Bitcoin Forum

Are we being punked? What gives with crash to $4 and spike to $7?

BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!

Its called 'profit taking'.

i seriously doubt there are any ppl making any money with this volatility and illiquidity on the exchanges. 

Well ppl said that bouncing between 6,5 -7,2 is boring, so now we have some fun in the market.

Oh, zhoutong most certainly is! The bank always wins!

I wonder if mtgox rolled back the huge sell order somehow.

I managed to make some BTC at least.. I think the major losers are bitcoinica users.

Also mtgox market makers / bots.  For them, nothing better than large spreads.

i really wonder about this.  whenever he liquidates someone it means their acct moved into negative territory and HE has to take the loss in those situations where he had to provide liquidity from his reserves when there was no matching order to be found.

multiply this over many accts both up and down in this huge whipsaw and he could get wiped out, i think.

I managed to make both BTC and USD. You just had to be in the right position and patient.

I only lost  $170 compared to the $1400 I would have lost when it was $4.80 and potentially fallen even farther.


optimism glass is half full/half empty

He wouldnt have lost a dime. He made a fortune I am sure. The shorts and the longs all got liquidated= pure profit. It is for this reason I question his integrity and wonder if he is the one moving the market with his now large collection of USD and BTC. He certainly has the means to do this unlike anyone else.

Come on 4.9!!! need to rebuy some bitcoins cheap! ;D

Lucky on that one!

Most is probably not his profit; it goes to the people with profitable positions.  The ones with deep enough pockets / big margin maintenance, who can survive the spikes.  Hard to know to what extent zhou can profit off the spread, beyond his commission.

This^

I fared pretty well too! Up about (censored).   :P

Patients is a virtue!
I figured out early yesterday that I was on the wrong side. So I waited, and got opposite the movements, and had my personal best day here.
I'm sure it was more luck than anything. ::)
I was going all in/out during the madness. I'm a glutton for risk I guess. Yet, I stay away from leverage!

made about 100 btc, when I saw 6.20 broken down I sold all and set buy orders at 5.50 and 5, didn't know it would fall even further, but anyway, easy coin and I helped stop this spike down a little, too :)

See? It's people like us who prevented a total collapse by forced liquidation.  ;)
We, as speculators, cushion the swings. It's stupid people with brilliant ideas ( ::)) that cause them, and bitcoinica that amplifies them.

well I'm actually quite surprised on the reactions over here. I mean, yes, I made profits in ranges > 1k USD, and yes, there was a bit of luck with it, however, I didnt realize that people on bitcoinica did never imagine that speculation meant possible loss too.

If you read the forums today, it just seems like the possibility to lose was something totally new to them...

If you think about it, this explains the behaviour. Since they vastly underestimated the probability of loss, they didn't think it strange to trade on gigantic leverage. Nobody who thinks an own mistake likely or sees uncertainties about the market would do heavy margin trading on a crazy market like this one.

Myself, I wouldn't claim to trade safely enough to go all-in, let alone risk even more than that! I don't know what kind of track record one would need to qualify for 1:3 or higher margin trading on Bitcoin, but I doubt such a person is present. Maybe such a person doesn't even exist.

This is why I believe that the current volatility has actually strengthened the market.  It will make the leveraged traders think twice before plunging in, reducing volatility (zhou's move also helps).

It is true that in this environment, every gigantic blunder reduces the likelihood of another one.