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

[bonipper]

$18k -> $3k (6x) wouldn't be unprecedented.  In 2011, we fell from $30 -> $2 (15x), in early 2013 from $250 -> $50 (5x), and in late 2013 from $1200 -> $200 (6x).  

If we get away with a low of $9k (2x) I'd hardly even call that a crash!  

Here are projected lows compared to historical crashes:

2x: $9,000
3x: $6,000
4x: $4,500
5x (early 2013): $3,600
6x (late 2013): $3,000
10x: $1,800
15x (2011): $1,200

Bitcoin is less volatile now. Unless the bull market has ended - which I do not think it has - most of these other crash comparisons are not really valid.

Right now this is a healthy correction - one many people called - that will lead to another bullish year in 2018 with BTC prices well above $50k. BCH might die however

Previous corrections would go into alts but it’s all dropping now.  It won’t get to low Ks overnight but 20k could be a top.  It’s x10 what it costs in electricity per BTC and most past tops were never 20x of previous ATHs.

Well either we are starting a recovery or getting a dead cat bounce. It's gone back above $11000.

[Peter R]

No one cares that the Bcash ledger goes back to 2009 and the Litecoin ledger only goes back to 2011.

If we use Peter R's argument on that subject, then the noble metals (silver and gold) are a billions year old blockchain with built-in pruning, thus making anything cryptocurrency related a joke.  It was a very illogical comment to make by not admitting the ledger of humans has been metals for thousands of years and it's NEVER been the scamchain.  So if he claims the oldest ledger wins, then metals win, not any of this garbage.

Indeed, gold did serve mankind as a sort of "analog ledger." Gold's special physical properties (scarce, durable, divisible, fungible, transportable, etc.) made it apt for this purpose.  

But I don't think the "oldest ledger wins" will be any sort of rule of thumb.  A ledger only "wins" if the people who give it value (those whom accept it in exchange for their goods or labor) continue to value it.  If it is widely believed that the distribution of money on that ledger is "sufficiently unjust," then people will work to discredit that ledger in favor of replacement, if a possible replacement exists.  

Imagine a world 50 years hence where "bitcoin whales" wage war and spread destruction, while the economy limps along because everyone is indebted (in BTC!) to these whale warlords.  In such a future, it would be in the people's best interest to work to abandon the bitcoin ledger that is both the source of the whales' power (to fund war) and the root of their problems (due to debt).  And so a new cryptocurrency ledger would emerge as people abandoned the old.  

I think what's happening now is a slow discrediting of the fiat ledgers, as value shifts to the crypto ledgers for similar reasons to those I described above.    

[realr0ach]

So you think there isn't any difference between bitcoin and a random coin

None of them remove middlemen or counter party risk, therefore have 0 fundamentals.  Or to put it differently, whether you like or dislike him, Martin Armstrong defines metals as being a hedge against government.  Something that doesn't remove middlemen is obviously not a hedge against government, because as I stated before, transactions are not blinded and the govt can just walk into the mining buildings and claim anyone who doesn't worship them is a terrorist and has their transactions blocked.  

Entities like the G20 will obviously form such policies.  This makes it a permissioned ledger or tyranny by default.  What is bitcoin a hedge against?  NOTHING.  It operates on the govt's infrastructure and it costs virtually nothing to run a police state in the digital world like when Iran supposedly shut off access to Telegram recently.  On the other hand, the cost to run a police state covering the physical planet is almost infinite orders of magnitude higher, and thus not possible.

You have no idea what you are talking about. I've sold stuff for bitcoin and bought stuff with bitcoin. It doesn't need a middleman to work.

Just because you're too stupid to know that bitcoin has built-in middlemen, doesn't mean they don't exist.  They're called transaction validators, aka miners.  They also demand a ransom usury fee to to allow you to spend your own money.  Another permissioned ledger trait.  This is why most PoW coins die when the mining reward runs out.  Nobody is willing to pay the usury ransom they demanded that was subsidized by block reward (an unsustainable ponzi in practice).

If the bitcoin block reward runs out, people will simply shift over to some other coin that still has a block reward going so the miners are temporarily subsidized and they don't have to pay it, or someone will just start a new coin with block reward so the ponzi starts all over again.  That is the point in which you would be forced to switch to some shoddy bullshit like proof of stake so the thing doesn't instantly collapse.  But proof of stake is also useless being a closed entropy system.  I would advise bitcoin shills to not argue with me because the fundamentals and truth are not even close to being in your favor vs metals.

[mindrust]

So you think there isn't any difference between bitcoin and a random coin

None of them remove middlemen or counter party risk, therefore have 0 fundamentals.  Or to put it differently, whether you like or dislike him, Martin Armstrong defines metals as being a hedge against government.  Something that doesn't remove middlemen is obviously not a hedge against government, because as I stated before, transactions are not blinded and the govt can just walk into the mining buildings and claim anyone who doesn't worship them is a terrorist and has their transactions blocked.  

