Bitcoin Forum

How is it made the Bitcoin price?

How is it possible in a so called decentralized market, where the exchangers are(should be) independent entities, ALL of them to have the same price when they certainly don't have a "the same" order book(same clients, same orders) ? How is that come?

Can someone explain ?

All of them dont have the same price. That is why arbitrage occurs. Arbitrage brings the price close, but not same.

I asked similar question on July , you can see the answers here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1123803.0 It should help you out to understand how it works .

without a "central" committee that decide price and make right and properly decision, only people "set" the right value.
It's like "far west"... you can also sell 1 btc for 10k $ or 1$ by convention I think best price is from preev.com

becaue the demand somehow, will auto-adjust on every exchange, so you get roughtly the same price

simple example is this a random guy running a bot for trading, sees that the demand is higher in another exchange, he will not sell anymore at the same price as before

They have similar prices (1-2 usd plus or minus).... :)  Why?

Not all exchanges have same price, so far haven't seen any that have exact prices but they tend to always be close together as they follow the price in real time, perhaps just matter of which one of price charts they follow for base but there are the so call manipulators in which make different in the prices as one would trade it for more or less in value and if it happens to be a large amount then they also tend to manipulate the whole market by affecting Bitcoin price itself.

Correct but each exchanger has completely different orders(big, small), the number of orders are not the same too.
Example:
OKcoin claims to have a volume of 50,718.58   BTC
Bitstamp : 32347 BTC

Even so, their price is ALMOST similar. OKcoin = 369,7 USD  and Bitstamp 370 USD

The price should be made by sell and buy orders.  Remember, we are taking about "independent" companies and not a cartel. What kind of coincidence is that one exchanger to have the same kind of orders with other exchanger from other part of the world, DAILY?

most exchanges are following china and that results in the prices being nearly the same except a few exchanges where the difference can be $5-$10 and some times even more than that. different exchanges have different traders, so the price may be a bit different. that allows us to buy up the cheaper coins there, and sell them at the other exchange where the price is fairly higher. it's called arbitrage trading. i have done it a few times by buying at btc-e and selling on bitstamp.

there is different liquidity in each exchange, different level of tx fees... withdrawal to some country and not to some other... or manage a fiat and not another...

Because if one exchange had bitcoin worth 200$ and other had bitcoin worth 500$ then everyone would go to the first one buy bitcoins there and then go to the second one and sell for 500, giving 300$ profit for every bitcoin for free. There is no way that's going to happen, I mean why would someone sell bitcoins for 200$ if he knows there is a place where he can sell for 500$?

Everyone is making it thought a constant influx of buying and selling, now the question is who is manipulating it, well, the massive fud campaign by Mike Hearn and his r3 friends are the big responsibles of the price debacle recently. But we will recover, no doubt about this, and stronger than ever we will come back.

sometimes bad exchange could give a better price than other...
well when you see a good difference...and this difference is too good....turn around and go away ;)

bitcoin users, with their selling/buying, or when they panic, also china changes bitcoin price, and bitcoin spreading around world

 We are all making the price, its a combination from sellers and buyers that makes the market price, its like any market price.
The bitcoin is unstable if there will be a big amount sold to another one the price will sure get higher.

Mostly, it's because bitcoin users, and their panic, then they'll sell/buy bitcoins for funny prices

The value of the bitcoin depends on its usage. If it is used by many people, the value will be high. But the price will change a lot.

I think that China changes price of bitcoin for sure, then  of course supply and demand, more people wants to buy bitcoin, price rises, people sells it, price falls, and things like halving rises price too

Yeah I do agree china does play a vital role.

Just hope to god that one of those exchanges for china dont end up like being a mt.gox situation though. Thats the last thing we need..

so, there is a cartel of exchangers, right? otherwise, the price cannot be ALMOST the same ( few dollars difference) :)

It is made by supply and demand capacity, if more supply and slow demand = price dump, if more demand and low supply = price goes up

that means all the big exchangers(5-6) should have the same demand because their prices are almost the same which is IMPOSSIBLE !

it's an unregulated market, remember? so, one exchanger may have 100 orders for buy and none for sell and other 1000 for sell and 10 for buy.

buyers and seller for small exchange usually regulate themselves on the base of other big exchange, so for example if they see a bigger value in the other exchange, they increase their buy orders and so on

And also whales and chinese miners are manipulating the price of bitcoin in the market,if you see a boom in the price well they made it.

This doesn't mean that the big exchanges should have the same demand, no.

If exchange A has 100 buy orders and no sells, and exchange B has 1000 sell orders and no buys, then the rational thing for me to do is buy at exchange B and sell at exchange A. I could even make a decent profit off this, though in practice it wouldn't last - the buyers at exchange A would get wise to my activities and would lower their bids, and the sellers at exchange B would raise their asks.

Exchanges don't operate in isolation, even in an "unregulated" market - they regulate each other, through the actions of arbitrageurs and other traders. Indeed, one of the arguments against regulation is that it tends to hinder these self-regulatory processes.

which makes the price of bitcoin is the bitcoin users themselves. bitcoin increasingly used for financial transactions will raise the value of bitcoin. it is very convenient, widely used bitcoin bitcoin will keep the price high. otherwise if the user is using bitcoin, the smaller is the price of bitcoin on the exchange market.

