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

[jbreher]

Segwit and nonsegwit are all "on the blockchain."  I don't know how anyone who has been in bitcoin for a while would conclude that segwit is NOT on the blockchain?  I do believe that segwit has allowed the transactions per second to jump up dramatically and if you hit refresh on that page you will see the transactions per second jumping around between 10tsp and over 300tsp...   It seems that before segwit, there were proclamations that the bitcoin blockchain could only process a maximum of 7tps.

Yeah... about that....

Segwit or no segwit, BTC is utterly incapable of averaging 300 tps. By a couple orders of magnitude. Block weight will not allow it.

People testing the lightning network are seeing 400TPS easily between two nodes.  

Segwit let that happen.

Note the "on the blockchain" in the quote that advances the mistaken notion -- which I corrected -- that ...

Oh fuck it. If you're determined to be a loon, go ahead. Knock yourself out.

But what difference does it make, jbreher, if "on the blockchain" or not,

Because 'on the blockchain' means 'on the blockchain'.

Because words have meanings.

Because the total value accessible* on the pan-global lightning network won't even buy a single house in some markets.

*Because that total value really isn't 'accessible' anyhow.

[1713296233]

1713296233

[1713296233]

1713296233

[goldkingcoiner]

Low-key game changer. Price tag with actual BTC price.

That's crazy (maybe even batshit crazy?) to actually post prices in BTC - especially if BTC prices are changing a lot and likely to continue to change a lot, relative to fiat.

Note the actual BTC and USD prices on the tag . I don't know when the picture was taken, but if it was this year, then well... with this kind of conversion rate the seller has nothing to lose!

From another hand, lets put it this way - it is crazy to actually post prices in USD, with USD price changing a lot and likely to change a lot, relative to real value in BTC.

Possible solution is to use digital price tags updated in real time...

Or use a paper tag with : $60 - payable in Bitcoins.

This really reminds me of the mcdonalds in our town. They want to seem hip and new and modern so they got these screens where you pick your food. But problem is you don't pay there. It prints a piece of paper you take to the clerk and he puts in your order and you pay him. So totally redundant, yet flashy.

[jbreher]

I haven't done the full Math on this, but isn't that a back and forth kind of game (due to the presence of traders and speculators)?

Correlation vs Causation.  This is the Captain speaking.  If there is a statistician on board, please press the call attendant button to identify yourself to the cabin crew.  

From that perspective you can spin the argument up from both sides. The price is a result of the difficulty, as it dictates the supply. The cause that you speak of can be arbitrarily picked here. (Infinite difficulty = no coins = no price, hence the presence of a difficulty creates a price)

Except this isn’t really accurate. Difficulty adjusts both up and down. With a low enough difficulty I can run the entire Bitcoin network on my 2009 laptop.  Any decrease in supply due to a rapid decrease in hashrate is inconsequential on a multi year time line.

I should've clarified that I meant the initial difficulty for the genesis block. A difficulty so high that no coins can be mined results in no coins and thus no price, and a difficulty so low that arbitrarily many coins can be mined by anyone would result in a price of zero. Hence, the difficulty came first, and the price came after. Even without these edge cases, you need to mine coins first before any price can be set though. Alas, you can spin this up either way by including or excluding exotic scenarios.

Your extreme scenarios are so far out there as to be unrealistic because the algorithm allows for blocks to be mined every 10 minutes and the difficulty is adjusted every 2 weeks in order to attempt to approximate the 10 minutes for every block time line.

Well, no. Difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks. You can think of it as 'to attempt to approximate the 2 weeks', should that help. If that 2016th block is never mined -- perhaps due to sudden decrease in hashpower -- difficulty is unable to adjust. Which, of course, would lead to inability to transact -- AKA chain death.

[El duderino_]

This week was hard and bad. Of the good events was only the purchase of a dog. And in the crypto nothing happened. SEC represented the second delay, the next deadline for a decision is now December 29

I need to rest. Have a nice evening.

OMG Bob and Mic are total non-drinkers compared to you!  You're probably completely wasted by now....

