VERY interesting results. I didn't expect this, what with all the bearish sentiment around lately.

Considering that the majority here seem to be trading for bitcoin profit, most of the traders ultimately believe in the fundamentals of the technology and it's future utility, because they seem to want bitcoin more than they do fiat. I would assume that a good part of the the bearish sentiment here might be attributable to a lust for cheaper coins - the bubble deflation notwithstanding.

Are you bears hiding your true bullish nature?



The exchange rate has been pretty static around the $2.20 mark for the past 10 hours. This is far longer than I would have expected from monitoring the charts these past few days. It seems that everyone is waiting patiently for the <$2 mark to get back in.

People are floundering for reasons for the price to fall further - miners are inefficient, there is no economic support for this price level, more people would have access to the coins etc etc. Many of these reasons are questionable at best, and all reek of a longing for cheap coins. Since I am aware of this hunger, then you can be sure that the big players are aware of it too.

Many of the active bearish coins on the exchanges have probably already been sold to people who have a strong desire to hold. I watched a 50k bidwall get eaten alive a few days ago. This might mean that there are very few actively trading 'bears' remaining. Just look how slowly the last fall back to $2.20 took to complete. Many people are likely now sitting on the edge just waiting for the chance to get back in.

Given this, how likely is it that we can actually get to $1.xx?

I think we might have reached the psychological bottom here. If those elusive $1.xx coins never surface and we keep hovering at just above $2, how soon do you think it will be before the bulls strip off their bear clothes and roar forwards?

I could be wrong, but I have liquidated all of my fiat holdings. This might end up being a mistake, but I am sick of trying to catch this falling knife. I would rather have a decent amount of cheap-ish coins now, than a tiny amount if I am right about this.

I'm going to repost my reply to zhoutong, as this thread became temporarily derailed and I don't want him to miss it:

@zhoutong: Thank you for the concise reply to my concerns. Having bitcoinica around still worries the heck out of me, but I am very glad it is you who is running it. You seem like a trustworthy guy. I hope you do not let us all down.

Since you won't/can't open your order books for the reasons you outlined, then would you consent at some stage to regular independent third party auditing of your accounts and your platform?

I apologize if you were somehow offended. I am in fact a medical doctor by profession, and I know only too well about the struggles of families with trisomy and other congenital abnormalities. But surely you must understand that I was not using that term to refer to people with trisomy?

If we were to ban every word that offended someone, we would not be left with many. It is silly to be offended by a neologism. And please do not assume that I think that people with downs should be treated as less than human. That is a huge assumption on your part, and I myself am offended that you would even suggest such a thing.

@zhou: Thank you for the concise reply to my concerns. Having bitcoinica around still worries the heck out of me, but I am very glad it is you who is running it. You seem like a trustworthy guy. I hope you do not let us all down. Since you won't open your order books (maybe for good reason) then would you consent at some stage to third party auditing of your accounts and your platform?


Libertarian nonsense. I don't HAVE to wear clothes when I go out in the snow, but do you think maybe I should? Similarly there is nothing stoping me from wiping my ass with poison ivy, but do you think that would be a wise thing to do? Please inform yourself before posting your vacuous libertard claptrap.. here, I'll help that process along:

1) Bitcoinica is not an exchange.

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market)

3) Bitcoin is not 'unregulated', the supply of bitcoin is very carefully regulated by the network as a whole, rather than self interested elites. You are mixing up deregulation with decentralization.

4) The bitcoin network does have rules - I cannot alter the blockchain in a way that the rest of the network does not agree with.

5) Leveraged margin trading is EXTREMELY risky, not just for the end user, but for all of the participants in the market. You cannot just open an account like this in the US without holding professional qualifications in economics/business, and for good reason. I am ALL for a decentralized currency, nowhere did I say I 'don't like it'. Read my post again if you failed to understand my concerns about bitcoinica. I assure you they are justified.

6) Just because we don't HAVE to follow well established financial 'rules' does not mean we SHOULD not. Some of them are archaic and outdated, others are VERY important. Financial institutions and market makers are audited carefully in real world finance due to the many concerns surrounding the fact they have more information available to them and can use this information to bet against their clients. Zhou has access to the stop/limit positions and liquidation points of all his clients. He can use this to get a better understanding of the market than the rest of us can, or he can move the price with his own capital on MtGox to force liquidation of his clients. He would know exactly how much would be required to do this.

I was thinking the exact same thing!
TH was trading down at 2.03 while MtGox was trading at almost 2.30.
Our manipulator is developing new tactics!!

It's getting vicious...

People moving coins into the exchanges to cash out maybe?
That would cause a MASSIVE drop.

Yep, I was right. The rally seems to be over. People are starting to unload.

