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

[explorer]

well now...
just got my head wrapped around this merit business then I see we
now have copper members.  Theymos has been busy I guess...

Is it still 50BTC to change your username?

[1714133319]

1714133319

[1714133319]

1714133319

[Typex]

This guy makes a good case for why the CME futures expiry tomorrow will be a nonevent: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7syd2c/expiring_futures_tomorrow_not_so_fast/

The CME futures expire tomorrow, and everyone is panicking that Wall Street will manipulate the price downward to gain the most profit... But it's not that simple; CME has limits on what any given entity can hold, that make it almost unprofitable given the cost of manipulation.

Any entity is limited to owning 1k contracts containing 5btc each. Every $5 move in bitcoin is a $25 profit/loss on a contract. In the recent month, we saw the price move from $19k to $10k potentially tomorrow at expiration - accounting for a $9k price move, meaning $45M possible profit (per entity holding the maximum 1k contracts; every $1k move in btc price equals a $5M profit/loss). I am a realist, and do believe that multiple entities could collect and agree on a direction (for example 10 groups) meaning the profit would be $450M for the month of January. However, open interest today says this isn't happening (more on that below).

To manipulate the price today, it costs about $15M to buy all the btc within $1k of the current price (based on the depth chart in GDAX). The group of 10 entities (referenced above) could agree to spend $15M to move the price lower by $1k, thus gaining the group of 10 a total of $50M (or a $35M profit for the group by spending $15M). This will not hold the price down the $1k, however, and many traders would instantly gobble up the orders at the lower price, meaning the entities would need to do this multiple times to keep the price low. A realistic strategy for Wall Street is going to be to hold their "manipulation money" until right before the market closes, and push price down in the hours leading up to expiration (4pm London time, or 11am Eastern Time for CME futures).

As the market matures and becomes more balanced, these opportunities will be harder to accomplish, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable that this could happen tomorrow, but likely in the 9am-11am hours, and likely immediately rebound back.

Finally, the open interest on the futures expiring tomorrow is currently at 1,459 contracts, meaning the total bitcoin in play here is 7,295 btc or ~$80M, meaning the cost of manipulation will dramatically cut into profits. This also means there is not a group of 10 entities teaming up to manipulate the price.

Just food for thought as people prepare for the Wall Street futures dip tomorrow...

TLDR; I don't think it'll happen, the business case and open interest just isn't there.

Its also possible many of those orders are from the same person or entities.  The net cost to buy and sell to each other is effectively zero.
I guess we will see tomorrow.

[Biro Bob]

On a different.. wall observing kinda note, the UK annual self assessment tax MUST be paid by January 31st. I’m sure many people that spent well in 2017 (knowing they had massive BTC profits to fall back on) didn’t really plan ahead so needed to cash out a few Bitcoins to pay their tax bill... I’m one of these people. I cashed out at £10600 (approx $14k) but I’m sure others have been holding to the last minute hoping.... it goes a bit higher than now...

31st Jan payment deadline is for tax year 16-17, so CGT on sales before last April

Edit: so your tax is due Jan 2019. No rush.

This wasn’t my Capital Gains. This was just the tax on my self employment that I frivolously spent on hookers and blow rather than saving for my tax bill. I have CGT to look forward to next year.

[Neo_Coin]

[HairyMaclairy]

Robinhood popping up in other countries.  Looks like they are doing a global push.

[Torque]

Robinhood popping up in other countries.  Looks like they are doing a global push.

Honestly good for them. Competition in the brokerage space is a great thing.

The only thing though, I hope they stick with just Bitcoin and ETH. If they start adding other shitcoins it'll just go downhill from there.

[True Myth]

In the end, it's all a gamble, I just like the odds better on some of them that few people see for now (then everyone else will see it and have their "Napster" moment, that one dies and gets "torrented", but the world changes anyway.)

Mostly is that latecomers feel that btc can hardly make another 10X+ from current levels, so they end buying lottery tickets priced $1 or less to have their chance for a 100-bagger, without even looking at the monetary base or any other technical spec of their tickets.

I feel like this is the *real* reason. The delusion these people feel is trying to justify the "reasons" why they are doing it, but they can't ignore the underlying reality.