Entities like the G20 will obviously form such policies.  This makes it a permissioned ledger or tyranny by default.  What is bitcoin a hedge against?  NOTHING.  It operates on the govt's infrastructure and it costs virtually nothing to run a police state in the digital world like when Iran supposedly shut off access to Telegram recently.  On the other hand, the cost to run a police state covering the physical planet is almost infinite orders of magnitude higher, and thus not possible.

You have no idea what you are talking about. I've sold stuff for bitcoin and bought stuff with bitcoin. It doesn't need a middleman to work.

Just because you're too stupid to know that bitcoin has built-in middlemen, doesn't mean they don't exist.  They're called transaction validators, aka miners.  They also demand a ransom usury fee to to allow you to spend your own money.  Another permissioned ledger trait.  This is why most PoW coins die when the mining reward runs out.  Nobody is willing to pay the usury ransom they demanded that was subsidized by block reward (an unsustainable ponzi in practice).

If the bitcoin block reward runs out, people will simply shift over to some other coin that still has a block reward going so the miners are temporarily subsidized and they don't have to pay it, or someone will just start a new coin with block reward so the ponzi starts all over again.  That is the point in which you would be forced to switch to some shoddy bullshit like proof of stake so the thing doesn't instantly collapse.  But proof of stake is also useless being a closed entropy system.  Checkmate metals.

Have you ever heard the Lightning Network you ignorant shit? Do you have any idea when will the block rewards run out? Do you think all the bitcoins will be mined in the next 3-4 years? Do you even understand why we are against any miner centralization? (to keep it permissionless in case you are too stupid to understand)

Now go back to school.

I hold Bitcoin because Bitcoin is a hedge against the whole banking system.

Keeping money out of baking system, being able to transfer your money no matter what. These 2 are enough to make bitcoin a thing. When I transfer money to some other country banks ask too many questions. They can seize your money for no reason. I know the Bitcoins I send will make it to the other side no matter what. I know no government can steal my money from my BTC account.

If you think these are unimportant why are you even here? Gtfo to where you came from.

[realr0ach]

Have you ever heard the Lightning Network

Of course I've heard of Lightning Network, it's a trojan horse to recreate the exact same banking system that already exists:

LN is an unworkable train wreck without putting all channel closings in the same common permissioned queue (meaning completely centralized).  The fact these systems are built around a finite block size means humans can easily attack that bottleneck by flooding it with channel closings.  Since it can be flooded, you're required to buffer them and either discard low payers or put them at the back of the line just like regular bitcoin mempool.

From that point, you either have to design as a hub and spoke model just like what Mike Hearn claimed, where the Lightning node is a bitcoin bank and everyone who uses it is their peon slaves to extract usury upon, or every lightning node broadcasts a shared queue with each other.  But due to the fact that people can try to flood the queue as mentioned earlier, each lightning node will have their own criteria for what is or isn't spam, or who is and isn't a terrorist that they will broadcast to other nodes (meaningly INSANELY PERMISSIONED, cartel coordinated, and usury based).  The nodes might also be incentivized NOT to broadcast and force a hub and spoke model for their own gain.

If a Lightning node constantly broadcasts flood bullshit to everyone, they will likely be blacklisted by other Lightning nodes (lightning banks, whatever you want to call them), so the entire system is based around things like trusted and untrusted members, subjective anti-spam filters, etc.  In other words, for Lightning to work at all, it would probably be the most permissioned centralized piece of garbage ever to exist.  No real difference from having an account at Bank of America, and ironcially, the govt will likely legislate who is and isn't allowed to run these Lightning nodes, meaning Bank of America or Goldman Sachs will run them.

At least this is my understanding of the problems one has to overcome to create such system.  The fact bitcoin is not decentralized and it's impossible to create a decentralized digital currency in the first place, also means anyone claiming Lightning is going to be "decentralized" is a complete idiot when it's built on top of bitcoin.

Do you actually know what LN is?  I'll tell you what it is.  LN is nothing more than establishing bitcoin banks on top of the blockchain.  All of the exact same regulation traditional banks have will be applied to them and bitcoin will be virtually identical to your current banking system.  The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because it's too difficult for them to play whack-a-mole with regulating miners, but the LN "nodes" aka banks are less ambiguous in nature and will be regulated to infinity just like any normal financial services provider or bank.  

The costs, compliance, and amount of lawyers needed will be so high only entities like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs will run them.  This is how crony capitalism works.  You introduce regulation with compliance requirements and fees so high that only your existing monopoly can participate while all small competitors are eliminated.

Nevermind the fact LN doesn't function in a decentralized manner in the first place.  There is also ZERO incentive for LN nodes aka banks to broadcast transactions to external peers.  There is actually incentive for these bitcoin banks to FORCE a hub and spoke model or cartel collective in order to hold their users hostage for usury fees (just like regular banks do). There's also nothing that stops them from changing usage of bitcoin as settlement to ripple, US dollars, or anything else.