And the slide begins...

There is only about 200 btc of demand left above $2.35. You better get them moved quickly.
I don't think this rally is going to last much longer.

The walls are starting to shift around again. It's only small movements at the moment, but the bids are sinking and the asks are slowly rising. The asks are looking VERY steep now in comparison with the bids... they could be real bids, but the way they are bobbing around it really is hard to know.

Considering the lackluster demand over the past 24 hours, a number of failed rallies, in addition to the RSI being at about 70, the MCAD predicting a downwards reversal, and trading happening at the upper range of the bollinger band for about 12 hours...

This all adds up to only one thing in my mind. We are going back to the $2 mark at some stage today.

I tend to agree with you. The ask walls are starting to build even faster now. And the bidwalls are slowly sinking.
I think we might be in for a massive downward movement very shortly.

The temptation to do this surely must be great though. I find it worrying that the operators of dark-pool trading platforms like bitcoinica (perhaps ONLY bitcoinica) are privy to the collective trade decisions of it's users when everyone else is not. Especially when these businesses are not subject to the stringent external auditing processes as real world institutions.

I know you have stated that you promise not to trade based on this information, but it is not really good enough for me because a promise is hardly a rock solid guarantee. How can we be sure you are telling the truth, and are not going to trade against your clients? Trust is just not enough, even though you seem like a decent guy zhou.

Given the open-source spirit of bitcoin, I think it would only be right to open your order books the same way mtgox and the other exchanges do. I know you said that this would leave bitcoinica open to manipulation, but my (admittedly poor) understanding of game theory is that as long as everyone has access to the information, it would be no more problematic than it is now. What do you think about this?

Mtgoxlive is eerily tranquil at the moment. Looks like people are on the fence at 2.30.
Will it go up, or will it go down? Only the manipulator knows.

Ahh. I was trolling too...  

I thought you were some kind of anti-individualism zealot.

Lurk moar.

You don't seem to have any idea of terry's background, yet appear very quick to pass judgement on him.
Get off your moral high horse before someone knocks you off it.

'I' is an irrational invention? Are you kidding me?
What about all the other pronouns? Or is it only the first-person singular personal pronoun that you have a problem with?

In that case though, anyone who didn't sell to the government would hold the entirety of the supply. Since bitcoin is divisible to 8 places, even if there were only 1 million of them left, that would still be plenty to facilitate trade.

Bitcoin cannot be shut down, because it would be impossible for any single person to own 100% of the supply. Even if only 1000 bitcoins remained, it would still function as it does today; only with the decimal point in a different position.

I wish there was a charting platform that would allow us to interact with the actual chart, i.e. drawing trend lines, fibonnaci retracements etc, moving forwards or backwards along the same time reference. This looks exactly the same as what is already being offered at bitcoincharts.org.

I agree with most of what you have said Jonathan. But there are a few important things to remember:


Yes, he has pulled those walls in the past when the price was too high to continue, but at the level we are at now, it is VERY likely that those walls could be real. As we fall even lower, the likelihood of real bid walls becomes higher. And once he has eaten up a significant portion of the supply, the price will rise because he is likely to hold hard - maybe coupled with a strong buy from him.


How can you be sure that he is the only one to blame here? There are plenty of people with thousands of coins that might sell once the price has risen enough with the hopes of buying lower. This is not a game that he and he alone is playing so we should not blame him solely for this. This kind of thing happens in real world markets too. After large rises come large falls, and vice versa.


You might be right. But you might also be wrong. As I said, the lower the price goes, the greater the likelihood that those walls could be very real. I don't think he is losing any steam whatsoever. The price has been continuing downwards, requiring less and less purchasing power on his part. And he has taken enough profit from the higher levels to be able to provide real support at the levels we are currently at.


I agree that he will be left holding a LOT of coins if this happens. And when he is the biggest holder of coins on the market, what do you suppose is going to happen? The people who sold to him will have fiat to spend and no coins, and he will have lots of coins (and probably lots of fiat too). This is a recipe for movement in an upwards direction only.


I agree. If the walls disappear, we are going downtown. But not for long I would imagine. He will be holding too many coins at that point, and will only have one option if he hopes to ever get any of his money back. HOLD, and hold strongly.

I know we all want cheap coins, but I am going to do what the manipulator is doing.
It is a mistake to bet against someone with that level of bitcoin and fiat holdings.

Great post! I also think that a lot of the whining going on around here is due to to this 'jealousy'. If any of you had that level of capital, you would all be doing it too. You cannot criticize the 'manipulator' for wanting to protect his own interests. You are all doing it yourselves, albeit on a much smaller level. He is allowing us to find the bottom slowly and carefully, as opposed to the madness which would otherwise ensue if he didn't.