You might want to sue Wall Street too--DJIA is down over 200 points today and will slide further if it breaches 17,000.

A miner's ultimate incentive is the block reward which requires the survival and adoption of Bitcoin so that the reward can actually be worth something. A solution that causes investors to panic and devalue Bitcoin is not one that they would logically adopt.

About 12% of nodes are running XT with zero blocks mined.

If this number doesn't start rising XT will be DOA, Bitcoin will have worked as intended, and Gavin/Mike will have egg on their face for unnecessarily causing a rift and spooking the market.

I support a block size increase but not something as contentious as XT. There has to be a better solution.

Personally I think this will blow over soon and better solutions will be found.

Seems like a logical approach with the moving average (simple or exponential) dictating the average block size. Any reasons why this might not work?

Oh Jorge, Lambie and all the other regulars who come out when sentiment is low... you know you make excellent buying indicators. Your psychological responses which cause an irresistible desire to discredit Bitcoin are so predictable.

"Price crashing... sentiment low... must... discredit Bitcoin... cannot focus... on work... secretly... jealous... gaaaahhhh"

So where in the cycle do you buy? For the prudent investor it is not during a bull market. Instead he watches for the market to bottom out and give evidence of accumulation. There are technical ways to predict bottoms but they are not well known, (and TA gets dismissed as voodoo around here anyway )

That leaves the average investor in a conundrum. Buy now or wait for lower prices that are not guaranteed? Obviously during the past down cycle waiting would have been prudent, but what if the price had gone into a new bubble May/June 2014? It totally could have but it didn't. What if Gox hadn't failed? Everyone who waited would be stuck buying back at higher prices.

The longer we stay in this range with $200-$220 as a bottom the less chance we will go below. This is because of the effect supply absorption has on the market--it prevents it from making new lows and quality absorption causes higher lows and declining trade volume--the market eventually becomes dull as selling and trading grind to a halt. Because of this activity I see on the charts, I'm a buyer at $225 every time.

If you were waiting for sub $200, that was your chance. With these buying opportunities comes low sentiment (which is why everyone wants to wait for lower prices that won't come) and they tend to last for days rather than weeks with the opportunity for really cheap coins (at the apex of the crash) lasting for minutes or hours. That is where the biggest traders build positions, during the big sell climaxes, but it is hidden to the public who are distracted with scary red bars.

"But we could slide lower due to the XT drama!" you say. That is not necessarily true. The Finex cascade ran so many stops and caused so much panic selling that if those traders and holders come to their senses and want back in, they must buy back, and do so in a market that has been stripped of sellers. The longer the market sits steady at this price, the more price will edge higher as this happens.

Down slightly, then up. Catching a short here is dangerous.

If the longs are well-financed, it will take a dip to $100 or below to call them. You really think bearwhale will risk taking out another $3 million short? Everyone thought the sky was falling after $166 yet the best trade would have been long from there. I longed at $180 when everyone was crying about the end of Bitcoin. Great counter-sentiment trade.

Sell climaxes are meant to unnerve investors and encourage shorts in inexperienced traders.

My mistake; looks like he covered into the cascade. Probably got some nice $200 coins too and plenty of USD

A bullish market is one that resists repeated tests of lows on declining volume. That means selling has dried up at that level and is when traders buy--not during bullish moves (that's when they sell).

The market capitulated in January. That's where the big volume came in to start the ownership transfer of the supply float. The six months that followed showed higher lows and declining volume and volatility--evidence of accumulation. The swing traders and shorters were long gone by May and the market became dull until the strong rally in July. That rally happening after the dull period is an important signal that most of the float had been locked up, waiting for higher prices. I agree that last night was not capitulation, rather a shakeout that retested the same January lows on low volume. It's meant to dislodge even more supply by unnerving investors, trap the remaining bears and remove selling before a move out of the trading range.

