Volume at Gox is so small it is almost scary
everyone is busy at the conference  If I may extrapolate on that (with a chart of course)...  ...the weekly step-down in volume would be explained by those having had to travel furthest leaving their trading desks on the 2nd week of April to start their trek to the conference, followed by those next-furthest away in the 3rd week of April and so on so that last week's volume drop-off can be explained by the Californians departing for San Jose Let's see what happens as everyone returns home  On a more serious note I'm fascinated looking at the prices on the same weekly chart, especially the EMA (3) Look how insignificant by now April's 'crash' was; Look at the massive contrast between the huge volume drop-off and the virtually unmoving (but slightly upward) price. Meanwhile the transaction volume (in USD) appears only just to have dropped out of the $20.000.000 - $60,000,000 channel.  Given that more than a small part of the transaction volume must be currency trading transactions and that trading transactions have almost died off entirely I'm surprised we are only now seeing the overall transaction volume drop. Does this mean transactions other than currency trading are going up? I wonder if the trading volume were to drop off further or stablise at today's levels would the price fall to any significant degree? I'm suspecting, based on the failure of low volumes to trigger sell-offs that the vast proportion of bitcoins is in strong hands by now. Whether or not the price is being manipulated I believe the nervous have had plenty of opportunity to close their positions by now and we have also seen buyers come pouring in every time there is a dip. So if I were to make a prediction it would be that the longer we hang around this price mark the more likely we are to continue to go mainly sideways. When the market is too calm for day-traders to make anything we get an idea of what currency-trading is required to sustain (non-currency-trading) transaction volumes. And if that's steady or rising there should be enough liquidity to satisfy their requirements without shifting the price very far either way. In the meantime if we get another wave of speculators or of long-term savers (hoarders) or if existing speculators/hoarders decide to increase their bitcoin holding then up we go again. Call me an eternal optimist but I'm failing to see credible downward pressures |
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Given that there's so little going on I'm still pondering on the differences between the rates on the various exchanges - this time with respect to the way BitPay claims to be calculating its own rate: Bitcoin Exchange Rates
As of today, the only exchange that has enough liquidity and tight spreads to pull real time rates is BTC/USD.
To calculate the exchange rate for US Dollars, we pull up-to-the-minute BID prices from three exchanges. We take the 2 that are closest together and toss out the third, so that a bad feed from one exchange will not affect our calculation. Of the 2 rates that remain, Bit-Pay uses the highest BID price as our exchange rate. Looking at the current figures below 'the 2 that are closest together' are bitstamp and btce leaving gox as the one that ought be 'tossed'.  Yet the rate showing on Bitpay's list is mtgox's:  I'm not saying it 'should' be but I'm guessing their algorithm is a bit more sophisitcated than the explanation implies? |
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Volume at Gox is so small it is almost scary
In the context of the last few months I guess it could be scary but in the bigger picture we're less than half way through the day (with the US just coming into play) and it's still in the all time top 20 Mondays for USD volume! It may be a little premature to be getting worried |
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In fact ^this is the reason I don't have enough fiat to risk to on the arbing game. Id quite happily be trading between mtgox\btc-e but there isnt a quick and easy way to move $ between the two... especially when your from the UK.  unless someone wants to enlighten me?? I just started to try. So far I have been charged 4% for uploading funds to OKPay. 4%! So even before btce and mtgox commissions, you have to write off 4%. Its sort of discouraged me from uploading a serious amount of money. Ive tried to find a route for far too many hours, and after total fees, im concluding the margins are too small for the amount of turnover necessary, for the current risks involved (seized exchange funds). There is something left, but the UK route just dont make it viable enough. Thanks to you and others for trying. I know it was never easy but my guess it's happening even less now is if all the exchanges closing in recent months wasn't enough, the DHS/Dwolla/mtgox was a stark reminder of how risky it is to hold money (whether fiat or bitcoins) on the exchanges. Arbing for decent money requires shifting large sums and I'm guessing the rewards (after costs and delays of moving money) aren't sufficient to justify the risks involved. But for now at least it looks like the gap with bitstamp is closing a bit even though overall volumes are pretty dismal so I guess not much to be read into the figures:  |
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I guess it is safe to say that none of us know. But in danger of missing a Black Swan go by I would rather sacrifice some future "profit" or holdings of BTC by trying to buy in later at lower prices, with just holding at what I see to be a great price - now. But I can say, it is wise to have capital available to buy more in later should that occur. But it sounds like you are trying to rationalize the greatest social experiment in the history of our civilization. Think about that.
