I tend to disagree with this view. Real markets like currency markets as well as commodities and derivatives are even more gambling than gambling itself for couch traders. As others have mentioned, crypto is or was very forgiving, at least till recently. You could have bought a few coins and then wait patiently till the price rose and then you reaped the profits. This doesn't work very well with established markets.

To tell the truth, I want to be proved wrong. But as long as there exist super whales holding dozen thousands of bitcoins, the threat of someone offloading this huge stash at one stroke will persist. And so will the fears. The major problem is that the higher the price rises in the future, provided it rises at all of course, the stronger will be the urge to sell. Isn't that what happened to Mt. Gox coins after all?

If only it were that simple. If you just create your own piggy bank and start putting your money there, it will be depreciating constantly. So after a short while, whatever you manage to save montly, the same amount will be eaten away completely by the inflation. Crypto is not a panacea either. If we cut all the crap and hype, it is not guaranteed that your crypto holdings won't turn into digital trash in a couple of years.

I don't think that they are going to give back the coins. If they haven't done so already, why would they now? Since these coins were not distributed between the Mt. Gox clients at once, while they were offered fiat reimbursement instead. So it looks more like the remaining coins will be expropriated and then sold at an auction. Actually, not a very bad idea, given how many bitcoins confiscated by the FBI have been already auctioned off.

Actually, it is not as risky as it is boring. Basically, when you get the hang of it, it becomes more like a daily treadmill routine rather than a fascinating journey. So if it is not your thing, then definitely stay away from it. Many people have tried their hand at this and they left not because they lost but because they thought the profits they earned were not worth it. And for them, it is likely the best choice.

If you've been trading markets for 35 years, and this is a helluva job, how could it happen that you bought into this ****? Typically, people learn their lesson the hard way in their fresh years, and then it either remains with them for the rest of their trading lives or they go to hunt elsewhere. Don't consider this as an offense of any kind because I'm really-really curious. After 35 years you should be kinda invincible to these things. I mean the ones like "it will be different this time".

A little over a year ago Bitcoin was worth less than 1k. On the one hand, this tells us that we still have a pretty decent price and some support. On the other, though, this also shows how low Bitcoin can actually go. The problem is Bitcoin is not stable, and if it stays at the current levels for longer, the speculative folk will lose their interest. That wouldn't be an issue if real adoption took off for real but so far the prospects for that are rather bleak too.

Not that I disagree at large with your point, I just want to clarify that governments are not supporting their currencies directly as in setting some arbitrary exchange rates and then trying to keep them at any price. Rather, most sane and experienced governments are targeting price inflation rates because this is the real support that fiat money needs. On the other hand, for export-oriented countries it makes sense to keep exchange rates artificially low - as long as they manage to keep inflation bridled, of course.

I'm more inclined to think that it is the other way round. If it were so and the market became stronger as you seem to assume, then it would make sense to sell the bulk of his coins now and not when the price was high. I agree this is a little counterintuitive but if you take into account that it is the average price that matters, then it could actually make sense. Obviously, this is not the case, and if he decides to sell now, that would likely cause an even stronger panic and ensuing price crash, with no organized support at any price level.

Why should they really? If I were them, I would try to conceal as much of the deal as possible. Indeed, given the blockchain and circumstances, it is next to impossible and I'm not them either. Further, if the same amount of coins was sold that had been moved out of the Mt. Gox wallets, this is a telltale sign if you ask me. You know, if it looks like a duck...

As an aside, I agree that the possibility of dumping large amounts of coins may already be counted in by the market, and that likely explains why there is a strong trend to the downside currently, which we can easily see revealing itself in the recent price moves.

You can always say that. Namely, that the price doesn't rise because there's no demand or, in case it doesn't fall, that there's not enough supply. And you would be right. But can you explain why exactly there is no demand at the moment and where it has gone? Has it not occurred to you that the lack of demand may be due to the fear that prices can go lower when the Mt. Gox trustee or just another Bitcoin bearwhale throws a few dozen thousand bitcoins into the orderbooks?

