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

[Wekkel]

Want to really see that DAG under stress.

Actually, I would like to see:
* basic wallet functionality like generating a random wallet address
* transactions always confirming
* fool proof solution to avoid address reuse (=vulnerable under IOTA system)

Before that happens, I do not consider it a buy until below $0.50.

/off topic

The real question is why would you consider it a "buy" at all? Does it feel good to have a slick hypothetically functioning payment system that mimics Bitcoin, but no one ever uses to buy things with because there is zero merchant adoption?

...

I don’t think Bitcoin is established (yet) as the sole cryptocurrency of choice for everyone on planet Earth. Adaption in genuine use cases is a non-existent feature for now, also for Bitcoin. Frankly, I do not think that Bitcoin will ever take the position as one and only cryptocurrency and that we will remain forever to have a variety of coins (including FIAT brothers) with their own fans. Yes, I expect Dogecoin to be still there after 10 years, whether (micro)pennystock or not (just like Tittycoin or other shitcoin). It does not matter.

For now, the race for leadership is still fully on with Bitcoin having a lead but that’s not carved in stone. It is not said that this will be the case forever. In a use case whereby ‘no fees’ micro transactions are vital, IOTA would clearly have a lead over most other cryptocurrencies, assuming they can get their clusterf* of a wallet and network stability up to standards.

Besides that, having various altcoins around with new variations and technologies popping up all the time is vital for the survival of this digital phenomenon. Adapt continuously or die. So I welcome altcoins instead of loathing them.

TL;DR: Bitcoin still reigns, but it will not be forever. I see a purpose and place for various altcoins.

[HairyMaclairy]

SEC Statement - surprisingly supportive of crypto. 

Distributed ledger technology, or DLT, is the advancement that underpins an array of new financial products, including cryptocurrencies and digital payment services. Many have identified DLT as the next great driver of economic efficiency. Some have even compared it to productivity-driving innovations such as the steam engine and personal computer.

Our task, as market regulators, is to set and enforce rules that foster innovation while promoting market integrity and confidence. In recent months, we have seen a wide range of market participants, including retail investors, seeking to invest in DLT initiatives, including through cryptocurrencies and so-called ICOs—initial coin offerings. Experience tells us that while some market participants may make fortunes, the risks to all investors are high. Caution is merited.

A key issue before market regulators is whether our historic approach to the regulation of currency transactions is appropriate for the cryptocurrency markets. Check-cashing and money-transmission services that operate in the U.S. are primarily state-regulated. Many of the internet-based cryptocurrency trading platforms have registered as payment services and are not subject to direct oversight by the SEC or the CFTC. We would support policy efforts to revisit these frameworks and ensure they are effective and efficient for the digital era.

The CFTC and SEC, along with other federal and state regulators and criminal authorities, will continue to work together to bring transparency and integrity to these markets and, importantly, to deter and prosecute fraud and abuse. These markets are new, evolving and international. As such they require us to be nimble and forward-looking; coordinated with our state, federal and international colleagues; and engaged with important stakeholders, including Congress.

http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7680-18

[infofront]

This guy makes a good case for why the CME futures expiry tomorrow will be a nonevent: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7syd2c/expiring_futures_tomorrow_not_so_fast/

The CME futures expire tomorrow, and everyone is panicking that Wall Street will manipulate the price downward to gain the most profit... But it's not that simple; CME has limits on what any given entity can hold, that make it almost unprofitable given the cost of manipulation.

Any entity is limited to owning 1k contracts containing 5btc each. Every $5 move in bitcoin is a $25 profit/loss on a contract. In the recent month, we saw the price move from $19k to $10k potentially tomorrow at expiration - accounting for a $9k price move, meaning $45M possible profit (per entity holding the maximum 1k contracts; every $1k move in btc price equals a $5M profit/loss). I am a realist, and do believe that multiple entities could collect and agree on a direction (for example 10 groups) meaning the profit would be $450M for the month of January. However, open interest today says this isn't happening (more on that below).

