I feel like making a pointless topic. So! Just visited alexa.com and got this:

High Impact Search Queries for Bitcointalk.org

Query    Impact
1    bitcoin forums
2    bitcoin forum
3    problems getting pregnant
4    amd vision engine control center
5    guiminer
6    getting pregnant

Who's the joke-master and how did he do that? Or did I miss something on the forums?

Gibt's was neues hierzu? Gibt's wieder ein Treffen? Vielleicht schaffe ich's ja diesmal.

Tut der Welt einen Gefallen, sammelt alle Logs und Daten und versucht, den Aufenthaltsord des Witzboldes zu ermitteln. Dann das ganze hübsch verpacken und zur naheliegensten Polizeistelle schicken.

Ihr könnt euch natürlich stattdessen auch mit dem Schutzengel seiner Urgroßmutter unterhalten, der wird sich sicherlich auch bald hier im Forum registrieren, um eine schlüssige Erklärung vorzulegen.

Profit criterion:

Buy price * (1 - commission fraction)^2 > sell price

Just use Wolfram Alpha when you have a browser around. For simple calculations, it responds quickly in JavaScript.

Hm... whatever makes the option market liquid. I guess that would be "don't use too many", but I'm not an expert on this.

There were a few times when I wanted to buy options on Bitcoin, but couldn't. Let's see whether you can change that.

If people fit straight lines onto log-scale price charts, the following crash doesn't usually involve soft landings.

It will last until the guy who managed to trigger it feels like he's made enough... I congratulate him if he manages to set the turnaround point as well.

That guy is reaching at 40k USD earnings in just hours, and he set the timing. I'm in awe.

Gold is highly dependent on many things, including India, backing reserves and stability of other stores of value.

In the past two years, all those were good for gold. If it runs into a buying mania phase now, and one of the indicators turns around... expect a crash.

It's almost as if they want the price to spike right away. If there is a plan behind this, it might be short-time trading. E.g. buy in a flash, people mentally accept the higher price for a bit, sell slowly and as invisibly as possible for profit. Wait for correction, repeat.

Why didn't I think of that? (Truth is, I know the idea but can't afford it. This probably only works with 100k USD+, so someone pulling it with safety against fluctuations needs 1M USD play money or something -- don't have that, so I can just post the idea in an attempt to spoil others' fun in case this is what they actually do.)

Any other theories why someone would want to buy in so visibly, with such sharp price fluctuations? Not exactly a cheap move there.

For the last time (hopefully):

If someone can predict the expectation value of price, he will NOT tell others about it, but get insanely rich instead by trading himself. Technical analysis is for risk management, it is NOT a magical tool for infinite money! There is usually no simple, well-known way to get rich, duh!

This should be common sense really.

So, when miners begin to quit, that's a good sign for the price? Uhhhm, that does not make sense at all.

Strangely enough, I never lost, to compensate I missed out on many chances by a hair's breadth. I guess that's what I get for being conservative -- should have traded more, taken one or two rounds losing to get more hits.

Tonight was when I got closest to losing -- it was really late, and I was moving an order SECONDS too late for that 28k unlimited sale, which hit my order quite far up. When I managed to roughly break even, it was 4am, then I slept through the neat rally with way too few coins. But no losses!

You talk as if people who steal coins are significantly worse at trading than the average person here. I don't think so. Stolen or not, this was a panic sale, and the conspiracy theories are mostly bait, manipulation or urban legends.

Traders have no interest in clarifying false beliefs. If you think about it, you'll see that the stolen coins were probably sold *before* it became obvious they were stolen. Why would mybitcoin sell AFTER everybody tries to track their coins?

Also, this is a financial crash's bust pattern. Why would a sell-off from one or two thieves cause fancy spikes and saw-teeth?

I believe you. Sold the few I got in my messed-up day-trading tonight around 8.5.

Man, I wasn't good in this spike. The 28k unlimited sale was just not something I considered likely enough, it messed up my day-trading. I barely broke even, made a hundred dollars or something... should've just gone to sleep.

But yea, had I not messed up, I'd be selling right now, down to a price of 7.7 or so... lol, look at the depth. The price would *be* 7.7 now if I still had some. These buy-orders are really thin, I wonder where the panic went.

It's not wise to force the price anywhere. The bots typically just wait for small-scale fluctuations, and have a higher tendency to sell at higher prices and buy at lower. Their advantage is that their time isn't too valuable, so they can trade on small margins.

So, I guess the bots feed on jumpy prices at low volumes. Larger spikes are usually food for day-traders... I think it's all fed by people who let themselves be manipulated too easily. Their money pays for the show. IMO, we will see a few speculators and a lot of destroyed wannabe speculators in the end. And those who laugh at the show.

(I'm not the type to watch at a challenge like this idly, so I will be in one of the former groups -- but I know very well I could become a defeated wannabe. I hope everyone playing is aware that he can lose.)

I agree!

I think the three theories named are all likely (>10%), so it's stupid to yell at people who support either of them. It's just bad etiquette to act like knowing everything AND calling everybody with different opinions stupid.

Just BTW, the majority of people who talked that way were utterly wrong. Remember the 30-spike, where everybody was flamed who didn't believe in an exponential rise above 100 USD/BTC within a month or so? I guess there's a negative correlation between the ability to consider other peoples' models and being wrong in the end.

So, yes, please don't flame people for having a different opinion.

That almost sounds like one must hoard Bitcoins to be part of the "building nice things" community.

I speculate, meaning I do sell when I think the price will drop, yet I do wish to *use* Bitcoin for trading in the future. I'll just buy some again when I need 'em (or think their value will rise). Am I a traitor now? *shrug*

There's a lot of potential for Bitcoin. Just not in mainstream speculation mania and hoarding.

Wall street professional on a market with less than 1M USD volume on most days? I dunno. Trainees, maybe. Or people who know the methods. The real masters won't waste their time on something this size just yet.

Good, since I would probably chicken out against these guys -- I have other things I do in life and would fear losing to them. Right now, I still place day-trading orders every now and then. Not something I'd like doing against pros.

Why do people keep discussing BTC generation cost on a speculation board? That's totally off-topic.

Speculators care little about anything other than the BTC influx, and that's constant. True, we may have lots of miners playing speculators, but trying to forecast their behavior as a major market indicator is really going overboard.

Where can one get a security architect for this kind of job?

I thought Microsoft has depleted the supply by dragging all the good people into the Midori project...

Seriously, someone who can manage a 100.0% flawless system for all the running time -- those people are rare to come by. One contact of the private keys with a hacker, and your entire company is history. And possibly the responsible people as well, if the amount of value lost was high enough for people to get violent.