Where were all these threads when we were rallying to $1250? It's been known for almost a year that gox was dying/dead but during the rally everyone was just "CCMF. Thank god were over gox and we can still CCMF without it due to bitstamp". Where were all the doom mongers then, to say "no, gox dying is bad and you'll be seeing under 300 soon eough". Now suddenly that we're LOW, everyone's going to bring up this old issue and use it to rationalize that we should be even lower?

Can you copy your KYC questions here. Mine were about 8 questions. I answered them and then my withdrawal was processed the next day.

I just looked at the first 2 pages in services discussion and there are no topics about Bitstamp currently having problems with withdrawals.  

Is there anything to substantiate "Bitstamp is the next gox" other than that they are following KYC requirements (isn't that a good thing)?

Interesting. I had no idea that there were problems with btc and fiat withdrawals at bitstamp. Can anyone else confirm (besides proudhon)?

I wasn't all in USD at the end of year. I had some bitcoin, so I was able to subtract the unrealized gains I had on those bitcoins, and they will apply to next year. I think I avoided a tax bracket this way.

Here's a new approach to this thread:

A free-market fixed-supply commodity-based currency was first invented by Thomas Edison in the 1920s and became widely adopted. Since then, several different versions of this currency have been reinvented and implemented. However, none of these are here today. They have all been squashed by the fed, central banks, and governments.

This year it's easy, because I started bitcoin in 2013. I know I made an initial deposit of $X and at the end of the year I had $Y and I subtract them. Otherwise I wouldn't know what the hell to do because I've not only done bitcoin trading but arbitrage, altcoin trading, and altcoin arbitrage, used about 8 exchanges, and half of the exchanges I've used have closed.

ya ya we see a 5K wall these days and the first thing we do is assume it's fake, which is almost always true. But back in the day (2013), at gox, the 5K walls were real and were almost an every day occurrence. You'd see a 5K will and think "great someone is finally trading".

I thought that's not Satoshi though.

I agree at this point, selling doesn't make sense because in 2 months from now the trend will be all caught up to this level. So think of it from a short's perspective. "Would I short here at 625 becuase maybe I'll see 450 after this tough struggle through all these low levels, but maybe I wont and it'll just shoot up to 700 and break out of the downtrend instead." A bad trading proposition, and it's almost not even worth the risk of having fiat on exchanges now, and not worth the stress of following the markets.  You can just remain in cold storage and leave the market, come back 2 months later, and see what's happening then. You might find out that 1 month ago you were "down" but now you're up. Also, if you're willing to keep coins on exchanges, you can keep your coins on bitfinex and then margin trade if some kind of volatile downspike happens (you'd be alerted by bitcoinparanoid etc).

But still I can't help but feel fear over this low volume drift down and sudden decrease in order books. I suspect there is a long sideways trading period in the 500s ahead until the real support trend catches up.

What happened? The bitstamp order book looks like shit now. It's been halved since when it was trading in 500s. That's not normal for a true reversal. The bid depth should be continuing to increase every step of the way, not decrease!

Is there selling now?

I only "leeched" money against other players in the same game to make profit. We bet against eachother, it was fair, and they lost. They wanted to take my money too. "real" bitcoiners who are here to support bitcoin don't speculate and trade to make a profit. In fact, "supporting bitcoin" doesn't consist of any kind of investing or trading activity. "Investing" in bitcoin doesn't really help bitcoin because it doesn't increase the liquidity in the markets at all - it only raises the price while increasing scarcity which makes the currency just as hard to use by merchants because the same sale will cause the same percentage swing - everything cancels out. So what is someone who is really supporting bitcoin? Well they are people writing code and increasing the economy by getting more merchants involved, integrating bitcoin into platforms, and doing marketing.  I intend to do all of these things myself, and have always actively promoted bitcoin to my friends and family.

News has a short term effect on price which snaps back to regular supply/demand levels within a matter of days or less.

Why is it just drifting down on no volume? Last year's retracement had high volume. It was just this big fast dump and then it started climbing again.

Crypto is a casino.

ewww I wasn't trading on GOX. I was trading on btce and bitfinex, with 0.2% and 0.1% fees respectively. Also, the trades in November were 2x leveraged

That's correct too, but the market tends to look for excuses to conduct the timing of these movements.

Also, if 180,000 coins actually hit the market, it won't be a "news-based" drop, it will be entirely due to the raw technical of an exploding supply - which may override the market's planned movements.

AND none of the options clearly mentions the 180,000 gox coins moving which is the real reason for today's decline.

400 is very likely the bottom but we have been way above it in a very short time. If one were to speculate a retracement to, say, 450, or even 530, they might consider now as an opportunity to sell and rebuy more coins later. Also, there may be people who have obtained coins who are not or are no longer long term bulls about bitcoin and they would like to just obtain fiat.