Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[octaft]

No, the point has gone over your head. Forced charity is not charity. Involuntary wealth redistribution is not efficient because the victims resist and evade. Wealth is destroyed in the process making everyone poorer. The size of the pie is just as important as the fraction of the slice. You don't seem to care about the poor and needy nearly as much as you care that I might possibly spend my money as I see fit and not as you think I should.

You spend your money your way and I spend my money my way. That's agreeing to disagree, but when you advocate theft against me, that makes you my adversary.

If your painfully obvious, self serving points ever did actually go over my head, I might have to kill myself for being so stupid. Thanks for the talking head commentary, care to add something useful?

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[octaft]

What is involuntary about it? It says "let's say you COULD," not "what if the rules changed." It's a voluntary option to get out of paying taxes, and I think it does a pretty good job of simulating what it would be like if we relied on voluntary contributions. The thing is, you all say that support will come from voluntary contributions, but when it comes time to actually, you know, contribute, all of you will be passing the buck. It's because it's not about the ideal, it's about the money, so stop bullshitting and acting like it's not. If the government charged no taxes, I assume a lot of you would care much less about getting rid of it.

Doublespeak at its finest. You have to pay taxes or an alternative that we're not going to call taxes? You should be a politician.

Please avoid the point that you will not be donating to charities voluntarily (and will be instead passing the buck) some more.

[billyjoeallen]

Governments aren't corrupt. People are corrupt. Why do so many people think getting rid of the government gets rid of corruption? All it does is changes where it takes place.

For comparison, let's look at getting rid of ALL guns. What happens? Does murder stop, or do we only see a sudden jump in the number of stabbing deaths? I argue the latter.

Nobody is suggesting corruption can be eliminated, but corruption is less profitable when power is distributed. Democracy is an attempt to distribute power. We just want to take it a few steps farther.

[billyjoeallen]

What is involuntary about it? It says "let's say you COULD," not "what if the rules changed." It's a voluntary option to get out of paying taxes, and I think it does a pretty good job of simulating what it would be like if we relied on voluntary contributions. The thing is, you all say that support will come from voluntary contributions, but when it comes time to actually, you know, contribute, all of you will be passing the buck. It's because it's not about the ideal, it's about the money, so stop bullshitting and acting like it's not. If the government charged no taxes, I assume a lot of you would care much less about getting rid of it.

Doublespeak at its finest. You have to pay taxes or an alternative that we're not going to call taxes? You should be a politician.

Please avoid the point that you will not be donating to charities voluntarily (and will be instead passing the buck) some more.

That's what your worried about? Free riders? You don't think we have free riders now? When were there ever not free riders?

[Richy_T]

What is involuntary about it? It says "let's say you COULD," not "what if the rules changed." It's a voluntary option to get out of paying taxes, and I think it does a pretty good job of simulating what it would be like if we relied on voluntary contributions. The thing is, you all say that support will come from voluntary contributions, but when it comes time to actually, you know, contribute, all of you will be passing the buck. It's because it's not about the ideal, it's about the money, so stop bullshitting and acting like it's not. If the government charged no taxes, I assume a lot of you would care much less about getting rid of it.

Doublespeak at its finest. You have to pay taxes or an alternative that we're not going to call taxes? You should be a politician.

Please avoid the point that you will not be donating to charities voluntarily (and will be instead passing the buck) some more.

Boom, strawman.

And if having government force others to support your moral judgements isn't passing the buck, I don't know what is.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Billyjoeallen has the point go right over his head. Shocker.

My question is a test to see who cares about their ideals and who is just greedy. Judging by your response, it's all about the money for you, which suggests to me your odds of willfully giving anything to charity are extremely low. If that is the case, why should I believe your ridiculous "support through voluntary charity" argument. You clearly don't.

Your question is flawed because it substitutes involuntary action with involuntary action. A question such as "how much do you think you would contribute to charity if you were untaxed" would perhaps be more illuminating (though useless for totally different reasons)

What is involuntary about it? It says "let's say you COULD," not "what if the rules changed." It's a voluntary option to get out of paying taxes, and I think it does a pretty good job of simulating what it would be like if we relied on voluntary contributions. The thing is, you all say that support will come from voluntary contributions, but when it comes time to actually, you know, contribute, all of you will be passing the buck. It's because it's not about the ideal, it's about the money, so stop bullshitting and acting like it's not. If the government charged no taxes, I assume a lot of you would care much less about getting rid of it.

It's only the statists that insist it is "all about the money" ... you know, the ones for who it really is all about the money because they've got their gaping maws shoved under the sipgot, getting their free lunch.

