Max has grown on me. He's a strange guy.

The idea has not warmed up to the vast majority the east coast hedge fund/private equity world, but they do know about it. They (generally speaking) believe bitcoins current success is symptomatic of the world's problems but they don't see bitcoin as a solution.

I think private equity on the west coast has a very different view.....they are probably quite bullish.

Dark pools would seek BTC that are closely held outside of Gox.

On Wall Street, there are individual traders dabbling. Institutional money would NEVER touch this. I could see some hedge funds getting involved, perhaps, on a limited basis.....the very high risk capital. Most are completely discounting bitcoin but there are a few who are intrigued about it enough to be vocal.

It's mainly the lone trader playing around with his/her (not firm's) risk capital.

Thank you. I've been saying this for awhile now. Career suicide.

Let's say a hedge fund wants to buy 500K coins. Let's say an old BTC holder wants to sell 500K coins. These people don't know each other and decide to go on the open market, but chances are they won't make their trades at the same time. If one tries to unload 500K coins, what do you think would happen to the market? It would go down substantially, even if he/she did it in a controlled way....How about if someone tried to buy 500K coins? Yes.....the market would go up erratically.

With dark pools, these two large players can find each other and transact without impacting the overall public market as much. And they don't even have to reveal exactly how much they want to buy/sell.

True, dark pools on Wall Street are used mainly for anonymity. BTC is so illiquid (relatively) that dark pools would help by matching larger buyers and sellers without moving the market as erratically.

And looking at Exante (and I already knew this actually), the fund is basically a vehicle allowing other hedge funds & HNWIs to trade in and out of bitcoins in the secondary market (with fund shares), I believe. This fund would have a greater affect on the overall exchanges than a closed-end fund because they would be dipping into various exchanges as needed (I assume).

Do you think I'm mentally retarded?

Dark pools also help large holders sell large quantities so that they do not crash the market, because of one of the large sellers tried to unload 500K coins.....no, they would not get higher prices on the open market.

They could purchase 500K - 1M coins without moving the market very much using dark pools. I highly doubt they would barrel in all at once with 1B. But yes, 1B would affect the exchanges.


Of course they haven't. Yes, this is more reasonable.

EDIT: If this is not a complete embellishment.....

And don't we already know that more than half of the 11M coins are out of circulation: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf

So dark pools surely have as much or more liquidity than Mt Gox.

Thank you. Even if they do go in with 1B (??), they will be using dark liquidity. They would/could not do this on the open market.

Dark pools would allow large holders to cash out without crashing the market, and allow themselves to enter a position without driving the market to absurd heights. You would not even know it happened.

Hedge funds are not complete idiots. Do any of you really think they would place open market orders from $250 to $2500? Hmmmm....I think I'll buy 2M shares of AAPL with a stop limit order at $430, limit at $4300. What's BAC trading these days? $12.50? Buy all you can to $125. They are bound to grow.....

I know how bids and asks are matched; I trade equities quite frequently. Watch the next sell-off closely and you'll see what I'm talking about. When sell orders get backed up, price rolls over then the Gox lag stems 'panic selling' and the bid/ask sticks 5% higher than executing trades. Gox apparently doesn't know how to match the bid/ask.

When the 'panic selling' is over, the bid/ask remain at levels much higher than all previous trades. There is no orderly flow. 100s or 1000s of coins sell-off and only 2 or 3 coins get executed 5% higher than the sell-off but somehow the price bounces right back up based solely on those tiny trades. Normally the bid/ask would go down to reflect the 100s of coins that are being sold at lower prices, but this never happens. Call it tin foil if you want. The spread should not be over 5% during a minor sell-off.

Agreed.

It's a trading log that shows the pattern of trades on a sell-off of bitcoin. This same pattern happens whenever there is a sell-off.

During any sell-off, very tiny buys magically keep the price buoyant until the 'panic' subsides.

'Together We Can Do A Lot!"

http://www.mmmindia.in/index/what_is_mmm_india/0-12

The only currency with higher growth than BTC.....

EDIT: Quite hilarious....

I'm not just talking about lag -- I'm talking about subtle support during sell-offs throughout the last three months.

Yes, but are you seeing bid/ask stick 5% lower than executed trades? And are you seeing tiny sells keep the bid/ask low in the face of 100s of coins being bought much higher? The reverse (tiny buys keep bid/ask artificially inflated) always happens when it drops.

It's not just the lag.....I'm talking about very subtle artificial support from Mt Gox to stem sell-offs.

This is now a moot point, the feedback loop has taken over and this will accelerate with or without Mt Gox's support. No, we are going up very high now.

No, you're not. This is the purest bubble the world's ever seen.....a true digital tulip at these prices (and poised to go much higher).

This is Nasdaq, October 1999. It's so very difficult to predict how irrational the exuberance will become. The feedback loop will likely accelerate this thing over the next couple of weeks. We will probably start seeing dizzying gains each day (20%, 30%, 50%, etc) with little selling.

When the buyers dry up and all the big holders sense we've topped, wow.......wow.......it's going to be amazing.

Yes, chart porn.

Oh, this is a full-blown bubble. I am finished calling tops. This could now go into the 1000s. Asian gamblers (and perhaps some Russians) could push this to bizarre heights.

Many, many Asian gamblers are buying in with little knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of bitcoin. They think they can double and triple their money. If this frenzy continues or gets bigger, which it could, they could easily push this to bizarre heights....

As I said in another post (I believe in BitcoinTate's original prediction post), the best thing for speculators who want bitcoin to go up, up, up, is not a big mover to come in and start buying indiscriminately, it's for 1000s of small buyers who are using fun money to essentially gamble with bitcoin.

Don't be so simplistic with your bull/bears nonsense.

I own bitcoins. I am involved in bitcoin related start-ups. I love the utility of bitcoin and do believe it is an innovative platform that heralds something big (bitcoin, or something similar).

I am a former bull. I now think this could now easily go higher ($1000s, $5000s), which I suppose is a bullish statement. However, I am not delusional. There are bears, bulls, and wild hyenas. The hyenas have taken over the asylum. I would have loved to have seen a steady rise in bitcoin throughout the year. I hope I'm wrong and this is a 'snowball' as some have said. I was looking for a steady gain throughout 2013.....

I've seen this before and I tend to underestimate the exuberance of the masses. Even in 1999 (I was very young but trading), I knew we were in a bubble but that didn't mean I didn't profit from it. The people who got wiped out were the true believers, the ones who thought we were going up forever. Know that this is not some kind of 'new normal'. Be a bull, but don't be a stupid bull. Know that this cannot last forever. It works until it doesn't, and then there is a day of reckoning. Have your day in the sun but know that there will be night.

There is no way to know when the Asian gamblers will get tapped out.....