...economics of minining ... This system simply does not make any economic sense.
I believe this quote captures the substance of your post and is the point which merits discussion. I agree generally, that the centralization of mining is a threat, in principle, albeit not in practice to date, to the security of the ledger. I also agree, generally, that the current energy expenditure is far in excess of the need of the design goals. I further agree, generally, that price motivates that expenditure. Whether it makes "economic sense" is a strange question, politically and philosophically loaded. Clearly it makes sense, because you have made sense of it, explaining features of its causal structure. I think what you mean is that the gap between energy expenditure motivated by technical needs, and energy expenditure motivated by economic factors is offensive to your sensibilities. I am somewhat sympathetic to this complaint, but the market is, as we see, without sympathy. An argument can be made that the economic value-add of the network suffices to explain all or part of the gap which offends you, and you seem to acknowledge that implicitly, but consider it inadequate to the scale of the gap. This view would gain respect, if you were to quantify it, or to offer a reasoned case as to why the value-add is less than the present energy cost.No "hype" is required to explain a deviation of current price from some present fundamental metric. All that is required is a rational discounting of a future price estimate (which should really be in the form of a distribution). (Aside, I observe that this discussion is off-topic, which may annoy some who frequent the thread.) I think (he thinks) he did: by saying that crypto only serves malicious ("drug dealers") or trivial ("Overstock.com") purposes, while tacitly assuming further that there will never be any usage cases for crypto other than the above. I appreciate your post, by the way, even if it'll hardly convince Jorge. It runs down to the question if you can see anything of value in a distributed value transfer & registration mechanism or not, now or in the future. Jorge doesn't (and in fact, he mainly seems to think of it as detrimental to the public good), while most in here happen to disagree. I don't see a major problem with that fundamental disagreement though - it would be rather boring if we would all agree on everything, all the time. All throughout history, there were times were it was necessary to be "visionary", even in the face of strong opposition. Existence of opposition is of course not sufficient justification that your vision is beneficial (I'll avoid Godwin here) - some basic morality 'test' is probably necessary, something along the lines of "Does your invention/social reform/plan to change the world undeniably cause more harm than (potential) good?" Jorge et al.'s cynicism aside, the answer in the case of Bitcoin is quite clearly: no, the harm does not outweigh the (potential) good it can do - in the worst case, the "failure" of crypto will leave the world mostly as it was before. Here's why: The defrauding investors argument is silly. Satoshi didn't cash out the vast majority of his coins (we know that for sure), and neither did the other original "megawhales". So, the pyramid notion can be dismissed. As to the possibility of investing, and losing, money when dealing with Bitcoin/crypto: such is the nature of investment. The dotcom bubble was a major disaster for many investors - I'd like to see the resulting claim that we should therefore abandon the entire Internet economy. Risk/reward are intrinsically linked in a market-based economy like ours, so a criticism of this aspect can only come from a broader criticism of capitalism as a whole. The wasted energy argument by itself is incredibly weak, and can be debunked immediately. For example, how about PC or console gaming? Scorn it as well, as "frivolous waste of energy"? How about traveling to places, for recreation? Vast amounts of energy used for that, no benefit other than enjoying life, getting to know the world. There is no "justified" use of energy in absolute terms, otherwise, everything except hospitals, schools and heating would need to be shut down. The drug economy argument is minimally stronger, but not much. Currently, perhaps illegal goods make up a large chunk of the total network economy (other than the "circular" aspects of mining). There's no reason that has to stay like this however, and in absolute terms, the drug economy did mighty fine before Bitcoin (and will continue to do so in case crypto would "fail"). Airplane travel wasn't "a waste of time and human effort" just because, say, in the beginning, only the super rich could afford it. The political repercussions argument is perhaps only one I can consider valid: in case Bitcoin/crypto would succeed, on a large scale, it might change the way national governments work. You can be against that, on reasons of principle - as in, I don't consider every non-libertarian standpoint inconsistent automatically. That said, of all the available cryptos, the world's governments could do much worse than with Bitcoin: because of its trackable nature, in case of success, Bitcoin transactions merely represent a (in my terminology) reversal of the rule/permission cycle , not a way to completely and universally change the laws and rules of nations as is. |
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Solid analysis of volume+bid/ask, Wandererfromthenorth. My reply was for the bolded parts of your reply.
