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

[slakeco]

EDIT: I seem to post on the top of the page almost every time page ends in 3 lol. Page 4043, 4023, 4013 (yeah I'm weird)

Too weird for me...selling all my coins.

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[dgarcia]

We have to ask Walsoraj. He's the last resort.

WALSORAJ!!!!

What to do? Hodl or sodl?

[Walsoraj]

We have to ask Walsoraj. He's the last resort.

WALSORAJ!!!!

What to do? Hodl or sodl?

That is a complex question. Bitcoin = always sodl. Dogecoin = always hodl.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[donut]

One of these plots is actual hourly closing price (USD/BTC) from one exchange, the other is a series of fake prices generated by a simple "log-Brownian" model.

Can you tell which is which, without looking at other charts?
If you think you can, what difference do you see?

Honestly, they both look very plausible. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they're both BTC/USD, but from different exchanges.

[windjc]

These bearish theories are compelling. And I think they provide much needed perspective.

I, however, can't get past one fact however. And that is that there are more millionaires in the world than there will ever be bitcoins. And as more major players get involved there will be more and more coins that never make it to an exchange.

Or put another way, there's not enough bitcoins for 200 more second markets. And Second Market is small small small.

Therefore, unless Bitcoin is greatly rejected by he world, I don't see miners having much of an impact on exchanges quite honestly. Not for a four year bear market.

[notme]

Excluding broadband internet from common carrier regulations keeps completion out of the industry.  With copper lines, which do fall under common carrier, you provider has to provide you with the contracted bandwidth and you are free to resell it if you wish.  Broadband providers do not have to follow these rules.  I just moved into an apartment and I am having a terrible time dealing with Comcast just to get simple fucking internet (it's been over a week since I moved in).  If I had any other options for broadband, I would love to give them my business.  But regional monopolies dominate and even when demand is strong competitors can't get a foot in the door by buying from the monopoly provider.  Networks are expensive to build and maintain, which is why centralization is such a strong force in these industries.  Common carrier regulations were put in place to help balance this tendency and promote competition.  If a stronger Comcast is so great, why am I typing this on my phone when I have a really nice desktop?

Because bitcoin.

The internet is fundamentally broken in part precisely because it doesn't include any economic protocol until now.
There are a great many tragedies of the commons that occur from this: spam, pervasive advertising, all you can download/upload pricing, that you even have to pay for it at all if you are getting just basic internet is a symptom.
Letting the providers use the available technology to solve some of these problems is not such a bad thing.

There will always be folks that just enjoy using law to stop technology, but that doesn't make it better.

For your particulars, I don't know where you are, but I've never lived in a location that had so few choices for network.  My priorities are likely different as I wouldn't have considered living in a place without more choices.  If it doesn't have cable + DSL + wireless + nearby fiber + satellite availability, for myself, it could at best be a vacation rental.  Certainly not a place I could live / work.  
Your vote with your rental payment has more sway than the ballot box.

"Just leave" is a poor solution, especially when I am in one of the most population dense areas in my state.  I probably am moving elsewhere when I finish my degree, but that won't help the millions of people that have no option to but to live with the situation (most people in my state are too poor to even think about moving).  Ultimately lack of population density is the main problem, but at least with common carrier lines there was the possibility of smaller fish focusing on service to clean up the scraps left by the whales.  Without such options, I am currently a scrap that can only access the internet though my phone or by visiting a friend.

[BTCtrader71]

The unequal distribution of coins can discourage adoption ...

What is the argument or evidence for this?

[notme]

Deep packet inspection by ISPs has been going on for at least a decade.  They never needed priority as an excuse.  But keep on cheering for more centralized control of our networks.  Soon all my traffic will be encrypted on Comcast's network.

Sure it happens, but it is relatively rare and expensive to do pervasively, even in places where the government claims the authority and is uncontested to do it at will, it is still relatively rare.
Putting this financial incentive in front of it will ease the burden making it more common.
When we brought our new shiny QoS high speed ATM and MPLS switches into China, knowing what to say, and what not to say, and to whom, remained important.

Comcast has been injecting shit into unencrypted web pages since at least 2008.  Not only are they reading the application protocol to do this, they are modifying the data.  And why do you think it is expensive?  They have the data and they have code to read the protocols.  They can trivially extract anything they want that isn't encrypted.

[JorgeStolfi]

One of these plots is actual hourly closing price (USD/BTC) from one exchange, the other is a series of fake prices generated by a simple "log-Brownian" model.

Can you tell which is which, without looking at other charts?
If you think you can, what difference do you see?

Honestly, they both look very plausible. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they're both BTC/USD, but from different exchanges.

The red line (Y) is Bitstamp's hourly closing price from 2014-01-05 to 2014-01-13.

The blue line (X) is generated by starting with

  X(0) = 840
  Z(0) = log_10(X(0)),

then, for i = 1,2,...

  Z(i) = Z(i-1) + 0.058*RND(),
  X(i)  = 10^Z(i)

where RND() is a random number with normal distribution, mean 0 and standard deviation 1.

In simple words, the simulated price X(i) increases or decreases at each step by a random percentage, without regard for the past history.

I had to try twice, with different random generator's seeds; on my first attempt the simulated price dropped too low at one point, it would have been a dead giveaway.

[Erdogan]

I believe bitcoin is money of course, a currency if it is heavily used. But you can also view it as an asset, like stocks, bonds, real estate and so on. It is just different views. I happen to think that the money view is the correct one in the long run, but it can be viewed as an asset. If it is an asset, it is somewhere you invest, instead of saving in dollars. Just like investing in a bond, a house, a stock or even in a bank account. Appearantly the asset view is also rampant with new users and the potential investors from wall street.

