Bitcoin Forum

Anyone see what is going on right now. Manipulator is buying everything up. He moved his bidwall from 2.4. to 2.5. I just saw 20K volume increase and he is the highest bidder currently. He is manipulating on an unprecedented level right now. He may have bought well over 20,000 to 40,000 bitcoins in the past hour, as he is the higher bidder and volume has increased over 80,000 in the last hour or so.

This is all after someone dumped a huge amount of bit coins. He is in full panic mode right now trying to maintain the price because he probably has bought over 300,000-500,000 bitcoins since the drop from $30. I have never seen him in such a panic mode, he usually pull out his fake bidwalls. This time he is actually buying.

Pretty interesting to watch what is going on. Are there still people out there who don't see this as plain and simple price manipulation?

Currently his bid-wall is getting chewed down, and he is holding it up there. I wonder how long he will try and hold this up.

This AHOLE manipulator is the only thing holding bitcoins from falling into the $1.00 range.

maybe HE sold, expected a panic sell off afterwards, then bought up? who knows, who cares, this is only happening because the price is far too high for the market depth.

I just watch the action

https://i.imgur.com/ROX4F.jpg

How's this scenario: A tries to manipulate by wanting to trigger a panic sell, then B appears. B is a real-size speculator who says "Oh, down? I don't believe it, here's 200k USD against your opinion" and that's that.

This version would be a pretty bad outcome for A, I guess. He would have sold a massive amount at 2.5-3 and get no chance to buy back at such levels until B changes his mind or gets sold a huge amount of coins.

Thousands of coins are being sold by A right now almost continuously. The only people who have that much are people who want Bitcoin to succeed! I think this is a hack.

What does A care if he paid $3 in electricity for those 50k coins? Why not use occam's razor and instead of assuming someone is stupid enough to put 100-200k into this market, that the only people with this kind of depth got it from the early adoption of bitcoin. For crying out loud, 50k coins were put on ask then immediately moved to bid in a span of a second. Misclick?

https://i.imgur.com/FgSUp.png

This is the way I like to view market depth.

x: 1min/px
y: $0.01/px
z: log(price)

Tick marks on top are at the top of each hour.

Edit: The bidwalls are very cleanly visible on this one (the bright red pixels).  I'd say that this is the first time I've seen a wall this large in control of a single person.  IMO it's not manipulation; someone is just buying up cheap coins.  But they sure have a lot of fiat on hand!

They could very well have sold a lot of bitcoins over the previous months…

Can't you make this an actual 3d chart, btw? Like mtgoxlive, but instead of ghosting, just have old positions receding into the background…

Buying cheap? Wait till it's under $1...

It is an actual 3d chart!  Mine just switches the axes:  mtgoxlive has time in Z (fading), whereas I put depth in Z, and the history is off to the left (one hour per tick).  My way makes time easier to see at the expense of being fuzzier on depth.


No argument; I'm very bearish based on fundamentals.  "Cheap" is just relative to the short term.

Agreed, but, I want all variables on axes, not in color or fading lines :P And rotatable, and zoomable, etc etc. That'd be cool though.

I see.  I'm much too lazy to bother with that kind of eye candy.  It'd look great if someone did it, though.  :)

How did you get this chart?
thx!


Oh... silly me  ;D
back to the topic:

It's my own software.  I wrote it a while back while training a bot.

Who the hell is this guy? And more important, what does he wants?

I would assume he tries to win money either by:
1. stopping bitcoin going under $2 and make it successful, starting a rally
2. long-term invest in cheap bitcoins

IMO he figured the price would be creeping slowly down anyways so he might just dump now.

The bid-walls were just to catch any panic sells. Smart move.

That's what I figure. There is little new interest in bitcoin and 7200 coins a day is a lot for this market to bear without the price dropping over time. Time to cash out the winnings and hose everyone. Then when/if the price starts rising at some point far in the future, the process can start all over again with one of the other 15 or 20 people that have enough coins to do this crap.

