Bitcoin Forum

Everywhere I look I keep hearing people complaining about the price and blaming the auction and the auction only, and thinking that everything hinges on what price the coins are sold at. It is silly.

Right before the descent in early June, there were not one but THREE significant news events - it wasn't just the auction. There was also an article released in China by central bankers of how they were going to keep track of and close down accounts that were being used for recharge codes.  After that there was GHash.io reaching 51%. There are even aspects of the auction itself which are more significant than the coins themselves being sold. I'll explain each of these:

1. China: There was news about further crackdowns on deposit methods to Chinese exchanges including recharge codes. Now, I don't care how many times people try to dismiss China or call it 'FUD' - China is very significant. China is the world's most populated country with 20% of the worlds population, is one of the world's largest economies, and most importantly it contains the world's largest shadow currency trading market where high rollers throw around trillions of dollars on a regular basis to gamble on shadow currencies (mostly BANs - notes from banks). It is also happens to contain half of Bitcoin's exchanges which appears to do 5-10 times as much volume as the other half. There are some questions about the legitimacy of the volume but a safe guess is that the legitimate volume should be at least as much as the 'west', which is still highly significant. You can't just take something involving at least half of Bitcoin's trading economy and dismiss it. Any news about China is going to be very important for Bitcoin (in the short term at least) whether you like it or not. At the very least, it is much more significant than the auction.

2. GHash: The pool reached 51% for the first time and nothing was done about it for a while until a big player finally voluntarily pulled some power out of it.  This raised questions about the viability of Bitcoin and the nature of the community and caused some major players to become bearish. Some whales decided they were going to sell half of their holdings. The amount of bitcoins being dumped over this probably trumps the 30K bitcoins being sold at the auction. In addition, future investors have become somewhat dissuaded and there will be some degree less new investment in the future. All in all, it is a much more significant event than the auction.

3. The Auction. Even within the auction itself there are more significant things to consider than the 30k coins themselves being sold and their effect on the market.  Anything involving the government doing something adverse leaves a bearish taste in investors. "Why is the government selling? Has the government become bearish on Bitcoin?"
- "What does the government know that we don't? Have they found some exploit in the protocol? Have they run some study and found that there is no way technically or economically that bitcoin could possibly work?"
- "Has the NSA broken EC already but it is top secret?"
- "Does the government plan on banning Bitcoin?"
- "Are they going to dump their other 500,000 coins?
I'm not saying any of those are true but it might be what is running through certain people's heads which would account for a reduction in new investment which is more significant than the coins themselves being sold.

I understand many of you may object to some, or many, or all of these points, and that is fine... Maybe none of these things are really that significant in the long run. However, that is not my point. They don't have to be that important - just more important than the auction. My entire point is that there are many things that have occured lately that are much more important than the impact of 30K coins hitting that market and at what price these 30K coins are going to be bought. This is an inisificant matter and something like that wouldn't have caused a downward slide this severe and this long. 30K coins are... a mere 0.22% of coins - it is nothing. Get over it. Please stop talking about those coins.

I agree with the post. I think many make threads about it (including me) mainly because of the uncertainty of what might happen. Right now its dropping. Some say it will push the price up, some say down. I am sure when this mess is over (when the winners pay some time in July) and its factored into the price, we will discuss the new issue.

Where did they get the 500k coins?

Yeah, we know.

And all the positive news lately trumps all the negative anyways, including the perceived negativity of the auction. But people are stupid and the bitcoin market is fickle; 30,000 BTC sounds like a scary potential dump to the 17 year-old crypto "traders" around here.

There are silkroad's coins, Ross's personal coins, and also the coins from some other dealer they arrested. It actually might be much more than 500k. Maybe 1M.

Source? I thought it was 140,000

10 batches of roughly 3,000btc each will be auctioned. Totaling 29,657btc. Not sure about the rest.

Potential bidders of those SR coins want to buy them as cheaply as possible. So they are dumping their coins-in-hand on the exchanges, lowering the maximum other bidders are willing to pay. After the last batch of coins is auctioned, bitcoin price will start to rise again.

140,000 is just the site wallet for silkroad users.  Then there is Ross's 400k and about 400k from that dealer which occured more recently.