Now, if it jumps up $100 or $200 in a day, your going to be there sitting in cash. Moral...
Don't try to time a Black Swan.
People should really try to comprehend this. The small value you are likely to gain by waiting (which is relatively probable) does not beat the enormous gain you lose by being out when the price suddenly spikes (even though this is a far less likely event to happen in the time-frame you are out of BTC). The opportunity cost of choosing fiat over BTC short term can be extremely high. ^ This! |
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This ChartBuddy thing should be posting like every five hours instead of every hour. Or tie the posting speed to volatility.
There was a discussion about this yesterday a few pages back. |
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... frankly people are expecting a huge rally somewhere in the future so that they can cash out. fiat..
That is an assumption I'm not seeing. Certainly there are many expecting a huge rally but on what basis do you believe people will be wanting to 'cash out'? Some, certainly, but far from most I suspect. And the reasoning behind my speculation is that anyone expecting another big rally is likely to believe bitcoin is not a flash in the pan and is therefore likely to be looking at it either as a long-term commodity investment as part of their portfolio or is holding onto it until such a time that more day-to-day transactions can be done in bitcoin. In the meantime if things they want to buy start becoming available and good value in bitcoin the likelihood is people will buy more bitcoin to spend rather than bitning into their long-term stash. My point is 'hoarding' bitcoin is better for bitcoin than hoarding pm, bonds, stock etc. Spending bitcoin is better for bitcoin than spending fiat. And should Bitcoin's long-term deflationary nature lead some to save a bit more and spend a bit less, whilst this may not be ideal to fledgling bitcoin-dependent businesses right now I'm tending to think it can't be a bad thing for the Bitcoin economy further down the road. |
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 I'm posting this here both to warn those who ignore everything other than gox not to get carried away by gox-only movement and also to try and nudge anybody with arbing capabilities to do us all a favour and make some money helping us discover where the price should be right now. |
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mtgox bid price still out on a limb in relation to others.  mtgoxUSD - bitstampUSD 5.21 mtgoxUSD - btceUSD 8.32 mtgoxUSD - cbxUSD 5.40 |
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Ask sum increasing also, maybe some are arbing the big gap between exchanges and gox..
if only bankwires worked faster and during weekend days.. hope i'm still fast enough to get cheap coins at bistamp.. wish i put some fiat over there last week.. stupid me! Don't know about the reasons behind it but I'm somewhat reassured to see mtgox bid price within a stone's throw away from the others: mtgoxUSD 119.5 2,170,113 73% bitstampUSD 117.45 444,120 15% btceUSD 112.51 293,743 10% cbxUSD 117 74,132 2% Then again on such tiny volumes maybe there's not too much to be read into anyway |
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This "Get-out-of-Gox" yankee-rally won't last long  [emphasis added by Pzi4nk] Is this a baseball thing? It's more of an idiot thing. A few vocal people who trade with 'pocket change' amounts of money can't make a withdrawal for 25 cents any more and this is creating a big problem for them. They think it's causing a 'bank run' on MtGox - it's hilarious. Dwolla = Dust transactions. Indeed. The theory is that dwolla users (which is USA customers only) are converting their fiat on gox into btc in order to shift it elsewhere, hence artificially driving up the price, towing bitstamp and other markets upward. However, major dollar buyers would use wire transfers and remain unaffected, so probably the theory is lame, and BTC was headed up anyway, hmmm, ok I didn't understand dwolla completely, but there are some massive ask walls getting in the way on bitstamp at this time... they are relatively new. I for one will cash out via bitstamp if/when I need to purely for convenience... I guess maybe that's what the other guys are thinking I'm getting the impression that some people are 'running for their lives' to save their money before everything is closed down all based on rumour and innuendo which has been spread around by people like d5000 and jaroslaw. These people who have pulled out may or may not have used Dwolla in the past and probably don't realise that it's mainly used by pennyless noobs gambling with their day to day living expenses instead of well funded traders. I'm not saying you're wrong Samson but do you have a better explanation for the unprecedented* difference in price between mtgox and the minor exchanges? For jaroslaw and co it's just another excuse to cry wolf but that doesn't mean it's necessarily entirely without substance. * sustained difference since I was an algorithm using more than one exchange to determine price. |
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Hmm...nothing's changed with Gox/Dwolla?
