Bitcoin Forum

I was expecting BTC to blowup for a couple of days, but when they finally did, it was far beyond my expectations.  Whats up with that?

Gavin was on thisweekin.com talking about btc

Additional factors:

- Mt. Gox exchange had, days earlier, difficulties due to DDoS attack.  
  - There might have been pent-up buying pressure that was put to work once defenses to repel the DDoS proved relatively effective.
  - The exchange has stopped accepting wire transfer / ACH from the U.S. .  Not sure on the timing, but maybe there was a "last call" rush to add funds before that method got halted.
  - New "easy" funding method made available (for those in the U.S.): Dwolla ($0.25 per trx)

- Viral growth continues:
  - http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0 (http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)

- Forbes readers finally pulling the trigger?

- Network is protected even more from an attack using "massive computing power" now that there is over 1 Thash/s of hashing.

- The technical analysis indicating that further upside still kept the exchange rate within the trading channel.

- panic buyers realizing that if there is panic buying, it is better to be one of the first panic buyers.  :-)

- the crap on wall street, D.C. and elsewhere continuing, providing plenty of motivation for alternatives.
   (see: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511 (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511) )

More people wanting to buy than sell at the old price.

Publicity in India, perhaps?

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article2001732.ece

Interesting that Canada is leading that, followed by Australia and then the US.

And yet the top language is Russian? Those stats don't look very sound...

sure they do.

the russians are generally *much* more security conscious - more likely to use Tor, etc.

so even though their connection cannot be traced back to russia - and may in fact indicate that any given russian user has a tcp/ip address originating in guam or costa rica - they're still *speaking/writing* in russian.

makes perfect sense.

You're missing the point.

Canada is the top "country" making those searches.

Russian is the top "language" making those searches.

Russia itself isn't even on the list of top countries.

Really? I'm in Australia and I see us at #7

I think SgtSpike is suggesting that the Russian-language users are being counted under the country of their Tor exit nodes.

it doesn't matter what country is listed as the top country - if a significant number of users are hiding their country of origin by masking their real IP address.

look - if you're a russian, and you're manipulating your IP address to show that it's originating in canada, then that's one more 'canadian' connection - right?  and one less russian.

but the language you use cannot be hidden.  right?

Either that, or there's a vast underground movement of Russian immigration to Canada.

I don't know what spurred it, but a couple of observations.

The "situation" caught my eye about a week ago, upon wanting to sell the remains of a generated block (after sending some away as donations) on "bitmarket.eu" to cover the purchase of some electric vehicle batteries.

- observing the situation, I could note that with the price increase, the market volume tended to decrease

- further, I could note that the mean size of a transaction tended to be 10 BTC

- I could observe no meaningful geographical pattern in ask vs. bid offers

- I could observe no meaningful transaction type pattern (local wire vs. international wire vs. paypal)

Either way, it looks like a deflationary spiral, and makes me concerned. What is causing the typical transaction size I don't know. I hope that people who sell goods and services can keep up with adjusting their prices downwards. Either way, such a rapid change in exchange rates is not contributing to a healthy and stress-free trading environment. I do hope this passes, but people's behaviour is hard to predict. It might slow down, it might burst like a bubble, it might do many things.. first time I see such a thing, and this ain't the most usual economy.
/me goes to wonder more about it

The 10BTC thing may be due to deepbit.  The default automatic payment is 10BTC, and most people probably think that sounds like a good number to withdraw at, so they just keep it.  Since there are so many users on deepbit, it's probably what makes up a good portion of those 10BTC transactions.

There is nothing to be concerned when there is more trading than ever before.

I know why the price is going up so much. It's in the new signature I just made:

What spurred the New Rally to $7?  8)

FTFY  :)

8$ now.

In b4 $9...

I predict $20 by the end of the month.

If it hits 9.5 by this night, I'm totally investing.

What spurred the New sell-off to $6?  :D

i lol'ed

YOUR MOM'S CHEST HAIR!!!!
No, jk but I think it was people speculating and didn't think it would go higher so they cashed out.

Why do people think this way? Trends can be sustained, but often they're not. By waiting with buying, you will be buying expensively!