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

[dexX7]

It's not the same at all. Not even remotely comparable.

Weather forecasting is running mathematical models through a simulator, looking for convergent outcomes, and assigning probabilities to them. It is mathematics based on science. It is not always accurate -- because that is the nature of probability; and the models can always be improved. The beef you have with weather forecasts may also be more to do with how they are presented rather than the forecast anyway. "48% chance of rain" is much more useful than a picture of rainclouds over your city.

On the other hand, technical analysis is based on the assumption that markets are predictable in behaviour due to regular patterns in aggregate human emotion. TAs will tell you that they are modelling market emotion. However they are not -- you will never see any such model presented. Rather they are using patterns in historical price and volume to predict future price and volume. Usually based on premises (such as Eliott Wave) that are 100 years old.

You will see lots of fancy indicators -- however they are all based on the same raw data: historical trades (There is no other data available). They are not even remotely modelling the underlying users and markets at play. You almost never see any TA that attempts to model the reasons for rises and falls. They treat price falls due to bad news, technical glitches, and manipulation equally, assuming that the average market participant knows nothing of the underlying causes too. This may have been (somewhat) useful for Wall St. a century ago, but to an Internet currency in 2013? Really?

One could say, that (historical) price data reflects the underlying users and their feelings, behavior and reactions.

Furthermore TA could be translated into "mathematical functions" and drawing lines is only a visual representation of that.

[10c]

One could say, that (historical) price data reflects the underlying users and their feelings, behavior and reactions.

Not exactly true.
The parameters have changed. BTC used to be all nerds; now we have profesional traders.
profesional traders and a lot of average people joining the game. meaning that previous results are in no way an accurate indicator in reflecting current performance. Professional traders that come from traditional (old) markets try to use the TA that they are used to. which works because most of the participants in the market use the same logic as they do. the average newB or nerd doen't know the rules to play by, so why do you expect them to follow the rules?

Up until the ratio is reached where the rules are clear to most of the players TA is less effective.
and how do you factor in the sentiment for the increased price compared to the past?
gambling a dollar vs a 100 * X makes a lot of difference in ones sentiment on how to gamble.

[dexX7]

You're right and as you said: the parameters have changed, the users have changed and their behavior, too. But still the price is a reflection of that.

I think human behavior and emotion could be modeled and that's where TA comes to play.

Disclaimer: I'm talking about theory.

[ChartBuddy]

[S3052]

It's not the same at all. Not even remotely comparable.

Weather forecasting is running mathematical models through a simulator, looking for convergent outcomes, and assigning probabilities to them. It is mathematics based on science. It is not always accurate -- because that is the nature of probability; and the models can always be improved. The beef you have with weather forecasts may also be more to do with how they are presented rather than the forecast anyway. "48% chance of rain" is much more useful than a picture of rainclouds over your city.

On the other hand, technical analysis is based on the assumption that markets are predictable in behaviour due to regular patterns in aggregate human emotion. TAs will tell you that they are modelling market emotion. However they are not -- you will never see any such model presented. Rather they are using patterns in historical price and volume to predict future price and volume. Usually based on premises (such as Eliott Wave) that are 100 years old.

You will see lots of fancy indicators -- however they are all based on the same raw data: historical trades (There is no other data available). They are not even remotely modelling the underlying users and markets at play. You almost never see any TA that attempts to model the reasons for rises and falls. They treat price falls due to bad news, technical glitches, and manipulation equally, assuming that the average market participant knows nothing of the underlying causes too. This may have been (somewhat) useful for Wall St. a century ago, but to an Internet currency in 2013? Really?

One could say, that (historical) price data reflects the underlying users and their feelings, behavior and reactions.

Furthermore TA could be translated into "mathematical functions" and drawing lines is only a visual representation of that.

Technical analysis of bitcoin charts and bitcoin prices has worked very well over its entire trading history since 2010, even in the beginning when market cap was tiny
I still remember the first TA with a triangle at 0.065$ where we predicted the huge breakout

[10c]

We should be moving up.
I don't see any founded reasons why we are not. (disregarding past performance)
Either we make this a self-fulfilling prophecy or we move on. We didn't have any bad news, economy is (slowly)growing beyond SR and ASIC and we have prospect VC's joining the game. All this sounds bullish to me!
However people are afraid to move on because they look back at past performance factoring out new parameters;
they expect the capitulation of sub 50 coins. There has been no indicators that we need to go there. clearly people support 120 range. (drop due to fear of still being in bubble deflation) clearly support 100 range we have been going sideways for long...(in BTC world).
Why no move upwards? fear of still being in the bubble. If we all accept 100 being the new low we can go up again.
No one knows if a 100 is cheap or expensive (except for the bears, everything above 3 is...)
So if anyone has good reason why we need to drop further without playing the previous bubble as an example or any bubble for that matter I would gladly hear it.
Who says we are bubbling anyway? no parabolic growth going on lately. We corrected enough to sustain price. 180 might be a good price but no one knows...

