Bitcoin Forum

Has anyone else notice the value of btc and ltc dropping dramatically over the last 24 hours?

Is there anything that gives reason to this claim? If you own bitcoins or ltc stop selling!!!!!

It happens regularly, and yes, people do notice, lol

Get used to it. All part of the fun of the rollercoaster. A rollercoaster that only went up would be no fun  ;)

the biggest reason this is happening is because there is 1 online exchange where 80% of transactions happen.
it is the most liquid and thus heavily watched - people use it to assume that that is the current value of a bitcoin
as of now their site is not reliable and easily manipulated by either few or many or by bots or a combination
this will go away in the future when there are more exchanges and when mtgox takes it upon themselves to stop the heavy manipulation in continues to allow.
also when their lag gets crazy it's just a shithole

There is also the aspect of relative value - LTC is staying relatively more valuable (on a mining basis) than BTC, while FTC and, to a lesser degree MNC, has skyrocketed.  See - http://www.coinchoose.com/

This will be the $2 mark back in 2011, let the hype die out over the summer and then buy!

I think its down to about 60% now, the figure mtgox boast on their homepage is from 2011.

I actually believe the huge volatility is more to do with a relatively large % of bitcoins still being owned by a very small number of people. However many exchanges open up will not change that, people can switch which market they trade in very easily, and soon there will be "market aggregators" (coinsetter etc) that will allow people to trade across multiple markets at once.

With any market, its relatively easy to manipulate if you own a large % of whatever is being traded.

Over time, more new players will enter the market, the distribution will become wider and volatility reduced.

How long that will take, who knows.

I think the other reason is that a lot of noobs have never traded anything before, know very little about bitcoins, and are therefore very easy to manipulate. First sign of a downturn / DDoS / false rumours about MtGox being raided and its panic sell time.

If you don't believe in the long-term future of bitcoin, you really shouldn't bother buying any, because you'll just hit the panic button the moment anything negative happens.

I am not new to Crypto currency and currently I have a lot of several.  I squandered so many coin in the beginning by panic selling or "day trading" BTC it would blow your mind.  Just hold your coins sir......it's all a roller coaster and it will rebound to new levels that we can even imagine someday.  I wish I had all the coins that I have made major mistakes selling.  Hold on Spartan.

I believe in it because I want to believe in a better future.

My co-workers say I'm too optimistic, but I say what good does being cynical and apprehensive about diving headfirst into a venture do?

At the very worst, you lose some fiat, well to that I say we're all gonna lose it one way or another, so why not go in on something potentially groundbreaking in the human saga?

Based on that link it looks like feathercoin is the most profitable?
I haven't seen many exchanges for it though. Also btc-e doesn't even trade FTC for usd. Only btc if I'm not mistaken? If I'm wrong let me know and I might setup a miner for the hell of it. Why not right?

You have to have nerves of steel to an extent. I only have about .5 BTC but I was tempted to sell yesterday. Can't imagine what it's like for someone that has their life savings in bitcoin.

I just have a good feeling that it will bounce back up though, the indications are all good, it's really just a fluke that it dropped down this low IMO.

Vircurex, BTC-e, Cryptonit and I think BTER all accept Feathercoin but my calcs are based purely on Vircurex.

Volatility isn't all bad, if the thing just had a straight line up that would be bubble behavior. Now huge swings isn't great either, but you got to remember the amount of people trading is still growing and the participant pool keeps growing it'll effect price discovery.

Volatility will be around till it becomes more of an everyday currency, which will probably happen in my lifetime.

If you put your life savings in bitcoin your asking for trouble, anyone who puts their life savings in only 1 thing is asking for trouble no matter what that thing is.

Bitcoin is a great place to but your un-needed money, but life savings... oi, I hope people arn't doing that yet.

Speak for yourself; I would have an immense amount of fun if I never had to work again.

meanwhile Mr Miagi teaches Daniel son about bitcoin

"no no no Daniel son bitcoin like painting fence, it go UPP, DOWWWN UP, DOWNNN"

slowly increasing in value (painted panels) as time moves on

Three days ago I called that BTC would plummet for a few days due to more ASIC's starting to ship. Guess I was right  :)

If you dont have your life savings in btc you have no faith in btc ;)


The more people that have their money in btc the more the demand will be for places to accept it.

