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

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

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[Peter R]

I'm starting a business as a Bitcoin consultant. There's so much work to be done building the infrastructure.  

A Bitcoin Consultant!?

But you are a Bitcoin Nutter and since I have became aware of you, you have been nothing but wrong.

Billyjoeallen has made many helpful and insightful contributions here.  People will be successful as bitcoin consultants and it would give me pleasure to see our own forum members succeed.


MatTheCat, you haven't answered my question from last night:

....and if u think that big hands in marketplaces don't attempt to bend and manipulate the market, then...erm....

..WAKEN UP LADDIE!

Out of curiosity, MatTheCat, how would you define "manipulation"?  Is posting a big ask wall to try to scare smaller fish into selling "manipulation" or is that just "strategy"?  How about if your "buddy" is the one who eats your big ask wall?

I'm trying to figure out where you draw the line between natural and unnatural price movements.  

[billyjoeallen]

I'm starting a business as a Bitcoin consultant. There's so much work to be done building the infrastructure.  

A Bitcoin Consultant!?

But you are a Bitcoin Nutter and since I have became aware of you, you have been nothing but wrong.

I wish you all the best on your new venture but I think I shall pass on your services thankyou very much.

What was I ever wrong about? Can you provide any evidence of this assertion? I may be talking my book, but my book is doing just fine.

[ampere9765]

a break upwards from this consolidation could be a false breakout. bearish wedge forming. watching closely.

[Peter R]

Fear...

BTC went from $10 to $260 ..  that is huge.

Then it went to $50.. that is huge..

Then back to $140.. that is huge..

And then people got scared and just fear took over..

Fair enough.  But fear by whom exactly, and why so late?  I doubt it was fear from new buyers who came in near the March/April run-up: they did not yet have much to lose.  So it was fear from people sitting on large gains thinking it could all vanish and they had better diversify, just in case, correct?  But why did it happen so much after the March/April growth spurt?  And are we likely to see this play out again?

[ampere9765]

Fear...

BTC went from $10 to $260 ..  that is huge.

Then it went to $50.. that is huge..

Then back to $140.. that is huge..

And then people got scared and just fear took over..

Fair enough.  But fear by whom exactly, and why so late?  I doubt it was fear from new buyers who came in near the March/April run-up: they did not yet have much to lose.  So it was fear from people sitting on large gains thinking it could all vanish and they had better diversify, just in case, correct?  But why did it happen so much after the bubble?  And are we likely to see this play out again?

many EW theorists see it as likely, yes. perhaps a typical ABC correction would have been too profitable to traders for the market to allow it, hence the choppy movement over the past month. the post-crash consolidation is both a time for profit-taking and accumulation -- and it's hard to say which force will be greater over the next month or two.

[TERA]

Fear...

BTC went from $10 to $260 ..  that is huge.

Then it went to $50.. that is huge..

Then back to $140.. that is huge..

And then people got scared and just fear took over..

Fair enough.  But fear by whom exactly, and why so late?  I doubt it was fear from new buyers who came in near the March/April run-up: they did not yet have much to lose.  So it was fear from people sitting on large gains thinking it could all vanish and they had better diversify, just in case, correct?  But why did it happen so much after the March/April growth spurt?  And are we likely to see this play out again?

Mtgox was having major liquidity issues and was facing major lawsuits at a time when it was the only major  exchange. This fear triggered the final phase of repressed  capitulation to occur. You may notice low volume. This is because most of the buying occurred off-exchange by hedge funds.