To manipulate the price today, it costs about $15M to buy all the btc within $1k of the current price (based on the depth chart in GDAX). The group of 10 entities (referenced above) could agree to spend $15M to move the price lower by $1k, thus gaining the group of 10 a total of $50M (or a $35M profit for the group by spending $15M). This will not hold the price down the $1k, however, and many traders would instantly gobble up the orders at the lower price, meaning the entities would need to do this multiple times to keep the price low. A realistic strategy for Wall Street is going to be to hold their "manipulation money" until right before the market closes, and push price down in the hours leading up to expiration (4pm London time, or 11am Eastern Time for CME futures).

As the market matures and becomes more balanced, these opportunities will be harder to accomplish, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable that this could happen tomorrow, but likely in the 9am-11am hours, and likely immediately rebound back.

Finally, the open interest on the futures expiring tomorrow is currently at 1,459 contracts, meaning the total bitcoin in play here is 7,295 btc or ~$80M, meaning the cost of manipulation will dramatically cut into profits. This also means there is not a group of 10 entities teaming up to manipulate the price.

Just food for thought as people prepare for the Wall Street futures dip tomorrow...

TLDR; I don't think it'll happen, the business case and open interest just isn't there.

[Torque]

For now, the race for leadership is still fully on with Bitcoin having a lead but that’s not carved in stone. It is not said that this will be the case forever. In a use case whereby ‘no fees’ micro transactions are vital, IOTA would clearly have a lead over most other cryptocurrencies, assuming they can get their clusterf* of a wallet and network stability up to standards.

Besides that, having various altcoins around with new variations and technologies popping up all the time is vital for the survival of this digital phenomenon. Adapt continuously or die. So I welcome altcoins instead of loathing them.

...  I see a purpose and place for various altcoins.

You guys still talk about all these various coins in some hypothetical future where you see them being "used" for various things. But without the ONE CRITICAL thing, mass merchant adoption, they won't be used for anything other than trading. That's all. Years and years will pass by, and they won't have achieved merchant adoption on any significant level. So what then?  Just trade?

How long will you guys give these also-ran shitcoins before the fallacy of "some future use case blah blah blah" never materializes? A few years? A decade? Two? There is only so long that something can exist on pure hype.

Besides that, having various altcoins around with new variations and technologies popping up all the time is vital for the survival of this digital phenomenon. Adapt continuously or die.

That is a GIANT fallacy if I've ever heard one. Bitcoin in no way shape or form has to continuously "evolve" beyond a certain point to become the predominant form of digital money or digital gold 2.0 on a worldwide scale. (Notice I said "beyond a certain point", bc it is not there quite yet).  In the same way Gold does not have to continuously "evolve" to be a sound physical store of value.

[Toxic2040]

I am calling for a nice little spike within 36 hours.

Remember: NO LUBE !

EDIT: Meh. Pulled my sell wall @ $12.5k, for... reasons.

Bobbie..its going to be ok.

[JayJuanGee]

I am calling for a nice little spike within 36 hours.

Remember: NO LUBE !

EDIT: Meh. Pulled my sell wall @ $12.5k, for... reasons.

Bobbie..its going to be ok.

Oh.. you can gloat now, Toxic.

Yesterday, you were shaking in your boots regarding potential consequences of such an inaccurate BTC price prediction.

I will add that it seems that BTC prices are still in a kind of bouncing around territory, and even largely in the middle our current price consolidation range - perhaps $10k-ish to $13k-ish.

[jojo69]

ASSLESS CHAPS

ASSLESS CHAPS

ASSLESS CHAPS

[Toxic2040]

I am calling for a nice little spike within 36 hours.

Remember: NO LUBE !

EDIT: Meh. Pulled my sell wall @ $12.5k, for... reasons.

Bobbie..its going to be ok.

Oh.. you can gloat now, Toxic.

Yesterday, you were shaking in your boots regarding potential consequences of such an inaccurate BTC price prediction.

I will add that it seems that BTC prices are still in a kind of bouncing around territory, and even largely in the middle our current price consolidation range - perhaps $10k-ish to $13k-ish.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day..  /s

Naa..not my style JJG..I am actually concerned for Bob. Dealing with end game financials is enough to make anyone on edge. If anything I am still recovering from this Weiss report...left a sour taste I do believe.

