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

[HerrAndreas]

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 = .

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.

Ok at last indicators I understand. dinosaurs. thx for that.

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[theonewhowaskazu]

The main problem with ancap is that there's nothing preventing a violent gang (a new government if you will) from forming, because everyone else is being so peaceful, and if everyone else stops being peaceful, then it it isn't ancap any more - its just regular anarchy.

Ancap will only work if there is some force to stop people from conducting acts of violence, preferably some force that isn't corruptible. So, until we have open-source peacemaking enforcement droids no such utopia can exist.

[byronbb]

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.

So a little Hell on earth for the promise of Heaven? The Nazi's tried this already.

[Richy_T]

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.

Indeed.

'Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws.' - Mayer Amschel Rothschild

[shmadz]

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.

Indeed.

'Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws.' - Mayer Amschel Rothschild

slowclap

[Richy_T]

The main problem with ancap is that there's nothing preventing a violent gang (a new government if you will) from forming, because everyone else is being so peaceful, and if everyone else stops being peaceful, then it it isn't ancap any more - its just regular anarchy.

Ancap will only work if there is some force to stop people from conducting acts of violence, preferably some force that isn't corruptible. So, until we have open-source peacemaking enforcement droids no such utopia can exist.

That was the case many years ago when the nobility had castles, horses, swords and so forth and the peasants had pitchforks and sack cloths. And true to a degree currently where the government gets the most fun toys. But in a modern society, the people would have access to the same kinds of weapons as your gangs and the gangs would have a much harder time establishing any kind of footing. It's no accident that the American revolution occurred at a time when important changes in personal armaments were happening.


And after all, it's not like places with governments are exactly gang-free either. Especially where the citizenry are disarmed.

[JimboToronto]

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.

Nice chart. Reminds me of the old Political Compass.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Good to see Proudhon made the cut.  

[stylin]

The main problem with ancap is that there's nothing preventing a violent gang (a new government if you will) from forming, because everyone else is being so peaceful, and if everyone else stops being peaceful, then it it isn't ancap any more - its just regular anarchy.

Ancap will only work if there is some force to stop people from conducting acts of violence, preferably some force that isn't corruptible. So, until we have open-source peacemaking enforcement droids no such utopia can exist.

Once ancap becomes firmly established this will not be a problem, others will band together to defeat the "violent gang," if this "violent gang" happens to win it will simply be peaks and troughs of centralization vs decentralization settling on a long-term mean. Also, ancap doesn't require that every single person who owns land/property defend it himself, there will be large communities (perhaps even states) of trust where everybody acknowledges that it is to the betterment of the community to work together.

Ancap isn't feasible now mainly because the technology is hardly there to support it. Freedom of information, a transparent money trail, and the abolition of privacy (yes... I said it... too many libertarians clinging onto privacy, well the notion of social privacy is obsolete now, it is simply another element of human living that will be destroyed by civilization) must all be present for ancap to truly exist.

[JayJuanGee]

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.

These are  are real fantasy land examples, if you are of the belief that you could establish infrastructure and/or practices to accomplish either one of these without some kinds of community consensus (in other words govt-like input)

[theonewhowaskazu]

The main problem with ancap is that there's nothing preventing a violent gang (a new government if you will) from forming, because everyone else is being so peaceful, and if everyone else stops being peaceful, then it it isn't ancap any more - its just regular anarchy.

Ancap will only work if there is some force to stop people from conducting acts of violence, preferably some force that isn't corruptible. So, until we have open-source peacemaking enforcement droids no such utopia can exist.

That was the case many years ago when the nobility had castles, horses, swords and so forth and the peasants had pitchforks and sack cloths. And true to a degree currently where the government gets the most fun toys. But in a modern society, the people would have access to the same kinds of weapons as your gangs and the gangs would have a much harder time establishing any kind of footing. It's no accident that the American revolution occurred at a time when important changes in personal armaments were happening.


And after all, it's not like places with governments are exactly gang-free either. Especially where the citizenry are disarmed.

Exactly, thats the point. People do have the same kinds of weapons as your gangs, so everywhere a gang would form, a counter-gang would form, and the winning gang would surely be angry at the losing gang (especially if fatalities occurred), and the losing gang would flee to a surrounding area (or get killed off). Once they flee to a surrounding area, they will pick what they think is the winning gang there, and try to join it, resulting in each area being run by 1 gang constantly in fear of being taken over by its counter-gang (who they will naturally call "criminals") and surrounding gangs who have allied with "criminals."

And then the winning gangs become governments and we're back to square 1. The problem here is human nature: Humans like to form teams, and the winning team tends to punish the losing team, who then wishes to get revenge.

