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

[Dalib]

I'm currently 100% fiat again, looking for a suitable price to buy back in (very speculatively, I'm looking at something around USD52, since I think USD50 will be a psychological trigger with mass-buy in, that will see the beginning of a steady, sustainable, non-bubbled climb)

Oh boy, we are really all on the same page. In fact, after reading your post, I decided to put my biggest bid a tad higher, it was at $52.25 and now it's now at $53.75 (aprox., I'm trading in EUR). My biggest bid during the April, 10th crash was unfilled, as it was at 37ish€, and I missed it for such a low margin... I think the absolute low was 37.8€ or something like that. I still did a nice profit as I re-loaded the truck at an average price of 50€ish ($65ish), but still I don't want that to happen again

Ok I put mine at 53.85! Who's going to give more?

with this logic, everyone writes that the price may fall to 30-50, but we prefer to give orders to 50-70 

[sarc]

One difference I notice between 2011 and now, is that back then most people were taken by suprise and weren't prepared for the fall. Now it's like everyone's expecting it and preparing for it, which makes me kind of worried that it's not going to happen at all. Maybe it will just consolidate here for a long time, make a few more short dips into the double digits and then move up leaving all the sad bears behind. I'm still speculating on a larger dip, but I see the above as a serious possibility.

I wonder about the opposite, lots of fingers poised over the sell button...

[lucas.sev]

One difference I notice between 2011 and now, is that back then most people were taken by suprise and weren't prepared for the fall. Now it's like everyone's expecting it and preparing for it, which makes me kind of worried that it's not going to happen at all. Maybe it will just consolidate here for a long time, make a few more short dips into the double digits and then move up leaving all the sad bears behind. I'm still speculating on a larger dip, but I see the above as a serious possibility.

Well according to all the nice 2011-2013 graph overlays we are right on track for the long and painful slide.

[strawbs]

Interesting take on statistics.  You feel that if X is twice as likely as Y in the long term, the short term probability is still 50/50?  

In this particular market, yes.  In fact, in pretty much any market.  Let's assume that we all think that one bitcoin will be worth $1000 in 2015, or 2014, or Sep this year.  This will have next to zero impact whatsoever on how the price of one bitcoin will change between now and 24 hours from now, or a week from now.

[Ultraviolet]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

Maybe it would be if the market had any volume, but since mid April/early May the market moves exclusively at the whims of traders who have 6 or 7 figures. There's little to no combined influence from a multitude of smaller players to offset the manipulation attempts of traders with huge amounts of fiat on the exchanges. People with a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of dollars can't move the market. Their combined activity can, but as individuals, they can't. So when volume is low and the price just sits there, whether a trade is profitable or not comes down to what move the whales make, because there's no market momentum because nobody wants to trade when the price is above 100 unless it's rippling from a large move. You can't tell what move one or two people with that much manipulative ability are going to make via TA.

The run we just went through to 135 after the 60-166-79 correction, once it rallied above 105ish, only happened because one or a few people would show up in the early morning or the middle of the night and shove the market up with a 5,000BTC buy, let the market settle, and then do it again the next day or the day after that. The moves raised the price because speculators decided to take a shot on riding the train, that kind of a move doesn't incite a panic sell, and the other whales won't dump against you because it's more profitable to wait for the combined momentum of smaller players who are buying to fizzle out before dumping. It is pretty much exactly what has been happening since the dumps below 120 last week as well.

The market doesn't have confidence in the price above $100, period. The only reason it's been floating here since the post-166 correction is because the market is entirely speculation and bots. Bots give the illusion that trades are happening and the market is moving upward and a whale comes behind that illusion (probably because it's his bot) and plays against it. Low volume is very dangerous.

If people thought the price was profitable we'd see the kind of volume you see between 80-90-100. People are only buying right now because they're short term speculating, exchanging B for fiat for their business, or buying and holding and not giving a fuck about what happens on smaller time frames. The price isn't dropping because a few people with 20 or 200B simply can't affect market depth.

And even when they all sell at once and do affect market depth, you still get phenomena like the other day when someone showed up and bought 15kB from 101 to 111.

Under this kind of circumstance a hard, downward, long term correction is inevitable and it's only a question of how to make money in the interim.

