reagrding your special short-term update:
Similar to your "Reason b)", I've been suspecting a "conglomerate" of wealthy bitcoin players has come together and is trying to stabilize the price. I think it's been going on for longer than just since the bitcoinica problem, though. I also think the "target range" is being adjusted sometimes. It used to be "$5.0 +/- 0.20" and is now 5.00 to 5.20.
This is wild speculation, of course and this might be totally wrongThe only other explanation I can come up with for the astonishing stability since March would be a herd-effect with traders saying: "oh, ok, so it'll be around $5 now, so I'll just sell slighty above and buy slightly below". If enough money acts like that, it's self-fulfilling.
Of course the market cannot be manipulated in the long run (at least not against its general will: it might be possible to "stabilize" it into a certain trend and I would welcome that).
anyhow, thanks for the update, I think it's spot-on.
Yes, it is also correct that those stabilization efforts have been going on already before the bitcoinica disaster.
And also yes, it will fail for sure. The market does what it wants, not what a few players want. |
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Both Bitcoin and gold (& silver) are grinding upward. The dollar is all over the place, and the Euro is getting ever-closer to the breaching the $1.25 level. For the past few days, commodity currencies have not been dragged along with the Euro as tightly as they were in recent weeks.
Once Euro sub-$1.25 happens, I'm expecting a final panic sell-off in equities and forex into the end of May or early June; markets have been too controlled so far. Gold may be dragged a bit lower initially, but I don't think by much; I'm still looking for the $2,100 to $3,000 range to be hit in the next cycle.
In the first wave of the Euro crash towards 1.18-1.19 and possibly towards parity, PM will dive with the Euro at least to Gold 1,300 |
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Sorry for duplicate posting (I posted this in the newbie forum initially) but I really wanted to share my concerns about the claims process as proposed by Zhou here. By now it is clear that bitcoinica had their entire db and all records (apart from PII/AML and some outdated records) wiped. This is a worst case scenario. What a royal mess and one that baffles the mind considering they were dealing with a lot of customers money on a daily basis. Having a single point of failure on a virtual server hosted by a 3rd party? Wow. just wow. If I had known I'd never have put as much money into this operation as I did. However that is all in the past so let's move forward. Zhou suggested the following approach to dealing with claims: --- Disclaimer: Pure suggestion. NOT OFFICIAL ---
- Your bitcointalk.org profile or Bitcoin-OTC rating shows you as reputable and trustworthy. (50 Points)
- You can supply at least one transactional email you have received which perfectly matches our outgoing transactional email records. (30 Points)
- You can provide passport scans and you have provided to Bitcoinica (even if it's pending verification). (40 Points)
- The order of magnitude of your reported balance is consistent with our outdated accounting records. (30 Points)
- You can recall the balances exactly or very precisely. (20 Points)
- You have reported a losing position, with precise details. (20 Points)
- You have contacted Bitcoinica Support at least once since September 2011. (10 Points)
- Your email can be searched online and matches your identity. (10 Points)
- You can provide proof of Bitcoin address ownership (signature), Mt. Gox code you have used/obtained or accurate details of large transaction records (>2500 BTC) that match our hedging activity. (10 Points each kind of evidence)
- Another reputable member supports your claim. (10 Points)
- You have used wire transfer, BitInstant or AurumXchange to deposit/withdraw funds and they can verify the records. (10 Points)
- You have submitted the claim within the first 24 hours since the announcement. (10 Points) Couple of points below: - Your bitcointalk.org profile or Bitcoin-OTC rating shows you as reputable and trustworthy. (50 Points) Wow. 50 points if you have a reputable bitcointalk.org account. Ranked higher then any verifiable things like transaction IDs, passport data, etc. I'm sorry I didn't know when I signed up with bitcoinica that it's compulsory to go to some unrelated forum and post here daily. Some people have no interest in this and have busy non-BTC related dayjobs (me). To me this is wholly unrelated. Like Bank of America returning money to customers who were good boy scouts or something? Oh you weren't in the boy scouts? tough luck. Putting this item on the top of the list introduces a kind of bias that I wholly disagree with. I also don't see how the reputation system is workable. For example I am using another username here then on bitcoinica (and this is on purpose). I also chose to hide my email. How can Bitcoinica match Bitoinica users to Bitcointalk.org users? And even if they can how would they establish 'reputation'? (Read all posts by members? I think not). And giving points based on friends supporting your claim... what is