This infographic of bitcoin's price is something I've been pondering today.

It tells bitcoin's often dramatic price story in fundamental trend lines that abstract away some serious doses of speculative activity.


There's a lot in this chart, so lets break it down:

    In late 2015 through to May 2016, we saw a three cats and a moon consolidation pattern play out over six months after a multi-level marketing (MMM) pyramid scheme took bitcoin price action through some exciting times.
    By early June 2016, we saw a speculative bubble (marked in green above) as the market sought to price in the upcoming block reward halving event. This was to be the second halving event, slashing payout and therefore the supply of new bitcoins from 25 BTC every 10 minutes to… well, exactly half to 12.5 BTC.
    Leading up to this, many people were afraid miners would exit (taking their protective hashing power with them), and that the block processing would slow and the price could crash. This did not happen. What happened was simply that the markets saw less sell-side pressure from miners who had fewer newly minted coins to sell. (The blue trend shows the steeper rate of price appreciation this had on the markets.)
    Finally, what we may be seeing from Q4 2016 to present is the market undergoing a much larger and longer speculative phase for the upcoming bitcoin ETF decision. If approved, hundreds of millions at a minimum are expected to be poured into bitcoin. Understandably, the blue-shaded area in our infographic would then be drawn out.

Each time there is a FUD around here and generally whenever it is time for dips it is the best opportunity that anyone can hope for.
you are either a long term hodler who can buy in these dips and enjoy the continuous upward movement (the green arrow) or you can be a short term trader who sells on top and buys back in the dips with even more money at hand having accumulated more bitcoin in the end.

PBOC is the government (or more precisely both are just subsidiary of the party). But yeah - they will not confiscate - they'll just allow moving the funds only between government approved wallets, this is the only way to stop BTC leaving the country and this is their goal announced already a few months ago. Next step will be controlling the Chinese miners.


Chinese citizens can only move $50K yearly abroad - I don't think that there is an exception to paying mortgages - it would take 10 years to move half a million.

I guess some would move it slowly - but for most it would be more urgent now.

Do you think the Chinese government are even remotely worried about the rights of common people? The PBOC is busy with a power play, and

the Chinese exchanges are rolling over to stay in business. They have already made significant changes to please the government agents, and

it is still not enough. I think the PBOC is on a fishing expedition to hunt down "tax avoiders" and "money launderers" and to curb Capital flight.

Unless there is some huge development, price is going to stay sideways.
Doge is still used for some gambling and to transfer some small amount of Bitcoin quickly, but I don't really see a price increase any time soon,
unless someone with a ton of money decides to pump the price a bit.

Rumors are that China is in the Midst of a Great Depression that will Rival the 1929 US version.

China is doing everything they can to prop up their Yuan, including blocking all outflows of capital from China.

So even when the Chinese exchanges do start allowing BTC & LTC to be withdrawn , expect their to be serious restrictions on those amounts.
(If they don't immediately reinstate a longer block not long after allowing them.)

China may start confiscating BTC from the exchanges and sell them to prop up the Yuan.
If they do , then we have to call BTC ,  BNTC instead.

BNTC = Better NOT Trust China

 

FYI:
On a trading note , A month is a long time, BTC value could easily drop in half before the blocks are lifted.

It seems that Japan is now #1 in volume. China will start having less and less relevancy as other countries catch up in the importance of bitcoin. When this happens, we will see how 3 figures a BTC was always as cheap as hell. The days of chinese government backed price manipulation are numbered. PBOC trick to short the market is increasingly less effective as price recovers quickly. Shorters beware.

The most recent report hilarious.

1. Vernon and his ex-wife bought a house for $1,374,000 with user funds (paid cash).

2. Then he bought here a $104k diamond ring (user funds).

3. He bought a Infiniti QX60 that was liquidated for $26,000.

4. He had over $3MM in a personal Coinbase account that he liquidated into his personal bank accounts.

The best part is Vernon is still selling user accounts onto the black market.

So funny. He literally had a license to print money. He could have probably covered all hacking losses on profits alone (assuming there was ever a hack in the first place), but he had already sucked the exchange dry.

Honestly I don't feel bad for the victims here. Everyone knew what happened to Mt. Gox. If you kept funds in an exchange you were taking the known risk.

Nevermind what I said.  With what China has done with the exchanges this morning, the ETF is screwed!  Price is too easily manipulated by communist China.

You still don't get it: you're describing the status quo, not how things have changed.


Let's put it a different way: if, in 2010, a government issued a decree that all small businesses must pay a 90% revenue tax, businesses would have no choice but to comply (and almost certainly go out of business). In 2020, the same decree would not have the same effect.

So, the balance of power has changed between Bitcoin based businesses and the governments in their respective jurisdictions. Where the government previously had almost all power, Bitcoin businesses now have the power to resist draconianism, they have a bargaining chip where they previously had none.

Without forgetting that they are going to apply fees (since they wasn't doing that before) and I personally doubt that this is a coincidence as Kraken was down as well and users experienced an 404 error page , It's probably more like a plan to drop the price.

I think that they cannot touch now neither BTC, nor CNY deposited in the exchanges.
And the estimated time for making the systems AML compliant is .. 1 month (!)
"Estimated 1 month but can be significantly ahead of schedule if it went well", meaning they leave enough room for speculation.

Edit: however, markets already recovered some 20$

There is that classical chartpattern called "bulltrap" which could be forming out just right now. I exspected that to happen some week earlier. Predictions aren't really easy to do, but if that (above) happens kust everybody will announce it's been "clear from the beginning" since it's pretty distinctive.

One thing about coins with real-life usage like ripples is the price stability and relatively few pumps. Taking LTC and Doge for instance, their prices are so predictable... it will take a while for XRP to pump to 800+ satoshi, like once or twice a year occurrence.