Bitcoin Forum

...at doing so. People are losing big because of this.

There is someone/group that are playing a unfair game at manipulating the Mt.Gox exchange. They/him have at least 30 000 bitcoins worth of fiat/BTC that they move around in by putting up big walls, removing them. Try to make people panic selling and panic buying. Because bitcoin isn't regulated in any way this is the wild west of trading, no one seems to care, because we know that Mt.Gox knows exactly who this person/group is. The evidence is easy to collect, when like 10 000 -15 000 bitcoin walls are removed in a second (many many times over), it is overwhelming evidence that someone is playing a unfair game (if you are not prepared).

In this condition, I recommend people that can't trade to stay out of trading. Just buy and hold, or put buy orders at low levels and let him/the group manipulate without us participating.

Also, we should ask Mt.Gox who this is. Because this has been going on for a very long time, more than a month? There are some people on this board that have tried to follow all the tactics of this person/group. Any information is good.

Maybe this is mtgox itself ?? or satoshi ? or mark karpeles ? or tycho deepbit owner ? or artforz ? or maybe they are all the same person ?

I've noticed it also but didn't/don't know how significant this is/was. Perhaps others on this board may shed some light on the subject.

Right now, that wall really is a giant 17000btc middle finger to the entire community. It even looks like it on the market depth chart on MtGox. A massive 'you shall not pass' wall of stop.  MtGox really should ban this type of blatant crap (unless of course they don't want to because they are involved.) The person may very well be benevolent, attempting to attain as much $5-6 range BTC as possible while also letting everyone else, but people don't want to trade in such an easily manipulated market. It isn't good for BTC as a whole.

Anyone that argues that 'no manipulator exists' is being silly. This is a person with enough money to alter the market it doesn't matter what you call them. They put these walls up and down instantly. And anyone with that amount of money isn't stupid enough to think that they can actually sell 17000btc as a wall.

Was another thread necessary?

How is it unfair? Were you forced to buy or sell your Bitcoins?

Would you like it if MtGox released personal information about you?

Instead of working up a hissy fit over it, how about you out trade "The Manipulator" and beat him at his own game? 

Easy and SAFE way to profit:

1.)  Consistently monitor market price at whatever exchange you are on and at mt. gox.
2.)  Go all in at somewhere between 50 cents to $1 under current price.
3.)  Place these bids at psychological barriers + a couple cents (e.g. $5.02, $5.52, $6.02, etc.)
4.)  Wait for someone to dump.
5.)  Watch it pump.
6.)  Now you dump  ;D

Never failed me once.

If you want to trade this market you should know that 1. Mt.Gox is allowing this kind of act, because anyone can see it happening. Because of this no one cares, in the long run I don't think this is good. But this is the rule of the game today. 2. If you don't understand or have not that much experience trading than I would say that Bitcoins exchanged/traded at Mt.Gox right now is a massive hustle for the majority of people out there. 3. I know the game, and I also know that Mt.Gox rates is manipulated, knowing this all trades that I make are at my own risk.

Exactly, so what's the problem?

I mean, if you are just trying to inform people to save them from "The Manipulator", awesome. But don't you think that's been done already in the other threads?

If so many people think this way, why does MtGox have more volume than all the other exchanges combined? You would think people would leave in flocks to avoid being sheared.

Calm down guys, Sibos is tomorrow and we'll be fine in spite of the manipulator.

People do, I do, I'd rather not have to, and I'd rather have a market that isn't manipulated in a way that is illegal in the stock market. Bitcoin needs to be taken seriously in order to grow and be accepted on a much wider scale.

Indeed, the manipulation is more dangerous than I thought... Specially now that we have bitcoinica...

I bought lots of BTC at 6, and then that 17k BTC wall appeared along with several massive dumps...

quickly BTC went to near 5, and I got a forced liquidation :(

THIS^^

Been doing this for weeks!
Though, the disappearance of those two $.40 ranges a few hours back kinda caught me off guard!

Talking about volume, forgot about that. I have just started to trade this market. My conclusion is that most volume is from the bots (beside the volume from the manipulator). Because Mt.Gox is taking at least 0,25 % in fees per trade on each side, that means that the only one that can have active bots is Mt.Gox them self. So the big picture. Most volume are from Mt.Gox, the real volume should be at a much lower level. Money is going back and forward by two groups: Mt.Gox own bots and "the manipulator". Together maybe they have 80-90 % of the volume.

If this is really the case that the big majority of the volume is from this two parts, then Bitcoin shouldn't be trading at 5.70 dollars. More like 2-3 dollars.

You know that low of 5.11 today on tradehill?

That was me   :D

I was talking about the two on Gox! Went from 5.25ish to 5.60, then again 5min later from 5.40ish to 5.80, or there abouts!

Guys,

 I have a simple question:

 1- How to stabilize the price of goods and services ONLY in Bitcoins?!

 I mean, I want to forget about trading and the fucking price of Bitcoins in Dollars, Euros, Reais, etc...

 Or, when the reverse will be a reality? I mean, when the dollar that will have its price in Bitcoins?

Thanks!
Thiago

ThiagoCMC, I have been thinking about this since last week. The price will not be based on $ if sellers of products and services are able to directly spend earned bitcoins for they needs (pay electricity, rent for their office, internet/phone bills... in bitcoins). It's a kind of magic circle (It cannot be closed until it's closed :D) But we are going offtopic with this...

It's dependent on how easily you can live your life with only Bitcoins, and how easily merchants/service providers can live using only Bitcoins.

