Been ages since i posted here. An unfortunate loss of my password coupled with emails not coming through telling me the new one whenever I tried to change it has kept me locked out for months. Anyway after a moment of inspiration I suddenly remembered my password so here I am.

Thought I might aswell share my latest speculation on bitcoin price. In summary after the latest fall in price it looks pretty clear that the trend is still down, chart below shows Bitstamp data in US$ with 1 day candles.



On my log chart below, this is all fitting the picture I've had for some time now of a sideways, or slightly downwards consolidation. I still think the path shown by my arrows is likely kind of action. I first placed on that chart back in September when the price first fell into that channel and so far they have fitted the picture pretty well.



My feeling is that price trend is destined to eventually reverse back to the long term bullish trend probably where the bottom trendline lies. There will be more bitcoin bubbles in good time.

edit: I don't really think bitcoin will crash below zero, but that doesn't mean it couldn't

[I think this would be a huge mistake and I’ll explain why.]

Research by the Department of Computer Science, Cornell University suggests bitcoin is vulnerable to selfish miners gaining more than their fair share of the spoils of mining.

Allegedly a selfish group will quickly become a majority as individual miners seek to join that cheating group to reap the higher rewards, like a snowball growing bigger as it rolls down the mountain. This group will then become the controllers of bitcoin and it will become effectively centralised and controlled by that group of miners rather than the decentralised currency we all value.

heres is a link to the research paper if you are interested, http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243v2.pdf

It is claimed by the same researchers that they can also implement a modification to bitcoins to help resolve the problem. I think this would be a huge mistake and I’ll explain why.

First such pools with greater than 25% share of mining already exist. http://blockchain.info/pools
Therefore if the patch was implemented now it would mean instead of anyone being able to cheat only those big pools could cheat.

The proposed patch takes that away freedom to choose to cheat replacing it with a crippled network in which small guys can’t cheat, but the big guys can. In other words it is the software patch that guarantees the snowball effect, not the strategy of selfish mining.

I'm hoping to stimulate some interesting debate here about the problem, and the proposed patch and hopefully spread awareness about the danger of the patch and why it would be suicide to implement it.

Thanks

--
full article on my blog http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/selfish-mining-possibilities-discovered/

[would be suicide.]

A new mining strategy has been discovered in which 'selfish' miners can benefit at the detriment of others.

Heres the research paper from the boffins at Cornell University
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243v2.pdf

 My opinion is that the proposed 'solution', a modification to the way bitcoin works, would be suicide.

I've written more on my blog here about why I think that but in short, they propose to make it so that only big mining pools can 'cheat' instead of everyone. No more level playing field for mining pools.

This gives incentive to everyone to join a big mining pool in order to reap the benefits of the selfish mining strategy. In other words the patch, far from helping things would almost guarantee centralised control to appear in short notice.

The alternative is that everyone can mine 'selfishly' if they choose to opening up interesting possibilities but hopefully allowing the network to remain decentralised.

Hoping to get some conversation on the topic here.

Thanks

http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/selfish-mining-possibilities-discovered/

Just read this link about coinfloor, a new london exchange allowing high frequency trading.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/london-bitcoin-exchange-opens-business-145000999.html

Wondered what people make of this? Could High Frequency Trading be a tool allowing big interests to push the price around or supress the price?

Note: All updates posted at the end of the thread.

In light of the Silk Road take down I've been thinking along the lines of a large new rising channel, pictured below. This is slightly less steep than the channel i've been following on my blog. The silk road dip has confirmed the bottom line of this new channel I'm watching.

The fact that Fed is now seizing and accumulating bitcoins is bullish development in my view.

Red line shows slope of resistance, I expect we'll meander sideways staying within the channel and under that resistance for a while. Might not get resolved until late November, then I expect we'll break up, staying within the channel.

Thought I'd share my latest thoughts on the long term channel with the speculation community.

Heres the long term channel I'm talking about, which is using all MtGox US$ data on a log scale



I'd say we are finding strong support at the top of that channel, will we stay above it?

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http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/long-term-channel/

I say Ripples will try and eat bitcoins liver but what do you think

Heres a chart from my blog



It will be interesting to see what happens when the price hits this line in the near future. Will we get a bounce up in price. I think there’s a decent chance that may happen and if it does the chart will start to look rather bullish again.

