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

[BitChick]

Isn't it about time for a rally?  It has been a few months.  I would like to think I am a fairly patient person but I have things I want to spend some money on.  C'mon Bitcoin.  Be the "Little Engine that Could."  Let's get the choo choo started.  If you close your eyes and say, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can"  perhaps we can get this going! 

[N12]

It took 1.5 years from June 2011. Why do you think it couldn't take as long, or even longer than that now?

[oda.krell]

Sure, you can explain part of that by independent causes (Norway: natural resources, Switzerland: banking culture), but hardly all of it. The way it looks to me, at least in /some/ countries "statism" works just fine, from an economical perspective.

A mostly free market can support quite a lot of nonsense. Heck, even the minor capital reforms the Chinese have allowed have boosted their economy enormously.

With the productivity increase that technology has brought, we should be seeing astounding progress right now. As it is, even with what's going on, things are still pretty good. It's that hard to keep people down.

No, I won't let that slide. That's the worst kind of argument: "If A happens, it proves my point. And if not-A happens, that proves my point as well."

Unless you can come up with a "wealth/productivity baseline" that is guaranteed solely by technological progress, the only (sort of) objective comparison we have is between different forms of states, and how they compare economically. And a 'heavy state' economy that outperforms several 'low state' economies *is* something that a libertarian needs to account for in proper detail, otherwise he is just as ideologically motivated as the statists he despises.

[BitChick]

It took 1.5 years from June 2011. Why do you think it couldn't take longer than that now?

I wasn't involved with Bitcoin in June 2011!    Last year was perhaps too exciting.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[octaft]

Nope, I'm not a gun toting, survival of the fittest type,

True, and nothing you said would suggest you were. That is my mistake for addressing that point to the wrong person, as noted in my edit.

but I do have more faith in humanity and I believe that when it comes down to it, people end up helping each other... I don't buy into that apocalyptic Hollywood type crap fed to everyone in which people turn in to monsters and everything goes Mad Max... no way, we don't live in the dark ages anymore, just go an look for positive videos on the internet and you'll find plenty, it's just not 'news'. Apparently the New York blackout turned into a more of a block party than looters and rioters and strangers invited strangers into their homes for the night... people aren't all mad you know.

My view is that if you create positions of power, you will have certain types of people (psychopaths, sociopaths etc.) who will gravitate towards those positions because of the advantages it affords them. Most normal people just want to get on with life and enjoy it, but the power structures allow them to be taken advantage of... it's just the way things work. It's not that all humans are evil, it's just the power structures we live in that allow a few evil to rule over the many good... and not by chance in my opinion.

If you get rid of centralized power, you get rid of centralized corruption... automatically.

Positions of power will still exist, they'll just be different. If it turns out your way, those will likely be higher ups in corporations. If it turns out the way I think, it will be gang leaders and large families/groups that are in control. Sociopaths will simply tend to gravitate toward the top of whatever heap you throw them in.

The argument that no roads, schools, hospitals etc. would be built without government is an old one, but is not very valid because most of the best roads are always private toll roads, government roads suck simply because they are made by companies on govenrment payroll which everyone know is a free ride, that also just the way things are. The best hospitals and schools are also private. I understand your argument that the poor can't afford these things, but that's exactly why there are charity organizations, those won't just go away without the gov. If everyone had more money from not paying taxes for things they don't use, then there would be more money to go round and it wold lift everyone up and more people might help poor people... just look at Kiva today...

The government is inefficient (which I agree with), but charities somehow magically aren't? Not to mention now nobody is obligated to pay into them, and no matter how idealistically you want to look at humanity, the fact is there are a lot of greedy and selfish people in the world, and none of them will be giving to charity unless they deem it good for their image.

Perhaps what this boils down to is a fundamental difference of opinion regarding how humanity functions and how things would go down in this new world. You have faith in humanity, I do not. You think it is possible to live in harmony without a government, I say many people need structure so as to not start killing each other, and some are so heartless and selfish that they wouldn't piss on someone on fire unless it benefited them in some way.

The devil you know, or the devil you don't.

[Richy_T]

"Statism doesn't work for very large countries".

No. Simply the bigger the state, the worse the detriment. Possibly even non-linear.

[N12]

"Statism doesn't work for very large countries".

No. Simply the bigger the state, the worse the detriment. Possibly even non-linear.

US seems to be faring pretty damn well with its 300 million. Germany too.

[Richy_T]

otherwise he is just as ideologically motivated as the statists he despises.

Yeah. Primarily I'm motivated by the ideology that people should be free. Quite frankly, the economic stuff is secondary.

