Paddy Power giving 5/6 on Bitcoin being below $15,000 on Jan 1 2019

[Duke of Marmalade]

Surely you can avoid the max bet by going around to a load of bookie offices and placing the same bet many times.

Good point but I think it is only available online

 

[ant dee]

Surely you can avoid the max bet by going around to a load of bookie offices and placing the same bet many times.

If only it were that easy, I would be rich!
In reality, even small bets on small markets need approval from the HQ. HQ also looks at the logs from online bets but you might be able to place it once more at the shop.
Second shop will kick you out though, even if you send a different friend to try to bet for you.

Anyway, all that would happen if the bets had any advantage. If they accept multiple bets on one's bitcoin price predictions, it really means he is a mug

 

[ant dee]

I have yet to see any of the believers showing a calculation to justify any value on Bitcoin. Any value at all. Just vague ideas about limited supply and great technology and the collapse of capitalism.

Hi Brendan,
Where did you source this idea from?
One would think Bitcoin and free-market capitalism would go hand by hand.

 

[Fella]

Very rare these days. Maybe round Cheltenham time bookies are giving sweeteners which really are value bets but for very limited stakes. Anyway better avoid a topic fork.

I was reading more of your posts Duke and you come across as very clever but then I remembered this post and I didn't want to derail thread but i'll be honest there are lots of people not just yourself who post things as fact and only for I know it is wholly inaccurate ( like this post above ) I would believe it.
I'm careful in what I post and I always avoid topics that I'm clueless about or I'd post in a questionable way but lots of people seem to be experts in everything. It makes me doubt what else your posting , I think people should be more mindful in there postings , if you believe that to be true you have no clue about bookies but you still posted it anyway.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

I was reading more of your posts Duke and you come across as very clever but then I remembered this post and I didn't want to derail thread but i'll be honest there are lots of people not just yourself who post things as fact and only for I know it is wholly inaccurate ( like this post above ) I would believe it.
I'm careful in what I post and I always avoid topics that I'm clueless about or I'd post in a questionable way but lots of people seem to be experts in everything. It makes me doubt what else your posting , I think people should be more mindful in there postings , if you believe that to be true you have no clue about bookies but you still posted it anyway.

Fella I'm taking that post in good faith. As you can see I have plenty of time on my hands. Are you saying that there are arb opportunities more or less daily on ATR? If there are I am sure I will find them, but if you tell me they are as hard to find as bitcoin mining (keeping on topic) I won't bother looking.

 

[Dan Murray]

That place was written about 400 years ago by a guy called Sir Thomas More. He called it Utopia.

Just to be accurate, STM wrote Utopia in 1516 in Latin (that curious and beautiful language). Obviously, utopias existed, in conception if not in name, long before then. Think Plato, etc.

Interestingly, in terms of the current discussion, in More's Utopia, gold is valueless and just used to make chamber posts.

 

[Fella]

Fella I'm taking that post in good faith. As you can see I have plenty of time on my hands. Are you saying that there are arb opportunities more or less daily on ATR? If there are I am sure I will find them, but if you tell me they are as hard to find as bitcoin mining (keeping on topic) I won't bother looking.

Well finding arbs daily is easy , keeping your accounts is the hard part. There are arb finding sites that scan all the odds against Betfair and list them and the percentage value of each arb. Nowadays I'd never dream of taking a standard single arb like this its too easy to lose accounts , I was taking advanced arbs for years that are harder to spot for bookies.

Theres just so much to learn about the topic , its all about staying under the radar and advancing but I can find an arb any minute of any day , theres also live betting which is limitless , going on ATR and having an oddshcecker is pointless its going to get you closed fairly quickly, an example of an advanced arb I foudn using asian bookies for part of the bet (the don't limit you ) and a mainstream bookie for the -1 handicap part is below , your not going to understand it but your 10 years behind where I am now so I don't expect you too , its a skill learned over years and if you invest in the educating yourself you will make endless money on it.

There are simpler things like Betfair acca's that I mentioned before available about twice a week also but theres nothing there at the moment to give you an example of but there was a 14% value bet there the other day with 50,000 available to back so the opportunities are there for the willing and able

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

Fella fascinating as some of your earlier posts (in other threads) were. I think I have worked out what the example is saying. Key is the Asian Handicap on the Away side. It must take a lot of looking to find these. Is it mostly the footie that it works on or are there arbs in horse racing? Actually I would like to be banned by a bookie, something to boast about

I stand ejected My mother told me that you never see a poor bookie. I took that to mean don't try to beat them but I see you have genuinely found a way to do so. It is not without effort, do you think a decent living can be made at it?

