that's not how market psychology works. you're being far too rational. irrational despair and exuberance dominate markets, and emotions dominate traders.

so here's what usually happens: those people who bought at $15k? they think rationally like you for quite some time. but the price drops and drops and eventually, they start to wonder if the price will ever recover. then the crash accelerates. panic ensues. these once rational hodlers who were so strong at $8000 are suddenly so much weaker at $5000 and below.

these are the bulls that sell the bottom on high volume in bitcoin's classic v-bottoms. then they provide lots of buying power on the way up when they want to recover their coins. you should only devote yourself to hodling if you can actually keep your cool during crashes and avoid selling into bottoms.

a bull trap topping out at $11.5k would make for a triple top, visible on the weekly chart. not particularly reminiscent of 2014 but more importantly, just not a formation i've ever really seen in the charts. could you find an example? if we get to the $11.5k area, i expect a pullback and breakout.


aside from the triple top, it would look kind of similar because you're forecasting a move that mimics 2014 and hasn't happened yet. but right now, put the weekly charts side by side. they don't look similar at all. it's hard to see one fractal do a 78.6% retrace and another do a 38.2% retrace and call them similar.

if that's supposed to match 2014, what fractal are you looking at specifically? i assume not the $380-->$995 bounce or the $340-->$680 bounce? both would get us further than $11k.

in terms of both time and price, i still don't see any of the parallels to 2014 that other people are talking about.

yeah, i get that, which is why i bring up capitulation. gotta shake them trees, and create some bottom selling. that creates fuel for future rallies. i'm just disappointed to see no big volume coming in to indicate that kind of despair and mass selling. no such luck.

who knows, though. maybe this is a low-volume retest of the lows.


yeah i originally thought this could resemble that fractal. and it still can, as long as we don't go below $6000. if we start pushing below there, there was so much volume on that feb 5 candle that we'll probably go significantly lower. and it'll look like 2011.

i was wondering the same. but i doubt we'll see freezes/seizures for noncompliance like when the US government shuts down exchanges. i've never heard of european regulators having any real authority.

in theory, they could target bank accounts held by non-compliant exchanges in most of europe, but that probably won't have much effect on the china/hong kong exchanges or bitmex. and bitfinex seems pretty good at avoiding bank seizures. they could just affirmatively ask customers if they reside under european authority and lower leverage too. they only do 3.3x leverage anyway.

i didn't say it feels like 2014. i said it's more bearish. and yes, i was around back then. after the initial crash, we made a 78.6% retrace. this time? we barely got past 38.2% and now we're approaching $6000 again.

i'm just taken aback by the sentiment and the perpetual lack of bounce. the market has flushed out 50% of longs, while shorts are again nearing all-time highs. yet still we bleed. not impressed by the volume on this dump either. no capitulation here....

unfortunately, given the weakness of every bounce since the december top, the chart is significantly more bearish than 2014. it's really starting to look like a non-stop massacre just like 2011. i wasn't around at that time, so i can't comment on what sentiment was like. but it seems like the closest parallel we have right now.

whatever happens, a 95% decline isn't the end of the world. but it would be painful. this board would probably be a ghost town.

wow, i had prepared for some bear power, but this was unexpected. okcoin quarterly futures just dropped to $4755! that's 31% lower than all the spot exchanges (even more at the extremes)....wtf happened?

i can't tell if a huge contract holder getting liquidated caused a cascade, or if something went very wrong with their order matching system. either way, the okex chart is completely rekt. what a shitty day....

thanks. it makes more sense in this context. sounds like a tough road ahead for the OP....


it often takes a hard lesson for that to sink in. for years, i knew the risk existed but valued the ability to quickly hedge (and also often preferred holding USD a few years back). i lost a big chunk of my holdings in 2016 to the bitfinex "hack" and didn't take the risk seriously until then.

it's hard to say how things will pan out. the post-2013 action provides some guidance, but it should be stressed that charts never play out the same way twice. history rhymes (doesn't repeat), but it's also a really small data set we have. so we shouldn't be biased too much based on the previous bubbles.

but, i think it's still possible this correction will look more like summer 2013 than 2014. we really won't know until there is a confirmed lower high on the long term charts, which will confirm the long term downtrend.

might be too short if we are experiencing a correction to the raging bull market of the last 2-3 years. i wouldn't be surprised if the market corrects for a year or two.


by previous bottom, what do you mean here? like the august 2015 bottom before this bull market? i don't want to wait until we're in the $100s to decide that we're in a bear market.

or do you mean the last major bottom on the long term (weekly or higher) charts? that was ~ $5400.

