Okay, didn't realize there's a mismatch between order placement via website and API. That changes the situation for me somewhat, they should clearly have the same rules across all methods of placing orders.

That was the point I was trying to make. Thanks for phrasing it a lot better than me :)

Danke dafür.

Endlich jemand der den konstanten Lärm sowohl von Bullen als auch Bären ausblenden kann. Weder die Verschwörungstheoretiker ("Seht es doch endlich ein! Die Presse/Politik/whatever hat Bitcoin endgültig zerstört!") noch die Permabullen ("Das ist dieses mal wirklich der letzte Swing nach unten, versprochen! Neues ATH im Juli!") verstehen dass der BTC Handel von Anfang extremen Schwankungen unterworfen war, natürlichen Schwankungen (im Sinne von: von tradern wie du und ich, plus ein paar Waalen, verursacht) und dass es unsinnig ist aus den gegenwärtigen Schwankungen auf einmal Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen über den Gesamtzustand von BTC, bzw. über die ferne Zukunft.

Es gibt praktisch, m.E., 3 mögliche Heransgehenweisen: man ist Tageshändler (dann interessiert einen der Gesamtzustand von BTC sowieso nicht), man ist mittelfristiger Swinghändler (dann achtet man Indikatoren die etwas über den Tag hinausgehen, ist aber sonst ebenfalls relativ "agnostisch" was den die ferne Preiszukunft angeht), oder man ist "Investor". Dann schaut man gefälligst auf die fundamentals, und ignoriert die Tages oder auch Monatskurse, ansonsten wird man verrückt dabei.

Look, from what I wrote it should be clear I really don't mind if they define some min. order size.

But my point was whether this is "fee fraud". And whether I'd consider Bitstamp fraudulent, and not a place where I'd want to keep my money if they continue as they do now. And the answer to that is: I just don't care that much.

If you want to know what I /really/ consider problematic, take a look at the Bitstamp service thread and the discussion about what they accept (or not) as a response to their KYC questionnaire. Link

It affects all customers, but not all customers equally, as I'm sure you're well aware.

I place single, large limit orders near market price (i.e. my orders are executed almost instantly). As a result, the rounding affects me only minimally (in relation to the volume of my order).

I can see how you think this is a matter of principle, but your solution is raising the minimum trade amount to 5 USD? I can see bot traders complaining about that...

"fee fraud"... big words, huh?

Fact is, I knew about it, but it doesn't affect me more than for just a few cents (despite large volume), because I don't trade with bots or by splitting up a large trade into many small ones.

I can see how it would affect two types of traders: those that use bots to make many very small trades, and the example from the thread, of putting up a large order, and then having someone else "nibble" at it, thus driving up the relative fees.

Not ideal, but I have to ask: how do you prefer it to work otherwise? Rounding to a full cent seems reasonable, so the only solution I can see it calculating the x% fee they advertise over some time span's volume, as opposed to the volume of each (tiny) trade, which is then rounded up to a cent. I can see how Bitstamp would consider that an unnecessary effort to save some traders a few cent.

In either case, and in the spirit of choosing your words super carefully in here (remember kids, there are Bitcoin /fanatics/ in here, not /cultists/), the term "fraud" is entirely misplaced.

That's putting an awfully fine point on it.

But, sure, if that's what makes the crowd happy: I see a lot of fanaticism in here. Precise information about the exact share of users exhibiting signs of fanaticism to follow soon, JayJuanGee :D

You are repeating yourself. From "I have no idea where price is about to go" you conclude "Nobody can know where it'll go". Some form of Dunning-Kruger corollary, I suspect.

Re: $266. I never said we'd go there with certainty. Neither did windjc. He described a scenario where we could hit a price that low. But don't worry, I know: you don't think of events in term of (conditional) probabilities. "He said 266, so that means he thinks we will go there." I got the impression windjc is smarter than to think in binary terms.

You have a point there (that crossed my mind as well, but I decided against mentioning it to keep it simple)... for any group to overcome overwhelming odds, some form of 'extreme group cohesion plus unwavering belief in ultimate success' is necessary.

Still, from my point of view, this unwavering belief in the /success/ of Bitcoin that is so common in here is just as irrational as the unwavering belief by the general public in the /failure/ of Bitcoin.

Can you appreciate this distinction, between the perspective that I understand might be necessary for Bitcoin to have a chance at success (i.e. the "cultish" fervor), and what I hold to be 'objectively true' (or an approximation of objective truth)?

Try to stay objective, okay?

So now it's "degrading" to use the word cultist for, well, cult like behavior? I don't think so. As for the numbers, I don't have hard data, and I cannot have data because what I would call "cultish" is hardly a set-in-stone definition, but to give a few examples:

- Remember the guy who sold his house to invest it all in btc. Zero risk control, just puts all his wealth into one of the riskiest assets on earth. What's the overwhelming response in his thread? "Good on you! You won't regret it!". The dissenting voices are in the minority. That's cultish, in my book.

- The kneejerk reaction to mentioning the /possibility/ of total failure of our little experiment. Please note, the exact likelihood of total failure (as in: price approaching 0) is up for debate, but I'm pretty sure a rational observer will admit that there is a real chance for the (publically traded) price to go back to 0 (or at least, close to it), in case of catastrophic failure of parts of the network (like a major flaw on the encryption side), or some other event that causes an absolute loss of trust in the safety of the network. Try talking about that in here. The responses /should/ be "Okay, that's possible, but unlikely." The responses /are/ actually "No! Absolutely impossible! Logically invalid!". Go back a few pages when TERA suggested offhandedly what a blockchain "reset" would look like, and look at the reactions. That's cultish.