Imo you read luc posts with a bit too strong bull classes. Luc could comment, but my interpretation from example H&S pattern that luc has showed also, is that luc thinks that new LL <166 is likely.
We could see capitulation <100 then upper weekly BB then "very fucking long silent phase" at middle weekly BB.
Hehe, I'm hardly bullish at the moment. The point I was trying to make was simply that luc's "big picture" analysis was first and foremost about saying "prepare yourself for a long period of stagnation", and less about another crash (so: not ruling that one out, but not stressing it either) - but maybe I misunderstood luc. Anyway, I see it the way like damiano said above: the really painful part could be the stagnation to come, not further sharp price decline. /shrug |
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ITT people see what they want see...
I'm leaning towards 'more downside' as well (expecting to see sub-200 again, for example), but you'll note that luc didn't say "New lower low incoming", but rather "Further price collapse is possible, but not required".
Also, prices an order of magnitude lower than current price (i.e. ryn's myself chart) are pretty unlikely in my opinion, unless catastrophic protocol failure or "global crypto ban" happens. It took more than a year for price to deflate 75% (as measured by a 20 day average), and we're already showing signs of selling exhaustion, so I wouldn't bet much on pre-2013 prices.
a) 208 not hit (yet?). Keep the salivation reflex in control  b) Even then, still missing what luc's main point was. Relevant parts again: 1. Further price collapse is possible, but not required, and 2. Very fucking long "silence phase" (after final collapse) |
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See, you guys read it all wrong. That chart isn't targeting $.05 for this correction (though I know it looks like that with the box and the note), it means we are correcting the entire history of Bitcoin. Not just the 2013 euphoria phase.
Get it now, wasn't clear to me at first glance. Besides "we won't retrace 100% of wave 1", is there any other price level prediction that can be derived from that parse? |
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ITT people see what they want see...
I'm leaning towards 'more downside' as well (expecting to see sub-200 again, for example), but you'll note that luc didn't say "New lower low incoming", but rather "Further price collapse is possible, but not required".
Also, prices an order of magnitude lower than current price (i.e. ryn's myself chart) are pretty unlikely in my opinion, unless catastrophic protocol failure or "global crypto ban" happens. It took more than a year for price to deflate 75% (as measured by a 20 day average), and we're already showing signs of selling exhaustion, so I wouldn't bet much on pre-2013 prices.
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- Case for the bulls: daily (bullish) divergence on MACD hist. We'll find out if only "delays the inevitable" (i.e. breakdown), or if we're finding support here (i.e. above 200). I lean towards the former (perhaps brief touch of ~240, then back to 210-220 and lower), but I'm not entirely ruling out a bullish scenario either.
[Non-EW Post] I have never really paid much attention to the MACD hist before, but I'm assuming you've used it previously in your analysis. How valid a signal would you say the histogram divergence is? Equal predictive value as regular MACD divs, or less so? [/Non-EW Post] Honestly, I'm not sure. I've previously asked two traders I respect (ryn and luc), and both said, more or less, they don't trust MACD histogram divergences much. I'm mentioning this because these two have a lot more experience in market analysis than I do. In my own experience, the MACD hist is a pretty reliable, if nervous, momentum indicator, across time scales, so I would expect divergences on it to hold some value. But as with all divergences spotting them is one thing, but determining how much weight they carry at any given time is another (i.e. they can be neutralized, and they can come to effect with a delay). tl;dr I don't know how much value you should assign to hist/f'' divergences exactly. I like to track them, and don't entirely dismiss them, but I suspect more experienced traders have a point when they say they're not too reliable. /off topic |
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...
Covering all bases there?
:D
'It might go up or it might go down'
;)
Hehe, sounded like that maybe, but not really what I meant... in numbers, I'd give it a 2:1 chance of further decline (informal probability model, before you ask). In terms of market bets, that's pretty damn close to saying "I'm certain. Almost." :P |
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No EW whatsoever. Sue me :D
- Price action since last week, while not exactly impulsive, differs from e.g. the December breakdown in that there seems to be less panic. Mildly bullish.
- Volume of the latest move on daily (~1 week) supports further downtrend through.
- Bid/Ask on BS and BF holding up so far, recovering even.
