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

[lebing]

Hellllllooooo China

[ChartBuddy]

[lebing]

And turns out yesterday was actually bigger than post silk road.
We might be going down/sidways over the next few days... but next week will be ridiculous.

[molecular]

Holy crap: http://stats.grok.se/zh/latest90/%E6%AF%94%E7%89%B9%E5%B8%81

Can someone post a screenshot? I'm on the phone.

[lebing]

Holy crap: http://stats.grok.se/zh/latest90/%E6%AF%94%E7%89%B9%E5%B8%81

Can someone post a screenshot? I'm on the phone.

Beat you to it by a few minutes =P

[rpietila]

Why is this happening now?

[gizmoh]

And turns out yesterday was actually bigger than post silk road.
We might be going down/sidways over the next few days... but next week will be ridiculous.

It takes 2 to 4 weeks for a newcomer to learn about bitcoin, set up a Verified account and wire funds.
IMO the recent good news, press coverage and anticipation of new money is already reflected in the price.

[lebing]

Why is this happening now?

Need someone who speaks mandarin to help us out

[thoughtfan]

Why is this happening now?

I don't know but it's fun isn't it

The market movements appear to be getting more and more unpredictable to me, especially seeing as we have a much healthier balance of exchange volumes where any one of them could be taking the lead on a move.  I therefore find it harder even to correlate a movement with news/new service events let alone to assign causation.  So I do find it amusing that some here insist with such certainty what is the cause of what

Not trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs rpietila but did you ever see the quirky BBC tv programme called QI with Stephen Fry?  They put in some questions to which there is no known answer - and if somebody spots it the screen shows a massive:

?

....and the big booming voice says:

NOBODY KNOWS!

I think of this often these days when someone asks why a market move is happening

Edit:  I just realised after posting you're asking not why the market is moving as it is but why the wikipedia hit explosion! Ah well.   My answer therefore does not refer to your post at all but I'll leave it there because I like it

[solex]

And turns out yesterday was actually bigger than post silk road.
We might be going down/sidways over the next few days... but next week will be ridiculous.

It takes 2 to 4 weeks for a newcomer to learn about bitcoin, set up a Verified account and wire funds.
IMO the recent good news, press coverage and anticipation of new money is already reflected in the price.

Actually, I would think that all those people who are checking out Bitcoin on wikipedia are in the first days of the 2-4 week process. Many won't be buying, but those that eventually will are nowhere near ready.  

Why is this happening now?

Norwegian story of $22 in BTC forgotten from 2009, buying apartment, Robocoin ATM, hedge fund interest, CCTV and RT general coverage. All recent.

[gandhibt]

Some whale(s) is/are just trying to get more coins, but soon they realize it's no longer possible at these prices. Maybe in $300, $500 or $1000 they have better chance...

[ChartBuddy]

[gizmoh]

Some whale(s) is/are just trying to get more coins, but soon they realize it's no longer possible at these prices. Maybe in $300, $500 or $1000 they have better chance...

Very low volume is cause for concern for the bulls, seems like whales are not willing to buy in the 200 region as there is no wall support and price ahead is steep.

[lebing]

It takes 2 to 4 weeks for a newcomer to learn about bitcoin, set up a Verified account and wire funds.
IMO the recent good news, press coverage and anticipation of new money is already reflected in the price.

It took me 18 months ...

First time : great idea ! Will not work.
Second time : Bitcoin ? Yeah it kind of reminds me something...
Third time : OMFG why didn't I dig deeper the first time ? Hope it's not too late now ... (Answer : no it wasn't)

Similar story for me. I literally tried to start mining with the qt client though as I didnt quite get it the first time around. Thankfully that was in 2010  

[prophetx]

It takes 2 to 4 weeks for a newcomer to learn about bitcoin, set up a Verified account and wire funds.
IMO the recent good news, press coverage and anticipation of new money is already reflected in the price.

It took me 18 months ...

First time : great idea ! Will not work.
Second time : Bitcoin ? Yeah it kind of reminds me something...
Third time : OMFG why didn't I dig deeper the first time ? Hope it's not too late now ... (Answer : no it wasn't)

it took me even longer than that, when you are busy with other projects you just don't have time to investigate everything that comes up.  i only got in  when i was looking for sponsors for a hackathon and the ripple guys were nice enough to give us some.  

the funny thing is all of the students had no clue what to do with the stuff.  i told them it was worth real money but getting people to create a ripple web wallet was harder than selling someone on a million dollar ERP system...  and these are primarily MSc students at a technical university, so you can only imagine how hard the adoption curve is for non-techies.

[macsga]

I bought my first Ati sometime in May 2011. I really wish I'd bought bitcoins with that money by then...

[NewLiberty]

And turns out yesterday was actually bigger than post silk road.
We might be going down/sidways over the next few days... but next week will be ridiculous.

It takes 2 to 4 weeks for a newcomer to learn about bitcoin, set up a Verified account and wire funds.
IMO the recent good news, press coverage and anticipation of new money is already reflected in the price.

So you expect selling to equal the anticipated new money?

[miningnew]

I bought my first Ati sometime in May 2011. I really wish I'd bought bitcoins with that money by then...

same here.
I auto sold mine at 20 usd -.-

[ChartBuddy]

[barbs]

I think bitcoin is awesome but I have ongoing concerns.  I agree with all of you that bitcoin is going to explode but at the same time have worries that I don't think are unfounded.  Bitcoins are still largley paced at the whim of people with self interests at heart who control the majority of coins.  In addition you have a major exchange that probably has a huge stockpile of coins themselves. Then we see these buying patterns from the whales of big buys into walls -> large bid walls placed to support the new price. This is not the behavior of your neighbors getting into btc.

I'm still concerned about MTGox and their FIAT problem.  You're a BTC millionaire, and it amounts to several millions, lets say.  You email them about making a withdrawal and you get this response (i got this response yesterday regarding my transfer request over SEPA, not USD, and not for that much ).

Hello XXX,

Thanks for your email. Kindly note that all the international withdrawals are delayed due to backlog. We are working hard to clear such pending requests manually. We are in the process of forming relationships with new partners, banks, and taking other steps to clear the backlog. So as of now we do not have an ETA to follow up and we are unable to determine the exact time frame for withdrawals. Kindly let us know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Mt.Gox Team
https://www.mtgox.com

This has been going on for months. I take on board what people are saying that this could be a non issue. However people need to eat, and right now you can't go to the supermarket and feed your family with bitcoins. So you have essentially a number balance at an unregulated exchange which is really just a limited liability company. What else can you do but buy bitcoins with your milliions?

Then you have other exchanges providing a way out for payments, but that takes time and patience because until today these exchanges generally did not have a great book order depth.  So slippage is a real problem for the BTC milllionaire who's only way to get his 10's of millions out from mtgox is to slowly pump it into bitcoins and try for an exchange that pays out.  Luckily MTgox, for whatever reason still basically sets the BTC price.  So what can you do? you can pump the price with your millions and patienty wait for bids to fill in on the other exchanges. You can move your accumulated BTC to liquid exchanges and slowly build up a fiat balance on that as bids support smaller dumps. If i put on my real tinfoil hat you wait until those exchanges build enough supporting bids and then you dump and start transfering your millions finally home.

I know all of this has been said before but it haunts me.  If MTGox was paying out and if they werent still the exchange that sets the price and buy / sell panic on the other exchanges I'd be way less concerned about this new price.  Remember BTC is the only real way to pull money out reliably from MTGox..