Haha thats a Nice table full of glasses , next time i Maybe gonna show how its done ....     (actualy i’m Maybe not the biggest drinker, get drunk much more quickly these days)

have a good evening/night and enjoy Some good drinks there

[Hueristic]

you may refer to me as LA the Legendary

[bitserve]

I would accept that scenario right away (which holder wouldn't?).

Even though the scenario could happen, as a fellow HODLer, I don't accept it... at least not readily.

The scenario calls for an additional 50% down, based on an overlay of 2014/15 which were different circumstances than we find today.  Yes, it could happen, but it is far from a given, and it is even reasonable that the bottom is already "in".  

Unfortunately there is a high probability that futures markets (CME/CBOE/etc) have indeed sorta "tamed" Bitcoin and we won't see neither those lows nor those skyrocketing highs, at least not in that relatively short timeframe. But... I only know that I know nothing and anything is possible.

Your last sentence seem to be the most important, and even though the theories like to suggest that bitcoin has been "tamed" and volatility has gone down forever, how are they really going to tame it, when we still have way less than 1% of world adoption and a whole lot of stupid ass crazy with the alts too?

Financialization of bitcoin has both its ups and downs, but even a lot of those folks are still acquiring bitcoin and they want to "get rich" too, especially if they are able to take advantage of the least resistance when it happens, and when such "least resistance" happens to be UP, they will also join in on the buying frenzie... which seems to be a matter of "when" rather than "if".

I am "poor" already... If it is on the cards that I will be "sufficiently rich" someday just because of crypto... so be it.

Whoaza!!!!  you have been registered here since early 2013, weren't you able to accumulate some BTC over the years?   At least enough to have decent profits, even though you might not be "rich" yet, the decent profits should have removed you from "poor" status, relatively speaking, no?

In the meantime I will be working on other potentially profitable stuff to raise my probabilities of reaching that status one way or another.

It does not hurt to continue to accumulate BTC and even to have some kind of cashflow coming in and to use a decent amount of that cashflow to buy BTC.  Hopefuily you don't delve into gambling and become desperate about becoming rich, which does not usually work as well as a sound investment strategy, such as accumulating BTC....

The next months/years are critical guys.

Agreed.

I don't know how to reply to a multi-quote reply without messing all quotes.... so I will do it like this:

1) As I said, I don't expect neither those lows nor those highs in that timeframe. But I say I would obviously accept it because were it happened that would mean a price higher than $100K in 2020/21. If you don't, maybe your expectations (even if possible) are a bit too optimistic.

2) About the "taming" thing... I do agree that adoption is probably below 1% currently. But as the price gets higher it is probable that the whales that currently hold $billions in BTC would gradually start selling to those new adopters/investors. That would mean that the currently small float would enlarge thus somewhat absorbing the new demand without the need of an otherwise ridiculously pump into the millions per BTC. At which price offer and demand would find equilibrium is the million dollar question, but as time passes it should naturally and gradually happen.

3) Please don't confuse being "poor" with being poor. It's not the same and I don't want to offend really poor persons. Yes, I have had very decent (unrealised) profits. I can't honestly complaint. But, if that decent profits will one day mean being sufficiently or barely rich is something that I can't control (beyond holding). I can dream BTC will reach $100K in a few years but that won't make nor help it happen. The contrary is equally true.

So whatever happens, we will know in the next few years.

[BotanicKilt]

I don't know how to reply to a multi-quote reply without messing all quotes.... so I will do it like this:

Just click 'quote' with open in new window 2 times. Cut the quotes from the first window and paste in second with answer in second.

[JayJuanGee]

This week was hard and bad. Of the good events was only the purchase of a dog. And in the crypto nothing happened. SEC represented the second delay, the next deadline for a decision is now December 29

I need to rest. Have a nice evening.

Maybe some patience?

[Dunkelheit667]

The monthly update:


Q3 was boring. Q4 just started and brought a lot of healthy, juicy green in recent years. Let's observe if 2018 will be a tiresome 2014 or something different.

[JayJuanGee]

Low-key game changer. Price tag with actual BTC price.

