Let's just say it was a "security measure".
You got drunk and left your computer at the bar? :P Close. We were staying in a hotel for a few days. After checking out, about two hours away by then, I noticed I had accidentally left about 20 million dollars worth of bitcoin in the drawer of the bedside table. Found the nearest town, bought a new cold wallet machine, retrieved the wallet data from an encrypted backup, made new wallets (did I mention there were a couple of billion dogecoins in that drawer too?) and transferred the coins over. Everything on the cold wallet was encrypted so there was no risk, but it felt scary to be so far away from it. I'm told that even full-disk encryption is no protection if your hardware falls into the wrong hands, since they can install a keylogger in the code that prompts for the passphrase at boot time. So I can't use that machine any more. It goes into the pile marked 'possibly tainted'. So don't worry guys. Your coins are in safe hands. Most of the time. :) I'm not invested at the moment, or have funds on the site currently, but it's stuff like the above that makes me think of you as one of the most capable and trustworthy site owners in the Bitcoin ecosystem. If you ever decide to open, say, an exchange, let me know :D (and, yes, I'm serious) |
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$600 in sight
Agreed. $600 within reach (<12h). Then: rally time to 650, maybe higher, touching 700? Then then: falling back below 640, and eventually re-testing 530. So say we all? So say we all! :D |
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It is a much more lucrative and "safe" vehicle for scams than the classical ones -- stolen credit cards, counterfeit cash, phony viagra, nigerian heirlooms, penny stocks, ponzi funds, ...
Wrong. Do you even have any idea how profitable just credit card fraud is? The credit card fraud in a single year alone absolutely dwarfs the entire bitcoin ecosystem. That is utter bullshit, please stop repeating it. I had the numbers somewhere that I cannot find now, but from memory: commercial payments through credit cards amount to over 7 trillion dollars a year, so 11 billion dollars of fraud is 0.2% of the total. In comparison, Bitpay claims that it processed 100 million dollars of payment last year; even if you multiply by 4 to account for other bitcoin e-commerce outside Bitpay, that is still less than the MtGOX heist alone. Even if you leave MtGOX out (since, technically, it may have been "embezzlement" rather than fraud), the KNOWN scams and heists in 2013 add to several million dollars at least. So, KNOWN bitcoin fraud must already be at least 10x worse, in percentage of total e-commerce, than credit card fraud. You are comparing cc fraud /now/, in a mature e-commerce environment to btc fraud as commited in a nascent Bitcoin environment. If you really don't see any problem with that comparison, go ahead, but don't complain if people accuse you of biased perception. Lets just, ignore Jorge. Shall we? It would be such more of a blast to read through this thread without people going into an endless discussion with him. He/she/it wont ever admit anything, even at fault. So yeah, ignore?  No, I'd rather not. Jorge is certainly stubborn and probably biased, but intelligent and polite. I enjoy the discussions with him. |
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I remember people saying something similar when something called 'the Internet' started to gain momentary popularity in the late 90s.
Did they? Lots of stupid things were said about the internet back then, but scamming was not as big a problem for the internet as it is in the bitcoin world. Perhaps because it was mostly classical scams (such as chain letters and credit card theft) that the police already knew how to recognize and handle. One big "advantage" of bitcoin is that law and police often cannot even tell whether a crime was committed. You have a remarkably bad memory for this stuff then. I distinctly remember the repeated (ad nauseam) prediction that "e-commerce" would never take off because of the inherent risks of using your credit card online. That was before amazon put a nail into the coffin of that notion obviously. |
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We're retracing through this dip at a remarkable speed.
Yep, plus wasn't someone harking on about how this isn't a real breakout until we see increasing volume through old trendlines? Something like this ?!  Look at that sweet 1w MACD powering towards the green as well. Volume looking better by the day, true. But let's not get cocky before we get to the daily SMA200 (conveniently depicted in your chart, unless I'm mistaken  ) |
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Sweet mother....  We're retracing through this dip at a remarkable speed.  |
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Ok... I've been a long-term bitcoin bull since I first really researched it in 2011. But you guys with your charts are grasping at air. Humans are natural pattern seekers, so this is all very tempting, but you're drawing conclusions based on a sample-set of 2 (and not to mention while also ignoring the 2011-2013 peak-to-peak of 20 months).
