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

[Cconvert2G36]

Obviously I don't know, but my guess is that it is to front load the distribution... for subsidizing the growth of transactions hard and early, attracting the most amount of mining power at the most vulnerable time for the network, the beginning.

Right, but that could still be done while also ...

Having it be smoothed or stepped

I'm not all that concerned about it, that's why the difficulty adjusts. In a free market, the price of the (now more costly to produce) commodity could rise to compensate as well. The 1MB cap exacerbates the potential problem in the intervening 1000 blocks or so. Maybe that'll give our "benevolent" central planners a kick to the teeth.

Edit: The people who run PH/s of mining power have seen this coming from miles out. It's not like they'll just flip the breaker on their multi megawatt facility at block 420,000.

[bargainbin]

^Yeah, this is just a tangent, not related to the Core/Classic drama. Just something that seems intuitively ...wrong.
But could be missing something, so asking.

Re. edit: so how do you see it being done? Miners playing chicken & seeing who drops first, mining at a loss for a while to kill competition? Even then, the bigger reward granularity -> bigger hashrate fluctuation. I think.

[Cconvert2G36]

^Yeah, this is just a tangent, not related to the Core/Classic drama. Just something that seems intuitively ...wrong.
But could be missing something, so just asking.

The entire thing seems intuitively wrong to you... 

[bargainbin]

^Yeah, this is just a tangent, not related to the Core/Classic drama. Just something that seems intuitively ...wrong.
But could be missing something, so just asking.

The entire thing seems intuitively wrong to you... 

Yeah, but on a different level -- V1 buzz bomb may seem intuitively wrong to me too, which won't keep me from pointing out peculiarities of design (on top of its moral implications)

[Cconvert2G36]

The big mines with the latest gear running at <4 cents kWh (a huge portion of the network now), won't be unprofitable at all.

It'll be the smaller guys with more expensive power that hit the switch, and continued expansion by the majors will suck up their exit if there is profit to be had.

Edit: btw I agree with both of you that there aren't huge negatives to a smoothed function. If non-granularity is a negative, it should be largely negated by a company's incentive to plan for the future, which is known in the case of coins per block. Planning for a price that can fluctuate between $1200 and $150 in the space of a couple years is tougher than this.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[bargainbin]

^You're just making it seem intuitively wronger. Wait, dumbening isn't even a word...

>it should be largely negated by a company's incentive to plan for the future
But you got sort of a prisoner's dilemma thing happening -- let's say 3 major megamines, and it only makes sense to scale down if *others don't*. You don't know what others will do, so?
*it might be reasonable to keep mining at a loss, hoping that competition runs out of $$$ faster than you, it might make sense to make backroom deals & cooperate, so many different possibilities...

[Cconvert2G36]

^You're just making it seem intuitively wronger. Wait, dumbening isn't even a word...

>it should be largely negated by a company's incentive to plan for the future
But you got sort of a prisoner's dilemma thing happening -- let's say 3 major megamines, and it only makes sense to scale down if *others don't*. You don't know what others will do, so?
*it might be reasonable to keep mining at a loss, hoping that competition runs out of $$$ faster than you, it might make sense to make backroom deals & cooperate, so many different possibilities...

Replace megamine with any other business. You just try your best to make rational decisions that net you the most profit over the longest amount of time. If rational economic behavior is innately irrational, we're all doomed. Hardcore collusion could get a keccak response, all variables in this mess of an equation.

Look, I know I'm never going to convince you this bird'll fly. I'm having a hard enough time convincing myself these days... 

[bargainbin]

>Replace megamine with any other business.

Any other business suddenly losing half of its revenue?
Like the auto industry suddenly being able to sell only half as many cars? (hoping against hope that the cars it does sell will somehow double in price)?
Not finding anything readily analogous & rekindling hope at the same time

[jbreher]

Of course, the design (hope) is that the doubled scarcity (halved rate of new production) will cause price to ~2x. But we know that the market will front-run this expectation to some extent, and maybe lag a bit as well. But for miners, the instant is the instant - revenues suddenly halved.

