Bitcoin Forum

seems like the last hour something odd is going on, Im thinking if you didnt have to pay fees someone would be making a profit, otherwise it must be out of control bots, or am I missing some hidden strategy?

The more you trade the lower MtGox's fees become.  Even going for a 2 cent profit is worth it for some people trading a large volume.  I don't think the past few hours have been that unusual.

the last hour someone has been buying and selling very small amounts every minute or so at what would be a loss if fees are taken into account

Carefully re-read the first sentence of Cluster2k's post.

If you have enough transaction volume, the fees decrease enough to make those transactions profitable.

you could be right, fees do go lower then I thought, the lowest fee is 0.25%, the last trade was making 0.85% less 0.5% is 0.35% profit. been watching mtgoxlive for a long time and never seen anyone else doing that, Im surprised its not more common in that case

Slightly off topic, but maybe this is a bot-induced problem with reporting many transactions?

Bitcoinity is showing the following transactions:

xx.xx  BTC sale - 5.36x
88.69 BTC purchase - 5.400
00.17 BTC sale - 5.377

So what I'm seeing: an 88.69 BTC purchase props the price up .04 BTC, and a sale of .17 BTC dumps the price .03 BTC. What is missing here?

The 'current' price is the last transaction price.  If that 0.17BTC had sold for $1 instead, you'd have seen the price drop $4.30 until the next, hopefully sane, transaction. 

The price stays relatively even only because a) nobody will buy for more if they don't have to, and b) it doesn't make sense to sell for significantly less (unless you're just dumping 'free' or 'cheap' coins without regard to price)

If you watch mtgoxlive.com, you'll see that kind of thing happening all day long.