If you’ve been sitting out, maybe its soon time to get back into bitcoins?

This is the down trend we're in just now, looking for support at $100 give or take.



(chart taken from a bit earlier today, 1 month log chart)

Its looking more and more like we are back on the uptrend. Me thinks no crash, bull mode on.

World controller types who hold power by control of central banking and fiat money would almost certainly want bitcoin to decline or disappear entirely. What if someone, I don’t know, like George Soros, or perhaps someone acting on behalf of central banks, decided to pump up bitcoins deliberately by overbuying it, only to massively sell into the first opportune sign of weakness. It wouldn’t be that hard to do. They might be able to successfully paint a fake top into the market. Result, killed enthusiasm, and a promising bull run, nipped in the bud.

Could this be a fake top in bitcoins?

I very much doubt they can yet manipulate the bitcoin market with the same precision that they can do the gold and silver markets, because they don’t have futures contracts, ETFs and naked shorting to fine tune the downside. However  those world controllers still have manipulation of perception via the media, and limitless fiat. In a small market like bitcoin, you’d hardly need that much fiat to move it up like that. Easy in fact if one had the sort of funds of someone like George Sorros or someone acting on behalf of a central bank.

http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/fake-top/

Doesn't look quite so bad on a 3 month log chart



The red arrow indicates the peak of course, but also the moment we hit the top of the steep channel we were in.

[edit: have removed $200 from the title, was too misleading. I wasn't saying resistance at $200 I was referring to the fact we broke through $200]

edit: have removed $200 from the title, was too misleading. I wasn't saying resistance at $200 I was referring to the fact we broke through $200

From my blog



I noticed quite a while ago what looked like a resistance level somewhere near $200 ish.. Here it is again on the ‘all data’ log chart.

Very hard to judge on these log scales what prices are but as you can see the green increasing price is at this very moment approaching the same trend line which produced resistance twice during the 2011 mania ...

This channel which has held since about $50 has been breached to the upside. Hard to imagine that this current push even higher upwards can be sustained without a pullback soon. (edit) Since I did the chart the price has pulled back and stabalised a little.

Will the top of the channel now be resistance? Perhaps we’ll fall back into the channel? Might be a time to lock in a few profits if you feel like selling some bitcoins.

Shameless plug of my blog  

I expect many people are looking at bitcoins parabolic rise of the last few months and wondering how it will all pan out. How high will it peak? Will it fall after it peaks? Is it a bubble about to burst? Will it just begin to flatten out?

I recently spent some time looking at other historical bull runs, mainly in precious metals from 1980, to try and see what might be coming

...

Read more  http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/bull-market-tops/

...  it looks like we’ll probably meet resistance at the top of the channel.

If the price drops we may find support at $75 ish where the middle of the channel is or somewhere just above $60 if we fall to the bottom of the channel. Perhaps we’ll just flatten out at $90 for a few days.

Funny seeing all the topics appearing in this forum with CRASH!!! 
If you're a bear right now you'll get hurt.

This is how I'm viewing it, see following chart taken from my blog



... Was there anything special about the region where it found support and bounced? I kind of think it matches the bottom of where I’ve been drawing in my new steeper channel ...

http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/found-support/

From my blog, I’ve spent some of my hard earned time scaling up a graph of bitcoins to match as closely as I can on both time and price axis with a similar graph for silver. Heres the result.



http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/fight-silver-versus-bitcoins/

Heres a 3 month chart plotted on log scale.



The charge towards $50 caused the price to bust out the top of the channel but the resistance we’ve encountered there since then has pushed us back down back into the channel again. The very bottom of the channel has been tested twice with brief spikes down which rebounded very strongly and very bullishly.

I feel that this resistance near $50 will hold perhaps as long as to the end of March but ultimately be breached and much higher prices are on the way. During the rest of this month, the price may fall down near the bottom of the channel again, currently near $40 but the relentless upwards pressure will soon have us above $50 anyway.

From my blog, bitcoins plotted on a log scale



If the price was to take off as it did in 2011 and spike up to the same trendline it peaked at then, what was $32 back then is more than $500 today. Quite a thought. I’m thinking it might be time to load up on bitcoins while they’re cheap!