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

[seleme]

BTW: You´re actually quite famous? Is that you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Stolfi

Seems to fit the description, cool CV (and field of work).

yes, it is me...

Good stuff.

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[Mota]

You are quite right, larger markets and a fixed supply increases the price. But how many people do you think use Bitcoin Worldwide? I would hazard a guess and say a little over a million.

I have no idea of how many people use bitcoin for legal commerce.  Is there any solid estimate, somewhere?

Huobi's CEO claims that he has 10,000 active clients.  I would guess that no other exchange has more than that.  So we have perhaps 50,000 active clients
in total.  Granted, those are speculators, not users.

However, I would guess that less than 1% of all trade at the exchanges is people buying BTC to buy legal stuff.   People who keep moving bids and asks up and down to follow the price are speculators, and they seem to  generate most of the volume.

That would mean less than 3000 BTC/day, or 2,000,000 US$/day used for commerce.  If the average purchase is 100 $, that would be less than 20,000 users.

Those are just guesses, loosely based on what I see on the charts.  I would love to see real data.

I did not say that they have to be used for legal commerce. Even buy and hodl would suffice. I don't know about Huobi, but gox has over a million registered account, even when only a third of them was ever used you would have 333333 users there alone. You have Bitstamp/btce/bitcoin.de/huobi/btcchina/localbitcoin/kraken etc. who are all having massive user growth.
And those are the greater ones. I know that there is a turkish exchange too, and you can pretty much buy your bitcoins at every bitcoin "stammtisch" as Germans like to name them.
Again, the bitcoins bought don't have to be used for commerce in any way, you seem to forget that you can just use them as a commodity.

[bassclef]

BTW: You´re actually quite famous? Is that you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Stolfi

Seems to fit the description, cool CV (and field of work).

yes, it is me...

Cool! Great to have such an academic mind among us... what do you think about blockchains as voting mechanisms, seeing as vote fraud is of interest to you?

[fonzie]

Well choose for yourself if you tend to believe the bearish(fatal) predictions of an well educated mind(Jorge) or if you want to follow Billie Jean´s 80 Mio$ 2nd ellbow S-curve predictions.
Or take the easy way and believe the fonz.

Edit:
Sorry Jorge that i´m using you for my bearish trolling

[BTC5OOO]

BTC *it's aliveeee ~ looks like we are heading back uP^ ---> run shorty runnnnn ;-) LOL

[oda.krell]

@JorgeStolfi

I'll ask you the same question I've asked a few times before, when people seem particularly negative about the prospects of Bitcoin. Here it goes:

You probably think of yourself as someone who, by and large, believes in/follows the empirical method, right? As in: you let external data dictate and change your models, not the other way around. Correct so far?

If so, under which circumstance would you conclude that you have been wrong?

Can you describe (not fully formalized and quantified, but approximately) what would qualify as:

a) a "success" of Bitcoin and

b) Bitcoin being a good investment.

Unless you're a dogmatist, that should be possible, right? To define, before the fact, the boundaries of your current assumptions/your model, and the point at which the new data requires that you adjust your assumptions/your model.

That's what I'm asking :)

[JorgeStolfi]

[ speculators ] provide liquidity and absorb excess risk that average investors are not willing to take. They exist in every market. I don't see it as a negative.

I do not intend the term as negative.  But the use of bitcoins for speculation or store of value is a side effect that is not strictly necessary for its goal (cheap safe etc. payment via internet) and may be a an obstacle to it.

I have yet to see a convincing model (with numbers) of the bitcoin economy in the bright future; much less how we can get from here to there without being steamrolled along the way by banks, governments, and other competitors like Apple and PayPal. (I read somewhere that PayPal is already blocking any payment related to bitcoin.)

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players (greedy speculators, shady investors, incompetent businessmen, scammers...) which are already harming the project's image.

[bassclef]

[ speculators ] provide liquidity and absorb excess risk that average investors are not willing to take. They exist in every market. I don't see it as a negative.

I do not intend the term as negative.  But the use of bitcoins for speculation or store of value is a side effect that is not strictly necessary for its goal (cheap safe etc. payment via internet) and may be a an obstacle to it.

I have yet to see a convincing model (with numbers) of the bitcoin economy in the bright future; much less how we can get from here to there without being steamrolled along the way by banks, governments, and other competitors like Apple and PayPal. (I read somewhere that PayPal is already blocking any payment related to bitcoin.)