The user affect to the price of bitcoin is quite small but the majority of price movement which a sudden jump from 10-100$ add in value of bitcoin i caused by whales.

Yes,whales are really the main source why the price of bitcoin can suddenly jump to a high price or go down rapidly.

the exchanger's robots are the ones who are manipulating the price. just like MTgox did it. :)

same "Willy bot"  ;D

As far as i know its depends in trading and exchange site and its depends in demand and supply that makes the price low or high..
If more supply from the market and less demand the price should be low...

People who have the most bitcoin are the ones that are making the price. If they decide to hold, then the price holds or goes up. If they decide to sell, they lower the price.

people themselves are making it right now because it depends on the selling and buying offers only and nothing else

to be honest thats why i like bitcoin that much, i believe that its really good that people can control the price and not banks or governments

thats true, its a bit sad for me to see that the price right now is controlled by the ones who have a lot of money and can have impact

pretty same system is right now with banks as ordinary people can not have any impact on currency prices

We are making it by ourselves, we are buying and selling and we all together are making the price.
You also got traders and all kind of people that have influence on the bitcoin price itself by selling and buying like every other currency.

In a word... ARBITRAGE.

Less than 1% of the traders control the entire Bitcoin price. The average traders can only impact the price by massively panic buying/selling. If it isn't with big numbers, there will be no impact on the price from regular people.

Honestly I dont see anyone doing this arbitrage.

Unless they have a friend overseas or something with the china exchanges and for one can collaberate to sell back to u.s markets.

Selling one market to the next is harder then it sounds.

this view is a bit skewed. but intially the right view just not as accurate as you made it sound to be.

If people who have the most bitcoin sold all their coins then yeah. But when other buyers who have the same ability to buy w. a same purchasing power who isnt involved in bitcoin makes a buy order it matches their supply.

So intially if they do sell it wouldnt effect the price since the other same big buy order matches up to it.

for the price of BTC to stop being so "volatile" it needs at least some more Billions USD in market cap, at 6 billion it is still a small market.

even now china manipulate bitcoin price but i think they not full control bitcoin market at least trader from china can't settle price.

when 10 million poeple hit buy with 12$ they lose control instantly.
there is no "control" over markets, best you can really do is short term manipulation with a good chance of getting fucked.

its supply demand and Speculation

Speculation has the most impact on moondollars price
first its a money and all monies only have value because everyone believe they do ( this is pure speculation )
second its not clear what is a "uᴉoɔʇᴉq",  digital gold? settlement layer?  digital cash? what is it? how knows!  ( this is pure speculation )
third its pretty clear the uᴉoɔʇᴉq ecosystem has not fully matured and the exception is that it will get better and better  ( this is pure speculation )
speculation is the driving force behind moondollars price.
and supply demand is actually a function of speculation, poeple speculate moondollars will hold value and so they use it to transact.

millions of poeple Speculating.

I think it is harder than it used to be. But I know people who do it every day. As you point out, some markets like China are hard to get into and when you partner up with someone abroad you have to share profits. Still, no money is ever left on the table for long.
A few years ago there were big differences in price between exchanges and arbitrage was a lot more common.

well, there is an exchanger cartel. The biggest ones agreed to collaborate each other and here we are. It is the same BTC price despite the fact that BTC is NOT a centralized market. IT IS NOT possible a such thing while there is not any central authority. :)

example : Coinbase  and Bistamp are very tightly coupled. They have the same shareholders :)

Look to ALL the biggest exchangers and you will see a similar price even it's from Singapore, China, USA or Europe... HOW IS it possible if there is no cartel?

All forex is decentralised. Try buying GBP in Singapore, China, the USA or Europe and you'll see a similar price.

The reason prices are similar is due to arbitrage: if 1 GBP costs less in Singapore than it does in China, arbitrageurs will buy GBP in Singapore and sell it in China. The same thing happens with BTC.

I'm not saying that there isn't a cartel operating, I really don't don't know. But this isn't evidence of it.

i think that people themselves make the bitcoin price and no governments can have any decent impact on the price and it is a really good thing to be honest that it is not centralized

i think that bitcoin is a really good currency because of the decentralization aspect as it cannot be impacted in a bad way and people can be their own banks when it comes to bitcoin

The forex companies are regulated. They are financial licensed, a gov authority supervise them.

Let's take the first 5 exchangers:

Okcoin = where is regulated? Nowhere! Even China or HK requires a financial license for their activity
BTC China =  same as above
Huobi  = same as above
BTC-e = they don't even have an address on their website. they claim to be registered in Cyprus (EU). EU requires a license for their activity
Bitfinex = they claimed to be registered in BVI which requires a financial license for their activity.
Kraken = unlicensed money transmitter in USA. It's a matter of time until the feds will close it down.

So, these are the companies who "control" Bitcoin.

 Bitcoin exchangers are coordinate their prices across continental divides. One goes down – they all go down. The question is why the public tolerates their scam.

The exchanges’ arbitrage-bots equalize prices between one another. IT's NOT NORMAL in a DEcentralized market as Bitcoin.

