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

[ynef]

3 more hours and the USMS will notify the winning bidder that his bid has been selected.

including the price per bitcoin?

I think the winning bidder has quite a good idea what his bid was, no need for the USMS to remind him.

11 people were bidders and nobody knows (unless the bidders work together secretly)

Really, only 11 bidders?  That is fairly bearish news, if true.  Didn't we have close to 30 bidders in previous auctions?

Yeah.
http://www.coindesk.com/bidder-turnout-low-silk-road-bitcoin-auction/

Although it doesn't necessarily mean bears in my opinion. The amount of coins was nothing compared to previous auctions as well.

[1714686573]

1714686573

[gentlemand]

Although it doesn't necessarily mean bears in my opinion. The amount of coins was nothing compared to previous auctions as well.

It was broadly similar in quantity to previous auctions.

[mr angry]

3 more hours and the USMS will notify the winning bidder that his bid has been selected.

including the price per bitcoin?

I think the winning bidder has quite a good idea what his bid was, no need for the USMS to remind him.

11 people were bidders and nobody knows (unless the bidders work together secretly)

Really, only 11 bidders?  That is fairly bearish news, if true.  Didn't we have close to 30 bidders in previous auctions?

only the first one

11 was a tie with with another auction, lowest precipitation, as the twins said, it's kinda pointless to go to these you're pretty much guaranteed to buy at the top.

Not if you put in a really cheapskate bid and it wins because nobody else made any bids. They have to pay some money to bid plus make a deposit. I don't think they get the bidding fee back, but the deposit gets returned so it doesn't cost silly money to put a cheapskate bid on.

[JayJuanGee]

3 more hours and the USMS will notify the winning bidder that his bid has been selected.

including the price per bitcoin?

I think the winning bidder has quite a good idea what his bid was, no need for the USMS to remind him.

11 people were bidders and nobody knows (unless the bidders work together secretly)

Really, only 11 bidders?  That is fairly bearish news, if true.  Didn't we have close to 30 bidders in previous auctions?

Yeah.
http://www.coindesk.com/bidder-turnout-low-silk-road-bitcoin-auction/

Although it doesn't necessarily mean bears in my opinion. The amount of coins was nothing compared to previous auctions as well.

Thanks for that link.  That may clear up one point for me, and it appears that in a couple of hours, the bidders find out whether they won or not, which could affect their behavior concerning whether they buy more coins or not with the proceeds that they had allocated for potentially winning some of the blocks.

Further, it appears that the public would not find out about the identity of the bidder until Monday, at the earliest, and that is if the winning bidder were to chose to disclose such information.

Gosh.  There must have been some crazy spread in the bids this time around based on the then price fluctuations of BTC prices.

[bButtercup]

even i'm bearish.

time for me to buy.

Ma sent me money now
I'm gonna make it somehow
I need another chance
You see your baby loves to dance
Yeah...
          yeah...
                      yeaah

[ynef]

Although it doesn't necessarily mean bears in my opinion. The amount of coins was nothing compared to previous auctions as well.

It was broadly similar in quantity to previous auctions.

You're right, didn't pay attention

[billyjoeallen]

if blocksize gets an issue it will be solved in 24h

its not a big deal, more a question of details

ideialy there wouldnt be this "blocksize" issue in the first place

but there is

so how do we deal with it

dealing with it by ignoring it until it actually start to mess shit up and then saying " that's fine! bitcoin was meant to be slow and costly, using the holly ledger is a privilege! " is wrong.

on ther other hand gavins proposal is equally ridiculous to the other extream.

i'm confident devs will implement a happy middle ground

On what do you base this confidence? Past performance? 

[Fatman3001]

even i'm bearish.

time for me to buy.

agreed

Some else one says so...

I cannot verify the validity of his shaking arrow upwards, but I wholeheartedly agree nonetheless.

[hdbuck]

if blocksize gets an issue it will be solved in 24h

its not a big deal, more a question of details

ideialy there wouldnt be this "blocksize" issue in the first place

but there is

so how do we deal with it

dealing with it by ignoring it until it actually start to mess shit up and then saying " that's fine! bitcoin was meant to be slow and costly, using the holly ledger is a privilege! " is wrong.

on ther other hand gavins proposal is equally ridiculous to the other extream.

i'm confident devs will implement a happy middle ground

On what do you base this confidence? Past performance?  

bitcoin is up and running, isnt it?

