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

[Peter R]

You guys do realize that subchannels and sub-sub channels are a thing.  

And subchannels don’t have to transact in Satoshis.  They could be any token.  I’m going to launch a Hairy token for my Lightning Channel.  

Those are highly artificial restraints Zohar has applied to LN.  Which means his model isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on.

This is the problem with Peter.  He talks shit but sufficiently technical shit that many cannot see through it.

Zohar is a basically a Core-supporting small blocker.  Watch the video and see for yourself. He is still "pro" LN, but he admitted during the talk that he was "surprised" that the fees his model predicted for LN were not nearly as low as he initially suspected.

[AlexGR]

I would much prefer a written source, but I do get the gist of the model, which seems indeed sensible. I would like to see some quantitative estimates on "very very richly founded". In principle, I agree that at first it could be so that you need a mammoth channel to deal with the occasional mammoth payment (or several squirrel payments), but once a system is in place that implements a kind of "packet switching" for payments, splitting them over different channels/routes, that problem will disappear. All it takes for the system to work in a quasi-steady state is the global I/O of the channels to nearly null out, which means little fresh btc need enter/exit the LN.

Alternatively, Average Joe - who runs a LN hub whose net capacity flow is negative (more BTC going out than in) - could send fiat or other low-fee cryptos into some LN-friendly exchange, which in turn would refill Joe's channel with positive capacity. It remains to be seen how the flow will be organized, although until salaries are paid in BTC I imagine normal user channels would send more than they receive on average. The net effect for Joe would be that of "buying moar", which for an enthusiastic LN volunteer (possibly politically motivated), sounds quite desirable.

Zohar modeled the flow of coins as a random walk.  For example, if a channel starts with Alice and Bob each holding $100 dollars, and if you imagine them routing through their channel N payments of $10 each, we'd expect the channel to be fully lopsided after routing 100 transactions ( [$100 / $10]^2 ).  If recharging the channel costs $30, then fees need to be at least $30 / 100 = $0.30 per transaction per hop.  If it takes 5 hops to route your payment, that is at least $1.50 in fees.  

Anyways, this is is the gist of Zohar's model.  

The main issue in "100 transactions" is that if they are done over time, the price of BTC might have changed.

Let's say Valve/Steam allows LN channels for gamers. Valve wants to get paid in $$$. However, as long as the channel is open, the $$$ value is not fixed. They have a fixed BTC value instead. So if they have a channel open with the gamer for, say, 1 year, they have to speculate on BTC price going up or remaining relatively steady (which is not against the trend - just saying whether or not a company wants to do that).

So while LN channels are good for aggregating a lot of short-term transactions between two parties that operate in a trustless manner, they are not necessarily optimal for aggregating mid-to-long term transactions without a "USD-proxy" / a more centralized company that you open a channel with them instead, in order to lock USD profits from sales. Unless there are solutions I'm not aware of regarding the btc<=>fiat markets as long as the channel is open. Perhaps atomic swaps or sidechains will be more useful regarding faster clearing to USD.

Still, anything that can aggregate txs and make new possibilities emerge (that aren't even possible in a mid to high-fee microtx arena), while also reducing network requirements, will be nice.

[Toxic2040]

No..your not delusional..perhaps slightly acrobatic if your avatar is any indication.  /s


Lol..and I just realized I F'ed up the meme...think its supposed to be "Gentlemen"...


JJG...I feel the same way...while I am not going to step out the the local lambo dealer(this week)...life is indeed much less stressful than pre-btc. My hodling are down 2000% from the ATH....but I am still over 24k+% overall....there is that. 


It would take...well..im not sure what it would take really. I have been blessed with a good career and financial stability for many years, bitcoin has always been a hobby. But I am passionate about my hobby. I will of course be very disappointed if bitcoin does not perform as well as I think it will. That has a low order of probability imo tho. Bitcoin and the blockchain are such a disruptive paradigm shift that there is no stopping now. The genie is   out of the bottle. I like to equate it to what Henry Ford did for the automotive industry..he didnt invent the auto..he just streamlined building them and wallah the assembly line was born. Satoshi has done the same thing. He didnt invent money or ledgers..just streamlined the way they are integrated and used.

bleh..im preaching to the choir again 

[HairyMaclairy]

I don’t know Zohar and so can’t comment on his leanings.  