Look at it from a market-cap and global-influence perspective. Something going from a $100M to $1B market cap is going from a pittance to....still a pittance. Thus, there are many dynamics that can cause such a thing to happen. We're probably still in that realm going from $1B to $10B. Ten billion is still small in terms of global finance. There are plenty of *individuals* with higher net worth, and hundreds if not thousands of equities.
But the next order of magnitude up crosses a line. At $100B, there are only a few global equities with higher market-cap, zero individuals, and we're starting to get into the M2 money-supply range of somewhat important nations. Go toward $200-$500B and we're in serious global influence territory. Crossing that line out of "not globally important" is a big deal, and it can't happen easily.
That said, I think we *can* get to $30B-$50B market-cap on largely the same dynamics that have brought us this far. To get above, that, though, bitcoin will have to win some major battles.
Great comment, melbustus. Thanks. Similar to an argument I play out in my head occasionally. 100B (or somewhere around there) crosses into a new territory, imo. Marx' Umschlag von Quantität und Qualität comes to mind (the transition from a difference in quantity to a difference in quality.) Just to play devil's advocate, I want to say that perhaps market cap might not be the one true indicator of when we move from pittance to globally important. I serve this with a large helping of salt, but roughly speaking it looks like a n^x increase in price only requires xn in fiat volume. That is to say that if the market cap was to increase exponentially, the fiat needed to support that price only appears to increase geometrically. This is a loose observation just glancing quickly at price /volume in fiat and necessarily means looking back at gox data, so theres potentially interference, and more than likely a bit of wishful thinking  What it might mean (here's that wishful thinking) is that the move to $10k could still happen without a globally significant amount of fiat backing it, and that it might be a move to $100k that would necessitate the transition to quality. Of course bear in mind that I'm the frothy mouthed kind of bitcoin nutter that thinks the willy report is long term bullish  Good point. But there are two ways to look at the question "what kind of price increase will be possible assuming we are fundamentally 'the same' as now?". One way is to look at it causally, what you seem to do, looking at USD volume in relation to XBT/USD. The other way is what I did (and I think melbustus as well): without speculating on the exact cause that would prevent us from reaching the level of the "global players", we assume we won't reach that level until some fundamentals change qualitatively (say: merchant adoption reaches a point where large companies need to report on their XBT turnover vs. their USD turnover... something like that), because the resultant capitalization would be a qualitative change. Circular argument, maybe, but based on experience/intuition, I suppose. Anyway, I agree with you in that 10k XBT/USD might still be within reach of the "current level" of fundamentals... the (very vaguely defined) global player valuation is closer to 500B than 100B, imo, so 10k per coin at ~10M coins could still be possible. roughly speaking it looks like a n^x increase in price only requires xn in fiat volume. That is to say that if the market cap was to increase exponentially, the fiat needed to support that price only appears to increase geometrically.
Sure you mean "geometrically"? A geometric series still undergoes exponential growth. You formula seems to imply linear growth in fiat vs. exponential growth in XBT/USD. I'm wondering though, how do you get to that formula? It's, well, one of my "pet projects", to find a way to analyze USD volume as a predictor for XBT/USD, but that ratio is not something I personally found yet, and I admit, I'm also a bit skeptical about it. Care to motivate it a bit more? |
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Split 2.5k over 48 hours and I'm sure you'll do much better.
Different trading styles, then. I often don't know 48 hours in advance if I want to buy or sell. 48 hours is way too short a trading time for me. 48 hours to liquidate 2.5k BTC if you need to diversify would be the absolute minimum for me ( I don't have anything near 2.5k BTC though). Me neither (on both parts :D) I don't "daytrade", but I do trade swings, and while I'm sure the more talented traders (like lucif) can often see the signs in advance, I usually have to wait for confirmation in the form of trends being touched or broken, i.e. I can't tell 48h in advance. So if I see signals that make me believe we're in for a, say, 10-15% swing, and I know in advance I will incur, say, 2*2% slippage on the trade pair, I might still take it (if I am sufficiently sure about the swing going in the right direction, and far enough, of course). |
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Split 2.5k over 48 hours and I'm sure you'll do much better.