Manipulation like this is actually very damaging to the market because when the correction does come and it makes the news, it makes a lot of the potential newcomers to Bitcoin feel the whole system is a fraudulent scam. You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

[strawbs]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

Maybe it would be if the market had any volume, but since mid April/early May the market moves exclusively at the whims of traders who have 6 or 7 figures. There's little to no combined influence from a multitude of smaller players to offset the manipulation attempts of traders with huge amounts of fiat on the exchanges. People with a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of dollars can't move the market. Their combined activity can, but as individuals, they can't. So when volume is low and the price just sits there, whether a trade is profitable or not comes down to what move the whales make, because there's no market momentum because nobody wants to trade when the price is above 100 unless it's rippling from a large move. You can't tell what move one or two people with that much manipulative ability are going to make via TA.

The run we just went through to 135 after the 60-166-79 correction, once it rallied above 105ish, only happened because one or a few people would show up in the early morning or the middle of the night and shove the market up with a 5,000BTC buy, let the market settle, and then do it again the next day or the day after that. The moves raised the price because speculators decided to take a shot on riding the train, that kind of a move doesn't incite a panic sell, and the other whales won't dump against you because it's more profitable to wait for the combined momentum of smaller players who are buying to fizzle out before dumping. It is pretty much exactly what has been happening since the dumps below 120 last week as well.

The market doesn't have confidence in the price above $100, period. The only reason it's been floating here since the post-166 correction is because the market is entirely speculation and bots. Bots give the illusion that trades are happening and the market is moving upward and a whale comes behind that illusion (probably because it's his bot) and plays against it. Low volume is very dangerous.

If people thought the price was profitable we'd see the kind of volume you see between 80-90-100. People are only buying right now because they're short term speculating, exchanging B for fiat for their business, or buying and holding and not giving a fuck about what happens on smaller time frames. The price isn't dropping because a few people with 20 or 200B simply can't affect market depth.

And even when they all sell at once and do affect market depth, you still get phenomena like the other day when someone showed up and bought 15kB from 101 to 111.

Under this kind of circumstance a hard, downward, long term correction is inevitable and it's only a question of how to make money in the interim.

Manipulation like this is actually very damaging to the market because when the correction does come and it makes the news, it makes a lot of the potential newcomers to Bitcoin feel the whole system is a fraudulent scam. You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

[crumbs]

Interesting take on statistics.  You feel that if X is twice as likely as Y in the long term, the short term probability is still 50/50?  

In this particular market, yes.  In fact, in pretty much any market.  Let's assume that we all think that one bitcoin will be worth $1000 in 2015, or 2014, or Sep this year.  This will have next to zero impact whatsoever on how the price of one bitcoin will change between now and 24 hours from now, or a week from now.

That's simply false.  Or, rather, what you're calling "next to zero impact" is in fact significant, the very thing that makes X twice as likely as Y, and separating blind gamblers from informed traders.  Not that at any given moment, a gambler couldn't win while a trader loses.  No.  All this means is that statistically, the trader will fare better than the gambler.

In other words, going on above info & nothing else, the smart money is always on X, no matter the time span.

[Miz4r]

One difference I notice between 2011 and now, is that back then most people were taken by suprise and weren't prepared for the fall. Now it's like everyone's expecting it and preparing for it, which makes me kind of worried that it's not going to happen at all. Maybe it will just consolidate here for a long time, make a few more short dips into the double digits and then move up leaving all the sad bears behind. I'm still speculating on a larger dip, but I see the above as a serious possibility.

Well according to all the nice 2011-2013 graph overlays we are right on track for the long and painful slide.

That's the problem, in 2011 nobody had these kind of graphs as there was no precedent. Now everyone's looking at the 2011 graph and think they know exactly what's going to happen next. I don't think it works that way, it would be nice ofcourse to have that kind of certainty and predictability, but something tells me there is a little twist to the plot in store for us.

[JimCGSavings]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

...You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

So to rephrase it in a more positive light, aren't you also saying that all BTC needs is a huge influx of new players for a massive swing from the low $100B to $200B+ again?

[Rampion]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

Maybe it would be if the market had any volume, but since mid April/early May the market moves exclusively at the whims of traders who have 6 or 7 figures. There's little to no combined influence from a multitude of smaller players to offset the manipulation attempts of traders with huge amounts of fiat on the exchanges. People with a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of dollars can't move the market. Their combined activity can, but as individuals, they can't. So when volume is low and the price just sits there, whether a trade is profitable or not comes down to what move the whales make, because there's no market momentum because nobody wants to trade when the price is above 100 unless it's rippling from a large move. You can't tell what move one or two people with that much manipulative ability are going to make via TA.