Decentralized violence begets more violence, and violence begets centralization. The only way of avoiding centralization is either reducing it just enough so that no violence breaks out,  but government is still sufficiently small, or by somehow getting rid of it entirely and replacing it with a system to prevent violence hands down.

[JayJuanGee]

If you claim the a monopoly government is necessary to prevent the predation of the disadvantaged by the powerful, then I ask, howz that workin out for you so far?

Here's a question: let's say you could, for the rest of your life, commit 30% of your income and savings to charitable organizations of your choice, with a certain amount required to go to basic needs charities, in exchange for never paying taxes on anything ever again. Would you say yes? If that's too much, what's the maximum you'd go up to?

My maximum is zero percent. It's my money. If I am forced to be charitable, it's not really charity, is it? How much freedom would you be willing to give up for freedom? Your question makes no sense.

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.

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.

Billyjoeallen: 

I must congratulate you, at least, for coming full circle back to the original postulate and re-emphasizing your point that you are of the belief that the government is the same as a thief - merely b/c they are levying taxes against your "involuntarily."     I really wished that you could find some island to live upon, b/c you  would like to stay detached from society, or at least that is what you are saying that you want.  But when push comes to shove, you likely do NOT want to live on an island by yourself, and instead you want to enjoy the fruits of various infrastructure but NOT have to pay your fair share.

Surely, I would like to pay as little as possible as well; however, I realize that it is my responsibility to pay, even when I do NOT get a direct benefit.  Anyhow, simply asserting the government is the equivalent of thieves demonstrates that you DO NOT appreciate either the various roles of government, and your logic remains very fuzzy to equate government with a ceo, such as Karpeles, who seems to have used his position of privelege and access to the money of others to be irresponsible at best and possibly engaged in fraud (has NOT been alleged, yet).

[JayJuanGee]

Here you show the extreme nature of your thinking and how detached you are from the real world in some kind of ideological attempt to have some fantasy society in which there is NO taxes...(or compelled  charity), and in such a world, supposedly, necessary public services will still be carried out... ... OTHERWISE, we will truly be living in a survival of the fittest, dog eat dog world... Most people would NOT want to live in such a society.

WTF is "compelled charity"?

I was merely attempting to refer to Octaft's hypothetical  in which he seemed to be attempting to describe a preset amount (such as 30%).  Something like this could be either compelled or voluntary... I was merely playing along with the hypothetical... but I admit that I may have lost the point about whether such a hypothetical was going to compel such contributions or leave them up to individuals.

Surely, we must all realize by NOW that certain individuals, including Billyjoeallen (based on his earlier comments), is NOT going to contribute if voluntary ... unless such a charity meets all his likely impossible to accomplish and vague parameters.. Individuals like that, just seem to want a free ride to have the benefits of various infrastructures (NOT to recognize the existence of such infrastructures), so it is just a waste of time and energy to explore possibilities of "voluntary" charities for guys who seem to want a free lunch.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

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.

NOW, you are throwing in the concept of Democracy.  I doubt you understand the concept b/c from your past comments , you do NOT seem to understand the idea of community and public good.  Accordingly, I would venture to put forth that democracy has something to do with giving votes to people in spite of their having money.  Therefore, if you let poor people actually vote, they are going to chose to have some things that are good for the public, and even rich people will vote to have certain protections for their property, so the poor people do NOT up and take it away from the rich people.  Various public goods and interests are protected through democratic processes - which also requires money (likely taxes, unless we come up with some other means to accomplish the same).

[JorgeStolfi]

What is the point of my "Chinese Slumber Method" predictions?

I do believe that the price of bitcoin is basically unpredictable, apart from it following the "geometric Brownian" model with variance modulated by trade volume.  That is, the market does not care about past prices, only about the current price; hence it has no "trends" based on the price itself.

However, I thought that there may be underlying trends that persist for several days, due to "external" variables such as the amount of money and bitcoins in the exchange, the exit of old investors and recruitment of new ones, and persistent trader sentiment modified by news and price evolution.  I had the hunch that those trends would be best seen by considering the price at Huobi at some fixed time in the early morning.

Why Huobi?  First, until recently it was the largest exchange by volume, and thus more likely to influence other exchanges than be influenced by them.   Second, it is a simple market: one product (BTC), one currency (Yuan), input and output of currency only through Chinese banks, and a clientele largely confined to China and so presumably more uniform that that of other exchanges.  Third, because its clieants all but stopped trading at small hours of the night.

Why look at Huobi's price in the early morning?  Because, looking at the charts, it seemed to me that the price at those times followed simple trends, over several days, whereas the price during the day often deviated from such trends.  Asa  possible explanation, I though that perhaps many traders tried to return to their preferred BTC:CNY positions before going to bed, after having deviated from those positions during the day; and that somehow  brought the price back to some "natural price" determined by those hypothetical exeternal variables.

