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

[Asrael999]

Greece introduces a cashpoint tax to try to stem capital outflow
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/

[arivar]

Does anyone know how long it take to receive the cash after you sell your matured shares ?

[macsga]

Greece introduces a cashpoint tax to try to stem capital outflow
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/

Good luck with that. The most of the capital is out of the country for about 4-5 years now. 

[oblox]

Does anyone know how long it take to receive the cash after you sell your matured shares ?

Probably your standard T+3

[arivar]

Does anyone know how long it take to receive the cash after you sell your matured shares ?

Probably your standard T+3

So if anyone is trying to arbitrage this price we would see him buying it back only by the end of the week.

[Norway]

Greece introduces a cashpoint tax to try to stem capital outflow
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/

This is disturbing news for the greeks. (But not for the geeks).

[minerpumpkin]

I mean, what's going on with GBTC... $550/BTC? Seriously? How come it's not moon time, already. This only leaves on conclusion in my opinion: Wall Street money just doesn't want to do anything with the current exchanges we have (Coinbase, Finex, Kraken, Stamp,...). They want something "official", secure, insured, whatever. Preferably an investment vehicle they're familiar with... An ETF, you know?

Why do people find this so hard to figure out? Todays GBTC trading volume has been 300 shares. That's roughly 30 bitcoins. Try going to Bitfinex and market buy 30 bitcoins. Does the moon time begin?

Sure, the volume is pretty low. I wouldn't have expected it any other way. I actually was kind of surprised there were trades, at all! But the volume doesn't matter, in my opinion. The shares did change hands at those prices. That's what matters.

[Fatman3001]

Greece introduces a cashpoint tax to try to stem capital outflow
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/

Are these the capital controls that's supposed to make greeks look at Bitcoin?

Well, its not like the greeks really have heard of Bitcoin anyway.

Except in finance minister Yanis Varoufakis' april fools joke. Irony is a bitch!


Edit: This is brewing to be The Perfect Storm!

[ensurance982]

Does anyone know how long it take to receive the cash after you sell your matured shares ?

Probably your standard T+3

So if anyone is trying to arbitrage this price we would see him buying it back only by the end of the week.

Good thinking! I also find the idea pretty plausible that there could be more people getting into Bitcoin because they saw the ETF trade at such a premium. They may opt to just go and buy the underlying asset directly!

[Fanbx]

The shares I sold at $133.7 were shares I bought within my self-directed Ameritrade Roth IRA.
You do not have to be an accredited investor to buy or sell shares of this stock, whose value is backed by the number of bitcoins it holds.

This GBTC thing is such a joke. It's obvious that each of these long-announced big-things-turned-fiascoes leave a BTC in worse state then before, because of broken expectations that some serious funds can get hold of BTC without sending money to unregulated exchanges. Please, please, never again announce "Big money in BTC" before there is a real mechanism for it to reach there, you make more harm then good even if you are thinking that being positive can't do any damage. Well, it actually can when many expectations get broken again and again.

Explain to me if you are in charge of an institutional fund (e.g. endowment, pension) why on earth you would wire 20$million to bitstamp/finex/coinbase and buy bitcoins?

Have you read what I've written? That's exactly what I've said: They 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.

Fortress Investment Group LLC(NYSE: FIG) Withdrawn 20$ million to MTgox and bought over 28K bitcoins.

No more bad excuses please! it's just that simple that no institutional fund wants this shitcoin any more.

They already know bitcoin is just a dying pyramid scheme, they will only build service to earn fees from this dying scam until it hit $0! they won't buy this shitcoin! so don't fool yourself with "wall st just hasn't found the way to get in".

Shame on you liars!


In its 2013 annual report, the 10-K filing it sends to the SEC, Fortress noted that it purchased $20 million worth of “Digital currency (Bitcoin)” in 2013. Its holdings at the end of 2013 were $16.3 million, and it recorded an unrealized loss of $3.7 million.

I hate those liars too!