They’re hoping no-one will notice, and suckers will just keep depositing bitcoins in their vulnerable, corruptible coffers. Proof-of-solvency., Proof-of-reserve. Proof-of-existence, Proof or the bank wires in and out...where are all these? :)

Normally this would be the case, but many others, me included, think that the price is somehow manipulated by a group of whales. They try to move the price up when they feel ti's time for a so called pump and dump scheme.

The market solves that problem via arbitrage. To paraphrase Adam Smith, individuals working for their own profit serve the public good (stable, accurate markets in this case).

Consider this: If one exchange is selling for $400 and one for $425, which would you buy in? Which would you sell in? The supply/demand equation balances out across exchanges because people seek the best deal. Sometimes, however, there actually is a difference which creates an (often short-lived) opportunity for investors who seek to make a profit buying on one exchange and selling on the other. This, of course, puts pressure on the prices to equalize.

As I mentioned in my previous post. Actual arbitrage is not necessary to equalize prices across exchanges. People looking to buy seek the lowest price and people looking to sell seek the highest, which equalizes supply and demand across exchanges.

the act of arbitrage:

Let's say Alice sees that at Exchange A the price of bitcoin is $410 per bitcoin

Let's say Alice also sees that at exchange B the price of bitcoin is $600 per bitcoin.

Alice now goes to her bank, withdraws $5000 and buys $5000 worth of bitcoin at exchange A, because her buy created a bit more demand at exchange A, the price rose a little bit to $430 per bitcoin, and Alice now has about 11.5 bitcoin.

Alice now sends the 11.5 bitcoin to exchange B, where she sells them. Because of the sudden increase in supply at exchange B, the price at exchange B drops a little, but she still manages to make $6500 from selling 11.5 bitcoin, the price is now at $550 at Exchange B

Alice sends the dollars to exchange A and repeats the process.

Eventually the price between the exchanges will be so close together that the fees would cost too much for alice to profit (i left out the fees in this example).

Basically, people like alice in this example make money from trading between exchanges, but usually it's done by bots because humans can't do it fast enough often.



It's not the goal to equalize exchanges, t's the result of arbitrage.

The goal is to make profit.

Again, "I'm not saying that there isn't a cartel operating, I really don't don't know. But this isn't evidence of it."

It doesn't matter (for this purpose) whether or not the exchanges are regulated - if you buy GBP OTC on the streets of Rangoon from an unregulated money-changer the price will still be similar to the price you'd pay from a fully regulated exchange in New York or Paris (possibly slightly higher OTC to compensate the money-changer for the risk their taking, but not that much higher because otherwise people in Myanmar would buy their GBP from a regulated money-changer, or register with an exchange in Thailand (I dunno if this is possible, or there's even much Burmese demand for GBP - this is an example. Substitute countries of your choice, but the quest for profit remains, and it's that that leads to arbitrage and drives prices towards equilibrium).

This is what we would expect to see. With GBP, with USD, with BTC. When we do see it, it's expected. It's not evidence of a cartel operating.

Again again, there may well be a cartel operating. But price-similarity is not the smoking gun.

"Arbitrage-bots" are entirely normal in decentralized markets like forex. We may not like it, but the days of buying GBP in Britain and sending a telegram to a friend in the US to get them to "simultaneously" sell GBP in another country - those days are over. This can be - and has been - automated.

the arbitrage can exists on a regulate market. the fiat currencies are backed by a Central Bank. The forex companies MUST be licensed, they are verified, audited and so on.

Bitcoin maket is unregulated and so the most of the exchangers. Once, a company is not verified, it can do what ever it wants on an unregulate market.

You cannot compare the real forex market with the Bitcoin market where 90% is black market and shady exchangers

what real arbitrage can exist when ALL the big exchangers are using the Willy bot (same as MTgox) ? I think the chinesse exchangers have 80% less volume than the volume they show on their website. This is called price manipulation not arbitrage.

Willy bot increases the volume so that the potential clients to see how "big" is that exchanger and how many clients it has AND to manipulate the price for the exchanger interest too

in fact, the market is very low but the price manipulation remains.

Arbitrage can indeed exist in regulated markets. It can exist in all decentralized markets. It can even exist with centralized markets - stock prices from bucket shops during the Great Depression were the same - or very similar - to stock prices from licensed stock brokers.

Unlicensed OTC money-changers aren't licensed. Buy foreign currency on the street anywhere in the developing world and the chances are near 100% you won't be buying from a licensed money-changer. Yet mysteriously they'll charge prices similar to the prices charged by licensed exchanges.

Arbitrage has been around since forever. It existed long before governments started regulating and licensing foreign exchange.

I fail to see why some (unregulated) exchanges using bots prevents people engaging in arbitrage. There used to be a Google Docs spreadsheet showing BTC arbitrage opportunities - people used it, despite the exchanges being less regulated than today. They made money. I have no reason to think that people have stopped chasing profit, that they've stopped arbing.

Price manipulation occurs to a greater or lesser extent in all markets. It doesn't prevent arbitrage happening. If the price on one exchange is lower than another exchange, or I can buy something cheaper OTC than I could on an exchange - it will be profitable for me to buy while simultaneously selling on the second exchange. Price manipulation doesn't matter to me while I do this. Neither does volume, fake or otherwise. All that matters is the difference between the buy price and the sell price - the profit I make.