Different trading styles, then. I often don't know 48 hours in advance if I want to buy or sell. |
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Traders who are satisfied with getting more than 15% profit in a week?
That's an awesome short-term trade, really, we can't blame them.
1st reply = correct answer. There's still hope for this forum If this were true they wouldn't dump it all at once but sell gradually. Why? Many traders have profit targets, but also like let a profitable position ride as long as possible. Someone has to take the first step, (i.e. take the actual profit), which triggers a) others to take profit as well (their long position won't ride much longer), and b) pure momentum traders. Slippage is the reason. Of course this are likely many people as you say, but if this is "someone" dumping 2.5k BTC he's not acting rationally. I really don't know what makes you say that. I don't know your volume, but did you ever trade (on, say, stamp) actively trying to avoid/minimize slippage? It's harder than you think. If I split up my own orders, the market often "runs away" in the meantime, if I don't split them up, I incur high, but predictable slippage (I can say pretty much with certainty how high my slippage will be, on average). Anyway, I don't see how "rational" or not factors in here at all... how is taking a 20% profit "irrational"? Because if the actor wouldn't have sold, we would be even higher? That's not a way to argue in an n-player game like a market. EDIT: re-reading your post, I guess "irrational" refers to the dumping part, instead of splitting it up. Consider for a moment however that a dump incurs higher slippage, but might trigger a stronger momentum reaction, so again: it's not necessarily "irrational", just a gamble, if you want. |
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Traders who are satisfied with getting more than 15% profit in a week?
That's an awesome short-term trade, really, we can't blame them.
1st reply = correct answer. There's still hope for this forum If this were true they wouldn't dump it all at once but sell gradually. Why? Many traders have profit targets, but also like let a profitable position ride as long as possible. Someone has to take the first step, (i.e. take the actual profit), which triggers a) others to take profit as well (their long position won't ride much longer), and b) pure momentum traders. |
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594... get ready!
Not saying I told... Yeah, screw it, Im telling you I told you so. You're like Neil Armstrong blowing his trumpet...no wait... *smile* @Shmadz Proof 'Satchmo' actually was on the moon...  (5 pages too late or so, but) *snort* |
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Traders who are satisfied with getting more than 15% profit in a week?
That's an awesome short-term trade, really, we can't blame them.
1st reply = correct answer. There's still hope for this forum :D |
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Ok... I've been a long-term bitcoin bull since I first really researched it in 2011. But you guys with your charts are grasping at air. Humans are natural pattern seekers, so this is all very tempting, but you're drawing conclusions based on a sample-set of 2 (and not to mention while also ignoring the 2011-2013 peak-to-peak of 20 months).
Look at it from a market-cap and global-influence perspective. Something going from a $100M to $1B market cap is going from a pittance to....still a pittance. Thus, there are many dynamics that can cause such a thing to happen. We're probably still in that realm going from $1B to $10B. Ten billion is still small in terms of global finance. There are plenty of *individuals* with higher net worth, and hundreds if not thousands of equities.
But the next order of magnitude up crosses a line. At $100B, there are only a few global equities with higher market-cap, zero individuals, and we're starting to get into the M2 money-supply range of somewhat important nations. Go toward $200-$500B and we're in serious global influence territory. Crossing that line out of "not globally important" is a big deal, and it can't happen easily.
That said, I think we *can* get to $30B-$50B market-cap on largely the same dynamics that have brought us this far. To get above, that, though, bitcoin will have to win some major battles.
Great comment, melbustus. Thanks. Similar to an argument I play out in my head occasionally. 100B (or somewhere around there) crosses into a new territory, imo. Marx' Umschlag von Quantität und Qualität comes to mind (the transition from a difference in quantity to a difference in quality.) |
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Why does igorr keep on saying: This user is currently ignored. Anyone?
He is one of our most intelligent users on here. His contributions, brilliant as they are, however tend to move the markets through their sheer relevance and originality in a way that is unpredictable, maybe even dangerous. It was decided that it would be for the better of all of us lesser users if we are spared the radiating intelligence of his posts, and thus he has been placed on ignore by most. A sacrifice none of us made lightly. The candle that burns twice as bright... |
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That is not clear... Addresses with zero balance could be created for many other reasons, such as sprinkling and collecting dirty coins to confuse detectives, stress-testing of wallet software, gambling, pay-out by miner pools, ...