[JorgeStolfi]

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):


               !   Wed !   Thu !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !    Tue !   Wed !   Thu !   Fri !                     
  EXCHANGE     ! 01/22 ! 01/23 !  01/24 !  01/25 !  01/26 !  01/27 !  01/28 ! 01/29 ! 01/30 ! 01/31 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp     |  8.31 |  7.40 |  15.78 |   8.70 |   9.70 |  25.19 |  20.04 |  7.04 | 13.13 |  7.73 | USD                 
  BTC-e        | 22.32 |  8.53 |  15.27 |   9.34 |  10.38 |  21.02 |  16.82 |  6.53 | 12.54 |  4.65 | USD,EUR,RUR         
  BitFinEx     |  2.97 |  2.83 |  10.99 |   4.62 |   7.88 |  15.63 |  13.62 |  3.87 |  8.18 |  3.91 | USD                 
  MtGOX        |  5.51 |  2.23 |   7.38 |   9.52 |  16.11 |  10.02 |  11.82 |  7.21 |  6.60 |  4.45 | USD,EUR,GBP,AUD,JPY 
  Bitcoin.DE   |  0.69 |  0.42 |   0.52 |   0.30 |   0.34 |   0.60 |   0.49 |  0.33 |  0.47 |  0.35 | EUR                 
  Kraken       |  0.25 |  0.19 |   0.46 |   0.19 |   0.24 |   0.63 |   0.54 |  0.24 |  0.37 |  0.20 | EUR                 
  CaVirtEx     |  0.15 |  0.17 |   0.41 |   0.33 |   0.10 |   0.40 |   0.22 |  0.21 |  0.25 |  0.24 | CAD                 
  CampBX       |  0.05 |  0.08 |   0.13 |   0.04 |   0.05 |   0.13 |   0.20 |  0.07 |  0.06 |  0.05 | USD                 
  Crypto-Trade |   .   |  0.01 |   0.01 |    .   |    .   |    .   |   0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |   .   | USD                 

  SUBTOTAL     | 40.25 | 21.86 |  50.95 |  33.04 |  44.80 |  73.62 |  63.76 | 25.50 | 41.61 | 21.58 |                     

  Huobi        | 25.81 | 25.67 |  89.25 |  58.16 |  91.31 |  63.13 |  92.88 | 32.14 | 29.27 | 15.26 | CNY                 
  OKCoin       | 15.88 | 16.50 |  34.01 |  26.33 |  31.40 |  35.41 |  52.37 | 29.11 | 18.56 | 17.11 | CNY                 
  BTC-China    |  1.62 |  2.01 |   6.82 |   3.04 |   5.55 |   4.43 |   6.45 |  1.94 |  1.99 |  1.17 | CNY (NOTE 1)

  SUBTOTAL     | 43.31 | 44.18 | 130.08 |  87.53 | 128.26 | 102.97 | 151.70 | 63.19 | 49.82 | 33.54 |                     

  TOTAL        | 83.56 | 66.04 | 181.03 | 120.57 | 173.06 | 176.59 | 215.46 | 88.69 | 91.43 | 55.12 |                     



All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. The BTC-e volumes now include retroactively also exchanges to EUR and RUR (together about 1 kBTC/day or less).  Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

Coinbase volume is not available, neither at Bitcoinwisdom nor at Bitcoincharts, but they are said to use Bitstamp for currency conversion.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

(NOTE 1) On 2014-01-30, BTC-China had a burst of extremely fast, regular and atypical transactions, all with similar amounts (a few tens of BTC) and prices (~4836 CNY), adding up to about 41,050 BTC.  The burst started suddenly around 17:00 UTC and and stopped suddenly around 19:30 UTC. Presumably those transactions were made by a faulty robot trading against itself or some other robot, and did not represent actual exchange of money and bitcoins between distinct individuals. Therefore those anomalous transactions were subtracted from the BTC-China volume for Jan/30.

[Peter R]

But fear by whom exactly, and why so late?  I doubt it was fear from new buyers who came in near the March/April run-up: they did not yet have much to lose.  So it was fear from people sitting on large gains thinking it could all vanish and they had better diversify, just in case, correct?  But why did it happen so much after the March/April growth spurt?  And are we likely to see this play out again?

Mtgox was having major liquidity issues and was facing major lawsuits at a time when it was the only major exchange. This fear triggered the final phase of repressed  capitulation to occur. You may notice low volume. This is because most of the buying occurred off-exchange by hedge funds.

