that it is volatile (for a few years old currency) but it can go either way. As for cloudbet I don't see horse racing, directbet.eu is still the standard setter in that regard.
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When you can't get a bet on with bookmakers and exchanges don't really suit your style it has to be an option worth looking at. I understand that you are betting twice, once on the value of your bet and secondly on the value of the coin but it could potentially have massive upside. Building a Bitcoin stash through betting could be a very savvy and low downside investment.
 
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SlimChance said:
Building a Bitcoin stash through betting could be a very savvy and low downside investment.
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Betting with Bitcoin might be all very fine whilst Bitcoin itself is currently in a Bull cycle.
But what about when the market turns Bear and sentiment goes against it -- as it surely eventually will. Your odds -- and any winnings -- will be shorted, maybe substantially.
Bitcoin is just too volatile a mechanism to play with in a betting environment in the long-term, IMHO. It's not for me.

I'll have a look at Cloudbet later -- near to kick-off in tonight's televised Wolves v Forest match which should be a reliable indicator of proper odds and liquidity, and compare it to what's available on Matchbook. I don't expect it (Cloudbet) to compare favourably. :)
 
These Bitcoins.

Can you do anything purposeful with them, other than roll-on your bet, or buy a sofa-full of Yellow Leb?

I mean, I assume you can't use them to load-up your Match & More card, so what purpose do they serve? Are they basically an exchange-rate play, or is there more to it than that? And how is easy is it to convert to real coin (hereafter to be referred to as realcoin)?
 
Grasshopper said:
These Bitcoins.

Can you do anything purposeful with them, other than roll-on your bet, or buy a sofa-full of Yellow Leb?

I mean, I assume you can't use them to load-up your Match & More card, so what purpose do they serve? Are they basically an exchange-rate play, or is there more to it than that? And how is easy is it to convert to real coin (hereafter to be referred to as realcoin)?
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They do make for a great platform for gambling traders given the volatility and the big price swings associated with the currency.
But bitcoin is much more than that; it provides a bank-less methodology of money transferance which is also anonymous and (mainly) immune from governmental snooping. It appeals greatly to those of a liberal and anarchist mindset for those reasons. It also appeals of course to the savvy criminal fraternity as it nicely greases their nefarious deeds and allows them to stay beneath the radar. It also appeals to the likes of Slim Chance who is blacklisted from every Pound-And-Shilling bookmaker in the world !

What can you do with them? Buy stuff, either on the legitimate surface or illegally on the Dark Web via TOR. You can nowadays convert them very easily to "regular" currency either locally in your home town via Localbitcoin or via any one of online global exchanges. Or if you want to sell stuff that may be a little dodgy, Bitcoin is your friend.

Unfortunately, my opinion FWIW, is that Bitcoin has fundamentally failed from the point of view of mass acceptance and take-up. 2014 should have been Bitcoin's year. It should have made the big break-thru', but it didn't. It had everything going for it,; the Chinese were jumping in big, it was benefitting from huge publicity, large numbers of big and respectable companies and service providers were getting on board. Yet it just couldn't make the leap into mainstream. I'll venture to offer a reason for that failure: the average man in the street just couldn't get his head around it, it was too difficult a mechanism both in concept and in practice to become accepted. All this e-wallet kerfuffle, the inability to buy a pint of Guinness with it down the local pub, the notion of having "money" that you can't hold in your hand or in your pocket.

But don't let me put you off, GH. Try it for yourself if you wish -- in a small way. And if you don't like it you can always get rid of it by sending it to my Bitcoin address which I have conveniently put as my sig for everyone's benefit for the past four years ! :lol:
 
Grasshopper, we're talking about bitcoin on this thread in one of its basic applications: that of a currency, which is great because this is a revolution in terms of how you exchange value with someone else taking out the middle man(banks) and instantly across the globe, while it also serves as a more complex payment infrastructure: https://bitcoin.org/en/innovation, but the technology behind it called the blockchain and other deviations of it, is the one truly powerful and could be used in countless applications (smart contracts which IBM are currently working on, identity signatures that are impossible to counterfeit, verifiable data technology, etc.) once more and more IT businesses start to work on them. Our kids kids will be using this blockchain technology without even knowing how it all works, just like we use the PC/smartphones without actually understanding how their control units work.
 
icebreaker said:
I wtched its price rise steadily and in Sept 2013 with some winngs from the horses I bought 50 Bitcoin for $35 each on the old Mt Gox exchange. By October the rate had risen to $110 which I thought had to be the ceiling for it. I sold all 50 coins at that price. Within a month the price had risen to $1,100 per Bitcoin. I had effectively "lost" $45,000 for being too safety-minded and cautious. It's a sum I will never again see in my lifetime, and I would have had it if I had waited for just four weeks.
Click to expand...

**** me.
 
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