Also, will it surprise them when Bitcoin does indeed do another 10X or 100X? It will, the only factor is how long it will take. Bitcoin is held by < 0.01% of the world population. Not every millionaire in the U.S. has any bitcoin. Wall Street hasn't even begun to up-leverage Bitcoin, because they don't have a way to do it effectively yet.

  Projecting one's own motives and beliefs/understanding onto the great unwashed is I think the most common delusion among (otherwise?) intelligent people.  In this echo chamber,  BTC is best because technical analytical blah blah, where clearly the world at large cares not at all.  It is the $$ and adoption of these uninformed and unintelligent masses that is required to make 'progress'.  Catering to them may be a sell out, but it is undeniably effective.

This. Some days I sit in disbelief at the ignorance of what can be refered to as "the masses".  The intelligent to  stupid ratio seems tipped in an unfavorable direction.

It often seems as if everything in day to day living is based on the simple task of manipulation.  I say "simple" because it often seems way too easy to sway the opinion of "the average person" or make them think they need something that may be completely worthless.

Ty Warner built a net worth of $2.5 billion by selling animals stuffed with fucking beads.  Hell... the guy who sold Snuggies even made a cool $200 million.  No one needs a beanie baby or a snuggie but, they were manipulated into believing there was a need for them.

Crypto is overrun with everyone and thier cousin making alt coins and promoting them. Shit... the other day I saw a coin called "DeezNuts" https://deeznuts.in. I wonder often if as we approach mass adoption that marketing and advertising will push an undeserving coin with poor tech ahead of Bitcoin as "the masses" gobble it up.  Sure the tech behind it might be shit but, that's not always the most important thing to "the masses".

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

[True Myth]

Robinhood popping up in other countries.  Looks like they are doing a global push.

Honestly good for them. Competition in the brokerage space is a great thing.

The only thing though, I hope they stick with just Bitcoin and ETH. If they start adding other shitcoins it'll just go downhill from there.

"While Robinhood customers will only have access to bitcoin and ethereum trading, effective immediately, the company will let customers add 16 different cryptocurrencies (bitcoin and ethereum included) to their "watchlist," a feature allowing them to monitor market data, read related news and create price alerts.

Other coins that can be added to the watchlist are bitcoin cash, litecoin, XRP (Ripple), ethereum classic, zcash, monero, dash, stellar, qtum, bitcoin gold, omisego, NEO, lisk, and dogecoin.

For now, Tenev isn't revealing any possible plans to start trading those other currencies, however, he said that a "listing committee" had been established to analyze factors such as security, functionality and demand to assess cryptocurrencies that could be added to the trading functionality or the market data list."

Source: www.coindesk.com/micro-finance-giant-robinhood-makes-big-bet-on-bitcoin-trading/amp/

[Torque]

Projecting one's own motives and beliefs/understanding onto the great unwashed is I think the most common delusion among (otherwise?) intelligent people.  In this echo chamber,  BTC is best because technical analytical blah blah, where clearly the world at large cares not at all.  It is the $$ and <b> adoption of these uninformed and unintelligent masses that is required to make 'progress'.  Catering to them may be a sell out, but it is undeniably effective. </b>

This. Some days I sit in disbelief at the ignorance of what can be refered to as "the masses".  The intelligent to  stupid ratio seems tipped in an unfavorable direction.

It often seems as if everything in day to day living is based on the simple task of manipulation.  I say "simple" because it often seems way too easy to sway the opinion of "the average person" or make them think they need something that may be completely worthless.

Ty Warner built a net worth of $2.5 billion by selling animals stuffed with fucking beads.  Hell... the guy who sold Snuggies even made a cool $200 million.  No one needs a beanie baby or a snuggie but, they were manipulated into believing there was a need for them.

Crypto is overrun with everyone and thier cousin making alt coins and promoting them. Shit... the other day I saw a coin called "DeezNuts" https://deeznuts.in. I wonder often if as we approach mass adoption that marketing and advertising will push an undeserving coin with poor tech ahead of Bitcoin as "the masses" gobble it up.  Sure the tech behind it might be shit but, that's not always the most important thing to "the masses".

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

I agree. I remember a time when the pre-qualification for a company going IPO was that they were just starting to turn a profit. Nowadays we have public companies like Tesla, Twitter, Snap, and Netflix that burn through billions of dollars every quarter or year, and make waaaayy less net profit than they spend. And yet their owners are millionaires and the stock is flying higher and higher.

