Bitcoin Forum

Being new to trading, to what can we attribute the recent downturn?  The Bitcoin got down as low as $7.64 US today and now is up to $8.49.  All of this on MtGox Live.

Call me perplexed.  LOL

it's kind of normal for bitcoin. It moves around a lot.

any idea when its gonna hit 15$ again? waiting for payout....

high doubtfully but you can always come back in 6months

I heard it said that Bitcoins move around because there's not a lot being traded so just a few trades moves the market quite a bit.  Is this your thought too?

6 mo wtf it was jus at 15 3 weeks ago.

lol fine. ill wait 6 mo. im not sellin my 5 btc that took me forever to get for 8 bucks a pop. id rather keep them on my usb in my drawer and look at it once a month.... :)

The market moved down because someone sold like 21,000 @ 6:45 PM

https://docs.google.com/document/pubimage?id=18QuzRMjjrJsRAM8GMfJLj61ry2lyZbBsVq-g7KUe90E&image_id=1ajKN8Y--GSPP0NfsmJp400kmU4sB7Gw

if i had 21000 btc id be in vegas til christmas

In one man's humble estimation it is due to the fact there is such LOW volume and that why the spreads widen, but the volitility creates a real opportunity.  

@plogank

welcome to the free market total. trading 24/7 - every day, not like wall street from 9 to 5. no break of trading because of high volativity (- 50% crash or/and + 50% rally per day)

once again, free market total !

its that easy as AndrewBitcoiner says:

-> More sellers then buyers moves the price down. More buyers then sellers moves the price up.

the really stupidness / schizophrenia is that more volativity the more hurts the bitcoin itself as a stable currency/token/good. how can a merchant/store owner accept 100 bitcoins when he doesn't know what they a worth tomorrow?

if someone buys/invensts a lot of thousand us$ because of greed at mtgox in bitcoin in an agressive style (buy on whatever price) it moves very strong up, so with his investment he hurts the thing he invest in very much. looool - thats crazy. but we can not change. somebody says, 'we created a monster we can not control' - i like this sentence every day more....

i love bitcoins really really really - but - the more speculation on mtgox (up or down), the less legitimacy for bitcoin as what a bitcoin originally wants to be.

once we finally hit 21million and miners arent cashing out it should be more stable yes?

The volatility is part of the fun :P  And it'd be hard not to sell thousands of bitcoins if I had them...

Anyone considered https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39654.0 to be the reason?
Or https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39679.0 for newbies.


Totally ... prices move at your fingertips. If you want the prices to go down, flood the market. Then buy back at low prices.

Do you realize that if miners stop cashing out that means they gain 0 and thus they stop mining? Even at 21 million, miners will profit from fees. Remember, no miners=no safety

Some claim stabilization bots have prevented gains until fatigue brings drops. I'm only looking at past performance:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?noheader=1&height=100&width=720&m=mtgoxUSD&i=Daily&v=1&cv=1&c=1&ps=0&s=2010-10-27&e=2011-02-10&l=0&t=W&b=B&a1=WMA&m1=30&a2=WMA
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?noheader=1&height=50&width=720&m=mtgoxUSD&i=Daily&v=1&cv=1&c=1&ps=0&s=2011-05-17&e=2012-01-01&l=0&t=W&b=B&a1=WMA&m1=90&a2=WMA

Downturns are good:
1) If the entire market crashes, then crashing sooner is better than later. I think it's highly unlikely to ever completely crash, because there are enough stubborn miners who will refuse to sell off at low prices and because the currency is super effective for making low cost irreversible transactions (that's intrinsic value there, by the way)
2) If the market doesn't crash, then it just sheds the weaker hands -- those miners who weren't mining efficiently to begin with or who can't afford the risk. Again, this is a good thing. Miners on the edge of financial breakdown should get out. If they aren't profitable now, they won't become more profitable without changing what they do. It's really doing them a favor.
3) More efficient miners protect the network more per GH because the dollar exchange value per GH is lower, even though the cost of attaining the required hashrate has not changed (well, it changes over time, in a predictable rate tied to Moore's law, but at any given moment in time, when the BTC rate drops, the cost of hashrate does not drop with it)
4) My favorite: When enough people stop mining, difficulty drops!

I only see this as an opportunity to BUY MORE BITCOINS!  :)

"Successful speculation begins with objective observation".

The trend of bitcoin is downward.  If you are new to trading and want trading advice, put a 21 period simple moving average on a bitcoin chart and when price is above the average, say that bitcoin is going up and when price is below average, say that bitcoin is going down.

Sound advice  8)

Downturns are good because people drop out of mining and just go to speculating.  Thus the miners see a decrease in difficulty.

Why 21 exactly?

21 gives a good feel for the direction of the intermediate trend.  Anything from 15 to 30 is a good period for medium term.  If you have a more short-term perspective use the 10 and for a more long-term perspective use the 50.

The most widely watched moving average numbers are 20, 50, and 200 so you will see in more active markets that "gamers" push price around these numbers and prices are very responsive to them.

I learned the specific number 21 from a very successful proprietary currency day-trader.

Might be a while before then.