Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoins are back in Rally mode!

This is evident in many areas

* BTC / USD exchange rate is rallying (mtgox.com (http://mtgox.com))
* Number of businesses accepting BTC are rising
* Number of forum activities are increasing

All people in the "bitcoin team" did a great job.


Lets continue!

MtGox broke volume exchange record yesterday with 36672.7 bitcoins. That's a lot!

Right, and the chart prediction for a breakout to the upside proved right, supported by the high volume.

Next big target is the all time high around 0.08

The possibility of a volume record breaking is high now with 42669 bitcoins.

Should be pointed out that there are only 16,579.29 coins offered at this moment at MtGox, totaling $1,172.89, versus 63,881.94 coins bid totaling $3,845.73

The coins just are not there, IMO now would be the time to pick up a few.

100% agree

Looks like bitcoinmarket is well ahead of mtgox.com, but volumes are low....real low.

you're right.

Mtgox has become the market leader and on all other exchanges volumes are ridiculously low.

makes me sad, i used to enjoy bitcoinmarket, i feel nostalgic when I go to visit (like MySpace), even though I only stopped visiting there 6 weeks ago. lol.

Just jumped over .08, So does anyone have thoughts on what is happening here?

30 days waiting period for paypal dollars deposit meant that influx of new buyers at mtgox ain't possible.

> 30 days waiting period for paypal dollars deposit meant that influx of new buyers at mtgox ain't possible.

No it doesn't. they can trade immediately. they just can't withdraw.

I'm going to offer some over 10 cents. Maybe zoom out a bit now, or make it an option or something.

Sorry for my misunderstanding.

I don't see how this can last. 100,000 BTC in bids+asks on MtGox, but 7,200 BTC are created every day. The market just can't absorb it.

Of course, I've been bearish about the market since I was selling (below the normal market rate) at 0.003.

It been at 0.06 for a really long time for like 2-3 weeks? In any case, the market seem to practically ignore the fact of monetary inflation.

Those 100k are what are left after doing all of the daily absorbing of whatever generated coins make it to market, people save and spend too. I have some coins, but not enough, I'd welcome a crash. I'm mostly worried about not having enough in 5 years when bitcoin is "accepted everywhere" and 14 year olds don't know what a Visa card used to be.

Today is a historic day for me. For the first time in my life I have made a profit trading a currency - a whopping 30 dollar cents.  :D

Now I am going to reveal my secret trading strategy, ingenious in its simplicity:

1) Buy Bitcoins whenenver you can afford to lose the USD (or EUR in my case).
2) Never sell Bitcoins for less than you bought them. Ever.

you may have to wait very long for  a crash to come, and the level from where the next decline starts may be way higher than you think.

The technical pattern of the breakout is very strong, accompanied with huge volume.

Perhaps we see some consolidation at "1/10parity" = 0.1 USD, before BTC break this level.

I think the price movement is solely due to the Bitcoin article which is still on the front page of www.fsdaily.com

This created a small extra demand at MtGox, plus a bigger extra demand from existing Bitcoin users who speculated by buying some extra coins before the fsdaily users arrived.

Please note that Bitcoin was also on the frontpage of Freshmeat.net yesterday (I created a record for it).

It could be any number of things.

For example, a new casino mmo just poped up. Probably some ATITD users are looking to cash in on what they earn.

If there are any new services that manages to pop up during the bitcoin rally, it will probably drive up the price higher again....

I notice bitcoinmarket is a lot cheaper than mtgox, or at least seems to be.  Is this an arbitrage opportunity?  Or is it just that the buyers aren't offering the price the sellers want?

bitcoinmarket is kind of dead.

MtGox is highly liquid and preferred by most people.

Most people trading have moved to MtGox. this is why the market is so thin on bitcoinmarket that it is highly risky to trade there. the spreads are far too big.

I respectfully disagree, and I think most LRUSD traders would, too.

ALERT: DWDOLLAR POSTED A SCAM WARNING IN THE MARKETPLACE

This warning seems to be not substantiated at all.

People should not look at the small exchanges as they are just not liquid enough.

I checked my account on MtGox and it is all perfect.

I don't think the current situation warrants the great optimism on the market at all.

It's just weird to me even with the positive news that has been circulating in the economy.

You forget that this is how ALL markets work. They are ALL emotional and there is herding.

We need to be be careful to avoid thinking that BTC could be having a stable exchange rate.

As dwdollar noted, the problem is occurring on other exchanges as well.

