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

[DaSheep]

nice answers, ty for that!

my opinion on rptiela is the same as rampion, he's talking big and posts nice stuff but he sucks at trading

Hey - if you did wrote and 'arb-bot' would you have to accept the first thing that would happen upon launching it be a selling down of the higher exchange - an automatic reduction of the spread?

Just a kooky theory?

I'd say yes but you would need ultra deep pockets, the "normal" spread between btce and gox was always 100 USD so if you'd turn on an arb bot all the other people and bots would still trade with the $100 spread in mind so if you buy on btce to sell on gox someone else might sell on gox before you have the chance to profit.. the only way to counter this is either by DDOS or by buying/selling enough to close the spread but it would only last temporary before reverting back to the "normal" $100..

now the strange thing is it's not reverting at all, the only explanation I have is that someone is catching all the other trades until they run out of money to recreate the spread.. but that's insane isn't it?

[kurious]

nice answers, ty for that!

my opinion on rptiela is the same as rampion, he's talking big and posts nice stuff but he sucks at trading

Hey - if you did wrote and 'arb-bot' would you have to accept the first thing that would happen upon launching it be a selling down of the higher exchange - an automatic reduction of the spread?

Just a kooky theory?

I'd say yes but you would need ultra deep pockets, the "normal" spread between btce and gox was always 100 USD so if you'd turn on an arb bot all the other people and bots would still trade with the $100 spread in mind so if you buy on btce to sell on gox someone else might sell on gox before you have the chance to profit.. the only way to counter this is either by DDOS or by buying/selling enough to close the spread but it would only last temporary before reverting back to the "normal" $100..

now the strange thing is it's not reverting at all, the only explanation I have is that someone is catching all the other trades until they run out of money to recreate the spread.. but that's insane isn't it?

Yes - except the tight spread is continuing - it may not hold if a huge buy / sell comes in - but this has been too close for too long to be a coincidence - or am I insane?

[gandhibt]

stamp 730
gox 733
btce 734

scary...

[kurious]

stamp 730
gox 733
btce 734

And it was 'normally' easily 10% between Stamp and Gox, and no-one really thought that unusual, right?

Now it has been less than 1.5 % for some time.

Must be by design and may explain the hammering down of the Gox price to start the bot engine off...  Only a theory, and they coudl all diverge in 10 minutes, but it just looks like they are much more closely linked now.

And it's Sunday - a good time withthin trading to start up, meaning you play the spread properly when the pro money kicks off on Monday having tested it out...?

Hmm....  

EDIT: more like under 1.5% sorry

[DaSheep]

Yes - except the tight spread is continuing - it may not hold if a huge buy / sell comes in - but this has been too close for too long to be a coincidence - or am I insane?

No you're absolutely right.
The lack of fiat on the weekend makes this alot easier, so let's see how long he can keep it that close when the new money starts flowing in.

[mmitech]

stamp 730
gox 733
btce 734

And it was 'normally' easily 10% between Stamp and Gox, and no-one really thought that unusual, right?

Now it has been less than 1.5 % for some time.

Must be by design and may explain the hammering down of the Gox price to start the bot engine off...  Only a theory, and they coudl all diverge in 10 minutes, but it just looks like they are much more closely linked now.

And it's Sunday - a good time withthin trading to start up, meaning you play the spread properly when the pro money kicks off on Monday having tested it out...?

Hmm....  

EDIT: more like under 1.5% sorry

yes it is not usual that stamp or BTC-e are at the same or more than gox simply because it is a pain to get money out of gox so you have to buy bitcoins and withdraw them elsewhere...

[Taxidermista]

This thing is drawing a beautiful triangle.

[proudhon]

This has been the most difficult of all the crashes to watch without moving significant sums of bitcoin to the exchanges (because opportunity seemed so obvious), but I remain resolved that the risk of allowing 3rd parties control over my bitcoins is too great.  The best I was able to do was have some fiat on a couple of exchanges with buy orders staggered all the way down to $250, many of which, as you can imagine, were hit, and the bitcoin have subsequently been removed from the exchanges.

[bclcjunkie]

precisely, there are much much bigger paws than rpietila in this game and they keep low profile... sometimes i tend to think in the grand scheme of things early asic manufacturers might be involved too via proxies with deep pockets... currently bitcoin market is unregulated so the incentives to fleece average joes are just too irresistible to them... they'd be killing 2 birds with one stone: they sell you asic at insane margins while pumping bitcoin to euphoric levels and when they're done for that quarter or a year with shitload of fiat they can either sell off the coins to cover previous pump and may be even get some additional profit along the way...  

nice answers, ty for that!

my opinion on rptiela is the same as rampion, he's talking big and posts nice stuff but he sucks at trading

Hey - if you did wrote and 'arb-bot' would you have to accept the first thing that would happen upon launching it be a selling down of the higher exchange - an automatic reduction of the spread?

Just a kooky theory?