That's crazy (maybe even batshit crazy?) to actually post prices in BTC - especially if BTC prices are changing a lot and likely to continue to change a lot, relative to fiat.

Resolution of photo is pretty bad, there is also "Shake to buy" on the screen. Have no idea how it works, guess QR appears and after few confirmations it shows completed purchase and you can gave it staff to remove the tag.

Does that mean that the price will update, automatically, too, because then such a pricing in BTC would make sense?

Note the actual BTC and USD prices on the tag . I don't know when the picture was taken, but if it was this year, then well... with this kind of conversion rate the seller has nothing to lose!

There is both a buyer and a seller for such a transaction to take place, and sure the buyer might be willing to give up some BTC because s/he believes that the seller is "hip" for listing a product in BTC, but if the BTC price does not adjust with the fair market value, then either the buyer has to discuss with the seller or be willing to pay more than what s/he could otherwise purchase the item, especially in fiat terms.

Part of the reason that folks are less willing to spend their BTC is if it is going to cost them more to replace them and they don't feel like overpaying, especially if they consider the upwards volatility potential of the BTC value.

From another hand, lets put it this way - it is crazy to actually post prices in USD, with USD price changing a lot and likely to change a lot, relative to real value in BTC.

I am not opposed to innovation or if there is a way to update the BTC price on a regular basis, but let's attempt to stick to reality in a few ways.  1st of all, less than 1% of the population owns any BTC, 2nd BTC HODLers are not necessarily willing to spend their BTC if they have to overpay for a product and 3rd it is going to take a while to transition into another forum of pricing, especially BTC where it remains way undervalued... so perhaps has to engage in another 100x or more price appreciation before it becomes more longer term stable.  

I am surely not making any argument against the value of bitcoin, and that becomes part of the problem when there are so many shitty currencies, and it could take 20-50 years before we see real gravitation into bitcoin, even though many of us earlier adopters are likely going to profit stupendously from such, as long as we live that long and we don't get tricked out of our bitcoins.

[Ted E. Bare]

Big walls flashing on both sides at finex.

[d_eddie]

... and irregular, un-barty movement for btc. An interesting week is ahead.
Or, to put it the WO way, "The next week is critical."

[JayJuanGee]

Segwit and nonsegwit are all "on the blockchain."  I don't know how anyone who has been in bitcoin for a while would conclude that segwit is NOT on the blockchain?  I do believe that segwit has allowed the transactions per second to jump up dramatically and if you hit refresh on that page you will see the transactions per second jumping around between 10tsp and over 300tsp...   It seems that before segwit, there were proclamations that the bitcoin blockchain could only process a maximum of 7tps.

Yeah... about that....

Segwit or no segwit, BTC is utterly incapable of averaging 300 tps. By a couple orders of magnitude. Block weight will not allow it.

People testing the lightning network are seeing 400TPS easily between two nodes.  

Segwit let that happen.

Note the "on the blockchain" in the quote that advances the mistaken notion -- which I corrected -- that ...

Oh fuck it. If you're determined to be a loon, go ahead. Knock yourself out.

But what difference does it make, jbreher, if "on the blockchain" or not,

Because 'on the blockchain' means 'on the blockchain'.

Because words have meanings.

Because the total value accessible* on the pan-global lightning network won't even buy a single house in some markets.

*Because that total value really isn't 'accessible' anyhow.

If I could, I would strangle a picnic bear for making a bunch of non-sensical trivial points.   



Currently, bitcoin is processing a lot of transactions "on the blockchain," and it seems that the speed and costs of the on-chain transactions have come a long way since more folks are using segwit. 

You likely realize that lightning remains in its relatively early stages, and likely it went live faster than it would have otherwise because bcash nutjobs were spam attacking the bitcoin network for a couple of months in December 2017 and January 2018, which seemed to have incentivized the earlier adoption of lightning network but also seemed to have coincided with the BTC blockchain spam attack going away.

perhaps some bcashers are feeling their oats in recent times with recent pumpenings of their crap?  And want to shout out loud that they are a "better solution?"  Maybe lure in few more folks who don't know any better?

