Bitcoin Forum

Both MtGox and Trade Hill are way down in volume right now and the price of BTC is flat for hours.

Makes for a boring day trading.

Seriously, if it's just going to hang out at 17.0 all day, I can find better things to speculate with.  ::)

Nice, there are days when it sucks to be in the market, days when it sucks to be a miner, and days when it sucks to be a hoarder.  The only people enjoying Bitcoin are the ones that keep it flowing to other people.

Huge demand sitting on the buy side.
Charts look strikingly similar to the previous run past $30.

Run-up very soon.

Everybody is scared and just watching. It will break soon. There has been a lot of media recently, but it takes a day or two to move money in.

I don't blame the miners for not wanting to sell at current prices, since the difficulty did slash all mining nearly in half.

This is what a psychologist friend of mine predicted: if prices go stable, speculators will miss their dopamine releases and be even more upset than when price is plunging, which is at least exciting.  Random, unpredictable, positive reinforcement is the best way to train behavior, and that has been the story of bitcoin for the past year or so.

Oh, I hope it stays relatively stable for a few months. Then we can get more merchants on board.

We could use some more oil speculators in the market. :P

I'd say your friend has me completely figured out.

I like it staying low. I take part of my paycheck and buy a little bitcoin as I can after child support and bills. After viral smartphone apps and Point-of sales products are released, bitcoins will boom in price.

OP is trolling, a single entity is keeping prices stable at $17/BTC, and the market is as unstable as ever minus said single entity.

#trufax

might see a bunch of buying tomorrow after 5pm. i'm not sure how long it takes for everyone else's bank to get money into dwolla, but when i talked to Dwolla on the phone today he said my Transfer initiated on Saturday wont be available until tomorrow (wednesday) at around 5pm PST. i'm sure Many buyers trying to take advantage of these low prices are just waiting for the funds to clear before they can buy.  And like i mentioned in another post, i'm sure a person working at Dwolla would be at a good friend to have if they could let you know when large amounts of money were being transferred to the hill or the gox.

is CIA floating our boat?

Not trolling.  Genuinely bored with the market today (and to a lesser extent, yesterday)

If your "single entity" theory is true, I wish he'd stop.

Eh, the "single entity" thing has already been explored by a few other threads recently, similar to the conditions at the $20 mark before MtGox was hacked.  I was simply trying to add some small bit of humor, 'tis all.

Though I would advise a bit of patience overall.  Such rapid swings, while "interesting" for speculators, are mostly detrimental to the general health of the Bitcoin economy.

Unless someone hacks an exchange and sends the price to zero or someone pledges to invest his life savings in bitcoins sending the price to the moon soon, there's a danger the excitement might wear off and people will just start using it as money. omg.

all it takes is for one G20 country to declare their economy shall be run in bitcoins to send the price to da moon!!!

I really hope that's what a lot of the people speculating with Bitcoins think. I'm sorry this is spoiling the fun for you - but people speculating like crazy with Bitcoins is spoiling the fun for the people actually using Bitcoins and that's the people who actually give Bitcoin true value. Driving them away is one of the things you can do to assure that Bitcoin will eventually die.

So less people speculating with Bitcoins won't hurt the Bitcoin economy. Quite the contrary.

It'll become fun for you again when the dollar dies and everyone tries to escape to Bitcoin. Let's hope this happens when Bitcoin is already more or less well established. The wise thin

Well looks like the price has stabilized. Now we can all start buying/selling goods and realistically make money at it.

Ask your psychologist friend what conditioning is occurring that produces dopaminergic activity for market instability as opposed to profit.

I agree with you 99%.  The wild swings in trading prevent merchants from adopting BTC as a useful currency; there's no easy way to price a good or service.  The 1% disagreement I have regards the impact of speculators.  Stability will happen only when there are more speculators; the market needs to be saturated.  As more speculators enter, the more narrow the margins become.  Stability follows. 

Embrace greed.  It is your friend.

+1 The more speculators the more stable bitcoin will be. Also, the Bitcoin community is learning and becoming better at trading.


Greed is not your friend, neither your enemy. Greed just is.

The beauty of free market systems is that every player sees it differently.  The more volatility, the more speculators.  The more speculators (long & short side), the more stability.  The more stability, the more investment and trading.  Some outside event rocks the boat, the more volatility and the cycle continues...

The key word here is 'more'. More is better.

She says to ask casino operators.  You're guaranteed a negative expected utility, but you play anyway, because the swings in your fortune are exciting.  Treasury bills are nearly guaranteed profit but boring as hell.

The brain's salience and reward circuits are dynamic, not static, and demand ever-changing stimuli.

@OP.

Still boring?

The market has more to do with classical conditioning rather than with operant conditioning.
It is possible that every time we see a crash graph we laugh because the "goxed" meme pops up in our brain, or we might feel anguish because it reminds us about losing money.

The dopamine rush on the other hand, yes, she is right and I rely on it when I invest.
This is very similar to what compulsive gamblers do.
But it is improper to call it "random" reinforcements (that would have NO effect at all), but variable-ratio schedules.
This not only happens to humans, it happens with animals as well. In gamblers, the euphoria and the excitement is their "reward" (dopamin & endorphines). If winning at the casino were trivial, the gamblers would get really bored because there would be no excitement.
Btw, endorphines literally means "internal morphine", no wonder why it is so desirable and in some cases even addictive.

I take behavioral cues for investing, since I know how (crowd) psychology works I take that as an advantage when the prices are way under its value or from its perceived value.
That's why neoclassical economics can't explain the irrational behavior of a gambler, because by definition economics is about "rational choices".

It is here where behavioral economics have its relevance when analyzing an inefficient market.

Nope, that was fun.   ;D