- Strongest case for the bears (imo): mid term momentum (~50 days on regular MA) is broken, which meant further price decline all throughout 2014.
- Case for the bulls: daily (bullish) divergence on MACD hist. We'll find out if only "delays the inevitable" (i.e. breakdown), or if we're finding support here (i.e. above 200). I lean towards the former (perhaps brief touch of ~240, then back to 210-220 and lower), but I'm not entirely ruling out a bullish scenario either.
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been lurking in here for a while, first post to say: good analysis, good call |
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Lots of talk from bears who are also losing money on their leveraged positions every day. I say talk because you have already sold or shorted - all you can do is yap or buy the price higher if the market turns.
Waiting for someone else to sell the price lower for you because line on a chart points down. Worked in 2011, right Xiao?
But it's not just a "line on a chart that points down" though. It's bid sum still being ridiculously low (and still decreasing, while at the end of the 2013 bear market bid sum went nuts, and price clearly followed for example), it's decreasing volume on all exchanges since January (again, after a real capitulation like in 2013, the recovery should be panic buying on progressively increasing volume), the fact that the actual volume on the $150 bottom wasn't all that amazing (on chinese exchanges they are almost a standard volume bar), the fact that overall volume measured in USD in lower than in the 300-400 area especially on chinese exchanges, EW analysis, value of daily mined coins, short term (and also long term) support trend lines broken, recent weak price action etc. And these are just the technicals. I have asked you before but you ignored it. How much fiat is sat on the exchanges or in hidden bid orders? And yes technicals are simply 'line on a chart points down or up' however you want to dress it up! Painting the dance between the longs and shorts as being won currently by shorts is a little silly, lots more money backing the long position, and only a little more and shorts will cover - retail is shorting bitcoin right now, whilst real whales accumulate. Not necessarily disagreeing with your broader point, but by my experience bid/ask time series on, say, BS and BF is not entirely uninformative, at least as a short-to-mid term predictor. |
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It looks like really slow/boring downside movement, where we will test support around 200-220..if we break that support, damn, it will take long time before we will truly reverse the bear trend...my crystal ball told me that this morning
so i am placing buys on 20 BTC @ 180...do you think its too low / or still too high??
IŽd say too high, entire movement since january seems now like H/S pattern, which would point to lower lows 90-130. However 180 is safe bet unless you go in leveraged, bitcoin should recover fairly quickly after crashing to bottom. Many people predicting 80-120 prices... i somehow refuse to believe that after so great fundamentals and difficulty x times higher than 2013 summer, i would buy in the same range i was buying most of my coins...i will probably go like 80% of my money to 160-180 and 20% i will hide for the final crash to 100-120 but i really don't believe we will go that low... Despite what Sr. Stolfi likes to claim about "there being no fundamentals", you are right of course: Bitcoin fundamentals are substantially better now than they were, say, 2 years ago. The network is undergoing respectable growth (although perhaps a bit less spectacular than some were hoping a year or two ago). Number of transactions is up - and despite what the trolls like to claim, no evidence exists that this is due to manipulation. Hashrate is growing, which obviously serves a greater purpose than simply "making miners rich", i.e. the core function of the network (security) is getting stronger. Alternatively, you can look at investments in BTC infrastructure as a long-term predictor. Sure, those are not "fundamentals" per se, but they're a good indicator that this isn't a Ponzi after all - again, despite what the trolls like to claim. All of the above granted though, there is no arguing with the market. In order for your argument (about price/fundamentals now vs. price/fundamentals back then) to actually work, you need at least one additional assumption: that price back then was the "fair" price per coin. And I'm afraid that's not a given. We're in the long, arduous process of figuring out what the fair price per coin is. My personal view is this: if you look back at the limited history of this market, you will note that there are periods where price seems to run ahead of the fundamentals, and periods where the fundamentals seem to run ahead of price. Right now, we're in the latter type of period, and it's possible that it'll last some longer. |