By no means do I think it is fatal - we've been through it before. I'm just puzzled why it is not more nearly continuous. Same for the difficulty adjustment.

[jbreher]

In other news: today, Bitcoin is down to 82.5% market share of the crypto space. Lower than any other data point in my recent memory.

[Terwa]

Could be ether a problem?
Now a lot of $ go to eht :/

[tommorisonwebdesign]

The price drop means nothing. Bitcoin is the way of the future. More people know about it. It will be accepted at more merchants. More and more people are finding out about it. And the price will increase again for sure.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[ImI]

The issue is that Core is not responding to requests to officially accept the HK-agreement. As long as they play this silly "Lets wait and see"-game the price will suffer.

Its unbelievable how irresponsible some of core are acting! If BTC goes 200$ they will be quick to adopt the agreement i guess.

[Cconvert2G36]

>Replace megamine with any other business.

Any other business suddenly losing half of its revenue?
Like the auto industry suddenly being able to sell only half as many cars? (hoping against hope that the cars it does sell will somehow double in price)?
Not finding anything readily analogous & rekindling hope at the same time

The block reward subsidy was not the intended revenue stream for mining in the long term. A rare metal with the easiest to find surface quantities already found may be loosely analogous. But the analogy breaks down when...

The real product the miners end up producing and relying on for revenue is blockspace. Inflation subsidy is just supposed to pay the bills while we scale up the number of fees paid per transactions.   

[JayJuanGee]

Of course, the design (hope) is that the doubled scarcity (halved rate of new production) will cause price to ~2x. But we know that the market will front-run this expectation to some extent, and maybe lag a bit as well. But for miners, the instant is the instant - revenues suddenly halved.

By no means do I think it is fatal - we've been through it before. I'm just puzzled why it is not more nearly continuous. Same for the difficulty adjustment.

I'm sure that there are a lot of decent and all over the place theories regarding these kinds of miner market behaviors. 

Surely miners are speculating in a large number of ways, and surely there are a whole hell-a-va lot of individuals making decision based on knowns, unknowns and speculations about knowns and unknowns.

As market theories describe, there a some aspects of the halving that are already priced in, yet there is some aspects of the halving (like human behaviors and miner behaviors) that no one really knows until the halving actually takes place (and that includes the various responses and behaviors of other rational and irrational actors). 

Furthermore, some technical and/or otherwise insightful people are better able to foresee the impact and the various applications of seg wit and even how seg wit may cause (or forestall) developments and/or blocksize limit increases.  Some of these individual actors are going to plan for the halving really well (maybe partly lucky), and some of them are going to plan for the halving less well (maybe get distracted by some alt coin developments (such as ether) or bitcoin political debates (such as the blocksize debate or governance)), and in the end, the changes in mining and hash rate are both gradual and sudden.. because some kinds of adjustments take longer to gear up for and other changes can be implemented more quickly.

In the end, it is not completely a fog - but in essence, like I already suggested, some predictions are going to be more solid than other predictions regarding how the various market moving actors will behave.

[JayJuanGee]

In other news: today, Bitcoin is down to 82.5% market share of the crypto space. Lower than any other data point in my recent memory.

Wasn't there a time in early 2015 in which Ripple had nearly 25% of the market cap of bitcoin?  Seems like it.

[jbreher]

In other news: today, Bitcoin is down to 82.5% market share of the crypto space. Lower than any other data point in my recent memory.

Wasn't there a time in early 2015 in which Ripple had nearly 25% of the market cap of bitcoin?  Seems like it.

There was a time when Ripple's market cap exceeded that of Bitcoin.

No, really.

Stop laughing - you're gonna feel foolish when you check the facts.

[MinermanNC]

what's going on with price slippage... or so it seems