Also un needed money? What is this? If it's un needed i know plenty of people who need it.

I heard Silk Road closed down, at least for awhile?

It's not about faith it's about being prudent with funds may need liquid in the short run, someone young like me without many obligations can afford to take the risk of toeing up income in accumulating bitcoin.

If your a senior living on a fixed income or got kids to put through college I wouldnt go overboard, there is a lot potential upside but a lot of potential upside generally means a lot of potentials risks.

We don't want people over adopting because one bad turn will sour their impression of bitcoin, we want a healthy gradual natural rate of adoption.

That wouldn't have anything to due with it. The amount of coins being discovered would remain the same. If anything people who have btc would be less inclined to sell the ones they currently have due to the difficulty going up, which in turn would drive prices up!

Remember..

More buying power than selling power creates demand. High demand drives the price up.

Look at the market and pay attention to the selling power vs the buying power.

When everyone panics and sells/ and no one wants to buy for the same reason, causes prices to fall.

Realistically the recent price fall is a direct result of people selling thier coins. Hence my earlier statement "stop selling!!"

Just a thought.

Remember you now have hedge funds accumulating bitcoins, I would be surprised this is part of an institution sell off, just means a buy opportunity although I have a limit order waiting at a much lower price if I can get it.

I don't know about that - if you put your life savings in when they were USD 0.20 a piece you'd be pretty happy right now :)

Crypto is the future!

More accurately, stop panic selling. There have to be actors selling, no matter how bullish the market, else there would be no market. Conversely, there have to be actors buying, no matter how bearish the market, else there would be no market.

Imagine, though, if half or more of the ask orders on the major exchanges were pulled, or raised by at least $300/BTC... ;D

Yes, but it was still risky, speculation isn't the same thing as investment or savings.

Savings isn't about making money , but having funds that you can depend on.

Again I'm not disagreeing that early adopters made a lot of money, but how many other similar projects did early adopters lose money on.

The one successful speculation doesn't mean all will pan out the same way or then then everyone should be putting their life savings in feathercoin.

Can you explain a bit more about feathercoin? The chart says 400% profitability but most of the calculators iv used are putting me in the whole by almost 50% after 24 hours haha.

basically when you factor in the difficulty, exchanging it to BTC would yield to 400% more satoshis than mining BTC alone.  Now my pricing is based on the best exchange.

Do you personally mine it?

I have bought 30 btc today,I think some big man is selling their bitcoins.

Hedge Funds, the financial community it f you listen to bloomberg don't think kindly of Bitcoin, so probably all the hedge funds that form are starting to reduce their exposure, and when hedge funds do that it has an impact.

I suspect that now you can binary bet on bitcoin with IG index which is a MONSTER of financial muscle price volatility will increase

A little about IG index which I used for about 4 years and specifically binary bet.

50% profit on a turnover of GBP 386 million ( NICE business)

http://www.iggroup.com/corporate/ab_history.html

http://forexmagnates.com/ig-groups-launches-bitcoin-binary-option/

The binary bet is a fixed bet per POINT of 100 points

If you think BTC price will rise.. ON THAT DAY or in the NEXT FEW HOURS or even minutes... and the quote is in the middle of range ..say 50  then you place a $10 or $100 or $1,000 ( depending on your credit limit which is a MULTIPLE of your bet)   per point bet UPWARD. as the price rises the quoted price rises toward 100 so after 20 min of continual rise in price pushes the quoted price to 70...YOU have made money !!!!  How much?

17 points x $10 = $170 profit. Why 17 and not 20? there is a spread of 2 or 3 points where IG make their money.