[octaft]

What is involuntary about it? It says "let's say you COULD," not "what if the rules changed." It's a voluntary option to get out of paying taxes, and I think it does a pretty good job of simulating what it would be like if we relied on voluntary contributions. The thing is, you all say that support will come from voluntary contributions, but when it comes time to actually, you know, contribute, all of you will be passing the buck. It's because it's not about the ideal, it's about the money, so stop bullshitting and acting like it's not. If the government charged no taxes, I assume a lot of you would care much less about getting rid of it.

Doublespeak at its finest. You have to pay taxes or an alternative that we're not going to call taxes? You should be a politician.

Please avoid the point that you will not be donating to charities voluntarily (and will be instead passing the buck) some more.

That's what your worried about? Free riders? You don't think we have free riders now? When were there ever not free riders?

Free riders currently are free riders because they can't afford to pay. In your world, free riders will be free riders because they don't want to help.

You still haven't answered the question: Will you, or will you not be donating to charities voluntarily in your world? I'm assuming the answer is no, and you will be passing the buck, mainly because if it wasn't, you likely would have rammed that fact so far up my ass I'd be tasting your thoughts by now.

[JorgeStolfi]

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Tuesday Mar/11

Two predictions for today:

Predictions valid for: Tuesday 2014-03-11, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)

Huobi's predicted price for bulls: 4073 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price for bulls: 679 USD.

Huobi's predicted price for bears: 3597 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price for bears: 600 USD.

Huobi

The red and green strokes are actual Huobi hourly prices.  The current predictions are the rightmost magenta squares.  The blue square is the last prediction (see below), and the light blue-gray squares are the previous ones.  The orange and grey dots are the Slumber Points, the mean Huobi prices at 19:00 UTC every day.  Each point is a Glyptodon if the hourly volume V_h for 19:00--19:59 UTC is less than 0.005 times the daily volume V_d 00:00--23:59 UTC; and is an Albertosaurus otherwise. The grey lines are trends fitted a posteriori to the Glyptodon Points. The orange lines are the trends that were assumed for the predictions. The Germanodactyl and Ophtalmosaurus indicate which direction is up and which is down, respectively.

By the arbitrary criterion I have been using, today was defintely an Albertosaurus (V_h/V_d = 682/95100 = 0.00717 > 0.005).  However, volume in the preceding hour 18:00--18:59 (02:00--02:59) was only 274 BTC, so it should have been a Glyptodon.

Anyway, since by the rules today's point is not a valid datum, we again have no clear trend.  In order to fill what would otherwise be a huge blank space on the forum's page, I considered two straight-line trends p(d) = A+B*(d-d0), where d is the day of the month: the least-squares line fitted to the last five Glyptodons (Mar/04--06,08--09; A = 4022.56, B = -60.63, d0 = 4), and the traight line through the last two (Mar/08--09; A = 3668, B = +135, d0 = 8 ).

Bitstamp

The red and green strokes are actual Bitstamp hourly prices.  The dots, dinosaurs, mammals, lines, and magenta squares are Huobi's Slumber Points, dinosaurs, mammals, trends, and new predictions, scaled by the currency conversion factor R (6.40 for Feb/07--09, 6.00 since Mar/04, and 6.12 for all other dates).

Checking the previous prediction

Since today was an Albertosaurus, the prediction is officially void.  But, just for the curious:

Prediction was posted on: Monday 2014-03-10, 01:47 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Monday 2014-03-10, 19:00--19:59 UTC

Huobi's predicted price: 3938 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3784 CNY
Error: 154 CNY (~26 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 656 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 619 USD
Error: 37 USD

NOTE: These predictions are guaranteed to be correct only in some parallel universes.  Be sure you choose the right one.

EDIT: fixed a "d0 = 8 )" that accidentally turned into a "d0 = "

[JorgeStolfi]

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):

EDIT: Volumes of Huobi and OKCoin were swapped.


             !    Mon !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !                      
  EXCHANGE   !  03/03 !  03/04 !  03/05 !  03/06 !  03/07 !  03/08 !  03/09 !  03/10 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp   |  64.91 |  28.03 |  12.72 |  10.40 |  21.45 |   9.70 |   9.12 |  13.40 | USD                  
  BitFinEx   |  50.92 |  25.03 |   8.38 |   7.06 |  17.23 |  10.97 |   8.29 |  11.60 | USD                  
  BTC-e      |  41.71 |  28.83 |  11.19 |   5.69 |  13.54 |   8.71 |   6.52 |   7.16 | USD,EUR,RUR          
  Kraken     |   2.82 |   1.81 |   0.87 |   0.71 |   1.20 |   0.55 |   0.64 |   0.57 | EUR                  
  Bitcoin.DE |   1.34 |   1.02 |   0.40 |   0.34 |   0.38 |   0.31 |   0.20 |   0.39 | EUR                  
  CaVirtEx   |   0.55 |   0.33 |   0.22 |   0.22 |   0.24 |   0.12 |   0.15 |   0.13 | CAD                  
  CampBX     |   0.28 |   0.14 |   0.04 |   0.03 |   0.07 |   0.03 |   0.02 |   0.05 | USD                  

