You mean 50 minutes.

Thanks! Now, we don't have all the interesting orders overshooting anymore. I personally would love a way to set upper and lower end though -- the range I find most interesting (200~2000) is only one block small now. With the scale lines so dim, it's sometimes hard to make out the larger changes. If I was able to set the top and bottom end of the log scale, it would be even more awesome.

The 0 in the center makes no sense on log scale though, it must be a ±1. Also, I would make the minimum at least 10. Nobody in his right mind cares about an accumulated order change of size 8 BTC or so.

If you have the time, nerve and wish to make it perfect, I recommend the following:

• switch for log/lin scale
• setting for upper limit, including the option "automatic"
• setting for lower limit if log scale is chosen
• default either to linear automatic or linear max 2000 (Not that I care about defaults, but that's what I'd choose.)

I might drop you a BTC if you do that.



Last but not least: Thanks for the zoom! It is awesome!



Edit: I'm having issues with nonsensical bars appearing. Red up far to the left, and red down far to the right.

I'm not a fan of security by obscurity.

There's one thing I know: if I were to be malicious and have system rights on your PC, there is no way you can execute a Bitcoin trade without me taking everything from every wallet privkey involved.

Of course, you can try to make it look & feel different by using VMs, weird encryption, blah etc. But in the end, the hacker has your RAM, your keyboard input, your UIs, your network interfaces... no matter how you open and/or decrypt, he can do the same.

Unless, of course, all your software except Bitcoin runs in your sandbox from the moment you installed the system. That works.

lol² ... if they are any good at speculating. I'm sorry to inform you this doesn't appear to be the case.

The only thing this is leading to is all the money accumulated with the maybe 1% that actually know how to speculate. Problem is, unless these people are rich from the start, they will continuously withdraw money in fiat due to A) the Kelly criterion forcing them to not risk too much at once and B) them withdrawing whenever things don't look too good from a fundamental perspective. What does this do for Bitcoin? Just reduces purchasing power.

The speculation maniacs serve mainly one purpose: push media attention. If they fail at that, long-term value doesn't change due to these guys buying -- unless they really never ever sell again. And currently, they seem to fail at drawing attention. Forum activity, Google trends, News mentions, Web reach: all down during the past week. If another such drop happens, there will be little reason for day traders to remain active at current price.

If a four-digit sum is what you call "a ton of money", I did do that.

Only I sold again when price was higher than what I thought reasonable expectations. It now appears that wasn't a bad idea. Now I'm waiting for the mania to cool down, so I can analyze the outcome.

You know, a chance to get rich isn't all that valuable, if one can lose all as well. There are many other things a ton of money is good for. Speculations with a high failure probability come with a lot of trouble, personally as well as mathematically. I don't consider Bitcoin price super low anymore, since it rose a lot while fundamentals did not change. Thus, I'm reluctant to push in money again.

I'm still lying in wait for some day trading though, and if I ever think it's undervalued again, I'll be there to jump right in. Just don't expect me to go "ZOMG price dropped half a Dollar BUY BUY BUY" or something. It's about the fundamental quality of the Bitcoin project and markets, and that's just not looking *that* great yet.

I guess it will have another down step, but I'm not too sure yet.

My reasoning is the search and reach trends. They are stagnating after a decline, I see quite a possibility they'll decline again. This is correlated with USD influx, and miners should give a minimum volume, at least a part of them. Variance on my guess is very high since a single large buyer or seller can already have quite some influence at these constant volumes.

If nothing changes and we drift around the way we did these last days, mh, $14? In a few days, I'll have a lot more statistics to make guesses though. But I'm not going to tell about thoughts I can make money with until I applied them myself.

(Price is actually $15.5, not $15 now, and has been for a while. Not that it's a large difference.)

"bitcoin's goods and services economy"

lol -- such a thing never existed in the first place. All facade; a few small deals as demonstration at best. The volume of actual trading was never anywhere near what would be required to sustain current prices.

I personally believe that the Mt. Gox hack only altered price by a little; we're still facing the chaos from the jump-to-30-then-drop-to-10 bubble. That was just stupid and most likely scared newcomers more than the downtime. The whole speculation game just looks much more unstable ever since that happened.

Sure, the hacks play a role. But that article is trying to blame a bit too much on Mt. Gox.

? What market are you talking about? Or is this some kind of joke about the inactivity and value at 80 cent back in March? Or maybe the ArtForz sale day to 50 cent in early April is what you mean? I don't understand.

Anyways, the current pattern of media hype followed by decline, also sheer amount of actual money in the game, has not happened before in Bitcoin country.


@RogerR, tvbcof:

I'm very much enjoying the chaos ride ever since the 30 USD hike. But why would you take further losses if you guess a crash likely now? You both talk as if you see the crash scenario very likely -- if there are more people like that, another price hike becomes quite improbable. Yet hold at all cost?

A speculator doesn't care whether something doesn't have to be true... the important question is, can you give a probability? Is there one you would bet on? People are implicitly betting by holding BTC, but as I see it, quite a few of them are overconfident. I want to know what our real chances are.

Just as a side note, I usually mean things as I say them. I didn't mean to imply "ZOMG BTC IS DOOMED TO CRASH 100%", or imply anything at that -- I'm really just wondering what the chances of reaching critical mass are after a crash or crash-like event.

@GeniuSxBoY: In fact, I sold some and might get put options for the money elsewhere... maybe I'm just a price drop maniac?