[Samarkand]

...


How long will you guys give these also-ran shitcoins before the fallacy of "some future use case blah blah blah" never materializes? A few years? A decade? Two? There is only so long that something can exist on pure hype.

...

I think they will not really die, but rather linger on for a fraction of their former value.

If a cryptocurrency newcomer asks me about my opinion of altcoins I usually gently guide him
towards these articles that destroy all altcoin enthusiasm pretty fast:
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/the-problem-with-altcoins/
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/the-coming-demise-of-altcoins/
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/appcoins-are-snake-oil/
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/its-not-about-the-technology-its-about-the-money/

These articles are a few years old, but nothing has really changed except that
a few new platforms where these coins/tokens are launched have emerged (e.g. ICOs
on top of Stellar or NEO).

[Dabs]

Serious question. I'm trying to understand the delusions and fallacies associated with the altcoin market. So far I'm still not getting it.

Or if you just consider it a "buy" because you think it's going to get pumped one day, then just say so. Penny stocks see their day in the sun sometimes too.

What's that saying, our mind is like a parachute. It works better if it's open.

90%, or 95%, or maybe even 99% of the altcoin market are all shitcoins or just utter garbage. There are those few 1%, and I can't even name them because I don't know them all, otherwise I'd be trading them too.

Some are trying to do things that hasn't been done, and some of them are all doing the same things one alt is trying to do too, such as all these privacy oriented coins, the biggest of which is Monero (and I have no stake in it, I don't hold or trade Monero), or Dash, and in that one's case they have these other "features" that incentivize the network to run "masternodes" which is trending these days.

There are even CoinMarketCap-like sites for them, I count maybe 4 or 5, you really only need to look at 1 or 2.

For all cases, the good ones are indeed good buys, as well as world changing disruptive tech. File storage. Decentralized databases. Privacy. Libraries? Real estate.. it's dot-com and 99% of them are going to Burst (that one popped awhile ago, but Burst seems to have revived now.)

There are more than 2000 alts / tokens. It's a giant dart board or you could say you fire a shotgun, you will hit one of these 1% wonder coins.

Again, I have my bets, but I don't know all of them, or any of them for sure until they get big, but I've managed to trade my way or hodl my way to double digit BTCs. And I'm not even a day trader nor do I run bots (I've seen bots in action, tried a few I think.)

You can call them delusions or fallacies. Some have actual real "merit". For those, I consider them tools of the trade. Or a means to an end. In the end, it's all a gamble, I just like the odds better on some of them that few people see for now (then everyone else will see it and have their "Napster" moment, that one dies and gets "torrented", but the world changes anyway.)

Even Litecoin has a purpose. It's a Bitcoin testnet on a live mainnet with value. Because the Bitcoin testnet itself is supposed to be valueless and it's been reset a few times in the past, and idiots attempted to trade testnet coins.

I get that you don't get it. You have to go deep in the rabbit hole, not just an aerial view from above.

Still working on getting to triple digits ...

[JayJuanGee]

I am calling for a nice little spike within 36 hours.

Remember: NO LUBE !

EDIT: Meh. Pulled my sell wall @ $12.5k, for... reasons.

Bobbie..its going to be ok.

Oh.. you can gloat now, Toxic.

Yesterday, you were shaking in your boots regarding potential consequences of such an inaccurate BTC price prediction.

I will add that it seems that BTC prices are still in a kind of bouncing around territory, and even largely in the middle our current price consolidation range - perhaps $10k-ish to $13k-ish.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day..  /s

Naa..not my style JJG..I am actually concerned for Bob. Dealing with end game financials is enough to make anyone on edge. If anything I am still recovering from this Weiss report...left a sour taste I do believe.

I think that you realize that even thought there may be some attempt at communicating substantive messages, some of these comments are in an exaggerated form of fun, too, and I have already done a kind of back of the napkin calculation of the Bob situation that makes me ssssssssoooooooooo  sssssssssssooooooo   worried for him, too.

I know that there are some claims that he has around 1k coins, but I put it at around 650 (after he had made his most recent $1million claim of coins).   So, yeah, we should worry for bob.... hahahahahhahaha  Problems of the .01%, no?