Nobody is participating in an international market manipulation conspiracy (which might not even be profitable) so that they can acquire 3,000*[1-9] bitcoins from the U.S. Marshall for their investment firm.

are you sure? isn't 30k going for sale now bitcoins from the site wallet and users and 140k is ross ulbricht personal stash?

You know what - I'm not 100% sure. My apologies if it is incorrect. Whatever the total amount is, it is much bigger than 30K. I seem to recall hearing 'The government now owns 5% of bitcoins' somewhere.

The selling pressure is really strong for the past 24 hours, Is it a coincidence?

The auction is just the easiest one to follow
Just hold for a few more days and the auction will be out of the news after the bids list is publicized.
But your right there are more factors and more volume a day than just from the SR auction.

I dont think that the government will auction something before banning it, its like scamming, if they would want to ban bitcoin they had destroyed the coins, what an absurd bear theory.

Actually the selling pressure is not strong. There is a lack of buying pressure. Stamp and finex each have 10K volume and btce has 5K volume. These volume levels are very low. It is more of a reflection of a loss of faith by investors.

I knew that the 25-30k was the hot wallet and the 140 k was personal Ross wallet, where is the source of that claim about 500k coins, you are talking like if ross were satoshi himself  :D

I'm not sure the point of this post. The auction is definitely the current biggest market influencer. All the other stuff is what it is. But its the auction that has everything on hold.

Good points. For the first time, mining centralization is happening and raises very serious questions about bitcoin fundamentals. If we only hit the 51% red zone with Ghash once and dropped back down soon after, this may have not even become a serious concern. But the fact that it keeps happening every few weeks is huge... and nobody has any idea how to stop it from happening. I think we've crossed a line here, and people are only beginning to truly realize it. The auction is just a distraction.

I think the auction is by far the most significant price mover at the moment. It's not because 30k coins is going to increase the supply of coins or the fear that they will be dumped afterwards, but it's more the fact that the interested parties want to lower the price on the exchanges to get a better price on the auction. And because people expect these parties to do this it will almost create a self-fulfilling prophecy already.

AFAIK the 30k is from the Silk Road and there is another other 140k that is from Ross Ulbricht.

This is correct. TERA is just bear trolling like usual.


Also correct. TERA is just bear trolling like usual.

You are the one trolling. This topic has no price prediction attached to it so what does it have to do with 'bear'?

The coins seized from SR wallet are 30k, the ones belonging to Ross are 140,000ish.

There is absolutely no evidence about law enforcement controlling more than that.

You are right, I should have used the words false information with a pinch of FUD, instead of bear.

I see you way too much on this forum for you to not know how many coins there are, and in whose possession. Perhaps you overlooking this will cause you to "get caught" in this bear trap?

EDIT: Also, don't confuse lack of buying pressure with waiting for the right time to buy. If I were the one who pushed the price from 420 to 680 earlier, why not fill in 420 to 680 with more bids and wait for people like you to sell into it, everyone screaming "There is no buy support sell sell sell". Then when I have the coins I need, I stop manipulating. Manipulation is so easy with a market this small, but yet people still use T/A, which only one trend line has yet to break.  The only reason a few people here can profit on trading is because there are so many traders thinking the same thing. Physiological analysis might be the best way to trade this market.

You are technically right there is no buy support. But all the whales are waiting for this auction, and putting the buying on hold. Weak hands get scared and sell, so thats why we are slowly going down.

/rant.

I don't usually post here but there is so much FUD spread in this post I couldn't abstain myself from commenting

The suggestion that the governement is selling coins because somehow they found an exploit in the bitcoin protocol or any of the elements mentionned after is some of the most ridiculous stuff I've had the misfortune to read on this board. Anyone even entertaining these thoughts need to get checked cause something ain't right with their heads

I'm not suggesting that any of those things are true;  I'm suggesting that those types of thoughts have affected the sentiment of buyers. The average investor is very irrational and emotional, and would think that type of thing. See my use of quotation marks in the post.

Yes government does NOT control 970,000 bitcoins.   ::)

There is another dealer they seized a load of coins from. It happened much later than the incident with Ross.

Link?  I can't find it anywhere.

For the past 2 weeks and for probably another week, the news surrounding the auction has had/will have the most impact on the price imo. The 51% attack FUD was just used to amplify the uncertainty and bearishness in general but it is not the main story or a big problem - the same FUD has occured in the past and not had much impact on its own. Also for the moment Stamp is leading the other exchanges and China is following, which suggests that China isn't fearing more government regulations, but this could change at any moment and have a much larger impact on the market depending on what happens.