Viewed as an asset class, the speculative view is different. You have some fiat, or some other asset that can be liquidated to fiat, and consider investing it in bitcoin. Your goal is to enter at a low price, then for a high price sell out to the safety of fiat or some other traditional asset.

The point with all this is, that to the degree that a number of people view it thusly, it will be affected by the central banks actions just like stocks. That is, bitcoin can go down if the investing public believes that the money fountain will be turned off.

What do you think?

[CMMPro]

The unequal distribution of coins can discourage adoption ...

What is the argument or evidence for this?

There is none.

We can't tell if there is one entity with coins scattered across a thousand addresses...all they are doing is guessing at the distribution based on the coins in the largest addresses. We don't know if some of those are lost or irretrievable. It could be far worse or far better than the estimate.

They also count Satoshi's 1m coins as a part of that distribution....which is plausible, although most people believe we will never see those coins moved again.

The entire argument is irrelevant anyway....as it becomes an incentive those coins will redistribute from those large wallets to smaller and smaller wallets as they get sold or spent. If they never get moved, they have less and less influence on the bitcoin economy. (Other than determining scarcity.)

[Le Happy Merchant]

Use your imagination

[BTCtrader71]

The unequal distribution of coins can discourage adoption ...

What is the argument or evidence for this?

There is none.

We can't tell if there is one entity with coins scattered across a thousand addresses...all they are doing is guessing at the distribution based on the coins in the largest addresses. We don't know if some of those are lost or irretrievable. It could be far worse or far better than the estimate.

They also count Satoshi's 1m coins as a part of that distribution....which is plausible, although most people believe we will never see those coins moved again.

The entire argument is irrelevant anyway....as it becomes an incentive those coins will redistribute from those large wallets to smaller and smaller wallets as they get sold or spent. If they never get moved, they have less and less influence on the bitcoin economy. (Other than determining scarcity.)

I agree with this analysis.

[Erdogan]

Haven't seen this talked about much on bitcointalk, and the good people frequenting this topic should know about it:

Sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31813471


Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1v7ayg/revolution_in_bitcoin_privacy_stealth_addresses/

It is about stealth addresses, a possible new anonymity feature. So with coinjoin, we now have two anonymity efforts going on.

Breaking the partial anonymity we have now, is the most realistic way governments can reign in the bitcoin users. In my view.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[Dragonkiller]

I believe bitcoin is money of course, a currency if it is heavily used. But you can also view it as an asset, like stocks, bonds, real estate and so on. It is just different views. I happen to think that the money view is the correct one in the long run, but it can be viewed as an asset. If it is an asset, it is somewhere you invest, instead of saving in dollars. Just like investing in a bond, a house, a stock or even in a bank account. Appearantly the asset view is also rampant with new users and the potential investors from wall street.

Viewed as an asset class, the speculative view is different. You have some fiat, or some other asset that can be liquidated to fiat, and consider investing it in bitcoin. Your goal is to enter at a low price, then for a high price sell out to the safety of fiat or some other traditional asset.

The point with all this is, that to the degree that a number of people view it thusly, it will be affected by the central banks actions just like stocks. That is, bitcoin can go down if the investing public believes that the money fountain will be turned off.

What do you think?

Well bitcoin is essentially an asset. If the money fountain is turned off, all assets will be deflated to varying extents.

[Walsoraj]

One of these plots is actual hourly closing price (USD/BTC) from one exchange, the other is a series of fake prices generated by a simple "log-Brownian" model.

Can you tell which is which, without looking at other charts?
If you think you can, what difference do you see?

Honestly, they both look very plausible. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they're both BTC/USD, but from different exchanges.

The red line (Y) is Bitstamp's hourly closing price from 2014-01-05 to 2014-01-13.

The blue line (X) is generated by starting with

  X(0) = 840
  Z(0) = log_10(X(0)),

then, for i = 1,2,...

  Z(i) = Z(i-1) + 0.058*RND(),
  X(i)  = 10^Z(i)

where RND() is a random number with normal distribution, mean 0 and standard deviation 1.

In simple words, the simulated price X(i) increases or decreases at each step by a random percentage, without regard for the past history.

I had to try twice, with different random generator's seeds; on my first attempt the simulated price dropped too low at one point, it would have been a dead giveaway.

Are you trying to tell us bitcoin is a purely speculative investment? Nah, GTFO!

[Dragonkiller]

One of these plots is actual hourly closing price (USD/BTC) from one exchange, the other is a series of fake prices generated by a simple "log-Brownian" model.

Can you tell which is which, without looking at other charts?
If you think you can, what difference do you see?

Honestly, they both look very plausible. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they're both BTC/USD, but from different exchanges.

The red line (Y) is Bitstamp's hourly closing price from 2014-01-05 to 2014-01-13.

The blue line (X) is generated by starting with

  X(0) = 840
  Z(0) = log_10(X(0)),

then, for i = 1,2,...

  Z(i) = Z(i-1) + 0.058*RND(),
  X(i)  = 10^Z(i)

where RND() is a random number with normal distribution, mean 0 and standard deviation 1.

In simple words, the simulated price X(i) increases or decreases at each step by a random percentage, without regard for the past history.

I had to try twice, with different random generator's seeds; on my first attempt the simulated price dropped too low at one point, it would have been a dead giveaway.

what about over a longer time period?

[JorgeStolfi]

Are you trying to tell us bitcoin is a purely speculative investment? Nah, GTFO!

Not at all! "Random" means "due to arcane reasons that we mortals are not given to understand".