Myself, I think it is like making the best of a bad bargain on the Mt. Gox trustee's part, though I can hardly say that was a bad bargain by any means. As me in OP and others in this and other threads have already said, the effect is the same whether it was him or someone else going on a schizophrenic selling spree. People will definitely shy from buying in the coming months, but if Bitcoin doesn't go up it goes down, as simple as that. This is what we can all attest to now.

As a matter of fact, I saw it with my own eyes.

I'd sooner say that he now feels kind of guilty for the chaos he wreaked on the cryptoverse or just tries to make it look like he has nothing to do with the off-loading of the Mt. Gox coins and didn't in fact go on a selling spree. I humbly admit that I didn't investigate this issue myself, but I've read it around here that a few people actually bothered to track down the coins, and they reported that around 40k BTC of Mt. Gox coins had been sold late December through early February. Though I don't really know if it is FUD or not.

Perhaps, this mostly refers to little-known and unpopular altcoins at such exchanges as Yobit and their likes. Major altcoins like ETC, LTC, etc are all traded against fiat as well, and it actually remains to be seen where's more volume. Apart from that, the majority of people who trade these coins are well aware of their dollar price and their cross-rates.

I agree with you so much. However, how do we know that he didn't actually try to sell the coins off the market first? He may in fact have tried but there might not have been enough buyers or the price was not as good as he would get in the open market. Let's not forget also that he started selling at or near the top. And that was 20k dollars, not something that you would easily sneeze at or dismiss lightly. Was there anyone willing to buy that many bitcoins at so high a price in the first place? This is the question we should ask ourselves before making sweeping accusations. Besides, it is a free market after all, isn't it?

I tend to disagree that Bitcoin right now is extremely sensitive to FUD or just sensational news. It has become kind of invulnerable or even invincible to them. Let's remember the Chinese news that were shaking and quaking the markets through the entire 2017 year. At first they were making a difference and then this difference began to taper off until their impact came basically to nothing. But Bitcoin cannot be made invulnerable to large sell-offs because its price is still in the realm of economic laws like those of supply and demand.

Well, it is not so much about him selling the remaining 160k Mt. Gox coins he has in his wallet as about the fear that many, if not all, buyers of crypto now have because of him. It doesn't even matter if the price crash as of recent was actually due to his massive sell-off, though the evidence seems to be overwhelming. In fact, he may not even sell them at all, not a single satoshi, though this is unlikely given the circumstances, but people will still think that one day he goes nuts about selling these coins at any price, and then prices will be halved again extremely fast. Therefore, Bitcoin won't rise until these coins are gone for good, burned or otherwise disposed of, and people become confident and positive again.

Yes, it has become known that a Mt. Gox guy was selling something like 40k bitcoins December through February, and he still has 4 times as much. And I'm afraid that until he sells it all, we won't see prices rise anymore, to any appreciable degree. People will always think that there's someone who's ready to take advantage of them. Well, there was always someone like him but no one saw them sell their coins yet. Until now.

We all know that crypto is exceptionally volatile but many don't know that it is sort of built in. It is easy to understand why the price moves either up or down when a news breaks out or a rumor surfaces. But there is another variety of volatility which manifests itself in the absence of any major news or significant events. When the price of a speculative asset trades in a sideways market for some time, traders become disinterested in the asset and begin to move their capital into other assets, which they consider more interesting and promising at this point. Unsurprisingly, this leads to an inevitable spike in volatility they were so eagerly waiting for. In this manner, the volatility of cryptocurrencies is a self-sustaining process, which is not going anywhere as long as cryptocurrencies remain mostly vehicles for speculation.

The practical consequence is that the longer the price stays at a certain level or trades in a narrow range, the less time remains till the calm is over and the storm begins. This is a somewhat counterintuitive fact but it is real, so you shouldn't fall victim or prey to seemingly stable prices. They won't remain stable for long. Don't get fooled!

I don't really believe we can measure crypto markets by the same yardstick as we do with, for example, stocks, or even just one stock. It could be said that volatility is built in with Bitcoin. There is no significant use for it outside speculation. That means that it can't be stable. When it moves toward more stability, people become bored and they start to withdraw their capital from Bitcoin, which, in turn, leads to volatility. In this fashion, crypto volatility is a self-sustaining process which can maintain itself on its own.