Again, "I'm not saying that there isn't a cartel operating, I really don't don't know. But this isn't evidence of it."

This is like you seeing Malory MalIntent breaking into my house one night, and the following day I wake up, realise I've been robbed, see that the sky is blue, and think to myself "The sky is blue. That's totally unexpected, therefore Malory MalIntent must have been the burglar." People are not going to think there is a scam in operation when what they're seeing is exactly what they'd expect to see.

you didn't say anything about fake volumes and price manipulation what results from that. :)

definitely us, who uses and collecting bitcoins, companies, gambling and exchange sites.
its us holders,who is making the price of bitcoin.if we bitcoin holders decided to hold our bitcoins and no one will gonna sell any amount of it, im sure the price of bitcoin will reach on its highest price.

Arbitrage does not require bots and CAN in fact be done legally on regulated FOREX exchanges. Arbitrage is not some shady manipulation tactic, it's a healthy, beneficial part of efficient markets.

again, you are talking about a regulated forex market with a real arbitrage. Bitcoin is not...Bitcoin is full of unknown exchangers who are manipulating the price via bots as they want. I am referring to the biggest ones. There is a cartel of 5-6 big exchangers.

Now, tell me that OKcoin who "owns" 90% from the BTC market ...it's for real; no bots, no fake transactions, no fake volume. :)

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

If there are fake transactions and fake volumes that means there is HUGE price manipulation which is "somehow" illegal  ::)

But, again, there may well be price manipulation - but price similarity between exchanges is not evidence of it.

And no, I'm not talking about a (solely) regulated forex market - I'm talking about a global forex market where many exchanges (in particular) are licensed and regulated, and many OTC money-changers may well not be.

There is no difference between arbitrage in a regulated market and arbitrage in a non-regulated market. If the price at one location is lower than the price at another location - it is profitable to engage in arbitrage, regardless of volume (fake or otherwise), regardless of the licensed/unlicensed status of the exchange, regardless of the regulations in place.

I could create two shady exchanges, AlphaExchange and ExchangeBeta. Neither are licensed or regulated. I fake the volume. You see a price of $450 per 1 BTC on AlphaExchange and a price of $455 per 1 BTC on ExchangeBeta - you realise you can make money if you simultaneously buy on Alpha and sell on Beta. In doing this you create demand on Alpha (pushing the price up), and you create supply on Beta (pushing the price down) - the prices on the two exchanges move towards each other. Both exchanges remain unlicensed, unregulated, and are (since they're secretly controlled by me and I'm up to all kinds of naughtiness behind the scenes) a cartel of two exchanges.

Honestly, this is not the smoking gun you seem to think it is. No one in the real world will look at this and assume that there is a cartel - even if there is. People will assume that this is normal - even if price manipulation is occurring.

We are all making it and it depends also on the people how much Bitcoin they use because that is also important for the currency itself, and that people are also making it more acceptable.
But as you can see now you see that the value is rising slowly and that is because more people will also get to know about it.

The value is primarily determined by investors and bots moving the value back and forth, and the occasional groups of people buying Bitcoin in large amounts.

The halving, and the implied 50% reduction in supply, will also change the value over a period of time after the halving itself, and not necessarily immediately. The cheaper coins will have to be sold and cycled through so that miners can start selling their coins for their cost-covering price.

We are making it, its like any other stocking, the price is based on the sellers and buyers and people that have invested.
Most likely if the bitcoin will get bigger the price will also rise if they also invest.

The price is really based on demand and supply, but it is also based on miners. If we don't have miners this coin would be dead.

Yes price is directly proportional to demand, but it is determined by big whales, and their big walls can
encourage us to buy or to sell, plus they speculate on major social network so that is how price is created..
Demand is only used by whales for hype.

The big walls and also the tight spread is good for buying or selling. You do not lose a lot of money during the trading.

Do you really think this high value per bitcoin can still be manipulated by a single person? It might be possible if it was Bill gates or the Rothschild family.

it can be manipulated by a cartel of exchangers and IT IS.

The so called "whales" are few. The price is made by 4-5 exchangers :)

There are many whales.
4-5 exchanges cannot control the majority of the bitcoin trading volume.

Yes, they can. Example: OKCOIN controls 90% from all the exchanges(volume) and along with Bistamp, Coinbase, Bitfinex and BTC China, control 99%. It's so easy to manipulate the price with the bots :)

We ourselves are making it so that is a good question but its also simple to answer it, we are making the bitcoin it its now.
The price is coming from selling and buying the bitcoin itself.

Yes, this is the way in a normal market. All the exchangers are using trading bots who are making a lot of fake transactions so that it appear to have a lot of customers. What you don't see, it's the IN and OUT transactions. None of these exchangers are showing them. Why? :)

Remember how MTGox manipulated the whole market with their Willy bot and it only owned 75% at that time.... Okcoin has 90% :)

Live Bitcoin prices are based on either the minimum or maximum value of the bBitcoin price.

I think that some sites simply try to compete with others to get the best Bitcoin price whilst still making a profit.