But the bidwall is HUGE. he could loose a ton of money if another dumps thousands of coins.

https://i.imgur.com/OXJJm.png

What an interesting day.  I'm usually not a believer in The Manipulator.  Most of the time people say it and I look at the charts and I see some walls on either side of the spread representing some arbitrageurs or market makers leaving their hook in the water, moving in rational ways predicted by commissions and profits.  I post my charts, say "point him out", no one does other than saying "OMFG walls", I roll my eyes and move on.

Today's different.  This was really interesting behavior by a single entity, either an individual or a coordinated group.

The left side of my chart is 22:00 GMT.  Interesting moves:

0:50: Mr. X sells 50k.  Crash.
1:00: the market behaves normally.
1:50: Mr. M: I'm in.  $2.50.
2:30: M: $2.55
2:50: Mr. X sells through him.  Ouch.
3:00: The price is creeping up and M starts backing it as it goes to prevent any sells from freaking the little run.
3:15: He pulls back to $2.50.  Perhaps he's hoping 15 minutes of running it up is enough to start a rally?  If so it didn't work.  Crash to $2.50.
3:30: Mr. X sells right through his wall.  That was expensive.  M puts it right back up.
3:55: Repeat.
4:00: M pulls back to $2.40.
4:15: Down to $2.30.  I'm pretty sure he pulled the $2.40 wall before the dump hit it.  I'll have to check trade history to be sure.
4:20: He puts in a 3 bid spread.  

... And after that, the dumps stop.  The market starts to behave normally again.  He catches a couple more small sells, the market continues to drift up, and he keeps backing it.

Mr M is clearly one entity.  Mr X is uncertain.  Someone wanted to unload some coins, but it's hard to say if it's just one guy.  Some are probably panic sells.  Some are probably exploiting M's bid wall - hey, if you want out, the time to do it is when someone's putting up a huge wall that you can dump into!

This cost M a whole lot of fiat.  He gained a whole lot of BTC, and saved the price.  I hope he wants them because he won't be able to unload them for a while.

But why?  I can speculate two reasons:

#1, for Bitcoin's sake: he's willing to throw a bunch of money into stabilizing Bitcoin.  That could be MagicalTux or anyone else who has a financial interest in a strong Bitcoin economy.  It could be someone simply doing it for altruistic reasons, or because they hate PayPal.  (Revalin holds his fist in the air!)

#2, corner a market and get rich quick!  This is very hard to do right since you have to convince other people to do your work for you.  If he has a whole lot of BTC and wants to cash out he'll need to create market depth.  By propping up the market at $2.50-$3.00 he can put an end to The Great 2011 BitBear.  By finishing Despair as quickly and cleanly as possible the market will regain confidence and hopefully start rallying again.  As it does, he can gradually sell off his holdings starting around $3.50-4.00.  Depending how much he has to dump that may prevent another bubble from forming (no complaints there); despite his dumping there may be a strong stream of investors to buy his BTC since they are no longer Despairing.  If he's really good he can run it up higher before he sells...  bigger risks, bigger rewards.

If it's #2, he'll need to stir up some hype soon.  All the stability in the world doesn't do any good if no one is watching.  I still contend that the fundamentals are very poor, so the price isn't going to rise on it's own without another big influx of outside interest.

https://i.imgur.com/4ApQo.png

Fat pixels for people who can't figure out Ctrl-+.

I think I've got it all wrong.
 I was thinking that the Manipulator is a guy with lots and lots of funds but never crossed my mind that it could be some kind of organization with pocket change.

The only thing "the manipulator" wants is for the price to go down. There is no profit motivation in the way that he sells.

He sells on Sunday night/Monday morning knowing that most MtGox accounts do not get filled after the weekend until Monday evening.

If it was someone wanting to drop their BTC they would wait until during the week and drop in small portions when the price is high and people have cash in their accounts.

Makes me think of something someone mentioned where they had a conversation with an NSA friend of theirs who said that Bitcoin would be gone in 2 years. The government already does market manipulation, they would not need much to destroy Bitcoin from a financial perspective.

Can we calculate how much coins the 'mystery miner' would possess?

I still think someone just wanted to cash out and just didn't care.

Makes perfect sense to me.

@Revalin: thanks for sharing your analysis! very interesting.

it would be interesting to have an up to date graph like that on bitcoinX...

