While in the past I've also been annoyed at the lack of funds on bitstamp, I'm going to bring up a defense of sorts:

What are they supposed to do instead, in your opinion? Say the total amount of USD deposited by their users is 10M $. Put it all on bistamp, in one or more transaction? That brings along a *huge* counterparty risk (bank collapse, government seizure, even just temporary freezing of fiat assets in Slovenia). Raphael and Giancarlo have said repeatedly that they consider safety ultimately the higher goal than profit taking (of course trying to balance the two goals).

So how much of the total fiat should be placed on bitstamp? I don't know how they actually do it, but I would suspect that they try to anticipate the market to a degree, and send money over to bitstamp based on that evaluation. Sometimes, when the markets goes full retard like now, that might not be enough

That said, I would also prefer if bitfinex would be *slightly* more aggressive in sending money to bitstamp. It was pretty clear that we continue to be in a rally, so it's also clear that more money than usual should have been send.

I'll say it again: I understand the reasons why there can be *some* delays/shortages, but I would prefer if bitfinex would consider leaning slightly more towards "profit taking", and not overestimating counterparty risk (and whatever other reasons exist to withhold fiat from bitstamp),

Actually I *do* remember reading about the third guy. Forgot his name though Buffet also acknowledged that the guy was a brilliant trader and made huge profits at times, just not consistent enough. I should look up the article I read about this...

Guess my point is, margin trading can work in a few special situations (like the aforementioned recovery after the SR flash crash), but it's probably not a good idea to let it become a habit.

By April logic, we should have sold already :/ +50$ in less than 3 days. On volume that is respectable, but even after adding up mtgox+bitstamp+btcchina, still less than half of April by my count.

I'm holding, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Looking forward to you telling us, afterwards, when you shorted this time :P

Alright guys, now that we're all here.... let's start a Zwarte Piet discussion ^__^

d'oh. should have known you're Dutch, wachtwoord

Hey.

I'm somewhere between "completely clueless" and "mildly informed" on this topic, so please forgive me if I get the terminology wrong or misunderstood something. That said, here's my question:

Electrum uses deterministic key generation, i.e. it derives my private keys "on demand" from the seed generated at the time of installation/wallet creation.

(Roughly) correct so far?

This key is stored *unencrypted* by default inside electrum.dat, but setting a transaction password will make electrum *encrypt* the seed. Correct?

Here's my question: say someone gets physical access of my computer. My hdd is not encrypted, so he will be able to receive a complete copy of all files on my computer.

The seed is encrypted with a 128 bit key, so assuming my password was chosen sufficiently random, the seed should be protected.

But what about the password itself? I realized I have no clue how the password is stored, and if it is a possible attack vector to retrieve the password, and with the help of it, retrieving the seed.

Can you explain how that approach is prevented (note that by "explain" I mean: a bit more technical than "Explain like I'm 5", but not with the full detail of "Explain like I'm an open source encryption software developer" :P)

Awesome news, read it this morning as well. I'm especially pleased because, at least that was my impression, the NL is a bit spotty when it comes to Bitcoin awareness (btc conference took place in Amsterdam, but relatively few sellers on localbitcoins, and no "bitcoin friendly district" like in Berlin).

Anyway, thuisbezorgd is absolutely mainstream and used by everyone and his grandmother, so the mere fact that it now says (in the lower right corner of their frontpage) "bitcoin" is fantastic.

*Goes to order Kip Roti*

'typical price' is similar to 'median price' in that it takes the middle value between the extrema of the period (highest price, lowest price), only difference: 'typcial' throws in closing price as well, which is IMO pretty arbitrary, so median is usually more informative.

but, yeah, I noted it as well and made a post yesterday: we've surpassed the previous daily median price ATH, on mtgox and bitstamp. didn't check btc china, but I'll guess there as well

Forgive me for quoting myself. But here's a nice example of the effect I described above:

Mtgox reaches today's high at 15:35. Bitstamp takes another hour before it reaches its own daily high, at 16:45.

Ergo, mtgox still "leads".

Same time, 16:45, bitstamp iniates downwards correction, 225.5 --> 224, then 223. At this point, mtgox trades sideways. Takes another ~15 min before the correction gathers speed on mtgox as well.

Ergo, bitstamp "leads" as well.

Just as a reminder:

We've reached a new all-time highest median daily price...

mtgox

previous: 213 (09.04.2013)

now: 228 (today, so it can still go up or down :D)

bitstamp

previous:  199

now: 216

That's all.