this even supposed to mean? Any prudent investor/speculator will keep their deposits and positions private. I don't see how getting supports from friends promotes the claims process in any way apart from allowing you-help-me-i-help-you schemes between people making claims look more legit. - The order of magnitude of your reported balance is consistent with our outdated accounting records. (30 Points) The reason this won't work is because your records are outdated. In my case I sent a significant USD wire transfer to Bitcoinica that cleared only days before the hack. Yeah that is money in the bank for Bitcoinica but no 30 points for me. No sir. - You have reported a losing position, with precise details. (20 Points) Ah so customers that came in at the time when Bitcoinica started paying interest on deposits and used Bitcoinica as a USD+BTC savings account that had no interest in speculation (like me) will lose out here. Sounds like a great idea. - You can recall the balances exactly or very precisely. (20 Points) And you are going to verify this *how* exactly? Basically what you are saying is that if the user picked the 'Exact' option from the dropdown they get a free 20 points instantly. I would argue that because of daily interest on deposits combined with 5 decimals of precision, almost no account holder will know their *exact* balance. - Your email can be searched online and matches your identity. (10 Points) Right, because we all know that putting your email address online so they can be harvested by spammers and impersonators is best practice. +10 points. - You have submitted the claim within the first 24 hours since the announcement. (10 Points) Yeah sure. Because all 5500 bitcoinica customers have nothing better to do then read 70+ post threads on bitcointalk.org all day. People have families, jobs, vactations, etc. Bitcoinica has not notified any customers by email of the claims process and the main website has been spotty at best (non www. domain did not work. Certificates were invalid suggesting the claims process could be bogus, etc.) if your user ID is less than 4500, I'll definitely make sure you get your money back Let's check my user id... hmm 47**. Well I guess I might as well wave bye bye to my money. Again I started using bitcoinica for the interest on deposits back in February. I put a large chunk of my savings here (yeah, shame on me). Please tell me why I am an inferior bitcoinica customer again? Don't get me wrong - I think Zhou did a lot of good stuff with Bitcoinica and really appreciate the information he shared during this incident given the total lack of info from Bitcoin Consultancy, but he clearly dropped the ball when it came to security and I don't think he is the right person to handle the claims process since he seems to have a personal incentive to protect his reputation that might adversely influence the process. The claims process should be based on facts. Meaning MTGOX codes, Wire Transfer Codes, Blockchain transfers, AML/PII docs and the like. It is a big Jigsaw but the only way. Bitcoinica should start working with MtGox, BitInstant, ArumXchange and other transfer services pronto. All money (be it BTC or USD) that came into Bitcoinica should be verifiable though other institutions. And if it sounds like I'm angry - It is because I am. --- Disclaimer: Assume that the suggestion is used without modification. --- Well, none of these measures work individually, for sure. That's why we need 100 Points for full refunds. If you are reputable on this forum, submitted passport scan and at least one other proof, you can get 100 points. If you're not active on forums or OTC and never verified. Never mind. If you honestly reported a losing position (and we have pretty current position reports), sent an email to us ever, gave accurate balances up to two decimal points (20+30 points) and used Mt. Gox and Bitcoin to deposit. Full refund! Even if you can't give us exact details, we can offer a partial payment for you and the remainder will come later. We are not eating your money. --- Disclaimer: Assume that the suggestion is used without modification. --- EDIT: I'd like to add one criterion for the suggested plan: Reported very close balances and positions (less than 0.5% upwards or 1% downwards) compared to our non-current records. (50 Points, but disqualify the orders of magnitude criterion) We're not telling you the date of our record, so if there're no balance changes after that date, we'll give the most recognition. This applies to interest-earning accounts with not many activities. The fact is, we have all kinds of records, so it's very hard to submit false claims without contradictions. I have spent about 100 hours in total monitoring orders execution, user balances change, deposits, withdrawals, support requests and position liquidations since the launch of Bitcoinica. The memory itself can prove something. And I have a previous project selling virtual goods and facing a lot of credit card fraud - I have trained myself identifying fraud. |
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The new bitcoin weekly report is out to subscribers. "the calm before the storm"
End of month is nearing. If anyone is interested in a subscription, just PM me.