But with that said, you have to be careful with your definitions. You named a couple of well performing "high state" economies, but not the low-state ones you are comparing them with. Also, one needs to take historical data into account. One must also take care to differentiate economic from social freedom, either of which will have different effects.

[Richy_T]

"Statism doesn't work for very large countries".

No. Simply the bigger the state, the worse the detriment. Possibly even non-linear.

US seems to be faring pretty damn well with its 300 million. Germany too.

Inertia will take you quite a long way.

[ChrisML]

Bitstamp down.
Sell!

No jk about the sell part. HODL ffs.. Jesus, this has been boring for the last 4 days.

[Richy_T]

The government is inefficient (which I agree with),
but charities somehow magically aren't?
Not to mention now nobody is obligated to pay into them,

You answered it yourself. Poorly performing charities will lose donators and disappear. Poorly performing governments will continue to take your taxes whether you like it or not (frequently using the poor performance as the reason for doing so).

[ErisDiscordia]

Yeah, let's build them! Let's take your knowledge of building roads, my knowledge of building roads, and combined, I'm willing to bet that we'll have a total of zero knowledge of how to build roads. Since we can't do it, someone will have to. But that someone is going to want to be paid for their investment/hard work, so you'll probably have to pay tolls every few miles. Oh, wait, some people can't afford those tolls. Those people better stay home or get ready to walk it, because they're fucked.

So who builds the roads now? The government? No. It just pays for them. It hires private companies to build them (in most cases. Sometimes they will have their own national road building company) So how is that working out for us? Is it the most efficient way available? Is it the most fair? I would doubt it. Just because the government has been the sole provider of something during your whole life doesn't mean it is impossible to provide in different (and better) ways. What about progress?

...I am convinced that decentralized/voluntary/anarchistic forms of societal organization are far superior to centralized forms in terms of their efficiency...

This is not, nor has it been in recent history, a reality.  The fact that such arrangements have never persisted is, in itself, proof of their implausibility.  A world where there is no crime, for instance, is superior to a world where crime exists.  But such an ideal is as implausible as the utopian volunteerism you describe.  

I am willing to concede that during the majority of history this might have indeed been an impossibility due to barriers to efficient communication. Now that the internet and associated technologies are ubiquitous I feel we need to have this discussion again. The need for empire to hold society together might be far greater in a world where information travels no faster than a horses gallop, than in one where information can propagate at the speed of light globally.

Just because something hasn't been done so far with the technological and cultural level of development we had so far, does not mean that i can not be done. I hope this is clear.

I would be glad to see people, who are *sure* that a society based on voluntary cooperation and decentralization can't work just stay with the old models they feel comfortable with and let the Neophiles try the new, weird, far-out stuff. If you're sure it can't work, just let them learn their lesson the hard way, will you? And if, by any chance, they might succeed in creating communities which are more free on an individual level, more efficient in their use of resources or otherwise desirable, that's a great thing, isn't it? Wouldn't they be happy about that? They would now have more choices than to "move to a different piece of land managed by a slightly different type of government".

I repeat: let's build that shit. If you pay attention, you can see the first green shoots appearing. Think of Seans Outpost or the Dogecoiners who sent Jamaicas bobsled team to the olympics. Crypto gives us the tools, now we need to use them. Help us, or move out of the way, please!

[octaft]

The government is inefficient (which I agree with),
but charities somehow magically aren't?
Not to mention now nobody is obligated to pay into them,

You answered it yourself. Poorly performing charities will lose donators and disappear. Poorly performing governments will continue to take your taxes whether you like it or not (frequently using the poor performance as the reason for doing so).

You are assuming most people pay as much attention as you do. Most people donate to the charity they see on TV the most. They don't give a shit about said charity's efficiency, they just want to say, "Oh, I got this pretty pink ribbon, see how great I am!"

[BitcoinWisdom]

Is this normal to not show any lower bids?

Bitcoin Wisdom is just generally fucked and never reports the right volumes.

a) btcwisdom truncates the order book, for speed reasons as the owner says. seeing that his site is usually up during heavy trading days when the others go down, i'm inclined to follow his logic.

b) the way the order book information is displayed is unintuitive at first maybe, but before claiming it's all wrong, first understand how prices are grouped. explanation is in the btcwisdom thread in the service subforum.

c) never heard of volume being wrong. quick check matches volume shown on tradingview. care to find some evidence for your claim?

I'm the one claiming lot's of data that bitcoinwisdom is showing is fucked up:

MACD numbers are wrong, they do not match tradingview (and my own calculations at all).