It's a while ago that I read his methodology, but what you seem to have in mind is actually /creating/ an address, one that is empty though. Correct? If so, that address would not appear on the blockchain. What gbianchi means (again, iirc) is the /existence/ of empty addresses which necessarily means they a) received an input (thus appearing in the blockchain) and b) were used in an ouput (the "spending" part). Hence: an empty address on the blockchain implies a transaction took place, and more specifically, one that was not just for "storage" reasons, but also spending the input again (even if, in principle, that spending could be to another storage location) |
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Fair enough, yeah makes sense. Naturally I won't be basing any trade decisions solely on RSI (particularly not when I'm such a noob with it ) but rather in combination with other analysis. Though it should be noted that the October and November cases you mention were all during the bubble, when (I assume) overbought RSI should be the rule rather than exception, and the example I mentioned (August 2013) was well before the bubble, so from this one might infer that RSI being overbought outside of bubbles acts as a stronger sell-indicator. But then of course there is the problem with knowing how long it will stay overbought, and how high it will go, which (as previously mentioned) necessitates one using other indicators in combination to make any hard decisions. Though, looking at historic timescale on Stamp, I just noticed an interesting pattern: For every case of (daily) RSI being overbought outside of bubbles, the RSI top has been extremely consistent before price went down/consolidated: 83-85 (what do you even call that, RSI level?). Currently we're on 79, which according to this would give us some more room to go before the hypothesized correction (also assuming this is not the start of a bubble, which I doubt). Curious to see if this pattern holds again.  I like the approach: segment our data into different types of periods (I'm trying for now: bubble-rally, bubble-deflation, consolidation-upwards, consolidation-downwards) and see how RSI behaves in each segment. Playing around with it myself now. |
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Does the increase in transactions perfectly motivate price increase? Maybe not. Or at least, it's an open question (see gbianchi's model, for example)
Does the no. of transactions rise very obviously in an exponential fashion? You'd have to be pretty biased to deny that.
And there it is, one of the "fundamental reasons" for price growth you keep looking for.
I think you have to be pretty blind to deny that ;) Well, for fairness sake, you can find growth functions that model the price increase that aren't exponential (cue Jorge: exponential "spurts", purely motivated by outside news), and you can always question whether the (EDIT fundamental) growth function so far continues to hold. I'm just saying, looking at this chart (or many similar ones graphing the network fundamentals) and concluding we're not undergoing exponential growth requires some serious mental acrobatics... :D And that's your keyword, Jorge :P |
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However, by that measure bitcoin has already achieved success. The bitcoin network currently mediates between 50 and 60 thousand transactions every day, transferring an estimated 70 million USD every day.
As far as bootstrapped nascent currency experiments go, bitcoin should certainly fulfill many criteria for "success" already.
Curioulsy the number of transactions per day and their total BTC volume have increased very little, or not at all, since September last year. So, either commercial e-payments are a small fraction of those numbers, or they are not increasing (and their USD volume is actually decreasing, since the BTC price has fallen considerably in that period). Actually, the number is almost twice as high. (use "exclude popular addresses" because: dust from gambling sites)  Does the increase in transactions perfectly motivate price increase? Maybe not. Or at least, it's an open question (see gbianchi's model, for example) Does the no. of transactions rise very obviously in an exponential fashion? You'd have to be pretty biased to deny that. And there it is, one of the "fundamental reasons" for price growth you keep looking for. |
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This thread got me thinking, what's the best trading strategy based on this kind of information?
More specifically, say you get a string of perfectly accurate up/down probability predictions. (Ie. if it says 63% up, that means ~630 out of 1000 times it WILL actually go up.)
How do you choose when to buy/sell based on such information? And how much, or how often? You could do the same placements as percentages (ie. 63% BTC / 37% USD based on the number above), or you could go all-in up or down on every guess, or some hybrid strategy. What strategy would give the most profit over time?
At least the "how much to invest" part can be answered with certainty by the Kelly criterion, if you do assume that your highest ranked goal is maximizing your (profit) growth rate. |
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