Bitcoin Forum

Volumes are healthy, not only in US markets but also in Canada and Britain.  It is the first time for the latter two to stabilize in terms of buyer/seller volume, normally seller volume for CAD/pound highly outstrips buyer volume.  It appears that US buyers may now be operating in these markets to make cash through forex when the price of BTC fluctuates as the overall trade volumes for these foreign markets has exploded over the past 24 hours.  This should bolster investment in the US market as well and enhance stability as BTC becomes further an international monetary instrument like gold.

Overall network hash rates have fallen sharply so the incoming supply of bitcoin through this medium is low.  Forecast: Final Mtgox close will be 10.75-11.5 by the end of the day.

One interesting thing to note is that there does not seem to be those large bid walls on mt gox anymore. That 10,000 bitwall that was at $9 yesterday is gone. Also the $10 bidwall is quite small at only around 1500 bitcoins.

Usually these walls are much higher. To me it seems like someone who usually puts up these (usually fake) bidwalls, has decided to leave the market. Maybe he has lost too much money by trying to stabalize the price. It actually seemed like yesterday this person pulled out trying to stabalize the market and that is why it crashed.

I agree the price may close up higher  today in the $11-$12.5 range. Usually after a big drop, the price goes up higher temporarily. It then starts to fall back slowly. If your holding bitcoins I would look for these temporary highs to sell out your bitcoins.

What I would see as a concern for buyers is that their doesn't seem to be many bidders (buyers) of bitcoins. Only a sale of a few thousands bitcoins would tank the market.

I would think most buyers are going to be very cautions when buying now, after we just hit a low yesterday.

We have the foreign (though not as large markets) available to help stabilize the price through foreign trading.  As soon at the Mtgox price goes down it can be bought and resold for small gains in the foreign markets as people seem to have figured out yesterday.  You don't really even need to handle foreign currency to benefit from the forex trade, just open an account at one of the other international trading places and push it back and forth between markets with BTC as the common ground.

Interesting, I wonder how long one could profit from this before bots keep it almost 100% stable.

Watching those walls you mention get put up and torn down within seconds on mtgoxlive makes me go "hmmmm".  You can see the lines jump thousands of BTC or tens of thousands of USD all of a sudden.  There is a very large bot or human messing with us.  The only thing that is clear is that he has a ton of money to play with.  Confirms the speculators that always say "you think the market moves a lot now? wait until your average wallstreet guy comes in and starts throwing a few million around".

I'm gld more people are starting to figure that out. A whole bunch of people got gamed yesterday.

It's important not to overstate the importance of the visible bids and asks. Those show only the orders people have placed, but any number of additional orders could exist that haven't been placed yet. Thus, there is no way to know whether a wall is an overestimate or underestimate of true demand at that price.

Anecdotally - I am a "buyer" of bitcoins, and I don't have any placed orders. When I want to buy, I just do it at that moment, so my "interest" is invisible to everyone else. I assume most interest, on both the buy and sell side, is invisible.

However, you should like this bot or human because he has been the reason why the price was stabalized for so long and held much higher. This person in my opinion has bought thousands of coins. It seems that he may have pulled out as he is finally realizing making money is a lost cause.

Interesting points! (bonus points for putting the date in the title, very good idea)

I'm curious about how feasible it is for foreigners to trade on those exchanges though...

I can only speak for the Canadian exchange (cavirtex.com) but for the time being at least, the only way to transfer money in or out is from a Canadian bank account from one of the 4 or 5 chartered banks.

Not sure if you can even open an account with one of those chartered banks without a valid Canadian home address. (I remember stories in the paper about how this limitation makes it very difficult for homeless people to get back on their feet...)

other payment/withdrawl options may be made available in the future, but it seems the people running virtex are very cautious about any kind of security or chargeback liability... (exactly why I love that exchange)

No reason to deal with Canadian banks.

Deposit say 100BTC to Cavirtex or Britcoin.  Convert half of it to the local currency at whatever the going rate is.
Say Mtgox drops in price but Cavirtex remains the same.  Buy BTC at Mtgox, send it to Cavirtex, convert to CAD.  Eventually, the market at Cavirtex is likely to go down too.  When this happens, rebuy the bitcoins at this lower price, then send them back to Mtgox.
The same thing but backwards works fine if Mtgox raises in price but Cavirtex is still lower.  Doing this you could (at least formerly) make 6-10% in a day or so, albeit on small amount.  But that much in a couple of weeks means doubling your money.

Obviously it's slow to wait for the six confirmations, which is why you have the 50BTC/50BTC-CAD equivalents buffer.  The buffer is spent instantaneously while you wait for the confirmations for the amount you just used to be sent from your Mtgox account.

And now this'll probably be less profitable since I'd mentioned it, but oh well.  I'd settle for better trade volume on foreign exchanges; if bitcoin becomes a tiny-fee Forex market it has the potential to replace the other Forex markets which is best for everyone involved in bitcoin.

Yep, he's my brohemoth

Thanks tacotime, I had not thought of that.

bitcoin is truly without borders.

Come on, don't put NSFW pictures in the middle of normal threads.

Anyway, back to single digits we go.

$9.50 by this evening

+1

I think we'll get closer to $9 before the day is out.

Good thing it will be millions of USD, not millions of BTC.

You say that like it's a good thing

Somebody just threw up 10,000BTCs at $10.  Methinks we're going down.

