So, just to get this right:

We found a massive security hole. Multiple people claim to have money stolen. MtGox writes a line on IRC stating the hole was not exploited, and we remain with multiple users who claim to not have been paid the money owed by MtGox?

I'd like this examined in detail. If my money ever disappears in such a fashion, I will be on the next plane to Japan to figure out in person what the fuck happened.

Just saying, this isn't a SONY-class incident leaking personal data, we have money vanishing according to some people, and just found a potential cause of it.

Hurr Durr.

derp derp derp

Pun intended.



With the "discussion" now summarized, can we move on?

We could use a forum exclusively for speculating about the price and flaming those who have a different opinion.

That's the interesting question. Bitcoin is still small; it could cancel out of the crash and form an even larger bubble.

I hope people will hurry up with the spikes so I get a clearer view. What's with those low-volume phases... seller staring contest.

If it continues onto a rising trend again, it will become a battle of speculators. I can't imagine it would end well for everyone; but the best might make a nice profit -- and the early adopters that didn't sell yet most of all. But I can see it doing a classical crash just as well. Gotta figure out what the buying folk is thinking right now -- that's the most important question.

This thread is beautiful. It should be read in economics class by schoolchildren to understand bubble dynamics.

I especially love the denial phase as soon as an upwards spike happened. It's EXACTLY as the economists say. Doubts are drowned by one over-riding fact: the price is still rising. As long as the price shows a higher number, people are satisfied. Even though everybody should know it crumbles the moment the stream of new money stops, they all just take that risk.

No matter what happens from now on, the chaos and drop were unavoidable after the spike to 30, and there were people who knew that. But everybody ignored them until it was too late! It was just unreasonable to rise that fast, even with the exponential media attention.

I hope this will teach Bitcoiners a lesson; we don't want this to happen again. It's a crazy kind of game that disrupts normal trading. At least keep the price roughly close to actual trading market size.



Edit: Oh wow, I just saw the link to the bubble article, including the quote "The voices of the wise are ignored by the greedy who justify the now insane prices with the euphoric claim that the world has fundamentally changed and this new world means higher prices."

And someone answered "You have to go way outside the box to find economic analysis of the monetisation of a newly discovered form of commodity currency.". And another "how can you compare BTC to anything? There has never been anything like it"

Priceless. Pun intended.

Der Preis ist im Abschwung. Über Bitcoin im Allgemeinen kann man in so einer chaotischen Phase wenig aussagen.

Der Preissturz ist nur das Resultat einer Preisblase, weil eine Menge Leute super-schnell reich werden wollten. Die Spekulanten, die in ein paar Monaten noch übrig sind, werden den Preis stabilisieren. Habt Geduld; Bitcoin ist jung und anfällig für irgendwelche Spinnereien. Das gibt sich mit der Zeit.

Die Preissprünge werden langsamer werden, und dann kann man auch besser Handel betreiben. Es dauert nur noch ein Bisschen, bis der Spekulationswahnsinn ausgebrannt ist. Solche extremen Aktionen wie im letzten Monat kosten diejenigen, die sie verursachen viel Geld -- das kann nicht ewig so gehen.

Und ob 1 BTC nun 20 USD oder 2 USD wert ist, das ist doch total egal, solange er sich halbwegs stabil einpendelt.

I think it added to the downward trend, but saying it's the main cause would overdo it.

Windows has been compromised countless times, and look around, people only care once it happens to themselves. I'd guess it's similar with Bitcoin. Pushes it down a little further, but the reason for the big breakdown should be elsewhere.

Posting in a troll/whiner thread.

This is beginning to feel like the chans. I'd prefer some more moderation in here, or push these types into a different sub-forum than "Economics".

Hmm. Two things to consider:

First, speculators aren't some kind of force of nature that brings in money. If they *think* they price will drop, their support can vanish instantly and they might sell off everything. And that, again, depends on their mindsets and prospects.

Second, the cost to generate BTC is not relevant. Miners will always cost exactly the price of the current inflation rate and have to sort out how much profit they make in the process among themselves. Their past before they spend the coins is not relevant for price estimation within Bitcoin markets. Think of miners as a black box producing 7200 BTC inflation a day.

Other than that, I like they way you approach this. You'll be surprised to get a value far lower than the current one if you pull this through though, and that's natural.

No offense taken. You're probably right and I shouldn't rant about it. But it would help if people at least knew what they know and when they're starting to go overboard. On here, everybody claims to be able to model everything right now, and it's all a flood of nonsense. All the decent discussions are being drowned in that. I guess that just started to frustrate me.

