Bitcoin Forum

Hi there !

I just want to know the reason of all this huge up and down for BTC's price.

Any idea?

someone sold 20,000ish bitcoins a few hours ago at mtgox - expect plenty of action over the next 24 hrs

Was the order completed or is it still in progress? If it is completed, I don't see why there should be huge movements after the fact, unless some story comes out about the reason for this.

In my mind, a big sale like that moves the market down, which stirs both fear (will it drop more?) and greed (yay, BTC is on sale), thus more volatility as more people trade.

Why it goes down? Also this huge amount

Good point. Since BTC isn't that liquid anyway, I guess the equilibrium will be harder to reach between these two. If the same thing happens on say a stock market, the equilibrium will reach very quickly and price will stabilize, either up or down.

I wrote this article a while back which contains details about how and why prices 'move' in market:

http://www.wildbunny.co.uk/blog/2013/03/15/algorithmic-trading-for-dummies/

Cheers, Paul.

Thx buddy

In the longer term timeframe it's not that big of a move... scroll out your charts.

Paul, I doubt these kinds of algorithmic trading exist with Bitcoin. For one, the financial industry still isn't in the game yet due to the ambiguity surrounding the legal aspects of Bitcoin I am guessing. Also, the BTC market is far from efficient - it isn't even leverage free!

Well, the article does address one of the questions in this thread about what causes prices to move, so I posted it.

As to whether you can run trading algorithms on bitcoin, you should probably take a look at some of the articles in this very sub-forum titled '...trading platform...' because there are *a lot* of them. Also, I have no idea what you mean by 'leverage free' bitcoin is a market where the natural state of exchange is 0 leverage.

Why it dropped again?

From 120 to 109

It is simple market manipulation.  Easy to watch process:

Sell a bunch
People freak / put up a wall so price can't rise
Repeat...
Take wads of cash a buy tons of cheap coin, drive price up.
Repeat...

It's the problem with the market as-is, dead-simple to manipulate if you already have a few hundred thousand dollars to push around.  The numbers are simple and the behavior predictable, and sadly the probably future of the market. 

Or AsicMiner is continuing to bleed the market dry by dumping their mining profits for their continued cash-out of BTC.  Either-or.

lots of selling. i wouldnt be surprised if some were short btc. is coinsetter's service online yet?

Corrections to a market is good if your on the right side of the fence...   ;D

it already corrected from 250. did a bounce, then went sideways for a while. this is a sell down.

dont deny yourselves of the fact that bitcoin is going down right now. the more important thing is to know what to do.

Sooo... what to do?

SELL !!!!!

I'll buy your cheap coins  ;D

I really hope it will go up soon, mining is very expensive.

sell. then buy back at cheaper prices.

Any advice received may be intended to help you... Or it could be intended to manipulate you and the market. Advice could even be intended to do both.

For anyone saying to sell, what percentage of one's BTC should we sell? (Wouldn't selling at 130-265 have been a better time to sell?) What levels should a person buy back in? Is the person you're advising looking to trade or accumulate BTC?

I'm not selling. If the price tanks, I'll buy more. If it gets anywhere near past highs, I'll probably buy more stuff using BTC, or donate to the EFF using BTC, actually use Bitcoin to support greater adoption. But I will never sell it all.

That's my perspective, take it or leave it.

ok. lets say you buy more as the price go down and it ends up stablizing at 10.

you see, no one can really predict the market.  and it could be that everyone is still in denial in what's going on right now. remember that bitcoin, although its a great idea as a whole, but as a currency has no intrinsic value.

I agree, no one can predict the market (except, maybe if they're big enough that they can manipulate it). Next week it could shoot up to 200. Or it could drop to 25. Or it could go to 25, then 200. Or visa versa... But I would buy all the way down, say more each time it drops $20 in value, and I think many others are also perched with limit orders to buy on the way down (it's not just fear that drives a market, but also greed). I'm buying in at staggered lower values, attempting to accumulate BTC at lower values, with the belief the price will eventually go up. While I can't even make guesses at the short term market, I do have a belief in the longterm value

Of course, there's risk buying Bitcoin at any price (hopefully everyone knows that too). It may go down and never come back up. But I figure, even if there's a 90% chance BTC will fail, and a 10% chance BTC will be worth 5000% of the current value, the odds are that taking a lot of bets like that in life will pay off (just like a VC invests in a lot of promising startups knowing most will fail, but hoping one will be so successful as to make it very worth it). Many seasoned entrepreneurs who are way smarter than me are pouring millions into Bitcoin ventures, even with all the known risks. Regardless of the current volatility or price of BTC, many people believe Bitcoin will be huge in the future.

