Some people need to learn how to use MtGox, they have more money than sense...

[Synapse_On_Slush]

http://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/547846_10100273758223734_1358617768_n.jpg

Buyers new to bitcoin are being tricked into placing orders for bitcoins (some huge ones) way above what they should be because of the "scaffolding" that people are using to prop-up the value. It's why we had that ridiculous rise earlier this week.

Here's a copy of what I said about this a couple days ago on Reddit:
( http://en.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bkubc/purposely_causing_lag/ )

"Someone (presumably the sellers) are inflating the price. New bitcoin users come to buy $500 worth of bitcoins on Mt.Gox and see the 'highest ask' / 'last' at say $135 which they take as the recommended price to bid at when if you take away all the "scaffolding" (the hundreds of asks for 0.01 BTC with increments of $0.025) it would actually be like $125.

Sadly the "newbie" bitcoin user doesn't know that the recommended ask price on mt.gox of $135 is actually erroneous and should really be much lower (such as $100 considering its nearly all "scaffolding"). So proper orders are being foolishly placed ontop of this "scaffolding". They end result being the newbies inadvertently, and independently peg up the price high. And so more scaffolding is build up on top of that.

It's a vicious cycle and wont stop until newbies learn to look at the deep market orders. Sadly MT.Gox keeps that hidden and unless you have half a brain and google for it you'll just take what mt.gox shows you and place a bid foolishly. (*source: I did this when I first bought some BTC :p)

p.s. "Scaffolding" is a term I invented last night after 4 hours of watching the price go up in huge jumps with only a few actual purchases of (> 20BTC) appearing between rises of $2 from empty 0.01BTC orders acting as inflatory filler."

Surely we should teach the new members of the community that they should look at Clark Moody or similar before making their first bid on MtGox. It's just causing unstable inflation and causes panic buying and then inevitable crashes as the demand is clearly much lower than the buys are being tricked into thinking it actually is.

Just my 0.00002 bitcoins.

[farlack]

BTC price went up that high 4 nights ago because of what was going on at btc-e.com

[sega01]

I've been around a while and I didn't even know that. What should I use to find a good sell order size that will happen fairly soon, but isn't as high as the inflated asking price?

Also, what website is that screenshot from?

I appreciate the information.

Thanks,
Teran

[Synapse_On_Slush]

Most people use:

http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/

And as a rule of thumb, if your buying 10+ BTC, don't try to bid above any offers of volume less than 2.1BTC.
(EDIT: I added the .1 as I've just noticed since posting this some of the "Scaffolders" have upped their offers to lots of 2.0BTC bids rather than 0.1)

If your buying 100 BTC, don't try to bid above any offers of volume less than 15-20BTC.

If your buying 1000BTC, don't try to bid above any offers of volume less than 100BTC.

The two guys in my screen shot had just put in orders for 300BTC and 1000BTC at $142, really they should have gone in around $138. It was at $138 for the last 12 hours and as soon as they did that we've now been around the low $140s ever since. It's entirely their fault for the price rise lol. You can see a big green bar on the graph at the exact point their two trades happened.

Lastly, don't get into a bidding war with someone unless there really is a good reason in the news or something that you suspect the price to increase very soon and so you're actually wanting to buy FAST. Just put in your offer and and wait a while (an hour maybe). If nothing happens, raise your offer a bit.

Final point, the Mt.Gox trading floors in the (US and UK at least) have been extremely quiet the last 48 hours. I get the feeling maybe everyone is a bit scared of buying or something because of the big drop. So take that into consideration if you are trying to buy right now, it's very quiet so could take a while for someone to come along who's wanting to sell their bitcoins.

After all, it's a negotiation. You are supposed to barter/haggle The bigger your order (number of bitcoins your wanting to buy) the bigger your negotiating power

[Synapse_On_Slush]

I believe this weeks 40% price rise was caused by the sudden mass media advertising bitcoin as the current "get rich quick" scheme which led to an influx of people not familiar with Clark Moody etc. just sending money to Mt.Gox, waiting the 2-4 days for the wire transfer (which for us in the UK for example makes perfect sense as the price rise started about 3 days after Sky News did 24hour reporting on Bitcoin) and then being fooled by the "scaffolding" trick which made each new buyer put in offers to pay $2 above what the last REAL buyer offered. So each new buyer increased the price by $2 a time. The rise from $115 to $145 was done by only a hand full of actual trades with a total volume of very little.

And then the DDOS happened at $145 as some tricksters wanted to make people panic sell so the price would crash down and they could make a nice profit. The DDOS seems to happen every week between wed-friday (at least for the last 3 weeks anyway).

Oh, and this DDOS was particularly bad as the whole world+dog was going onto the mt.gox website to look at the pretty graph every 5 seconds to watch the price sky rocket. Good thing mt.gox switched their graph for a boring picture lol. Should make it less exciting and demanding on their servers for non-bitcoin users who just like the 'lurk' and check the price.

[vongesell]

What are the chances that this is happening due to the UI choices at MTGox's trade window? I've had to walk a few new buyers through the hoops and explain to them it is unwise to just take the default rate mtgox gives you in that window when you buy. Perhaps it would be sound to either remove the default, change it based on wanted volume or do something similar to bitcoin-24 where you have no value by default and get the current value you when click "buy instantly".

[Synapse_On_Slush]

That's exactly what I've been thinking. I'm just not sure what's the best way to send a suggestion to Mt.Gox. I imagine if I just email their customer services my message will just get lost.

It should be a fairly simple solution, one I thought of is to show a small 3 row table such as:

Bid Price,   Sum of volume above that price
$135.22,   0.1 btc
$134.37,   1.0 btc
$131.01,   10.0 btc

That way people can see quickly how much total volume a price range has and can make the decision that if they are buying 5 btc, then they should bid at say $132.

Your idea is better though, some kind of more intelligent recommendation based on the sum of volume. Or just not having a recommendation and showing the top 10 asks/bids (ignoring ones with volume < 1BTC maybe)

[vongesell]

It should be a fairly simple solution, one I thought of is to show a small 3 row table such as:

Bid Price,   Sum of volume above that price
$135.22,   0.1 btc
$134.37,   1.0 btc
$131.01,   10.0 btc

I agree this is sound trading defaults but I think considering the issue is that the current UI might create a bias by suggestion, better would be to remove the UI's bias rather than add a "more fare" one. Meaning, maybe its just better to remove the default and force users to think about what price they will bid at.

[Razick]

Thanks for the tips. I've used the depth chart in placing offers for awhile but this helps to explain it better.

[alexh]

There will always be some losers, even if the system gets easier and easier.

[MonkeyMarcel]

Just my 0.00002 bitcoins.

Thanx for saving me BTC

[Exocyst]

Are merchant trades not also helping to provide the liquid to drive these price increases? Personally, I like to use a large window VWAP to gauge my daily buying prices, and wait for MACD/Signal line crossovers, but the future troughs aren't much lower than previous peaks with such a steep incline.

The market is growing so quickly because there is very little reason to sell until the market caps off at a new equilibrium, which is probably somewhere closer to 1000/BTC by year's end. And every time a  government's like Cyprus starts taxing bank deposits or going bust, there will be a lot more buying pressure driving the bitcoin market up. After all, you can't practically store gold, silver, or platinum yourself unless you also can afford private security or big guns and lots of coffee (late nights staring at your gold stacks, gun tightly held). There's going to be some ups and downs, but BTC is still greatly undervalued because its portable, (semi)anonymous, and very easy to transact.