Plain text passwords?  Words escape me how incompetent someone could be to even think of allowing that.  It's an unforgivable error.

I'm very amused, as many people still consider bitcoin to be a natural market that follows analysis of fancy graphs.  Today's action highlights that bitcoin is a plaything for people with a lot of money to burn.  It's a toy like Newton's Balls on an executive desk to keep him amused between board meetings.  The amount of speculative money in the market surely dwarfs any real commerce taking place.

LOL.  Massive amount of bids at $5.20, and asks at $5.21.  Hilarious.  Someone is putting on a great show.

Sounds like a fantastic time to make some money.  Scare people with 'wall', buy up bitcoins, remove asks, watch confidence go up and sell.  It's beautiful to watch.  The question is, when will the market stop playing this little game and burn the speculator(s) responsible...

By many accounts she loved to partake in certain illegal substances.  Maybe she took a walk on the Silk Road once too often.

Playing with Bitconica atm.  Someone dumped the price so I bought some longs.  Price back up to $5.67.  Profit.  Nice.

Is someone deliberately screwing around with the bitcoin price?  Can't think of any other reason to dump the price to $5.30 in an instant and see it quickly build back up again.

Indeed.  I often see a star next to the buy and sell prices. Sometimes only on the buy price.  Yet, none of this seems to have an affect on bitcoin's price.  It's not moving at the moment, and hasn't done so for the last 24 hours.  Bitcoinica only seems to have a large impact on bitcoin when people are forced to liquidate.  Then the fun starts.  Otherwise it's a non issue.

It's quite common to see goal orientated analysis on the Bitcoin forum.  It goes something like this: "Bitcoin is going up, so what reasons can I find for it doing so?" and "Bitcoin didn't go up as it should have, what reasons can I find for it not behaving the way I expected?"

Bitcoinica is the latest in a long string of entities blamed with either failing to pump the price up, or clamping the rise.  Bitcoinica has replaced 'the manipulator'.  On the up side, The Good Wife failed to produce thousands of eager new bitcoin customers right after they saw the show (despite claims by many this would happen).

That's true for some places (particularly the USA), but tax returns arrive at all times of the year depending on where a person lives.  I got mine in October.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year

The sudden surge to $6.20 helped me trade out of some losing positions for a mild profit.  I quite liked this morning's sudden buying binge.

The one thing we do know about bitcoin is that it's impossible to predict (without insider knowledge) when a huge dump or price rise is coming.  People like to claim they knew, after the fact.

The key word here is "all".  It only takes one person to change their strategy and act counter to everyone else for the whole 'fake' bid wall to unravel.  If a trader finds a way to make money because everyone else is colluding to do something else, they will.

Sound advice.  If we all didn't sell the price would only go up.

 

The block reward was 50 btc when we hit $32 in June, and it was 50 when we touched $2 in December.  The block reward has no impact on the price.  It may however have an impact on miner profitability.

Don't worry, the $5 wall is made of solid gold.  It'll hold.

 

When do we see mass selling of long positions on bitcoinica?  I don't think its happened yet.

BOOM!  9k of bitcoins sold and away we go.  Bye wall.

Nom nom nom.  Bricks being eaten away on the wall.

The 'walls' have never failed, and never will.  Traders see a massive torrent of trades heading towards their 'wall' and momentum shifting towards the negative and just leave all their bids in place.  Have faith in the 'walls'!

    

It's happening.  I can feel it coming.

Let's hope it happens soon.  The less leveraged gamblers in the system, the better.

No, but the problem can be framed in another way.


There is a limit to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand': if everyone uses bitcoin to maximise their own profit while screwing everyone else over as hard as they can, eventually the players may tire of the game.  In some games the only way to win is not to play the game.  Human nature is pretty stubborn and downright stupid however, as evidenced by packed casinos around the world.  Maybe the players will never tire of the game.

Wild swings in price may result in many players losing the game, with a few large winners.  The large winners need more players in the game otherwise they'll be left with interesting electronic tokens that few want to buy.

If good comes automatically from players maximising their own profit, then I don't see what all the fuss is about with CFDs, Goldman Sachs, flash crashes and holding stocks for seconds before selling them.  Good does come automatically, naturally.


That's assuming the large players are losing the game, not the small players.


Bitcoin is just as useful as a means of transaction at $0.10 as it is at $10.  The problem is many people are not using it as a means of transaction: they're using it as a speculative vehicle for extracting profit.  New players need to enter the game or old losing players need to stump up more cash or the game ends.  Recent price activity is testing the conviction of the true believers.