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

[JorgeStolfi]

As your interest in Bitcoin is purely academic and you presumably don't own any bitcoins, one has to wonder why the majority of your posts are in a forum thread consisting of mostly un-academic discussion between bitcoin owners.

Is there some other thread where my posts would be more welcome? 

Actually, I find this thread far more interesting than the more focused ones I have looked at.  I have learned a lot more about Bitcoin here than I could possibly have lerned there.  (All the gossips about MtGOX, for example, or why bitcoincharts does not cover Huobi and OKCoin, or ....)

Besides, the "liquidity" of the other threads is abysmal...

[aminorex]

America would not ban bitcoin. They would make life hell for people who owned it, sold it or bought it. But highly unlikely. Right now America is looking for a way to use bitcoin to its advantage. China does not like it because it cannot control it but cannot do much about it.

 If all goes well we will see widespread adoption at least in the western world this year. Prices will have to increase to make room for the new players, the big players. The big question mark is google coin! Will it exist, what effects will it have. If there's anyone who can compete with the bitcoin network it's them.

That would be evil,  they are more likely to support btc in wallet.

[yrtrnc]

If they become skynet, then we are all doomed. Let's hope no Google coin.

America would not ban bitcoin. They would make life hell for people who owned it, sold it or bought it. But highly unlikely. Right now America is looking for a way to use bitcoin to its advantage. China does not like it because it cannot control it but cannot do much about it.

 If all goes well we will see widespread adoption at least in the western world this year. Prices will have to increase to make room for the new players, the big players. The big question mark is google coin! Will it exist, what effects will it have. If there's anyone who can compete with the bitcoin network it's them.

That would be evil,  they are more likely to support btc in wallet.

[the_sunship]

just because Google might make a currency, doesn't mean everyone would use it. How many people have an Orkut account?

[TERA]

While it may not necessarily be Google's coin, I do forsee that another crpytocurrency or "digital money" comes out which solves the shortcomings of Bitcoin - including the blockchain scalability issues and the ability to update to stronger encryption algorithms once the existing ones (SHA256, EC) are broken. Then Bitcoin becomes known as only "the first digital money there was back in the day". I do not see serious worldwide banking adoption trusting billions and trillions of dollars into something that has a built in death sentence. Don't forget that Bitcoin is BETA software.

[JorgeStolfi]

US-centric much?

Marijuana has been criminalized in most countries only because of pressure by the US.   Ditto for music/video/software sharing,  unscrambling HDMI signals, and several others. So if the US bans cryptocoins, most Western nations will probably follow suit.

It is true that the ban on marijuana did not stop its use, and actually increased its price by several orders or magnitude.  However, marijuana can be grown and sold in secret, while cryptocoins cannot be used without accessing the very public blockchain and support network.  I cannot imagine how the network could continue to function if the US decided to stop it.

there seems to be a correlation between people not being willing to describe themselves as anarchists/libertarians and their faith in the viability and effectiveness of the political process to effect meaningful positive change.

Why is that surprising?  Rejection of the traditional political process is almost a definition of anarchism/libertarianism, isn't it?

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[keithers]

Next monday.

Next Monday after the next? Or next Monday after the next and before the next Monday after the next next?

No three mondays prior to the next next next Monday after the next before the next Monday

[hyphymikey]

Just took a ride with Dr. Who…. Gox will close in a month.

[adamstgBit]

Just took a ride with Dr. Who…. Gox will close in a month.

not sure if this is bullish or bearish. 

[mah87]

Just took a ride with Dr. Who…. Gox will close in a month.

not sure if this is bullish or bearish. 

still in denial ? waiting for 500$ ?

[adamstgBit]

Just took a ride with Dr. Who…. Gox will close in a month.

not sure if this is bullish or bearish. 

still in denial ? waiting for 500$ ?

yes, and yes that would be nice.

[JorgeStolfi]

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):


               !   Thu !   Fri !   Sat !   Sun !   Mon !   Tue !   Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !
  EXCHANGE     ! 01/30 ! 01/31 ! 02/01 ! 02/02 ! 02/03 ! 02/04 ! 02/05 !  02/06 !  02/07 !  02/08 !  02/09 ! Currencies considered

  MtGOX        |  6.60 |  4.45 |  5.13 |  2.28 |  3.37 |  5.40 |  8.20 |  21.54 |  58.89 |  26.82 |  23.48 | USD,EUR,GBP,AUD,JPY
  Bitstamp     | 13.13 |  7.73 |  8.30 |  4.07 |  4.93 |  7.59 |  8.48 |  20.65 |  42.79 |  13.50 |  15.06 | USD
  BTC-e        | 12.54 |  4.65 |  6.30 |  4.74 |  5.75 |  4.51 |  6.55 |   9.72 |  31.84 |  11.67 |  12.51 | USD,EUR,RUR
  BitFinEx     |  8.18 |  3.91 |  4.54 |  3.15 |  3.45 |  3.36 |  5.22 |  21.11 |  66.36 |  11.12 |  12.07 | USD
  Bitcoin.DE   |  0.47 |  0.35 |  0.33 |  0.35 |  0.51 |  0.27 |  0.31 |   0.61 |   1.30 |   0.37 |   0.47 | EUR
  Kraken       |  0.37 |  0.20 |  0.23 |  0.15 |  0.21 |  0.29 |  0.23 |   0.59 |   1.45 |   0.37 |   0.45 | EUR
  CampBX       |  0.06 |  0.05 |  0.23 |  0.16 |  0.10 |  0.12 |  0.16 |   0.21 |   0.82 |   0.27 |   0.24 | USD
  CaVirtEx     |  0.25 |  0.24 |  0.24 |  0.20 |  0.08 |  0.17 |  0.18 |   0.39 |   1.07 |   0.57 |   0.23 | CAD
  Crypto-Trade |  0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |  0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |  0.01 |   0.04 |   0.05 |   0.01 |   0.03 | USD