OK, I think this all makes sense.  The MtGox fears reduced the total bid volume on the exchange, and when the final capitulation came (triggered by Gox concerns), there was insufficient USD liquidity to soak up the bitcoins and the exchange price fell dramatically.  The street price in Vancouver (local bitcoins) didn't fall during this period--in fact many exchangers were sold out!  So I think this was basically a market dislocation--there was ample demand from new small buyers, but the mechanism to acquire coins from the large holders at Gox had broken down.  

Will we see a final capitulation from this last November's growth spurt?

[TERA]

But fear by whom exactly, and why so late?  I doubt it was fear from new buyers who came in near the March/April run-up: they did not yet have much to lose.  So it was fear from people sitting on large gains thinking it could all vanish and they had better diversify, just in case, correct?  But why did it happen so much after the March/April growth spurt?  And are we likely to see this play out again?

Mtgox was having major liquidity issues and was facing major lawsuits at a time when it was the only major exchange. This fear triggered the final phase of repressed  capitulation to occur. You may notice low volume. This is because most of the buying occurred off-exchange by hedge funds.

OK, I think this all makes sense.  The MtGox fears reduced the total bid volume on the exchange, and when the final capitulation came (triggered by Gox concerns), there was insufficient USD liquidity to soak up the bitcoins and the exchange price fell dramatically.  The street price in Vancouver (local bitcoins) didn't fall during this period--in fact many exchangers were sold out!  So I think this was basically a market dislocation--there was ample demand from new small buyers, but the mechanism to acquire coins from the large holders at Gox had broken down.  

Will we see a final capitulation from this last November's growth spurt?

Now that most real trading occurs completely off of the exchanges, and there is no way to follow it, it is too difficult to predict what is going to happen, especially with all these constantly changing variables like mass adoption, government bans, and China. A capitulation might occur or it might just be sideways trading instead. There might be enough demand off exchange to execute the capitulation at market price rather than causing a drop. Or there might not, and certain types of news could change this at any time. I've given up trying to predict the future. Instead, I'm just following a basic TA strategy to move in out of my position dynamically so that I don't miss any major movements.

[niothor]

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):


               !   Wed !   Thu !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !    Tue !   Wed !   Thu !   Fri !                     
  EXCHANGE     ! 01/22 ! 01/23 !  01/24 !  01/25 !  01/26 !  01/27 !  01/28 ! 01/29 ! 01/30 ! 01/31 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp     |  8.31 |  7.40 |  15.78 |   8.70 |   9.70 |  25.19 |  20.04 |  7.04 | 13.13 |  7.73 | USD                 
  BTC-e        | 22.32 |  8.53 |  15.27 |   9.34 |  10.38 |  21.02 |  16.82 |  6.53 | 12.54 |  4.65 | USD,EUR,RUR         
  BitFinEx     |  2.97 |  2.83 |  10.99 |   4.62 |   7.88 |  15.63 |  13.62 |  3.87 |  8.18 |  3.91 | USD                 
  MtGOX        |  5.51 |  2.23 |   7.38 |   9.52 |  16.11 |  10.02 |  11.82 |  7.21 |  6.60 |  4.45 | USD,EUR,GBP,AUD,JPY 
  Bitcoin.DE   |  0.69 |  0.42 |   0.52 |   0.30 |   0.34 |   0.60 |   0.49 |  0.33 |  0.47 |  0.35 | EUR                 
  Kraken       |  0.25 |  0.19 |   0.46 |   0.19 |   0.24 |   0.63 |   0.54 |  0.24 |  0.37 |  0.20 | EUR                 
  CaVirtEx     |  0.15 |  0.17 |   0.41 |   0.33 |   0.10 |   0.40 |   0.22 |  0.21 |  0.25 |  0.24 | CAD                 
  CampBX       |  0.05 |  0.08 |   0.13 |   0.04 |   0.05 |   0.13 |   0.20 |  0.07 |  0.06 |  0.05 | USD                 
  Crypto-Trade |   .   |  0.01 |   0.01 |    .   |    .   |    .   |   0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |   .   | USD                 