I never said that. You can also get rich playing roulette in the casino if you're lucky. I'm only saying that such people cause fluctuations and lose money on average.

If people are having fun taking high risks, let them go ahead. They're all free to do what they want with their money. But I am allowed to call people who follow trends in an insane fashion or fail to use limit orders without burning 10% of their order incompetent. It's pretty safe to assume they don't make losses on purpose.

I'm not angry at anyone or telling them what to do; I'm a Libertarian after all, maybe some of them are right and I just don't get it. Nobody has to listen to me if they don't want to. That's the nice thing about free markets.

That.

Also, current trend is way too strong to be *caused* by specific days. Triggered, maybe, but whether today or tomorrow, it would've happened anyways.

High volume is a property of the phase after a bubble bursts.

I'm more concerned that MtGox has data that might see these things coming a little earlier. I really hope nobody in there leaks inside data such as money influx and dark pool information!

Someone should make a faq about the basic concept of logic.

No offense, but I'm amazed at how we need an faq entry for that kind of thing. This forum is called "Economics" for a reason, or not? Just over a month ago, I was actually using my mind when discussing on this forum; now it is filled with posters that don't know what an argument is! There just exists no reasonable response to most of the posts. What in the world happened?

Sorry for ranting. I'm just gonna do something else now 'n cool down.

Goons bring the market up, goons bring it to crash, whoever is smarter than them makes money in between.

Everything good as long as something's happening. And if people are in for long-term speculations... well, since no smart speculator put everything on one card, the drop increases the buy-in size of those speculating on a rise.

So why would one complain -- because the earnings could have been higher? Oh well, I also sold some too low in the first drop, you can't get it perfect every time.

On correct mid-term predictions, a speculator makes good money. The ones who should complain are those wanting to use Bitcoin; traders will be annoyed by the jumping prices.

What does MagicalTux say about this? This looks extremely critical! I'm very happy now I did not increase the withdrawal limits.

Password bruteforcing cannot be an issue, since it is trivial to block IPs that have too many failed login attempts -- unless MtGox is allowing an insane amount of attempts from a single source, which would be very similar to openly accepting theft risks.

This should be resolved and the origin of the attack found ASAP. MagicalTux, please comment and analyze the cases at hand; also, explain your security measures against password extraction.

I'm currently withdrawing some; the first test showed no abnormal delay. 5 Business days is quite a bit though.

Was it a large sum, 5-digit or above? Maybe they're doing money laundering checks or something of the like.

I hope to not see any more strange behavior of MtGox, it's making me nervous enough as is. I'd like to have a firmer handle on information about the people responsible, in case things go haywire there. All we have is a name, a company and address in Japan, a bank in France and some USA stuff. I hope they'll prove to be stable and trustworthy.

Of course, we don't know. But I can take my best guess.

If you ask me, it could very well happen on a single-digit price value, so I'll wildly guess <8. I base that on the possibility that the relatively sized inflow of overconfident speculators seems to decrease, which would cause the situation to behave like a classical price bubble. But with all the chaos, it's really hard to make out a "real" price, I could be wrong to an order of magnitude.

The price gets stable when the majority of incompetent speculators lost enough money to give control back to classical speculators. Real speculators make money from margins and stabilize price; insane speculators lose money and cause fluctuations.

The important point is: the smaller the inflow of newcomers compared to market size, the more stable the price will become, because bad speculators will burn out their resources over time. Give it at least a few months; Bitcoin is still brand new.

I highly doubt the natural price just happens to converge to 20 USD. It's not stable, look at the volume! Everybody has simply stopped exchanging!

This is psycho-nonsense. We'll be able to get a better feel on the market once the staring contest ends. Well, at least we know that nobody has a clue where the real value is, and everybody thinks he's on the correct side. That doesn't make any sense, but what can I say?

Someone will have to move eventually! I hope it'll happen some time soon, this is like hitting a pause button; the speculation game needs to be finally settled and a reasonable price found. This jumpiness is surely scaring off traders.

MtGox is down. I can't reach the site, the tickers are getting buggy too. Either DoS or some kind of trouble on their side.

But yea, even with serious downtimes, volume is too low. People just don't want to make a decision. But the price can't just be fixed to 20, so I'm also waiting for someone to finally pull the trigger.

I'm not sure, but maybe people are just slow to realize there is no infinite money influx.

Also betting on a down correction. But it's very very psychological now, nobody wants to make a clear statement, so everybody's just staring at the history in disbelief or something.

Anyways, this isn't a stable state, is should change within the next days one way or the other.