Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday the transaction volume dropped to the lowest number since 2011 with only 69,152 BTC traded. In comparison, during peak periods, the volume was between 350,000 and 450,000 BTC traded. What does this mean? Do people hold and wait for better price or is BTC simply losing momentum?

I half suspect that the price has been kept in an artificially narrow channel, I have my theories as to how, but they are just speculation. Traders will be awaiting a breakout.

Dont forget when you talk about it in BTC volume its not a good comparison. BTC is orders of magnitude more expensive now so you should compare $ volume numbers.

But in answer to your question less traded volume just means that sellers aren't selling and buyers aren't buying, I suspect the uncertainty out of China is a major factor in people just waiting on the sidelines.

What uncertainty about China? Chinese attitude towards BTC has been known for months and I really do not see how markets can react to anything else but China banning BTC which is not going to happen. The rest is pure speculation.

People who are holding BTC does not want to sell them at these prices... Some of them might have bought those coins at $1,000+ and don't want to sell at loss. On the other hand, there is a lack of demand from the buyers, as they are hoping that the exchange rate will go down further.

Unless there is fiat chasing after bitcoin, this will be the trend.  Lots of VC going into businesses...but not bitcoin itself.

Please share with me what is going to happen for certain in China?

Then once you've used your crystal ball to tell me exactly whats going to happen next explain to me how the market would not react to one or more of the major Chinese exchanges stopping trading for example?

Isn't this an issue though, because people assume that the BTC transactions will pick up to make mining worth it when the reward halves.  But if it doesn't pick up then 2016 is going to be a BIG problem for miners.

I guess more people are holding there BTC and thinks that could make it higher in value before they will sell their coins.

Yep and then when they see it rising they dont want to sell them because why would you.

This happens with all investments it goes down you tell yourself your content with breaking even so say your goign to sell when it reaches the price you paid but it has to rise to get near that price. When it rises, you get more confident, as does the market and when you get close to your price you dont sell.
Rinse and repeat.

Buyers are waiting for the price to go down, sellers are waiting for the price to go up. Some people are losing faith, some people are gaining hope :)

People were still mining when BTC was going at $70.... So I don't think that prices will be having any impact on the Bitcoin mining. By 2016, we might be seeing 10 times more people engaged in Bitcoin mining compared to the numbers right now.

Probably GOX. Think how many people must have said "fuck this" after that. For many it was their first exposure to crypto and I imagine the majority kept their coins on there

The majority of morons, maybe. The red flags were there months before Gox imploded, months before they stopped allowing BTC withdrawals.

Morons or not they we're investors who lost money and will have told everyone they know Bitcoin is a scam etc etc.

people are waiting to see what the chinese will do. The ban date is 10 march, I think we will see low volume until that, then a recover or sell of, depending of the news

With the uncertainty of the Chinese everyone will want to wait to see what happens

Sort of off-topic, but I noticed you have the bitcoin foundation member avatar, I am also a member - how do I get my badge to show here on the forums?

Exactly!  ;D

Yes! I wanna see all those speculators losing hope and leaving BTC. Let true backers of BTC remain.
Until we increase our user base again we can enjoy some stability.


PS: I'm losing 30% of my money as well. But I don't care. I wanna see this idea grow. Maybe in the long term I'll see some money, if not okay this idea worth the try.

Yup.   Lots of rich people who "want bitcoin businesses to succeed" and in the process they "suck seed" from the regulators weiners because they don't hold actual Bitcoin themselves, and care only for making money off the businesses that provide services around Bitcoin.  Assuming they succeed long enough, maybe Bitcoin itself will propel to new heights because of the businesses.  But the only VC going directly into Bitcoin are the investment companies that are offering trading platforms and direct investing.

I believe that number is 300 million starting ... soon.

-B-

I think buyers are actually waiting for the price to go up to show the downtrend is over.  I know I am.

I wrote an article on Bitcoin price stability and I postulated that once Bitcoin adoption increases prices will stabilize, which is what is happening right now, the only volatility is if any news from China comes.

http://razorsforex.blogspot.com/2014/02/bitcoin-adoption-bitcoin-price-stability.html

It seems there's a distinction to be made between the number of transactions and the amounts being traded in those transactions.  According to the charts on blockchain.info (https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions), the number of transactions is still averaging between 50k and 80k each day, so there's no real drop there.  But it would seem that the transactions are for smaller amounts at the moment.

Either way, though, as long as it doesn't become a steady decline it's not too much of a concern.  All markets have the odd slow patches and it's understandable people won't be making large gambles when there's a fair amount of uncertainty about.  It's also a little amusing that when people aren't complaining about volatility in price, we start getting threads about volatility in trade volumes.  You guys are never happy, heh.

I wonder about trades that are being done outside of exchanges? It seems like some of the peers I know are increasingly doing larger deals over the phone or in person. I don't know if this is a factor or not. 

Bitcoin's success (i.e. price per dollar going up, if that is how you measure it's success) is directly related to volatility.  Stability = failure.  Volatility = success.  Not sure why people are touting that we need price stability.  We don't.

Volatility is good if you are a trader/speculator, not if you want Bitcoin used as an actually currency.

I suspect most of the volume before was from high frequency traders via bots. They would have to keep a fair amount of coins in the exchange to made it worth while. The recent issues with exchanges made them think about the security of their capital. If they are keeping less at the exchnage, there would be less trading volume.

Current categories of people that are interested in bitcoin:

1. Buyers: These people see the current downtrending of bitcoin against the USD and are waiting for a "better" opportunity to buy in.

2. Sellers: If they bought within the past few months they would be taking a loss, many of which are probably just holding for now in hopes for a rise in bitcoin this July/August to resell.

3. Long term holders: Keep on holding

4. General public: Less excitement in btc due to downtrending price, will not put much effort into btc at this time

5. Chinese day traders: May be thinking about transferring some of their btc off the exchanges and into less visible personal wallets until they know what the PBOC will end up doing and if there will be any other avenue for them to continue day trading btc. May be holding off buying/selling btc for now.

with that being said the trade volume in USD is over $30 million dollars (estimated at 70K btc), which is still a very healthy and thriving economy IMO.

People are afraid right now to sell or buy bitcoins.Is bad time to sell it when most of the people buy it when it was $1000,and also they don't rush into buying ,either are afraid price won't go up,or they want the price to drop so they can buy it cheeper.Holding bitcoins over a longer term will decrease trade volumes and act to drive down the price as an effect of inter-exchange arbitrage, commissions and apparent lack of interest.

It may be followed by the Chinese government recently strictly prohibited Bitcoin transactions? Just a guess.

When did the Chinese government restrict BTC transactions? Fiat transactions to and from exchanges as well as third party payment processors yes but there's nothing anyone can do to actual strictly restrict transactions.

The lack of interest comes from short term buyers who jump on the bandwagon as soon as something becomes popular, yet they have no understanding of it whatsoever. When the bandwagon slows down, they get off and are disappointed that it didn't take them to heaven.

oh no,it's a bad phenomenon,what's going on?