Doesn’t stop his model from being wrong. There is no need to use BTC at the subchannel level.  You could have a Tether running at the subchannel level.  Makes all of his concerns irrelevant.

[HairyMaclairy]

Alex:  you can separate units of account and storage of value.  Just price in USD if you are worried about it.

[JayJuanGee]

I am. I was 100% long and want some fiat on exchange for this weekend.  I’m now 98% long  

Didn't want to offend you

I thought it was funny.  Sold around $15998.   Let’s see how stupid I was on Monday !

I was thinking of doing the same drop around 2% to fiat... but damn.. this train has some legs.

If we never go sub-$16k again, I will be delighted !

I bought back just under $15600 and confident we are going up in the short term.

I hope that you are not 100% BTC, again?

You may have to fix your strategy a bit, no, because it is not healthy to go 100% either direction, right?   Accordingly, it seems that you have to have to sell BTC on the way up and buy on the way down.  no?


I don't want you to feel like I am dogging you, but on a personal level, I am feeling a bit heavy on the BTC side, because when we went up to $19,000s, I was around 88% BTC, but my bullish inclinations caused me to be kind of on a BTC accumulation mission because I had been selling so much BTC all the way up from $9k-ish and even before that, ever since our mid September correction down to $2,970.    Anyhow, by the time we reached $19,666, there was a bit of a sense that we were going to continue going up and to break above $20k (or at least at the time there seemed to have been decent odds to break above $20k, which kind of seems absurd now, and like we really did need to have this "pause" period).


Our recent BTC price correction down to $11,060 and then some of the back and forth on price, including my own trades puts my current position at about 91.5% BTC.. yet there remains some queeziness within me regarding some of my more recent trades, like I may have played them a bit wrong - even though I feel like I am kind of in a decent proportional range, with maybe a slightly higher quantity of BTC than I had considered "safe" at these relatively high BTC prices.... .. but when I reflect further on the whole matter, we have had already some decent attempts at breaking below $10k and really it is seeming less and less likely to actually break below $10k without some really decent FUD - and I am not sure if the ongoing SPAM attack coupled with actual high fees and delayed transaction times is enough to keep this baby down.

Anyhow, I guess my point is that even I am feeling a little bit nervous about whether I am in a decent position, and maybe I do have a bit too much BTC, yet my allocation towards BTC seems to be a bit smaller than yours.... Therefore, you are more bullish than me or maybe just a BIGGER gambler?

[Toxic2040]

Oh..I know I should keep my mouth shut..

Cant help it..have all this extra "gas" lying around....

I have to comment on the elephant in the room...

Peter..is the reason your here and shilling so much of late is perhaps because BCH is going to be dethroned by Eth soon? Sell that trash man..you know your going to...just a matter of time.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

I hope that you are not 100% BTC, again?

[HairyMaclairy]

I am currently 100% BTC on my BTC / USD account.  I will start selling down again as we hit $16k, to a low of 98% BTC.  Yes I am a hard bull because anyone not on the train when it leaves the station will be left behind.   Again.

I have Tether and Alts in my Alts account.  But that is firewalled from the BTC account and they don’t mix, other than taking profits in BTC which is a one way process. Those funds never come back to the Alts account.

Edit:  first sell at $15900 so no longer 100%....  

The problem from my perspective is that the weekend dip grossly underperformed. I was targeting buying back lower.  This is a strong bullish signal for the week ahead.

[HairyMaclairy]

Oh..I know I should keep my mouth shut..

Cant help it..have all this extra "gas" lying around....

I have to comment on the elephant in the room...

Peter..is the reason your here and shilling so much of late is perhaps because BCH is going to be dethroned by Eth soon? Sell that trash man..you know your going to...just a matter of time.

Bcash is down to 0.158.  They will get eroded on the next BTC pump, as early as this week.

