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

[MicroFi]

Hope this is true. Buitink says investors trying to bail out gox.

Hearsay, but do we have anything better right now?

https://twitter.com/paulbuitink/status/438428157948219392

I can only hope this is true too, but I still consider my Gox coins lost.
I'm not hoping for any miracles

[JorgeStolfi]

I also don't buy the liquidated them to play with the cash story. No one who believes in bitcoin (which he clearly did / does) would do that,  they all feel that the price is way under valued and its a life changing tech. Hence why he acquired so many coins and then wanted his own exchange. Why would he then bet against the price going up?

Also back at $100 there wasn't anywhere near the liquidity to sell all of those coins.

That is just a theory, of course (I still think that it is more likely than the stupid malleability hack.  Both theories depend on sheer stupidity, but mine also has a greed motive.

Frrom the charts, I see that there were long periods when the price was stable.  Perhaps MtGOX expected the price to remain stable for another couple of months, or that it would rise slowly so that they would have time to reverse the deal.

In my theory, the sale would probably have happened off-market, in large lots.  Suppose that a big investor contacted MtGOX and offered to buy 1,000,000 BTC from their cold storage at 15$ each, when the market price was 10$.  Would they let that opportunity pass?

[kkaspar]

User count is going to stabilize at some point, and will become lower than the actual BTC inflation rate. I see no reason why that wouldn't lead to price stability (not in USD terms perhaps but that's because USD is actually not stable at all).

It's hard to believe that the usercount will stop and stay stable. In my idea, it will more probably either increase or decrease.
But what remains the same is that the inflow of new coins will slow down and get more expensive.
All of it combined will keep bitcoin far away from stability.

[bassclef]

User count is going to stabilize at some point, and will become lower than the actual BTC inflation rate. I see no reason why that wouldn't lead to price stability (not in USD terms perhaps but that's because USD is actually not stable at all).

It's hard to believe that the usercount will stop and stay stable. In my idea, it will more probably either increase or decrease.
But what remains the same is that the inflow of new coins will slow down and get more expensive.
All of it combined will keep bitcoin far away from stability.

Good news for day traders.

[seldon]

Did you guys see the neo-bee demo already? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRUM75oyI-g

[Sitarow]

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[KeyserSoze]

I think "the pundits here" mostly have no clue what they are talking about or they are just plain out lying.

...otherwise known as "a speculation thread."

[kkaspar]

User count is going to stabilize at some point, and will become lower than the actual BTC inflation rate. I see no reason why that wouldn't lead to price stability (not in USD terms perhaps but that's because USD is actually not stable at all).

It's hard to believe that the usercount will stop and stay stable. In my idea, it will more probably either increase or decrease.
But what remains the same is that the inflow of new coins will slow down and get more expensive.
All of it combined will keep bitcoin far away from stability.

Good news for day traders.

Yeah, exactly! Most of the people are here because they are interested in buying low and selling high, so they can make a easy buck. People aren't here because bitcoin is a practical currency for everyday use. It's all good fun, but bitcoin can't become a serious financial tool because of that.
But, I think that the idea of open sourced and transparent monetary system, that is supported by the internet, is very important and it is the future. Bitcoin is just financially too simplistic to do the job. Something more complex has to be made to create a practical currency, that follows the same open source rules of transparency.

[JorgeStolfi]

Of course it is OK to buy coins on other exchanges from the exchange's customers and withdrawing them.

What is not OK is buying a big lump of those coins in private from the exchange without the clients' knowledge.  

Is  fractional reserve banking actually illegal, especially with Bitcoins?
Banks are quite happy to use it and screw us .

Technically that would not be fractional reserve banking, or even banking at all.  While the price remained constant, the exchange would still have on its hands enough capital to honor all the clients' account balances -- except that it would temporarily be in the form of stocks or other investments, rather than bitcoins. 

There is no law that requires an exchange to store clients' dollars as dollars and bitcoins as bitcoins, unless that is stated in the user agreement.   Converting coins to dollars would have been a terrible risk, but they may have thought that it was OK.
 

[dreamspark]

I also don't buy the liquidated them to play with the cash story. No one who believes in bitcoin (which he clearly did / does) would do that,  they all feel that the price is way under valued and its a life changing tech. Hence why he acquired so many coins and then wanted his own exchange. Why would he then bet against the price going up?

Also back at $100 there wasn't anywhere near the liquidity to sell all of those coins.

That is just a theory, of course (I still think that it is more likely than the stupid malleability hack.  Both theories depend on sheer stupidity, but mine also has a greed motive.

Frrom the charts, I see that there were long periods when the price was stable.  Perhaps MtGOX expected the price to remain stable for another couple of months, or that it would rise slowly so that they would have time to reverse the deal.

In my theory, the sale would probably have happened off-market, in large lots.  Suppose that a big investor contacted MtGOX and offered to buy 1,000,000 BTC from their cold storage at 15$ each, when the market price was 10$.  Would they let that opportunity pass?

Only time will tell, I too dont see how malleability could be blamed for completely drainage of cold storage. In fact by its very essence cold storage could not 'leak out' to the hot wallet. The only way this could happen is infact if they didnt have cold storage at all and it was kept in majoirty in a hot wallet. Having no coins in this other than the ones I bet on bitcoin builder I just cant wait to find out the truth.