Makes perfect sense, right?

[explorer]

In the end, it's all a gamble, I just like the odds better on some of them that few people see for now (then everyone else will see it and have their "Napster" moment, that one dies and gets "torrented", but the world changes anyway.)

Mostly is that latecomers feel that btc can hardly make another 10X+ from current levels, so they end buying lottery tickets priced $1 or less to have their chance for a 100-bagger, without even looking at the monetary base or any other technical spec of their tickets.

I feel like this is the *real* reason. The delusion these people feel is trying to justify the "reasons" why they are doing it, but they can't ignore the underlying reality.

Also, will it surprise them when Bitcoin does indeed do another 10X or 100X? It will, the only factor is how long it will take. Bitcoin is held by < 0.01% of the world population. Not every millionaire in the U.S. has any bitcoin. Wall Street hasn't even begun to up-leverage Bitcoin, because they don't have a way to do it effectively yet.

  Projecting one's own motives and beliefs/understanding onto the great unwashed is I think the most common delusion among (otherwise?) intelligent people.  In this echo chamber,  BTC is best because technical analytical blah blah, where clearly the world at large cares not at all.  It is the $$ and <b> adoption of these uninformed and unintelligent masses that is required to make 'progress'.  Catering to them may be a sell out, but it is undeniably effective. </b>

This. Some days I sit in disbelief at the ignorance of what can be refered to as "the masses".  The intelligent to  stupid ratio seems tipped in an unfavorable direction.

It often seems as if everything in day to day living is based on the simple task of manipulation.  I say "simple" because it often seems way too easy to sway the opinion of "the average person" or make them think they need something that may be completely worthless.

Ty Warner built a net worth of $2.5 billion by selling animals stuffed with fucking beads.  Hell... the guy who sold Snuggies even made a cool $200 million.  No one needs a beanie baby or a snuggie but, they were manipulated into believing there was a need for them.

Crypto is overrun with everyone and thier cousin making alt coins and promoting them. Shit... the other day I saw a coin called "DeezNuts" https://deeznuts.in. I wonder often if as we approach mass adoption that marketing and advertising will push an undeserving coin with poor tech ahead of Bitcoin as "the masses" gobble it up.  Sure the tech behind it might be shit but, that's not always never, or rarely the most important thing to "the masses".

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

For your consideration:

Think on how stupid the average person is.  Now grok the fact that fully half of the population is dumber than that.  It is somewhat scary.  Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

[Dabs]

I feel like this is the *real* reason. The delusion these people feel is trying to justify the "reasons" why they are doing it, but they can't ignore the underlying reality.

Also, will it surprise them when Bitcoin does indeed do another 10X or 100X? It will, the only factor is how long it will take. Bitcoin is held by < 0.01% of the world population. Not every millionaire in the U.S. has any bitcoin. Wall Street hasn't even begun to up-leverage Bitcoin, because they don't have a way to do it effectively yet.

That's one reason, and also a major one. Sometimes it's not the main reason. Let's take an example. One of these alts wants to recreate the equivalent of a decentralized netflix or youtube. Without thinking twice, the first to adopt this tech would be pirates and porn star cam girls. Then some rapper who names himself after half a currency is going to accept the alt as payment for his latest album.

So there are people backing this coin and don't care about the price, they just want to support it. Why? There are distributed computing projects out there with NEGATIVE ROI such as calculating prime numbers (a mersenne was recently found), or cures for cancer, or searching for extra terrestrial life.

Like I said before, someone has to buy the pizza.

A 1000X increase is just a side effect when everyone wants free HBO and nothing can stop them.


And don't forget there are other payment processors that accept alts, some are even embedded in ios and android wallets, some are coinpayments compatible. There are open source alternatives to bitpay.

A specific example is a seller of flash hiders on gunbroker.com is accepting GUNcoin as payment. Weedcoin, Potcoin, Dopecoin, Cannabiscoin, they are catering to the medical marijuana industry. Some have celebrity endorsement. So ... let's see what happens in the next few months or years with all these alts.

Disclaimer: I have some GUN because I like firearms. I don't have Potcoin because I have no intention of buying.