I'd say yes but you would need ultra deep pockets, the "normal" spread between btce and gox was always 100 USD so if you'd turn on an arb bot all the other people and bots would still trade with the $100 spread in mind so if you buy on btce to sell on gox someone else might sell on gox before you have the chance to profit.. the only way to counter this is either by DDOS or by buying/selling enough to close the spread but it would only last temporary before reverting back to the "normal" $100..

now the strange thing is it's not reverting at all, the only explanation I have is that someone is catching all the other trades until they run out of money to recreate the spread.. but that's insane isn't it?

[PirateHatForTea]

There is no effective means of arbitrage at this time. The reason we have seen a consolidation of price is due to the levels of support at varying prices on different exchanges. Some exchanges had enough volume to push the price higher than others. Once the price comes down, the percentage difference diminishes the observable nominal price differences. And there was also a large manipulator on Gox, I don't know about the other exchanges.

I agree with you - though if you had been using my strategy to trade the spread previously, right now (all exchanges at same price) is a great opportunity to re-normalize your positions across exchanges by buying/selling BTC and transferring BTC between exchanges. And although there is 'noe ffective means of arbitrage' NOW, I expect the spreads to widen again as soon as we hit some new volatility.

I would also expect Gox to typically maintain at a minimum 5% premium to other exchanges, because this is how much it costs to withdraw fiat via wire transfer (unless you pay for the 5% expedited withdraw method you never see your money come out of Gox). So the ucrrent zero spread is quite strange, and probably reflects a lack of selling pressure (noone is in a big hurry to get their miney out of Gox, so they're less inclined to pay the extra to buy BTC and transfer them out).


Niothor - not sure what you were trying to show by quoting that as it wasn't rpietila talking. I agree with the Rampion's takedown of his trading/pricing recommendations though - I'm with Dasheep and Rampion that he sucks at trading.

The quote that is relevant to what I was saying was:

My trading strategy is currently such that there are major fluctuations in relative prices in BTC China and Bitstamp. I chart them and analyze them and have both fiat and bitcoins in both exchanges. I sell in China (buy back BS) when it goes like 10% ahead. When it goes back to 0%, I reverse.

[niothor]

My point is that if you're following the trading advice of anyone on this forum , you'll get burned at least once ... per day .

Rpietila does some great posts that are good in theory and nice to read.
When it comes to action , I wouldn't trust this guy to handle my money.

edit:
Oh crap! I forgot to bold the important things in those quote.
It was the claim that rpietila was a "big" player and the thing that based on his trading , he's losing lots of money. So ... he won't be a "Big" player for too long )

[humanitee]

This has been the most difficult of all the crashes to watch without moving significant sums of bitcoin to the exchanges (because opportunity seemed so obvious), but I remain resolved that the risk of allowing 3rd parties control over my bitcoins is too great.  The best I was able to do was have some fiat on a couple of exchanges with buy orders staggered all the way down to $250, many of which, as you can imagine, were hit, and the bitcoin have subsequently been removed from the exchanges.

I'm with you on this. Here, take more money then I've ever had in my life and please don't make it disappear ok?^{ok?ok?ok?ok?ok?ok?}

[sumantso]

My point is that if you're following the trading advice of anyone on this forum , you'll get burned at least once ... per day .

Rpietila does some great posts that are good in theory and nice to read.
When it comes to action , I wouldn't trust this guy to handle my money.

By his own admission he bought in higher than he sold. And within 2-3 days the big crash happens.

Also add adamstingbit to the list.

[MahaRamana]

It does not look to me like 700 is holding this time.

[oroboras]

I hope not - I have a buy order ay 685, which was missed by a hair, last night.
I'd like to fill it before it goes up again, please.

[humanitee]

It does not look to me like 700 is holding this time.

Doubt it. China is an anchor.

[niothor]

My point is that if you're following the trading advice of anyone on this forum , you'll get burned at least once ... per day .

Rpietila does some great posts that are good in theory and nice to read.
When it comes to action , I wouldn't trust this guy to handle my money.

By his own admission he bought in higher than he sold. And within 2-3 days the big crash happens.

Also add adamstingbit to the list.

Isn't he already there?

[gandhibt]

Im not convinced yet that we surely enter a bear market from here, this is not typical bounce, first of all "crash" should have been deeper and the following bounce more violent. If halfway holds, I mean 128 - 650 - 1163 or isn't broke more than few times with bounce, then we maybe are still in bull market.

[proudhon]

This has been the most difficult of all the crashes to watch without moving significant sums of bitcoin to the exchanges (because opportunity seemed so obvious), but I remain resolved that the risk of allowing 3rd parties control over my bitcoins is too great.  The best I was able to do was have some fiat on a couple of exchanges with buy orders staggered all the way down to $250, many of which, as you can imagine, were hit, and the bitcoin have subsequently been removed from the exchanges.

I'm with you on this. Here, take more money then I've ever had in my life and please don't make it disappear ok?^{ok?ok?ok?ok?ok?ok?}

Yep.  It's really an absurd risk, on top of the risk of merely being involved in bitcoin in the first place.

[mmitech]

Im not convinced yet that we surely enter a bear market from here, this is not typical bounce, first of all "crash" should have been deeper and the following bounce more violent. If halfway holds, I mean 128 - 650 - 1163 or isn't broke more than few times with bounce, then we maybe are still in bull market.

I agree https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=362406.0