Dwdollar runs bitcoinmarket so he would know. I don't think he said anything about a problem on Mtgox.

dwdollar said "Other exchanges are reporting similar behavior."

mtgox noted he was refunding fraudulent PayPal transactions, on IRC.

Well. We experienced another day of volume record breaking. I think for the first time, we actually exceed slashdot era price record.


What can I say? It's absolutely nut.

People cant buy gold and are fleeing the US dollar. Bitcoin is the next best thing imo.

 ;D

also this - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1396.msg16154#msg16154 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1396.msg16154#msg16154)

From http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ ...

Total bitcoins sent in P2P network, past 24h: 210973
Total bitcoins traded at mtgox, past 24h: 222710

The remarkable part is the high/low reported on mtgox: 0.12/0.01

The number of people wanting to sell bitcoins totally exceed the number willing to buy.
Big lost opportunity for people who believe in bitcoins.

The low was a software glitch, when someone put in an ask at .01 it should have met the high bid which was around .083 but instead was matched with the exact equal bid. It'll probably be taken out of the data like last time, the trade has already been reversed. The code should be fixed, it's happened once before.

You can tell it isn't real because there are no trades going all the way down, just one oddball way down there.

Apart from that single 0.01 glitch, the entire upward breakout was exactly as I predicted 2 weeks ago:


http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=749.20 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=749.20)

And its quite normal that sell order around 0.1 are jigh, this is a psychological mark and will be resistance for a couple of days or more (potentially even weeks).

Without any evidence apart from my own feelings, I think the 30day withholding period is going to cause more volitility.

Up 'til 48 hours ago, i'd only put in bid/asks 2-3% either side of current market. Now I have to wait 30days, I'm just putting in radical speculative bids/asks well above/below the market.

Judging by the current Depth Chart, I'm guessing I'm not alone in the thinking of "Im stuck here so I might as well have fun!"

It would be better if veteran traders can opt out of the 30 days withdrawal.

I think it would be a nice feature of a paid mtgox account.

I am thinking a possible downward spiral to the 0.060 price range since there were a large of bids in the 10,000 bitcoins were.

Now this is what I call a chart!

http://www.bimmerhead.com/bitcoinchart.jpg

Sort of what the DJIA will look like next month except in reverse.  ;D

Bimmerhead:

I couldnt agree more.

 ;)

If the exponential rally of BTC goes further (which is always a possibility, especially given the high breakout volume), we may be able to buy the whole DJI in a matter of years with 1 coin ...

Look at the "Depth of Market" chart.
Only four bids? That doesn't look right.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2d8husj.jpg

[edit: There is something wrong. Apart from anything else, I have a bid at 0.065 which should be shown]

The charts and table only show a certain range.

If your bids and asks are outside the range, they are just not shown.

As long as they are in your order book, they are 100% active.

The Dow will go down in term of gold, but in term of dollars it will rally. Bernanke is there to make sure it happens.

Im my opinion you will be massively wrong.
The DOW will also crash in nominal terms.
Below 1000 points between 2014-2016

Lets bet. 1000 bitcoins that the DOW does not touch 1000 points before 2016. Deal?

kiba what you are working on could come handy now.

Deal

Yes it would.  I want a piece of that action (on the DOW will not get that low side) but it is a long term bet and I don't know anyone on the forum well enough to want to make a bet that I wont be able to settle for 6 years.

great, i will win more if more people add bets on DJI below 1000.

i accept more and be 100% willing to wait a couple of years

I agree with your prognosis S3052, but I hope you've got those bitcoins in the bank now at 6 cents in case they skyrocket to $10 and the Dow only hits 1,005!

[quote auth ;)or=Bimmerhead link=topic=1388.msg16404#msg16404 date=1286715992]

I agree with your prognosis S3052, but I hope you've got those bitcoins in the bank now at 6 cents in case they skyrocket to $10 and the Dow only hits 1,005!
[/quote]

Yes, indeed!

<shamelessplug>You can also ask TTBit to get that on bitcoinsportsbook</shamelessplug>

Yes. Please let me know of the details, and bitcoinsportsbook will create the wager. If it is something as simple as DJIA close on a certain date, BSB will also make a market if needed.

BSB will be happy to create and make monthly or yearly wagers for spot close of gold/silver/stocks, etc.

My idea was DJI trades below 1000 points sometime between now and Dec 31, 2016. Whenever it trades below that level, also intraday, it is a win.
The only question that remains for me is who can I ensure that the BTCs are still in this account by that time?

