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

[Torque]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

[d_eddie]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

Double and triple crosses. You're just way above in Higher Conspiracy Studies, man.

[OWZ1337]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

when Tether dies bitcoin will skyrocket because then the real market makers will fill the void? hmmm

[HI-TEC99]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

Most exchanges still have a giant backlog of newly registered users waiting to get verified. Some of them had to upgrade their servers to handle the numbers of users that were already verified, but they still haven't dealt with the unverified backlog. There are still people who have been waiting for months for verification.

After they all get verified the price might skyrocket again.

[HairyMaclairy]

The difference between Mt.Gox and Bitfinex is that, at that time, bitcoin had few use cases, and few exchanges, whereas now, is much more widespread, with lots of use cases and exchanges (there are even people using it to buy cars and houses).

So a Bitfinex scandal would not affect the price as much as Mt.Gox did.

Furthermore, a 500 million theft from a Japanese exchange last week curiously isn't even a talking point now. Are we just being ethno- and bitcoincentric or is this kind of shit just not so important anymore because of the larger ecosystem?

A hack of an exchange holding NEM has no real impact.  It’s like a bunch of Ripple was stolen.

[FractalUniverse]

...

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be
dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone
else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

I was completely agreeing with you until your last sentence. Why do you think that they can´t control it?
They can easily shut down Tether using the same tactic that the US authorities used against
E-Gold (of course the central banks won´t do it themselves, they will let the usual authorities do their
bidding).

Take a look at my earlier post where I described how the Department of Justice and the
Treasury Department simply changed their definition of a money transmitter to a vague definition
that fits literally every business that is somehow related to money transfers.

However, in its actions from 2006-2008, the U.S. Treasury Department in conjunction with the
United States Department of Justice stretched the definition of money transmitter in the USA Patriot Act
to include any system that allows transfer of any kind of value from one person to another, not merely national
currency or cash

I meant they cannot control issuance of tether by themselves, and yeah thats why they will likely push for crackdown.
i dont remember e-gold much, but i know about how they took down liberty reserve. Suddenly "domain seized" landing website appeared and it was gone. People were able to file claims for their money though.

[york780]

They are watching. They are always watching. I see you.

[flynn]

A hack of an exchange holding NEM has no real impact.  It’s like a bunch of Ripple was stolen.

The very nature of NEMs is to be eaten by some chinese people.

[OWZ1337]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

Most exchanges still have a giant backlog of newly registered users waiting to get verified. Some of them had to upgrade their servers to handle the numbers of users that were already verified, but they still haven't dealt with the unverified backlog. There are still people who have been waiting for months for verification.

After they all get verified the price might skyrocket again.

pls hurry up and "verify" our crack team of homeless people(sockpuppets) that are signing up to bittrex   ~*good luck with that!*

[acquafredda]

I like the one guys reply.
"Always ask for evidence" - Sure. Please provide evidence that you are solvent.

Lol

From the same thread - "Burden of proof is with the people making accusations not the other way around"

I've seen this thrown back multiple times by Bitfinex when asked about this.

It doesn't quite compute. People are making an accusation based on a complete lack of evidence to refute it and BFX are only too happy not to provide it.

The funny thing is though, I'm not sure any of these exchanges are fully solvent. They could all be running fractional reserves. Or leveraging user account coins against other investments. Hence the reason why the whole "yearly independent bitcoin audit" thing seemed to have died 2-3 years ago.

About fractional-reserve and Bitcoin Exchanges there's this thread if you missed it
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=945881.0

Please, do yourselves a favour: don't get tethered

 

[JayJuanGee]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

Whether it is conspiracy or not, we need to formulate some kind of explanation about why now coinbase is $200 below the BTC market price on the weekend, and in previous weekends it was $200 above.  Could be the network speed is increased, so easier to move bitcoins in and out of coinbase?  Could be manipulation to set an impression that selling is higher than buying - since coinbase is a pretty BIG onramp from fiat(including USD)?

[starmman]

What worries me about tether the most is not that it may not be fully covered by real dollars, but that it might be dangerously close to what central banks are doing. ANd we all know, that banks are not too happy when someone else is taking their money printing/fractional reserve monopoly away from them. Especially when they cannot control it.

My conspiracy tinfoil hat tells me that Tether was sort of endorsed by the CB establishment. They need Bitcoin and the whole crypto market to have a weakness, an Achilles heel, when the next financial crisis comes. Otherwise they know that Bitcoin will go to the moon and they won't have a way to crash and short it.

Tether could be like their Trojan Horse. 

Whether it is conspiracy or not, we need to formulate some kind of explanation about why now coinbase is $200 below the BTC market price on the weekend, and in previous weekends it was $200 above.  Could be the network speed is increased, so easier to move bitcoins in and out of coinbase?  Could be manipulation to set an impression that selling is higher than buying - since coinbase is a pretty BIG onramp from fiat(including USD)?