[ynef]

3 more hours and the USMS will notify the winning bidder that his bid has been selected.

including the price per bitcoin?

I think the winning bidder has quite a good idea what his bid was, no need for the USMS to remind him.

11 people were bidders and nobody knows (unless the bidders work together secretly)

Really, only 11 bidders?  That is fairly bearish news, if true.  Didn't we have close to 30 bidders in previous auctions?

Yeah.
http://www.coindesk.com/bidder-turnout-low-silk-road-bitcoin-auction/

Although it doesn't necessarily mean bears in my opinion. The amount of coins was nothing compared to previous auctions as well.

Thanks for that link.  That may clear up one point for me, and it appears that in a couple of hours, the bidders find out whether they won or not, which could affect their behavior concerning whether they buy more coins or not with the proceeds that they had allocated for potentially winning some of the blocks.

Further, it appears that the public would not find out about the identity of the bidder until Monday, at the earliest, and that is if the winning bidder were to chose to disclose such information.

Gosh.  There must have been some crazy spread in the bids this time around based on the then price fluctuations of BTC prices.

We won't know their names, but we'll probably see the result soon enough. China (apparently) isn't pumping anything any more so the auction might have an effect after all.

[JayJuanGee]

3 more hours and the USMS will notify the winning bidder that his bid has been selected.

including the price per bitcoin?

I think the winning bidder has quite a good idea what his bid was, no need for the USMS to remind him.

11 people were bidders and nobody knows (unless the bidders work together secretly)

Really, only 11 bidders?  That is fairly bearish news, if true.  Didn't we have close to 30 bidders in previous auctions?

only the first one

11 was a tie with with another auction, lowest precipitation, as the twins said, it's kinda pointless to go to these you're pretty much guaranteed to buy at the top.

Not if you put in a really cheapskate bid and it wins because nobody else made any bids. They have to pay some money to bid plus make a deposit. I don't think they get the bidding fee back, but the deposit gets returned so it doesn't cost silly money to put a cheapskate bid on.

Does anybody know the fee that they have to pay in order to bid? 

That's a little bit crazy that there is a fee (but upon reflection it does make some sense to have some kind of fee for the government to ensure some sure revenue from the administration of the process, and it may provide a bit more assurance of serious bidders).  Likely the non-refundable fee affects how much bidders are willing to bid, depending on how large is that fee.

[JayJuanGee]

3 more hours and the USMS will notify the winning bidder that his bid has been selected.

including the price per bitcoin?

I think the winning bidder has quite a good idea what his bid was, no need for the USMS to remind him.

11 people were bidders and nobody knows (unless the bidders work together secretly)

Really, only 11 bidders?  That is fairly bearish news, if true.  Didn't we have close to 30 bidders in previous auctions?

Yeah.
http://www.coindesk.com/bidder-turnout-low-silk-road-bitcoin-auction/

Although it doesn't necessarily mean bears in my opinion. The amount of coins was nothing compared to previous auctions as well.

Thanks for that link.  That may clear up one point for me, and it appears that in a couple of hours, the bidders find out whether they won or not, which could affect their behavior concerning whether they buy more coins or not with the proceeds that they had allocated for potentially winning some of the blocks.

Further, it appears that the public would not find out about the identity of the bidder until Monday, at the earliest, and that is if the winning bidder were to chose to disclose such information.

Gosh.  There must have been some crazy spread in the bids this time around based on the then price fluctuations of BTC prices.

We won't know their names, but we'll probably see the result soon enough. China (apparently) isn't pumping anything any more so the auction might have an effect after all.

Don't count China out. 

I'm sure that there are plenty of bitcoin enthusiasts (or maybe some would call them speculators) who may be waiting for fairly clear signs of a trend reversal before they return to pumping (or buying) mode.

[gentlemand]

Does anybody know the fee that they have to pay in order to bid? 

Looks like you had to place a deposit rather than pay a fee. I guess otherwise they'd be swamped with reddit morons for the lulz.

http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2015/dpr-february-auction/

"Example 1: A bid to purchase three (3) blocks of Series A for the same per bitcoin price (e.g. $X per bitcoin for 6,000 Series A bitcoins) requires ONE registration form for Series A with a $100,000 deposit. Use ONE Bid Form to bid for ALL THREE Series A blocks.