Separately, we can also have short term bets

DJI
below 10,000 by Nov 30, 2010
below 9,000 by Jul 31, 2011
above 11,260 by Dec 31, 2010
above 14,200 by Dec 31, 2011

Well, your trust would shift from him to bitcoinsportsbook, whatever that is worth. Coins would have to be put up. Problem I see is BSB is a public site and anyone could bet along with you and it would change the odds.

[off topic]
Maybe a feature of BSB should be to have private wagers. You create a wager and send a password to friend to put up his coins. BSB could declare a winner (for a small fee) or just hold the coins and let bettors settle (for a smaller fee). Or, not even hold coins and just show proof of wager and settlement status.
[/off topic]

Hugolp and Babylon,
reading the above, I'd like to bet exclusively with you. How can we set up this in a stable way?

As a straight, even odds bet?

I figure we need a trusted party to serve as an escrow service.  Either that or some sort of personal relationship such as personal info on one another.  I don't want to tie up more than 100 bitcoins for that long personally.  (I know, that's only about 9 dollars right now, I expect it to be more by then though, and I am actively trading back and forth to make money at the moment)

If it is set up at a bitcoin futures market and we are the first ones in I think we'd have even odds as well, although I might be wrong about that.

As Babylon said we need someone to hold the bitcoins or at least a part of them until the bet can be resolved.

We need someone who can be trusted and willing to set it up.

WHO wants to do it?

The one who will do it gets a couple of BTC as incentive, ok.?

What you need is an escrow, which is something that no one has yet done for Bitcoin, because it would require that at least the escrow manager be willing to expose his own real identity.  I've been considering setting up an escrow service for Bitcoin, but I'm still not convinced that there is enough of a demand to justify the loss of my autonomy.

I trust several people on here well enough to escrow for a short period,  Not for a 6 year period without some more solid contact info.  Not because I have even a hint of a suspicion they'd steal my coins, but because I am concerned they might lose internet, or go to jail for being an Anarchist, or have their computers melt down, or whatever in that time.

I agree this is too longterm.
what about DJI below 10,000 ( close or intraday ) before 12/31/2010.
100BTC

Not a bet I'd personally take.  I expect it to drop that low by the end of the year.  I expect the elections to be a bit of a kick in the teeth to the DOW

This is a complete different bet. I can see this happening, specially depending on the Fed actions.

If QE2 happens in the November FOMC meeting as almost everybody is expecting and it is big enough, the DOW will remain over 10.000, but if the Fed leaves QE2 for later or it is percieved as too small then it could happen.

Big parts of the economy are now driven by monetary policy rather than market forces. Its sad.

Why don't you guys take this bet to Long Bets?
http://www.longbets.org/

Thanks , I will look into longbets.com

And coming back to the Thread-Title:

Bitcoins are back above 10 cents again.

with mtgox having paypal issues, i think we should turn our focus away from their dollar value (what good is $1.00 on mtgox without faster withdrawal capabilities?  how much would you be willing to have mtgox take from your $1.00 if you could withdrawal dollars today?).  let's get back to April, May and June discussions of "how much is a pizza worth in bitcoins?" without having to convert into dollars to answer the question.

with all the exchanges facing chargeback issues, shouldn't this be the best time to focus on exchanging goods and services for bitcoins?  go to biddingpond if you want to buy bitcoins.  offer some tennis balls, offer a delicious pizza, offer something of value and someone will pay you bitcoins for it!  promise!

Agree in principle that biddingpond is very useful.

However, there are not enough users.

Therefore, there are requirements before biddingpond can really be used broadly enough:

• More people need to be able to buy BTCs; otherwise a few dozens of this forum will exchange pizzas with different toppings until they are fed up with pizzas or more seriously, have sold and bought a handful if things, still exchanging within this mini community. Only if more people own BTCs the market can get sizeable enough.
• This means someone needs to establish an easy way to buy bitcoins for everyone. Provocative question:
      What does it take to convince paypal to get back into business with mtgox (perhaps only allowing trusted registered users that have confirmed bank accounts)/has someone asked paypal responsibles about what the barrier really is for them? What does it take to allow bank account transfers to a BTC exchange (and all this with lower fraud risks)?
• In parallel to the above , biddingpond needs to do advertising/marketing to grow users.

Don't forget bitlist.  With such a small userbase bitlist is actually more useful than an auction site because auctions in small groups are unpredictable.

That's certainly true for the two VISA debit cards I lost money on...   ;)

luckily I was given the amazon code as a freebie so i didnt technically lose money on it..but yeah the userbase needs to grow. I might purchase some squares on bitlist with the proceeds  :D

back to the original starting point.

