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

[Torque]

I predict that so much of late 2017's run up was by deep pocket institutional investors (and not retail), that we may see a long period of boring market action sideways for 6-8 months. Maybe longer.

Only boring relative to last year's craziness though. I'm thinking 2018 could be very much like 2016, slow and steady. Make no mistake though, institutional investors will continue to accumulate OTC. Someone has to buy all those newly minted coins each day/month.

[RealMachasm]

I predict that so much of late 2017's run up was by deep pocket institutional investors (and not retail), that we may see a long period of boring market action sideways for 6-8 months. Maybe longer.

Only boring relative to last year's craziness though. I'm thinking 2018 could be very much like 2016, slow and steady.

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

[Ludwig Von]

I predict that so much of late 2017's run up was by deep pocket institutional investors (and not retail), that we may see a long period of boring market action sideways for 6-8 months. Maybe longer.

Only boring relative to last year's craziness though. I'm thinking 2018 could be very much like 2016, slow and steady. Make no mistake though, institutional investors will continue to accumulate OTC. Someone has to buy all those newly minted coins each day/month.

That is the best new years wish ever... . I hope it will happen like that. (small swings may be welcome on a regular base to help increase our stash a bit).

[Torque]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

[RealMachasm]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

True. It does seem very odd doesn't it?
Are people just signing up but not buying?
I guess it can take a while to get the wheels in motion from beginning to sign up, through verification to eventually sending funds to exchanges.
During that time if the price started tanking it might well have put alot of people off buying at all.
Maybe if we see a sustained increase and less FUD then these new users may just start buying up?
This is all completely hypothetical of course.
In the meantime I am still Hodling. :-)

[FractalUniverse]

Yes, that's the hilarious part.  The last time there was a Bitfinex scare and everyone KNEW they were a fraud, Bitfinex DOUBLED DOWN on fraud.  They knew everyone would convert everything to BTC to try and withdraw, so what do they do?  They pumped BTC on their own exchange right beforehand to make sure everyone is forced to buy the bitcoins at TOP DOLLAR HAHA.  That's how big of crooks everyone affiliated with that exchange is.

by this logic, they would have to significantly pump every coin on their exchange now. Thats not easy when most of these coins are traded on other large exchanges too.,

Personally I don't see much of a difference between tethers and "real" dollars displayed on an exchange after you sell btc or a shitcoin. I mean they are both virtual until you get the money on your hand. Many insolvent exchanges showed dollar balances that weren't reflecting the reality of the USD holdings of the exchange, whether it was MtGox or more recent ones.

So no matter if it says "USD balance" / "EUR balance" / "CNY balance", "USDT balance" or even "BTC balance", it always has a risk when you are dealing with an exchange.

Good point. Actually its the same with whole real world banking industry. When we log in to our internet banking apps, all we can see is just a number. But can we all withdraw or spend that today? No. Not a chance if too many people do it at the same time.

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

[Torque]

People also have to remember that with Mt. Gox, near the end they weren't selling Bitcoin anymore. They were selling fake Goxcoins, and they blocked withdrawals.

At least with Bitfinex, we are assured that they're Bitcoin is the real thing and can be transferred out. Now whether or not they are wholly solvent, that's another story. They're probably running fractional reserve coinage like many of the other exchanges.

[Samarkand]

...

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be
dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone
else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

I was completely agreeing with you until your last sentence. Why do you think that they can´t control it?
They can easily shut down Tether using the same tactic that the US authorities used against
E-Gold (of course the central banks won´t do it themselves, they will let the usual authorities do their
bidding).

Take a look at my earlier post where I described how the Department of Justice and the
Treasury Department simply changed their definition of a money transmitter to a vague definition
that fits literally every business that is somehow related to money transfers.

However, in its actions from 2006-2008, the U.S. Treasury Department in conjunction with the
United States Department of Justice stretched the definition of money transmitter in the USA Patriot Act
to include any system that allows transfer of any kind of value from one person to another, not merely national
currency or cash

[d_eddie]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

That's why I've been wishing the audit to produce an "all clean" report.

If there's no fractional reserve going on, and tether is really backed up 1:1 by real USD, this means no actual printing privilege has been taken away from the central banks. In turn, this should imply the central banks can't take legitimate action against tether creation and, more importantly, have no need or little motivation to do so.