The run we just went through to 135 after the 60-166-79 correction, once it rallied above 105ish, only happened because one or a few people would show up in the early morning or the middle of the night and shove the market up with a 5,000BTC buy, let the market settle, and then do it again the next day or the day after that. The moves raised the price because speculators decided to take a shot on riding the train, that kind of a move doesn't incite a panic sell, and the other whales won't dump against you because it's more profitable to wait for the combined momentum of smaller players who are buying to fizzle out before dumping. It is pretty much exactly what has been happening since the dumps below 120 last week as well.

The market doesn't have confidence in the price above $100, period. The only reason it's been floating here since the post-166 correction is because the market is entirely speculation and bots. Bots give the illusion that trades are happening and the market is moving upward and a whale comes behind that illusion (probably because it's his bot) and plays against it. Low volume is very dangerous.

If people thought the price was profitable we'd see the kind of volume you see between 80-90-100. People are only buying right now because they're short term speculating, exchanging B for fiat for their business, or buying and holding and not giving a fuck about what happens on smaller time frames. The price isn't dropping because a few people with 20 or 200B simply can't affect market depth.

And even when they all sell at once and do affect market depth, you still get phenomena like the other day when someone showed up and bought 15kB from 101 to 111.

Under this kind of circumstance a hard, downward, long term correction is inevitable and it's only a question of how to make money in the interim.

Manipulation like this is actually very damaging to the market because when the correction does come and it makes the news, it makes a lot of the potential newcomers to Bitcoin feel the whole system is a fraudulent scam. You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

I also agree. Lack of volume is a bad signal for bulls, but nevertheless BTC is such a tiny market that a 7 figures player can move it at his will. We can all be expecting a downturn, and a couple of whales can trigger a 30% increase in the blink of an eye, and the opposite is also true.

That said, is clear to me that there's absolutely no confidence on over-$100 prices. Apart from yesterday, where we saw upwards movement backed by significant volume, during the last weeks all the rallies were on ridiculous volume. Unfortunately for the short-term bulls, when volume appeared it was to bring the price way down.

I think things will change a lot as soon as we approach $50-$60. As you all know I think $50 was the very post-bubble bottom, and that we won't go below that (even if I wouldn't completely discard shortly visiting $30ish). It seems to me that a lot of players have the same impression, so I expect huge buying pressure in the $50-$60 range.

That said, reading these forums it seems that even the perma-bulls are holding fiat ATM. Heck, I've been almost 100% of BTC since late 2012, and right now I'm 80% fiat - the 20% BTC remaining was bought below $15 and is resting in a paper wallet for good, no intention to get rid of those coins in the next years to come. So, if someone like me is 80% fiat at the moment, sometimes I wonder if there's any trader left to sell.

I guess we will have to count on ASICminer coins

[vokain]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

...You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

So to rephrase it in a more positive light, aren't you also saying that all BTC needs is a huge influx of new players for a massive swing from the low $100B to $200B+ again?

Or massive inflation

[crumbs]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

Maybe it would be if the market had any volume, but since mid April/early May the market moves exclusively at the whims of traders who have 6 or 7 figures. There's little to no combined influence from a multitude of smaller players to offset the manipulation attempts of traders with huge amounts of fiat on the exchanges. People with a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of dollars can't move the market. Their combined activity can, but as individuals, they can't. So when volume is low and the price just sits there, whether a trade is profitable or not comes down to what move the whales make, because there's no market momentum because nobody wants to trade when the price is above 100 unless it's rippling from a large move. You can't tell what move one or two people with that much manipulative ability are going to make via TA.

The run we just went through to 135 after the 60-166-79 correction, once it rallied above 105ish, only happened because one or a few people would show up in the early morning or the middle of the night and shove the market up with a 5,000BTC buy, let the market settle, and then do it again the next day or the day after that. The moves raised the price because speculators decided to take a shot on riding the train, that kind of a move doesn't incite a panic sell, and the other whales won't dump against you because it's more profitable to wait for the combined momentum of smaller players who are buying to fizzle out before dumping. It is pretty much exactly what has been happening since the dumps below 120 last week as well.