The bitcoin rally.

Prices have pushed to 10 cents and hold firmly above that level. Volume has been low after the breakout. There hasbeen quite some buying interest at the 10 cents level, indicating that some folks are speculating on a further rally.

There hasn't been downward pressure despite a huge increase of block generation rate despite high difficulty (280 blocks past 24h )

Technically speaking a further rally is the most probable scenario. Only a close below the 6.3-6.5 cent former breakout level, would invalidate this outlook.

Next resistance is 13 cents (alltimehigh) and 15, then 20 cents

Wait, this doesn't make any sense. We are unable to deposit dollars into Mt. Gox. for quite some time.

Kiba is right.I think we should disregard the price on mt gox it is obviously not reality. 

does this mean current trades on mtgox are fake ?
because I "sold" quite a few bitcoins there the past days ...

The are no indications that trades are fake at the exchange.

People claiming this should provide evidence for this.

MtGox the the single exchange where there is active trading and provides enough liquidity.

If people believed that the prices were not real, they would sell, which they obviously don't enough to drive down prices.

No offense, but people who are not invested enough are typically those who believe that high prices are not real as they hope to get a cheaper entry. That is the psychology of the markets.

No, they're not fake.

You cannot withdraw USD, but that is a temporary situation that mtgox is working to remedy.

The trades aren't "fake". It's just that the market right now is BTC vs "MTGOX USD" which will be paid at some point in the future by some undetermined method. Since this type of dollar is worth less than a real dollar a bitcoin is worth more of them. Make sense?

Wow, we hit $0.19 today!

The question though is this from money that was already in accounts before the PayPal debacle, or is there still new money flowing into MTGox?

It's now possible to send money into MtGox...

Bitcoin is on a rally again! The exchange on mtgox surged to 60,000 bitcoins in the last 24 hours!

MtGox is back in business.

Also, a dollar will now only buy you 5.15 bitcoins. The bitcoin economy is now worth 854344 dollars! We're on our way to a million dollar economy! Yippie!

I noticed too. It's very exciting.  We on our way to reach quarter (25 cents) parity.

The true value of all Bitcoins is less than marginal price * total amount. Has anybody tried to estimate that number?

Only by LibertyReserve though...

Why are all the hard currencies (including BTC) so hard to get ?



Of course. People like to hold a lot of BTC in their wallet. If almost everybody just dumped the contents of their BTC wallets on the market at one time, the price would drop by many times.

You can buy Liberty Reserve with bank transfers, money orders, money transfers (Wester Union, Moneygram), cash in mail, or exchanging another e-currency. What other funding methods do you want? Anything that uses credit cards is out of the question, and that's the only other funding method there is.

People have always made digital currency seem a lot harder to get than it really is. Take a little while to review exchangers and take it from there.

it only takes about 30,000 $ to ignite the next bitcoin rally.
That means for example 30 people buying bitcoins for 1,000$ globally... Not a lot.

Why am I saying this?
because it is indispensible for the bitcoin economy that prices rise.
as someone else has stated yesterday in the forum:
unless the value of bitcoins rises significantly there is a viciuos circle :
not enough businesses accepting them, because too few customers having bitcoins
not enough customers buying bitcoins as not enough things to do with them

No one interested  ???

Are most people here busy with fighting Goliath's like paypal, mastercard, etc. vs. trying to grow bitcoins?

What about a tell-a-friend initiative?

If you convince a friend / colleague to buy bitcoins, you will get a special bonus?

lots of people are interested, i guess,
but it's still kinda complicated to get money into our little economy.

if you'r not familiar with LR and don't know of any trusted partys to exchange your USD to LRUSD,
how'd you buy bitcoins on mtgox?
common paypal people don't want to go to IRC to try to find someone willing to trade PP2GOX and even if, there's still the trust-issue.

we'll see what happens as soon as mtgox enables €-funding from bank accounts,
at least i'm gonna add some more cash then, no idea what others do.

Not hard now, just use your credit card here: https://www.bitcoingateway.com/

maybe news to you, but there are indeed people outside the US using bitcoin.  ;)

True , but creditcards are accepted for US people only on bitcoingateway (which is great, but it should be global)

We should also make a pitch to get some Asian folks in. I am sure they are also interested in investing.
Maybe we can reach out to some Asian forums? Anyone who has some contacts?

A bunch of Japanese tweeted about bitcoin. Maybe we could contact one of them and ask them if they're interested in making some sort of exchange for yen to bitcoin.

