I'm all fine and dandy with your assessment that whales are NOT being obvious on exchanges.. ... however, if you read my post above, I am suggesting that prices are gotten from exchanges.. so exchange prices are manipulated... It may NOT be for the purposes of directly obtaining coins, but it does seem to be for the purpose of manipulating price. 

Are any of you suggesting that BTC price comes from anywhere other than from the exchanges?

I was exaggerating a bit, as you may have been able to tell. 

I agree with your overall sentiment.. you are correct; however, each of us get into an investment at a different stage, and based on such, we may engage in slightly different behaviors and investment strategies.

 I happened to have gotten into BTC at $1200, so I have been constantly buying to bring down my average BTC buy in price (currently I am at about $662) and in order to hopefully someday get back into the black... so current BTC price trends remain somewhat worrisome to me, based on my starting point and ongoing working and monitoring of BTC prices to continue to buy on the dips and to be able to be in a position to be able to get to a position of being in the black and to be able to be comfortable that I could sell at any point and be profitable (NOT there yet and getting further from there when the price goes down to such extremes.. especially, if such considerable dips cause concerns about whether the price will ever return to a place that I would be in the black). 

Certainly, I do NOT plan to sell any of my BTC until some time far into the future (unless some emergency or something).. but I would feel much better, if I could bring down my average BTC price and to rest in a position of being in the black rather than resting in the red... if you know what I am talking about... and the lower the average BTC buy in price, the easier it is to get to and to stay in some place of comfort and near being in the black.

Excuse me about your supposed sincerity.. what the fuck are you talking about?    You are talking about a different category of spending.

People engage in various kinds of investments and speculations in order to be able to live well in the future and to have financial security and various kinds of things like that...  sometimes the bets pay off and sometimes they do NOT ..  whether people invest in real estate, business ventures, the stock market, fiat currency, gold or bitcoin, we are speculating as a vehicle.. to later be able to later spend.. some people hedge and diversify and others invest balls to the walls.

When you are talking about consumption, you are referring to a different category of spending, and to me it sounds as if you are provoking incitement, being argumentative and possibly patronizing us as if you supposedly know better about something...

Are you invested in BTC?  Are you engaging in thoughts about it, or you just come to this thread to say I told you so, during a downtrend?  In essence, your comment is NOT productive, contributory or even insightful.. it seems to be just a means to say I told you so.. so if you do NOT believe in BTC investing or making some kind of meaningful contribution, then go to engage in your own consumption activities and leave us in this thread to ponder BTC investment and/or speculation possibilities.

YOU may be correct about the dynamics that you describe, and I may be speculating beyond any reasonable semblance of knowledge that I have about how BTC price is being affected by trade; however, whether we like it or NOT, it seems to me that BTC prices are affected by exchange activities.  It also seems to me that there may have been quite a bit of removal of money and BTC from exchanges b/c of the GOX collapse issue.  Therefore, if there is less money on the exchanges, it takes less money to manipulate the BTC prices on exchanges and whales may want to engage in tactics to NOT show that they are manipulating BTC prices.. but still seems to me that there is a very, very, very large incentive to manipulate for some institutional investors, wealthy individuals (and even governments).

If there are invisible walls that do NOT let the prices go up.. then it may NOT cost very much to keep up those invisible walls.

Accordingly, maybe it is the paranoia in me, but I believe manipulation is taking place on exchanges, even though I may NOT be able to clearly articulate the mechanics of how it is done.. or how much profits and or losses take place through such manipulations.....

For example, if an institutional investor can manipulate prices, and it costs that institutional investor, let's say for argument sake 1 million to manipulate BTC prices downward.. but the institutional investor is able to acquire, 20,000 BTC for average of $500 per BTC rather than average of $650, then that institutional investor has just saved $2 million.  $3million saved from purchase of coins at lower price at $1million cost to manipulate the market downward = $2 million profits overall.    Surely the numbers work out differently with different quantities of BTC purchases.  If an institutional investor wants to acquire 200,000 BTC, then multiply that by 10, and you get $30million savings and the institutional investor may be willing to take large losses on exchanges to keep the prices down and to save and to get 200,000 BTC at $500 average rather than $650 average. 

In this regard, if, as you suggest, smart money is coming into BTC sphere through these various outside channels, they are likely using the exchange price to figure out how much they are going to be paying per BTC, no?  So, even if they are NOT making their big purchases through the exchange directly, they are figuring out the price they will pay, based on some agreed to average which likely a reflection of the exchange prices.

WE are gonna see sub $400......?

OM f'ng G  !!!!!

I hope NOT... at this point I would NOT be surprised by anything, but i am thinking outside chance we may get to at little below $430 .. and then we are going to head for our upward trajectory into the $500s this week, $600s by the weekend and $700 by the end of April, maybe even $800 by the end of April..... Of course, continued and ongoing speculation that is based on NOT much more than overall sense of a need for an uptrend and that we are continuing to get increased rather than decreased adoption....

NOW.. if the china ban rumor ends up being true.. then this could put a cog in my speculation..  At this point, I am "speculating" that the chances for the china rumor to be true is fairly unlikely... maybe less than 5% chance that material aspect of it is true.

WTF? this is the speculation thread... we trade on rumors... and trading on rumors of rumors is even MOAR better!!!!!!

A little incongruent b/c i was making a serious post, but I was also referring to the pictures of the girls and/or the duck buttoms.

