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[Namworld]

Just a few things that might be interesting to notice.

If we check the average trend over a long period, Bitcoin is on an upward trend. I believe Bitcoins are worth more than the shown average trend, but the current price has very recently skyrocketed for no apparent reason. There has been very little asks depth these last few weeks.


Some have pointed out more transactions, more adoption, as a main factor:
http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

But I'd like to point out SatoshiDice is becoming more and more popular and now represents the majority of transactions, and money is mostly moving back and forth between SD and the user, in very small amounts per transactions. Even so, the actual output transacted has declined steeply and the estimated transacted volume has been quite stable, although on the rise slightly:
http://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume
http://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume

Another sign that adoption is slow, albeit steadily going upward.

There seems to be an incredibly high amount of:
"Bitcoins can only go up"
"We'll all be filthy rich"
"You can always sell it for more to someone else"

The price is up quite a lot without any real massive growth for the economy/services providers backing the Bitcoin economy with useful purchase opportunities.

As far as long-term I think Bitcoins will rise in price, right now I have yet to see any good justification to the current Bitcoin price other than people witholding selling BTC because the price keeps rising and buying more BTC speculatively.

"Bitcoin can only go up, there's massive adoption!"

The only massive adoption I see is Bitcoins getting sold more and more as everyone sees the price going up. Not for services nor anything. Just to make a profit.

Bubble pretty much?

(I remain long on Bitcoins for long-term (span of a few years). Short term? Bearish. I don't that price is CURRENTLY sustainable.)

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[FreeMoney]

"4 years and bitcoins are still awesome" should be an option.

[Namworld]

"4 years and bitcoins are still awesome" should be an option.

Hahaha, added it for you =P

[BitcoinRate.com]

Feeling the same as you - Bubble now, but long on the long term.

[Kupsi]

Some have pointed out more transactions, more adoption, as a main factor:
http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

But I'd like to point out SatoshiDice is becoming more and more popular and now represents the majority of transactions, and money is mostly moving back and forth between SD and the user, in very small amounts per transactions. Even so, the actual output transacted has declined steeply and the estimated transacted volume has been quite stable, although on the rise slightly:
http://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume
http://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume

Why don't you look at the important charts?

Number of transactions excluding popular addresses (excluding Satoshi dice) 12 weeks average:

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=84&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Estimated USD Transaction Volume 12 weeks average:

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=84&scale=0&address=

[Namworld]

Why don't you look at the important charts?

Number of transactions excluding popular addresses (excluding Satoshi dice) 12 weeks average:

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=84&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Estimated USD Transaction Volume 12 weeks average:

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=84&scale=0&address=

The USD estimated transaction volume multiplies the traded amounts by the current price. Which means increased "transacted" volume when people move bitcoins around. There's plenty of services which give dynamic addresses for deposit then move it to another address, doubling the transacted volumes.

Yes there's growth, but I wouldn't be surprised if those represented the growing amount of small speculators buying bitcoins.

Can you show ANY services which are getting large growth, other than wallet services/bitcoin sellers?

[Kupsi]

The USD estimated transaction volume multiplies the traded amounts by the current price. Which means increased "transacted" volume when people move bitcoins around. There's plenty of services which give dynamic addresses for deposit then move it to another address, doubling the transacted volumes.

Yes, but those services were doubling the transaction volume before too. You have to look at the USD value transferred, not number of bitcoins transferred. There are only 10,777,825 bitcoins, so there is a practical limit of how many that can be transferred every day.

Yes there's growth, but I wouldn't be surprised if those represented the growing amount of small speculators buying bitcoins.

That is adoption.

Can you show ANY services which are getting large growth, other than wallet services/bitcoin sellers?

SatoshiDice and Silk Road.

[Namworld]

I don't know much about the SR situation, but SatoshiDice hasn't seen that much increase in business. Maybe a bit from a large player who played for about two months.

As for the amount of bitcoins moving, I think quite the opposite. The more they move daily, the more stable the price. The USD value can be tricky if you can't distinguish if the transaction is part of a true transfer of value or just coins moving around without changing hands.

As for:

Yes there's growth, but I wouldn't be surprised if those represented the growing amount of small speculators buying bitcoins.

That is adoption.

That would not be sustainable adoption, just growth from speculators. If that's the case, then they're only interested in the price rising and it ought to go the other way around.

[Kupsi]

I don't know much about the SR situation, but SatoshiDice hasn't seen that much increase in business. Maybe a bit from a large player who played for about two months.

But I'd like to point out SatoshiDice is becoming more and more popular and now represents the majority of transactions, and money is mostly moving back and forth between SD and the user, in very small amounts per transactions.

[Namworld]

I don't know much about the SR situation, but SatoshiDice hasn't seen that much increase in business. Maybe a bit from a large player who played for about two months.

But I'd like to point out SatoshiDice is becoming more and more popular and now represents the majority of transactions, and money is mostly moving back and forth between SD and the user, in very small amounts per transactions.

SatoshiDice is responsible for millions of BTC in transaction volume but only made ~60k since they opened for business.