Sites like YObit sell bitcoins at a cheaper rate as they are just an exchange to allow for an escrow between the buyers and sellers.
Sites like Coinbase have higher prices as they are more trusted and won't (or at least shouldn't) run away withyour Bitcoins as they are more trustworthy.

It's almost the same. it's not half from Coinbase and others.

No one is making it there is a whole solution behind it but I do not know what the reason is why the prices are changing. Can someone explain it I am sure that someone here knows the answer to it.

I believe everything happens in accordance to the technology that runs the entire system based upon the user profiles and the usability.

the price is made by the exchanger's cartel with the help of their BOTS :)

I do believe that the major Chinese exchanges are heavily involved in the mining industry and thus will not allow the market to crash to certain very low levels. BTCChina is well known for also having a mining pool, but Huobi and OKCoin are also having big interests in Chinese pools, but more behind the scenes.

Arbitage trading always occur due to this factor and it is simple concept like nobody will be willing to sell their coin in less that the market value. So i think those price are not made my exchanger, it is determined by all traders while as some whales can manipulate the price easily with their money.

no control bitcoin, so that I think all users bitcoin makes prices move, and this is just my opinion :)

No one is making the Bitcoin price is is decided by allot of other things I do not know about. There are some people here on this forum that know precisely how the prise works and stuff.

the exchangers are making the price by using the bots as Mtgox did it in the past. it's so simple :)

likely that makes the price is whales of bitcoin. because most only those who can make and move prices.

You should have more confidence in the technology, the applications and the adoption in the society.
Bitcoin is not just speculation and trading.

Bitcoin has actual usage. Thousands of shops, physical and eshops, and e-services, accept Bitcoin. OpenBazaar. Steam. (The two latter big ones, just this month.) Debit cards (Visa/Mastercard, filled with Bitcoins, edited by Coinbase, Spectrocoin, e-coin etc.) And much more.

Yes, there are bi challenges for Bitcoin in the near and in the more distant future, and it has to respond. But I think it's here to stay and evolve.

Are you sure? there are a lot of exchanges and a lot of people that have an interest in exchange or mining, it's difficult a "trust" behind it...

there are only 5-6 big exchangers and these ones are forming a cartel(example: Bitstamp and Coinbase are twin brothers; same shareholders). they are using bots too.
The small exchangers are taking the price from the biggest ones . :)

it's so simple to manipulate the price.

That could be true, the price at the Chinese exchanges are around $590, but the bitstamp and coinbase are just $520.

Chinese manipulators will do first some every pump scene in their respective exchanges. Then they will try to give another move as well on other exchanges.

If others will eat the bait and it really shake up the price then that's what you called a succesfull manipulation even for a short period of time. Look at the recent pri

simple - maybe, but it sure isnt cheap. volume on chinese exchanges is something that definitely should not be taken seriously, but the price is something else.
the pump in price may be artificial, but it cant stay high for long if there's nothing backing up the trust people have by not selling. If you can sell at that price, it aint fake.

We are all making the price, its a combination from sellers and buyers that makes the market price, its like any market price. The bitcoin is unstable if there will be a big amount sold to another one the price will sure get higher.

That is right. Although I do not sell the bitcoin directly, when I use the bitcoin, it is sold by the retailers.

I began to think that bitcoin prices fall or rise depending on the users, if they sell bitcoin cheaply, perhaps its price will go down, and if we sell them at high prices, maybe the price will rise

Literally that is the common reason.

To make the price move for an increase, it needs a large amount of buy volume.

Same goes for the price decrease, it needs a large amount of sell volume.

Yeah thats right chief ,and the fact that everyday there are more investors gaining and buying bitcoins ,we can expect more of this will come after the end of halving.

so what for you all tell to us because a trader already know if large amount of buy volume the price would rise and if large amount of sell volume the price would goes down.

actually there is many reasons why price changes and we can't tell them all because sometimes they are very random, but some small ones are like when steam accepts bitcoins, this makes price larger

and supply and demand of course, if more people wants them, and buys them then price will rise of course and if nobody will buy them then price will fall down, price dump

This is a very interesting topic, unfortunately there are much low-quality posts.

The reason for existing a "unanimous" price across exchanges is in fact the result of arbitrage, but not only.

But why does the price move? Why does there even exist a price for a digital "good" like Bitcoin? That's the interesting question.

There are many influences:
- The prices in the past. People get a "feeling" where the price "should be" when they see the current or past price movements. That's the same thing like when you say, "a coffee must cost 2 dollars". (more precisely, "a dollar is half of a coffee")
- Future expectations. Many people hope that Bitcoin will be worth more, so they think the price could go up and buy when they see a "good opportunity". That drives the price up. Similarly, "bears" can drive the price down. The balance between these two forces is determined by the "sentiment" - it can be positive or negative.
- Large market participants. That's what some are referring as "the cartel". I don't think there is ONE cartel, but there are definiely large players that try to influence the price with their own buys and sells.
- Real world usage. The more participants the Bitcoin community has, the higher the price.
- Speculation and technical analysis. Speculators try to find patterns and react to it, driving the price up or down.
- Newly generated supply from miners. The significance is low (mined coins make up about 1 to 3 % of all sold coins), but it exists.