So is there anyway to tell if this rally is because of the public's bullish sentiment, or because US gox users are converting their fiat into btc and hence causing a rise in price?
I believe not. People getting excited too because ask side orders are thin on the ground. It could as many appear to believe, be because we're about to hit a nice well-due rise in price. But how would the ask order side look if people were simply moving their bitcoin off gox? Mmm! |
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However in this instance I think we could see negative repercussions of the Dwolla/mtgox episode rumble on for some time yet.
Its clear that the dwolla mtgox episode will affect the market for some time, but I'm curious what makes you think it will be negative? In the short term, I believe it will push the price up and in the long term provide a new price discovery mechanism (at the moment unknown what exactly that will be) along with much needed diversity on the exchanges.
mtgoxUSD 0.11919918 5,092,881
bitstampUSD 0.11399 774,256
btceUSD 0.109 542,282
cbxUSD 0.10955 124,859
These are the bid prices with volumes. As dominant as the mtgox market is whilst people used to being able to use Dwolla to get USD in and out can only move money from mtgox in Bitcoin I'm not looking at the current mtgox price as reflective of current supply & demand. I know this thread is about the mtgox walls but the excitement in the last page or so about price 'breakouts' etc. whilst the other exchanges are nowhere near seems short sighted. I'm simply not trusting the price to give me an impression of sentiment. One of the service providers was talking about the long process of getting both their bitcoin and dollars out of mtgox and with things as they are it is obvious that arbitrage is simply not happening. Of course money off of gox trading by other exchanges or otc etc. is good but for now I don't believe we have an operational 'price discovery mechanism' so I don't know what the price 'should be'. My algorithm, that used by bitpay and mine all come to quite different figures at the moment. All I'm suggesting is that we don't get carried away by the fact gox is going up right now. The movement might not be telling you what you think it is! |
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 Anyway you draw it, we seem to be out of the short term downtrend. I was a short term bear until today's mini rally. I dumped at 110 only to sit idly watching the ticker as it went down to 103 thinking sub 100... Bought back in at a loss at 118, we've been stable way too long and have broken through all the bearish trendlines. I really see no reason not to be long right now. As long-time wall followers will know I'm a TA sceptic at the best of times but I'd be especially wary for the next few days at least to read too much into the Mtgox data in isolation of the other exchanges. Where mtgox is too far off the other exchanges the likelihood is it is because people are buying btc to get them out of mtgox and very few have the means to do the arbitrage to even it out. Long-time wall thread followers will also know I am a very optimistic long-term bull and am virtually always more questioning of anything more than slight bearish predictions than I am of bullish predictions. However in this instance I think we could see negative repercussions of the Dwolla/mtgox episode rumble on for some time yet. |
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[FUD, claims of being genuine and a 'guarantee' the price is going to go WAAAY down]
Congratulations Coinseeker, you have just passed with flying colours the rigourous vetting required for membership of my exclusive 'Ignore Club' Bye! |
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Anyway, a bit of perspective...  Wasn't really even a blip, was it? Much less deep, although admittedly much less decisive than the blockchain fork even in March. This plateau we've been experiencing actually reminds me a lot of that time, just on a slightly longer timescale. The price could admittedly do anything, but as time goes on, a continuing crash does appear to be increasingly unlikely. Even if volume is weak and we hold at around $110 - $115 for another couple of weeks, any downtrend will be pretty much broken. It could be moving further under the long term trendline by staying still. If it stays at this price for too long that trendline will be invalidated. Sorry, I'm in a picky mood today but if a trendline shows what has been how can it be 'invalidated'? Given that no trendline goes on forever surely the trendline just shows what was going on up until the point the price went outside of it, at which point it no longer applies past that point. If on the other hand a trendline is being used to predict future then I'm afraid my TA-sceptic stance is that it is invalid even when market prices with time happen to fall within it. Just my thoughts on the matter |
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...Bitcoin transactions that avoid paying applicable taxes are in fact illegal...