If you wear the correct goggles (intersangoGBP in this case), there is no calm:  fx markets in turmoil. If USDX (measures USD against other fiat) reverses (as it might've just started to do a couple of hours ago) and heads back down, bitcoin could go up consequently? |
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Cash out now or Dec 2012 after reward drop. SO many decisions  The reward drop is already priced in as it is already public knowledge. |
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The new bitcoin weekly report is out to subscribers. "the calm before the storm"
End of month is nearing. If anyone is interested in a subscription, just PM me.
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I also said this can take long, but its not a question of IF only WHEN I like your technical analysis. But, couldn't this be said about anything? It's not IF the world will end, it's WHEN.
[url]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493.msg919512#msg919512
Back to the topic:
I have said as well that we need to ask for a deadline for the claim process to be done to bitcoin consultancy. I think 5 days max are realistic. Otherwise we should take real big action/url]The claim process will be finished when you stop writing in blue and learn to post a link. Before those 2 conditions are met, no chance! I have nothing against different color font. It brings a little joy into our lives. And seriously. It is necessary to limit the time "claim page". Otherwise, all claims will grow and grow. Otherwise soon will not be enough $ 5`000`000  Why would the claims "grow and grow" if the system can't be gamed  Who said anything about $5 million ? Is that how much money Bitcoinica has ?
There can always be another 2nd batch of claims processed afterwards, but you can't wait years to ensure that everyone is covered.
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Continuing the good discussion here, and not on the bitcoinica thread:
I also said this can take long, but its not a question of IF only WHEN I like your technical analysis. But, couldn't this be said about anything? It's not IF the world will end, it's WHEN. Yes, this is right. But I can narrow the time scale: We will likely see more volatility in the next 10 trading days that will show >= 10% move(s) [/color]
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But stability will soon be gone...
what makes you say that?
To the second question: We are at historical low volatility which always leads to an explosion (and I also said this can take long, but its not a question of IF only WHEN). I do not say that to get more subscribers, I have a lot of them already. The reason why I am writing it is that I want to make people aware of the risk / opportunity even if they do not pay, because I feel there are a lot of people into bitcoins who are not experienced in trading and who may make big mistakes just because of some wild posts. |
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By the way, isn't BTC remarkably stable lately? I thought it was going to be doom and gloom without Bitcoinica.Volume is decent too.
you are right that there is good internal bitcoin market strength.
But stability will soon be gone... |
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Bitcoinica Consultancy: You are full of shit when you say you already dealt with a good number of the more simple claims.
My friend who has a whole bitcoin(lol) in your service still haven't got a response after he filled your stupid claim form.
I guess 1 open position with a 1 BTC balance is fucking complicated for you to deal with.
Also, one question my friend asked me: Where are you going to return his Bitcoin to if you don't even ask for a Bitcoin address?
Just stop lying.
I'm not sure were you got that. Please show us the post so it can be altered. This is what we said: Right now, we believe the best thing for all parties involved is that we continue with the reclaims process. We have investigated many of the claims but have many left. There were still claims being filed as of at least yesterday. Our intention is to have a secure platform where users can claim their accounts and everyone will be able to claims their accounts once the claims process is finished. We cannot offer a concrete timeline for exactly when this will happen but we are working as fast as possible. Please be patient. We are truly sorry for the grave inconveniences.
You need to give a deadline for claims resolution and you handle all available claims and finalize them.
You can always add remaining claims at a later stage. But you can not wait until the last claim comes in which could be anytime between now and 500 years.