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players (greedy speculators, shady investors, incompetent businessmen, scammers...) which are already harming the project's image.

You know you're absolutely right. I don't think anyone in their right mind doubts that digital currencies have an uphill battle.

I was in total agreement with you last year, but I invested anyway because I believed in the idea, and have had this nagging sensation in the back of my brain ever since I didn't buy up domain names when I was 16. I even had the idea then, but got sidetracked with college, music, girls... you know Bitcoin brought me right back to that "oh shit" moment when I was learning about the internet in its early days.

After using Bitcoin, one realizes that it's so far better than the traditional system that it may just win by default. It's an extraordinary piece of technology that's driven by a huge need for change, not just in the way we transfer value, but in the political arena where central banking has gotten out of hand.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players

Look behind, they didn't wait the price to jump on bitcoin..
The numbers is bigger but as the random joe numbers

[medialab101]

[ speculators ] provide liquidity and absorb excess risk that average investors are not willing to take. They exist in every market. I don't see it as a negative.

I do not intend the term as negative.  But the use of bitcoins for speculation or store of value is a side effect that is not strictly necessary for its goal (cheap safe etc. payment via internet) and may be a an obstacle to it.

I have yet to see a convincing model (with numbers) of the bitcoin economy in the bright future; much less how we can get from here to there without being steamrolled along the way by banks, governments, and other competitors like Apple and PayPal. (I read somewhere that PayPal is already blocking any payment related to bitcoin.)

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players (greedy speculators, shady investors, incompetent businessmen, scammers...) which are already harming the project's image.

The academic mind tends to approach every problem from a point of skepticism.

This is partly due to formal training and partly due to the politics of maintaining the image of an 'academic.'

Vision and foresight to see the future coming require a completely different disposition and set of skills.

Let the academics discuss why Bitcoin is going to fail, and then watch the tide of opinion slowly turn as it becomes the reality of our shared future. History is filled with such examples.

[jonoiv]

[ speculators ] provide liquidity and absorb excess risk that average investors are not willing to take. They exist in every market. I don't see it as a negative.

I do not intend the term as negative.  But the use of bitcoins for speculation or store of value is a side effect that is not strictly necessary for its goal (cheap safe etc. payment via internet) and may be a an obstacle to it.

I have yet to see a convincing model (with numbers) of the bitcoin economy in the bright future; much less how we can get from here to there without being steamrolled along the way by banks, governments, and other competitors like Apple and PayPal. (I read somewhere that PayPal is already blocking any payment related to bitcoin.)

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players (greedy speculators, shady investors, incompetent businessmen, scammers...) which are already harming the project's image.

I see your point. but as a community, we keep growing. at some point bitcoin will change from a niche to a real threat...  After time the general population will be educated to the benefits and in my opinion, given the option, the ability and knowing the facts, most people would prefer to use bitcoin.

having said that... the short term future is not so great, and the recent problems, are not going away overnight.

[seleme]

[ speculators ] provide liquidity and absorb excess risk that average investors are not willing to take. They exist in every market. I don't see it as a negative.

I do not intend the term as negative.  But the use of bitcoins for speculation or store of value is a side effect that is not strictly necessary for its goal (cheap safe etc. payment via internet) and may be a an obstacle to it.

I have yet to see a convincing model (with numbers) of the bitcoin economy in the bright future; much less how we can get from here to there without being steamrolled along the way by banks, governments, and other competitors like Apple and PayPal. (I read somewhere that PayPal is already blocking any payment related to bitcoin.)

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players (greedy speculators, shady investors, incompetent businessmen, scammers...) which are already harming the project's image.

The academic mind tends to approach every problem from a point of skepticism.

This is partly due to formal training and partly due to the politics of maintaining the image of an 'academic.'

Vision and foresight to see the future coming require a completely different disposition and set of skills.

Let the academics discuss why Bitcoin is going to fail, and then watch the tide of opinion slowly turn as it becomes the reality of our shared future. History is filled with such examples.

Exact,y that's why I wrote on page before that he is teacher and they are not really exciting ones.

They tend to play on safe, and there's no place for that in crypto at this moment. You either risk hard and make it big, or you fail trying

[JorgeStolfi]

As an experiment ... go to Google trends....