So now some guys with financial muscle place a BIG bet with IG at 70 DOWNWARD ( say $1,000 per point). On the BTC market (Mt Gox) which has relatively SMALL trading volume...they start placing sell orders with artificially low ask prices. Thus forcing the price DOWN.. as the price at mt Gox goes down the IG quote also goes down..this can turn into panic selling as we saw on April 12-14 ( which coincidentally is about the SAME time as IG opened binary betting on BTC).  If they can force the price down far enough then the quoted price of IG will go to 1

they earn 67 points x the size of their big downward bet .

ANY BET may be cashed in or stopped at any time with click of the mouse.

If you havent stop lossed YOUR bet @ 50 or cashed out earlier.../when the quote hits 1  and stays there until close of market you will have lost 49 points x $10

From time to time I expect certain groups will plan . coordinate and enact such schemes and therefore prices WILL be(very) volatile

Is this just a conspiracy theory.. lol I wish it was.

here are a few real life tales

http://www.financial-spread-betting.com/Spread-manipulation.html

Pay attention to question 6

Does investing via the spread betting route actually impact the underlying price of the share (or whatever is being spread bet)?

http://www.evergreen-sports.com/betting-advice/fsa-fines-trader-for-manipulating-spread-bets

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/fixed-odds-binary-betting/35668-ig-market-manipulators-2.html

The price will be MORE volatile which CAN be a good thing if you are continually buying low and selling high BUT BAD for BTC as traders will not want to accept a volatile "currency" as payment for goods or services.

Obviously we haven't noticed. Why would people on a bitcoin forum check bitcoin prices regularly!?
Doesn't make any sense.

Your post will convince thousands of people to stop selling bitcoins.
Thank you for fixing the price.

The usual litecoin spam. Why should be litecoin more valuable than bitcoin ? Because has more spammer ?
Litecoin is dropping even faster than bitcoin.
The bitcoin price is dropping simply because of CoinLab v. Mt. Gox lawsuit.

So you're saying if you had a stock that lost 50% of its value in a several day period, it would all be part of the fun?

Volatility, Capital Markets, and Regulation

No but that's why there is intervention in capital markets (lending companies money, or buying their stock) ... that's sort of the whole justification of Market Regulation

it's not that the market needs regulation (it sure doesn't)

But most people would agree more capital formation is better than less (more enterprises start soon, innovation continues quicker, although some may argue that if capital forms too fast the pace of innovation may outpace the ability to redeploy labor causing structural employment issues which is arguably happening today... although to me more innovation always wins out)

Most people can't be bothered to understand the nature of captial markets so if they are  perceived to be unfair or overly volatile people shy away from them.

So the reason for having a specialist on the floor of the exchange (once upon a time, now a bunch of market makers) and rules regarding insider trading, short selling etc. Is not that the market can't work without them but the perception of market fairness and the dampened volatility allows mom and pop to feel more comfortable committing their capital and letting capital accumulate. (which also leads to higher capital asset prices... although this can lead to bubbles)

(I'm not against regulation in theory, I just think government does a freaking horrible job of as it does everything else due to it's structure as a institution)



Now how does this relate to Bitcoin based currencies?


Well without a central server or issuer it results in a couple of different possible outcomes:

- No one will care enough to try to dampen the price volatility in any way, which is fine, adoption rates will be slow but eventually adoption will grow enough that volatility will be fairly mild except for the occasional panic buying and selling. (the market on it's own will eventually get there on it's own, some people don't have patience, thus market intervention)

- Exchanges will begin voluntarily regulating the trading on their exchange (size limits, establishing specialists or markets makers, etc.) and the exchange with the least volatility will be the exchange mom and pop will go to and where people looking to buy or sell large lots will go to while the less regulated one will be the haven of speculators. (Ideal free market situation)

- Individuals in the community form an outside entity, pool their bitcoin together and for a sort of stabilization fund that will attempt to dampen volatility of the major exchanges without the exchanges help


In the the two scenarios where volatility is dampened, bitcoin adoptions will be faster, in the first one it won't.


Other future non-bitcoin based currencies may have central servers with a central issuer (the one man central bank) that may attempt to manage volatility through psuedo monetary policy and whoever is able to do it the best will be chosen by the market.