Check their business volume. It doesn't explain such a raise. People should lose on average 1.8% of bets. That's a few 100k USD at best to replace and it's been like that for some time. Bets on SatoshiDice are even on the decline right now. Whale exhausted his few 10ks of BTC and there's been almost no betting in the last 2 weeks. But Coinbase still sells and sells and sells. What are all these bitcoins suddenly needed for?

[Vandroiy]

I think one can identify bubble behavior from online posts alone.

Bubble behavior may weaken the quality of adoption! Educated people will detect the bubble behavior and refrain from entering the market; busts scare away the common man afterward! The 2011 bubble was quite damaging for Bitcoin's reputation. People named "unstable exchange rate" as a negative point of Bitcoin, called it a pump-and-dump scheme, you know how these things go.

I'm personally not a fan of random buzz. I hate "there is no such thing as bad publicity". These things aim at the trendy idiot audiences. Bitcoin should try to stay professional to be able to set a stable foot in finance. That has failed every single time. Look at the track record!



The '11 bubble, exchange hacks, shorting mania, "service" wallet hacks, leverage mania with flash crash, lending mania with Ponzis, now it looks like we're in for an echo bubble! Can you blame people for not taking us seriously?

[humanitee]

Just a few things that might be interesting to notice.

If we check the average trend over a long period, Bitcoin is on an upward trend. I believe Bitcoins are worth more than the shown average trend, but the current price has very recently skyrocketed for no apparent reason. There has been very little asks depth these last few weeks.


Some have pointed out more transactions, more adoption, as a main factor:
http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

But I'd like to point out SatoshiDice is becoming more and more popular and now represents the majority of transactions, and money is mostly moving back and forth between SD and the user, in very small amounts per transactions. Even so, the actual output transacted has declined steeply and the estimated transacted volume has been quite stable, although on the rise slightly:
http://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume
http://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume

Another sign that adoption is slow, albeit steadily going upward.

There seems to be an incredibly high amount of:
"Bitcoins can only go up"
"We'll all be filthy rich"
"You can always sell it for more to someone else"

The price is up quite a lot without any real massive growth for the economy/services providers backing the Bitcoin economy with useful purchase opportunities.

As far as long-term I think Bitcoins will rise in price, right now I have yet to see any good justification to the current Bitcoin price other than people witholding selling BTC because the price keeps rising and buying more BTC speculatively.

"Bitcoin can only go up, there's massive adoption!"

The only massive adoption I see is Bitcoins getting sold more and more as everyone sees the price going up. Not for services nor anything. Just to make a profit.

Bubble pretty much?

(I remain long on Bitcoins for long-term (span of a few years). Short term? Bearish. I don't that price is CURRENTLY sustainable.)

Yeah because we know so much about how many new merchants are on Bitpay. Go look at the Coinbase graph in the wall thread. ASIC's will allow more capital to flow in because the network will be 900x more secure.

The price is going up. When it tries to go down, incognito dollars are there to snatch'em up. Argue with it and rationalize it all you want, but it's defying the bears!

[sunnankar]

Can you show ANY services which are getting large growth, other than wallet services/bitcoin sellers?

Why do you think that is your business? And why do you think that those in possession of such knowledge would share it with you? How much are you willing to pay for such research and analysis?

I think the 200 day moving average of transaction fees paid in USD is a pretty good representation of Bitcoin usage and adoption; because it represents an actual economic loss.

And if you do not have knowledge or information on who is using Bitcoin; can you imagine how annoying it must be to the CIA/FBI and others that have access to all the credit card and banking system data? Think of the information asymmetry they have in being able to front run markets, etc. Them, and you, being in the dark about the economic activity sure removes a lot of power.

[Namworld]

Those fees are small, maybe 30k per month to replace. And don't forget the transaction fee required by miners increased a lot after the reward halving and SatoshiDice.

The fees could still correlate to simply the value of those fees in USD increasing with price and SatoshiDice/Miners transaction fees increase.

Here's a moving average over the last year


Here's an economic bubble chart:

Can you show ANY services which are getting large growth, other than wallet services/bitcoin sellers?

Why do you think that is your business? And why do you think that those in possession of such knowledge would share it with you? How much are you willing to pay for such research and analysis?

I think the 200 day moving average of transaction fees paid in USD is a pretty good representation of Bitcoin usage and adoption; because it represents an actual economic loss.

And if you do not have knowledge or information on who is using Bitcoin; can you imagine how annoying it must be to the CIA/FBI and others that have access to all the credit card and banking system data? Think of the information asymmetry they have in being able to front run markets, etc. Them, and you, being in the dark about the economic activity sure removes a lot of power.

Yeah, that's the thing, I don't see anyone buying other than for the hype, and I don't think anyone who would have such information should be required to share it. I'm proposing that no one has such information. No information anywhere disclosed, but plenty of people buying on the thought that someone must have information somewhere since all bitcoins keep getting bought.

People want to be rich overnight. Not going to happen. Even for shares in companies which appreciated greatly, it took years. Having part of the economy moving into Bitcoins will also be slow. Bitcoin is quick to transact, but that doesn't make business quick to switch. I remain long on Bitcoins in the long term, but the current price is out of whack.

I call for a price of 16-18 USD/BTC max, which should be where we'd be at weren't it for the parabolic curve we've entered out of nowhere.