  SUBTOTAL     | 40.25 | 21.86 |  50.95 |  33.04 |  44.80 |  73.62 |  63.76 | 25.50 | 41.61 | 21.58 |                     

  Huobi        | 25.81 | 25.67 |  89.25 |  58.16 |  91.31 |  63.13 |  92.88 | 32.14 | 29.27 | 15.26 | CNY                 
  OKCoin       | 15.88 | 16.50 |  34.01 |  26.33 |  31.40 |  35.41 |  52.37 | 29.11 | 18.56 | 17.11 | CNY                 
  BTC-China    |  1.62 |  2.01 |   6.82 |   3.04 |   5.55 |   4.43 |   6.45 |  1.94 |  1.99 |  1.17 | CNY (NOTE 1)

  SUBTOTAL     | 43.31 | 44.18 | 130.08 |  87.53 | 128.26 | 102.97 | 151.70 | 63.19 | 49.82 | 33.54 |                     

  TOTAL        | 83.56 | 66.04 | 181.03 | 120.57 | 173.06 | 176.59 | 215.46 | 88.69 | 91.43 | 55.12 |                     



All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. The BTC-e volumes now include retroactively also exchanges to EUR and RUR (together about 1 kBTC/day or less).  Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

Coinbase volume is not available, neither at Bitcoinwisdom nor at Bitcoincharts, but they are said to use Bitstamp for currency conversion.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

(NOTE 1) On 2014-01-30, BTC-China had a burst of extremely fast, regular and atypical transactions, all with similar amounts (a few tens of BTC) and prices (~4836 CNY), adding up to about 41,050 BTC.  The burst started suddenly around 17:00 UTC and and stopped suddenly around 19:30 UTC. Presumably those transactions were made by a faulty robot trading against itself or some other robot, and did not represent actual exchange of money and bitcoins between distinct individuals. Therefore those anomalous transactions were subtracted from the BTC-China volume for Jan/30.

Can somebody research how many coins are sitting on those exchangers's order book?
I can't find a way to view the entire orders for huobi or okcoin

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JorgeStolfi]

On most of the exchanges that I monitor, the BTC trade volume for Friday Jan/31 was extremely low.

Huobi (15.26 kBTC) and BTC-China (1.17 kBTC) were the most affected; both had about 1/6 of the volume of last Tuesday's  (Jan/28).   For the non-Chinese exchanges, that ratio was around 1/3.

The decrease at Chinese exchanges is easy to understand, since Jan/31 is the Chinese new Year, and AFAIK people have several days of vacations before and/of after it.  But the fall at the non-Chinese sites is puzzling, since they are usually very active on Fridays. 

This "experiment" may show how much China infuences other exchanges.   Except for MtGOX, the prices in all exchanges are obviously tied by arbitrage.  So perhaps (less volume in China) --> (less price variation) --> (less volume at all exchanges).  Or perhaps arbitrage trading is a large part of the volume; then (less volume in China) --> (less price variation in China) --> (less arbitrage trade).

OKCoin fell "only" to 1/3 compared to Tuesday.  That is another hint that its clientele includes a significant non-Chinese component (the people who keeep trading while the Chinese are all asleep).

We all know about BTC-China's rogue robot that traded ~40,000 BTC in 2.5 hours, 40 BTC at a time, around Jan/30 18:00 UTC (Jan/31 02:00am in China) .  But there are other weird things going on at that site.  For example, its order book now has an offer to sell ~100 BTC @ 4872.38 CNY, and a bid for ~175 BTC @ 4872.37 CNY -- and those two guys just sit there, nose-to-nose, without moving a penny. 

Like some other exchanges, BTC-China also has a stream of small trades within that narrow spread, moslty below 40 BTC. I suspect that it is a robot trading with itself, to cover up the lack of real transactions and/or to inflate their volume.

Once in a while, there is a transaction that changes the price: arbitrage, perhaps?