Businesses can encourage bitcoin adoption by offering discounts on purchases paid in bitcoins. They can also offer cash to bitcoin conversions in person. Of course, that all depends on the existence of a quick and easy way to handle bitcoin transactions in person. Having to type in a bitcoin address just to buy a beer is no fun.

What about buying bitcoins with one’s cell phone via SMS, or an application? Would such a method offer a more secure transaction for the seller?

That would be great if you can connect with them.

There exists the possibility on btcex.com to trade JPY/BTC already, and either the Japanese can do it that way or they set up their own exchange, which is maybe  a better way to get funds in.

BTC/USD has just cleared the 0.25 resistance and moved to 0.26 $ on relatively strong volume.
RALLY seems to continue...

Seems like the dark pool ASK order on MtGox has been bought fully.

Cool. I wonder if the mining pool has anything to do with this.  Maybe it made so big miners go low on business.

That's a good question about the miners.. I would love to understand this as well.

I notice the price is up around 30 cents.

I am not sure why prices need to keep going up in order for more businesses to accept bitcoins though, Just so that bitcoins in circulation are worth enough for it to be a worthwhile market to tap into? or?

It's more the reverse I think. If it is used more widely then the value relative to other currencies will go up. But there is causation the other way too.

It would be pretty hard to buy a house with bitcoin right now since you would need more than all of them, but as you went to get them you'd drive the price up yourself. The trouble is that the deal is hard to work out, what do you say buy bitcoins until you've spent $2M USD and give me that many? That doesn't exactly give incentive to get the best price on them. The other way has the same problem "Keep giving me coins until I've sold them for a total of $2M" now I don't have much incentive to get a good price and we're denominating in USD anyway.

So wider trading will allow bigger trading which will open up more opportunities making the economy wider... but it won't happen all at once.

Speculating (by buying now) that it will happen eventually will help it to happen faster too. Offering to trade goods and services will help the most though.

Holy Moly! Bitcoin is seeing another SURGE! It just hit $0.40 per
Bitcoin! It was only $0.06 only 3 months ago.

http://mtgox.com/trade/history

Yes, we are in an acceleration phase of a big , high volume rally.
At this stage, selling is not really needed from a technical perspective (unless people really need cash or need to buy sth with bitcoins in the short term)

A quote from the beginning of THIS THREAD....


Those who are pessimists will always be pessimists.    :)

Meanwhile....  those who are putting ALL of their money into bitcoin......    are very pleased.    :)

A 666% increase in 3 months time....   How much is THAT annually...?   2664% per year?

Hey, magic must be involved. You consulted with *censored* and must be burned alive.
D:>   <---Tin Hat

LOL just joking. This is awesome! Going to start a market here in Mexico when I figure RoR out.

The danger is if people are buying bitcoins in the expectation that the price will go up, and the resulting increased demand is what is driving the price up. That is the definition of a BUBBLE, and as we all know, bubbles burst.

what you say is pure speculation.
how do you know when to define it as a bubble?
we may talk about a bubble when BTC/USD is at current value, at 100$, at 10,000$, etc.
currently, there is no technical evidence for a bubble

Yes, all pricing in a free market is the result of supply and demand.  The problem is determining which part of demand is reasonable and which part is "irrational exuberance."

exactly, most of the times, people call the top way too early.

this also applies for insiders of companies

It could be a bubble, on the other hand if the increase in price, even if driven purely by speculation, encourages more businesses to accept bitcoin as a form of payment that can serve as a real foundation for a bitcoin economy.

The current prices are rising constantly high even on a high trade volume. So I wouldn't say this is a bubble.

Mtgox BTC/USD is back to ~3,30 currently. I think this is the "normal" price, 0,40 was speculation.

I don't think there is a bubble either, but why would high volume imply that? For example, didn't houses turn over faster during the bubble than during other times?

Even if this is a bubble, it's unlikely to burst as long as there is a steady influx of new users and new businesses accepting Bitcoin.

We are still a long way away from market saturation.

10 million users 2 years from now I think is possible, if the history of other p2p networks is any measure. Say that each of those users spends $100 to buy Bitcoins on average.

The Bitcion economy would be worth 1 Billion USD and the naive exchange rate would be approx 1 Bln USD / 10 Million BTC = 100 USD/BTC.

$8500 just crossed the tape, 40c - 44c

The rally is continuing.

As a side note, I am just wondering, who is the one selling 20,000 BTC at 0.51 in the order book?

At least from a market analysis standpoint, this does not make sense at all. 0.5 is really not a strong barrier. It's purely psychological.
The only fundamental reason could be that this person needs the money quickly.