Once you understand how the large market operators work you can make more sense of what the market is doing outside of technical indicators. It gives you context. The point to understand about last night is that it was a small group that caused this cascade under the guise of the XT drama--bad news tends to shake the market out and they know it. to Once the drama blows over a bit the market should be poised for a big move up.

Would you go long here? (It's the weekly chart in reverse that someone posted on reddit.)

No they don't. Oscillators and RSI are way oversold on large timeframes. Maybe we'll get a retest of lows, but it'll probably be a higher low.

When you get climactic action to the downside like this and the bars close way above the lows, that means the market found high quality buying at that level and is an indication of strength. Market weakness is found on green bars near the tops of rallies, where the volume either trails off or you get high volume on narrow bars (evidence of high volume selling entering). That's when you short--not here after climactic action to the downside which removes all the selling.

A lot of people will disagree with you.

If you study historical charts of stocks, bonds and commodities they exhibit randomness, yes, but the structures do repeat and are always from the same playbook--a playbook of how humans react to price action. The fact that this doesn't change is why markets peak and crash similarly over and over again throughout history. The names and players may change, but the principles of speculation do not.

What happened a year or a month ago is absolutely critical in determining the future trend, because those trends set up a supply and demand imbalance. So on every timescale, each wave in the market sets up the next wave--ignoring the past is ridiculous.

A slow grind to $200 or below won't happen unless there are sellers to bring it there. That $3 million short on Finex won't happen again, and he may cover at some point. Scary, climactic action, even if a flash crash (and especially one near the end of a trough accumulation zone) has the effect of removing most of the sellers and remaining weak hands from the market. What kind of move do you think this sets up the market for?

After the Silk Road panic there was no secondary test, just a brief higher low. Consider at which  point of the price cycle this is happening.

The volume signature of this crash is low when compared to January. That would indicate there's not much more supply below $200 to be had--a classic shakeout/bear trap to end accumulation.

We've also been through multiple panics and crashes... "this time it's different..." Well it never is.

Historically you buy crashes. I'm buying at this price. Also bought some futures contracts.

Bitcoin offers a discount and nobody shows up. Sounds like a bottom to me.

You registered at the top of the November 2013 bubble. I think you've seen despair after that unraveling.  

Also, there's no rule that says there has to be x amount of palpable weeping and wailing for capitulation. If the selling climax is of big enough volume, supply and demand take care of the rest.

I think XT won't be happening given the market uncertainty it caused.

Currently zero percent of the miner vote.

http://xtnodes.com/

Grab those those coins boys!

My withdraw still says "processing"

Any updates, BFX team?

He was pimping Monero for a long time and had (has?) a huge stake in it. Last I saw he was working on Cryptokingdom, an RPG with a built in altcoin. It just annoys me seeing smart and charismatic people use their talent to take money from the gullible, but I suppose the world works like that on many levels--they should just be run for office and be done with it

So he's attempting to drum up business for his wallet software by crippling the same network on which his wallet software depends and angering his potential userbase.

Yeah, great idea Coinwallet 

Trading is easy in hindsight as markets can do anything at anytime. That's why it's more about managing risk/protecting profits than being able to predict great moves.

A short from $300 looks amazing now but it's extremely difficult to do in the moment. And if we slingshot up from here in a few days, a long today would look amazing in hindsight. But what if it doesn't? Maybe we skid to $240 and go up from there. How does one plan for each possible scenario? You can't really. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are a trader's worst enemy.

Also, careful about being the charismatic great predictor. You'll gain a huge following then lose credibility the one time you're wrong. Just ask rpietila leading his newb army into Monero and whatever other go-nowhere altcoin project he was working on.

Hie brings up some good points. The positive is that if there's a sliver of doubt, XT will not come to fruition and the consensus mechanism will have worked as intended. 75% of miners will not vote for a change that has even a 1% chance to undermine Bitcoin.

Technically speaking, I'm a buyer at these prices. The 200 day MA as support is my entry zone for a nice long if it holds.