 

[Dan Murray]

Actually I would like to be banned by a bookie, something to boast about

I don't know a serious (non-mug) gambler who has not been banned many times from bookies (hence: my bolding in post 68)!

 

[Brendan Burgess]

I have not followed the Duke's views on Global Warning, but the Duke is not an expert in that area.

The Duke clearly has expertise in finance and investment and economics. He would know the experts.

Brendan

 

[Fella]

That's a fair point. But as I have stated on many occasions it is not just my naive common sense that informs me but some considerable research into the views of those who are expert in the field of economics and monetary phenomena.

This all suggests to me that there is a high probability (is that okay Dan?) that the economists are right and that a hundredfold increase in price in two years without any significant shift in fundamentals looks, waddles and quacks like a bubble.

But there is no arb available here, no certain way to make money but surely a way to get the odds very heavily on your side, once in a lifetime I think the Boss calls it.

I agree with you and Brendan in nearly everything but I don't agree with the last statement that the odds are heavily on your side , I think its as likely to rise as it is to fall over the short term.

I agree with this guy - Japan Post Bank Chief Investment Officer Katsunori Sago

The futures contract is expected to make it possible for institutional investors to short the digital currency.

But Sago said it is hard to predict when and where a bubble will burst, and therefore, the bank is not interested in shorting bitcoin.

Sago noted that blockchain is a great technology and one day bitcoin could become a major means of settlement.

“But that will be years away, possibly more than a decade -- so there’s no need to buy bitcoin now. Since no one knows when the bubble will burst, the best thing to do here is to stay away from it,” he said.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

No way would I take a short term punt, but I am interested in this Betfair end 2018 bet, wouldn't touch their End January. So Sago describes it as a bubble. Bubble's do burst but yes very difficult to time.

 

[Fella]

No way would I take a short term punt, but I am interested in this Betfair end 2018 bet, wouldn't touch their End January. So Sago describes it as a bubble. Bubble's do burst but yes very difficult to time.

Your trying to guess when people's belief will end , people are mad - irrational behaviour is just that , I'd rather put my money into something that has an actual outcome , this could go on forever but I wish you all luck. I'm coming at this as an advantage player and try as I am I can't see the advantage you and Brendan feel you's have. I would trust a computer over a human in predicting market crashes , humans absolutely suck at predicting boom and bust.

 

[Gordon Gekko]

Its value is derived from a few attributes:

- It is a handy way for criminals and terrorists to invest

- Blockchain technology may have some merit

- Idiots are jumping on the bandwagon with a view to making a quick buck (classic end of bubble euphoria)

Regulation will deal with the first point, Bitcoin and Blockchain are different things, and idiots always get burned towards the end of a bubble.

We are now dealing in semantics; Brendan says it is worth nothing; it is nit-picking to disagree. Yes, it is clearly worth something because its market value today is significant. However, there is more than a reasonable degree of certainty that it will be worth little or nothing within a reasonable timeframe. Bitcoin is a four bedroom house in Leitrim for €800,000...it is a tulip bulb for €10,000...it is a share in Anglo Irish Bank for €18...it represents a rare investment opportunity in that its market value today is high whereas its market value in the short to medium term will be nil or negligible.

 

[Duke of Marmalade]

Your trying to guess when people's belief will end , people are mad - irrational behaviour is just that , I'd rather put my money into something that has an actual outcome , this could go on forever but I wish you all luck. I'm coming at this as an advantage player and try as I am I can't see the advantage you and Brendan feel you's have. I would trust a computer over a human in predicting market crashes , humans absolutely suck at predicting boom and bust.

Fella I am hugely impressed at your success against the enemy and the fact that you don't see a bitcoin short punt as a good thing genuinely gives me pause, enough to limit my exposure, but I have gone short, if for no other reason so as to avoid kicking myself when the bubble bursts.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Bitcoin is a four bedroom house in Leitrim for €800,000...it is a tulip bulb for €10,000...it is a share in Anglo Irish Bank for €18...it represents a rare investment opportunity in that its market value today is high whereas its market value in the short to medium term will be nil or negligible.

Hi Gordon

Very well put. Were 4 beds in Leitrim really going for €800k?

Brendan

 

[Fella]

Fella I am hugely impressed at your success against the enemy and the fact that you don't see a bitcoin short punt as a good thing genuinely gives me pause, enough to limit my exposure, but I have gone short, if for no other reason so as to avoid kicking myself when the bubble bursts.

