What could explain this huge, increasing, spread between Bitfinex and other popular exchanges?



This looks like a fantastic arbitrage opportunity, so why no one is taking advantage of it? 

Maybe "financial crisis" is a strong term, but all indicators are pointing towards at least some sort of recession...

It would be a first time for the cryptocurrency market so I'm wondering what things will we see; maybe some resemblance to the bond market? I seriously have no idea.

The chart of the week

I have avoided Ethereum like the plage since day one mostly because of technological reasons, and when the DAO fiasco happened I felt like I proved my bias against it. Having said that, from a market perspective I have to admit that Ethereum had an amazing performance during the last four months, and it's doing remarkably well during this bloody January.

Right now Bitcoin have a market cap of $172B, and for Ethereum it's $110B. If this trend continues we may get overpassed this quarter, and since it seems like no new money is coming to the crypto market in general I wonder if people are, for whatever reason, swapping Bitcoin for Ethereum.

Are bad programmed smart contracts running over an insecure platform that hot for this market?

[brutal ride]

Hey y'all my dear bears! Bear season is coming soon and it looks like this time we will have some brutal ride!

Alpha leader: Proudhon (as always)
Invited: all the ol' permabears of course, tempbears, and why not, weak-hands too! 
Not invited: the obviously delusional rest...

So, lets predict when will Bitcoin crash into the tripledigits. I think that after the upcoming flash crash and some short bulltrap, we will see an extreme fall probably in mid to late January, what do you think?

[COMBINED]

Can we please speculate how the hell is Bitfinex trading billions every day when they can't even operate with US banks?

Today for instance they traded more crypto than GDAX, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Gemini, Poloniex and Kraken COMBINED! ($120 million more to be exact )



Since Bitfinex' parent company (iFinex) also owns Tether, and since they will probably never get audited by a Big Four, I just can wonder what the fuck is going on here...

[Thanks]

Do you think we could see sub $1k prices at some point next year? I mean, is that even a possibility?

Thanks

[$4653]

Today I had one of those very realistic dreams: for some reason I can't remember there was a new rally, and the price went to $4653 in a rally short period of time, and I was really sad because I didn't own any btc.

I have a feeling, but I can't buy Bitcoins right now, so do me a favor a do not start a new rally until next month ok? thx

[lot]

Mt.Gox claims that someone gained illegal access to their systems and stole 850,000btc. They filed for bankruptcy protection.
Three weeks ago Mt.Gox closed their withdrawals and reported that someone was using transaction malleability to steal their bitcoins. A couple of days before the public statement we had a new peak on days destroyed:



If, and only if, what Mt.Gox is claiming is true and those bitcoins were stolen three weeks ago, then we can assume that right now there is a single entity (could be one single person or a group) owning ~7% of all the btcs mined until now, and since many old wallets are lost forever this percentage could be much significant in relation to the current market cap. Which means that there is a new single entity with a lot of power over Bitcoin's economy.
Please check out the depth chart of the biggest exchanges to understand how bad is the current situation: if this entity drop all those coins in the open market the price would go close to 0, literally. And even when an event like that could last maybe just a couple of hours, I believe that most people would lose all their confidence and Bitcoin could die as a currency. Actually, the 850k could be divided in 3 parts and just use the first part to send the price to single digits, and keep the rest to make everyone scare. You could even write and sign some message to terrorize the community. I know that all this was already discussed, but now the thing is real...


Is there anything we can do? iff Mt.Gox still have their private keys then yes: Bitcoin is a consensus network and we can fork the blockchain whenever is necessary. We need Bitcoin to be useful as a currency, and sometimes we will need to take extreme measures. Specifically, what we can do is pay miners to double-spend the illegitimate transaction and recreate the last ~3000 blocks. There may be people affected by doing this (ie people who received coins from the thief), but if the amount is not something huge then Mt.Gox should be able to pay for their loses.

The only thing we need is consensus, we must analyze what is worse: a fork or a shady entity owning too many bitcoins.


tl;dr: to fork or not to fork, that is the question

So MagicalTux and his lawyer confirmed that some cracker gained illegal access to their systems and stole 850k coins, don't ask me how that is possible...

Since many old bitcoins are most probably unspendable, what real percentage of bitcoin's market cap is now owned by a shady cracker? I would say something between 10% and 20%, which means that now one person with no moral values could destroy the economy at any moment.

I'm really worried. I saw a lot of bad things over the last 4 years but nothing like this.

Bitcoin as a technology is still amazing, but the economical impact of one bad guy owning a loooot of coins is pretty scary  

• The first drop was almost at midnight (UTC time)
• The official statement was published at 16:19 (Moscow time, which is just +04 UTC)

This is almost 12 hours before the public announcement.



Coincidence? I DON'T THINK SO!

[WARNING]

WARNING

We are about to start a really bearish week! There are bad news from everywhere: USA (BitInstant CEO/Bitcoin Foundation VC arrested), Russia (Bitcoin could turn illegal), China (January 31st).

I'm not telling you to sell... but maybe you should if you care about short-term.


God help us.

How do bitcoin processors process their bitcoins?
Do they just go to various exchanges and drop their bitcoins or what?

I was thinking, would it be possible for them to sell some kind of financial instrument that let people buy their bitcoins at some price lower than the current/last price before they actually have those bitcoins? I mean something like a bitcoin "bond"..

