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

[Shatoshi]

Yeah that data really freaks me out about my short, but I wonder what the ratio of long to shorts is even in a period of decline.

[gkv9]

It feels awesome when trend is actually your friend, I am seeing the lines touched with not much higher margin of breakouts, but they are going according to these lines only, so I think there might be a possibility of $275 back soon...

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[inca]

Yeah that data really freaks me out about my short, but I wonder what the ratio of long to shorts is even in a period of decline.

If you go to bfxdata.com: click btc swaps and choose historic, then scroll down, there is a nice chart showing the btc swaps (shorts) with total number of contracts versus swap interest rate.

The same data can be examined for the long contracts.

You will see that even when bitcoin crashed from near 400 down to 160, even when the world was ending 14 million USD failed to cover. Since then the total value of leveraged longs has drifted up to 25 million USD (ATH was 31 million USD last year). So 11,000,000 USD from that point. Remember you can go long with just BTC on finex, so large holders can easily use their btc holdings for long positions.

In stark contrast the total number of short contracts have oscillated between ~5,000 and 26,954 (ATH) over the last few months. We are currently within 400 btc contracts of being at the all time high (currently 26600).
12,000 contracts have been opened from the recent peak at 300.

Bear case: longs have more money borrowed, higher interest rate on borrowing, bear market not technically finished

Bull case: 160 was high volume washout reversal + bear market is over, shorts at all time highs - mainly retail day traders, little room to manouvre and several thousand shorts have opened in the last few days are already underwater with the price rises. There is a limit to how low the the price can go, bulls wanting to close their positions could have at 160 and are not going to now. Shorts will capitulate if the price moves up another 10-20 dollars with at least 12,000 becoming underwater at 300. A glance on the orderbooks shows what damage even a few thousand shorts closing would do to the ask side, let alone the entire 12k from 300.

Up or down, who knows!

[Xiaoxiao]

Bear whale needs to push this thing to below 100 for some fireworks to happen and more media attention before anything interesting will develop. 

A headline such as "Bitcoin goes from $1200 to below $50 and now back to $400" would bring a lot of attention.

[inca]

Bear whale needs to push this thing to below 100 for some fireworks to happen and more media attention before anything interesting will develop. 

A headline such as "Bitcoin goes from $1200 to below $50 and now back to $400" would bring a lot of attention.

Anything is possible xiaoxiao, but do you really believe the price will drop another 80% from here, just to let you buy in and make 10x your money? Markets don't work like that.

And if bitcoin did reach 50$ you would certainly would not want to buy.

When the price was 1200 and someone said would you buy coins at 160 or 250 next year you would have jumped at the chance, right? But now the price is down here all you can see is an opportunity to buy coins even cheaper. What is amusing is you then expect other people to suddenly buy it back up 10x so you can profit.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[Fatman3001]

Bear whale needs to push this thing to below 100 for some fireworks to happen and more media attention before anything interesting will develop. 

A headline such as "Bitcoin goes from $1200 to below $50 and now back to $400" would bring a lot of attention.

Anything is possible xiaoxiao, but do you really believe the price will drop another 80% from here, just to let you buy in and make 10x your money? Markets don't work like that.

And if bitcoin did reach 50$ you would certainly would not want to buy.

When the price was 1200 and someone said would you buy coins at 160 or 250 next year you would have jumped at the chance, right? But now the price is down here all you can see is an opportunity to buy coins even cheaper. What is amusing is you then expect other people to suddenly buy it back up 10x so you can profit.

If BTC gains traction as a kind of linux for financial transactions then $50/$250/$1250 is cheap as peanuts. I know I'm beating on an old drum here but I am baffled by people who always wants ever cheaper coins. One of the few things that can crash this train is if prices go so far down that the infrastructure around BTC crumbles (I know that's an oversimplification of cause/effect, but you get the point). I'm not knocking on Tarmi or other's who wants BTC to "get rekt!", those are entirely consistent in wanting to crash the price.

[JorgeStolfi]

So that no one can say that I never posted a train picture:



That is actually the first electric passenger tram built by Werner von Siemens in Berlin, in 1879 (or perhaps a rebuilt replica), now at the German Technology Museum in Berlin.  There is a photo of it in use. 

It has some interesting similarities and contrasts with bitcoin.  Like bitcoin, it was a prototype and proof of concept; it did not see much commercial use, being used mostly for fun at trade shows.  (The first commercial version, opened by Siemens two years later,  looked like this.)  Like bitcoin, it was powered by electricity but, unlike bitcoin, it did not waste more electricity than necessary.  And it reached a speed of 13 km/h; that is, one (city) block every 4.6 minutes.