[d_eddie]

On a related note, my gambling BCH short has grown in size and has been repositioned a bit higher. In the green now. I'm tempted to close it, but greed is a thing when I gamble (not when I hedge).

[Ted E. Bare]

I'm curious to find out if the end-of-year rally will take us to $10.000.

[xhomerx10]

I'm curious to find out if the end-of-year rally will take us to $10.000.

 I'm curious to find out if end-of-year rally.

[JayJuanGee]

I haven't done the full Math on this, but isn't that a back and forth kind of game (due to the presence of traders and speculators)?

Correlation vs Causation.  This is the Captain speaking.  If there is a statistician on board, please press the call attendant button to identify yourself to the cabin crew.  

From that perspective you can spin the argument up from both sides. The price is a result of the difficulty, as it dictates the supply. The cause that you speak of can be arbitrarily picked here. (Infinite difficulty = no coins = no price, hence the presence of a difficulty creates a price)

Except this isn’t really accurate. Difficulty adjusts both up and down. With a low enough difficulty I can run the entire Bitcoin network on my 2009 laptop.  Any decrease in supply due to a rapid decrease in hashrate is inconsequential on a multi year time line.

I should've clarified that I meant the initial difficulty for the genesis block. A difficulty so high that no coins can be mined results in no coins and thus no price, and a difficulty so low that arbitrarily many coins can be mined by anyone would result in a price of zero. Hence, the difficulty came first, and the price came after. Even without these edge cases, you need to mine coins first before any price can be set though. Alas, you can spin this up either way by including or excluding exotic scenarios.

Your extreme scenarios are so far out there as to be unrealistic because the algorithm allows for blocks to be mined every 10 minutes and the difficulty is adjusted every 2 weeks in order to attempt to approximate the 10 minutes for every block time line.

Well, no. Difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks. You can think of it as 'to attempt to approximate the 2 weeks', should that help. If that 2016th block is never mined -- perhaps due to sudden decrease in hashpower -- difficulty is unable to adjust. Which, of course, would lead to inability to transact -- AKA chain death.

You are getting caught up in the weeds again, jbreher.  First, I understood that the difficulty is adjusted by number of blocks and also there is a time aspect there too, because the algorithm is attempting to adjust the difficulty in such a way (every two weeks - or every 2016 blocks as you assert) to preserve about a 10 minute per block production rate.

Regarding your other extreme hypothetical point, get real.  We are talking about bitcoin, not bcash.  The difficulty adjustment has been an ongoing process for nearly 10 years, and even when there were temptations to mine other coins, such as bcash or even perhaps some malicious playing around with the btc hashrate, the honeybadger did not suffer from any kind of meaningful hiccups.   So, even though, hypothetically, there could be issues of no blocks for extended periods of time, like we saw in bcash soon after its launch, bitcoin has not suffered from such extreme levels of stagnation - and accordingly, incentives in bitcoin seem to be sufficiently aligned in order to cause a sufficient number of miners to continuously mine and perhaps even some non-profitable ones that will find blocks if hashpower leaves bitcoin.... so in that regard, bitcoin has ongoing hashpower, and seemingly some reserved hashpower, too that keeps the blocks coming regularly on an ongoing basis with incrementally and relatively minor tweaks to the difficulty, here and there.

[JayJuanGee]

I don't know how to reply to a multi-quote reply without messing all quotes.... so I will do it like this:

Just take the end quote and put it above where you are typing and the header quote and put it at the bottom of where you are planning to type... so in this particular response, I just cut and paste this:  

>>>>>>>>end quote with beginning and ending brackets>>>>

   /quote]

[type your response here]

quote author=bitserve link=topic=178336.msg46372330#msg46372330 date=1538348805]  

<<<< header quote with beginning and ending brackets<<<<<

and then I type response in between the end quote and beginning quote.

1) As I said, I don't expect neither those lows nor those highs in that timeframe. But I say I would obviously accept it because were it happened that would mean a price higher than $100K in 2020/21.

you seem to be going along with the expectation that the price has to go down before it is able to go up, and that dynamic is an unknown.  Furthermore, some of the additional down can cause the price to stay down longer and not to go up as high, so it is NOT fair to assume that the only way that the price can go up or go up BIG is to have more downward correction.