Example 2: A bid to purchase three (3) blocks of Series A for the same per bitcoin price (e.g. $X per bitcoin for 6,000 Series A bitcoins), and two (2) blocks of Series B for the same per bitcoin price (e.g. $Y per bitcoin for 6,000 Series B bitcoins) requires ONE registration form for BOTH Series A and B with a $250,000 deposit ($100,000 for Series A plus $150,000 for Series B). Use ONE Bid Form to bid for Series A AND Series B blocks. Note that the per-bitcoin price for Series A does not need to match the Series B per-bitcoin price.

Example 3: Three (3) separate bids to purchase blocks of Series A at different prices (e.g. $X per bitcoin for 2,000 bitcoins, $Y per bitcoin for 2,000 bitcoins, and $Z per bitcoin for 2,000 bitcoins) requires THREE separate registration forms (EACH selecting Series A), and a $300,000 deposit ($100,000 for EACH registration). Use THREE Bid Forms, ONE FOR EACH Series A block. Note that each registration also permits a bidder to register for other Series (requiring additional deposits)."

[adamstgBit]

if blocksize gets an issue it will be solved in 24h

its not a big deal, more a question of details

ideialy there wouldnt be this "blocksize" issue in the first place

but there is

so how do we deal with it

dealing with it by ignoring it until it actually start to mess shit up and then saying " that's fine! bitcoin was meant to be slow and costly, using the holly ledger is a privilege! " is wrong.

on ther other hand gavins proposal is equally ridiculous to the other extream.

i'm confident devs will implement a happy middle ground

On what do you base this confidence? Past performance?  

from what i see, the scaling conference, the open letter from devs, the on going discussion about it.

it seems pretty clear something will be done about it, extcal what and when is up in the air.

also what's encouraging is that there is still a lot of room for improvement in a few aspects of the protocol, after a little bit of study 2 months ago i concluded we could grow the network 250 times bigger without demanding more bandwidth than is currently being used, if all these improvements were rolled out. and from there i think 10-100 X increase in bandwidth requirements to run a full node isn't all that crazy, so from where i'm standing bitcoin can potently scale by a factor of 2500 - 25000 while still being very decentralized.

of course i'm probably being a little optimistic on these potential coding gains. but i ain't worried about scalability anymore.

[JayJuanGee]

Does anybody know the fee that they have to pay in order to bid? 

Looks like you had to place a deposit rather than pay a fee. I guess otherwise they'd be swamped with reddit morons for the lulz.

http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2015/dpr-february-auction/

"Example 1: A bid to purchase three (3) blocks of Series A for the same per bitcoin price (e.g. $X per bitcoin for 6,000 Series A bitcoins) requires ONE registration form for Series A with a $100,000 deposit. Use ONE Bid Form to bid for ALL THREE Series A blocks.

Example 2: A bid to purchase three (3) blocks of Series A for the same per bitcoin price (e.g. $X per bitcoin for 6,000 Series A bitcoins), and two (2) blocks of Series B for the same per bitcoin price (e.g. $Y per bitcoin for 6,000 Series B bitcoins) requires ONE registration form for BOTH Series A and B with a $250,000 deposit ($100,000 for Series A plus $150,000 for Series B). Use ONE Bid Form to bid for Series A AND Series B blocks. Note that the per-bitcoin price for Series A does not need to match the Series B per-bitcoin price.

Example 3: Three (3) separate bids to purchase blocks of Series A at different prices (e.g. $X per bitcoin for 2,000 bitcoins, $Y per bitcoin for 2,000 bitcoins, and $Z per bitcoin for 2,000 bitcoins) requires THREE separate registration forms (EACH selecting Series A), and a $300,000 deposit ($100,000 for EACH registration). Use THREE Bid Forms, ONE FOR EACH Series A block. Note that each registration also permits a bidder to register for other Series (requiring additional deposits)."

Thanks for clarifying that.  One of the previous posters had mentioned a non-refundable fee, and that was the first time that I had heard of such a non-refundable fee.   A non-refundable fee could make sense, but as your linked materials point out, a non-refundable fee is not based on the real practice that is in place for this auction.  And, surely this auction is going to bring in plenty of revenue for our dear Uncle, and he should not need various fees in order to be able to pay for the costs of administering the servicing of the auction.

