Observe in light of recent disruptions:  The aforementioned ask-wall was getting chewed on quickly for a while when it moved into the active area, but it was subsequently moved up out of that zone.  Both the buyers and sellers on Tradehill seem pretty stubborn and patient (and relatively few) so it seems to have stayed in tact at it's $3.15-ish for a long while.

The most interesting thing is that it did not budge with all the activity today.  Hypotheses:

 - The guy was sleeping soundly.

 - The guy has lost his interest in liquidating with significant haste for some reason.

 - The guy has lost his ability to move the wall around.  If he is the allinvain thief and Mt. Gox applied enough shame to Tradehill to cut him off or cooperate with any law enforcement who may have taken an interest, I could imagine that.

Fixed within a few hours it looked like.

The brief down-time reminded me that I had not yet contributed to the whiskey fund.  I just rectified that.

If the price has stabilized at $3.00, it seems clear enough to me that the amount of money flowing in is around $20k/day net.  1000 people putting in $20/day would be all it would take (and soon it will only be $10/day.)  I find it amazing that given the size of the human population, the difficulties with the various monetary systems, and the ease with which BTC and migrate, the price is not much much higher.  But there it is.  I'm resolved to avoid staring a gift horse in the mouth.

I use bitcoinity.org most since I am used to it and find it superior to other such solutions that I know of.  Unfortunately this morning I find:

===========
Internal Server Error

No space left on device - /home/btc/app/log/production.log
WEBrick/1.3.1 (Ruby/1.8.7/2011-02-18) at bitcoinity.org:80
===========

The up-side is that it also screams "I'm not running a sophisticated honeypot on behalf of well capitalized players."

My hat is off to you and the more mature and responsible side of me is rooting for success here (the other side being stimulated by big action no matter which direction it is.)

I've got a nagging suspicion that some people want out and have not gotten their way yet.  Part of it is from the depth charts which have a sordid history of being manipulated, but another part is just a sense about how the pieces landed after the jar was shaken in the exchange divergence over the last few days.

If my sense is true, I hope that the people who want out are patient enough to sit tight for some time else I could see that big route that lots of people are purporting to suspect coming to pass.  I may re-load my cash position tomorrow just in case the long awaited opportunity to back up the truck for another load of BTC comes by.

Not redeemable, at least on the basis only of the public block chain, but some other methods may (or may not) be employed to make that possible.

I envision a situation where (say) I as a holder of BTC in the 'Satoshi' block chain wish to support an alternate chain for whatever reason.  The reason might be that they pay me a cut of the proceeds of inflation, a cut of the transfer fees, or simply because I agree politically with the structure and operation of the currency system.  Most likely it would be some combination of these in my particular case.

If part of the value of the alternate currency was the BTC backing it, it could be possible to automatically keep tabs on that aspect of the alternate currency's value.  That is what I mean be parsing the 'Satoshi' block chain.

There are a lot of complexities associated with how to implement a 'backing', and what exactly that means.  Would it be demand redeemable for BTC?  Under what conditions may the backers withdraw their support?  That kind of thing.  I see a bewildering array of possible structures.  I'm hoping that some of them end up being explored and the process of evolution arrives at a solution which works well for everyone (and most well for the actual users of a currency base, or at least better for these people than our current debt-based currency regimes.)


One of the reasons why the idea of an array of 'specialty' crypto-currencies appeals to me is that I think it would allow the general 'distributed' scheme to scale to an immense size and be a legitimate and compelling alternative to state sponsored solutions which I fear will be presented as 'our only way forward' in the event of some sort of crisis.

I agree with your point about the practicality of centralization in some areas a family of currency systems, but I very much would like to see the actual core remain decentralized.

I've seen it happen but it was some time ago IIRC.  And it was not really enough to cover the 1% exchange fees plus whatever fees are associated with transferring a lot of money (if one needed to do that.)  But I think that the best way to arbitrage would probably include some amount of picking off spikes and dips anyway.

From time to time I think that outlier picking off could be effective even in one exchange (specifically Tradehill where the volumes are lower and the outliers are higher), but these opportunities seem to come and go (as people learn from their fat-finger mistakes or whatever.)  I was writing something to play that game, but got interested in other things and keep thinking that others are going to be writing the same thing (but better.)

The down-side is, of course, that you double your chances of losing in the event of an(other) exchange failure.  If you are a good trader and making money hand over fist, it's probably worth the chance.  It would take a lot of winning of nickles and dimes through arbitrage to add up to a sizable capital loss should one of the exchanges go belly-up.

I noticed it days ago and minutes after it went into place here:

  http://bitcoinity.org/markets?currency=USD&exchange=tradehill

and have been watching it switch around and diminish ever since.

I'm betting that you are right, and in part because, IMHO, Bitcoin seems to be remarkably tight and free of major functional design defects.

I suspect that the most successful alternate crypto-currencies will end up being ones which use Bitcoin pledged as a backing store.  I believe that it should be fairly doable to parse the existing Bitcoin block chain to validate BTC currency base which is pledged as backing to alternate chains.

