It's less than zero sum, right? Each transaction has a cost.

If you're referring to Bitcoin transaction fees, that's not a factor on the exchanges, since the exchange itself holds all coins in its own wallet until you decide to withdraw.

They were probably referring to the fees that exchanges charge.

There are no fees on GDAX unless you're a taker.

That's true, but irrelevant. GDAX takes a fee on every trade. Therefore it's a negative-sum game, not zero.

The casino always wins. True for poker and bitcoin.

this is the simplest, most correct understanding. there are some things that drive the price of bitcoin that are more fundamental, like instability of various currencies, and government regulations on btc. but none of those have changed drastically recently. so what is driving the price? hype, and the price itself. i think you should be pretty skeptical any time you made money and youre not sure why.

I know exactly why I made money. This is a ponzi scheme with unlimited uninformed people joining. You feel your personal level of risk, find a time, and invest only what you can afford to lose. You can do the same with Tupperware if you know enough people to sign up under you, grab a bunch of free product and sign out.

During previous dips, it was 100% guaranteed you could get a good return in one week. So that's exactly what any smart person was doing. Some could risk more, power to them.

Personally, I'm not touching the market until it gets a lot closer to $1k. And I think the odds are getting better every day.

didnt mean to imply that you or someone else didnt. just that lots of people are deluding themselves in to thinking that they are tech scions who know something special about "blockchain technology" and are profiting off bitcoin because of this. and that is not to say that the tech is not interesting, or without some interesting applications. just that there seem to be a crop of idiots who are acting like they did more than just get temporarily lucky.

I'm curious, how did you come up with $1k?

That's what it was roughly worth before the hyperdeflation started.

I put my money on waiting until after Tether [1] fraud gets exposed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency)

I often hear this theory that tether is just printing bills that are not backed by actual USD... Which I doubt is occurring... But even if it is and every single tether is counterfeit, the market cap of Tether is a mere $1.2 billion. To put that in perspective, Bitcoin's cap is $240 billion. Tether is not a major factor in Bitcoin's price. Sorry.

If you doubt its occurring, mayhaps you can share facts which lead you to that conclusion?