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

[Divitiae miserae]

Suppose that you have 10 BTC and 5000 USD in each of the exchanges X and Y. Suppose that the price has been rock solid at 500, with plenty of liquidity and tiny spread, in both exchanges.  Your total worth is 20 BTC and 10000 USD.

Price drops in exchange X, and you see an ask of 1 BTC at 490 there.  You buy 1 BTC at X for 490 and sell 1 BTC at Y for 500.  Suppose that it raises the price at X back to 500 BTC.

You now have 11 BTC and 4510 USD at X,  9 BTC and 5500 USD at Y.  Your total worth is now 20 BTC and 10010 USD -- you made a 10 USD profit.

If prices in X and Y fall below the price paid to acquire bitcoins minus the spread the arbitrageur incurs losses. I see speculation in X and speculation in Y under a central-bank-like approach, not strict arbitrage.

[Fatman3001]

Whenever I see Tux outside of this forum I'm thinking of Adam drinking and spamming this thread with weird pics.

[Andre#]

Bitcoin moves across borders relatively frictionlessly and speedily (10 mins to hours not days). This creates lots of seemingly bizarre global arbitrage opportunities ... the same 9k btc can be sold on a western exchange and back being bid up in china within an hour. Large cross-border fiat settlements take 3-5 business days at best.

Chinese BTC is getting sold on Western exchanges? Shouldn't we be seeing a bit more (as in 'corresponding') volume if that's the case?

.... guess you missed the friday night dump in your razor-sharp focus there? 29k in 3 mins, probably some room for chinese btc in that flood.

It's interesting to look at the relative volumes of that friday night dump (@5.00 CET). On the half hour chart, compare it with the average volume of the four half hours predecessing the dump.

Outside China:
- Bitstamp: dump volume was 5,200 BTC, before that 700 BTC (7.5x)
- Bitfinex: dump volume was 19,500 BTC, before that 3,500 BTC (5.5x)
- BTC-e: dump volume was 2,200 BTC, before that 500 BTC (4.5x)
- Kraken: dump volume was 1,500 BTC, before that 250 BTC (6x)
 
Inside China:
- BTCC: dump volume was 15,000 BTC, before that 6,000 BTC (2.5x)
- Huobi: dump volume was 85,000 BTC, before that 75,000 BTC (1.1x)
- OKCoin: dump volume was 10,000 BTC, before that 30,000 BTC (0.3x)

Clearly, the dump took place in outside China. Don't let the wash Chinese volume blind you.

Equally in and outside China if you do the math.

Of course the rise in dump volume will be lower in the chinese exchanges because they are bigger

Do elaborate how that math works, which explains OKCoin dumping with just 0.3x the earlier volume, while Bitstamp dumps with 7.5x the earlier volume.

[jaberwock]

Bitcoin moves across borders relatively frictionlessly and speedily (10 mins to hours not days). This creates lots of seemingly bizarre global arbitrage opportunities ... the same 9k btc can be sold on a western exchange and back being bid up in china within an hour. Large cross-border fiat settlements take 3-5 business days at best.

Chinese BTC is getting sold on Western exchanges? Shouldn't we be seeing a bit more (as in 'corresponding') volume if that's the case?

.... guess you missed the friday night dump in your razor-sharp focus there? 29k in 3 mins, probably some room for chinese btc in that flood.

It's interesting to look at the relative volumes of that friday night dump (@5.00 CET). On the half hour chart, compare it with the average volume of the four half hours predecessing the dump.

Outside China:
- Bitstamp: dump volume was 5,200 BTC, before that 700 BTC (7.5x)
- Bitfinex: dump volume was 19,500 BTC, before that 3,500 BTC (5.5x)
- BTC-e: dump volume was 2,200 BTC, before that 500 BTC (4.5x)
- Kraken: dump volume was 1,500 BTC, before that 250 BTC (6x)
 
Inside China:
- BTCC: dump volume was 15,000 BTC, before that 6,000 BTC (2.5x)
- Huobi: dump volume was 85,000 BTC, before that 75,000 BTC (1.1x)
- OKCoin: dump volume was 10,000 BTC, before that 30,000 BTC (0.3x)

Clearly, the dump took place in outside China. Don't let the wash Chinese volume blind you.

Equally in and outside China if you do the math.

Of course the rise in dump volume will be lower in the chinese exchanges because they are bigger

Do elaborate how that math works, which explains OKCoin dumping with just 0.3x the earlier volume, while Bitstamp dumps with 7.5x the earlier volume.

total dumped by the chinese: 110k
total dumped by others: 28.4k

in fact the chinese still are leading the moves

[ChartBuddy]

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[TERA]

Seriously, you guys are still counting BTC/CNY volume on Huobi and OKCoin? Get a clue.

[LMGTFY]

Do elaborate how that math works, which explains OKCoin dumping with just 0.3x the earlier volume, while Bitstamp dumps with 7.5x the earlier volume.

total dumped by the chinese: 110k
total dumped by others: 28.4k

in fact the chinese still are leading the moves

I've not checked, but I don't doubt your numbers. However, the point wasn't that CNY exchanges had higher volume than USD exchanges, it was that the USD exchanges saw dramatically increased volume during the dump, while the CNY exchanges didn't.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Seriously, you guys are still counting BTC/CNY volume on Huobi and OKCoin? Get a clue.