And the weekend hasnt even started yet  ;D

That 10000BTC wall is so fake, it'll rise to 10, sell maybe 100 and then the wall will disappear

I'm not interested in bitcoin for the promise of 1000X returns and I'm not particularly tied to this blockchain over new blockchain technologies that might emerge. I'm interested in a viable cryptocurrency for the future.

So whether it goes down in price or not is fairly immaterial to me (at some point I'll shut off my miners, but that's my only concern).

Personally I think bitcoin has a lot to gain from going back "underground" for a year or so while more client programs and infrastructure emerge.

I think the price of bitcoin will eventually reflect its usefulness, but I dont think its usefulness is tied to its price, especially as a pure medium of exchange, which is what I'm most interested in it as.

Why? This could well just be someone wanting to buy. Putting a fake wall like that tends to trigger a lot of orders just below it, which can then be bought up. After that, the wall order is removed.

We'll see...

EDIT: wall at $10 now 17,000 BTC

thank god i bought in at $17.50

Might want to consider cutting your loses before your hand is forced @ $5-6

no i already used them to buy a bunch of drugs... hehe.. bitcoin might get down to $5 or less, but it will not die. too many good uses for it.

Miners don't sell your Bitcoins ! Just buy things with them...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

my thoughts *almost* exactly - as long as bitcoin, or it's cryptocurrency replacement, becomes widely accepted and trusted, yet remains decentralized and distributed! that's what I'm most hungry for.

*(somewhat off-topic rant coming in 3... 2... 1...)

the globalization or conglomeration of economies that has taken place over the last few years is exactly the opposite way to go.

the whole reason they built the internet in the first place was to have a robust, heavily redundant, network of communication ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET )

when you begin to centralize (which is the way we've been going) you introduce a singular point of failure (also a singular point of control, which is the main goal of the global banksters)

after seeing first-hand the dangers of over-centralization in the bitcoin world, we should be pushing for more decentralization in all aspects of our global society. I'm not talking total anarchy here, but I think we need to start moving away from this ever-growing concentration of power at the federal level (and beyond that, the growing consolidation of power from forming the G8, G20, "super-congress" <- lol) and move back to more power at the state (province if you're a canuck  ;D ) and municipal levels... and we need to begin with the currency, or rather the people that control the currency; because it is they, not the governments, that are now controlling the world.

-- sorry for rant. just brainstorming here, throwing some ideas out there.

You traders aren't affected by the swings, but us miners have bills to be paid. We are taking a huge hit from these price swings. We are dependent on a higher price while all the traders are like CHEAP BITCOINS YAAAAY (...)

Just curious, what's your "break-even" point?

I mean including power, replacing burnt out cards, power supply, motherboards, etc... (let's not include initial investment because that gets complicated with figuring resale values and stuff, and as long as bitcoins stay above your break-even point, theoretically you will cover your initial investment eventually)



the reason I ask is cuz I bought a couple extra cards and an air conditioner just to play around with mining (only about 800 total investment) and I'm wondering about setting up another rig, (but that would cost roughly 1200-1500)

I don't pay for power, I live in a small apartment, but I only have 2 15amp fuses so I can realistically only run 2 rigs (I haven't checked yet to see if the plug on my stove is on a seperate fuse)

my air conditioner can easily handle the extra heat, and I sleep in the other room so noise isn't a big deal...

I have two rigs I built to mine with. But I did it with "hobby" money, knowing I could lose most of it. Shut off your rigs until winter, or stop thinking about getting rich for not doing much at all, or enjoy it as a hobby, or anything else, but don't expect people to cry crocodile tears since all of the sudden you can't invest in a rig and have it paid off within less than a month. Everyone knew mining was a race to the bottom anyway. Expecting hundreds of percent ROI per year for something nearly anyone with any technical expertise whatsoever can set up and run would be silly.

6.88 - the hits just keep on coming!   may be down to $2 by tonite!

That would be nice since I have some orders down there.  Unfortunately, I expect the bottom is nigh and a more reserved rise will begin in the next day or two.

I expect BTCs to be trading over 9000 in the near future.  (not really)

On this note, we can celebrate key lessons learned.

Security
- personal wallet security is frightening
- online wallets have made things worse [they did not turn out to be the security solution for grannies]
- security failsafes should be coded into the blockchain [eg. user-specified wallet daily txn limits and emergency addresses]

Volatility
- exchange rate volatility is frightening
- blockchain rules should aim to mitigate this [e.g. feedback mechanism to manage coin creation and destruction rates according to  demand]

The good news is that there are solutions to these problems. My outlook for 'a viable cryptocurrency' is positive. In fact, the more that bitcoin gets pummeled by security and volatility, the more positive I feel. Recurrent bad news will lead people to recognize the severity of these issues and the necessity of more radical solutions.

1) Yes, for many
2) Crappy online wallets. Good online wallets, backed by larger capital with strong security, robust features, and insurance policies still have not emerged
3) Eh, still think 3rd party tools is best way to go about this, blockchain doesn't need to be any bigger and hard-coded scurity is notoriously difficult to change if broken


1) Yes, but that is what happens when a market is not only small, but mostly speculation - even then, larger businesses (like a gambling site) could use bitcoins as a mechanism of exchange without much risk by selling instantly and rebuying and xferring bitcoins when customer cashed out

2) That sounds like a recipe for disaster. At least with bitcoin the growth rate is a known quantity, if it was constantly self-adjusting it might lead to even more overshoots and corrections