I expect a deadline for claims settlement which is about maximal 5 days out from today. |
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Have you noticed that prices have spiked a couple of times above 5.20$ but without the needed volume to actually allow for that ?
it seems that there is something strange going on on mtgox .
I wonder if there is some price fixing / fooling going on on purpose. This could be even related to bitcoinica.
Does anyone know if bitcoinica is currently still trading on mtgox and is this outside of the normal order book.
I was not aware that there are still dark orders posible.
Some sh.t is up at gox, yes, but I wouldn't panic. An order of mine at 5.168 wasn't filled when it spiked to 5.18. I was told in #mtgox that trades had been cancelled (compare bitcoincharts.com to charts on mtgox.com itself to see difference) I'm not suspecting it to be bitcoinica-related in any way. Afaik there is no dark pool no more on gox. How did you come up with this theory of bitcoinica trading outside the orderbook? Bitcoinica bot has surely stopped trading anyhow.
Even if this is not caused by bitcoinica this needs to be fixed to avoid more damage to the bitcoin economy and public perception.
More professionalism is needed for ALL exchanges, not only bitcoinica, but also MtGOX |
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thanks for shedding lights on this
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Have you noticed that prices have spiked a couple of times above 5.20$ but without the needed volume to actually allow for that ?
it seems that there is something strange going on on mtgox .
I wonder if there is some price fixing / fooling going on on purpose. This could be even related to bitcoinica.
Does anyone know if bitcoinica is currently still trading on mtgox and is this outside of the normal order book.
I was not aware that there are still dark orders posible.
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Edited to add: 1. Unfortunately Zhou himself has delayed greatly the reclaim process.
How exactly has someone who reportedly has no access, done that? Are you claiming he has deleted data? I can't see any other way in which he could delay the claims process. 2. We hope that users wait until there is more disclosure to judge what has happened.
You seem to think we, at present, care one jot about disclosure. What difference will it make to us and our access to our money if you were all to publish your chat logs right now? Answer: none. You are being judged on the number of days that go by without access to our money; without explanation of why we have no access to our money; and without statements of facts. You addition of mud slinging is making neither you nor Zhoutong (despite what he might think about restoring his reputation) look good. 3. We do apologise for the turn this discourse has taken. However, we hope to show how important this disclosure is and our dissatisfaction with how things were being handled and continue to be handled.
Apologies imply regret; regret implies a wish that something hadn't happened; and yet you continue this public mud slinging. The pair of you seem to know nothing about professionalism. Customers are allowed to be noisy, ignorant, irrational pigs. Professional companies are not. See below for the questions you should be answering.
By "we want information", we didn't mean we wanted to see your internal squabbles over who's fault it all is, and who signed what piece of paper. Go and get some lawyers and a court case and sort it out between yourselves. What we want to know is: - Whether you have a database backup?
- Whether you have control of the remaining 'cold wallet' deposits?
- Whether you have control of the remaining USD deposits
- How much of the customer-owned funds are left?
- Why is the claim process taking so long? We all still know our passwords and if you've got a copy of the hashes of those passwords, we can ID ourselves. Surely a small web page to let us log in and look at our balances is about a days work? Even if we can't withdraw them yet?
- What is the name of the person or persons (not a shell company) responsible for Bitcoinica's debts? Note: the person responsible for the damned I.T. cupboard is an internal matter of your own.
These are simple factual questions. They require no mud to be slung and revealing them can't possibly be covered in an NDA, since the NDA wouldn't have predicted this theft. +1 This is exactly what is needed. And if those answers will not be given by a reasonable deadline which to me would be 24 hours, people affected could consider filing a class action lawsuit. And if the ownership / responsibility is not revealed to do that, could get a court order to reveal this quickly. |
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...
This analogy is far-fetched though since you are comparing AAPLes and oranges. Assuming a stock will act like Bitcoin is questionable.