Thinking is kinda what we do here now. Old-timer.

[billyjoeallen]

When the network gets near hitting capacity of ~220,000 tx per day, the rally gets its head lopped off... coincidence?

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

Any future rally will be meaningfully constrained by this "safety feature".  

That does not makes sense, since it would prevent bitcoins being send to the exchanges (which is of course not the case, since the fee will be set slightly higher to get access to the priority lane). The opposite would be true if your theory would be the case.

Most of the current bitcoin price is speculative value. That means that coins on the exchanges are only there to be sold, lent out, or used as leverage for margin trading. If no coins can get in or out, the only other way out is to SELL and withdraw fiat. Think MtGox only backwards.  People are less likely to move coins to an exchange or ANYWHERE if the xaction fees go up significantly.

Also, we know this MMM ponzi will end badly, as all pyramid schemes do. If the current rally is based on that, then we can expect a retracement when the pozi collapses.  That, coupled with the massive amount of margin longs relative to margin shorts, and there is a real possibility of a squeeze down into the $200-300 trafing range we've been stuck in for the last year.

There's almost no shorts to get squeezed. This rally likely won't go above the previous top if it isn't over already.  Even if it does, we'll probably hit the xaction limit and reverse Gox will bring it back down.

But hey, honey badger don't give a shit and markets can stay irrational longer than leveraged traders can stay solvent, so go ahead and pump.  I want to quintuple up my margin short anyway.

[ChartBuddy]

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[billyjoeallen]

Let's see if bulls can do better next time. I made a little money on the failed attempt at $445 so now You will have to buy even more, but you might do it. Just don't pump to over $3,000 or I'll get a margin call. HAHAHAHA.

Scale or die.

Weren't you screaming the same when the price hit ~260$ two months ago in October and sold like 50 coins and counting? Some people will never learn I guess.

edit: found it

Thanks for finding that BjA post.  he's got a lot of real retarded posts, even though once in a while he will say something that makes sense.

That should be really retarded posts, unless you are suggesting other posts are fake retarded.

[billyjoeallen]

Seriously, you guys are still counting BTC/CNY volume on Huobi and OKCoin? Get a clue.

Thinking is kinda what we do here now. Old-timer.

Show some respect to the lady, Mr. Mayor. She's made enough money trading against me to buy a car.

[TERA]

Seriously, you guys are still counting BTC/CNY volume on Huobi and OKCoin? Get a clue.

Thinking is kinda what we do here now. Old-timer.

Calling me 'old timer' only adds to my point here. Nearly two years ago I left, when all of this Chinese bs was going on, and when I came back I expected was ample time for the Chinese to be completely capitulated and out of the market, and that that fake CNY volume would be completely debunked. In fact it is well known that the CNY volume is fake and it was even way back then. Coindesk doesn't even include those exchanges in it's calculation. USD and adoption are supposed to be running the show now, but here we still have jokers talking about how 'the imaginary chinese whale dumped his 80,000btc/cny on Huobi'.

[Divitiae miserae]

Slow but steady demand-driven price growth. Wonderful.

[Fatman3001]

Let's see if bulls can do better next time. I made a little money on the failed attempt at $445 so now You will have to buy even more, but you might do it. Just don't pump to over $3,000 or I'll get a margin call. HAHAHAHA.

Scale or die.

Weren't you screaming the same when the price hit ~260$ two months ago in October and sold like 50 coins and counting? Some people will never learn I guess.

edit: found it

Thanks for finding that BjA post.  he's got a lot of real retarded posts, even though once in a while he will say something that makes sense.

That should be really retarded posts, unless you are suggesting other posts are fake retarded.

It's more of a colloquialism than dead wrong.

[nioc]

My transaction was included in the fourth block  My last transaction earlier this week took 3 blocks  

btc is working just like it should be

In case you need some rough fee estimate: http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees

                                      USD cents   satoshis   BTC
To get in next block                   2.1   4831   0.00004832
To be confirmed in the next hour   2.2   5139   0.00005140
To be confirmed within 24 hours   2.0   4659   0.00004660

Thank you.  I used the "recommended" setting in the Core wallet which was ~2x what is listed above.  I didn't check the mem pool but just saw the long time since the last block as well as the fact that the recent blocks were virtually full.  I knew I wouldn't be in the first block but 4 blocks?  Many blocks are now full and delays are happening to me much more often than not.  Maybe I'm just lucky

[oda.krell]

Seriously, you guys are still counting BTC/CNY volume on Huobi and OKCoin? Get a clue.

Out of curiosity then, how do you suggest to deal with it? Entirely discard it in the analysis?

Completely ignoring it seems quite excessive to me, and maybe just as counterproductive as treating it as if it were 100% 'real'.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

... USD and adoption are supposed to be running the show now, but here we still have jokers talking about how 'the imaginary chinese whale dumped his 80,000btc/cny on Huobi'.

~time passes~

[Fatman3001]

@Fatman: Not a colloquialism, it's an intensifier.

Ok, thanks

Edit: although:

Adverb[edit]
real ‎(not comparable)

(US, colloquial) Really, very.

[ChartBuddy]

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