  SUBTOTAL     | 41.61 | 21.58 | 25.31 | 15.11 | 18.40 | 21.72 | 29.34 |  74.86 | 204.57 |  64.70 |  64.54 |

  Huobi        | 29.27 | 15.26 | 28.86 | 26.27 | 24.77 | 18.65 | 19.55 |  39.97 | 131.91 |  77.00 |  64.08 | CNY
  OKCoin       | 18.56 | 17.11 | 20.38 | 20.00 | 18.09 | 12.77 | 12.33 |  26.07 |  74.37 |  37.63 |  34.63 | CNY
  BTC-China    |  1.99 |  1.17 |  2.31 |  2.21 |  1.70 |  1.33 |  1.54 |   4.09 |  17.66 |   6.86 |   5.75 | CNY (NOTE 1)

  SUBTOTAL     | 49.82 | 33.54 | 51.55 | 48.48 | 44.56 | 32.75 | 33.42 |  70.13 | 223.94 | 121.49 | 104.46 |

  TOTAL        | 91.43 | 55.12 | 76.86 | 63.59 | 62.96 | 54.47 | 62.76 | 144.99 | 428.51 | 186.19 | 169.00 |



All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

Coinbase is said to use Bitstamp for currency conversion.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

(NOTE 1) On 2014-01-30, BTC-China had a burst of extremely fast, regular and atypical transactions, all with similar amounts (a few tens of BTC) and prices (~4836 CNY), adding up to about 41,050 BTC.  The burst started suddenly around 17:00 UTC and and stopped suddenly around 19:30 UTC. Presumably those transactions were made by a faulty robot trading against itself or some other robot, and did not represent actual exchange of money and bitcoins between distinct individuals. Therefore those anomalous transactions were subtracted from the BTC-China volume for Jan/30.

[bitwager]

Sorry if I missed it, but was the fact that Coinbase ran out of fiat on bitstamp talked about in here?  Extremely bullish...

http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1xek7t/why_is_coinbase_buy_price_so_much_higher_than/

[billyjoeallen]

The nuclear industry once sponsored a very thorough safety study that examined all the ways in which a nuclear plant could possibly fail, and concluded that, assuming several hundred operating reactors, there might be one partial meltdown every century or so.  That was before Three Mile Island, of course.  According to the principles of that study,  three separate reactors melting down down at the same time would be less likely than a meteorite killing Santa Claus; and the possibility that an unloaded reactor could explode and become a major nuclear risk was not even considered.

NASA too once sponsored a very detailed study of the Space Shuttle's safety.  It concluded that the chances of a total loss were about 1 every 100,000 launches.  The actual rate turned out to be 1 every 50 launches.

Ok, I was a U.S. Navy "Nuke" on the U.S.S. Ohio. Three mile Island was not a meltdown, partial or otherwise. The control rods scrammed and it was sub-critical. Some fission particles escaped when the core was partially uncovered. This is not a meltdown. Chernobyl was a meltdown, but it was a very different design. What made Three Mile Island significant was that the incident occurred just about the time the movie "The China Syndrome" came out and scared the bejeesus out of everyone.

Water-cooled reactors like in the U.S. and Europe are much safer than liquid sodium reactors. Many of them are designed to automatically shut down when the tempt gets too high by having a built in negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. Also the poison (control) rods are held out the top of the reactors by electromagnets, so they fall into the core and shut it down whenever there is a loss of power.

[billyjoeallen]

Sorry if I missed it, but was the fact that Coinbase ran out of fiat on bitstamp talked about in here?  Extremely bullish...

http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1xek7t/why_is_coinbase_buy_price_so_much_higher_than/

Makes sense. So come Monday, there will be upwards pressure on the bitstamp price and downwards pressure at Coinbase when they equalize.  Gringos are buying.

[aminorex]

While it may not necessarily be Google's coin, I do forsee that another crpytocurrency or "digital money" comes out which solves the shortcomings of Bitcoin

And that will be bitcoin.  

[yrtrnc]

700, the new 800 and ain't nothin gonna happen in Tokio to change that. 

[wachtwoord]

While it may not necessarily be Google's coin, I do forsee that another crpytocurrency or "digital money" comes out which solves the shortcomings of Bitcoin

And that will be bitcoin.  

Exactly. Everyone seems to forget Bitcoin adapts.

[JorgeStolfi]

Ok, I was a U.S. Navy "Nuke" on the U.S.S. Ohio. Three mile Island was not a meltdown, partial or otherwise. The control rods scrammed and it was sub-critical. Some fission particles escaped when the core was partially uncovered. This is not a meltdown.

Sorry to have started an off-topic discussion... But Three Mile Island was indeed a meltdown, although it fortunately failed to breach the pressure vessel.

The industry initially denied any meltdown, but the truth became evident many years later, when the pressure vessel was finally opened and its contents were removed.  A large portion of the fuel had melted, leaving a wide cavity in the middle of the core.  The molten stuff trickled down through the remaining water, bore twice through internal steel baffles and collected  at the bottom of the pressure vessel.  If the operators had taken a little longer to do the right thing, it would surely had breached the pressure vessel, like Fukushima #1--#3 did.  See the Wikipedia article  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident. (The /Science/ magazine had a long article about that in the 1980s).  

EDIT: PS. By the way, the Fukushima reactors all scrammed properly and were completely shut down when the tsunami hit.  The meltdown occurred because of the heat given off by the radioactive elements resulting from fission, which is not stopped by the control rods and requires active cooling for months after shutdown.  Also, none of the reactors that melted down used sodium as a coolant.