These are only a few factors, but I think they're the most important.The problem is that it's difficult to predict how they work together. So there is no "safe" way of guessing the "right price" or a "price trend", but you can make estimations mainly based on the "sentiment".

remenber MT Gox's  Willy bot :)  fake transactions, fake volume. MTgox had over 75% from market at that time; China has over 90% at this time :)

But we all know the Chinese market volume is fake. So the bitcoin price will not be affected by it any more.

Honestly we are self making the price also, the fact is that its based on buying and selling like any other investing if you ask me.

You are right about that and I think that its gonna rise more and more this year due to the publicity.
We ourselves can also let the bitcoin rise again!

There are more media exposure now about the bitcoin. And most of the exposure are positive about bitcoin.

I would consider Mt Gox's "Willy" as an example for the "large market participants" I mention as one factor in the last post. In this case, its influence on the price was extreme because of MtGox's extreme market domination. The actual situation is much more balanced. It's true that Chinese exchanges have a large market share of the trading volume, but that is mainly because they charge zero fees and traders can earn profits with minimal price swings via trading bots.

But the Willy example shows that bots have another interesting property: They "can get weird". This is not limited to Bitcoin: in fact, the big stock market crash of 1987 was partly caused by trading bots (which were then in its infancy). The issue is that these bots sometimes act in a manner they are not more functional to their owners because of bad programming.

So we could say, as an addition to my post from last week, that: the more trading bots are active in a cryptocurrency market, the more irrationaly the price can behave.

I think the Chinese are making the bitcoin price. The price rose a lot today and it started in China again.

All people had contribution for this price rally up because many people now prefer to hold thats why we can see big rally of bitcoin price also their no doubt we can see upward trend since halvinf is not yet done it can go for more than we expected,maybe chinese people held their btc for more now knowing they had the biggest hashpower in btc industry and they can be a great factor if they will dump their coins surely the price will down also

i think the FOMO is making the price. it is currently at $631. back on May 26 - just a few days ago - it was $450 ie up 40% . When it goes up at that sort of rate it is because the whales have got the ball rolling and now everyone else feels the need to rush in. the willy bot got the ball rolling back in the mt gox days but it was the FOMO that took it to $1000.

Yeah, the halving event hype make people think that they can profit if they will do a huge amount of panic buy before event. But this might just be a bubble too because many people is thinking of selling what they bought after halving, so it will dump the coin's value.

Yes that was the main reason halving = thinking of profit also this factor adds a big price to the bitcoin price because many are buying of bitcoins its just.like trading more buyers the price rise panic selling makes the price dumps.

Its really help if they are huge buying bitcoins right now and we will see the price will increase bitcoin right now is indemand thats why the price is increase even block halving is too far.. but some people are satisfied what prices today and selling some of their bitcoin so that they can still make few profit.. and the bitcoin price will reduce. did you notice the price today its reduce a little bit i think few usd but more people are still believe and buying thats why the price today is increase again..
This is always depends of supply and demand. if we all people are not selling their bitcoin and buying bitcoin just holding it.. we don't not see price increase it will stable or instead it will reduce because of the miners increase the amount of bitcoin all whole world..

I just want the slow buying of the bitcoin. I just need the price to rise 10% a month. If it is too high, it will drop.

We users of bitcoins aaaaaaaaaaaaand.... *drum roll* the big whales of chinese!

Thats right, chinese has the most hold market cap. of bitcoin. Check this out https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/analysis/USD

Bitcoin price makes people and that is becasue there are allot of people who are just holding their coins and that is bad for the price rising so you should better spent them that will rise the price.

As you can just think normally we are making the price it all depends about how many we trow our coins away to buy things or are we just holding that makes the price.

people themselves only make the bitcoin price in my opinion because governments cannot have any serious impact on it

If the government declares the bitcoin illegal or make a big tax on it, the price of bitcoin will drop a lot.

keep dreaming about that.

remember: fake volumes = fake price = price manipulation

https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/reminder-chinese-bitcoin-spot-exchanges-okcoin-and-huobi-are-faking-a-majority-of-their-trading-volume-t6701.html

I am making the price.

Most of the volume for the current rally we are in is coming directly from China under the CNY pairing to Bitcoin. I believe this is more speculation based on the halving and the real price after the dust settles is still unknown.

No matter what is the reason behind the massive price increase, whether it be the Chinese bulk buying or the effects of halving, the beneficer is surely  the person who has bitcoins with him and therefore he/she may get profits from it.

That is right. So it is better for us to buy some bitcoin as well to benefit from the price rise. I think the price will rise further.

And just save a lot of BTC from now on so therefore we could somehow affect the bitcoin price.
If someone owe a large % of BTC he/she could affect the price in many ways, if the capital was 21M BTC a person need atleast 21k BTC and he or she will become the most fortunate person in the world.

No, 21k btc is still small, you need to have atleast 1m million btc volume to be able to pump or dump the bitcoin from 10%

The bitcoin prise and who is making it i dont think there is just some one making the prices we are all making the price because we are selling and buying bitcoins.

Even though we do some trades, we are too small fish. Only the big whales can influence the price and they have the skills.

Most importantly, the whales have the funds to manipulate the market. So for me, I just follow them.

We ourselves are making the price together the people that buy/sell and hold the bitcoin are making the price.
Another part is also making the price a sort of and that is the miners.

