It looks like the price started going down on Huobi, according to bitcoin wisdom charts.  09:00 was the start of the red candles there, but thy didnt start until 10:00 on the european exchanges.

Why is that?

Wouldn't it make sense to protect your investment by exploring every possible threat or opportunity?  All those in denial may just want to do themselves a favour and listen to every opinion to at the very least educate themselves. 

If you have learned everything you possibly can about the situation in China, including what's happening with the volume at Huobi and researched the background of the owner of what is currently the largest exchange in the world, and conclude that this situation is not a threat to bitcoin short term, that more power to you. 

We are at day 19/365 of 2014. Patience is a virtue. 

Exactly. 

Look, I can appreciate your enthusiasm, but the 1m charts give absolutely no indication of anything at all.  And over the past couple of days, and today in particular, volume (your "green shoots") is dropping in a big way. 

That would explain the (pretty significant) volume drop on Huobi, but why BTCe, Bitstamp, and Gox?

I keep hearing "Green Shoots" and "microcosmic" trends.  If you want to talk about TA you may want to have a look at babypips, they have a great school for analysis http://www.babypips.com/school.  I'd recommend you have a look. 

Also I'd recommend zooming out on your charts.  1 minute charts are too narrow.  Zoom out, 15m minimum, 1 hour, 4 hour and daily.

Also, volume has decreased fairly significantly over the past couple of weeks.

And the "green shoots" are called "candlesticks".

Thanks for keeping us informed.  Following

2014: the year of the weekend spikes! 

Come on weekend rally! 

Maybe MtGox has just decided that the US market is too much of a pain to deal with?  Their Japanese bank has also placed a limit on the number of wire transfers they can make in a day.  So they get backlogged

Is there something else I am missing? 

10 more Huobis would make sure one exchange doesn't control so much of the volume.  If China shuts down Huobi tomorrow what would that do to the price?  And there are many reasons for China to do so; using personal bank accounts for the transferring of corporate funds; operating a money loan service without appropriate licensing, or a money transmitter service without a license (I assume they don't have the proper licensing), or their bank simply doesn't want to piss off the government anymore and closes their account.

Bottom line: this leveraged BTC trading offered by huobi is dangerous in this climate.

As for your point #1, if "A significant proportion, perhaps a majority, of people on this forum" think something negative will happen on or around the 31st, wouldn't you think that that thinking itself could bring a panic sell, with so many people wanting to head to cash before the 31st?

And dont count out point 2.  Nothing is really being said about what is going on with Huobi right now.  With their leverage platform, everyone there is playing the market.  With the volume they have created through this leverage and potentially artificial data, and 74% of the global bitcoin volume, if they get shut down or worse, everyone there loses everything, it could seriously hurt bitcoin. We should be working together to stop exchanges from controlling the market the way they are.

That's like the most amazing explanation of technical analysis I have ever heard.  I mean, that guy was offering to buy your book, but you gave it away for FREE?  Follow this and you are bound to get rich.

The way I am hearing it is if you haven't had an account since at least bubble #2 (April) you know noting about BTC.  Did you ever think that maybe some of us have me e than one account?

Do you really think that Proudhon doesn't have like 7 different accounts, pumping his bs around here?  

Bobby Lee has repeatedly confirmed in interviews that as of the 31st you could no longer use 3rd party payment providers to withdraw funds

I know it's been talked about to death but there is no way huobi has found a magic formula that BTC china hasn't.  Definitely something strange with them

And I guess I didn't read the disclaimers saying this was a guess and complete FUD.  I got to "Huobi closed" and that was it

Huh?  Care to elaborate?  Is this a guess or is something legit?

There are some other threads here and on reddit about this. Basically, the Official is the head of statistics (according to Bloomberg).  Some call him head of "surveys" whatever that means.  Bottom line he is not someone who dictates policy regarding the financial industry, he's merely an analyst (or head of analysts)

The particular bitcoin question was asked by a Japanese reporter at the end of a 2 hour +\- conference, and he gave a response that was not clear by any means, seemed sort of a dodging of the question to be honest. He went on and on about how bitcoin cannot be a currency etc.  He seemed to be careful with his words, not saying much either way.

Here is the reddit thread about it

http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1v9ev7/an_official_statement_from_chinese_officials/

Bottom line, I think a lot of people are waiting with a lot of anticipation for what China is going to do next, hence the lack of major movement recently. Any news that comes out is analyzed a million times for any hint of what direction the market will go, and this little blurb from a relative nobody isn't telling us anything. 

Thank you for this, it is great insight into a confusing situation.