The daily predictions are a crude attempt to verify this impresion.  I choose 19:00--19:59 UTC (03:00-03:59 China time) as the sampling hour ("Slumber Time"), since volume was minimum around that hour.  I picked a threshold volume at that hour (500 BTC at first, then 0.5% of the total daily volume) to exclude data points when trade continued well into the night (the "Abertosaur" points).  Again by looking at the charts, it seemed to me that, on those "long days", the price often deviated from the trend line even at slumber time.  Moreover, breaks in the trend line seeemed to occur mostly on those days.  Then I tried to fit simple trend formulas to strings of consecutive "good" data points (the "Glyptodons"); either continuing across the bad ones, or breaking at them.

For trends spanning a few days, it does not make much difference to work in linear or log scale.  The general trend formula I use is the shifted exponential P(d) = A + B*Q**(d-d0), where A, B and Q are parameters to be determined, d is the day of the month, and d0 an arbitrary starting day.   That formula can be used when there are at least three data points; the value of Q can be estimated from the price differences between consecutive days, and then A and B can be fitted by the least squares method.   A special limiting case of that formula is the straight line P(d) = A + B*(d-d0).  The justification for that formula is that  it is the expected behavior of many simple sistems, such as a reservoir where the input flow is constant and the output flow is proportional  to the water level.  (Think of new investors joining, and traders becoming discouraged and leaving, for example.)

This approach is not very "scientific" of course.  A more serious analysis of the idea should, for starters, use a weighted average of the prices and volumes during the night, say from 18:00 to 20:59 UTC.   Instead of classifying the data points into "good" and "bad" by an arbitrary threshold, one should map the slumber-time volume to a numeric "slumber weight", 1.00 for days of near-zero volume and tending gradually to 0.00 as the volume increases beyond that threshold. Then one should use weighted least squares to fit the trend lines, and dynamic programming to choose the most likely breaks.   However, I don't know enough statistics to determine whether the trends obtained by such a complicated process are statistically significant or not.

Anyway, it does not seem to be worth going to all that trouble, considering that Huobi may goxify at any moment... 

[Threebits]

Aren't they the two sides of same coin, freedom vs control, or centralization vs governance?

Each side has its boundary, failing which the coin won't form or just collapse.

My wonder is how the other side of bitcoin will form?

[JayJuanGee]

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.

It seems that you are missing some essential elements in your quick rendition of the facts and the ramifications of borrowing or printing.

In essence what has happened since about the 1980s is that the US Government has increasingly let the rich off the hook.. by decreasing and decreasing taxes... .accordingly, instead of taxing them, the government borrows from them... which is really a bunch of bullshit.

Certainly, many of us here agree that there are a lot of messed up aspects in the current arrangement and how our tax money is being used.  Also, regular people are having to bear more and more of the burdens of failure to tax the rich.

[electronrancher]

I started small, and I am probably still very small compared to you guys.  But bitcoin made me a few bucks when up, and a few when down.  I've been thrilled, and rather than trying to multiply my "winnings" (which I have neither the time nor the skill to do) I have used it to start up a couple of new endeavors.  Those may have more or less risk than BTC, but the really great thing I've absorbed from lurking around this community is the entrepreneurial spirit.  Man, people are building ALL KINDS of stuff, and they're gaining incredible success from their efforts.  It's great!  Yep, some are greedy BFL types or straight up brainwallet calculating thieves, but I have seen more people apply themselves in clever ways in order to earn a living (or a bundle) than I've seen in any other community.

When the talk goes to anarchy and the collapse of society and all, I kind of glaze over.

Hows about we hear some tales about when you had no coins, then two, then twenty, then those twenty exploded?  What you have now is quite a bit better than you had a few years back, so what is it doing for you?  Fixed up your car?  Sweet new PC or Terahash rig in the basement?  How is this magical money from thin air improving your situation RIGHT NOW, and what sort of cool stuff is it inspiring you to do next?

PS.  CCMF!  This is speculation after all.

[JayJuanGee]

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.

This is a very pretty chart; however, it make nearly no fucking sense. 

A chart like this is NOT going to help anyone to think more clearly about the situation of the role of government about solutions about what to do in order to accomplish more fair and equitable societies, whether we are talking about distribution of wealth or the role of government to establish community objectives.  Also, it places labels that also make little sense and suggest that these various leaders fit squarely within some kind of paradigm.

It's pretty, though.

[JorgeStolfi]

One interesting implication of that chart is that FDR + Bush = Hitler + Stalin