[samson]

Technical analysis of bitcoin charts and bitcoin prices has worked very well over its entire trading history since 2010, even in the beginning when market cap was tiny
I still remember the first TA with a triangle at 0.065$ where we predicted the huge breakout

Do you think there's going to be a breakout from $100 ?

Some people seem to be talking like it's about to rally or something. I'm just waiting for 'the' drop at the moment.

[10c]

Technical analysis of bitcoin charts and bitcoin prices has worked very well over its entire trading history since 2010, even in the beginning when market cap was tiny
I still remember the first TA with a triangle at 0.065$ where we predicted the huge breakout

I assume you are one of the 'elite' now.
I am not disregarding the value of TA, just trying to warn people no to use it as if what ever your TA comes up with is written in stone.
I also assume you were one of the few using it in that time. That leverages your TA. You could have 'sold' it to make it so
every one being impressed and bought in to it, because they looked at it, concluded that 'every' market moves that way, it must be true for BTC.
just playing devil's advocate here...

[rpietila]

The dollar is too volatile to be useful for comparing BTC:s value, this chart says it all:

Nice chart. Bear in mind that the price is in the same ballpark as the actual bitcoin usage. It would be powerful to see this chart divided by the "# of users" or some other usage metric. If the marketcap is $50k per user, it is much less interesting to invest than if market cap is $500 per user.

In the Nasdaq bubble, mobile operators saw bubble valuations of $20k per user, which of course could not hold.

Dollar now has $2000 per person in the world valuation, bubble or not.

[10c]

Applying TA properly takes schooling AND experience + healthy perception.

[10c]

nice pic....

Nice chart. Bear in mind that the price is in the same ballpark as the actual bitcoin usage. It would be powerful to see this chart divided by the "# of users" or some other usage metric. If the marketcap is $50k per user, it is much less interesting to invest than if market cap is $500 per user.

In the Nasdaq bubble, mobile operators saw bubble valuations of $20k per user, which of course could not hold.

Dollar now has $2000 per person in the world valuation, bubble or not.

And these are exactly the numbers we don't have and do need to conclude if a 100 dollar coin is cheap or expensive

[4mherewego]

We should be moving up.
I don't see any founded reasons why we are not. (disregarding past performance)
Either we make this a self-fulfilling prophecy or we move on. We didn't have any bad news, economy is (slowly)growing beyond SR and ASIC and we have prospect VC's joining the game. All this sounds bullish to me!
However people are afraid to move on because they look back at past performance factoring out new parameters;
they expect the capitulation of sub 50 coins. There has been no indicators that we need to go there. clearly people support 120 range. (drop due to fear of still being in bubble deflation) clearly support 100 range we have been going sideways for long...(in BTC world).
Why no move upwards? fear of still being in the bubble. If we all accept 100 being the new low we can go up again.
No one knows if a 100 is cheap or expensive (except for the bears, everything above 3 is...)
So if anyone has good reason why we need to drop further without playing the previous bubble as an example or any bubble for that matter I would gladly hear it.
Who says we are bubbling anyway? no parabolic growth going on lately. We corrected enough to sustain price. 180 might be a good price but no one knows...

Yeah, this has been what I am thinking. Everything tells me bitcoin should be going up. But the market clearly does not believe this. So I guess either the market knows something I don't or this is one of the best investment opportunities I will ever get. Fun times ahead, no matter what happens I can always tell my grandchildren about it

[10c]

Yeah, this has been what I am thinking. Everything tells me bitcoin should be going up. But the market clearly does not believe this. So I guess either the market knows something I don't or this is one of the best investment opportunities I will ever get. Fun times ahead, no matter what happens I can always tell my grandchildren about it

"come on kids, lets see if we can still spark some light in granddads old lambo; did I ever tell you guys the story of how I bought it with bitcoin?"
"but grandpa we don't have any gas? and WTF are bitcoins?"
"I had it converted when they outlawed petrol, Bitcoins were a thing we considered gold 2.0"
"WTF is 2.0?"
 