[brg444]

if blocksize gets an issue it will be solved in 24h

its not a big deal, more a question of details

ideialy there wouldnt be this "blocksize" issue in the first place

but there is

so how do we deal with it

dealing with it by ignoring it until it actually start to mess shit up and then saying " that's fine! bitcoin was meant to be slow and costly, using the holly ledger is a privilege! " is wrong.

on ther other hand gavins proposal is equally ridiculous to the other extream.

i'm confident devs will implement a happy middle ground

On what do you base this confidence? Past performance?  

from what i see, the scaling conference, the open letter from devs, the on going discussion about it.

it seems pretty clear something will be done about it, extcal what and when is up in the air.

also what's encouraging is that there is still a lot of room for improvement in a few aspects of the protocol, after a little bit of study 2 months ago i concluded we could grow the network 250 times bigger without demanding more bandwidth than is currently being used, if all these improvements were rolled out. and from there i think 10-100 X increase in bandwidth requirements to run a full node isn't all that crazy, so from where i'm standing bitcoin can potently scale by a factor of 2500 - 25000 while still being very decentralized.

of course i'm probably being a little optimistic on these potential coding gains. but i ain't worried about scalability anymore.

To anyone reading these this "study" was based on flawed assumptions and rather broken understanding of how Bitcoin's gossip network operates.

TL;DR the claims in this post don't match reality

[mr angry]

Does anybody know the fee that they have to pay in order to bid? 

Looks like you had to place a deposit rather than pay a fee. I guess otherwise they'd be swamped with reddit morons for the lulz.

You're right, I thought there was a fee, but didn't read that page. I thought they charged the losing bidders at least the value of the bank transfer fee to return their deposits, but that page doesn't mention it. The Feds must pay the bank transfer fees out of all the money they got for the Bitcoins.

[billyjoeallen]

if blocksize gets an issue it will be solved in 24h

its not a big deal, more a question of details

i'm confident devs will implement a happy middle ground

On what do you base this confidence? Past performance?  

from what i see, the scaling conference, the open letter from devs, the on going discussion about it.

it seems pretty clear something will be done about it, extcal what and when is up in the air.

also what's encouraging is that there is still a lot of room for improvement in a few aspects of the protocol, after a little bit of study 2 months ago i concluded we could grow the network 250 times bigger without demanding more bandwidth than is currently being used, if all these improvements were rolled out. and from there i think 10-100 X increase in bandwidth requirements to run a full node isn't all that crazy, so from where i'm standing bitcoin can potently scale by a factor of 2500 - 25000 while still being very decentralized.

of course i'm probably being a little optimistic on these potential coding gains. but i ain't worried about scalability anymore.

There are legitimate philosophical differences on what type of network Bitcoin should be.  There are also political differences and it seems to me that someone behind the scenes is intentionally exacerbating these differences to prevent progress. Of course I have no evidence that is not circumstantial, but even if I am wrong, the failure of the various factions to find ANY common ground is cause for concern at the very least.

[bButtercup]

...
of course i'm probably being a little optimistic on these potential coding gains. but i ain't worried about scalability anymore.

21 Inc's Bitcoin computer can stick twice as many bits in a block already, and it makes you money.

[infofront]

if blocksize gets an issue it will be solved in 24h

its not a big deal, more a question of details

i'm confident devs will implement a happy middle ground

On what do you base this confidence? Past performance?  

from what i see, the scaling conference, the open letter from devs, the on going discussion about it.

it seems pretty clear something will be done about it, extcal what and when is up in the air.

also what's encouraging is that there is still a lot of room for improvement in a few aspects of the protocol, after a little bit of study 2 months ago i concluded we could grow the network 250 times bigger without demanding more bandwidth than is currently being used, if all these improvements were rolled out. and from there i think 10-100 X increase in bandwidth requirements to run a full node isn't all that crazy, so from where i'm standing bitcoin can potently scale by a factor of 2500 - 25000 while still being very decentralized.

of course i'm probably being a little optimistic on these potential coding gains. but i ain't worried about scalability anymore.

There are legitimate philosophical differences on what type of network Bitcoin should be.  There are also political differences and it seems to me that someone behind the scenes is intentionally exacerbating these differences to prevent progress. Of course I have no evidence that is not circumstantial, but even if I am wrong, the failure of the various factions to find ANY common ground is cause for concern at the very least.

This was a very interesting article written by Mike Hearn: https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830
It sheds a lot of light on what's been going on with the developers behind the scenes, and a potential major conflict of interest.