Sounds like more people selling than buying causing pressure on the buy side to me

[UnDerDoG81]

Sorry for that stupidish question. I invested 2013 in Bitcoin and holding since then. My Coins are on a paper wallet and I don't have much to do with cryptos since then. Everybody is talking about tether these days. I have no idea what that is again. Do I have to do anything with my bitcoins before this tether thing crashes? Or simply hold another few years?

[PoolMinor]

Sorry for that stupidish question. I invested 2013 in Bitcoin and holding since then. My Coins are on a paper wallet and I don't have much to do with cryptos since then. Everybody is talking about tether these days. I have no idea what that is again. Do I have to do anything with my bitcoins before this tether thing crashes? Or simply hold another few years?

https://tether.to/faqs/

[Torque]

Whether it is conspiracy or not, we need to formulate some kind of explanation about why now coinbase is $200 below the BTC market price on the weekend, and in previous weekends it was $200 above.  Could be the network speed is increased, so easier to move bitcoins in and out of coinbase?  Could be manipulation to set an impression that selling is higher than buying - since coinbase is a pretty BIG onramp from fiat(including USD)?

Sounds like more people selling than buying causing pressure on the buy side to me

Why doesn't somebody with a Twitter acct just reach out and ask Brian A. what the hell is going on?
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

^{(I don't use Twitter)}

[d_eddie]

Sorry for that stupidish question. I invested 2013 in Bitcoin and holding since then. My Coins are on a paper wallet and I don't have much to do with cryptos since then. Everybody is talking about tether these days. I have no idea what that is again. Do I have to do anything with my bitcoins before this tether thing crashes? Or simply hold another few years?

It isn't stupid to ask IMO.
Very briefly:
Tether, as per the FAQ pointed above, is a substitute for USD pegged 1:1.
It's being used to add fiat-like liquidity.
There are worries of over-creation of tether (fractional reserve), along with more complex hypotheses.
If it is a fake, and it pops, there will be some blood and unpleasant consequences on BTC price.
However, bitcoin has lived through worse events (Gox, for example). If one believes in the long-term future of bitcoin, tether shouldn't be able to sway their course of action for the long run.

TL;DR: Just hodl.

[HI-TEC99]

Sorry for that stupidish question. I invested 2013 in Bitcoin and holding since then. My Coins are on a paper wallet and I don't have much to do with cryptos since then. Everybody is talking about tether these days. I have no idea what that is again. Do I have to do anything with my bitcoins before this tether thing crashes? Or simply hold another few years?

It isn't stupid to ask IMO.
Very briefly:
Tether, as per the FAQ pointed above, is a substitute for USD pegged 1:1.
It's being used to add fiat-like liquidity.
There are worries of over-creation of tether (fractional reserve), along with more complex hypotheses.
If it is a fake, and it pops, there will be some blood and unpleasant consequences on BTC price.
However, bitcoin has lived through worse events (Gox, for example). If one believes in the long-term future of bitcoin, tether shouldn't be able to sway their course of action for the long run.

TL;DR: Just hodl.

On August 2, 2016 bitfinex announced it had lost 120,000 Bitcoins in a hack. Although I thought that would crash the price it only went down by $50, then doubled up to over a thousand dollars by the end of the year.

Bitcoin survived that, and it will survive a tether pop (if it does pop).

[Globb0]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

Interesting thought. I suppose if new signups was becoming a measure of adoption, then there may be some value in some group or other manipulating the figures.

Sign up is about the least hard thing to do. When you can already buy 1000's of Chinese zombies to click x or y at a certain time or like a post or whatever for just pennies.

[jojo69]

whelp...so much for today

http://philome.la/johnayliff/seedship/play

[HI-TEC99]

Doesn't seem to tie up with the number of new signups on various exchanges.
If it was just a relative few deep pocketed investors then surely there wouldn't have been such a demand for new registrations?

Well if demand was really so high from the retail side, then shouldn't we be seeing the price skyrocket right now? Or at least continue to rise? Hell, 20M+ retail accounts worldwide just trying to buy $50-100 each in this one month would send the price to the moon right now.

But we aren't even seeing that level of buying pressure. That's why I think it mostly came from the institutional side.

I'm sure we'll continue to see 500K - 1M sign ups a month this year, but not sure that will immediately translate to more buying. It really makes me wonder how much bitcoin is being bought by all these new accounts.

Interesting thought. I suppose if new signups was becoming a measure of adoption, then there may be some value in some group or other manipulating the figures.

Sign up is about the least hard thing to do. When you can already buy 1000's of Chinese zombies to click x or y at a certain time or like a post or whatever for just pennies.

Most exchanges have been freezing due to the strain all their new users are putting on their systems. The kraken had to do a massive upgrade to its severs after months of problems. Straining those exchanges to that extent would be much harder to fake. Most Bitcoin exchanges won't let you trade until you supply KYC documents.