You need to be able to rent/buy a home with BTC.  You need to make your car payments in BTC.  You need to pay for water, gas, electricity, etc. with BTC.  When you call your plumber, you need to pay him in BTC.  Etc., etc., etc.

And, merchants/service providers need to have enough people paying for their goods/services in BTC.

We're not even close for this to be a reality.  Fiat dominates, plain and simple.  Only when BTC rivals fiat (numerically, not theoretically) will you be able to truly price in BTC without pegging it to fiat.

But, any merchant/service provider is welcome to go ahead and try!!

When I set a sell order at an amount, it's been around for a while, and then I see a big buy order surpass me by 10 cents and MtGox decides not to have the buy order go to any of the coins I'm selling, I know Gox is doing the manipulation.

All this time you spend to make your lunch money could earn you a real salary if you sold trinkets on eBay.

I sell trinkets on eBay and buyers only want the item if it's basically free and a lot do "friendly fraud" to get it free.  eBay shut down their livechat, never reads email (even states this in the emails), won't answer the phone, and basically is completely uncontactable by anyone so it's horrible.

This doesn't seem liek an issue.  Perhaps a useful move would be for someone to put up a 'fuck you' I'm buying 30,000 bitcoins at us$6 (or whatever the price is) and buy them and then the person playing around would be left with us$ and without their bitcoins?   Even more useful would be if someone who were to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars were to take advantage of this opportunity to REALLY say 'fuck you' by writing a bot to wait for those orders to exist and then buy them up at such a great value. 

If I ate that many $ in food, I'd be HUGE!
I make just as much trading BTC for a few hours after work, as I do in wages!
Doubling my income is well worth my time!

Just a thought... if this 'manipulator' is so predictable that after the event many people comment 'of course he did that' and 'I knew that would happen', why not take advantage of this apparently predictable behaviour to make some quick profits?

If MtGox is trading on its own exchange this is insider trading and should be stopped.
we should clarify this with the owner Mark kapeles.

After all we've been through I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. Just another drop of water in the already large "selfishness" pool.

I'm surprised people make such a big deal of this "the manipulator".  Powerful traders are the inevitable consequence of trading in a small free market.  For those that don't like this there are many large and highly regulated markets out there.

In the same way as competition encourages miners to use very efficient hardware, so to does this free market encourage traders to make smart choices.  I find myself placing blame for high market volatility on bad traders rather than powerful ones.  As more unprofitable traders are driven from the market, panic sells and unthinking rallies will become rarer and less extreme.  I take solace in knowing that we are evolving towards stability.

TL;DR: If anything, I'm more annoyed with "the manipulated" than "the manipulator".

this +1

+1
Thank you for this.
If people are manipulated, it is because they are basing their buy/sell decisions on what others are doing, and not on their personal assessment of where bitcoin is going in the future.

Take ownership of your lives, people!

Boom. Exactly.

MagicalTux has already stated that mtgox doesn't trade at all because it would be unfair, or at least look that way.  That may or may not be true, but I don't consider the whining of lousy traders or the insane speculation of conspiracy theory nuts to be evidence in either direction.

If someone does have actual evidence, I would love to see it, as would everyone else, I'm sure.  That none has appeared seems to say a lot, even if it is neither conclusive nor final.

Oh well, as long as he pinky swears.   ::)

If Mark Kapeles said that publicly, then I believe him

It was in #mtgox on freenode IRC a while back.  They collect fees in whatever currency is being purchased, so they end up with a lot of BTC.  He said that they save it for purchases, like buying bitomat.pl, rather than trade it because of their position as insiders.  I saw it, but don't have logs, so now you are trusting me (and my memory), plus him, but I'm sure he'd give the same answer if someone asked again.

thanks for the clarification

What did you expect to happen if you bought on margin?

In case you haven't noticed, Bitcoin hasn't had more than three consecutive up days in the last 3 months. Buying on the third day at 6 was dumb. Buying at 6 on margin was dumber.

Someone is trying to find others dumber than they are.

Heh, the ponzi scheme thing is very old...

I do not think it work anymore, after someone attacked the site... But it was one of the first sites to accept BTC (it accepted 1 BTC... I parcicipated on it when BTC was valued 0.7 thus not big deal or anything...)




But yes, I did something sorta dumb buying at margin at 6... :/ Or rather, not realizing my profits when I had the chance...

Fucking greed :(

I completely with the comments about the overhyped "manipulator" and that it should be expected.  I also agree that bad traders are largely to blame for market volatility (though I can't say I personally mind the volatility).

But, there is one scenario that could potentially screw the whole lot of us...the largest sell-off that we've never seen.

Edit:  By the way, you all do realize there's now some guy sitting alone in his basement by his computer wearing a cape with a huge "M" on the back of it, right?

Certainly that won't be the pattern until the end of time. I'd say 95% of us expect a rally, perhaps even within the next week or two...


I just pictured it. :D

Today was an awful day for speculators because the price just stagnated.  I hope tommorow it will do its weekend drop.

haha, so a high/low diff of 8% is stagnation now, is it? 

Welcome to Bitcoin, folks ;D

Those are the very edge of wild swings.  The price has been 5.50 the whole time with only a 1% difference (about 10 cents) in either way both times.

weekend is coming, during the weekend, it will swing more, because daytime stock trader has nothing else better to do on weekend, so wait and see

Every order "manipulates" the market.

It's easier to manipulate btc than it is the stock market, for obvious reasons.

Relatively, it doesn't really take that much money to move the price either way.