i didn't realize that bitfinex had taken bullshit KYC to bitstamp's level. source of funds? bitch, please! it would be one thing if they locked your account because of a law enforcement inquiry. since your inability to log in triggered this, it looks more like they are just making it unreasonably difficult to recover your funds.


either there is some miscommunication, or i am missing something.

why are they treating this as a compromised account? you're not saying your account was hacked (and funds stolen), so why are they asserting that and requiring a police report?

you are twisting everything out of context. it is the US government that ran off with payza customers' money:


even if they are solvent after the seizures, their relationship with synapse financial is obviously terminated. the US government will continue to seize bank accounts associated with them. how do you expect them to repay US customers?

this is exactly what happened to btc-e. why do you believe everything the DOJ says is true? why do you assume guilt before anything is proven? and why would you think the charges are worth facing in court? you cannot beat an adversary like the DOJ in court; it just means willingly walking into federal prison, no matter the truth.


how does that make them scammers? it just means they knew they were in regulatory crosshairs and were at risk of frozen funds or domain.


i think he's just making a point. because you're the one making assumptions about payza...

wow, what an erection on the BTC chart! was that little plunge below $8000 just a total bear trap?! awesome to see that price has already shot up past the last bounce area, so there's probably a lot of bottom shorters to squeeze.

it's a beautiful sight to behold after all the blood this weekend:

nobody's telling you to use payza or btc-e. i bring up btc-e because they were a trustworthy, reliable service for many years. they had many legitimate traders, including myself. just because the US government does something doesn't make the law moral or precise. and the US government also engages in a lot of morally heinous shit.

i say let them show their case in court before passing these judgments. not that it matters morally. unlicensed MSB and money laundering charges are standard in the financial and crypto worlds. you have any idea how many crypto exchanges are unlicensed MSBs? i just don't understand the surprise or moral disgust here.


isn't that contradicting what you said above? where is the evidence that payza engaged in anything but money transmission, or knew that funds were tied to child pornography?


how so?

anyway, much of the global financial system involves endless layers of money laundering. the US picks and chooses who it comes after.

seriously, guys? four years later, we have the benefit of hindsight. this little detail is all you need to know the post was bullshit:


does ASICminer even exist anymore? i remember a few years ago trading AM shares was all the rage. i guess this guy didn't predict the demise of ASICminer and the rise of bitmain.

pretty good story though. 9/10. would read again.

if we're being fair, "taking on [money transmission] customers trafficking in child pornography" is not the same is engaging in violence against children. or knowingly processing the illicit proceeds.

where is that sourced from? how do we know that they knowingly entered into partnerships with child pornography rings or knowingly transmitted the proceeds of such?

how do we know---as i assume the case was with BTC-E---that this was not a case of inadequate diligence, or lack of care? running the business with a blind eye to any underlying activities, because it was profitable? that may not be honorable to everyone, but it's not what you're suggesting.


give it time. look at BTC-E.


honestly, i think it's a lot more complicated due to geopolitics. if all governments would simply agree to ban cryptocurrencies, i believe they surely would. but unanimous agreement among geopolitical powers is a very rare thing. if one power bans it while another accumulates reserves, that can put the former at great disadvantage. major governments know this.

can we try to keep this in perspective?

payza and the co-defendants face 3 charges: 1. conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, 2. conspiracy to launder money, and 3. operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in the District of Columbia.

remember, these are the exact same charges the feds indicted BTC-E for. HSBC bank was found doing the same thing---i was their customer for years too. do you see any charges for child pornography, child abuse, etc? i don't either. this looks like a typical smearing of unlicensed MSBs outside of the legacy banking sector. any remote connection to darknet market activity can garner these sorts of allegations.

inadequate diligence and operating sans license doesn't equate to "knowingly transmitting funds that were derived from illegal activity" including child pornography. the burden is on the government to prove the case.

that's sort of the point. your 2-factor is supposed to be "something you have" in addition to "something you know" (the password). if your 2FA token was recoverable via your google account, a hacker could compromise your google account to override your 2FA protection. this is similar to the porting attack with SMS 2-factor authentication.


good advice. i always have my tokens backed up on two devices, with a copy written down in a safe place.

i see where he's coming from. a lot of security researchers are turned off by BTC's utter lack of privacy. i'd like to think that we can expand on BTC's easily verifiable proof-of-work to include better privacy features.


fair enough. how about someone like matthew green (zcash)?


is that what they've done with monero, though? i suppose it's true that legit exchanges are too scared to touch it. it seems like the only fiat exchange (that you can actually deposit/withdraw fiat from---removing bitfinex) that offers XMR markets is kraken. i guess there's bithumb, but not sure i'd call them legit.


what's stopping tumblebit development? i was under the impression that it didn't require any major consensus change.