No... seriously, I think you guys have a p > 60% crash configuration there. Overconfidence-only market with declining public interest and considerable running costs (miners, exchange fees). If you're holding BTC for speculation, you need a good bit of luck now.

But what am I talking about, we're already halfway into a crash. 32 to <16, that's more than a factor 2, yet people fear further drops.

The poll is not reasonable since no up-trend height or time frame is given. Not that I have a crystal ball, but with this type of question, I might not be able to answer even if I had. *shrugs* Generally, my indicators say down on a time scale of weeks. But they're pretty fuzzy, and you know how unpredictable Bitcoin is. I think it's likely that we'll see sub-$12 prices though.

The really interesting question is shunned on these forums. "If we face a crash 'bust' phase, will the image of Bitcoin be hurt enough to endanger reaching critical mass, possibly causing catastrophic failure?"

I know, nobody wants me to ask that question here. Simply forget I did It's the one single thing I really care about though, since the answer determines whether I ever buy in again.

Posting in a troll thread.

@TurboK: I'm not too familiar with terminology, but didn't the bubble burst at 30 USD? Can it burst twice, or would it be a new one now?

@Grant: I might want to buy puts, but... I dunno, that site looks worse than mtgox, I have put enough trust in shady hacker sites for now. Also, seriously: the order book doesn't look healthy. And there are weird warning messages on the site even. Naah, maybe another time.

Let's do an even more fundamental perspective.

We're on an asset primarily hoarded for speculation right after a media hype. Indicators (Web reach, search trends, forum activity, media attention) all point toward a beginning decline in said hype. We have no market, the price curve showed us the first half of a classic crash and stopped primarily as the main exchange was hacked, which further worsened the tone in media. There is no noteworthy goods-trading market or other support of any kind.

Now, volume is starving, and even with a lot of possibly overconfident people still in, the strange spike-buyer yesterday could not even temporarily push price up. Bid history depth is slowly declining since yesterday, and a fairly large block of bids might be the last thing keeping people from selling.

I didn't have much BTC left on mtgox, but now it's a round, single digit. Seriously, if I did bet wrong on that one, there's no way I will have a bad conscience. The only time I saw a larger down arrow on this was when it started fluctuating around 30 after some insane exponential trend.

Edit: While I wrote this, another price drop happened, and volume is now increasing again. I did not see this before I sent this post. I guess it's needless to say that might rule out the "we all just sit here freezing things" outcome.

This thread is pure art.

I can't even count. "Market manipulation" is always a great shout, though kind of a classic and thus not very innovative. "Mining cost determines price!" is pretty much a meme now, and is the best replacement for "DERP" I've seen so far. But! A competitor appears! "Da Seller wants to push da price down!"

Wait, wait... one more. "a big hoarder who decided to cash out at 17$" ... whoooaaa big hoarder made the volume go... uh... what volume?

Man, I hope this is the work of trolls... I hope it for the sake of humanity.

Wow. Selling one's signature as ad space for 0.1 BTC.

I'd not do that even if BTC were valued at 5000 USD each.

Oho. Sollte vllt mal öfters in's deutsche Forum gucken. Ein Tag zu spät. Naja~

Ich geb's jedenfalls zu, ich bin auch in München.

You don't find that strange? We jump between stagnation and nuclear, where's the normal in-between mode?

So it's guys like you who do these positive feedback loop trend parties. Nice to meet you, I think it's not sane, but if you're on earlier than the others who do it the same way, you may make good money.

But think about those heeding your advice. Volume increases, people follow trend, volume increases further, more people follow trend... SUDDENLY! Volume runs out, trendbreak. Repeat the opposite direction. Welcome to June 12th, where they sell at 11 and then buy at 25. Yeeaaaa, smart.


@marvinmartian: being correct in trend direction "more often than not" is not sufficient for being profitable. Take a simple trend. Everyone knows the direction it's going, yet that doesn't usually help to make money. Because a trend is a trend until it stops, and when it does, it's likely to turn around hard.

More mathematically speaking: change the skew, look at the expectation value -- guess what, no change.

Hehe... wise words. But sadly, a tragedy of the commons. Most people just try to get rich on the others' supportive work on Bitcoin, so in the end, real trade and organizing is a mess.

But the speculation mania was (or maybe still is) an awesome game. Very simple rules, yet hard to master, played on an ever-changing environment -- and with real stakes in there. I found it a neat thrill and a grand show. I was prepared to lose all when I entered, but it appears fortune was on my side.

There's a time limit on it though. The extreme version we've had so far only works during exponential growth, and afterwards, those who lose will not be likely to join in again. So it must finish at some point; afterwards, you will get stable prices and a clear view on actual trading once more. Just be patient, speculation mania cannot last forever. Though I must admit: there were historical cases where it lasted for years, and sometimes, insane prices were reached.

I doubt I will enter again before I see the cycle completed. Hell, the earnings here are measured as a factor rather than in percent; it was a once-in-a-lifetime hit. Wanting even more would push my luck.

I just want to add something to that.

This is one potential scenario I use, and in my mind, it is equivalent to an imminent crash. If the money influx dropped significantly, take even the current (low!) volume, those orders would be filled in a matter of two days. It would cause a classic crash, setting in within the next week or so.

So, if you hold on to BTC, you better hope it's not just early adopters playing speculator who kept the price supported for multiple days.

Most likely, it's a mixture -- and the proportion will determine the short-term outcome. I guess we'll know more by the end of the week.