(and now I stop speculating about this .. but I am just curious about that to be honest)

Psychological barriers can be strong too i guess

Fully agree. My point is more that the 0.5 mark is ONLY psychological and not supported by strong market technicals. The 0.3-0.35 barrier was much much stronger.

Guys, why do you buy bitcoins at such high prices? The rate may still fall down and it can bring great losses. :-\

Some people want to use them immediatley for transactions to buy goods?

Yeah, this may be the cause.

Given that bitcoin just hit the front page of digg, I would actually expect the value to increase further at least in the short-term as there will be an influx of curious new users.

It is a numbers game, x number of people are exposed to bitcoins idea and website, half of those install tthe client, maybe one tenth will buy a few bitcoins, and of those maybe only a few will stay. The more exposure the better. It will all result in more people using bitcoin and an increase in price.

1. Some people want to trade, and don't have a GPU card, so they have no easy way to get BTC except by buying.

2. Some people are preparing to start up new BTC-based businesses, and need to build up a stock of BTC as their working capital.

3. Some people are speculating.


Absolutely. No-one should buy BTC unless they are comfortable with the chance of losing everything.

I completely agree. And this goes for buying Euro, USD, and cocaine too.

Any barriers (at least in Bitcoin market) are purely psychological. There was no fundamental reason for resistance at 0.3 or 0.4, there was no fundamental reason for support at 0.2. With resistance at 0.5 or even at 1 BTC/USD it will be the same - people just *think* that price is too high, which creates the resistance.

I think we are overall on the same page.

Summarizing what has been said here would look as follows:

1. Whenever there are no longterm price histories (which applies for bitcoins), all barriers are at first only psychological. This is particularly true at new all time highs, because there is no former top.

2. Once prices corrected from a previous top, on top of that psychological barrier, a more technical barrier forms. The strength of this barrier depends on many factors. One of them is the volume pattern.

Example:
If a lot of volume is traded at a certain price range, then this barrier becomes strong resistance or support.
This is what happened in the 0.3 - 0.35 area. A lot of people bought and sold in this range at the November peak. And, a lot of sell orders were placed again in December in this area. Hence, it took quite some time to clear this level again.

In contrast, the 0.4 level was cleared much faster, because there was not a lot of trading in this price range around the November peak.
Even less volume was traded around 0.5. This is why this level could be a smaller barrier.

At the same time, this is pure speculation. You can also make the case that 0.5 is a "nicer" and "rounder" number than 0.3 and 0.4 and many people want to sell in this range.

We will see what happens. The market will tell us and we will stay close to it.

*such high* term is very relative. When I come to bitcoin, prices were at 0.25. I was just curious and bought my first bitcoins for 100USD at this rate. And people asked me the same question - why are you buying at *such high* prices? :-D

I'd like to say that *such high/low* is only in your head. When price will be at parity, people will be surprised why somebody sold his all time bitcoin savings for 0.5. Similar situation can happen in case of bitcoin crash (big security issue, ...) - now people *think* 0.1 is too low to sell, but once price will be at 0.08 already, anybody will sell on 0.1 price.

Even during this weekend, the rally goes on.

We are already at 0.48 $.

One can even wonder what happens if some bigger players not only put 5k, 10k into bitcoins but 100k, 1 million. I would not be surprised if some hegdefunds would do that.

Of course this is pure speculation, but you never know.

Anyway this is a healthy rally. and I agree, it might be that some people wonder why they sold them at 0.48 or 0.50, etc. when prices are at 1$, 10$, 100$ per bitcoin (and vice versa as slush has written above)

Hi! First post.

I came across BitCoin somewhat serendipitously in the course of working on (IRC, eggdrop, TCL) trading bots for Galactic Milieu ( http://sourceforge.net/p/galacticmilieu/home/ ).

I was mostly looking for things like Open Transaction, since I wanted client (player's agent) bots to sit around trading "arbitrary" things in galaxies where one planet's local currency might be of little interest on another planet, especially in a galaxy far far away, but where actual tangible things, or even useful information such as how to build ships that can travel faster than light typically does, might well have value far away if ever it somehow managed to get there.

Part of the "game" with these bots is supposed to be the whole "problem" of why anyone anywhere would think your possibly puny planet's local currency has any value whatsoever, let alone bother buying any of it using anything actually useful to them such as ton-light-months of transportation or quantities of fuel usable to generate ton-light-months of transportation or ice cream cones or face paint (or even blue mud specially formulated for rubbing on your belly).