The crypto-coin community urgently needs to define professional ethics standards for exchanges, and set up an international entity that will audit them and rate them for compliance.

[TERA]

On most of the exchanges that I monitor, the BTC trade volume for Friday Jan/31 was extremely low.

Huobi (15.26 kBTC) and BTC-China (1.17 kBTC) were the most affected; both had about 1/6 of the volume of last Tuesday's  (Jan/28).   For the non-Chinese exchanges, that ratio was around 1/3.

The decrease at Chinese exchanges is easy to understand, since Jan/31 is the Chinese new Year, and AFAIK people have several days of vacations before and/of after it.  But the fall at the non-Chinese sites is puzzling, since they are usually very active on Fridays.  

This "experiment" may show how much China infuences other exchanges.   Except for MtGOX, the prices in all exchanges are obviously tied by arbitrage.  So perhaps (less volume in China) --> (less price variation) --> (less volume at all exchanges).  Or perhaps arbitrage trading is a large part of the volume; then (less volume in China) --> (less price variation in China) --> (less arbitrage trade).

OKCoin fell "only" to 1/3 compared to Tuesday.  That is another hint that its clientele includes a significant non-Chinese component (the people who keeep trading while the Chinese are all asleep).

We all know about BTC-China's rogue robot that traded ~40,000 BTC in 2.5 hours, 40 BTC at a time, around Jan/30 18:00 UTC (Jan/31 02:00am in China) .  But there are other weird things going on at that site.  For example, its order book now has an offer to sell ~100 BTC @ 4872.38 CNY, and a bid for ~175 BTC @ 4872.37 CNY -- and those two guys just sit there, nose-to-nose, without moving a penny.  

Like some other exchanges, BTC-China also has a stream of small trades within that narrow spread, moslty below 40 BTC. I suspect that it is a robot trading with itself, to cover up the lack of real transactions and/or to inflate their volume.

Once in a while, there is a transaction that changes the price: arbitrage, perhaps?

The crypto-coin community urgently needs to define professional ethics standards for exchanges, and set up an international entity that will audit them and rate them for compliance.

I agree. I think the exchanges are 95% daytrading/bot activity and 5% actual investment/divestment from occasional small players. So if the market leader (huobi) isn't moving then there's no reason for the bots and daytraders to trade and there is low volume. Also, even huobi itself is mostly fake volume due to the 0% fees. The big action is happening off of the exchanges. Or at least this is what we're led to belive. If it's not true then this is a house of cards waiting to fall apart.

[JorgeStolfi]

Now that most real trading occurs completely off of the exchanges, and there is no way to follow it

Is that a fact (say, deduced from analysis of the blockchain)?

When one wants to buy or sell something vauable, it is usually better to do it through a market or broker.  Otherwise one may waste a lot of time looking for the partner, and  the price may  end up being well above or below the market's price - leaving one of the sides quite frustrated.

So, who would want to trade bitcoins in private, and why?

[ampere9765]

The big action is happening off of the exchanges. Or at least this is what we're led to belive. If it's not true then this is a house of cards waiting to fall apart.

how do you have any idea? the "off-exchange activity" everyone talks about is like the lochness monster. big leap of faith required to believe that.

[Holliday]

So, who would want to trade bitcoins in private, and why?

I would because I don't trust exchanges and I value my privacy.

[Vigil]

There is one thing keeping the Bitcoin price up at the moment... Mt Gox. Without it we would be much lower. It provides the psychological ammunition for maintaining above $700 level. All other charts are showing a steady downtrend except Gox.

[Holliday]

There is one thing keeping the Bitcoin price up at the moment... Mt Gox. Without it we would be much lower.

If MtGox was always a fully functional exchange from the start, the exchange rate would be much higher.

[Vigil]

There is one thing keeping the Bitcoin price up at the moment... Mt Gox. Without it we would be much lower.

If MtGox was always a fully functional exchange from the start, the exchange rate would be much higher.

Doubtful.