I have been criticizing MtGox quite a couple of times, but I disagree with chodpaba.
MtGox IS the leading exchange. As they account for more than 80% of the BTC volume, they are by default the ones suffering from almost all attacks.
Despite that, they have been moving into the right direction in the last weeks. It is still not perfect yet, but unless someone comes up with a competitive alternative, there are the best, and they will get better every day.
They are also taking up the huge challenge to fight for getting bank access in France, which noone dared before.
This small data mess from yesterday will not change anything when it comes to overall BTCUSD forecasts.
(That said, I have asked separately to get yesterday's data straight, just to make sure we don't leave this stone "un-turned").
I have to agree - MtGox is certainly improving, I notice many small improvements in the interface. Each one of them is not a big deal and normally I would expect that by default from any serious internet service - but when I compare it with TradeHill which started with so much fanfare - at least it goes ahead instead of staying with mind boggling interface mistakes. |
|
|
|
As shown in the graph below, the orders according to the red line have been executed. However, all orders below and above the red line reflect the unusual activities within the last 12 hours. This is the exact wording (and this is what I read) - they don't actually say the red line was 'normal activity' (as you apparently read it) - only that these were the trades that were executed and that the rest were 'unusual'. But even if we interpret it your way - the coincidence would still be suspicious. All of this is rather foggy - but yeah - it's not unusual for mtgox. |
|
|
|
As users may have been aware of, the Bitcoin Forum ( https://bitcointalk.org/ - independent of Mt.Gox) has been the target of various attacks during the past few days. As a result of this event, some of the Bitcoin Forum users` accounts may have been compromised. Subsequently, some of the information have been used to conduct unauthorized orders, resulting in unusually high trade activities. Link: https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20433652-resolved-outage-11804-unexecuted-trades - it is not clear if it was the massive buy orders that originated from the hacked accounts - but it looks likely. It is also possible that the other anomalies observed were a result of the admins work. |
|
|
|
That's all great - if only the system was not burning half a million of dollars in electricity costs a month. With the bubble some people earned on it, some lost, but overall it was zero-sum - but the money spent on mining are burned now. The commerce will come with time if the system stays operating and has some internet visibility. But the expenses, the expenses - the cost of the system running is just crazy when compared to the commerce it supports now and probably years ahead. How much time it will take for the system to break even? Nobody even makes such estimates. I think I'll wait for a more cost minded system.
Its burning what the market tells it to. The market is bringing that expense into line as we speak. Price goes down miners fall off. Difficulty goes down. Same number of coins less electricity. How much money is spent by credit card terminals, POS and ATM's. Just sitting idle, And all the servers and terminals the banks run. The electricity you use when you fire up your computer to login to your online account. Charge Backs that cost us all a ton of money. Then all the money spent on printing money, Making it counterfeit proof, Building vaults, armored vehicles. Then all the gate keepers in the system, Tellers, Managers, Managers of Managers. Loss Prevention and on and on. And on top of all that when they run out they print more so your money is worthless. If you dont like the cost of bit coin. Our current system should make you head pop like a lemming. oooooo-noooooooooooo. Not quite - these are not absolute numbers - you need to compare the costs to the benefits, i.e. the commerce supported. The bitcoin based economy is probably not much more than Silk Road plus some lunches bought at one New York restaurant (this is of course just a speculation - but even the fact that no one tries to estimate it shows that cost/benefit analysis is not yet treated seriously in the bitcoin world). I don't include all the transactions related to bitcoin speculation - because they are zero-sum. How big is Silk Road? I don't know. But it probably does have pretty good margin and all of it we can discount on bitcoin - because it could not operate without it. And finally that price is also relative to what other can sustain themselves with. I am waiting for a system that would not require useless hashing, maybe one with voting by the amount of coins possessed or something else. |
|
|
|
|
That's all great - if only the system was not burning half a million of dollars in electricity costs a month. With the bubble some people earned on it, some lost, but overall it was zero-sum - but the money spent on mining are burned now. The commerce will come with time if the system stays operating and has some internet visibility. But the expenses, the expenses - the cost of the system running is just crazy when compared to the commerce it supports now and probably years ahead. How much time it will take for the system to break even? Nobody even makes such estimates. I think I'll wait for a more cost minded system.
|
|
|
|
|
If I invest $1000 and get $1 back - then it does not make much difference for me from the situation when I get $0 back. Zero is not that important. Also when people stop trading BTC - then it's value goes to zero in practice - that is less then the price of keeping the wallet.dat around. If BTC was the only possible crytpocurrency - then I would bet it is still a safe investment - but personally I am now waiting for one that does not burn half a million dollars a month in electricity costs.
|
|
|
|
I bought 900GBP on Britcoin today, moved them to mt.gox and exchanged them immediately for $ without loss. ie the functionality of Bitcoin is intact irrespective of the $/btc exchange rate. You can move stored value to anywhere in the world irrespective of the exchange rate (it would have cost me a lot more using a Bank) ie The purpose of bitcoin is not speculation.