The market doesn't have confidence in the price above $100, period. The only reason it's been floating here since the post-166 correction is because the market is entirely speculation and bots. Bots give the illusion that trades are happening and the market is moving upward and a whale comes behind that illusion (probably because it's his bot) and plays against it. Low volume is very dangerous.

If people thought the price was profitable we'd see the kind of volume you see between 80-90-100. People are only buying right now because they're short term speculating, exchanging B for fiat for their business, or buying and holding and not giving a fuck about what happens on smaller time frames. The price isn't dropping because a few people with 20 or 200B simply can't affect market depth.

And even when they all sell at once and do affect market depth, you still get phenomena like the other day when someone showed up and bought 15kB from 101 to 111.

Under this kind of circumstance a hard, downward, long term correction is inevitable and it's only a question of how to make money in the interim.

Manipulation like this is actually very damaging to the market because when the correction does come and it makes the news, it makes a lot of the potential newcomers to Bitcoin feel the whole system is a fraudulent scam. You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

I'm halfway with you.  With volume getting lower, the data becomes more granular,  the system becomes more probabilistic.  But just because the predictive power of [some form of TA] is lower, if it was true for large volume, it will remain true at smaller volume.  

Edit: Even if you assume that when market depth vanishes, remaining traders are no longer representative cross section of a deeper market, you still have no reason to assume the market becomes intractable, only that it needs to be modeled differently.

[strawbs]

That's simply false.  Or, rather, what you're calling "next to zero impact" is in fact significant, the very thing that makes X twice as likely as Y, and separating blind gamblers from informed traders.  Not that at any given moment, a gambler couldn't win while a trader loses.  No.  All this means is that statistically, the trader will fare better than the gambler.

In other words, going on above info & nothing else, the smart money is always on X, no matter the time span.

No, that's entirely wrong (the text I've made bold). If you're in it for the medium to long term then yes, I agree with you. But I'm not (at the moment).  It entirely depends on your timescale. I don't want to get into a protracted and largely meaningless to-and-fro, but my experience is that long term trends do not affect short-term traders.  They affect long-term traders.

Statistically, long-to medium term, I agree with you, so peace.

[strawbs]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

...You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

So to rephrase it in a more positive light, aren't you also saying that all BTC needs is a huge influx of new players for a massive swing from the low $100B to $200B+ again?

Yes, I think so

[bito]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

...You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

So to rephrase it in a more positive light, aren't you also saying that all BTC needs is a huge influx of new players for a massive swing from the low $100B to $200B+ again?

Or massive inflation

I think you mean deflation

[sarc]

One difference I notice between 2011 and now, is that back then most people were taken by suprise and weren't prepared for the fall. Now it's like everyone's expecting it and preparing for it, which makes me kind of worried that it's not going to happen at all. Maybe it will just consolidate here for a long time, make a few more short dips into the double digits and then move up leaving all the sad bears behind. I'm still speculating on a larger dip, but I see the above as a serious possibility.

Well according to all the nice 2011-2013 graph overlays we are right on track for the long and painful slide.

That's the problem, in 2011 nobody had these kind of graphs as there was no precedent. Now everyone's looking at the 2011 graph and think they know exactly what's going to happen next. I don't think it works that way, it would be nice ofcourse to have that kind of certainty and predictability, but something tells me there is a little twist to the plot in store for us.

I guess the flip-side is that all those fingers poised on the post-crash 'buy' button might be the thing that guarantees the long and slow (bumpy) slide.

[michaelGedi]

Isn't that gambling, defined?  Some day traders do more than simply watch the price & ignore past performance etc.

...You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

+1  Couldn't agree more

So to rephrase it in a more positive light, aren't you also saying that all BTC needs is a huge influx of new players for a massive swing from the low $100B to $200B+ again?

Yes, I think so

...and this could well occur if there was more faith in the exchanges and greater liquidity. As your case study explains, it's hard to trust sending off x dollars to an exchange in Japan with (probably) 0 legal recourse if things go wrong, even if you do want to trade.

I would speculate that the amount of traders out there who are interested in taking a punt, but are holding back due to these issues far exceeds those currently involved. I can also provide my own anecdotal evidence of friends who had very little idea about BTC a month ago, even in the immediate time frame around the bubble, and now have read investment newsletters/articles or discussed with friends the possiblity of buying a few BTC as a speculative investment. This includes web developers and also a bunch of Goldman Sachs employees.


on a different topic slightly. I love reading comments from a traditional traders perspective, it helps put things in context. I also think that those used to normal markets may well be missing the instinct that early adopters may have for price swings and the general BTC market sentiment. Bitcoiners will know what is likely to affect market sentiment on a more fundamental level, as well as likely be more in touch with historical resistance points etc. While Rampion has claimed to have sold at the bottom several times, I still think certain elements of "old timer" wisdom can be very helpful.