Surely, I get a little nervous when I hear people suggesting that it has got to be like this b/c that is the usual pattern, but with such a manipulated market (which the BTC market seems to be), seems that any one or two fairy godmother whales can come into the mix and mess up the pattern... so even though people think that we are needing to test or retest the $436 bottom, we may never return to $436 in spite of maybe the lack of volume or whatever b/c we have some fairy godmother whales coming in and then we are floating in the $500s and then maybe $600s and then maybe other whales start to say, "oh shit, i better get in"  ... so then the regular pattern is messed up.....

So I suppose we could be talking about patterns, absent fairy godmother whales, b/c the fairy godmother whales are going to mess up any kind of pattern that may be the usual... .... but bitcoin seems to NOT be the usual b/c it does seem to be fairly easy to manipulate with just a few million dollars....... I recognize that manipulation also depends upon volume.. so seems to be easier to manipulate during times when there is less volume.... but the attempts to manipulate may draw other whales if the manipulator(s) is(are) NOT subtle about it.

So we only see bottoms, like the ones in the pictures, during high volume?  

And, accordingly, I would take it that the volume is high during the bottom, and then there is a switch in direction and the volume stays high until it tapers out for consolidation or thereafter volume stays up for some time before it goes up and tapers out at a higher amount?

So we may see another $536 or something like that (maybe lower) before we go back up.. is that what you are saying?

Creekbore does NOT seem to be too good at either social graces or tactful lashings out, but he does seem to be working on improving his application of these, at least from time to time.  

If he is NOT too rash in his posts, he may get better at this, so I have NOT completely lost hope in him, yet.  But, I tend to be charitable like that.  

If any of you are buying BTC through Coinbase, you will see that currently, at this moment, they have this message up.


In my experience, the NOTICE may NOT stay up all day b/c Coinbase may be able to get back into business at some time within the next few hours.  However, these kinds of NOTICE(s) from Coinbase (which happens from time to time) can be kind of irritating when Coinbase happens to be the vehicle through which a person invests from fiat into BTC and s/he wants to take advantage of the current BTC market prices.    

And, I believe that it has been speculated in this thread, before, that Coinbase likely runs out of Fiat on bitstamp and they are unable to purchase more BTC until they get more fiat onto Bitstamp.. who knows?

Personally, I am o.k. for now with NOT being able to buy b/c I bought at $452; however, I may get itchy and want to buy again (my next buy point happens to be below $440, if we were to get there..... maybe NOT) and I will be unable to do buy any BTC until Coinbase removes its NOTICE and returns to business as usual.  

BTW, seeing the NOTICE (that I cannot buy BTC) makes me inclined to buy BTC more.


Edit:  Soon after I made this post, the Coinbase NOTICE disappeared off of their site.. maybe they read my disappointment in this thread and responded swiftly and appropriately?  LOL

Maybe they sold all their BTC? 

I would like to know: When are we gonna see $10K?  Are we gonna get there in a few flash crashes (upward) in 2015 and then maybe in 2016 or so, $10k will be the new bottom, and in $2017 $10k will be a distant memory of earlier years?  Or would you envision some other kind of scenario involving the $10K?  like further down the road? or earlier?

I thought that the avatar was the abominable snowman from the rudolph the rednose reindeer movie?

I don't know a whole hell of a lot about how price manipulation takes place exactly, but some of those order walls that you see on Bitstamp are fake, and they are used to attempt to push the market in one direction or another by creating appearances.... ... But the phenomenon that I am describing does NOT really directly answer your question.   

The other thing that seems to occur is that bots will continue to add sales on an ongoing basis to keep the price from rising.  These bots can only accomplish this in a meaningful way, if the actual trade volume does NOT become too high b/c once the trade volume becomes too high, it may become too unprofitable to operate bots in such a way. 

To me, there seems to be quite a bit of manipulation going on, and in this regard there is likely some of the trade activity that is taking place at a short-term loss but may be calculated to be long-term profitable.

I agree with you, and sounds like we follow a similar practice (at least attempt to do so).  I really began buying at $1,200 and I have been buying ever since..... and then recently, I began intensively again after the price dropped to $610 and then lower and lower and lower... I'm thinking that it has got to reverse sometime soon.. I still have some fiat in reserves, but i have been having to get some more fiat out of reserves based on what I consider to be a continued and unexpected downward trend over the last weeks.

So it sounds as if your average buy-in price is below $500... Accordingly, you are in pretty decent shape... even though the circumstances may seem a little dire at the moment. 

My average buy-in price is currently at $662 (including transaction fees), yet I am NOT going to lock in any losses by selling b/c I am fairly confident that we will return to above my average buy-in price.. maybe by no later than end of April or maybe in May? 

In any event, even though I am nervous, I am not too worried, yet.

official confirmation or denial not coming until maybe 4/7, at the earliest

dont speak too soon.. b/c overall, it still seems that we are on a downtrend....

I am NOT sure what time on Sunday the bull run usually begins, but it does NOT seem to be happening yet... .. and I am a bit sceptical about whether we are going to reach the poll numbers.... without a fairy whale grandmother or two

That is really bullish.. WE be lucky to reach $800 in 2 weeks.. then maybe 1K by July.. then maybe 1.5k by the end of the year... surely I am pulling these numbers out of my rear.. but.. I am trying to stay within the ballpark of probabilities.. .Maybe 2015, we will hit 10k?

YOU ARE BACK... oh.. shit!!!!