Just to be on page 4000

Er.... that is when I offloaded half my LTC - expecting a retrace.

Damn, welcome to my coins

I hate to say it, but I am still in a lot of fiat, so I hope so, I am still nervy too...

We shall see, three days is a long time in Bitcoin.

If it holds til Monday new ATH is looking like the next stop...

Damn - I am in too much fiat

I think a lot of people will be jumping back in so as not to miss the train.

Choo choo!

He is just sticking to his trading stance, and I am still holding fiat, it is volume-less exuberance and nothing is certain yet.

We are by a big majority long-term bulls here, contrary opinion based on sound thinking is welcome IMHO.

Well, if it looks like a choo choo train....

Through that 860 on Gox easily enough...

Am still holding a little fiat... just in case

Sold all my LTC on BTC-e a few days back to be liquid for the drop (which I was expecting on all alts, if BTC didn't break out).

Feeling I bet the wrong way - but not alts are positive, so what is the news with LTC - just er... curious?

China is what the current price manipulation is about.

People wanted to get out without selling in china when no new money was coming in.

Once a total crash in China looked likely, the coins were bought off exchange in volume - but some assets were used to keep China prices 'up' so that the world market was confident enough, to stay high enough, to gradually sell off coin elsewhere at good prices without crashing everything to hell.

To keep the price up on BTCC is easy with the minimal volume there.

There is no real basis for the price staying so high, there is no more money coming in.

Once all the big Chinese money is out (in coins) with help from the big guys in other markets, then eventually the support operation will have to slow.

By then of course new money may be in and able to take over supporting the price - no one wants collapse.

My two cents worth.

Disclosure: I am 'hodling' less BTC and certainly less alts than I usually do, I don't think the market price is being decided by normal factors and I do think it is being temporarily managed.

And temporarily is until the end of Jan - max.

I think this particular manipulation is a short term plan, and all about China: managed withdrawal.

Until end of Jan, I am watching carefully and staying cautious.

If a Zimbabwean farmer wants to avoid the devalued 'trillion dollar note' to sell his wares, what if he can trade (via a cell phone) to transfer value cheaply and just GET PAID?

Is he interested in the price of Bitcoin, or what it can do for him? I don't think so.

7 billion people are NOT going to become Bitcoin speculators, but they might use BTC (or its successor) to transmit money, to trade universally and to create a whole new world system of value exchange.

This.  Just this.

Anyone who wants to discuss this would be welcome, as I think we might be all missing the point.

And this is why wall street is not 'in', because you cannot buy the idea, and the coins are ultimately not what it's about.

It's the idea of freedom of exchange - it's so fucking radical..... and we are just playing with speculation, but this is a game-changer for the planet.

How many trillions of dollars traded per milli-second in HST data centres in NY State, but MAYBE the man on the street can escape and be free of the massive manipulation of his world....  by trading for his production directly with the buyer, without a middleman in a suit scalping him.

Revolution.   

And 5 billion people want THIS. I worked in NYC for years, I know manipulation is all about .

Wall street is fucked if the network allows this and billions of tiny transactions will crush their 'master-of-the-universe' world.

I really think we are watching something special happen - but it isn't going to be what this forum is focusing on, it's going to be something completely different.

Mark my words / ignore me - but this is what I am thinking about.  Not TA on next week's price.

I am interested in free-thinking start-ups with game changing plans for the 4.5 billion (plus) people who want to find a way out of corruption / exclusion and disenfranchisement the financial world is offering them now.

Pent up demand?

Yeah.

Agreed - but let me run this by you, it's been bugging me:


Digital currency - in the form of neutral, non-centralised and trustworthy value transfer systems make sense.

But whether BTC is Myspace and not Facebook, or AltaVista and not Google is a moot point.

Change will come, yes - but Bitcoin is a pioneer and something better could well take advantage of the doors it opens.

A network of P2P value exchange is obviously necessary, but BTC is just showing what is possible, and the coin value is much less relevant than the actual network value (which cannot be bought).

We actually cannot (yet) buy what the value of this idea is, anymore than you can buy shares in the internet.   The real money is in the applications regular people can really use.

They are not there yet, they will be and this will 'make' bitcoin, but to be honest I am beginning to thing the price of a coin is really missing the point of what we are part of and I am seeking ways to invest in applications for this technology, not the coins which flow between the points of its' network.

Philosophical drivel maybe - but I do not here anyone here discussing this kind of 'future' when it seems patently obvious to me that we are not thinking what the applications riding on the network could actually do, and mean for the future.  Not just the 'price' of a coin.

Hmmm....

BTC, logically will have no price at all if the dollar falls to zero, the way we currently calibrate its value at least.

And a zero price would mean a near total collapse of the existing system which would be such an upheaval that all bets would be off.   If BTC (and not some other trading medium) remained it would be pure chance as chaos would have to have existed before this happened.

I am with Goat on this - we cannot extrapolate that far, and BTC and the dollar are not simply the only two players in a a winner-takes-all game.

That is (imho) nonsencical.

It is much more complex than that.

EDIT: Why is a (if variable within reason) equilibrium not possible?

Jury is out on that one IMHO - I am feeling we are not in bull market yet.   Don't get me wrong, I am 80/20 BTC / fiat right now, so I want a higher price.

But I am not full BTC as I still think China volumes / prices are fake and the market is neither predictable (of course), nor settled.

I have two, it is possible.

And both are verified - I set up two ages ago, then when verification came along I did one at a time and have had no problems.

EDIT: But neither have suddenly turned up with 10BTC I wasn't expecting in them, sadly.

Price manipulation is to keep it down, or up.

Keeping it up is so you can sell coins at artificially high prices

Keeping it down allows you to buy at artificially low prices.

Keeping the Chinese exchange prices high enables Chinese coins to be sold off easier in a general market that thinks China is still in the game. Actually, no money is going into Chinese exchanges and the reality is the smart Chinese money is pulling out.

This could be a clever, controlled sell-off of off-market (or market bought) coins originating in China, when if things were not being 'controlled' China exchange prices would be on the floor.

Keep China looking good and slowly ease those coins out and sell them steadily off at Stamp and BTC-e (but not at Gox)

Everything looks good, market believes China is now behind us, price slips a little, but hey, it's the holidays.  

And Big money is rinsed out of Chinese exhanges with no panic.

We see the lights on on BTCChina, but actually - no-one's home.  

Maybe serious traders are not even here, why would they be?   Nothing will happen without them and they can come back in and decide the market in the New Year anyway...

Just a thought.

yep

高貴な武士になることはある!

+1

I still think this is all irrelevant, though - Bitcoin will not fail because of China, and if it will not - then it is not going away, so the financial world will need to incorporate it.

Where is Western Union's business model if Bitcoin is better?  Value transfer is BIG money and it is way overdue for a change.

It may not be Bitcoin, but it will be something and it must be a network which is currency neutral.

I think BTC is not perfect, but it is there.   Ergot, it will be used.

We are Microsoft, there will be an Apple and a Google to follow, but right now, warts and all it is Bitcoin that is the only game in town.

That depends on whether they want the currency, or the system.

Some will see it as like an early internet, or the invention of email, some will see it as merely a little currency-exchange app.

But a P2P exchange of value is the real utility value - and the only reason they are not already in, is they don't want the coins, the want shares in the network, but the network (like the internet) is not for sale!

So, they don't like it. The Asian guy who bought into bitpay (selling shovels to gold miners) is doing the right thing, in wall street terms.

'Let someone else work out value and appliactions, I will just sell the transaction tools'

Smart investor.   If it will work, the transaction interface with fiat is the territory you can buy and control.   You cannot buy the currency or the network.