Volumes are correct if you refresh the page, but if you keep it open for a couple of hours (without internet connection loss obv). It'll start showing some real messed up volumes for the past couple of candles. If you refresh the page after that the volumes will be correct again.

What seems to be correct however is:
Price, Orderbook

In the end I got tired of websites showing me wrong data, I wrote my own (private).

If you are looking for a better site tho, I can suggest tradingview (as far as I checked their numbers are correct).

Didn't know about the volume error when not refreshing page. Sounds plausible, but seems benign to me if it's solved with a reload.

Re: MACD. Did you account for different MACD parameters? Both tradingview and btcwisdom allow you to set your own parameters, which in case of tradingview includes price source itself.

According to to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACD or http://stockcharts.com/help/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:moving_average_conve

MACD formula is

MACD = [stockPrices,12]EMA - [stockPrices,26]EMA
signal = [MACD,9]EMA
histogram = MACD – signal

Standard MACD uses EMA to calculate signal. Trading View uses Simple MA to calculate by default, If uncheck tradingview's MACD option "Simple MA(Signal Line)", the chart will be same.

The formula you describe is correct however your results aren't. The argument you make about tradingview I knew about so I made sure I compared apples with apples (I'm no fool):

TradingView MACD Histogram Previous 30 Minutes:

-1.17

BitcoinWisdom MACD Histogram Previous 30 Minutes:


-2.2

Bitcoincharts.com MACD Histogram Previous 30 Minutes:


You can't hover over the Histogram to be sure, but it looks close to 1.2 (the same as TradingView has)

I see. I fogot when I write the formula make histogram twice to make the indicator more readable so the formula I used is histogram = 2*(MACD – signal) for histogram, and  when compared with trading view before, I checked all value except histogram. I have not decided to make the MACD follow standard or keep it more readable. but the trends is correct.

[ErisDiscordia]

You are assuming most people pay as much attention as you do. Most people donate to the charity they see on TV the most. They don't give a shit about said charity's efficiency, they just want to say, "Oh, I got this pretty pink ribbon, see how great I am!"

The government and charities we have now, are a reflection of our current culture. Culture is the collective operating system. Changing governments doesn't change much. We need to go one level deeper and change the underlying cultural operating system from which they spring. And how do we do that? Gandhi knew the answer.

[coins101]

Yeah, let's build them! Let's take your knowledge of building roads, my knowledge of building roads, and combined, I'm willing to bet that we'll have a total of zero knowledge of how to build roads. Since we can't do it, someone will have to. But that someone is going to want to be paid for their investment/hard work, so you'll probably have to pay tolls every few miles. Oh, wait, some people can't afford those tolls. Those people better stay home or get ready to walk it, because they're fucked.

So who builds the roads now? The government? No. It just pays for them. It hires private companies to build them (in most cases. Sometimes they will have their own national road building company) So how is that working out for us? Is it the most efficient way available? Is it the most fair? I would doubt it. Just because the government has been the sole provider of something during your whole life doesn't mean it is impossible to provide in different (and better) ways. What about progress?

...I am convinced that decentralized/voluntary/anarchistic forms of societal organization are far superior to centralized forms in terms of their efficiency...

This is not, nor has it been in recent history, a reality.  The fact that such arrangements have never persisted is, in itself, proof of their implausibility.  A world where there is no crime, for instance, is superior to a world where crime exists.  But such an ideal is as implausible as the utopian volunteerism you describe.  

I am willing to concede that during the majority of history this might have indeed been an impossibility due to barriers to efficient communication. Now that the internet and associated technologies are ubiquitous I feel we need to have this discussion again. The need for empire to hold society together might be far greater in a world where information travels no faster than a horses gallop, than in one where information can propagate at the speed of light globally.

Just because something hasn't been done so far with the technological and cultural level of development we had so far, does not mean that i can not be done. I hope this is clear.

I would be glad to see people, who are *sure* that a society based on voluntary cooperation and decentralization can't work just stay with the old models they feel comfortable with and let the Neophiles try the new, weird, far-out stuff. If you're sure it can't work, just let them learn their lesson the hard way, will you? And if, by any chance, they might succeed in creating communities which are more free on an individual level, more efficient in their use of resources or otherwise desirable, that's a great thing, isn't it? Wouldn't they be happy about that? They would now have more choices than to "move to a different piece of land managed by a slightly different type of government".

