I think Chinese events are more significant than just 'news' - they imply half of Bitcoin's trading power suddenly moving in and out, panicking and thinking that now they have to stop trading bitcoin, or now they can trade bitcoin again - there is a lot of raw force behind it.

Do you want to know why we bounced at $340 on Apr 13, why we bounced at $420 on May 5, and thus why this 'trendline' has held thus far? Both bounce events occured immediately when either China or the Chinese exchanges released some counter-FUD article leading us to believe some major change had occured in China and everything was going to be ok there.

Well it never actually happened,  and when we were up at $660, a new PR came out from the central bankers of a plan they had just developed to efficiently identify and track the accounts being used and to shut them down, and prevent new ones.

OK let me rephrase this:  The largest populated country in the world with 20% of the entire world's population, the largest financial shadow currency trading enterprise in the world where wealthy investors swap trillions of dollars to gamble on a regular basis, and half of the world's bitcoin exchanges being potentially taken out of the game completely by their government is much more important than 0.22% of bitcoins being sold at an auction. I tire of people constantly dismissing China as 'FUD' without comprehending the full extent of what it actually is, and it is NOT over until the exchanges are actually closed.

I'm guessing enough of it is real to be significant - perhaps 20-50%. Even at just 20% it is still equal to the west, which makes it highly significant. Also, there are frequently several 500-1000BTC walls moving around the order book - those can't be faked, meaning that there are in fact players with millions of dollars (worth of btc or yuan) playing on these exchanges, which leads to belief in at least some legitimacy in the volume.

My point is that the Chinese probably have about 10x more influence over Bitcoin than this auction as they still trump the entire 'west' in volume on EACH of their exchanges.

looks like it was dumped at bid

I don't think this decrease has anything to do with the auction. I think it is actually about the Chinese news about a continued Chinese crackdown, which was released about the same time. This would account for the alt decrease as well.

uh, the wall is removed...

I think it's stupid to make an entire thread over a wall unless the wall is at least 5KBTC  like that 8K wall in February.

Also to increase the trading volume and collect more fees.

For the past 6 months we've been in a sideways/down trend yet the swaps on bitfinex just keep growing and growing. There are now 500% as many swaps loaned out as there were at the PEAK of the rally at $1200.  It's quite fishy actually. I wonder if bitfinex is operating as a fractional reserve now?

Luckily there is this 6K high pile of bids on huobi.

No, it's not. Bear traps are typically short lived events on high volume, not a slow, low volume, never before seen breaking of a trend where every major indicator reverses.

This is exactly what the bulls sounds like right now, still playing their music about how bitcoin will imminently hit $100,000 and we should all take out loans to buy it right now.

TA is extremely difficult at this moment the way trends are breaking and all kinds of indicators are conflicting. Investing in Bitcoin right now is basically an act of faith. "I believe that Bitcoin is the future of money and will eventually rise even if it's not rising right now". I'm finding myself looking to take a long term investment with money that I'm willing to lose and closing out the rest of my 'trading position'.

No. Loan demand is not bullish because in order to fill the loan, someone else has to front the USD, which means that those USD cannot be used to buy bitcoins. It all sums out to zero. The only thing that really causes growth is when new fiat is wired in, which actually increases the amount of USD which can be used to bid on Bitcoins at a given time. Actually I would prefer no loans were given out at all and that all USD were directly used to obtain real bitcoins. The margin state is actually more bearish than the non margin state. Here are some more reasons why:

1. The margin positions only exist on paper in the user's account. The only thing he can possibly do with his position is dump it to take the shiny green profit figure shown next it. The user cannot withdraw those bitcoins or participate in the bitcoin ecosystem.
2. The user is subject to an interest rate which means it is most likely intended only to do a short term trade, and if the trend is not rising fast enough to be worth interest rates then he will dump.
3. The above factors reveal the psychology of a margin user which is just to do short term trading, dump, and make profits rather than being a long term investor in Bitcoin.
4. The rising interest rates entice bitcoin holders to dump their bitcoins to obtain USD to fulfill the loan demand.
5. The margin user can be liquidated and forced to dump if the price drops too low.
6. If people with real USD decide to leave the exchange after the margin contract period is up, this will also force liquidate the margin users.

FYI actually the loans can also be used to buy Litecoin and Darkcoin (duh) but the points above are stronger / more relevant.

I am impressed with the last 2 hours. There is still some fighting chance left if there is a good recovery over the next 8 hours.

ACH, Email, and http are all going to become obsolete and replaced with something else. It seems most people now prefer to communicate with something besides email, such as social networking and apps. Businesses send you email messages which just tell you to 'check the message center in your account on our website' because email is too insecure to transmit the message itself.

My conclusion from my observation of the charts on the different exchanges is that we never in fact left the state where the Chinese are the market leaders. The Chinese are still our overlords, and they might lead us all the way back down as their government continues to crack down and shut down recharge codes, etc. Wall street will not be coming in to save us in July as I had hoped for because for some reason the regulations with Lawsky are being delayed and there has been no progress.