The problem is that if miners quit - then you'll wait long for your transfers to confirm. |
|
|
|
|
One can only wonder what will happen if that trend is broken.
|
|
|
|
|
The problem is that if you look at the fundamentals you see that the bitcoin system as a whole is losing about $500K a month on electricity without producing much (beside providing another betting game - which might be a nice and addictive past time - but it is zero sum).
|
|
|
|
|
I've made a lot of money on bitcoins (bought in March, sold in July - after the crash but still for more than twice the current price) - there was no option for me.
|
|
|
|
Will there be a weekend effect this time or not? Depends on how many people wait for one to buy cheaply. My intuition says that there are too many of them this time. When all of them try to buy on weekend - then we might have a reverse weekend effect. Just a little speculation  |
|
|
|
|
The article itself is not that important. There are many people that don't agree with Krugman - he is one of the leaders of one world view in the very polarized political debate. But what he posts will be discussed in many places.
|
|
|
|
To be honest I don't know - but we have now two things coinciding some mainstream attention (with rather positive articles) plus some uptrend likely for a week or two. If that uptrend is sustained for long enough to intrigue new people into buying bitcoins - this can make a positive feedback loop.
Better be a huge influx of investors to get the price past $10.70. Why $10.70 is of any importance? |
|
|
|
|
To be honest I don't know - but we have now two things coinciding some mainstream attention (with rather positive articles) plus some uptrend likely for a week or two. If that uptrend is sustained for long enough to intrigue new people into buying bitcoins - this can make a positive feedback loop.
|
|
|
|
|
He he - pretty suggestive - but at one of these drops will be the bottom, and then very likely it can go sky high pretty quickly again.
|
|
|
|
Later this month or early next month there will be panic selling pushing the price down to the $1.50 to $4.00 level.
Looking at the chart of close prices on a weekly basis for mt. gox the market will test the $6.00 weekly close once again and likely will break it.
We have had nothing but failures and let-downs:
1. Mt. Gox Hack
2. Bit-o-mat exchange failing.
3. Mybitcoin.com
4. Bruce Wagner's past being revealed and Bruce not following through on his word and promises he made concerning his show.
5. Alt-chains are coming out that pose as test scenarios/experiments that will eventually add more usable and desired features into a block chain than bitcoin.
6. There are an excess supply of bitcoins created everyday of which there is no new money or incentive for investors to buy them with.
I'm sure there are other bearing topics but I'll stop there.
All of that is old news now - most of it was already priced a month ago and number 4 was priced last week. You see the trend? The trend is pretty negatively srtong when it comes to publicity. It turns faster then you think - this week we have Krugman and MIT Review with the effect of Google trends spike, all these old news were already priced. |
|
|
|
If the global hashrate were to suddenly drop, there'd a a huge uptick in the value of a single miner - e.g. my 400MH/s would suddenly be able to generate blocks quite quickly and I'd earn several hundred BTC in a fraction of the time it takes now.
Well - my question was how quickly this would happen, because if you think that this would happen immediately - then you are mistaken. |
|
|
|
Later this month or early next month there will be panic selling pushing the price down to the $1.50 to $4.00 level.
Looking at the chart of close prices on a weekly basis for mt. gox the market will test the $6.00 weekly close once again and likely will break it.
We have had nothing but failures and let-downs:
1. Mt. Gox Hack
2. Bit-o-mat exchange failing.
3. Mybitcoin.com
4. Bruce Wagner's past being revealed and Bruce not following through on his word and promises he made concerning his show.
5. Alt-chains are coming out that pose as test scenarios/experiments that will eventually add more usable and desired features into a block chain than bitcoin.
6. There are an excess supply of bitcoins created everyday of which there is no new money or incentive for investors to buy them with.
I'm sure there are other bearing topics but I'll stop there.
All of that is old news now - most of it was already priced a month ago and number 4 was priced last week. Today we have the piece by Krugman and that MIT Technology Review - not too enthusiastic - but both mean bitcoin is reaching out of geeky media. |
|
|
|
I disagree. Price did not bottom.
We recently broke a long-term trend line. Likely we will stay below it (i.e. $10.50 highest value to be reached).
Hmm - I have just bought some coins - if the price reaches $10.50 in a week or something - then this would be 50% up not too shabby gain. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