[Colonel Panic]

On a different.. wall observing kinda note, the UK annual self assessment tax MUST be paid by January 31st. I’m sure many people that spent well in 2017 (knowing they had massive BTC profits to fall back on) didn’t really plan ahead so needed to cash out a few Bitcoins to pay their tax bill... I’m one of these people. I cashed out at £10600 (approx $14k) but I’m sure others have been holding to the last minute hoping.... it goes a bit higher than now...

31st Jan payment deadline is for tax year 16-17, so CGT on sales before last April

Edit: so your tax is due Jan 2019. No rush.

This wasn’t my Capital Gains. This was just the tax on my self employment that I frivolously spent on hookers and blow rather than saving for my tax bill. I have CGT to look forward to next year.

Sorry, didn’t realise you were still feigning the need to work. And you misspelt “well” as “frivolously”.

[explorer]

I am so very, very bored.

Malaise sets in.

... stares out from behind a cold, frosted window. alone in the darkness. all is quiet in the wilderness. the herd is safe and sound. slow exhalations build up condensate on the window. a hand reaches out from beneath a swaddling blanket and aimlessly draws trails. the forefinger begins to chill.

How can you be bored?  Is there nothing that you want to learn?  I can't remember the last time there were enough hours in the day.  Giving up that working BS helped.  Not true.  It's worse now.  Better rethink retirement, old man!

[vanobe]

I am so very, very bored.

Malaise sets in.

... stares out from behind a cold, frosted window. alone in the darkness. all is quiet in the wilderness. the herd is safe and sound. slow exhalations build up condensate on the window. a hand reaches out from beneath a swaddling blanket and aimlessly draws trails. the forefinger begins to chill.

I have been doing my homework about the CME futures expiry tomorrow. Apparently they will either make bitcoin pump, dump, or do nothing.

Infofront says possibly down, or more probably damp squib. Fluidjax says possibly up, or possibly damp squib.

If it's a damp squib prepare to be very, very, very bored tomorrow.

CME first contract closes tommorow....

Strap-in or damp squib?   I dunno.

This guy makes a good case for why the CME futures expiry tomorrow will be a nonevent: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7syd2c/expiring_futures_tomorrow_not_so_fast/

...
Just food for thought as people prepare for the Wall Street futures dip tomorrow...

TLDR; I don't think it'll happen, the business case and open interest just isn't there.

[jojo69]

raises eyebrow

[Toxic2040]

raises eyebrow

[True Myth]

I am so very, very bored.

Malaise sets in.

... stares out from behind a cold, frosted window. alone in the darkness. all is quiet in the wilderness. the herd is safe and sound. slow exhalations build up condensate on the window. a hand reaches out from beneath a swaddling blanket and aimlessly draws trails. the forefinger begins to chill.

Last time I was bored I joined a Facebook crypto group.

Do yourself a favor and... don't do that.

[explorer]

How can you be bored?  Is there nothing that you want to learn?  I can't remember the last time there were enough hours in the day.  Giving up that working BS helped.  Not true.  It's worse now.  Better rethink retirement, old man!

Naw, brother. It's not like that. Just introspective hell right now, with everything coming up, and my partner being out of town.

Still have some work I need to trudge through, and just can't find the motivation lately.

Know what I mean ? Winter blahs starting to get to me. Can't wait to move out of Montana end of March. Hate the snow.

Moving further South.

Looking forward to pursuing passion projects, that I really can't start on now, for... reasons.

Ya, I hear that.  Go rip the Porsche around in the snow.  That will raise the heart rate, focus, and elicit a YEE HAW at the very least 

[explorer]

I am so very, very bored.

Malaise sets in.

... stares out from behind a cold, frosted window. alone in the darkness. all is quiet in the wilderness. the herd is safe and sound. slow exhalations build up condensate on the window. a hand reaches out from beneath a swaddling blanket and aimlessly draws trails. the forefinger begins to chill.

Last time I was bored I joined a Facebook crypto group.

Do yourself a favor and... don't do that.

Save time, and just stick the pencil in your eye beforehand.  Then you can avoid the whole fecesbook thing, and skip straight to the pain management.

[True Myth]

Back over $11,500 again. This can only mean one thing... BobLawblaw didn't put his massive sell wall at $11.5k.