My gut interpretation of your statements, respectfully, is that you are trying to drive the price down. I'm not going to get into a discussion of (the lack of) intrinsic value of fiat currency vs. the (arguable) intrinsic value of Bitcoin, but I suggest anyone who hasn't already looked at that issue google the topic to see the arguments.

Forgetting intrinsic value and utility, most people in the world have never heard of Bitcoin. But if interest and innovation continues to grow as it has, and the barriers to entry are lowered (as they will be), we're in the very infancy of (at least) a huge speculative bubble. Add in the actual utility and innovation that Bitcoin brings to the table, and I think there's valid reason to speculate on long term price gains and success as a platform. There's so much that people with great minds have put into Bitcoin over the past few years... Rigs, money, innovation... And there are so many Bitcoin companies with entrepreneurs involved who have proven track records. I don't know how all this can be ignored, regardless of relatively short term trading patterns.

At Los Angeles Bitcoin meetup a few days ago, I spoke with extremely smart folks, mostly developers, who have been laser-focused on Bitcoin for several years, and have seen crazy volatility and crashes before the recent one. They've seen a lot, but have remained confident that the technology of Bitcoin is the future. They were attending meetups with 2-3 people a year or two ago. This meetup had 40-50 people, only a few of whom were relatively new to Bitcoin (as I am). I think newbies like us probably are seen as silly for even trying to talk about these issues. But clearly, even those of us who are relatively new have our beliefs.

your gut feeling is wrong. here is my stand in bitcoin and all other crypto-currencies, i am bullish on it. i believe in it and i also believe it is the future.

but what i'm saying is this:  at a trader's stand point, what are you going to do with bitcoin's price down trending right now?

that depends in your strategy. but my strategy is to short it.  sell high, and then buy back at a lower price thereby making some profit from the down trend. so in a way, yes i am hoping the PRICE will go down more.

but bitcoin (and all other crypto-currencies as whole), i am hoping it will get adopted more by the mainstream.

And at what price will your start buying again?

until it starts trending up again.  cos you know this could all be 2011 all over again.


http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940.3999999761581&m=mtgoxUSD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=60&i=&c=1&s=2011-04-11&e=2011-12-10&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=0&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

I won't buy I will just continue mining whatever little I can with my gaming PC.

I bought btc @ $91, good so far.

I'd say so! But I guess no one knows what tomorrow may bring.

Tokeweed, how do you interpret the movements of late? You were advising people to sell and short-sell (you posted that scary 2011 chart on 6 threads) and buy on an uptrend (I think hoping the price would go much lower than it has). We got what seemed like a minor uptrend, followed by a weird instant spike in price that would be impossible to move on. I happened to be actively checking the price and saw it was 96, then a few seconds later it was 110. I thought it was a glitch, I couldn't imagine the price actually moved like that.

I'm not a trader, but as an observer, it seems like BTC would be hard to trade with such crazy movements. I feel more comfortable just trying to accumulate if the price seems low... Of course, with many in since under $1, I guess "low" is a relative term.

Does the video at this link really prove to you smart people that manipulation was at play recently?

http://sirbitsalot.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/bitcoin-price-manipulation (http://sirbitsalot.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/bitcoin-price-manipulation)

(I'll also ask on another thread I was participating on)

Yeah, I was some "unspecified" amount of that trade volume.

I made about 5% of my whole stockpile in one day. I am about to make another 5% in a few hours if the markets are willing.

Apparently, if you trade in volume, mtgox will send you free yubikeys to protect your account.

Interesting - so you planned to induce the market into a down-trend, wait a bit and then buy back cheaper?

That's not market manipulation, that is the market!!

Look at any market, FX, Gold, FTSE, Futures, whatever. The big players can move the market and 'make' the market. This is the essence of the markets and like Random Bit said, it's all good if your on the right side of the fence. That is the difference between professional and retail investors. Pros understand the signs and know how to position themselves to capitalize on the volatility of any given market, while hedging to ensure that no matter which way it moves there is money to be made.

PuertoLibre sounds like my kind of guy  8)

I will gladly buy all coins as $95 per

what do you guys think right now?  it could be, right?