The situation is a bit more complicated these days than "mtgox still leading" or "gox is dead".

In the past weeks, several rallies were lead by exchanges other than gox. On most days, gox volume is actually lower than that on bitstamp, for example. But once in a while, like now, when a big move starts, gox is still at the center of attention: they do have the market depth (and deep pockets and experience of traders on the exchange) that no other exchange matches so far.

See what I mean? Gox is almost certainly not the only relevant exchange these days. Ignoring what bitstamp or btc china does will cost you money. But on the other hand, gox is still in a unique position, and it is not wrong to say that, more often than not, you're well advised to watch what is going on there.

One more remark: I got the impression that, in the recent past, gox did in fact lead several *rallies*, but bitstamp was quite successful in *stopping* them (i.e. when gox price went too far ahead, and bitstamp was only reluctant to follow, it went down  again on gox)

Woohooo! Thread name change! End of an era! Beginning of a new one! The world became a better place! Let's all hold hands and dance and sing!

_{(just a tiny problem, volume on bitstamp right now is almost as low as on mtgox)}

(master)luc(ifer), what's your take on the situation?

Volume might be the lowest in 6 months... right now, bitstamp has 1 (one!) btc volume for the past 15 minutes o_O

You can't go to da moon on such volume, now can you.

AmazonBucks ™

*sigh*

That's like saying "the total cost of all the gold in the world = the money necessary to hire a fleet of small motor scooters to carry it to my hidden lair".

You are describing a possible, but far from certain attack vector on the network in general, the existence of which might or might not influence the current price (assuming enough traders are aware of it, and agree with your analysis), but concluding that the cost of the (hypothetical) attack sets the upper limit to the total valuation of btc is such a naive view of how markets work (and, as a prerequisite, how the human mind works) that I actually regret bothering and typing up this reply.

Meh.

*posts anyway*

Haha, I love how you basically just thought "fuck it, I'll just ask Gavin".

Also, his answer is mildly surprising (to me at least).

Last time I looked into the (block size limit) topic, it seemed to me that the point was still very much contentious. But Gavin's reaction now sounds like that phase is over

(yes, I know, Gavin =/= Bernanke, and his word isn't final, but I don't expect him to describe the situation as relatively clear cut when in reality he has to have serious doubts if some form of increase will be accepted without a hard fork)

I would read the ratio with extreme caution. In my experience, it's useful to a) look at the norm. ratio on bitstamp vs. that of mtgox to look for divergences (up or down) and b) concentrate on the short term only -- how the ratio developed over the past few days. Anything longer than that, as far as I can tell, is noise. Additionally, the ratio both leads price occasionally, but also follows it pretty often, perhaps more often in fact. I only use it as one of many pieces in analysing the price, but it's not completely useless IMO. Example: Both bitstamp and mtgox show a very nice divergence in the ratio before the recent correction from 200+, starting a few days earlier. This could (should) have been a warning sign for those who thought the run-up would continue uninterrupted. (not that it ever does :D)

http://www.coinorama.net/ --> Settings --> 'Normalize bid/ask ratio'

First, let's be clear: you extrapolate. With data set 1 (October 30, 2011 until October 30, 2013), extrapolating to January 1st (~2 months), you get 115 to 150 USD. In other words, we'd have to undergo another major correction. With data set 2 (June 1, 2013 until October 30, 2013), extrapolating to the same future date, you get to 175 to 250. Which would basically mean moderate growth or a mild correction in the coming two months.

And that's exactly the problem: if you use data set 1, you belong to the crowd of people that believe in the "long term trend" (i.e. ever since trading started). That's a plausible view, but the recent months simply don't support it. We have been, are and most likely will stay above that long term trend (which is basically what you regression on the entire data models).

If you use the recent data, I think you're getting closer, and personally, I find the numbers you get quite likely to be right. But my remark about "backtesting" went unanswered. What you meant by backtesting, I think, is the confidence with which you can predict the price on January 1st with your best model. What I meant was applying the best model to the truncated data, right before a major price move. It's pretty much impossible that the regression will capture the extreme price move, like for example the extreme rally in March/April. Some would declare such volatile phases "outliers" then, and ignore them, or consider them unimportant. I don't believe in that approach.

Anyway, I don't want to say that your analysis is useless -- it's just a big caveat one should keep in mind: if we continue to grow "as expected", your number will be right. If we will enter one of the (many!) extremely volatile phases, up or down, in the next 2 months, your numbers might well be off by a factor of 2 or more.