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[macsga]

Greece introduces a cashpoint tax to try to stem capital outflow
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/

Are these the capital controls that's supposed to make greeks look at Bitcoin?

Well, its not like the greeks really have heard of Bitcoin anyway.

Except in finance minister Yanis Varoufakis' april fools joke. Irony is a bitch!

Well, there's a Greek saying that goes like this:

"Among the funny things, pretty serious things are spoken"

Except you don't believe in "conspiracy theories"... Here's a nice one for you then.

If you ask me, yes; I believe that Greece should be the 1st one to incorporate BTC as a second currency. This way Gresham's law will take over and the debt will be eliminated (BTC=Non inflationary, EUR=inflationary). One after another the other -in debt- countries will follow... EU will be the 1st continent to test the new digital currency as it was the 1st one to test the EURO.

Too crazy to be real?

Remember: Fantasy has limits; Reality has not.

[JorgeStolfi]

As for the mining centralization worries, I think that it will be decentralized but not because big companies are not getting into the game. It will get a decentralization after the next block halving.

Why would that happen?  The halving means that there will be only 1800 BTC per day to be mined rather than 3600.  Many miners will have to stop mining, starting with those with smaller efficiency (hashes per dollar of electricty and other recurrent costs).  It is not clear whether these miners will be small or large.  My guess is that mining will become more centralized, and more China-based.

I have seen a proposal by an Israeli mathematician to change the way miners get their blocks from pools, that he claims willo reduce the risk of centralization by letting individual miners choose which transactions to include in a block.  Perhaps.

There is that "21" company that apparently intends to put mining chips inside domestic equipment. Let's see...

[bad trader]

But the volume doesn't matter, in my opinion. The shares did change hands at those prices. That's what matters.

The traders on the actual bitcoin exchanges have little reason to care. Someone could sell 50000 GBTC at $35 and buy 5000 BTC below $350 on bitcoin exchanges, but that seems to be where GBTC's ability to affect the prices ends at the moment.

[JorgeStolfi]

I don't think the SEC can stall this much longer. Because Nasdaq Stockholm is launching a bitcoin investment vehicle in 13 days.
I don't think New York or London will let Stockholm become Wall Street 2.0, lol  

I don't think that the SEC cares much about that.  The delay on COIN is not just bureaucracy, and the approval is not automatic.  The SEC is still trying to decide whether allowing people buy COIN on NASDAQ is a good idea.

[Fatman3001]

Greece introduces a cashpoint tax to try to stem capital outflow
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/

Are these the capital controls that's supposed to make greeks look at Bitcoin?

Well, its not like the greeks really have heard of Bitcoin anyway.

Except in finance minister Yanis Varoufakis' april fools joke. Irony is a bitch!

Well, there's a Greek saying that goes like this:

"Among the funny things, pretty serious things are spoken"

Except you don't believe in "conspiracy theories"... Here's a nice one for you then.

If you ask me, yes; I believe that Greece should be the 1st one to incorporate BTC as a second currency. This way Gresham's law will take over and the debt will be eliminated (BTC=Non inflationary, EUR=inflationary). One after another the other -in debt- countries will follow... EU will be the 1st continent to test the new digital currency as it was the 1st one to test the EURO.

Too crazy to be real?

Remember: Fantasy has limits; Reality has not.

The funny thing is that suddenly Greece would be No.1 in electronic payment system adoption too. A little image boost doesn't hurt.

[bassclef]

But the volume doesn't matter, in my opinion. The shares did change hands at those prices. That's what matters.

The traders on the actual bitcoin exchanges have little reason to care. Someone could sell 50000 GBTC at $35 and buy 5000 BTC below $350 on bitcoin exchanges, but that's seems to be where GBTC's ability to affect the prices ends at the moment.

The important factor is how much demand there is for any ETF. People are watching GBTC carefully as it is first out of the gate, and any price increase in the BTC cash markets will reflect speculation on future demand for paper Bitcoin securities, and won't be a reflection of the actual price traded (since there's not enough volume for consistent arbitrage). So perception of high demand is important for higher prices because the company owning the ETF will have to buy bitcoins on the open market to match it.

