People wanting the price to go down so they can buy "cheap coins" are not looking at it correctly. It's all a very relative thing.

$50 coins are exceptionally profitable under the condition wherein the price rebounds, but so are $200 coins if the price skyrockets.

However, $50 coins may bankrupt you if the market never recovers.

In my opinion, until there's another large event that brings a ton of new blood into BTC, we're going to see long-term sub-100. No volume is simply not a bullish market, so if the price stays high amidst no volume it's always because of whales making large moves, but whales can't sustain a market by themselves in the long term.

Honestly, I'm just happy to see more than 100B an hour be traded for the first time in 3 days.

110 is the new 135.

Maybe it would be if the market had any volume, but since mid April/early May the market moves exclusively at the whims of traders who have 6 or 7 figures. There's little to no combined influence from a multitude of smaller players to offset the manipulation attempts of traders with huge amounts of fiat on the exchanges. People with a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of dollars can't move the market. Their combined activity can, but as individuals, they can't. So when volume is low and the price just sits there, whether a trade is profitable or not comes down to what move the whales make, because there's no market momentum because nobody wants to trade when the price is above 100 unless it's rippling from a large move. You can't tell what move one or two people with that much manipulative ability are going to make via TA.

The run we just went through to 135 after the 60-166-79 correction, once it rallied above 105ish, only happened because one or a few people would show up in the early morning or the middle of the night and shove the market up with a 5,000BTC buy, let the market settle, and then do it again the next day or the day after that. The moves raised the price because speculators decided to take a shot on riding the train, that kind of a move doesn't incite a panic sell, and the other whales won't dump against you because it's more profitable to wait for the combined momentum of smaller players who are buying to fizzle out before dumping. It is pretty much exactly what has been happening since the dumps below 120 last week as well.

The market doesn't have confidence in the price above $100, period. The only reason it's been floating here since the post-166 correction is because the market is entirely speculation and bots. Bots give the illusion that trades are happening and the market is moving upward and a whale comes behind that illusion (probably because it's his bot) and plays against it. Low volume is very dangerous.

If people thought the price was profitable we'd see the kind of volume you see between 80-90-100. People are only buying right now because they're short term speculating, exchanging B for fiat for their business, or buying and holding and not giving a fuck about what happens on smaller time frames. The price isn't dropping because a few people with 20 or 200B simply can't affect market depth.

And even when they all sell at once and do affect market depth, you still get phenomena like the other day when someone showed up and bought 15kB from 101 to 111.

Under this kind of circumstance a hard, downward, long term correction is inevitable and it's only a question of how to make money in the interim.

Manipulation like this is actually very damaging to the market because when the correction does come and it makes the news, it makes a lot of the potential newcomers to Bitcoin feel the whole system is a fraudulent scam. You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

Either that 105 wall will fall today and we'll see ~97 be touched or 105 will be touched/rebounded off of as it bounces between 106 and 111 until the bid momentum vanishes by Sunday/Monday and someone dumps 25k BTC again.

This current bearish trend isn't going to stop until the price falls to the point that the market regains its previously reasonable trading volume. Most of May was characterized by no-volume "stability", with the price only floating 110+ because of systematic large buys by major players coupled with bot action producing an illusion of trading volume during periods of no-volume. The roll to 135 was nothing like the roll from 110-165 in post-crash April, where volume was high, there was constant trading, and Gox still had a deep verification queue with millions in fiat being wired while almost nothing got withdrawn.

This fall will have a lot of bull traps with people feeling that lower lows are cheap coins.

BTC was absolutely not post-bubble "stable" 110+ amidst no trading volume after trading for the rest of its existence sub $50. It's just currently an incredibly manipulated market where anyone with a few mega can have a huge short-term influence that produces illusions for smaller positions and makes money for their own.

I e-mailed 5+ times in the last two weeks including a PM to Friedcat but no response, so consider yourselves lucky if you've only been waiting since 5/30.

If that wall goes down and someone dumps we may see 120 fall, especially if everyone buying at 129+ capitulates. All the depth on the bid side above the wall is pretty much insignificant bot spam.

Honestly I think if bots were gone in the long term we'd see the price totally collapse. There's no volume in the market, it just heads in whatever direction the nearest large buy/sell takes it while market maker bots give the impression that trades are happening. It's not exactly bullish. The only reason there aren't huge sells is because people are waiting for 135+ to dump everything they own while everyone who wants to buy is setting orders at 125 and below and waiting for a dump.

I miss the vibrance of the market in April/early May.

The aggrandizing of the US Government's "triumph over evil in defense of the people" in the Liberty Reserve business is about the same bullshit they pulled with poker on Black Friday. Of course, in fairness, Full Tilt thought it was amusing to spend out of the funds held in trust for the players, so they were evil, but that is mostly irrelevant because what they went after FTP for was circumventing UIGEA. The rest of it was just public relations icing.

Someone just bought the 400B "wall" at 130.

Exciting times.

Bot fight had us touch 130.00.

Buckle. Up.

It doesn't do much now, but you used to be able to route buy/sell orders to Gox on BFX. They removed Gox routes after the Dwolla seizure though, so it's just Bitstamp and BFX's internal book now. At least BFX is 0.1% rake and 0.25% on Bitstamp.

No, but you can discern a bit from the interest rates and sum available for loan. During the 110-115 stagnation there were tens of thousands of dollars in fiat sub 40%. Before Monday's dump the only decent interest rate was the variable interest rate (69%). You can also tell from how many people are trying to set limit orders for borrows.

Borrowing BTC to short has been really cheap in the last 3 weeks. At one point you could borrow like 400B for 2%.

The problem is there's not any real bullish momentum in the market. The market moves up when someone with 7 figures decides to push it up. It's not moving up as a real result of supply < demand. If you watch the order book for 10 minutes you'll see how much of the already stagnant volume is only coming from market maker bots. The price wouldn't even be above 120 right now if it weren't for the aforementioned phenomena.

However, the price isn't going to go down until the same small pool of players with deep pockets decide to dump.

But it's been this way almost all month, so what can you do.

I really like this pool after switching to it. Do you have any plans to set up 2FA for withdraws?

Finland/Canada et al. are very small players compared to the US Government in regard to what kind of black swan event you'll see during an assault. If Finland or Canada assaults BTC maybe you'll see someone sell 10k coins and it will blow over like Dwolla. If the US Government does, we'll see sub 50 in the long term.

Also, they say they're fine with it today. When it's a considerably more obvious threat to the position of lobbyists, expect the position to do a total 180.

Thinking that the Government is okay with Bitcoin is not very wise. The only reason that Bitcoin is a high risk investment, in my opinion, is the huge risk of getting black swaned by authorities at one point or another. As Bitcoin grows more and more popular it will attract more and more attention from lobbyists. Lobbyists pay politicians in exchange for laws in favour of their position being passed.

Dreams of $1,000/BTC coming to fruition are totally in vain if Bitcoin can't establish itself in the cultural mainstream. Those who control society will simply suffocate the exchange of fiat for BTC if that condition can't be met, and Bitcoin will never, ever become a standalone currency without going through a period wherein its value is established in relation to fiat for the simple reason that you can't live on BTC itself right now or any point in the short/medium future.

US Government making a move on Bitcoin is inevitable. The telegraphing thereof has already begun. Bitcoin has to survive the tribulation if it wants global adoption. If it doesn't survive, it'll fall into obscurity or be marginalized.

I sent like 4 e-mails to address in the OP over the last 10 days and haven't received a reply. Pretty lame.