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Right. And, not for the first time I'm reminding you that straw man arguments such as "those who claim that bitcoin will be the solution to poverty, corruption, fraud, bank abuse, oppression, censorship, etc., etc.. " are bullshit and I'm calling you on it. Again. I know hundreds of people within this community both on the technical and financial side and I can't think of a single one of them that sees it in the way as you're trying to paint it here. Not one. It's a tool. Like I said in my previous post, you're deliberately, disingenuously conflating tool and solution. I know you're smarter than that hence my facetious tone. Some tools, like crossbows for example, are known to have levelled the playing field somewhat between the previously empowered and the disenfranchised. No longer did you need to be a trained full time professional belonging to a paid standing army to be useful on the battlefield. Some tools, like surveillance databases, armoured cars and the like are known to have been of more use to those with privilege and power than those without. Did we throw out computers because IBM helped the nazis track dissidents and minorities with their punched card technology? Some tools, like hammers, are just tools and, as you've astutely pointed out, can be used to almost equal effect by anyone wielding them. They are used to build both labour camps and hospitals. The Internet is a tool that can be used by anyone for almost any purpose but, generally speaking, a society with ubiquitous access to a free and open Internet is a greater threat to the .1% than to the rest of us. There's a possibility that Bitcoin is like a hammer. Just a tool that anyone can use for better or for worse. That's certainly how it looks right now. But I suspect Bitcoin is more like the Internet. Anyone can indeed use it but, generally, the level playing field its widespread adoption presents would be something very threatening indeed. As you've also said, they'll try to ban it, control it etc. We're watching that. It's fun. You're certainly old enough to remember the painful death throes of the old guard music industry and how it flapped about and sued the hell out of anyone that moved in an effort to forestall the inevitable change that the Internet was bringing to their business models. Well that ended in a complete overhaul of the industry in spite of their best, and most cunning efforts. But we know, for whatever reason, that you've closed your mind to anything positive about Bitcoin and are determined to repeat ad nauseam negative arguments regardless of whether anyone's shot them down or not so if it were just the two of us here, I'd certainly save my breath. The key here really is that Bitcoin is a disruptive technology and if anything needed disrupting, it's the current global financial industry and the frankly horrific level of global inequality that it supports. If you'll forgive me, and I'm sure you will, I'm going to put you back on ignore now. It's not like you ever say anything you haven't said before in one way or another.  Amazing that someone who keeps accusing Jorge of 'strawman' arguments, then proceeds on a massive rant made of hay. Ad people who claim to be 'scientists' saying this is a great comment, can you not see the glaring contradictions, fallacies and errors. It's such a shame that there are so many folks in the world who have been taken in by this 'disruptive' crap -- the reality is not 'democratization' but more concentrated power in the hands of not the rich but the (unelected) elite super-rich. But Jorge pointed this out and then it all went silent -- because everyone who disagrees with the great BTC world view is a troll. Keep banging away boys...the big money is surely round the corner  KFR's post is a bit wordy perhaps, but "made of hay"? How exactly? Because he holds the opinion that Bitcoin/crypto is a tool that he is hoping will be used to disrupt an industry that many people around the world perceive as in dire need of being disrupted? How dare he having an idealistic viewpoint! Seriously though: if I see anything fallacious in the quoted block above, it's your own response. How exactly did you get from KFR's argument about the financial industry and "disruptive tools" (whether you agree with him or not is a different matter) to "Ha ha, price is tanking, and will continue to do so!". I remember reading your posts in late 2013 and generally thought they were interesting, but the last ones I remember sounded mostly bitter. I'm not trying to be a jerk when I say that I hope it's not because you lost more money than is advisable in this strange financial experiment of ours. |
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Double digits is possible, but it's difficult to know without knowing how much ammo this bear whale has. If it's done right we could potentially hit double digits, but that would be with the assistance of the stop losses kicking in. I'm thinking 133-166 is the range it would most likely fall to. This whale is so close in triggering the first set of major stop losses which I feel are in the 215-225 range.
Just out of curiosity, does every market that goes through a long-ish bull or bear market have a unique individual that is personally responsible for that market condition? For example, is there a "gold whale"? There could even be a whale who's personally responsible for several different markets at once, no? Jesus, maybe? |
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First: I get it. Everyone of us has an uncomfortable feeling when leaving either coins or cash on the exchanges, after all the previous fiascoes.
That said: This is pretty clearly not (yet) "the same thing that happened at gox". Can't believe even some hero members aren't above that kind of bullshit fear-mongering.