Eventhough where small fish in btc industry we still contribute to the rotation of it in the market thats why i can say the one who making the bitcoins price is we all the users and stakers because of us we can make the price go soar high or die.

But big whales can contribute big since they have large amount btc in their pocket That can cause dump if they sell or pump if theyd buy.

i think that largest thing that moves bitcoin price is supply and demand of course, as more bitcoins people will want to buy - higher the price will be of course

and also things like halving moves price of bitcoins, steam started to accept bitcoins so it moved price a little bit too, but these things don't move price that much as supply and demand

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You can also use Paypal to transfer money into/from Coinbase to deal with bitcoin. It will increase user base.

We are making it, the bitcoin has a great future so it will go higher, investors and sellers/spenders are making the price.
See it as a stock market if its going well and a lot of people buy the bitcoin it will rise.

I think the bitcoin price will rise a lot because more and more people will use it. The price is proportional to usage.

you are right. the more people who use and need bitcoin, then the price of bitcoin will further increase. besides if you have a lot of bitcoin, you might make bitcoin prices down, but it would be very difficult to make it up. so I feel that bitcoin prices will always go up, because the longer the bitcoin users will be more and more, and it will definitely affect the price

The price of the bitcoin depends on the usage. When more people use it to buy things, the price will rise.

the questions remain":

" How is it possible in a so called decentralized market, where the exchangers are(should be) independent entities, ALL of them to have the same price when they certainly don't have a "the same" order book(same clients, same orders) ? How is that come? "

I saw many example when the chinesse exchangers dropped or raised the price and all the exchangers did the same without any valid justification. Their orderbook was the same.

The price is artificially created not by users but the exchangers according to their interests.

thats true, the more people use bitcoins the bigger price is, in my opinion we will make some good money out of all the price growths in the future because only people move the price

Do you know what is arbitrage. Someone make money by buying on the exchange with smaller price and selling on the exchange with bigger price, until prices are the same. There are a lot of bots doing  arbitrage.

The markets react simply. If one sees that the value of a commodity has dropped somewhere by X%, he/she might want to sell on a different exchange as well to follow the global trend.

Nevertheless, in general I see a 20$ lower price on BTC-e compared to e.g. Bitstamp at pretty much all times. Trends are usually the same, that is true, however, I think it is just the reaction of the global market.

Probably, but let me post a simple example, if you see two, three taxis,etc  on your way parked waiting for your chords, you give a look first to see which you decide, based on state of the unit, driver, price, etc...
next; you already carry an expected rate than they can overcharge you, so if any of them wants to charge more than you expect you'd go to the next just to see if you find comfortable according to what you expect to pay, somehow taxi drivers have to undergo even set price otherwise they will lose customers. I guess a similar thing could happens in the exchanges.

I don't know is right or not but i think the price is making by demand it's mean if demand increases the price will rise and when the demand decrease the price will down.

It's about supply and demand, just like stocks. If people are positive they will want to buy more bitcoin then people are willing to sell, thus the price will go up.

yeah, the more people use it and the more they buy it the price increases over time, in my opinion we will be able to make some good money in the future with it

This is in a normal situation, but we can all agree there are some extra factors/parties who make or manipulate the price.
The group of whales who own a lot of bitcoins (probably large mining pools like bitmain and discus fish) have a lot of interest to control the price.

Without them pumping the price, their million dollar mining rigs would be vanished.

bots like Willy bot who is making fake transactions. all the exchangers are making a lot of fake transactions so the price is manipulated in this way. the orderbooks are far from reality. it's a fact and ALL the big exchangers are using it. why? because the appearance of  many transactions, is attracting clients who are thinking that x or y exchanger is big or well known.

if the exchanger are so transparent why don't they publish the incoming and outgoing bank wires? :)

What do you think of the huge volumes in some of the Chinese exchanges? The volumes there are so big.

everyone in this world are the main bitcoin price movement. bitcoin prices are influenced from the many users of bitcoin. because bitcoin demand factors that can have an impact raising the price of bitcoin.

The bitcoin price is determined ultimately by the mass adoption. As long as there is good adoption, the price will rise.

No it is not. It is determined by supply and demand. More buyers means a buy increase, less buyers means price decrease.
Adoption at this moment is not even close of influencing the price.

i think you are right about it and im really happy that bitcoin price is dependent on all of us and i think that it will grow a lot in the future because of that

We ,bitcoin users and holders are making the price of bitcoin.if everyone of us make a sell then bitcoin will go down,and when there is a massive buying bitcoin will increase.

thats true, as long as people are into bitcoins and they want to buy it the price is going to grow a lot and it is a really great thing for me

well in short it depends only on people and nothing else, and that is really great that no governments or banks can tell people what price of bitcoin is

Mass adoption will only influence the price when these people start with actually purchasing themselves some coins instead of looking for free ways to earn some dust. We need people with money and the will to start take a small stake in Bitcoin.

Even having people work for Bitcoin does help to move the market upwards, as long as they aren't selling it immediately after they earn it. The scarcity that comes from people owning Bitcoin does help to drive the value up somewhat, but you are right, having more people with money come and start to buy Bitcoin does help to move the value up far more than people working for it.