Certainly, I am not jealous of Bob - because I have plenty of coins myself.... around 10-ish.... give or take some.....  hahahahahaha

[conspirosphere.tk]

Remember: NO LUBE !

EDIT: Meh. Pulled my sell wall @ $12.5k, for... reasons.

You would be still a crypto-millionaire with BTC at $3000 and you're being so anal... meh.

[JayJuanGee]

exaggerated form of fun, too

I tried to merit you 3.14 sMerit. I think we need Merit divisible to at least 8 decimal places.

Exactly... would be much more fun with a bit more divisibility, but seems like Theymos has gone with a quasi - "all or nothing" "use it or lose it" approach rather than granting a power to parse.

[Spaceman_Spiff_Original]

Same kind of reasoning could have been applied to bitcoin at the start.  Not that I have an opinion about this or that altcoin, just pointing out the hole in your rationale.

What hole tho? The impetus for creating Bitcoin against the other existing forms of payment/banking systems was clear.

How about the delusional hole in rationale that says once we have a single crypto payment system that is secure, decentralized, functional, and popular (w/ users, brokers, exchanges, and merchants), that we need another one? Or a thousand more? Ten thousand more?

Your argument boiled down to the assertion that a novel currency/payment system that does not currently have merchant adoption could not gain traction in the future.  
At one point, bitcoin had no merchant adoption and clearly it has gained significant traction.

If you are now saying that there was a need for a digital currency, and now that there is one, we don't need something else because incremental improvements will fail to gain network effects, we can look at myspace / facebook-like precedents.

Again, I am not saying bitcoin will not be the number 1 crypto in the future, in fact my best guess would be that it will be bitcoin that wins out, but I am not sure that it will.

[Biro Bob]

this is horrible

this is going to turn us all into merit whores

I wish I could help. I just tested my spendable merit... and now I have zero

Thank you all for the generous donations of sMerit. I started with 100 merit and 6 sMerit (which I consumed immediately) - I’m not sure what the initial 100 merit /6 sMerit formula is based on as other ‘members’ seem to have arbitrary amounts between 0 and several thousand.. Your very kind donations added 9 new Merit points and gave me 4 new spendable sMerits.

Cheers.

On a different.. wall observing kinda note, the UK annual self assessment tax MUST be paid by January 31st. I’m sure many people that spent well in 2017 (knowing they had massive BTC profits to fall back on) didn’t really plan ahead so needed to cash out a few Bitcoins to pay their tax bill... I’m one of these people. I cashed out at £10600 (approx $14k) but I’m sure others have been holding to the last minute hoping.... it goes a bit higher than now...

Edit: I just found out how to find out who my Meritors are by clicking on Merit in my profile. Thanks Dabs, Yefi, Rosewater, Hairy, vanobe and Jay. Much appreciated!

[conspirosphere.tk]

In the end, it's all a gamble, I just like the odds better on some of them that few people see for now (then everyone else will see it and have their "Napster" moment, that one dies and gets "torrented", but the world changes anyway.)

Mostly is that latecomers feel that btc can hardly make another 10X+ from current levels, so they end buying lottery tickets priced $1 or less to have their chance for a 100-bagger, without even looking at the monetary base or any other technical spec of their tickets. This make me support the idea of starting to use milli-bitcoins (one-thousandth btc) as the standard unit.

[HairyMaclairy]

12 hours later and it looks like the trend line is holding as an upper bound for now.  Question is whether closing of the futures on CME today will trigger a dump or a relief rally.  Volatility seems assured.  For context this is the 6 hour chart on Bitstamp.  It looks much the same at 1 week level or 15 minute level for those who don’t like the choice of scale.

[HairyMaclairy]

Robinhood 0% fees crypto trading.  200k people in line. 



quick image upload

[Heater]

Robinhood 0% fees crypto trading.  200k people in line. 



quick image upload

This is clearly a scam - zero commission? Yeah right. I guarantee you that they will front-run your order.

[jojo69]

Robinhood 0% fees crypto trading.  200k people in line.  

meanwhile Bittrex signup STILL MIA