Who is this other dealer that is being talked about.  Can't find it anywhere on google or coindesk.

Crap. I can't find it either. Sorry. I could have sworn about 2 months ago I read something about how one of the kingpin dealers was busted and about 400,000 coins were seized. Maybe it was fake, or I was dreaming. My apologies if this is the case.

http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/sales.htm

I can't agree with you more. It seems the US government is also consistently bearish on vehicle market, real estate market, and jewelry market

Please try harder.

Can nobody read the quotation marks and comprehend that these ideas are an analysis of market sentiment and are not my own beliefs?

Maybe if you had mentioned some of the positive news stories from recent weeks then you would not be being accused of bear trolling, I can think of a few - and am sure there are more
Expedia accepting bitcoin for hotel bookings - which means I can go the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in August purely using BTC.
Dish accepting Bitcoin (a while ago I admit)
Apple allowing wallets back in the App store
Ebay CEO comments on Bitcoin integration possibility with Paypal.
California Bill that moves to make BTC a legal currency
Coinbase move to allow merchants to offer discounts to those paying with BTC - as well as the top up functionality that allows users to automatically buy back the BTC they spend.

The thread is not about summarizing all recent news events - it is specifically about the significance of the auction and the auction's overestimated relationship to the recent decline.

Who care the sentiment of morons, do you?

Tera`s considerations are good.
the auction is insignificant.
>50% attack is dangereous
and China is not off of bitcoin

So TERA, after watching the price action of the past week, are you still convinced the auction was the least significant price mover?

SR Auction = 30000 coins
Existing coins = 13M

Peoples are nuubcakes.

You understand nothing about markets. It's all psychology. People can be fearful of dumps of those coins if bought cheap, or of manipulation because of the auction and this all affects psychology and thus also the market. You are the noob here.

Well one way or the other
Today is the day they release the results or tomorrow so I hope we can get this over with ^_^
Also assuming its made public

Exactly,these may be few in number relatively but the potential price movements that could be generated by the quality of the bidders and bids accepted are huge. Could define the future of Bitcoin and the ability of average Joe being able to buy, they could be priced out by syndicates and large traders wanting in. So this auction could be a vision to the next couple of years,interesting times

http://coinfire.cf/2014/06/30/breaking-usms-auction-winners-notified/

What we do know now though is that someone won all the Blocks

WE HAVE A SINGLE WINNER
-USMS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The winners and losers of the USMS Bitcoin auction have been notified and the auction has been completed and closed.

At the time of the last update to this entry no one has come forward publicly to announce that they were the winner of all blocks of the auction.

Prior to the coins being moved a verified source with the USMS who wishes to remain anonymous stated to Coin Fire, “It is really important that we get this 100% right. We have to verify that they aren’t tied to any sort of criminal activity, we have to verify we have the money from the wire transfer. If we send the coins we understand we will have no way to reverse the transaction so every step is being taken.”

At approximately 3:39PM EDT coins contained in the USMS controlled wallet: 1Ez69SnzzmePmZX3WpEzMKTrcBF2gpNQ55 moved to a new destination address of: 1a8LDh3qtCdMFAgRXzMrdvB8w1EG4h1Xi

even at it's peak Chinese volume was never over 10-20% worldwide.

Even at its peak there were huge hoops to be jumped through, it's barely ever been mentioned in the news in China.

Bunch of people who've never been there thinking they're experts on China

Guess I'll update from previous
We now know the identity of that sole winner is Tim Draper
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/02/vc-tim-draper-is-sole-winner-of-u-s-bitcoin-auction/

Mr. Draper was part of a group that included Battery Ventures and former AOL chief executive Steve Case that invested $4 million in Vaurum in May. The company went through the VC accelerator program Boost VC, run by Mr. Draper’s son, Adam Draper.

Mr. Draper won the auction independently, Mr. Bhama said. He is not only an investor, he is a customer of Vaurum as well, which is where the coins will be held. “Our partnership will allow us to use the coins to provide liquidity to our exchanges in emerging markets,” Mr. Bhama said.

Well everything pretty much points out at the fact that the Silk Road auction WAS in fact the most significant price mover.