I have been wondering about a specific tactic or strategy that, when reading this thread, I find myself thinking could in theory maybe "explain" some of the things this thread mentions.

Basically as long as transaction fees are low or zero, and accounts buying and selling can be anonymous, couldn't people interested in creating and maintaining a perception that their national currency (hello, BitCoiner nation! Why aren't you featured in Freeciv as a nation yet? Is the Galactic Ruleset going to have to start adding in nations itself due to some problem of getting a BitCoiner nation accepting into mainline/default Freeciv? But I digress...) has value buy it and sell it back and forth between accounts of their own at ever higher values, only ever actually releasing some to outsiders at higher price than they buy it back from outsiders?

I kind of envisioned some nations deliberately buying and selling their own currency among their own sock-puppets constantly deliberately to create high volumes at high prices precisely for the purpose of convincing speculators that there is money to be made with that currency...

It seems to me it could be interesting to somehow estimate (or would that be guestimate) how many of the dollars seemingly being spent to seemingly buy BitCoins is actually coming from real people who really had no bitcoins previously compared to how much is coming from people buying their own BitCoins from themselves.

Might it seem useful to at least some miners to buy from themselves some of the early bitcoins they created by mining, precisely for the purpose of creating an appearance of the saleablilty of BitCoins, but refraining from buying other people's BitCoins since they are not actually trying to spend dollars they are trying to keep the dollars themselves whilst making it look like people are parting with dollars?

-MarkM-

Whatever you are on, I want some.

Yes, this is possible.

I just bought a deck of cards (standard 52 card pack) for $45 (from myself, not that it matters). Anyone want it for $30? No? you don't make purchase decisions based on other people's previous trades? Pretty clever.

All that matters are currently available offers to buy and sell. Those can be 'faked' only as long as someone has USD to part with to waste on paying more than necessary.

MtGox price just shot up to 95 cents (due to a very small volume of coins on offer and, I presume, a determined buyer). We live in interesting times.

There seems to be a new resistance forming at 0.7.
Volumes stays high.

Personally I put my money where my mouth is over on bitcoin sportsbook, I fully expect this rally to continue.

The resistance at 0.7 collapsed. Now, we have to overcome 0.75 before moving on.

yeah, possibly people had auction orders to pay for and had to buy coins fast.

I don't think there are that many auctions though.

Support for the current level is very thin.  All bids combined above 0.66 amount to less than USD 1000, and the order book is thin and full of holes all the way down to 0.56.  At the same time sellers have been very busy fillng in ask orders.  The picture looks very much like it did before the correction from 0.5 to 0.30, just at a higher level.

It seem that a very large resistance at .85 is cleared. 10,900 BTC are sold. The road seem to be open to 1.00 BTC parity.

However, it seem that we could fall downhill quite easily.

Could be anything as far as I know.

It looks to me that the jumps were made by just one or a few (wealthy?) people buying everything they could from mtgox in a short amount of time. Rather than going quickly back to "normal" levels, the price has stayed high because there is a strong psychological desire from the community to reach parity. I think it will get to parity pretty soon and stall there or a little above for some time until new merchants arrive to sustain the bigger economy.

Support level is now at .82 USD with 10155 BTC.

How about "We don't know shit what cause the price of bitcoin to rise"?

Frankly, everybody have their own opinion as to why the price of bitcoin rise.

If we could properly understand why the market settled on a particular price, then we would have enough knowledge that centrally planned economies would be successful. The 20th century answered that question dramatically.

A market aggregates the desires and value judgements of everyone who participates in the market. Unless you fully know all of those, you can't know why the market price is what it is.

So just decide what a bitcoin is worth to you, and buy or sell accordingly.

amen

I didn't say wealthy people are buying because the community desires it? I'm just saying that those big jumps in value in a matter of minutes were created by single actors.

Also why do you say it doesn't look like a good investment? People who bought bitcoins at the start of this thread have had over 1000% return on investment. I'm think most would agree that bitcoin growth will be outpacing any other commodity/currency for a long time.


I said there's a strong desire to reach usd parity, not to stay there forever. Yeah, I know we are from all over the world but reaching usd parity is just very news friendly, I'm pretty sure we won't be making any headlines when we reach the kuwaiti dinar. Also it sends the message to people on the fence that "bitcoin is serious business".

While the big jumps were by single actors, I would argue that doesn't tell the whole story.  Mt. Gox does represent the bulk of the community and it has been impressive in terms of how many people are participating.  Generally I've been watching how many users are involved, and it typically has been about 50-80 people with orders on the market at any given time (the operator of Mt. Gox could give a definitive response for the exact number).  There are also other "lurkers" like myself who stay out of the market at the moment.

