This is for crazyivan and everyone else who is perplexed at wtf is going on with the markets???. Maybe my view of things resonates with some of you.

This is how I view the markets:
It is incorrect to say that price follows news. I think it is more correct to actually say news follow price but that is also not the entire truth. Price has a tendency to actually "unlock" news. Good times (price trending up) produce good news, bad news get ignored. Bad times (price trending down) produce bad news, good news get ignored, shrugged off.

The market can be viewed as waves in an ocean. Not that market price action is like water but more like water is a good medium that visually shows the movement of energy as it passes through it. For example in this simple animation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yPTa8qi5X8
The water does not really move, it is just energy that passes through it because if water moved it would carry the red ball with it. You can make that experiment yourself in the sea or ocean.

So price movements show a wave-like pattern to it. Look at any price chart, at any time frame. This means that as with water it is energy passing through that creates the waves not actual physical water moving (water movement in oceans is brought about by currents but leave that aside for now). The driving force of markets is human passion, it is the energy of human emotion and the ups and downs that come with it. The market is made up of 1000s of individuals who compose this super average being (or "Mr.Market" - B.Graham). The price chart is the emotional state of this creature in time. Every market has its own collective characteristics that make up this "being" - this gets influenced by the personalities of people who actively trade in that market. The gold market has a distinct "being" or characteristic, the oli market has one, the apple stock has one etc.

So since I simplified the market down to a single human (being) level, I can now try to draw parallels from my own life to spot patterns to understand this creature better. Know thyself and you will start to understand markets.

As a human I find that when I have negative periods in my life (and these do come in cycles) there is not that much that I can really do to "get better". Often the best things is to just ride it out. The strong tendency in those periods is to view the world in negative colours. Much easier to see bad things than good. So good things happening to me might only have a diminished impact on my mood. On the other hand, when I am happy, ectatic, I see only positive things. Even small good things might get me excited. Also I might even start to view bad things happening to me as not really that important, I shrug it off.

Both, the negative mind and the positive mind have the ignorance of not seeing the other side of the coin. This is also why the "balanced" mindset is the most profitable one for the trader since from a balanced (emotionally) point of view all the positive and negative aspects can be grasped and evaluated more truly.

To analyse the current situation in the cryptomarket:
There is currently a big Bitcoin wave. The capital in the crypto space is very limited, not enough to go around. When Bitcoin starts to rise it will suck up a lot of capital, since altcoin space is a very easy place to get it from. Bitcoin is ruthless in that matter. This makes altcoins shit the bed.
BUT this will also change. Soon Bitcoin will breath out that capital again and that will have a good chance to ignite a nice altcoin bubble rally. When that will be? I do not know. If I had to guess it will depend on whether bitcoin breaks the ~$775-780 area or not. What I do know is that right now there is a huge sale of altcoins going on that will probably produce nice profits sooner than later.

Good news should attract tons of new users and holders. How come it does not? This is one strange coin, everything which works in other markets, here means nothing.

I always said it...Poloniex is as crooked as it comes!

Where's Grossbit and his minions?

LOL Zclassic hits after only 1 day ZCASH Volume....

I think the Future will really be Zclassic...

http://coinjournal.net/blockchain-startup-receives-grant-gates-foundation-medical-records-project/

And it is.... Factom... 

Great post. Couldnt agree with all you wrote more.

You are talking about a different effect here.  The "naked shorts" imply a confusion between "paper gold" and genuine gold.  In fact, paper gold is like good ol' fractional banking.  As long as there is a "parity" between an once of paper gold, and of genuine gold, it seems as if this naked shorting is creating gold out of nothing and is causing inflation.  However, this is actually only inflation for paper gold.  When there's a lot of naked shorted gold (paper gold), it is the opportunity to acquire cheap physical gold, because when the bubble bursts, or when it deflates, the whole market cap of paper gold will go to physical gold.  
But this is not the action of the FED.  The action of the FED is to buy gold when it is expensive, and to sell gold when it is cheap.  That sounds like a crazy doctrine, because normally you lose when buying high, and selling low.  But if you can print money at will, that is no problem.  What happens when doing so, is that the FED increases the volatility of gold, and "stabilises" the paper dollar.  In doing so, it pumps effectively the held value in gold into the dollar.  When gold is expensive, its policy makes it even more expensive, meaning that people have to spend a lot of value on the little bit of gold they can acquire.  Later, when the gold price diminishes, the FED throws even more gold on the market, making the gold that people held, less worth, so that they can obtain much less value against it.
For any other agent, this would be a terribly lossy and expensive thing to do, but as the FED can print the money it likes (and is "backed" by the very stuff it is buying), it doesn't cost the FED ziltch doing so.

In fact, the naked shorting of gold counteracts the FED's manipulation.  I'm pretty sure they don't like it.

There's nothing that can stop the FED from doing exactly the same with bitcoin: buying it against printed dollars when it is high and selling it (absorbing dollars) when it is low, increasing its volatility.


Suppose the FED is willing to print $50 billion dollar to "own" bitcoin, what would be the problem ?  It could print 50 billion, buy up all bitcoin, which is then "backing" the printing of those $50 billion.  When the FED has bought 4/5 of all bitcoin, and people have been spending fortunes on the 1/5 that's left, the FED sells its stash of bitcoin all at once, crashing the price.  
All the value that people had been spending on acquiring that 1/5 of bitcoin is now gone (into dollars printed by the FED).

And the cycle can start over.

Value is pumped out of people wanting to store it in bitcoin.  Like value is pumped out of people wanting to store it in gold.

I rearranged your post a little to analyze it. Can you clarify your argument as to why NEM isn't as secure as BTC and which alts you consider superior to BTC?

NEM process seems to be much simpler, but I have a question:
the integrity of the fingerprint is proportional to the blockchain security, I mean, are NEM and Bitcoin blockchain security comparable against attacks?

There is still none, is there any coin you can use to buy drugs or guns yet?. Most  of these project have not really differentiated themselves from Bitcoin but rather a speculative tools relying majorly on the success and glory of Bitcoin

You need to trademark that. Another few days and some decent opportunities will be around methinks.
Stocks have been slaughtered, only pulled a little bit out in the lead up, ahh cautiousness my old friend. Didn't actually expect it could happen.

And Crazy, FCT still higher than last week. Not everyone measures in btc. Buy my dinner with dollars personally.

So I just sent some Factoids to a wallet and the transaction completely disappeared. This is my Txid: bc803a5d597ee76526d1acae8fbd4fb5320c6ec4db1ca9d73141bdcd9e5aee57

Not sure how this happened.. I can't find the transaction on the Factom Explorer either. 

Makes zero sense?  Any thoughts on the dump?

About 30k new entries per day. It s slowly speeding up but I agree, these price manipulators distort the price big time. I also feel like selling my stash. Factom has started delivering but somehow I feel marketing part is again not at the level where it should be. NOWHERE I was able to find any news about this important test phase besides on this forum or reddit. Getting really tired of this shit.