[empowering]

I don't think the SEC can stall this much longer. Because Nasdaq Stockholm is launching a bitcoin investment vehicle in 13 days.
I don't think New York or London will let Stockholm become Wall Street 2.0, lol  

I don't think that the SEC cares much about that.  The delay on COIN is not just bureaucracy, and the approval is not automatic.  The SEC is still trying to decide whether allowing people buy COIN on NASDAQ is a good idea.

did you get that from your direct line?

[Wings1987]

Just watched "The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin" free on Amazon Prime.

When does the "The Fall and Fall of Bitcoin" or, the empire striking back, come out

If the price goes back up then maybe we'll get "The Return of the Bitcoin Miner" for all of us who stopped mining because we're losing money.

I perceive BTC mining as an flamboyant idea. This idea incorporates a long promise. You're investing in something that *maybe* will give you back your investment in the future. If you do the (simple) math you will understand that under a certain USD/BTC price, it simply doesn't worth it.

More specifically, under the current circumstances all miners are better off buying BTCs instead of mining for them. The prices are so low that you could get yourself a new BTC every month, with absolutely no gear and no sweat at all. Good luck mining for one with your gear.

As for the mining centralization worries, I think that it will be decentralized but not because big companies are not getting into the game. It will get a decentralization after the next block halving. The price to pay in order to mine for BTCs is unfortunately tied to the Moore's law which is the most significant aspect of the question: "Should I mine for BTCs?".

So, there won't be an "infinite" rise on mining power as there cannot be an "infinite" shrinking to the current IC hardware. So, eventually... decentralization will occur because nobody will spend so much money to get into a game that will deliver "so little", with the only promise that "it will get higher in the future".

Of course, I may be wrong and the price of USD/BTC will hit 10,000 or more so this fires up a totally different scenario. But for now; this is the reality.

As someone who is involved in physical mining and cloud mining some of what you posted is not true.


Using Hashnest as an example. If you purchased cloud mining in the beginning of this year you paid .15 BTC to 1.39 BTC per TH (depending on the type of hashing your purchased) Currently the lower level is worth .212 BTC per TH and the upper level is the same value.

The hashing you purchased has gone up or retained its value and you have pocketed the earnings for the last 4 months. The person that did that is better off than the one that just purchased BTC from an exchange.


PLEASE keep in mind that the last 4-5 months have been a very different situation compared to the last few years. It is very easy to loose money mining but some people are making good money in mining. We are not all doing it out of the kindness of our heart.

[jl2012]

Why would that happen?  The halving means that there will be only 1800 BTC per day to be mined rather than 3600.  Many miners will have to stop mining, starting with those with smaller efficiency (hashes per dollar of electricty and other recurrent costs).  It is not clear whether these miners will be small or large.  My guess is that mining will become more centralized, and more China-based.

The price of bitcoin has halved 2-3 times since the ATH. In terms of mining profitability, effect of price halving and reward halving are just the same, since miners are paying bills in fiat. Therefore, a planned reward halving should not have a very dramatic effect on the hashing power (see what happened after the first halving in 2012). Also, price is expected to raise after halving due to decreased supply, which will compensate at least part of the loss of reward halving.

I have seen a proposal by an Israeli mathematician to change the way miners get their blocks from pools, that he claims willo reduce the risk of centralization by letting individual miners choose which transactions to include in a block.  Perhaps.

There is that "21" company that apparently intends to put mining chips inside domestic equipment. Let's see...

Probably you are staying in the speculation forum for too long. We already have that for a long time. It is called "getblocktemplate", the BIP22 and 23. At least the Eligius pool supports GBT.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0022.mediawiki
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0023.mediawiki

As a professor in computer science with academic interest in bitcoin only, I suggest you spend more time in the technical forum rather than the wall observer.