Bitcoin Forum

It seems strange to me that bitcoin has become so stable all of a sudden and for such a long time (in comparison to the last couple of months).

Can anyone explain this? Is there some form of manipulation going on? ???

in the past it was calm foooorreeerrr.

but in recent times a calm usually means its building support for a bull market. just my opinion.

I have a hypothesis.

1) Bitcoin was growing too fast. Everybody expected it to crash. When mtgox failed to handle the load, it crashed.

2) Almost everybody is long-term bullish, that is why many buy when bitcoin is cheap. But at the same time everybody knows that bitcoin is volatile and unpredictible. So people try to use the price swings to increase amount of BTC they own and maybe to make some pocket money too.

3) It is too easy to make profits when price swings widely. You just make an order in any direction at any price, and it is highly likely that you'll be able to take profit if you do not fix losses (since the price can go literally anywhere within few days).

So many people followed this strategy thus reducing the amplitude of price swings. And now there are a lot of fixed profits and unfixed losses, and the price can't fluctuate that much until something happens. And probably trade volume reduced because both short time bears and bulls don't want to fix losses and are waiting for price to come back to make even more profits to them.

That's why it looks like that: https://i.imgur.com/fY9NewR.png

But that is just a hypothesis. The other hypothesis might include some kind of conspiracy and manipulators.

long story short:  Consolidation.
The longer the consolidation, the more dramatic the eventual breakout.
And now for a rhetorical question:  Which direction will price breakout toward?
You have a 50/50 chance of being correct by a completely uneducated guess ...

So now the question lies within when. This is going to be cool

Can you explain what makes you think it's stable?  How can something be considered truly stable, when you have no volume and every time we get volume, there's no stability.

Well the price is not swinging profusely as it was following the crash. I thought I made that clear in my post where I said - in comparison to the last couple of months.

What do you thinks happening?

It will first dip (from the perspective of the daily chart) and then skyrocket again. Please note that this could take months up to a year to play out. Buy that dip!  :o

I wish I knew.  Bid and asks are waiting on each other.  It's a stalemate.  I really don't know what to make of it.  I just think calling it "stable" is to ignore the complete lack of volume but I heed your point on a broader scale.

 From thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174619.msg1817577#msg1817577 
                                                                   

Still holding......both BTC and opinion  :o

 

More like silent before the storm perhaps?

Perhaps...question is will it be a storm of destruction or prosperity.   ???

With BTC volatility is good, it brings more action, attention and people.

Weather it goes up or down, It will be a storm of prosperity.

Not exactly what I meant but, that's a really good way to look at it.   8)

... Ok, which is it?

Low volatility means speculators go elsewhere, or
High volatility means "normal folk" will go elsewhere?

Lol.

In high volatility we have people saying "Omg this is bad for bitcoin, because Average Joe won't adopt!"
In low volatility we have people saying "Omg this is bad for bitcoin, because speculators will go elsewhere!"

Make up your minds!  ;D ;D ;D

Agree with you on this, also volatility helped the price get as high as it did on a few occasions - the most recent one brought 18,712 new members to register on this forum in April and 11,789 so far in the month of May.  Prior to that there was only one month that crossed 10k new members since 11/2009.

After the initial flirtation with Bitcoin volatility might scare non-speculators away, but I believe that's only temporary when they start to learn about how resilient it has been.

This kind of stability where it's only stable because there's no volume isn't worth much. As soon as someone shows up with a 500k-1M market buy/sell the price will swing +/- $10.

If you want stability you need a market with depth so that volatility only really shows its head during times of huge boom/bust.

Yup, I descovered Bitcoins a month ago and acquired some with an Mt. Gox account. I've read many things about bitcoin and I think this concept will stay / the price of bitcoin will increase. But I think volatility allow us to "play" a bit with the money and attract new members... Low volatily -> I'll get bored faster but still trust in this system. I'll just stop trading and wait for my BTC to worth something more ;)

High volatility --> More speculators to buy the dips and sell the peaks --> Low volatility --> More interest from everyday people
--> Price rise --> High volatility ....

Wash, rinse, repeat until $1 million/BTC.

Personally, I'm sitting tight and waiting to see what Gox comes back with regarding the CoinLab and Dwolla situations.  Absent a reasonable solution there, I probably won't be trading much on Gox anymore.  I suspect many others have the same wait-and-see attitude.

Also waiting for Kraken :)

Correct, and the biggest peaks attract that much more money/attention from new fiat investors as they see the potential for the market and use their $ to improve BTC infrastructure - and become vested in the gains from it.  This, in theory, allows greater numbers of everyday people to spend, save, or speculate with BTC easier than before.

I pretty much agree with everything arsenische said, and concur that people are consolidating right now.  

But now that is settled :) any other theories ?  I remember reading something about MTGOX changing it's policy on bots, or limiting bots some how (or may the volume of thos 0.01 trades) around the time that this period of stability began. I wonder if that is a factor; I can't recall too many more specific details about it though, it might have happened or maybe someone just postulated that ...

My theory was that the high rollers were holding the price steady for the Bitcoin Conference in Silicon Valley.
I DO still think it is being held, but we are past the conference so I'm not sure what for. Everybody getting ready getting infrastructure prepared for massive buys, and then letting the horses loose? That's my next guess.

I'm sorry, but with all that has been happening with Bitcoin lately, I think this price is artificial.

+1
Kraken, yo.
Also I heard Max Keiser is starting a gold silver BTC exchange.