If you don't, maybe your expectations (even if possible) are a bit too optimistic.

I don't recall saying anything about my expectations, and it seems to me that I have largely been criticizing various assumptions that say that either more down is inevitable or that in order to get higher UPs then we have to go down first.

Personally, I don't have any problem with going up because I profit from such UP, but I do not assume UP.  I prepare for either direction, and any assumption (or hope) that I have about UP remains that at whatever price I am buying my bitcoins today, then 5 to 10 years down the road, I will be able to sell them higher... and I feel more confident about that now because I already have a decently large stack of bitcoins that I bought in the 3 digits, so the assumption of up seems to be that I will be able to sell those coins for higher than I bought them for and that is why I had invested in bitcoin and continue investing in bitcoin.

2) About the "taming" thing... I do agree that adoption is probably below 1% currently. But as the price gets higher it is probable that the whales that currently hold $billions in BTC would gradually start selling to those new adopters/investors. That would mean that the currently small float would enlarge thus somewhat absorbing the new demand without the need of an otherwise ridiculously pump into the millions per BTC. At which price offer and demand would find equilibrium is the million dollar question, but as time passes it should naturally and gradually happen.

We both agree that the higher the market cap, the more difficult it is for anyone to push the BTC price around because they will need more capital to accomplish the ability to push the price around.  A similar thing remains true with the longer that bitcoin is around, the more difficult to push the price around, too because there develop more liquidation avenues even while some folks are completely removing their bitcoin from the system, even though the liquidation avenues will still exist but have to trade with a lower level of coins (assuming that fractional reserves are not happening too much).    

Sure, there are some more tools that are available for manipulators, including futures, but I doubt that gives them any meaningful abilities to manipulate bitcoin in the short term since these financialization tools still remain so immature that there is fear about getting burnt, and the tools create a decent amount of demand to hedge by carrying some bitcoin.. so you have to buy some bitcoin before you can sell it, and if the tools allow you to accomplish that with dollars, there is a considerable amount of risk if the BTC price market moves against you while you are attempting to push it down with dollars (and bitcoins that you don't really have).

3) Please don't confuse being "poor" with being poor. It's not the same and I don't want to offend really poor persons. Yes, I have had very decent (unrealised) profits. I can't honestly complaint. But, if that decent profits will one day mean being sufficiently or barely rich is something that I can't control (beyond holding). I can dream BTC will reach $100K in a few years but that won't make nor help it happen. The contrary is equally true.

I agree that being rich "on paper" may cause a certain amount of perception of poorness if you are saving those BTC assets for the long term and not willing to liquidate them at current prices, even if they are in profits because you expect the BTC price to go up in the coming years (whether that is 3 years or longer, perhaps willing to wait up to 10 years?  Perhaps?).

So whatever happens, we will know in the next few years.

Surely there are interesting developments, and overall a lot of us retain decently bullish feelings about the coming years, and I believe for good reasons.

It still remains possible that we could experience a 3-5 year downward and flat price period from here, but it also seems to me that the odds are pretty decent that BTC prices will be decently up in the coming years.  I don't that it is safe to expect to have $100k coins in that period of time, even though many of us know that such price possibilities are reasonably within the realm of decently good odds.

[JayJuanGee]

The monthly update:


Q3 was boring. Q4 just started and brought a lot of healthy, juicy green in recent years. Let's observe if 2018 will be a tiresome 2014 or something different.

I am really not someone who buys into calendar year or seasonal limitations for bitcoin; however, it may be interesting to note that 4th quarters had tended to bullish in bitcoin's history, except for 2014 - so.. these next three months might be the BIG test about whether we are in a 2014 like scenario or something else is happening - such as reaching the end of this particular BTC price correction?

[xhomerx10]

My favourite coin is going sideways.
 My favourite team is going sideways...
 

 ...and to top it off, I have to work tomorrow

 On a lighter note, at least I haven't been replaced by a robot yet.



 It will happen soon, I'm sure.