  SUBTOTAL   | 162.53 |  85.19 |  33.82 |  24.45 |  54.11 |  30.39 |  24.94 |  33.30 |                      

  OKCoin     | 126.48 | 137.35 | 286.05 | 139.37 | 109.70 | 146.46 | 136.24 | 119.00 | CNY                  
  Huobi      | 253.71 | 268.47 | 196.00 |  92.40 |  96.37 | 119.46 | 103.51 |  95.10 | CNY                  
  BTC-China  |  16.59 |  15.36 |   8.04 |   5.58 |   4.87 |   5.08 |   4.24 |   3.34 | CNY                  
  Bter       |   0.67 |   0.64 |   0.31 |   0.32 |   0.32 |   0.28 |   0.21 |   0.27 | CNY                  

  SUBTOTAL   | 397.45 | 421.82 | 490.40 | 237.67 | 211.26 | 271.28 | 244.20 | 217.71 |                      

  TOTAL      | 559.98 | 507.01 | 524.22 | 262.12 | 265.37 | 301.67 | 269.14 | 251.01 |                      


All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

[JorgeStolfi]

Total trade volume today (Mon Mar/10 00:00--23:59 UTC) in the exchnges that I monitor was ~251 kBTC, which is 7% less than yesterday's and 55% less than last Monday's.

Trade volume outside China increased  34% over yesterday (from 25 to 33 kBTC).  The leaders are still Bitstamp (13.4 kBTC), Bitfinex (11.6) and BTC-e (7.16).

Trade volume in China decreased 11%. OKCoin retains its advantage over Huobi (55% of the Chinese volume against 44%).

China's slice of the total volume fell from 91% to 87%.

[billyjoeallen]

What is involuntary about it? It says "let's say you COULD," not "what if the rules changed." It's a voluntary option to get out of paying taxes, and I think it does a pretty good job of simulating what it would be like if we relied on voluntary contributions. The thing is, you all say that support will come from voluntary contributions, but when it comes time to actually, you know, contribute, all of you will be passing the buck. It's because it's not about the ideal, it's about the money, so stop bullshitting and acting like it's not. If the government charged no taxes, I assume a lot of you would care much less about getting rid of it.

Doublespeak at its finest. You have to pay taxes or an alternative that we're not going to call taxes? You should be a politician.

Please avoid the point that you will not be donating to charities voluntarily (and will be instead passing the buck) some more.

That's what your worried about? Free riders? You don't think we have free riders now? When were there ever not free riders?

Free riders currently are free riders because they can't afford to pay. In your world, free riders will be free riders because they don't want to help.

You still haven't answered the question: Will you, or will you not be donating to charities voluntarily in your world? I'm assuming the answer is no, and you will be passing the buck, mainly because if it wasn't, you likely would have rammed that fact so far up my ass I'd be tasting your thoughts by now.

oh really? So corporate welfare is not free riding or do you think they can't afford to pay either? Billionaire I.P. monopolists like software companies, movie studios and music moguls who use my tax money to enforce their copyright, trademark and patent claims aren't also free riders?

so I'm either ramming my charitable deeds up your ass or I'm uncharitable. I can't win with you, can I? The truth is you need to think I'm a contemptible person because that justifies stealing from me. This is the kind of dynamic that Statism engenders. It's a counter-civilization force. This is not civil discourse.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[shmadz]

whoa, it's gotten quite heated in here.

I just wanted to drop my favourite bit from all this drama, below.

-----------------
<snip>

Inevitable, the suicide of the state needs to be managed.  If the state is willing and able to scorch the earth to protect itself from all disruptive organic change, then there will be a sharp structural break, inevitably, which will be very costly in human terms.  Much better if either the state is co-opted to serve the people and stop crushing them, to live on as an entity enlightened by its past mistakes, and its failures in this range are met with substantial decentralized measures to ameliorate its failures and mitigate its damage.