All transactions that avoid paying applicable taxes are illegal. What's that got to do with Bitcoin? To be more accurate, all transactions MAY require you to report the income/loss from that transaction, annually. Technically, if your baseball card increases in value from $1 to $1,000 and you realize that value in a sale, then that's reportable income. Bitcoin is no different. (USA) From what I understand, whether it gets reported as 'income' or as a 'capital gain' may depend on your jurisdiction. My accountant's advice in the UK to me is that it becomes taxable as a capital gain only if and when the realised gain is more than £10,000 p/a. Of course this may change because as Coinseeker correctly says it is still a gray area. |
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...Bitcoin transactions that avoid paying applicable taxes are in fact illegal...
All transactions that avoid paying applicable taxes are illegal. What's that got to do with Bitcoin? |
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...where as [sic] Bitcoin is in violation of the laws of nearly every country.
...followed by post after post of people banging their heads against a brick wall trying to explain to Coinseeker that virtually all of the premises behind his ludicrous statement are untrue. I think he's sort-of got most of it by now but it would help if people actually made a little effort (Google is your friend) to understand what they're talking about before just coming out with baseless rubbish.
I'll try Reddit! Awww....does it bother you that I don't blindly follow internet rhetoric. wtf are you talking about. To the extent I was 'bothered' it was disappointment that a thread that has mostly for the 6 months or so I've been following and participating in it had at least something of substantive value in a few pages of posts was dominated by people trying to explain stuff to you you could have found out quite easily yourself by doing a little research. In the first instance your claim 'Bitcoin is in violation of the laws of nearly every country' illustrates plainly you neither understand bitcoin nor law. It is not that people don't welcome a difference of opinion. Did you actually notice how many people who know what they are talking about generously gave explanations far beyond what the initial ignorant statement deserved? No, you come out with some 'blindly follow internet rhetoric' bs. wtf?! At least I have the intelligence to be open to facts as they are presented, where most on this site are so ideologically dug in, that the only "facts" they see are the ones they have created in their own minds.
Starting with the continuing delusion that Bitcoin is immune to governmental intervention.
Wow, you really don't get it do you?! Nobody that I could see in the responses given to you was trying to claim 'Bitcoin is immune to governmental intervention' - if I'm mistaken please find and quote - rather patiently trying to explain things to you such as what 'legal tender' is. And for you, who made the statement about Bitcoin being illegal to accuse others of seeing "only 'facts' they have created in their own minds" is hill-fucking-larious  Intelligence? If you showed a tiny bit of evidence you have any you wouldn't have to protest so loudly how intelligent you are  Edit: looks like I was late with my rant - it appears the rest of you have kissed and made up. I'll leave this post though because I believe it was deserved even if it does make me out to be the nasty angry one |
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Is there a TL;DR on THE news in the last 8 hrs?
I don't know. I did my usual of going back a page or two from this thread and scrolling through to see if there's anything I should know about only to find this: ...where as [sic] Bitcoin is in violation of the laws of nearly every country.
...followed by post after post of people banging their heads against a brick wall trying to explain to Coinseeker that virtually all of the premises behind his ludicrous statement are untrue. I think he's sort-of got most of it by now but it would help if people actually made a little effort (Google is your friend) to understand what they're talking about before just coming out with baseless rubbish. I'll try Reddit! |
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