I passed by a Nepalese/pan-asian restaurant called "Silk Road" yesterday. I think it has about as much to do with the Silk Road TOR marketplace as this conference does.

Just posting to note I'm not dead. But I am still holding on to that short, maybe my longest-held position ever?

I don't really see why anyone wishing to move significant amounts of fiat would care about delays of several days so much. I do agree that some friction in converting to fiat is keeping people in BTC who might otherwise withdraw funds, but I think it's more to do with taxes and regulations. Back in the 20+USD/BTC days, a big reason I didn't sell was I figured I'd have to hire a lawyer just to figure out what kind of liabilities withdrawing funds might expose me to... Either way, if I want to spend my coins, it seems easier to just buy stuff with them directly, instead of first exchanging for fiat and then trying to explain to the taxman where the money came from. AFAIK direct spending exposes me to no tax liabilities aside from VAT and customs fees that may apply.

I'm not sure what you mean by me deciding.

Perhaps it's time to reiterate the M.O. here: Every action is decided at random. My system is slightly biased towards holding whatever position I hold, if any. Every day I perform between 1 and 3 flips, depending on what the outcome of each flip is.

First flip: Action or no  action?

if "action", flip again:

2nd flip: Long or short? If I'm not holding a position at the time, I take one up. If I am holding a position already, and the flip tells me to go in the same direction, I  hold the position. If the flip tells me to go in the opposite direction, I liquidate.

if I liquidate, I go for the 3rd flip:
U-turn or no position?
This tells me to either go short if I just liquidated a long position (or vice versa), or to hold no position.

I agree that the spreads will kill me eventually, if I keep going long enough. This is, as I've said before, a losing game. It's not even particularly enlightening in the sense that backtesting will give you a good idea of what this kind of strategy is likely to lead to. Read back a bit to see what that looks like if you're interested, someone did the work already. However, I think there's something to be said for the exercise as a performance of sorts - this is more interesting than just looking at a graph of backtests, and having a running experiment gets more eyeballs. I'm trying to provide a sanity check here. Statistically, mine is a bad strategy, I think we can all agree on that. But can you beat it? Is your performance any better? If it isn't, what makes your system, if you have one, is worth a damn?

Some more losses here:

liquidated my long, lost $2.39 , 2.590%, leaving me with $92.47598.

I'm now short 17.5 BTC @ $5.1279

Who dares, wins! Or something.

Long again,
17.5 BTC  @ $5.2629

Taking profit:
Liquidated my long for a profit of $1.25 or 1.386%. I'm now holding onto my $94.78539 with no position.

But how will the trade graph look then?

And again I'm long.
18.0 BTC @ $5.0059 (!)

That was a quickie. I liquidated again, with a profit of a whopping 0.43 USD or 0.483%. No position now.

You guys have been busy here, I see.

Action again. Time to cut my losses and liquidate the short I had.

took a loss of -$2.50 or -2.726%.   Luckily for me, there was a dip just before I liquidated... I'm holding $93.17130 currently, and going long again.

18.5 @ $4.8391

I've done it again!
short 19.5BTC @ 4.7052

I liquidated today for a profit of 1.26 USD or 1.381 %. No position now.

So how good can that kind of validation be currently? I'm no expert by far, but it sounds like either they're trusting the users not to double spend (unlikely) or they're trusting whatever DRM scheme (essentially) their chip implements not to get cracked. 

Caveat: I think I read "the docs", the site was a bit sprawling. What I found wasn't very big on details.

The flip giveth, the flip taketh away. Anyway, I haven't closed the position yet, so it's premature to say anything about how it will turn out.

I liqui dated my  long , gaining $1.96 or 2.190% with a swap of -$0.25.

This leaves me with  $94.34976 in my account.

Furthermore, I went short 19 BTC @ $4.8134

And if it's a useful tool, adoption will grow, and the price will go up... Which people are speculating on of course, hence all these spikes up and down.

My point? Don't expect stability. Don't bother complaining about speculation, either - it's inevitable, it really doesn't matter whether it's good or bad for the project as a whole, as long as there's a profit to be made, people will be speculating.

Wasn't 45K BTC about what was stole from Bitcoinica? Maybe this is the tactic Zhou took to fill his reserves. If that's the case, you'd expect that wall to hold.

Alternative theory: Someone put up a blatant wall to define a temporary bottom and is selling higher, somewhere around 4.8 USD per BTC, using a bot to avoid placing a wall there. I'm not sure the volume we're seeing really justifies this theory. Does anyone have historical depth data for the last few days? If this scenario is correct, you should see significant resistance at 4.8-ish which isn't reflected in the market depth charts.

I'm back in.
Long 19 BTC @ $4.7103

The losses are piling in now!

I liquidated my long,
lost $4.30   or 4.640%.

Current balance:
$92.47656

I'm starting to get a bit bored here. I think I may stop this experiment in mid-May, as I know there'll be a few weeks there I won't be able to trade daily.