I think that wall on btcchina just got refilled after being completely bought up? Can anyone confirm? I haven't been following closely enough...

Bidwalls on Finex blinking in and out of existence (bitcoinity.org)? A bug? Or really just one guy controlling half of the bids down to $300?

It's that awkward moment where you realise even ShroomsKit makes more sense than the permabulls... 

(sorry ShroomsKit, still love you  )

Ah, I see you have discovered the wonders of Technical Analysis for yourself!

Falllling was one of the main reasons why I sold all my coins before the big crashes. At one point I realised that if a ridiculous troll like him makes just as much sense as all the irredeemable permabulls, then it must be time to sell.

Edit: True story!

Sub $300 by next week. And we already had our rebound back in October. It's over bulls. I'm sorry, but it's time to face the truth.

Another thing that really irks me about TA is that it's not just a grandiose waste of money, but also of time and energy. Let me explain what I mean:

Picture yourself on a boat on a river, during a job interview. You urgently need that job because you just threw all your money out the window, based on a hunch you got from TA. "But the 3d MACD indicated this was the direction the market would be moving!" you try to justify yourself. Now you start sweating profusely. Also, you are wearing a goofy hat and a comically oversized bow-tie. The interviewers ask if maybe you have acquired any kind of useful, special skill that you could add to their business. Your face lights up euphorically and you go: "Well, I spend a lot of time drawing lines on charts and watching indicators turn green. Do I have the job?". Yeah, that's not going to fly, sorry dude.


                                                                                                                      

Awww fonzie, I love you too.  

But no, I didn't lose any money. Because I sold all my coins before the crashes after being told by a permabull that "only a fool would sell at these levels". I'll just go ahead and assume that he came to that conclusion using TA. That's what TA does to people.

About my own experiences with TA: I dabbled in forex years ago and luckily realized quickly what a bunch of hogwash that stuff is before I lost any money. Now I'm trying to help the lost souls here get to the same conclusion before they become completely corrupted. I have hope, but it looks pretty grim for now.

Employing hundreds of PhDs to analyse extensive databases with the help of extremely powerful high-end computers to find and exploit market inefficiencies couldn’t be further from reading the tea leaves of charts using technical analysis.¹

That's like comparing ancient alchemy to modern chemistry. Alchemy is not better because it's simpler. Hoping that fantastic lines you paint on a chart will lead you to riches is magical thinking. It'll probably lead you to bankruptcy instead, I recommend you better renounce the demon of TA now and open your heart to the spirit of reason before it's too late!

                                                                                                              

What I expect is to steer innocent newcomers to this forum away from false promises of easy, safe profits. So they won't waste their precious time and money on this TA mumbo jumbo.


Can complex, sophisticated algorithms enable safe and reliably profitable trading over reasonably long time periods? Sure, sufficient evidence for that is available. But these are in a completely different league than arbitrarily chosen lines drawn by humans with bullish/bearish glasses on or absurdly simplistic indicators that provide hardly any more information than a good look at the bare chart itself. Just like I'm not believing in oda's perpetuum mobile I'm not believing in safe and reliably profitable trading based on such lines and indicators, unless I see it for myself of course. But then again on the other hand, r/bitcoinmarkets serves as a seemingly never-ending source to supply evidence to the contrary. Probably right now their indicators are turning green again, it's obviously time to buy! Just like it was on that day before we crashed to $275. TA never fails to deliver - horrible trading decisions that is of course.

Oh no, I guess I blew it. No more safe profits for us unbelievers.  

Thank you dude, each quack quacky "analysis" less makes a real difference! I was already worried this thread would be for naught.

Edit: Changed the direct ad-hominem 'cause of chessnut.

I admit that I've taken it a bit too far with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn

Those safely made billions are out there somewhere, trust me! You can't see them yet, but that's just because you lack faith. Trust in your technical redeemer and you too can be rich.

You know, I'd just like to actually see one of those guys who safely made billions with TA. Otherwise I will simply dismiss them into the same category as perpetuum mobiles (that's actually a nice comparison you came up with there, oda ).

But I guess they are probably all too busy living the elusive, seclusive rich people life after they safely conjured up all those billions.