All of the buyers and seller are distributed in almost all of the available exchanges and the supply and demand remain constant on each of them, whenever the demand is increased on a particular exchange then its price increases and then the buyers search for other exchanges and then a demand increases at there also and so on, with that all of the prices of all exchanges come closer.

The same happen with the sellers they search for those places where the price go higher and with that the suppliers are distributed on every exchange.

It seems that some whales are pushing the price down atm.

It is also time for people to pay rent, taxes and everything else that happens monthly, so something like this happening makes sense. This kind of thing happens every month, followed by a bull run up to either where the value used to be or higher. According to the charts, that is.

I'd just wait, it should go back up soon.

well the price kinda is being dumped by the whales now but i think it is good that people themselves control the price because it gives more freedom

whats the point for the whales to push the price down? in my opinion people themselves are selling coins not only big owners of bitcoins though we cannot do anything about it

There are some whales who wish they knew how to use trading. The drop appears to me and I've wondered why someone would sell a huge quantity of coins in a market order, thereby drive the price down, and fail to get top dollar for their coins vs taking more times to liquidate them as a steady price.

The bitcoin price drop just means there are not enough funding in the crypto currency world. People are more interested in Ethereum now.

that is nonsense.
this is just a normal drop as always. have you even had a look at bitcoin price chart like ever?
this kinds of drop or rise are common with bitcoin, i am not saying it is going to stop here or even drop more but if you look at the history this much drop has been happening forever.

Whales usually... Price will stay high unless they got bored and when they do, it will be a bloodbath. They keep the price high and make us wanna buy so they can dump their coins:)

though how are they keeping the price high if it is dumped at the moment? i think the prices depend purely on people and anything might happen with it in the future

They don't wanna keep it high at the moment i thought that was obvious. lol. Of course it depends on people but depends on which kind of people? People with much money, or people with less money? That was my point.

I think the reason for the recent drop of the bitcoin price is due to the rise of the Ethreum, investors are more interested in that.

Price is subjected to current demand ...you won't see anything significant till next year.

As of now, the price is made by the supply and demand but as of this early phase of bitcoin the one who are in control are the whales in the market. They can manipulate the price anytime they wanted to do and we should not allow that to happen in the future and we have to do our part to help a massive adoption for the bitcoin.

this is just my opinion.
Nothing can affect the price fluctuations bitcoin unless the user bitcoin bitcoin itself, if user make bitcoin price panic, like now , people will keep selling hios bitcoin, and if bitcoin people/user start investing his money, the price will be rise too.

no it is wrong to say i do not  think so , i think the price fall down because there were some misunderstanding in the market which really made a panic in the market and people start selling bu hope that the situation going to be control very soon and the price of bitcoin will really come back to its original position and hope that people will again take interest in buying bitcoin.

The trading volume of the combined ETH+ETC is higher than the bitcoin at the moment. Ethereum is hot now.

The combined volume has reduced recently. but that is still higher than the bitcoin volume. So the Ethereum is a good trading tool.

you can mine some Ether for now but dont go out buy expensive as it has scarcity based speculative value. It has utilitarian value for the problems it solves by being a geo-politically agnostic currency and it can be traded for goods and services.

thats true, bitcoin price is usually controlled by the people who have either a lot of fiat or a lot of bitcoins it is kinda bad thing because in this way it becomes centralized

So then who you thinks controls all the other markets out there?
In each of those markets you have people who have shitload of money and therefore can control or have a big influence on it.
You will not find any market where this problem does not exist.Big players are everywhere!
But having an influence on the price doesn't not mean Bitcoin is centralized.These market makers ave no power and saying for instance to change the core protocol and therefore increase the number of bitcoins in terms of supply for instance.
Right now they can easily play with Bitcoin regarding the price, but they can not control it.That's a big big difference you should always keep in mind.

It is like in a company where the stockholders with the huge number of stocks will normally control the company, in bitcoins the major holders or the whales can dictate the price when there is a big demand of bitcoin.

yeah, people are still putting not enough money into bitcoins, because of that the price might be dropping really fast thankfully a lot of people still hold

Wow, we should have never stopped teaching economics in school.    :'(

thats true, right now i am buying and holding all my ethereum in order to make some money soon

I mine the Ethereum. I keep most of the Ethereum and trade that against the bitcoin. I will also hold some bitcoin.

bitcoin not only one people create price
bitcoin price run and work market demand and supply and issue news bad or good
i think capitalization and volume bitcoin is very high,you is control price market your must much money

thats true, it shows that not a lot of people are willing to invest in their bitcoins and it is definitely not a good thing because it does not allow bitcoin to be adopted

If you mean invest then that would simply holding your bitcoin for a specific period and I don't think that would really help in the market circulation, on the other hand if we want some kind of adoption we all need to spend online to increase the circulation of bitcoins and not just hold it.

The bitcoin price has stablised over the last few days. After a few more days of consolidation, the price will rise further.

but that is sought by the holders of bitcoin to make the market circulation is inhibited so that the price can rise quickly.

As more people spend Bitcoin on more small transaction that will help shift mining from being all about minting to being about supporting the network, which it has to do eventually anyway since Bitcoins get made at slower rates over time. It also means that less Bitcoins get immediately sold since it gets diverted to pools.