It could work like this: the processor expects to reach some specific amount in the next x time period, they checkout the order book in some exchange and they know that if they sell those bitcoins they would obtain (obviously) an amount much lower than the "last price", so instead of market-selling, they create a public offer for bonds so people could buy Bitcoins at some price lower than the current market price (or best ask) of some specific exchange BUT higher than the price they would obtain if they market sell.

Seems it could result in a win/win situation since people how buy those instruments are going to get a better price for the bitcoins, and the processor would obtain more fiat, AND also the market would be more stable

But I really don't know much about economics, so please tell me what do you think.

cheers

Since April's crash MtGox is looping big sells orders, preventing any possible flash crash.

I believe if you're being bull this feature leaves you calm since it's kind of a life-jacket for panic sells... but anyways I would like to know your opinion, I don't really care about your position or how fair is this.

And of course, some people can analyze this behavior to predict short-term market bounces on MtGox making things more interesting

[can not and should not be used as currency in circulation in the market]

Simple question, I want to know if this translation from Google is right:

"Notice" clearly the nature of Bitcoin, think Bitcoin is not issued by the monetary authorities, does not have, such as legal tender currency of the mandatory attributes, not the true meaning of money. From the nature point of view, Bitcoin is a specific virtual goods, does not have legal status and monetary equivalent, can not and should not be used as currency in circulation in the market. However, Bitcoin transaction as a commodity trading behavior on the Internet, ordinary people have the freedom to participate at your own risk premise.

Original text:

《通知》明确了比特币的性质，认为比特币不是由货币当局发行，不具有法偿性与强制性等货币属性，并不是真正意义的货币。从性质上看，比特币是一种特定的虚拟商品，不具有与货币等同的法律地位，不能且不应作为货币在市场上流通使用。但是，比特币交易作为一种互联网上的商品买卖行为，普通民众在自担风险的前提下拥有参与的自由。

This statement was issued by: PBC (People's Bank of China), MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), CBRC (China Banking Regulatory Commission), CSRC (China Securities Regulatory Commission), and CIRC (China Insurance Regulatory Commission).

Source: http://www.pbc.gov.cn/publish/goutongjiaoliu/524/2013/20131205153156832222251/20131205153156832222251_.html


Please note that I'm not asking if Bitcoin was "banned" in China since it clearly says that ordinary people can trade it as a "commodity", I want to know if the automatic translation from Google is correct and that Bitcoin can't be used as a currency anymore.

Looking for someone interested on this pieces:



More here: http://imgur.com/a/T5Ej5

please respond by pm.


Thanks!

Wow! just wow, what the fuck is going on here? how is this possible?? yesterday I expected a a rebound to 650, max 700, but not to this: we are still going up  
At this point I'm thinking if it would be possible to keep going up until 1000 and stay there, seems ridiculous since never happened before in Bitcoin... does anyone knows about an extreme fast peak that never went down?  

Even the log graph shows we are above the expected price for this period, but what happen if the market is accelerating exponentially? are we going to keep growing from this point?



I can't understand this anymore, it doesn't seems real, why now? the only thing I can do with my btcs now is paying for delivery service, some web services, and buying some giftcards... but well, now it seems obvious that is not about what you can do with btcs but that "everybody knows" that bitcoin is going to keep growing til at least 100.000!
And now I can only think that maybe China is going to adopt Bitcoin for real, letting millionaires all around the world inject money to their banks without asking shit, a la Switzerland!

should I turn bull again? are we in a real new paradigm?

I didn't have the opportunity to watch this second hearing yet, but I would like to know your opinion.

Yesterday the results of the poll were:

Positive    - 38 (92.7%)
Neutral    - 2 (4.9%)
Negative    - 1 (2.4%)
Irrelevant (aka same old^2)    - 0 (0%)

Today is the 2nd of the hearings, at 3:30 EST. You may watch it in C-SPAN3:
http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN3/

First panel:

• Jennifer Shasky Calvery (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
• David Cotney (Commissioner of Banks, Massachusetts Division of Banks)

Second panel:

• Anthony Gallippi (Co-founder and CEO BitPay, Incorporated)
• Mercedes Kelley Tunstall (Partner and Practice Leader, Privacy and Data Security Group, Ballard Spahr LLP)
• Sarah Jane Hughes (University Scholar and Fellow in Commercial Law, Maurer School of Law, University of Indiana)
• Paul Smocer (BITS President, Financial Services Roundtable)

http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_id=955322cc-d648-4a00-a41f-c23be8ff4cad

feelings?

I read many different points of view about the hearing: some people thinks that the US Senate is giving green light, some others are not happy because of regulations.

What is your opinion?

http://c-spanvideo.org/program/DigitalCu

Let's stay together my fellow bears, not even the most irrational bull still believes in this madness:



Yesterday (Sunday) the price in China went from 3000 to 4000 in 12hs, today we almost reached 5000.
And MtGox and Bitstamp are blindly following BTCChina.

The current situation is ridiculous and everybody here knows it...
Can anyone mention just ONE good reason to explain this price? well, no, because there is no reason for this delusional rally. Actually the only reason for this rally is the rally itself: people are buying only and only because they see other people buying and the price is going up like crazy!

So what happened over the last month in Bitcoin:

• Jiasule, a Baidu division, started accepting bitcoins
• Silkroad seized
• "First" Bitcoin ATM
• Bitmit (the only eBay-like website for btcs) went bankrupt

The Baidu thing is just hilarious, and the story about those news bitcoins ATM in Canada is almost irrelevant since BitInstant is still (and forever?) down.

But now we have the US Senate hearing, is this going to change anything? I don't think so, but let's see...