Ok, here are just 2 quick quotes as examples:



Proclaiming that you can safely make billions (lol!) and that Ronald McDonald is never wrong is IMHO pretty close to promising a 100% success rate for making profit. And that's just 2 random quotes from this board, I'm more familiar with r/bitcoinmarkets where they use magical indicators and arbitrarily drawn lines to make false predictions about imminent price outbreaks basically every day. Doesn't seem to bother them though, they just continue the very next day as if nothing happened...


To me this reads like a variation of the No True Scotsman Fallacy:
"Scotsman Indicators give you false trade signals? Well, then of course he's not a TRUE Scotsman you must be using it wrong!"

In any case, even if you are right, most of the economic wizards I see on these boards are quite obviously unable to use their TA tools correctly as the vast majority of their never-ending predictions turn out to be constantly wrong.

"Technical" analysis is so prevalent in all the bitcoin related communities that newbies may get the impression that the majority here is actually trading according to it. That is not the case!

Voodoo indicators (e.g. 3d Ronald McDonald Indicator, Random Squiggly Line Indicator, etc.) will not predict price movements! They do not guarantee successful trades! Don't fall for the deceptive words of the snake oil analysis high priests!

It's mostly just a bunch of esoteric shenanigans trying to make itself appear slightly less ridiculous by masquerading behind the term "technical". That one guy on r/bitcoinmarkets is at least honest and flat out admits that he trades according to astrological constellations. May I suggest some tea leaf reading instead? Or how about analysing the flight of the swallows? 100% trading success guaranteed, follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for only $29.99/month. I'll throw in a fancy feather crown for free!

None of those silly indicators predicted the series of massive drops we have seen in the past months. Instead, the false prophets on reddit would announce each and every time how all their indicators are pointing towards a great buying opportunity right before each single massive dump. People probably lost a boatload of money if they actually listened to that nonsense...

Ascribing all downward movements to an evil manipulator and all upward movements to organic buying gets old after a while. Manipulator or no manipulator, the demand is obviously just not there to push prices further up. Simple as that. Bulls seem upset 'cause they probably went all in sub $400 and are now getting itchy for their long promised bubble.

Ok, fair enough. Thanks for the link, this is actually interesting.

I'm curious though if such miners will keep their faith and hold on to their coins with an iron fist even if the bear market continues into 2015. Time will tell, I guess.

Edit: On second thought, if large parts of the mining industry are subventionized by VC like that... how low would the price be without such subventions that allow miners to keep their coins off the market?  

First off, I never talked about coins being dumped on exchanges. Maybe you are mistaking me for someone else? Also, my assertion still stands that a continuously watered down supply side increases downward pressure on the price, and I see no use in arguing that. Maybe your position is that there is no intersection between the OTC market and exchanges, but I have no reason to believe that this is actually the case. Actually, one obvious counter-example I can spontaneously think of would be the user "loaded", who is participating both in the OTC market and on the exchanges.

Second, I am doubtful that large industrial-scale mining operations engage in the speculation business on top of their main (mining) business. They most likely have massive regular expenses for employees, electricity, rent and of course for new hardware in order to stay competitive in the race for a large slice of the hash rate pie. I'd say this indicates that a certain amount of coins has to be sold in order to keep the operations running. And even if they are engaging in speculation - this just means that another failed attempt at a sustained rally will force them to sell a bunch of their held-back coins as soon as they realize that new buyers are not coming in to carry the rally further. So, that gives me one more reason why I suspect this current rally to fail spectacularly once the bulls run out of steam and momentum begins to decline.

Third, you are arguing on the basis of a rally that has not materialized yet. All I see right now is an insignificant bounce that hardly registers on the 2y chart, which may or may not develop into something bigger. Which brings me back to my initial posting, where I suggest that the bullish sentiment is irrational at the moment: We just crashed from the worryingly low sub-400 levels to the shockingly low sub-300 levels. Not too long ago the vast majority here seemed to be convinced that we would never revisit such low prices again. Now we FINALLY had the first significant bounce after going down ~$400 all the way from $660 since this summer, but we are still struggling to even break back above $400. This does not seem very bullish to me, in fact I find it quite worrisome.

Also, we had a similar high-volume bounce situation back in march, right before the failed summer rally that couldn't carry itself beyond the $660 point, despite the bulls being immensely euphoric and going all in (as indicated by the all time high in the number of usd-swaps on finex). I don't see why it should turn out any different this time. A high volume bounce obviously does not guarantee a sustainable rally afterwards, but this seems to be the bulls' main argument for why the bear market is now supposedly behind us.