I'm surprised you've not been bored to tears by the dead-times on Tradehill.  But I don't know, or really wish to know, your strategies and I assume you've got something going which can kill boredom.

Anyway, another hypothesis is that this (one-time) 20k is the (purportedly) stolen purportedly allinvain stash as per another thread.  The most interesting pick-up from that (to me) is that Mt Gox seems to be accusing Tradehill of failure to participate appropriately in the task of 'catching bad guys'.  That factor is (again, to me) a fascinating aspect of the Bitcoin economy.

I'll just mention this since, for whatever reason, it does not seem to be considered very often.

I have wired money to Tradehill maybe 4 or 5 times (US domestic) by stopping by my bank on my way to work.  2 or 3 of those times, the money has been ready to trade by early afternoon.  Lately it has taken till early the next business day.

The wire fee for me is something like $20.00.  So the transfer fee if I do a grand or two is %1 or %2.  I don't want more cash than I absolutely need to have in any exchange in case they run into problems.  Unfortunately this fear has contributed to my expediting some BTC purchases rather than being more patient.  Even mainstream outfits with all their regulations and what-not can go belly-up and cause individual traders a lot of grief (e.g., MF Global) so I always expect it as a distinct possibility with these Bitcoin outfits.

I withdraw most of my BTC from the exchange regularly.  While this is normally pretty quick, Tradehill went through a phase of taking their sweet-ass time but seem to be back on track now.  It could be that they whitelist users who they've already researched or something.

I'm sure it has not escaped you that if you want BTC, you need $$$.  Waiting for an opportune time to convert BTC to USD for the purpose of having USD to buy BTC takes more time, skill, and luck than a lot of us have.


I'll defer to your expertise here.  Your hypothesis sounds more realistic than mine.

Another fun hypothesis is that it is a plot by Tradehill to get some user's to take the plunge and get around to setting up and using a Tradehill account.  That might be a good investment for Tradehill actually.


I agree very much, and it was a big factor in my primary use of Tradehill.  Even Kenna has at least paid lip service to this philosophy in the past (which is easy enough to do when you are trailing by an order of magnitude I suppose.)  I would like to see several healthy and trusted exchanges in every major locale (Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceana for lack of a better delineation.)  Maybe a franchise of highly autonomous exchange outlets could be viable to instill some confidence and provide some level of back-end support, but not until the economy grows by several orders of magnitude.

But back to today, one could still loose all their chips in some domino effect which took down what few viable exchanges exist, but one should at least be somewhat insulated from garden variety coding fuckups or the types of corp/gov exchange harassment which seems endemic and unlikely to subside.

This is one of a few services that has been heavily and consistently pumped up by Bruce Wagner, IIRC.

I've watched things in this area pretty closely...one of my biggest sources of paranoia being that the exchange pulls a 'MF Global', and I am interested to know if they at least have the potential to be solvent.  My numbers are seat-of-the-pants, but...some months ago TH seemed to be catching up, but then fell back down to %10 (at best.)  The recent catch-up is just for the last few days and I think it mainly relates to that one huge sell order.

As for funding, even if one does keep a pretty good balance at multiple exchanges (which has it's own dangers as I've alluded to in the aforementioned) it is pretty easy to blow one's wad early and kinda hard to quickly re-balance the cash positions (at least I hear of serious nightmares trying to get cash out, though I've not run into any myself.)  The loss of arbitrage and subsequent drop-outs at Tradehill a few weeks ago speak to that I think.

The guy moved his bid up, but his lunch was being eaten by other would-be Tradehill sellers so he moved it back down again (is my take.)  He must want out pretty bad, and the block is getting chewed through pretty quick now it seems like.  But with some quick wiring of money and a bit of luck, one might be able to get in on the action.  Tradehill has never taken more than a bit over a day from when I send a wire till I am funded (if I do so on week days.)

Looks like he moved what's left of it (which is lots) up 10 or 15 cents just now.  I'd only see him move it down, but suspected he may move it up which is why I took a bite this morning.

I think the guy could be dark at those volumes if he wanted to be, but I cannot remember (or never knew) if that was possible on Tradehill.  My hypothesis (probably wrong) is that this is some early adopter who just wants out with limited hassle.  It is my hope that those who are taking a decent position at these post-bubble times will be more rare, and also less likely to be shaken out.  Thus, the currency base will be undergoing a healthy re-distribution.

I used the term 'damage' completely figuratively and not at all pejoratively.  Just meaning that it is of a magnitude such that it could have a noticeable impact.  I'm a fairly serious speculator as well and concur that such a class of participants could end up having a positive impact on the monetary system if it survives.

I'm with here on all fronts I think (though I'm certainly not putting up 100's of grand) and appreciate your efforts.  By happenstance I did do a recent one at $3.00, but whoever has the 20k BTC on the block at Tradehill right now is calling the tune on that exchange.  I am dying of curiosity about the story behind that block, but there are losta things we will probably never know.

$25,000 -> $250,000?

The sad thing is that these kinds of numbers are enough to do some damage.  Bring in a few buddies and let's get this thing rolling so I can stop pumping in funds and switch to more productive endeavors.