Actually what can happen here is that once the low volatility period is over the price movement in the oranges can be a lot sharper than price movement in the apples. Smile.... This is spot on: bitcoin logos are often indeed orange. |
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S3052, could you please post some of your reasoning for your $13 dollar target for silver?
I will do that soon. |
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BitcoinAnalyst said about an hour ago
The bitcoin price volatility has been at historic lows recently.
Over the past 10 days, this has started to change: Since May 6, volatility is on the rise and very likely will rise more in the next weeks.
this doesn't explain much, but you got me interested. The interwebs tell me: In finance, volatility is a measure for variation of price of a financial instrument over time.
I don't see the price jump around (vary) more than usual in recent times (since may 6th). Can you explain how you measure volatility? Is there an indicator on bitcoincharts that shows volatility?
* Bollinger bands (this one and the one below are available on bitcoincharts). You also see in this case that the bands are a bit wider than at the very narrow range on May 10
* Chaikin's Volatility: "Chaikin's Volatility indicator measures the volatility of a security. High values indicate that prices are changing a large amount during the day. Low values indicate that prices are staying relatively constant. Note that both trending and level prices can have high or low volatility." http://www.tradingsolutions.com/functions/ChaikinsVolatility.html still having a hard time understanding, especially potential implications. everything from 5.10 down to 4.80 has been cleared on may 10th, naturally there is less friction on the way back up ("ease of movement" == "not much friction"). What are the implications of high volatility (in the past)?
If volatility is EXTREMELY LOW (like currently), it just says that very likely there will be some explosive price action afterward. But low volatility can persist for quite a while. Nevertheless, it almost never fails to anticipate very sharp movements. But patience is warranted until then.
As one example, look at AAPL
From Oct 2008 to Apr 2009 is trading at historically low volatility (as expressed through the bollinger bands which narrowed to a tight range in Apr 2009). And then look what happened afterwards. Now look at the past months in bitcoins..
 This analogy is far-fetched though since you are comparing AAPLes and oranges. Assuming a stock will act like Bitcoin is questionable. Biitcoins are traded broadly enough that the principles of technical analysis apply as well as for stocks, induced, currencies, precious metals and other commodities. |
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I rather think it will soon be 100 (Gold) : 1 (Silver)
Lets see , the jury is out
Hmmm...Silver at $160,000/oz and 'soon', eh? Or do you mean gold at $0.28/oz? Thanks for reminding me how useless it is to pay attention to 'financial professionals'. Thanks, but you've already reminded me. |
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BitcoinAnalyst said about an hour ago
The bitcoin price volatility has been at historic lows recently.
Over the past 10 days, this has started to change: Since May 6, volatility is on the rise and very likely will rise more in the next weeks.
this doesn't explain much, but you got me interested. The interwebs tell me: In finance, volatility is a measure for variation of price of a financial instrument over time.
I don't see the price jump around (vary) more than usual in recent times (since may 6th). Can you explain how you measure volatility? Is there an indicator on bitcoincharts that shows volatility?
* Bollinger bands (this one and the one below are available on bitcoincharts). You also see in this case that the bands are a bit wider than at the very narrow range on May 10
* Chaikin's Volatility: "Chaikin's Volatility indicator measures the volatility of a security. High values indicate that prices are changing a large amount during the day. Low values indicate that prices are staying relatively constant. Note that both trending and level prices can have high or low volatility." http://www.tradingsolutions.com/functions/ChaikinsVolatility.html still having a hard time understanding, especially potential implications. everything from 5.10 down to 4.80 has been cleared on may 10th, naturally there is less friction on the way back up ("ease of movement" == "not much friction"). What are the implications of high volatility (in the past)?
If volatility is EXTREMELY LOW (like currently), it just says that very likely there will be some explosive price action afterward. But low volatility can persist for quite a while. Nevertheless, it almost never fails to anticipate very sharp movements. But patience is warranted until then.
As one example, look at AAPL
From Oct 2008 to Apr 2009 is trading at historically low volatility (as expressed through the bollinger bands which narrowed to a tight range in Apr 2009). And then look what happened afterwards. Now look at the past months in bitcoins..
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