However, my whole point is moot. Apparently, the audit's been canned and it's likely there is overprinting (fractional reserve) going on, so the games are still quite open.

[Torque]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

[d_eddie]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

Double and triple crosses. You're just way above in Higher Conspiracy Studies, man.

[OWZ1337]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

when Tether dies bitcoin will skyrocket because then the real market makers will fill the void? hmmm

[HI-TEC99]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

Most exchanges still have a giant backlog of newly registered users waiting to get verified. Some of them had to upgrade their servers to handle the numbers of users that were already verified, but they still haven't dealt with the unverified backlog. There are still people who have been waiting for months for verification.

After they all get verified the price might skyrocket again.

[HairyMaclairy]

The difference between Mt.Gox and Bitfinex is that, at that time, bitcoin had few use cases, and few exchanges, whereas now, is much more widespread, with lots of use cases and exchanges (there are even people using it to buy cars and houses).

So a Bitfinex scandal would not affect the price as much as Mt.Gox did.

Furthermore, a 500 million theft from a Japanese exchange last week curiously isn't even a talking point now. Are we just being ethno- and bitcoincentric or is this kind of shit just not so important anymore because of the larger ecosystem?

A hack of an exchange holding NEM has no real impact.  It’s like a bunch of Ripple was stolen.

[FractalUniverse]

...

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be
dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone
else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

I was completely agreeing with you until your last sentence. Why do you think that they can´t control it?
They can easily shut down Tether using the same tactic that the US authorities used against
E-Gold (of course the central banks won´t do it themselves, they will let the usual authorities do their
bidding).

Take a look at my earlier post where I described how the Department of Justice and the
Treasury Department simply changed their definition of a money transmitter to a vague definition
that fits literally every business that is somehow related to money transfers.

However, in its actions from 2006-2008, the U.S. Treasury Department in conjunction with the
United States Department of Justice stretched the definition of money transmitter in the USA Patriot Act
to include any system that allows transfer of any kind of value from one person to another, not merely national
currency or cash

I meant they cannot control issuance of tether by themselves, and yeah thats why they will likely push for crackdown.
i dont remember e-gold much, but i know about how they took down liberty reserve. Suddenly "domain seized" landing website appeared and it was gone. People were able to file claims for their money though.

[york780]

They are watching. They are always watching. I see you.

[flynn]

A hack of an exchange holding NEM has no real impact.  It’s like a bunch of Ripple was stolen.

The very nature of NEMs is to be eaten by some chinese people.

[OWZ1337]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

Most exchanges still have a giant backlog of newly registered users waiting to get verified. Some of them had to upgrade their servers to handle the numbers of users that were already verified, but they still haven't dealt with the unverified backlog. There are still people who have been waiting for months for verification.

After they all get verified the price might skyrocket again.

pls hurry up and "verify" our crack team of homeless people(sockpuppets) that are signing up to bittrex   ~*good luck with that!*

[acquafredda]

I like the one guys reply.
"Always ask for evidence" - Sure. Please provide evidence that you are solvent.

Lol

From the same thread - "Burden of proof is with the people making accusations not the other way around"

I've seen this thrown back multiple times by Bitfinex when asked about this.

It doesn't quite compute. People are making an accusation based on a complete lack of evidence to refute it and BFX are only too happy not to provide it.

The funny thing is though, I'm not sure any of these exchanges are fully solvent. They could all be running fractional reserves. Or leveraging user account coins against other investments. Hence the reason why the whole "yearly independent bitcoin audit" thing seemed to have died 2-3 years ago.

About fractional-reserve and Bitcoin Exchanges there's this thread if you missed it
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=945881.0

Please, do yourselves a favour: don't get tethered

 

[JayJuanGee]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

Whether it is conspiracy or not, we need to formulate some kind of explanation about why now coinbase is $200 below the BTC market price on the weekend, and in previous weekends it was $200 above.  Could be the network speed is increased, so easier to move bitcoins in and out of coinbase?  Could be manipulation to set an impression that selling is higher than buying - since coinbase is a pretty BIG onramp from fiat(including USD)?