What is interesting is that I've been spending most of my time also watching the Ruble market on btcex.com, where actions on Mt. Gox are typically reflected on those markets too.  Sometimes there is a bit of a lag, such as how the WMZ market is a bit below the Mt. Gox price, but I wouldn't bet on it staying that way for too long.  Hint:  If you can change Liberty Reserve for Web Money, now would be a good time to do just that and get some Bitcoins for cheap from that particular market.

The Ruble has long ago passed parity, but the current exchange rate is roughly settled down at what Mt. Gox has if you converted Dollars to Rubles on the ForEx market.  While it doesn't have the volume of Mt. Gox, I would say that this is a good indicator of what other traders elsewhere think of the value of Bitcoins.

The value of a Bitcoin is going up because those with Bitcoins don't want to sell them for cheap.  It is certainly a genuine auction market where the supply of Bitcoins is limited, but the supply of other currencies is plentiful.  If there were piles of Bitcoins burning holes in people's pockets, they would be put onto the market at this time.  Anybody who has either purchased or mined a Bitcoin could at any time put in a bid for a lower amount.  The real issue is why that isn't happening, thus pushing the market up.  Those who purchased Bitcoins for smaller values in the past certainly could use this opportunity for some "profit taking" into Dollars/FRNs.

It would be cool to see a page with the world's major currencies (20 or so?) ranked against bitcoins. Most currencies will need to first convert to USD or EUR, and then convert to bitcoin. This would easily generate small and frequent news events internationally as it reaches parity with each currency one by one up the list.

If someone makes a functioning web site with this and posts the link to it on youtipit, I'll donate bitcoins. I'll tip 20 bitcoins to the first working implementation I see, another 10 to the second working implementation, and 5 bitcoins to the third working implementation.

Are you talking about this?: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

17EHUui9LnEc4QJ1fnh7bhP1gfRor43knS :)

It only track currencies that are being traded for bitcoin.

Like this http://www.x-rates.com/cgi-bin/cgicalc.cgi?value=1&base=USD (http://www.x-rates.com/cgi-bin/cgicalc.cgi?value=1&base=USD), but denominated in BTC. The currencies not listed on "bitcoin charts" would need to be translated to the cheapest currency option available on "bitcoin charts".

Interesting link.

The Kuwaiti Dinar is the (nominally) strongest currency globally. This should be the goal for BTC to overcome (Kuwaiti Dinar is currently at 3.59 USD).

That is interesting because I think it was dinars that were being offered by the ponzi/gold game folk a few years back as the latest greatest ponzi to invest in. Hmm. Maybe that was some other nation's dinars or is that the only nation who calls their money dinars?

-MarkM- (Or am I thinking of something other than dinars entirely, some other money from out east somewhere?)

Interesting, I am not aware of this Ponzi thing about Dinars. Based on Wikipedia, here are all the Dinar currencies:


 Algeria     Algerian dinar    DZD
 Bahrain    Bahraini dinar           BHD
 Iraq              Iraqi dinar              IQD
 Jordan    Jordanian dinar       JOD
 Kuwait    Kuwaiti dinar           KWD
 Libya              Libyan dinar             LYD
 Rep. of Macedonia    Macedonian denar    MKD
 Serbia    Serbian dinar            RSD
 Tunisia    Tunisian dinar            TND

Aha, Iraq does use them. Cool, I thought I was more likely to confuse Iran and Iraq than either with Kuwait.

I think the goldgame folk were pushing Iraqi dinar when they were dirt cheap or maybe even newly invented
(if newly then maybe almost before they were really or much "out there" / "in use").

-MarkM-

As you can read in my latest Technical Analysis, the BTC/USD may have started again (bottoming around 0.71 over the past days).

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4487523#post4487523 (http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4487523#post4487523)

The Rally is underway.

See post here:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493.260 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493.260)

this is a great visual, and fits perfectly to the rally mood

This is funny to read posts this old. All time high of 0.08 dollars! lol...

Damn! Wish I wasn't muskie fishing up in Wisconsin that day.

Wow people were talking the same way back then that they do now

Makes you wonder, will be laughing 6 months from now when BTC is in the $50 trading range?

"Why oh why did I not buy at $14.50... doh !!!"

You are so right..

Bitcoin remains in rally mode, and this has nothing to do with the bitcoin conference.

The technical fundamentals are strong and point to a further rally of bitcoin price