[drdanishkhan]

Yeah, this has been what I am thinking. Everything tells me bitcoin should be going up. But the market clearly does not believe this. So I guess either the market knows something I don't or this is one of the best investment opportunities I will ever get. Fun times ahead, no matter what happens I can always tell my grandchildren about it

"come on kids, lets see if we can still spark some light in granddads old lambo; did I ever tell you guys the story of how I bought it with bitcoin?"
"but grandpa we don't have any gas? and WTF are bitcoins?"
"I had it converted when they outlawed petrol, Bitcoins were a thing we considered gold 2.0"
"WTF is 2.0?"
 

LOL 

[Its About Sharing]

First, let me say relying just on TA with BTC is risky but I do use it a lot.
TA for sure works. That is not really the question, the question is how often and how accurately. Looking at my (past) record, I'd say it works more times than not and a lot better than guessing. That has been proven over many many years.
If anyone thinks TA doesn't work I'd say you have to try it for a few months after learning it pretty well (spending a couple hundred hours studying and practicing).

To define how it works, that is a tough one. The underlying things we see in a chart are composed of many variables (e.g. emotion, economics, fundamentals (yes!), etc.)

So, I use TA but with BTC I am a lot more careful with it as a lot of BTC is driven on sentiment (aka The world situation). We could be going down fairly hard and if another country pulls a Cyprus - BOOM UP. And vice versa in a sense. But I think all of us know that, the thing is, the world is a tough place today. Some currencies/economies are getting closer and closer to collapse by all accounts and to me, that will be the real determiner - after all it is in large part why BTC is where it is.

Unless you get consistant results above the 50% marker, TA has no added value in BTC and a coin toss suffises.
if you only get 30% and don't consider it the process to get above the 50% marker no value is added.
you hit the nail on the head that BTC is mostly emotion driven. It is not backed by anything then (fragile) trust.
If you have ALL the parameters you can use TA effectively. Marketcap is small and whales are big, reducing your chances of success.
Just keep that in mind.

Lets say I used it to call the bottom a few times and was 100% correct. I don't overuse it and I don't underuse it. I use it as much as it seems to remain fairly accurate.
And of course I adjust.

All valid points, I don't really think we can make this a black and white thing as it is a bit more than that...

[ChartBuddy]

[10c]

Lets say I used it to call the bottom a few times and was 100% correct. I don't overuse it and I don't underuse it. I use it as much as it seems to remain fairly accurate.
And of course I adjust.

All valid points, I don't really think we can make this a black and white thing as it is a bit more than that...

That's exactly what I mean!
Just warning people it's not wise to look at it like it's 100% accurate 100% of the time and warning beginning traders/speculators.
You have to agree with me that we see some retarded TA come by with some lines in a chart that don't mean anything.

I don't pretend to be all knowing about TA, nor do I have the necessary years of experience to apply it properly (giving me more chance than a coin toss). so if your TA is 100% correct for 30% of the time. You are doing it wrong.

[rpietila]

nice pic....

Nice chart. Bear in mind that the price is in the same ballpark as the actual bitcoin usage. It would be powerful to see this chart divided by the "# of users" or some other usage metric. If the marketcap is $50k per user, it is much less interesting to invest than if market cap is $500 per user.

In the Nasdaq bubble, mobile operators saw bubble valuations of $20k per user, which of course could not hold.

Dollar now has $2000 per person in the world valuation, bubble or not.

And these are exactly the numbers we don't have and do need to conclude if a 100 dollar coin is cheap or expensive

If all the world uses bitcoin exactly as much as they use gold now, 1 bitcoin will be valued at $300,000.

[10c]

If all the world uses bitcoin exactly as much as they use gold now, 1 bitcoin will be valued at $300,000.

I'll take the 300K and assume you did the math on that as you usually do it thorough.

but it's not enough for a few of us to believe/know that. Until the world wakes up to this reality a 100 dollar coin can still be expensive.
That's why paper money is worth the digits on it. We all believe it is... even if the paper has no value at all

[naphto]

If all the world uses bitcoin exactly as much as they use gold now, 1 bitcoin will be valued at $300,000.

If ...
If ...
If ...


If I were rich, I would be rich.
Nice, but who cares?


Bitcoin will never ever be close to be used as much as gold is used now.
Come back in real life plz.