In gox' case, we didn't have a withdrawal delay of a few days once every month or two like here, but actually hundreds of cases, collected in one giant thread. And people still happily sent money to them. Now that was rather sad.
In my experience, cash withdrawals from Bitstamp are semi-fast, but there's a bit of variance: 1-2 business days for Bitstamp/SEPA is fast, but I've also had to wait ~ 3-4 days in the past.
I'd suggest to write a support ticket now (simply asking if they are working on the withdrawal), then wait until Monday or Tuesday (don't count on either Bitstamp or your bank doing anything on the weekend). If by Tuesday evening you still don't have the money, post an update here, if you want.
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According to the alltime EW chart we would either be at wave A, ending with double digits or the beginning of wave 5 going up uP UP.
So you're saying that price could go drastically up, or go down a lot... tellmemoreaboutit.gif Seriously though, I think that's more or less what part of the EW crowd thinks, for example luc, unless I'm mistaken. Also: avatars re-enabled? I thought I remembered you had a different one. |
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Nothing April foolish or trolling about considering evaluation on a log scale... Accessible explanation here for example, on why quants tend to look at log returns instead of "raw" returns. |
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Technical analysis is based on one assumption: that there exists time-correlations in market prices.
If someone manages to formally prove the existence of these correlations, that would settle it for me.
I've seen very complex attempts at extracting these correlations, through artificial intelligence algorithms such as high-dimensional support vector methods. These algorithms can find extremely complex correlations in the data that would be very hard for us humans to grasp, or completely unintuitive. If these methods fail at detecting correlations, I have a hard time with the credibility of "toy functions" used in classical TA.
Wrong on two counts, I'd say: (a) there are a number of statistically well established predictive factors (not many, but some), so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea from that nobody ever managed to find any correlations that enable market decisions/risk control better than 'guessing'. (b) your claim that "if formal algorithm X can't do it, the human brain most certainly can't do it" is pretty off, imo. As Lo et al. put it: These linguistic barriers underscore an important difference between technical analysis and quantitative finance: technical analysis is primarily visual, while quantitative finance is primarily algebraic and numerical.
Therefore, technical analysis employs the tools of geometry and pattern recognition, while quantitative finance employs the tools of mathematical analysis and probability and statistics. In the wake of recent breakthroughs in financial engineering, computer technology, and numerical algorithms, it is no wonder that quantitative finance has overtaken technical analysis in popularitythe principles of portfolio optimization are far easier to program into a computer than the basic tenets of technical analysis.
Nevertheless, technical analysis has survived through the years, perhaps because its visual mode of analysis is more conducive to human cognition, and because pattern recognition is one of the few repetitive activities for which computers do not have an absolute advantage (yet) ( source) |
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Not sure I agree with luc on the shitcoin theory (long-term XMR/BBR/DRK shill here ^_^), but as always, a pleasure to read his views on the technical side of BTC. We're glad to have him here Tip sent. |
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There are ~10 shares per bitcoin held, correct? So the visible bids on otcmarkets.com are well above "market" considering the 10:1 ratio and current exchange market price, correct as well? Someone who knows more about BIT, and investment trusts in general, can try to explain this? Order book padding by the fund owners themselves? (Would seem very, very risky, so I doubt it). Any why aren't the bid matched? Lacking liquidity? But the bids I can see are in the range of at most 1000 shares, which means, it's that's basically nothing. Anyone else wants to speculate on this, or explain it to me? |
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You use the big words, but you don't really know what they mean, huh? Whether you can extrapolate (in a loose sense) from past market data to future outcomes runs down to the question whether a market is a Markov process (or rather: can be modeled by one) or not. Some processes can be shown to be likely to satisfy that property (in which case, yes, you can't extrapolate), some processes don't, then you can go hunting for predictive factors (which take historic data as input.) Hint: even most of mainstream economy doesn't believe markets in general satisfy the Markov property. They just think (most) markets are also efficient enough to price in the information potential almost immediately. By that interpretation (which I don't share), TA still doesn't work, but not for the reason you seem to think it doesn't. This is not extrapolation, this is prediction. Building a model requires to have fundamental knowledge about the system. Some processes indeed can be predicted by simple models such as Markov model quite well. Seriously though, take a quick look at the article if you feel like it. In a way, it supports your point. In another one, mine as well. |
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