Fiat's probably not quite as bad but some fiat pushers owe their survival to dirty money:


I'm in two minds about MMM - yes, it's obviously a scam, the founder has served time in jail as a result, but if it draws people to Bitcoin, that's great (I just hope they don't associate BTC with MMM too strongly). I doubt all MMM participants would sell their BTC at the same time, so I doubt there'll be too much of a downside (for us). (I'm also pretty sceptical about MMM having much to do with the rise last year - MMM has been growing steadily for some time, it didn't suddenly explode into life in late 2015).

At the 420,000th block, roughly late June to early/mid July. There are a couple of sites providing estimates: BitcoinClock has been very slowly drifting towards early July from late July, BitcoinBlockHalf is a good bit more volatile, jumping around from mid July to late June.

Where are you seeing that? The box at the top-right says "24hr Volume: 57943.46936981 BTC".

Edit: I think you may be looking at the volume for the current 24 hours? That nearly caught me out when I was looking for data on BTC exchanges - in the end I went with the previous 24 hours, because BitcoinCharts isn't as fancy as Poloniex and doesn't do rolling 24 hour data!

60k BTC sounds pretty high to me - Bitstamp's volume for the last full 24 hour period was around 4.5k, Bitfinex was around 9k and Coinbase 6.5k.

Because you're replying to a thread started when the price was $360.

Because you're replying to people who posted when price was $380-$390, in a thread started when the price was $360. By Kwukduck. This should have been clear from the post you replied to: "He was not speaking about todays or last weeks decrease it was last month an pacifically that weekend."

$500 to under $380 in 12 hours. Under the circumstances it looks like it was a realistic concern.

I'm fairly sure MMM was just an excuse used by Bobby Lee to reassure the PBoC that demand for BTC by Chinese traders was definitely not related to capital flight. MMM has been around for years, it's founder jailed at least once - the sudden surge in price last November doesn't seem to me to be consistent with a long-term scam, more a short-term reaction to the PBoC lifting its most recent BTC "ban".

Chinese pools have the largest hashrate. I'm not sure why this is an issue, nobody worried about Czech domination of mining when Slush's pool was the largest!

The image certainly suggests the range is tightening. Not seeing anything in it, or in your post, to indicate a "china mini pump inbound again". Is there another image I missed, or a textual explanation?

Single entity?

I think you are confusing individual Chinese investors and corporations with "China". The former consists of multiple entities; the latter is a state in Asia.

Supply and demand - if the demand for BTC is greater than supply, i.e. the amount of BTC people want to buy is greater than the amount of BTC people want to sell, then the price will tend to rise.

Since November highs have been lower, and lows have been higher - presumably because traders are setting bids below the last high, and asks above the last low, in an attempt to outbid each other. This forms a triangle - the breakpoint (or breakpoints) for me are the upper and lower limits of the triangle (currently around $445 and $395 respectively, but the gap between them is diminishing). I believe when exit from the triangle is confirmed price will move quite rapidly away from the triangle.

Hmmm. The last time it dropped below $400 it was only for a couple of days. Before that, however, it spent half of January and then half of February below $400. I believe the likelihood of it falling below $400 is low, and decreasing daily, but I don't believe it has anything to do with an arbitrary line; rather it's due to traders competing with other - selling under the most recent high and buying above the most recent low.

You're suggesting that BTC should be more like GBP, and hence impossible for the next George Soros to move it how they want?

Absolutely. BTC/USD volatility [1.91%] is around 2/3x USD/EUR volatility [0.7%] (and not that far off USD/XAU [1.1%]). We either accept a freely floating currency (and the volatility that that implies) or we find some magic way to peg BTC to another currency and accept that we're now dependent on one central bank (and even then it's going to be volatile against other currencies floating against the currency BTC is pegged to).

How quickly we forget that major currencies experience volatility! George Soros made over a $1 billion betting on GBP volatility.

I don't think we all want total stability, either - even leaving aside the sheer impossibility of it! CNY was "stable" for many years (pegged to USD) and we're seeing now where that leads (sucks to hold CNY; USD and BTC - not so much). Fortunately Bitcoin has no Peoples Bank of China, so volatility - even if low - is likely here to stay, same as nearly every other currency.

Do we all want a stable price?

The price looks pretty "stable" to me: if I had to guess, based on what the market's done, I'd say that it was stable in October, volatility increased dramatically in November, and has been declining since then with a few increases in early/mid January and then again in early/mid February.

Fortunately, I don't need to trust my guesstimate (or anyone else's). There's a standard, widely accepted, definition of volatility, and there's even a website that measures and displays BTC/USD volatility (and even compares it with other currency pairs, like USD/EUR). (And it looks like my back-of-an-envelope analysis was slightly wrong - volatility actually fell in early/mid February. Thank goodness I don't need to rely on my own - or anyone else's - guesswork).

Is that the royal-we? Because if I sold now I'd make a lot.

Different people have different strategies for investing - my strategy with BTC is mostly buy-and-hold. Some people trade far more frequently than me - for them my approach is strange and confusing, because I forego the profits I could make if I traded frequently.

Other people might think my strategy is too risky - they don't know that BTC is going to rise, there are no clear indicators that it will, etc (not saying I agree with them - obviously I don't - but different people analyse the market and arrive at different conclusions). For them, waiting for a clear indication that the market is rising is a good idea. A clear indication like price rising above the previous ATH.

It's this latter group who would benefit from the OP's advice.

The OP isn't stupid - it's just that their advice is strange and confusing for some people. The solution is to follow your own strategy - it'll be far more effective than assuming the OP is stupid.