[YourMother]

[Lauda]

If BTC gains traction as a kind of linux for financial transactions then $50/$250/$1250 is cheap as peanuts. I know I'm beating on an old drum here but I am baffled by people who always wants ever cheaper coins. One of the few things that can crash this train is if prices go so far down that the infrastructure around BTC crumbles (I know that's an oversimplification of cause/effect, but you get the point). I'm not knocking on Tarmi or other's who wants BTC to "get rekt!", those are entirely consistent in wanting to crash the price.

I think that the community shouldn't be focusing on the price so much right now. We should rather work on getting more people into Bitcoin. The adoption is just not there yet (not talking about merchants). We don't need people hoping on the train when a spike occurs and then jump off. The price can go pretty high easy. If 5M people hold 2 Bitcoin (in addition to the stash that Satoshi has and such) the supply would be much lower than the demand.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[Wandererfromthenorth]

Mmmh, just realized something here:


The major support trend lines became resistance:








mmmh

[Wandererfromthenorth]

[fonsie]

So that no one can say that I never posted a train picture:



That is actually the first electric passenger tram built by Werner von Siemens in Berlin, in 1879 (or perhaps a rebuilt replica), now at the German Technology Museum in Berlin.  There is a photo of it in use. 

It has some interesting similarities and contrasts with bitcoin.  Like bitcoin, it was a prototype and proof of concept; it did not see much commercial use, being used mostly for fun at trade shows.  (The first commercial version, opened by Siemens two years later,  looked like this.)  Like bitcoin, it was powered by electricity but, unlike bitcoin, it did not waste more electricity than necessary.  And it reached a speed of 13 km/h; that is, one (city) block every 4.6 minutes.

Why don't you head down to the museum every single day to tell people how worthless that train is. Will make you feel real good when riding back home on your donkey.

[JorgeStolfi]

donkey.

Aren't you all envious of me for having TWO personal exclusive trolls devoted to my person?  (Unless they are sock puppets of the same nothing-better-to-do user, that would be really disappointing.)

[Fatman3001]

If BTC gains traction as a kind of linux for financial transactions then $50/$250/$1250 is cheap as peanuts. I know I'm beating on an old drum here but I am baffled by people who always wants ever cheaper coins. One of the few things that can crash this train is if prices go so far down that the infrastructure around BTC crumbles (I know that's an oversimplification of cause/effect, but you get the point). I'm not knocking on Tarmi or other's who wants BTC to "get rekt!", those are entirely consistent in wanting to crash the price.

I think that the community shouldn't be focusing on the price so much right now. We should rather work on getting more people into Bitcoin. The adoption is just not there yet (not talking about merchants). We don't need people hoping on the train when a spike occurs and then jump off. The price can go pretty high easy. If 5M people hold 2 Bitcoin (in addition to the stash that Satoshi has and such) the supply would be much lower than the demand.

Well...

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

I'm sorry, the WO thread is the most off-topic thread there is, but I genuinely disagree with what you are saying. The train hoppers are here already, and more will come. Bitcoin needs to be robust enough to deal with it now. Not when "the community" thinks it is mature enough. A lot of people have invested in BTC and to brush them off is disrespectful to them and destructive to the whole project.

Working on getting more people into Bitcoin must involve finding and promoting plausible use cases. I will not recommend buying bitcoins to anyone outside this forum who doesn't understand the risk involved and/or doesn't need it. Purely stating that "If 5M people hold 2 Bitcoin (in addition to the stash that Satoshi has and such) the supply would be much lower than the demand" promotes a pyramid scheme way of thinking, and that is definitely not what we need. Those 5M 500M people should have a real reason to hold buy and use 2/5/10BTC.

[fonsie]

nothing-better-to-do user

If only you had something better to do.

[Lauda]

Working on getting more people into Bitcoin must involve finding and promoting plausible use cases. I will not recommend buying bitcoins to anyone outside this forum who doesn't understand the risk involved and/or doesn't need it. Purely stating that "If 5M people hold 2 Bitcoin (in addition to the stash that Satoshi has and such) the supply would be much lower than the demand" promotes a pyramid scheme way of thinking, and that is definitely not what we need. Those 5M 500M people should have a real reason to hold buy and use 2/5/10BTC.

I'm not saying that people should be holding. I'm saying that they are. You should look around the forums more. The people around here see Bitcoin as an asset not a currency.
Did I just not say that we should bring more people to Bitcoin?

I've been following the price more closely in the past. The market isn't just as exciting as it used to be. In the last 6 months we've hit $400 only once. I only June/July 2015 would be the same as June/July 2014.

[Fatman3001]

nothing-better-to-do user

If only you had something better to do.

If Stolfi hadn't withdrawn to academia in '92 we would all still be exchanging floppy disks and people would still have phone tables.