I repeat: let's build that shit. If you pay attention, you can see the first green shoots appearing. Think of Seans Outpost or the Dogecoiners who sent Jamaicas bobsled team to the olympics. Crypto gives us the tools, now we need to use them. Help us, or move out of the way, please!

The bitcoin corporate miners have centralized a decentralized experiment. That's how life rolls. Move on.

[octaft]

So who builds the roads now? The government? No. It just pays for them. It hires private companies to build them (in most cases. Sometimes they will have their own national road building company) So how is that working out for us? Is it the most efficient way available? Is it the most fair? I would doubt it. Just because the government has been the sole provider of something during your whole life doesn't mean it is impossible to provide in different (and better) ways. What about progress?

And who will build them in your ideal world? The same private companies. Then who will pay for them? Who gets to drive on them? If it's tolls, the poor with commutes to their jobs will be adversely affected by it, especially when taken in the context of minimum wage no longer being a thing. If it's everyone pays a flat fee, again the burden is on the poor because paying $1,000 out of $10,000 hurts a hell of a lot more than paying $1,000 out of $100,000 (similar arguments work for thing like police and fire departments, etc.) If it's everyone pays a percentage of what they make, that's straight up taxes and the government is whoever is collecting those taxes.

No matter how you slice it, your world will in all likelihood suck for the have-nots.

[octaft]

You are assuming most people pay as much attention as you do. Most people donate to the charity they see on TV the most. They don't give a shit about said charity's efficiency, they just want to say, "Oh, I got this pretty pink ribbon, see how great I am!"

The government and charities we have now, are a reflection of our current culture. Culture is the collective operating system. Changing governments doesn't change much. We need to go one level deeper and change the underlying cultural operating system from which they spring. And how do we do that? Gandhi knew the answer.

What would change about our culture in your ideal world that would make charities better or more efficient?

EDIT: And what about our culture would change to make those who wouldn't otherwise give to charities suddenly decide to? Or what would change that would convince those donators to give to the now thousands of additional charities we have for every single basic human need that was in some part provided for previously?

[San1ty]

Is this normal to not show any lower bids?

Bitcoin Wisdom is just generally fucked and never reports the right volumes.

a) btcwisdom truncates the order book, for speed reasons as the owner says. seeing that his site is usually up during heavy trading days when the others go down, i'm inclined to follow his logic.

b) the way the order book information is displayed is unintuitive at first maybe, but before claiming it's all wrong, first understand how prices are grouped. explanation is in the btcwisdom thread in the service subforum.

c) never heard of volume being wrong. quick check matches volume shown on tradingview. care to find some evidence for your claim?

I'm the one claiming lot's of data that bitcoinwisdom is showing is fucked up:

MACD numbers are wrong, they do not match tradingview (and my own calculations at all).

Volumes are correct if you refresh the page, but if you keep it open for a couple of hours (without internet connection loss obv). It'll start showing some real messed up volumes for the past couple of candles. If you refresh the page after that the volumes will be correct again.

What seems to be correct however is:
Price, Orderbook

In the end I got tired of websites showing me wrong data, I wrote my own (private).

If you are looking for a better site tho, I can suggest tradingview (as far as I checked their numbers are correct).

Didn't know about the volume error when not refreshing page. Sounds plausible, but seems benign to me if it's solved with a reload.

Re: MACD. Did you account for different MACD parameters? Both tradingview and btcwisdom allow you to set your own parameters, which in case of tradingview includes price source itself.

According to to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACD or http://stockcharts.com/help/doku.php?id=chart_school:technical_indicators:moving_average_conve

MACD formula is

MACD = [stockPrices,12]EMA - [stockPrices,26]EMA
signal = [MACD,9]EMA
histogram = MACD – signal

Standard MACD uses EMA to calculate signal. Trading View uses Simple MA to calculate by default, If uncheck tradingview's MACD option "Simple MA(Signal Line)", the chart will be same.

The formula you describe is correct however your results aren't. The argument you make about tradingview I knew about so I made sure I compared apples with apples (I'm no fool):

TradingView MACD Histogram Previous 30 Minutes:

-1.17

BitcoinWisdom MACD Histogram Previous 30 Minutes:


-2.2

Bitcoincharts.com MACD Histogram Previous 30 Minutes:


You can't hover over the Histogram to be sure, but it looks close to 1.2 (the same as TradingView has)

I see. I fogot when I write the formula make histogram twice to make the indicator more readable so the formula I used is histogram = 2*(MACD – signal) for histogram, and  when compared with trading view before, I checked all value except histogram. I have not decided to make the MACD follow standard or keep it more readable. but the trends is correct.

Correct Values > Readability!