- The sense of "We're in this together, on the way up, and on the way down." It's only human to band together, but the article is spot on when it points out the phrasing of those "public messages" by well known BTC community members, that sound like rallying cries, to keep the troops in line. It's like military esprit de corps, or, well, a cult.

In case this is important to you, I still believe BTC has a real shot at success (where the exact type of success is up for debate). But I completely agree with Blitz: a lot of arguments in here are very clearly not motivated by rational analysis, but by make believe and selective perception. To call it "cultish" is confrontational, but not wrong, in my opinion.

There are some similarities in the price graph, agreed, but a closer look (including metrics based on volume) make me doubt the similarity is more than superficial.



(in short, the clues are: (a) price failing to break through, or even stay near, a near-to-the-daily-price running average like the monthly EMA, (b) daily CMF approaching zero this time, while steadily rising in July 2013)

Those people exist, sure, but even a cursory glance into this thread (or forum) during a flash crash will convince anyone with an open mind that the majority in here applies a different valuation to their BTC holdings.

In fact, the momentum driven reaction of the price itself will lead you to that conclusion, I hope.

The time where we neutrally look at our wealth *in BTC* as *measured in BTC* is not there yet, and won't be for a long time.

+1

The article is onto something (many in here *are* cultists), but in their total dismissal of BTC the author isn't any better either.

I stress this often enough: I am (still) a long term bull. But there are two additions I don't see everyone in here making with equal certainty:

a) there is /a lot/ of room to the downside left, both in absolute price, and duration of the downtrend. The expo trendline is a good guess of the past, and a decent predictor for the long run, but it is absolutely no guarantee for the performance in the coming month, 2 months, or even year.

b) there is still a very real risk of "total failure" of this investment. To be clear, I consider the chance of success and corresponding growth high enough to make this baby EV+, but everyone needs to ask himself if he or she is, honestly, comfortable with a, say, 30% or 40% chance of total failure (if you think those numbers are too high, fine. they're more of an example than actual prediction).

Very cool. Thanks :)

Oh absolutely. But he was the one who described taking out a loan on a cc (pretty high interest rate, to my knowledge), then selling half of the coins to pay it back, i.e. a wet dream of buying in low and selling at the immediately imminent recovery. I was poking fun at that unwavering certainty that it is a sure thing price always goes back up again, just because the fundamentals look okay, and price did that over the past 3 years.

I'd like to chime in on the KYC/AML questionnaire topic:

I haven't triggered this questionnaire yet, but almost certainly will once I withdraw (some of) my deposits on Bitstamp. So I already mentally prepared myself to be subject to this, admittedly a bit annoying, list of questions.

Here is my preliminary conclusion about this topic though:

The KYC questionnaire by Bitstamp is, most likely, just trying to play it safe.

They accept (to my knowledge) customers from all over the world. By asking relatively intrusive questions, they want to be in a position to have a reasonable answer to any requests from law enforcement agencies that might be directed at them in the future.

"That's not what Bitcoin is about!", you say? Maybe. But Bitstamp is a company, and they hold my money, so in that sense, keeping the company alive is more important than the more libertarian principles behind Bitcoin as a whole.

Now, here is my request to those who already filled in the questionnaire:

Can you let us know, in this thread, if your answers were rejected for some reason.

Because that's the only case in which I personally would start getting nervous. Bitstamp asking those questions I understand, but if, for example, they would reject an answer like that of dnaleor above ("money from my parents"), then I'd have to conclude we're in real trouble, and that Bitstamp is possibly trying to stall executing withdrawals, i.e. a situation similar to mtgox last year.

tl;dr Please let us know in here iff Bitstamp *rejected* the answers to your KYC questionnaire.

Look, it's not our problem you're unable to read charts, or wrap your head around even the most basic aspects of TA.

Furthermore, if you find yourself in a position where you accuse a (sometimes confrontational, but rarely trolling) user like windjc to be a permabear, who is posting just to manipulate the market, you can be pretty sure you will be one of the many suckers in this game who will learn the hard way that the rules of the market don't stop for Bitcoin.

To be clear: There is disagreeing with someone's opinion or analysis, and then there is sticking your fingers into your ears shouting 'I can't hear you'. For more than a month now, the latter is the dominant response in here by the investors that were lulled into a false sense of security by the various loglinear trendlines that keep being posted in here so often.

They will be in for a rude awakening: if they 'hodl' as advised, they will continue to spend many more uncomfortable hours and days seeing their net value decline. If they finally give in and sell, most of them will note that they haven't equipped themselves with the necessary tools to be effective traders, so they will lose as well.

As a result, the majority will tend to hold, but they will become increasingly vitriolic at any suggestion that the return to the magic exponential growth trendline is not imminent:

"Fuck you, reality! Why can't you already fall in line with my wet dreams of being a billionaire next year?"

Agreed on the sentiment of your comment, but I caution about "above 500 = uptrend". I had, in the back of my mind, over the past few months fixed price targets that I assumed would signify a turnaround, and every time it turned out to be a false breakout.

Right now daily Ichimoku cloud's upper band is at ~520 (and falling to around 500 within a week), so that'd be a first step to take to make it look like an uptrend. But daily SMA200 is around 600. 2nd lowest fibo level of the entire downtrend sits at 654 actually, but at that point I would consider the reversal firmly established (corresponding to 120 last year -- by that time, the people who didn't buy back in felt the need to explain why they hadn't, not the other way around).

And in the end, whatever price, if volume doesn't play along, I'd be reluctant anyway to trust it.

Sorry for a slightly OT rant.

ftfy