It's easy to go back and read the wall thread of back then. During the April bear market, that very argument was absolutely prevalent: "with such wild swings, investors will lose confidence". Didn't happen.

You're partially right about SR. In the SR aftermath, two arguments were made: (a) "the last real usage case of BTC jsut went down" (LOL, in retrospect), and (b) "investors will read about criminal activity and BTC, and will lose all confidence".

You can see how I see those arguments as pretty similar to what is being said now: it's always about "new investors losing confidence", and as a result, not joining the market.

What this arguments ignore is the fluctuation of the market sentiment before the news broke, and the price. By the time the news item hits the mainstream media, the following is true:

(1) price is well below the previous ATH

(2) the already involved investors had some time to "digest" the crash

Add to that the pure exposure value of BTC reporting, and you can see why, every damn time so far, the result of the news coverage wasn't a dragging bear market, but a (delayed by a few months perhaps) new rally period. Followed by an ATH. Followed by a crash. Ad nauseam.

@bitcoinwisdom

Could you please look one more time into bid/ask for Bitstamp?

I just found another site that shows historical data of bid/ask for bitstamp (http://coinsight.org/bitstamp), so there must be some way to do it.

I know you said already that the Bitstamp API doesn't give you the info directly, but somehow those other guys seemed to manage to extract the information somehow... and you've proven to be extremely competent, so I just hope you can get it to work as well.

Oh dear, Jorge. Have you *still* learned nothing? This time it's not about misunderstanding BTC, but how markets work...

>However, the headlines in mainstream media are going to scare away potential investors

Repeat until you understand: Price does *not* follow news.

Some will claim that "news follows price", which probably goes too far, but in principle even this (exaggerated) mantra is useful to remind our naive monkey brains of (admittedly unintuitive) truths.

Fact is, the *exact* same argument ("this will scare away new investors!") was made in September last year when Silk Road was taken down.

The *exact* same argument was made when price dropped sharply from ~260 to ~60 in April last year.

In either of those cases, nothing like that happened. In case of SR, it was particularly stunning how the brief flash crash (that did happen as a result of the news) revealed a solid underlying buying pressure that was lying dormant until then. It started the rally that led to the December ATH, in fact.

Please note what I am saying vs. what I am *not* saying: I don't claim to know whether the bear market just reversed. Just that looking at an "objectively bad" news item and concluding it will negatively affect price will get you nowhere in market analysis. It's simply not how the human mind seems to work, collectively: any event is interpreted in a highly contextual framework. And right now, I would be careful to conclude that the result of that interpretation is going to greatly depress price (see, e.g., the very solid recovery to ~600, or the huge jump in USD on the Bitstamp order book)

I'm sure everyone in here knows about Eternal September, so the phenomenon is not exactly new.

Does that means all is hopeless, and the community is just destined to become useless because of signal-to-noise going to zero?

I personally (and not just me, but other users and some mods) think we  can battle it, at least to a degree...  in the sense that it might be helpful after all to ask from newly registered members to "prove" themselves for a short while in a separate forum, thus mitigating the effects of Eternal September a bit.

Had a similar thought when I first read the leaked (or maybe "leaked") document. What if leaking an undeniably damaging (for mtgox' reputation) document is actually a scapegoat, to take the wind out of even worse accusations.

Say for a second Mark acted fraudulently. Reading a few articles in the general media, it looked like the discussion had turned to the unbelievable incompetence with which gox was run. "How can they lose 740k coins without noticing". Say he gets away with that perception, but in reality, kept parts (or all) of the supposedly lost funds as private profit.

Well, like I said, that was my first or second thought that came through my head when I read the draft. Not sure how likely it is.

Here's a bullish thought:

Total and sudden Gox insolvency (fraudulent or not, doesn't matter for now) is the best way this situation could have resolved.

740k coins(brain fart, nothing to do with the "missing" coins... but you get the idea: a lot of coins that are stuck on gox) *extremely cheap* coins compared to the other exchanges, won't hit the market once Gox re-opens as traders arbitrage the shit out of 500+ prices on Bitstamp.

Sure, those coins will hit the market at some point, when Mark wants to buy that cozy Carribean private island, but they have to be laundered first of course.