Heh, if it keeps dropping low enough, then someday maybe I can become "The Manipulator."  ;)

Been saying this all along.

Get the price down enough so that nobody is profitable anymore -> miners quit -> difficulty drops -> system can be 51%ed very easily without $13 million etc. -> our wallets are wiped -> people lose confidence in the system -> no more problems with SR or other illegal things the gov. did not want you to buy.

I think that's the most likely scenario.  We're just seeing very early adopters cashing out.  Remember, lots of those guys bought/mined when bitcoin was way below $1.  Selling at $3, $2.50, or even $1 will still yield tremendous profit.  I think we've got a lot more downside to go as more early adopters get out while they can still get a ridiculous return on their investment.

As I've said in past threads, apparently "the manipulator" = anyone with a substantially large sum of money.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  Calling this guy (or group of guys) a manipulator is absolutely retarded because the goal of "making money" far outweighs any other incentive to manipulate the market.  If anyone else traded with the same large sums of money that were observed yesterday, they, too, would be called "manipulators."  Large sums of money move the market?  No shit?

Edit:  I'll allow a caveat for Gox manipulation.

You mean the post where the guy photoshopped "top secret" documents out of old Comicon posters?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46000.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46000.0)

Sounds like something a manipulator would say.  You can't fool me!  ;D

Hmmm sexy..... i want those lips on my dick

A 51% attack doesn't let you steal wallets.  It only lets the attacker double spend their own coins.  Even then it's impractical to do in most cases.


Normally I agree with you.  In this case we have an individual who's placing some very large bids that go against obvious profit interest.  Short-term these moves are losing money in a big way.  He's either: 1) trying to help Bitcoin by propping up the price at his own expense; 2) trying to manipulate market sentiment for a risky long-term play; 3) a fool being parted from his money.

1 and 2 ARE manipulation.  3 is just business as usual except that we normally don't see a single person with that much money to burn.  Fools usually come in flocks.


I like the blue leather.  Black has been done to death.

Anyone interested in looking at the specific trades that took place can take a look at my post here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51774.msg619470#msg619470).

I noticed  that too...the tendency to make irrational bids that "go against obvious profit interest" as you put it.

This is one reason I think Gox may be responsible.

Another explanation, which I think is also plausible, is that this person or group of persons has a large enough sum of money such that they would have no problem acting as a catalyst for a spike up to $10 or beyond.  Price is psychological and there are a lot of psychological reasons why a series of incredibly large buy orders could cause a panic buy mimicking characteristics of the value increase in June.

 $30 wasn't that long ago and, being realistic, Bitcoin trading is currently a legal form of gambling and that is the main reason it is used.  Nobody would give a rats ass about Bitcoin if it didn't have the potential to help their financial situation, and the temptation of immediate rewards is oh-so-much-more emotionally satisfying than ideal, long-term goals.  If people see the price going up and going up fast, they will buy.  It won't matter at that point how many retailers there are or how much the value of BTC "should" be worth given current market conditions.

Why has no one proposed Dwolla's big release in businessweek as a possible motivator for the sell?

It seems logical: large startup comes out and says they are going to slay credit cards, and they actually have the infrastructure to do it. Kind of steals bitcoin's thunder, don't you think?

Maybe they'll use bitcoin to implement it.

^ Getting warmer? They certainly wouldn't use Bitcoin, though.

Conspiracy theory time: Consider the announcement date: December 15. Most students are on Christmas break -- like a mini summer vacation. What if they announce and release their own dollar backed cryptocoin for online microtransactions?

I doubt it, to be honest…

Are you bi or tri-sexually curious?  Why do you have to define yourself by your sexual orientation?  Doesn't seem relevant to me...  We're talking bitcoin here. ???

BTCurious, your worries about your username just got confirmed :P

Are you a fat guy named Marty? Doesn't seem relevant to me.

lol +1

That's a good question. You see, I'm not bi-curious. But you mention tri-curious, and I have no idea what that would entail. Frankly, I'm curious. So I guess that makes me tri-curious-curious.

Also, what RandyFolds said. (Why is it relevant that Randy folds, anyway? Also, knowing this beforehand will probably do you no good in poker.)