Don't limit your exposure on my behalf , I just don't want to see people lose money. The lunacy could go on for another few years if you keep placing say 5% of your bankroll on it falling and it doesn't after year 1 its hard not to risk more in year 2 and then more in year 3 etc , I'm not a gambler , I am an advantage player and there is not enough of an advantage for me to get involved , I think the whole thing is lunacy but we live in a crazy world . But just because I don't see it as been a great bet doesn't mean it's not I'm just not that knowledgeable on the subject so it really helps that I believe in market forces and efficiency it saves me guessing.

 

[Gordon Gekko]

Hi Gordon

Very well put. Were 4 beds in Leitrim really going for €800k?

Brendan

I can tell you that property prices in Leitrim rose by 29% in 2006...the highest growth rate in the country.

Had you been saying at the time that “these are worth nothing”, you’d have been correct, notwithstanding any pedant who might have contended that “they were clearly worth something”.

This is mad stuff...it’s magic beans meets the fella with the $25m in the Bank of Lagos that needs our help to access it.

 

[fpalb]

I really like the posts Fella has made on this thread. I've a few random thoughts that are perhaps relevant to this thread.

I think people often divide things into risky and non-risky. Bitcoin is risky, prize bonds are non-risky - therefore prize bonds are better. This might surprise some but I used to be hugely risk averse, to the extent that I never wanted to take on any debt, even a mortgage if I could avoid it, and I hesitated to invest in anything other than saving fiat and term deposits. Part of this was avoiding things I didn't fully understand and part of it was not wanting to risk my hard earned money.

I eventually realised there is nothing that is non-risky, it's a scale not an absolute, there is just varying degrees of risk. I apply this to a wide range of things in life not just investing, and I consider investing as just a low risk type of gambling. Is it better to sit down at the poker table with 1000 or invest it in a stock? It depends on your risk tolerance, whether you can afford to lose it or not, what percentage of your worth 1000 represents, how good you are at poker compared to the people you'll play against, how much you know about the stock etc... Every case has to be evaluated.

On the boards.ie investing forum a single Bitcoin related thread sat side by side with a prize bond related one on the investment forum for years. People with up to tens of thousands in prize bonds each week posting the odd 50 quid win, many of whom seemed to have no other investments. They see it as no risk I guess, but they risk their euros devaluing in real terms, they have a negligible counter-party risk of the state failing and not paying them back (but why not mention it anyway), and they have the risk of opportunity-cost due to not having exposure to higher risk investments that offer higher returns.

Now, you can say that last one isn't a risk at all, it's just opportunity cost, but personally these days I consider both in equal measure. A guy with 50 in prizebonds in 2013 could have taken 200 of that and put it in bitcoin. As it has turned out his worst case was having 49800 + pb winnings if bitcoin went to zero, or 78k+ as it has turned out. This is just an example, I'm not saying it was obvious or knowable that bitcoin would increase, that's not my point here at all, more-so that not taking risks IS the risk that you miss out on potential gains.

Following on from that thought, people today are being forced into more risk than ever, and not just in terms of investments. There is much less job stability (less jobs for life), there is more risk with taking on a mortgage as you may be unemployed or have to move for another job. Before you even get to that, Americans now are facing the risk of even going to university, they may leave with huge debt and no guarantee of a job afterwards that will have made it worth it. Due to the computer revolution society is changing faster than ever in human history.

I see a bit of a change in attitude among the millennials, they know they can try to do everything in the old fashioned non-risk way, get a high level of education, save for a deposit, buy a house, invest in standard mutual funds for a pension etc, but it can go wrong at every turn. A crazy rental market can prevent them ever getting that deposit, the mortgage may in reality be an anchor more than a home, the pension may be raided by the government if there's a large scale economic crash again. More of them are going their own way, the internet is letting people take other paths which don't seem as risky as before. Drive an uber, do air b&b, day trade bitcoin, play video games for a living on twitch, be a content creator on youtube. You can try things, start small see what works and find your own way, find where you have an edge.

When there is no real safe option, people will be more inclined to take risks, and it's not necessarily a bad thing in moderation.

EDIT: I think you can even see this with Brendan - he does not want to risk missing out on bitcoin falling to zero.

 

[Dan Murray]

I really like the posts Fella has made on this thread. I've a few random thoughts that are perhaps relevant to this thread...........

This is truly a superb post. Bravo squared....

Frankly, I am amazed that it hasn't received more traction. It is written in such accessible terms that belie the depth of wisdom it contains.

I really don't say this often but magnum opus, magnum opus indeed.