[Asrael999]

So yesterday's selling due to the bitconnect shutdown? Those behind it running away with the money ?

[mindrust]

~snip~

No more bullshit to continue? Ok now i can ignore.

[realr0ach]

Please do ignore if your technical skills are around 0 and you're unable to put forth any factual argument at all besides "wahh I'm a child who wants a get rich quick scheme, don't say anything bad about bitcoin or demonstrate how metals are infinitely more sound".  Too many fucking scamming children and conmen in craptocurrency.

[silverfuture]

It's gotten quite friendly in here all of a sudden. 

Glorious walls of volatility behold!

[TERA2]

You know whenever I say something quasi-bullish that it's finally going to drop.

[realr0ach]

You know whenever I say something quasi-bullish that it's finally going to drop.

It was stupidly predictable what was going to happen:

Why am I getting ads with retarded looking, giant hook-nosed Jews telling me to buy bitcoin AT THE TOP?

And what happens next:

Look, when the whales begin to believe that the bull market has ended, it's going to go below $5k. Their going to want to take profit.

That's what we call the Goldman Suplex.  When they bomb it down to the 50% retracement and make people believe they're getting a good deal so they all take longs, while the people sitting on 200,000 coins that were the only thing propping up the market are all dumping on the longs and it implodes down to the 38% retracement or lower wiping out everyone.

[oblox]

...but seriously, why would I use BCH over LTC? Because I don't want a coin with an option to use segwit? I'm trying to get the selling point of using BCH over something that already is established.

Since windjc asked me this exact question last week, I'll quote my response to him:

"I view money as a ledger.  Or "money as memory," as per the work of Kocherlakota. From this viewpoint, it is the information encoded in the ledger about who owns which coins that is of value.  The actual mechanism used to update that ledger is just a technical decision -- which is the best paper to write on?  Which is the best pen?

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) share the same ledger up until August 1.  At this point, the "ledger updating mechanisms" diverged (BCH allowed more information about the state of the ledger to be updated every ten minutes to facilitate growth).

Switching to LTC would be like ripping up the "ledger of money" because the pen we were using to update it ran out of ink.  Instead, just get a better pen and keep updating the same ledger."

If the whole premise is toward the cash part, basically, fast, digital money, why does the length of the ledger have anything to do with anything. When I go to a store and buy something with cash, I don't care about the history or who owned it prior to me spending it. I just want something that the merchant will take and be on my way as quickly as possible. Yes, transactional history is a major selling point of the blockchain (to be able to verify ownership and prevent double spends) but I fail to see why there is more value in a blockchain that is 2 years older. If you want fast cash, you use an alt with fast block confirms and low fees. BCH was created to try to solve a problem that it doesn't actual solve... you're not magically going to scale with 8MB blocks, fees aren't as cheap as other alts, and blocktimes are still 10 minutes (an on average target that was hardly followed given prior diff adjustments).

[RoomBot]

I suspect we'll see new ATHs for bitcoin in 2018.  

FINALLY someone looking forward here....

ATH!  ATH!

So....this week --  today and tomorrow -- MAJOR VOLATILITY.

Charlie Lee warned us.  Also someone on this thread kept warning about Jan. 18, remember? What was that about?

So the next few days, people, fasten your seat belts.

Imma buy the 2018 bottom this week.  

Then hope for the ATH Contest in March. 

[Karartma1]

Now I get it. Secret messages! Too much Rubicon for me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubicon_(TV_series)

1. Jamie called bitcoin a fraud: that was the first sign to pump it hard
2. Jamie said bitcoin is not a fraud in the end. Dump to profit.

Holy shit

[Heater]

stuff about bcash

Hi Peter!

[RoomBot]

Now I get it. Secret messages! Too much Rubicon for me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubicon_(TV_series)

1. Jamie called bitcoin a fraud: that was the first sign to pump it hard
2. Jamie said bitcoin is not a fraud in the end. Dump to profit.

Holy shit

That's rich.

Either way Jamie Dimon looks like is an @$$.

[TERA2]

Why am I getting ads with retarded looking, giant hook-nosed Jews telling me to buy bitcoin AT THE TOP?

This is one thing I'll agree with roach on is how ridiculous all these ads are. Like what did THIS guy ever have to do with crypto? Does he even know what a block is? And what does the matrix have to do with this? Are we being harvested by evil machines? If you were to see what bitcoin was doing it wouldn't be anything cool like the matrix, just a bunch of stupid SHA256 hashes over and over.

I did write an investor presentation about bitcoin back when it was $400 using a question mark with a bitcoin like that though.

[erre]

The dead cat is not bouncing at all

[TheRealProphet]

Bet you 0.1 BTC we don't go below $10,900 on BitFinex for the rest of January.

Can I have your 0.1 BTC?

[windjc]

The dead cat is not bouncing at all

yeah, this bounce is not even a bounce. its pathetic. looks like we need more pain.