[AlexGR]

I don't want you to feel like I am dogging you, but on a personal level, I am feeling a bit heavy on the BTC side, because when we went up to $19,000s, I was around 88% BTC, but my bullish inclinations caused me to be kind of on a BTC accumulation mission because I had been selling so much BTC all the way up from $9k-ish and even before that, ever since our mid September correction down to $2,970.    Anyhow, by the time we reached $19,666, there was a bit of a sense that we were going to continue going up and to break above $20k (or at least at the time there seemed to have been decent odds to break above $20k, which kind of seems absurd now, and like we really did need to have this "pause" period).

It still doesn't seem as absurd to me judging from the local market (Greece). Given that we still have in effect capital controls, you can't just wire a big amount abroad and buy BTC. So internal demand has to be met by internal supply - and this "closed system" over here kind of reveals more of the dynamics compared to an open/international system.

From what I saw, internal supply dried up sharply after prices went 8-10k+ - in a way mirroring your own sells. This means that most people sold a lot of BTC in sub-10k prices and then there was very little to sell from willing sellers... meanwhile willing buyers wanted a lot of BTC, even up to 20k and beyond (they were paying a premium) yet they couldn't find it.

On the international scene, you have similar situations with exchanges being unable to handle new customers, imposing buying quotas, etc. In a way, the market is being bottlenecked by tens of intentional or unintentional obstacles - but the money keeps piling up.

[HairyMaclairy]

If you sell on the way up, you won’t have anything left when BTC hits $1 million.  Don’t be that guy.

[TERA2]

I never sell all and always make up whatever I sell by trading altcoins. I was down to like 15% of my coins in October and made it all back.

[HairyMaclairy]

I never sell all and always make up whatever I sell by trading altcoins. I was down to like 15% of my coins in October and made it all back.

I would find that terrifying.  But you would do very well with the penny screamers.  It’s very different from trading BTC  and has required me to unlearn everything I know. 

[Peter R]

I never sell all and always make up whatever I sell by trading altcoins. I was down to like 15% of my coins in October and made it all back.

I would find that terrifying.  But you would do very well with the penny screamers.  It’s very different from trading BTC  and has required me to unlearn everything I know. 

I think the SSS plan makes a lot of sense.  Sell around 10 - 15% per doubling, on average. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345065.0

Whatever happened to Risto, BTW?

[explorer]

I never sell all and always make up whatever I sell by trading altcoins. I was down to like 15% of my coins in October and made it all back.

I would find that terrifying.  But you would do very well with the penny screamers.  It’s very different from trading BTC  and has required me to unlearn everything I know. 

I think the SSS plan makes a lot of sense.  Sell around 10 - 15% per doubling, on average. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345065.0

Whatever happened to Risto, BTW?

Stress and lifestyle caught up, family life imploded, lost his shit.  Not sure if he got a new white coat, or if he got away.  I hope he pulls it back together - a lot harder to do when you're older!

[Finski]

Whatever happened to Risto, BTW?

He was institutionalized due to bipolar before, IIRC. Now he's out of country so nobody's looking after him and he has by all likelihood relapsed into psychotic mania.

[Micky25]

Did everyone here manage to claim/dump their superbitcoin and bitcoindiamond? I figured out the easiest method last night and got a few extra btc for dumping them

Please elaborate.

[Peter R]

I never sell all and always make up whatever I sell by trading altcoins. I was down to like 15% of my coins in October and made it all back.

I would find that terrifying.  But you would do very well with the penny screamers.  It’s very different from trading BTC  and has required me to unlearn everything I know. 

I think the SSS plan makes a lot of sense.  Sell around 10 - 15% per doubling, on average. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345065.0

Whatever happened to Risto, BTW?

Stress and lifestyle caught up, family life imploded, lost his shit.  Not sure if he got a new white coat, or if he got away.  I hope he pulls it back together - a lot harder to do when you're older!

That's too bad.  He definitely walked a bit more on the crazy-side of sane, but he had lots of really great insights.  I would have loved to have met him in person.

[PoolMinor]

Did everyone here manage to claim/dump their superbitcoin and bitcoindiamond? I figured out the easiest method last night and got a few extra btc for dumping them

Please elaborate.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2702926.msg27635171#msg27635171