This is my "holistic" take, as I've said in previous posts I'm no good at maths etc...

[crumbs]

[strawbs]

...and this could well occur if there was more faith in the exchanges and greater liquidity. As your case study explains, it's hard to trust sending off x dollars to an exchange in Japan with (probably) 0 legal recourse if things go wrong, even if you do want to trade.

I would speculate that the amount of traders out there who are interested in taking a punt, but are holding back due to these issues far exceeds those currently involved. I can also provide my own anecdotal evidence of friends who had very little idea about BTC a month ago, even in the immediate time frame around the bubble, and now have read investment newsletters/articles or discussed with friends the possiblity of buying a few BTC as a speculative investment. This includes web developers and also a bunch of Goldman Sachs employees.


on a different topic slightly. I love reading comments from a traditional traders perspective, it helps put things in context. I also think that those used to normal markets may well be missing the instinct that early adopters may have for price swings and the general BTC market sentiment. Bitcoiners will know what is likely to affect market sentiment on a more fundamental level, as well as likely be more in touch with historical resistance points etc. While Rampion has claimed to have sold at the bottom several times, I still think certain elements of "old timer" wisdom can be very helpful.

This is my "holistic" take, as I've said in previous posts I'm no good at maths etc...

Absolutely! That's why I joined this forum, to try to tap into some of that market sentiment. However, how significant is that sentiment now that the majority of trades (in terms of volume) are carried out by unsentimental conventional traders?

[michaelGedi]

...and this could well occur if there was more faith in the exchanges and greater liquidity. As your case study explains, it's hard to trust sending off x dollars to an exchange in Japan with (probably) 0 legal recourse if things go wrong, even if you do want to trade.

I would speculate that the amount of traders out there who are interested in taking a punt, but are holding back due to these issues far exceeds those currently involved. I can also provide my own anecdotal evidence of friends who had very little idea about BTC a month ago, even in the immediate time frame around the bubble, and now have read investment newsletters/articles or discussed with friends the possiblity of buying a few BTC as a speculative investment. This includes web developers and also a bunch of Goldman Sachs employees.


on a different topic slightly. I love reading comments from a traditional traders perspective, it helps put things in context. I also think that those used to normal markets may well be missing the instinct that early adopters may have for price swings and the general BTC market sentiment. Bitcoiners will know what is likely to affect market sentiment on a more fundamental level, as well as likely be more in touch with historical resistance points etc. While Rampion has claimed to have sold at the bottom several times, I still think certain elements of "old timer" wisdom can be very helpful.

This is my "holistic" take, as I've said in previous posts I'm no good at maths etc...

Absolutely! That's why I joined this forum, to try to tap into some of that market sentiment. However, how significant is that sentiment now that the majority of trades (in terms of volume) are carried out by unsentimental conventional traders?

My guess would be that there is still a majority of BTC in early adopters hands (pre Feb 2013), but that is totally insubstantiated.

I wonder how many straight traders there are, as opposed to programmers/IT guys masquerading as traders     my understanding of the BTC universe comes largely from this forum, but I can imagine that there are a bunch of traders who don't post here or even grace us with their presence.

I also sometimes wonder about the larger manipulation, and what kind of ratio (at the moment) comes from early adopters who've been around playing the same old games since 2011 (Blitz mentioned something that other day about manipulation in the form of 50k BTC walls etc in the past), and what ratio comes from those with a few million to spare who have been involved only in the last few months. It's interesting that you say the price now is largely goverened by manipulation because traders have got involved.

I had fantastical idea the other day that these dumps were perhaps attempts to totally bottom out the market and provoke a downward trend, but then this massive 15k buy comes along and brings us right back up to 110... There's gotta be more than one whale out there right? I wonder if rpetila got excited about being sub 100 and instigated that big buy (just a bit of fantasy there... but he is a supernode after all ). The big buys and sells can't all come from one player, but I do imagine there is one very active whale who has dominated a lot of these big moves... I just wonder how much.