Thanks for the links.  The peaks seem to match significnt changes in price and the growth of the "market".

Also this is quite interesting stats for wallet note China does download a lot more in 2013, bbbbut not as many as USA

http://thegenesisblock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/global-wallet-downloads.png?be58f1

Interesting too. 

Are those numbers complete (e.g. could the Chinese be downloading the software from a local source not counted in those graphs?)

My picture of the typical Huobi client is a low or middle-class person, who does not understand English, has no programming knowledge, and keeps his bitcoins in his Huobi account.  He cannot use bitcoins to pay for things in China and does not usually travel outside the country.  Would he need to download the software and/or create a private wallet in order to open an account at Huobi?

[medialab101]

Would he need to download the software and/or create a private wallet in order to open an account at Huobi?

No offense intended but you seem to have a very tenuous grasp on how Bitcoin works. Before you start making grand predictions about it's future maybe you should spend some more time educating yourself about its inner workings.

[YoYa]

You don't give any arguments.  All you seem to be saying is : "I don't see the value in BTC, and I think markets are saturated".

I can see the potential utility of cryptocoins (apart from a host of economic problems that have no stisfactory answer yet) and I wish that they would succed.

But the issue is whether Bitcoin is a good investment now.  That depends only on whether its price will increase, by how much, and when.

Welcome, to answer your question: Bitcoin is a terrible investment!

Well, kinda, sorta....in a highly contextual way. In a world where safe to moderately risky investments only bring you double digit percentage returns(if even), Bitcoin is a highly volatile unknown, unperfected vehicle which hasn't even left beta yet, in other words it can never be an investment until both the software/price reach maturity and relative stability. But if you're willing to risk money you can afford to lose, why not partake, it's a pity that earnest people have taken it on themselves to invest their farm in bitcoin because it will mean a lot of pain should it come to fail.

Also, given that it's slow, and that there are emerging competitors, the safest way to assess it is to see it as a interface bus that is used on the basis of knowledge and reliability, not necessarily the best, but definitely the best known.

Given your credentials, although it's nice to have you here, you would really do well to take up your discussions with bitcoin senior devs who will be more than happy to see another senior member of the computer science community take interest. I hope you enjoy this fascinating new technology and it's implications for century old financial practices.

[bassclef]

Exact,y that's why I wrote on page before that he is teacher and they are not really exciting ones.

They tend to play on safe, and there's no place for that in crypto at this moment. You either risk hard and make it big, or you fail trying

Yes, but the fact that he's here says something

Jorge, do you have a wallet set up? I use Electrum for small amounts as it's super easy and lightweight. I'm sure some of us would throw a few cents your way to play with, if only to promote Ivy League academic research!

[fonzie]

I´m going to sleep now, i switched my dumping bot "Billy" on Gox back on to entertain you while i´m absent. Bye

[seleme]

Exact,y that's why I wrote on page before that he is teacher and they are not really exciting ones.

They tend to play on safe, and there's no place for that in crypto at this moment. You either risk hard and make it big, or you fail trying

Yes, but the fact that he's here says something

Jorge, do you have a wallet set up? I use Electrum for small amounts as it's super easy and lightweight. I'm sure some of us would throw a few cents your way to play with, if only to promote Ivy League academic research!

It's probably more because it's his niche that made him being interested to see what's going on.

[virtualfaqs]

[ speculators ] provide liquidity and absorb excess risk that average investors are not willing to take. They exist in every market. I don't see it as a negative.

I do not intend the term as negative.  But the use of bitcoins for speculation or store of value is a side effect that is not strictly necessary for its goal (cheap safe etc. payment via internet) and may be a an obstacle to it.

I have yet to see a convincing model (with numbers) of the bitcoin economy in the bright future; much less how we can get from here to there without being steamrolled along the way by banks, governments, and other competitors like Apple and PayPal. (I read somewhere that PayPal is already blocking any payment related to bitcoin.)

The fast increase in value, for example, seems to have attracted a lot of undesriable players (greedy speculators, shady investors, incompetent businessmen, scammers...) which are already harming the project's image.

You are allowed to sell virtual currency on eBay Classifieds now. No auction yet. So in this format it's safe to assume they will be allowing PayPal payment. No idea how this will be enforced. Of course accepting PayPal has its own risks.

[roslinpl]

Explanation

Wow this is nice I like it!