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

[Alley]

Good lord.  It was the first day of trading gbtc and the reasonable asks were instantly bought.  Give it some time.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[billyjoeallen]

What does that mean, "Volx100" and then "0.01"

I'm thinking it means Vol/100 (0.01*100 = 1), but it actually says 0.01/100 = 0.0001?

.01 * 100 = 1 share of GBTC which equals ~.1 BTC so currently the price of BTC on GBTC is $1750/BTC

That's my understanding.  How many do they have to sell before they have to buy more BTC to keep the price even remotely close to the equivalent prices on the major exchanges?

[Alley]

Nobody is buying or selling actual bitcoins with gbtc.  They are shares of stock.  Completely separate.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Nobody is buying or selling actual bitcoins with gbtc.  They are shares of stock.  Completely separate.

Nawt liek any stalk I eva herd of.

*edited for lolspeak*

[JorgeStolfi]

anyone could explain the hell is "Each GBTC share represents ownership of approximately 0.1 bitcoin" supposed to mean? is one share 1/10th of an <imaginary> bitcoin or not?

My understanding is that they refer to the fees that Greyscale will discount from the BTC returned if/when they redeem BIT shares.

[ Institutional funds ] would never, ever, send money to unregulated exchanges. It's simply against their basic policies. Institutional money has no mechanism of acquiring significant amount of BTC, except for the FBI auctions which is not usual way how they do business. Even if they want to buy BTC they can't, putting aside question whether they want to do that or not. That's why I've said any "good-intended" announcement of big money entering BTC which ends up being false, leaves much more damage then idiot who announced it imagined.

Can't such a fund strike a private contract with a sufficiently reliable middleman, who would buy the bitcoins on the exchanges or other places, shouldering the risks, and then sell them to the fund?

I consider the GBTC the first "crystal clear" way for someone to get BTCs and not worrying about losing their money.

Unless Greyscale loses their BTC because of hacking, accidents, embezzlement, etc.?  If I recall correctly, they are not insured against those things, and refuse to be held responsible for any resulting losses.

The price will definitely find its way - thats how free market works.

My understanding is that discrepancies between the GBTC price and the market price of "raw" BTC will take many months to be equalized by arbitragers, because the BIT shares would have to be redeemed by Greyscale (at turtle speed again, perhaps?), or issued by Greyscale and then held for a year.  is this correct?

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[JorgeStolfi]

I updated my "sum of 10 bubbles" model of the historic BTC prices, with slight tuning of the parameters and one extra "bubble" to account for the movement in March-April 2015:


[ Figure 1. A bubble model for the price of bitcoin, showing the smoothed actual price (grey), the modeled price (green), and the individual bubbles.  The brown line near the bottom is the ratio of the actual price to the model price.  Click on the image for a full-size version. ]

Here is an extended (20-bubble) model that also describes the major variations in 2014--2015 as eight rectangular pulses or spikes added to the tail of the "Chinese" bubbles, plus one spike to model the "stuttering" halfway through the rise of the main 2011 bubble:


[ Figure 7. A 20-bubble model for the price of bitcoin, showing the smoothed actual price (grey), the modeled price (green), and the individual bubbles.  The brown line near the bottom is the ratio of the actual price to the model price.  Click on the image for a full-size version. ]

Can anyone guess which events may have caused the bubbles that peaked before 2013-10?  

A longer explanation and discussion of this model has been posted to this thread.  

Note that this model is only intended to be "descriptive", perhaps "explanatory", but not "predictive".  If anything, it is "anti-predictive": if it does indeed describe the way the price evolves, then whatever happened before 2013-11 has no effect on the future price, and any future bubble will not be predictable from the price, until it is well underway.

[Cconvert2G36]

From the 2014 Annual Report published last month:

Authorized Participants who make deposits of bitcoins with the Trust in exchange for Creation
Baskets receive no fees, commissions or other form of compensation or inducement of any kind
from either the Sponsor or the Trust. No Authorized Participant has any obligation or
responsibility to the Sponsor or the Trust to affect any sale or resale of Shares. Authorized
Participants may realize significant profits buying, selling, creating and redeeming Shares as a
result of changes in the value of Shares or bitcoins. In particular, an Authorized Participant may
profit from the “spread” (or difference) between the prices at which it purchases and sells Shares
and bitcoins (or obtains Shares or bitcoins through the creation and redemption of Baskets). For
example, when creating Shares, an Authorized Participant may deposit bitcoins with the Trust that
it has acquired at a price that is lower than the current Bitcoin Market Price and thus receive Shares
with a value greater than the Authorized Participant’s cost of acquiring the deposited bitcoins.
Similarly, an Authorized Participant may sell Shares to a customer from its inventory at a price
higher than the Authorized Participant’s cost in acquiring such Shares. As another example, when
redeeming Shares, an Authorized Participant may receive bitcoins and then hold them for later
resale at a profit if the price of bitcoins increases. The frequent and significant fluctuations in the
price of bitcoins increases the extent to which an Authorized Participant may profit from its
transactions in Shares and bitcoins. As of the date of this Annual Report, the only Authorized
Participant is SecondMarket, Inc., an affiliate of the Sponsor.

Sponsor
Grayscale Investments LLC

Custodian
SecondMarket Holdings

The Only Current Authorized Participant
SecondMarket, Inc

The main question for me: Is it is possible for SecondMarket, Inc to receive creation baskets of shares and place them for sale on the OTC market without the 12 month lockup?

If yes, SecondMarket could quickly arbitrage the OTC share price closer to the NAV of the trust while providing liquidity that the OTC share needs at this point.

If no, the ask supply of the OTC share will be completely dependent on 12 month aged shares from individual investors. Meaning very low volume and little impact on the bitcoin market in general, at least for the reasonably near future.

Care to comment Barry?
I won't hold my breath.

[Adrian-x]

Can anyone guess which events may have caused the bubbles that peaked before 2013-10?

We call them growth spurts BTW,   the reference you mistakenly refer to as a bauble was sparked by the release of functional ASIC's in my opinion, it happened a little while after halving, which was a bit of a letdown as the anticipated price increase didn't happen.

I imagine 2013 -10 saw the first supply shortage, as AsicMiner brought the first industrial ASIC farm online and the few other ASIC'a hit the market. this changes the distribution and supply dramatically, I also imagine all those suckers who invested with Pirate40, bought back in during that time, that time frame would have given them just enough time to get over the tragic loss.  

[marcus_of_augustus]

Anti-gravity drive?

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

Wonder how long until cold fusion is a reality as well??
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2015/04/russia-preparing-for-iccf-195-and.html

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[Chef Ramsay]

From what I've read the last few pages, I'm leaning on that no one knows what's going on here, sorry. Almost no volume at high levels is going on, a few buying chump shares at high prices means nothing yet.

[Fatman3001]

From what I've read the last few pages, I'm leaning on that no one knows what's going on here, sorry. Almost no volume at high levels is going on, a few buying chump shares at high prices means nothing yet.

Was that dump you?

Please don't do that. It hurts in my qr code.

[derpinheimer]

Holy high volume dump on BFX 

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[coinableS]

Classic Bear Grylls trap.

[abercrombie]

is crypto done??  

[damiano]

Holy high volume dump on BFX 

It would be silly to think our beloved bear whale would go down without a fight 

Hope she blows soon