[billyjoeallen]

I also don't buy the liquidated them to play with the cash story. No one who believes in bitcoin (which he clearly did / does) would do that,  they all feel that the price is way under valued and its a life changing tech. Hence why he acquired so many coins and then wanted his own exchange. Why would he then bet against the price going up?

Also back at $100 there wasn't anywhere near the liquidity to sell all of those coins.

That is just a theory, of course (I still think that it is more likely than the stupid malleability hack.  Both theories depend on sheer stupidity, but mine also has a greed motive.

Frrom the charts, I see that there were long periods when the price was stable.  Perhaps MtGOX expected the price to remain stable for another couple of months, or that it would rise slowly so that they would have time to reverse the deal.

In my theory, the sale would probably have happened off-market, in large lots.  Suppose that a big investor contacted MtGOX and offered to buy 1,000,000 BTC from their cold storage at 15$ each, when the market price was 10$.  Would they let that opportunity pass?

There seems to be a lot of psychological projection in your attribution of motives, Jorge. I'm sure there is in my case also, but it reveals something about you.

[cbutters]

I still can't wrap my head around them not checking their BTC balance for 4 years.... I check mine daily even when I haven't moved any funds in/out. There has to be much more to this story. Or a really severe coding error that was telling them the BTC was there when it wasn't.

[Walsoraj]

Let's not rule out the possibility that Mark is simply lying, again.

[ag@th0s]

Can anyone imagine a scenario in which Gox *could* be revived without it temporarily crashing the price?  Assuming that the losses are not on the scale in the strategy document (big assumption, but I'm not convinced it's real) I can think of a few ways out, but most of them involve FIAT payouts.  If the BTC at Gox were paid out at the closing price ($135) - I can see an incentive for someone to come to the rescue. 

Alternatively is there some way that the existing Bitcoin economy could be used to stagger the re-entry of these coins (assuming they exist) back into the eco-system, so for example if Bitpay was involved in the buy out - could an agreement be reached that they would liquidate Goxbux on receipt of Real BTC - put the Real BTC in escrow and offer staggered release windows where Gox users are offered withdrawal opportunities at some kind of weighted price?  Basically I can see the possiblity of a hookup between existing entities, which could provide benefits to their businesses even if Gox users weren't entirely happy about it.  Can't help wondering what Coinlab's take on thing is - they sure ain't going to get $75 Million out of Gox any other way?

[JorgeStolfi]

There seems to be a lot of psychological projection in your attribution of motives, Jorge. I'm sure there is in my case also, but it reveals something about you.

One reason to believe in the future of bitcoin is that their salesmen are very good at winning the hearts of potential customers and skeptics. 

If you think that only a sick mind could imagine such a scenario, read this, for example:

http://www.assetrecovery.org/kc/node/b7b13256-28f7-11de-900c-81c63910293a.0;jsessionid=9697605F2890DC6814DA990ADC28D28C

[Davyd05]

Can anyone imagine a scenario in which Gox *could* be revived without it temporarily crashing the price?  Assuming that the losses are not on the scale in the strategy document (big assumption, but I'm not convinced it's real) I can think of a few ways out, but most of them involve FIAT payouts.  If the BTC at Gox were paid out at the closing price ($135) - I can see an incentive for someone to come to the rescue.  

Alternatively is there some way that the existing Bitcoin economy could be used to stagger the re-entry of these coins (assuming they exist) back into the eco-system, so for example if Bitpay was involved in the buy out - could an agreement be reached that they would liquidate Goxbux on receipt of Real BTC - put the Real BTC in escrow and offer staggered release windows where Gox users are offered withdrawal opportunities at some kind of weighted price?  Basically I can see the possiblity of a hookup between existing entities, which could provide benefits to their businesses even if Gox users weren't entirely happy about it.  Can't help wondering what Coinlab's take on thing is - they sure ain't going to get $75 Million out of Gox any other way?

gox damage is done, they crashed the price in to the ground, then they got outted by what was claimed to be an internal doc (made by an external body) that Mark in a irc chat log with imgur cat proof claimed to be "more or less" accurate.

We've priced in their incompetence. Them being revived would only ease the pain of those locked out from their coins and fiat.

[Davyd05]

There seems to be a lot of psychological projection in your attribution of motives, Jorge. I'm sure there is in my case also, but it reveals something about you.

One reason to believe in the future of bitcoin is that their salesmen are very good at winning the hearts of potential customers and skeptics.  

If you think that only a sick mind could imagine such a scenario, read this, for example:

http://www.assetrecovery.org/kc/node/b7b13256-28f7-11de-900c-81c63910293a.0;jsessionid=9697605F2890DC6814DA990ADC28D28C

I won my last facebook naysayer discussion with these three

 Not looking good in South America
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323951904578292383059267360
or Iran
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444592404578029810117268752

Or you could trust these guys http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanmaglich/2014/02/12/a-ponzi-pandemic-500-ponzi-schemes-totaling-50-billion-in-madoff-era/

[bronco]

Gox Gox
can somebody explain me why in hell so many ppl kept their coins there after march 2013? I dont know anything about manipulation but wasnt stupid enough to keep coins at gox after march 2013.

[Davyd05]

Gox Gox
can somebody explain me why in hell so many ppl kept their coins there after march 2013? I dont know anything about manipulation but wasnt stupid enough to keep coins at gox after march 2013.

lazy, ignorant of warnings, wanted to trade whenever with no wait times.