There is a powerful and well-resourced globalist oligarchy, which is becoming increasingly organized, and will fight for further centralization, because it is easier to strangle one neck than 7 billion necks.  It will use the decay of the nation-state as a stepping-stone to global governance.  If you think the drama of the nation state in the 20th century was nasty, just wait until there are no exits.  Much better to gradually supplant the functions of the nation-state with more local autonomous solutions (local in the sense of communities of aligned interests, whether geographic, economic, ideological, or cultural) which deal efficiently with the problems than to let a power-vacuum arise in which a spectacularly centralized interest becomes the emperor of all.

Those 2 paragraphs pretty much sum up my point on the matter.

I look at bitcoin and the rise of decentralization as a path to the future that might not have to include world war 3.


about the discussion about many small states vs fewer larger ones? I think that smaller groups mean more empathy, and more personal incentive to have a productive roll in the community. centralized, profit schemes like wall street means less empathy, you don't know or care who you're fucking over.

[Yololintian]

Volume on Huobi is much lower than normal right now

[shmadz]

Volume on Huobi is much lower than normal right now

always seems to be a calm before the storm...

[theonewhowaskazu]

All these people that say that they like charity fail to take into account one simple fact: The US Government has to be about the single most inefficient charitable organization in the history of existence.

Also, if they like charity so much, then why dont they (and others like them) provide the necessary donations, if they're so sure that you won't. The answer is, because they think that you'll end up contributing more than they will, or that they'll get something out of the bargain as well.

This is why a socialist state is fundamentally unsustainable, because everybody wants someone else to be putting in more than them. So, in order for everybody to be satisfied, money has to come from thin air. Some states have chosen to steal from others to come up with this, but the US has chosen to borrow.

[KeyserSoze]

Yes. Perhaps I don't care that I don't have good access to roads if I can telecommute and Jeff Bezos will drone my groceries in.

So you'd like to return to pre-Roman times with no roads AND you want us to take that argument as serious?

Not at all what I said and not even simply a poor representation of what I said. I'm disappointed in you.

My point is that other solutions may be more optimal but we are locked into "roads roads roads" by government action. Perhaps we would all have flying cars or 300mph underground vacuum tubes or something.

I understood and I don't take your flying car argument seriously. We have roads because they were/are incredibly important to commerce. We don't have tolls every 100 yards because its impractical. When and if we get to a point we don't need roads, bring this silly argument back up.

[billyjoeallen]

All these people that say that they like charity fail to take into account one simple fact: The US Government has to be about the single most inefficient charitable organization in the history of existence.

Also, if they like charity so much, then why dont they (and others like them) provide the necessary donations, if they're so sure that you won't. The answer is, because they think that you'll end up contributing more than they will, or that they'll get something out of the bargain as well.

This is why a socialist state is fundamentally unsustainable, because everybody wants someone else to be putting in more than them. So, in order for everybody to be satisfied, money has to come from thin air. Some states have chosen to steal from others to come up with this, but the US has chosen to borrow.

Government borrowing is stealing. The loans come with promises to repay by taxing future generations. Talk about taxation without representation. Borrowing is popular because children don't vote.

[stylin]

Lol at all the talk about paying taxes. One word boys and girls: Anarcho-capitalism (serious).





Anarcho-capitalism is one of two logical end-states, with the other being national socialism. Both are completely non-contradictory given their premises (freedom vs. control/safety). I personally don't agree with nat-soc but will acknowledge that it logically follows given its starting assumption.

Ancap seeks to socially apply many of the already-developed principles of economics. The premise of ancap is the non-aggression principle, thus it recognizes the inherent illegitimacy of all government. The problem most people have with ancap is that it necessitates suffering of the weak. If the US were to suddenly go ancap there would be a long period of the weak dying off, a "purge" if you will.... but what people don't understand is that the resulting society would be almost utopic.

I don't believe humanity will see ancap for hundreds of years - it is so far ahead of today's times that no doubt the vast majority of you reading this post will dismiss it. However, as long as we are below the technological Singularity and scarcity exists, ancap is the logical end state. We'll get there... even if it takes centuries of mistakes and rebuilding and mistakes and rebuilding.

The interesting thing about Bitcoin is that it is one of the first true ancap technologies. It makes sense, though - everything follows money and it's only logical that money should be the first to change.

[Richy_T]

I understood and I don't take your flying car argument seriously. We have roads because they were/are incredibly important to commerce. We don't have tolls every 100 yards because its impractical. When and if we get to a point we don't need roads, bring this silly argument back up.

Whose to say? There are other options in play at the moment, namely air and rail. Who knows what we would have by now if the government wasn't simultaneously distorting the market through subsidies and things like zoning while also burning large piles of cash on nonsense. Necessity is the mother of invention.