For now, it's a big relief that the flood gates of cheap goxbux cannot be opened anymore.

That is fucking brilliant.

You're now officially a worthy successor? sidekick? for TheKoziTwo.

Exactly my thought.

Just read an article, not even completely incompetently written in general, on Forbes that more or less believes the "740k coin leak through hot wallet" bullshit explanation, and I got really depressed for a second.

But we're not idiots. Those bullshit excuses didn't work for pirate40, nor sheep marketplace owners, nor anyone else. And with Mark, at least his identity is know -- there's no way he's simply going to get away and sip margaritas on his own private island while his company still has liabilities in the range of a few hundred million.

I fully expect that the current events will spawn the, so far, biggest lawsuit in Bitcoin history.

I'd say *now* we can take the mtgox charts out of btcwisdom

Only 9 coins? That's not much

You misread the list then.

Leaving the explanatory power of the list aside for a moment (basically, it naively assumed a bijection between individuals and btc addresses), the Top 500 ends at around 2k coins.

Very strange then. I usually see my limit orders executed within a few seconds. Not exactly forex speed, but not really a problem for me (as in: compared to overall slippage I experience, the small changes of the order book don't really make a dent). No idea why it's different then. I'll pay attention to it from now on, though.

Looks like we might get sub-500 coins after all

I'm obviously not a dev at Bitstamp, but I think I can answer the question:

To my knowledge, stamp doesn't really place 'market' orders (as in: matching your order in an instant, until filled), but places successively higher/lower limit orders on your behalf if you place a market order. Hence the delay.

Not saying this excuses it, but as a consequence, I personally only use limit orders, after looking at the order book, that are set such that I can be sure my order is filled entirely. Much, much faster that way.


EDIT: unless you actually meant limit orders. In that case, ignore my above comment, please.

Disagree with your assessment on yesterday. I'm keeping my eyes open for signs that the reversal happens, simply because my short term buys would become "real" holds again in that case.

Yesterday was such a day. Strong signals on 6h BB, CMF sharply up. Low on volume, because weekend, so no certainty yet, sure. Earlier today came the retracement. Of course we were short term overbought, that's what happens in either case, when a trend reverses, or when it's a false breakout. That "retracement" however was fucked up brutally by our friend, the whale.

So back to square one, imo. Looking bearish again, I agree with you, but to really count as a continuation of a bear market we would damn well need to see sub-500 coins at some point, I'm sure you agree. And getting there is sure taking some time.

The longer we bounce between 530 and 580, the less more I'll warm up to the idea that sub-500 coins won't happen anymore. Except maybe for a flash crash if gox outright declares that they're bankrupt and the the sheep hit the sell button without thinking twice.

Probably true. But I'd be careful making too much of that whale dump. Go back to July 10 (or so) in 2013. Marked the end of the post-April bear market. Buying pressure slowly, but clearly started building up after the bottom, 2h, then 6h BB started looking really nice, then: HUGE dump.

Took price development back for about a week, but didn't alter the general direction.

What I'm trying to say is: not sure yet if this is the reversal or not, but whales can occasionally be dumbfucks as well, and can lose money. Whoever dumped that huge load back in July 18 never got his coins back for the same price (unless he was on gox in the past days, but that doesn't quite cut it.)

Exactly. Never got the impression he said he'd do pure buy&hold.

I think his point was more, he's actively trading, but he advises the newbies to b&h

Don't know about Mr Allen, but where do you get it from that because we're in a bear market your total worth has to have taken a 50% hair cut?

Right, could have phrased that more clear.

But let me also clear about this: For months, non-Foundation board members in here have been complaining that the BF is doing shady business behind closed doors, and there's no accountability since their forum is off limits to the public.

Well, that changed. You can now *read* the discussion BF members are having. In order to *participate* in those discussion, you have to become a member still. Makes sense to me, I'd say.

You might not get a definitive answer (because there isn't one probably), but why don't you head over to the BTC Foundation forum and read the discussion there for yourself.

The foundation forum is open to the public now, and there's more than one thread discussing Mark's/mtgox's removal from the board, and whether he should be forced or "asked" to leave the board.

I suspect he saw that eventually he would be removed from the board forcefully, so he stepped down "voluntarily" while he still had a chance.