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

[jl2012]

Anyone know about lakebtc.com?

They have an impressive volume for a new exchange

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

They look very suspicious. In the Chinese forum they always claim they are "coming from Wall Street", and have been "dealing with derivatives 1000 times more complicated than BTC margin trading (offered by OkCoin and Huobi)"

.....

我们LakeBTC华尔街出身，比融资融币复杂1000倍的结构化衍生产品都做过无数，为

......

Maybe they are from wall street?
I wondered cause they operate since march and have a daily Dollar-volume of 4k. No word about them on bitcointalk and reddit, so they need to have some other fiat-sources (supposed they don't fake volume). This sharp rise and the operating outside this community can be a sign they have a direct link to big money

This is very typical Chinese-style bluffing. The now collapsed btc-gbl did in the same way

[roslinpl]

Whoa 8 blocks in 25 minutes.

Is that 200 BTC? 25 per block these days?

Correct.

Nice hashin...

[aminorex]

Our learning-impaired whale friend continues to dump.  Why he doesn't just sweep the bid stack down to zero, I do not know, because he obviously doesn't care how much money he leaves on the table. 

I will call him Dipstick.

[spooderman]

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/03/24/monday-second-markets-barry-silbert-meet-250-billion-usd-worth-institutional-investors/

This could be big! 

Just the hype I was looking for to create another selling opportunity.

You seem to be becoming quite cocky with your TA skills. Hope one day honey badger doesn't bite your you know what off.

Bulls are equally or even more obnoxious during a rally with quotes like "haha look at all the idiot bears" and "nothing like the smell of burnt bear and the sound of bear tears in the morning", etc.

yes but bears exist everywhere else, gloating in the MSM everytime bitcoin has a bad day. We are the ones on the fringe who are trying to change the status quo. This is our domain. The bitcoin forum. People here who like to see bitcoin fail (in so much as the price falling) are truly bringing any criticism/gloating upon themselves.

[roslinpl]

I am still observing the wall from morning time (7hours ago) and I see this is not heading up for the week... Maybe a good time to buy again but when will be good time to sell?

[JorgeStolfi]

http://www.coindesk.com/krakens-audit-proves-holds-100-bitcoins-reserve/
No fractional reserve goxbux and goxcoins with kraken and bitstamp and that's provable.

Kraken’s Audit Proves it Holds 100% of All Bitcoins in Reserve
Bitcoin exchange Kraken has passed a cryptographically verifiable proof of reserves audit with flying colours.

The audit, which was carried out by Stefan Thomas on 11th and 22nd of March, proved that more than 100% of Kraken’s bitcoins are held in reserve.

The process was designed to allow the auditor to verify that the total amount of bitcoins held by Kraken matches the amount required to cover an anonymized set of customer balances.

An audit that aims to prove that an exchange is honest cannot assume that it is honest.

There are two easy ways a dishonest exchange could fool such an audit (and they are even mentioned in Greg Maxwell's write-up).

First, the exchange could exclude some customers from the ledger given to the auditor, or list them with reduced balances.  The Merkle tree allows an ordinary customer to verify that his own account was included in the audit; but accounts that belong to the exchange owners or conniving customers (which are suspected to have existed at MtGOX) can be omitted without risk of being caught by this test.

Second, the exchange may have sold the coins to a long-term investor, who, being an accomplice to to a theft, would want to help the exchange pass the audit, and therefore provide whatever proof of bitcoin ownership that the auditor requests -- such as moving the coins in the way specified by the auditor, or some other crytography-based technique.  It seems very difficult, if not impossible, for A to prove to B that A knows the private keys, without revealing the private keys to B, in a way that cannot be simulated by the real owner C and passed off by A as having been done by himself.

I already commented on Coinbases's "audit" by Antonopoulos, which Greg compares to Ver's "audit" of MtGOX, and was flawed on both counts: according to his report, it did not verify that the total balances provided by Bitstamp were accurate (not even by the Merkle tree test above), and relied on the "move your coins" test to verify their holdings.  Bitstamp't "audit" cannot have been better than that.

Greg's paper discusses ways to fix some of those auditing flaws, but the major exchanges do not apply them yet.

In any case, an audit does not guard against the risk of a "100% honest" exchange suddenly folding, with loss of all client bitcoins.  There is currently no way to prove that an alleged hack or key theft was not done by the owners themselves, and (as the MtGOX case shows) there seem to be no effective way for the clients to recover their "stolen" bitcoins, or even to identify them in the blockchain.

Yes, these audit flaws and risks also exist for ordinary public corporations and banks; Enron, Worldcom, Madoff, Lehmann Bros and other famous failures are proof of that.  But traditional audits are much more thorough, and rely on lots of information that is known to many staff members and/or can be independently verified, such as bank statements, payrolls, tax reports and other official records, transactions with suppliers and retailers, and so on.  Moreover, it is much harder for the owners to steal half of the company's assets without being caught and having their loot seized.

And I know of no case where a hacker invaded a bank, stole all of its clients's money, and got away with it.

[smiley123]

Our learning-impaired whale friend continues to dump.  Why he doesn't just sweep the bid stack down to zero, I do not know, because he obviously doesn't care how much money he leaves on the table. 

I will call him Dipstick.

Could it just be big miners that need to pay their electric bill?  I'm still new to the game, but couldn't someone just buy large tranches of bitcoins directly from a huge petahash miner with no slippage at a price below the exchange rate, then carefully dump those coins on the exchanges?  You could also figure out what the slippage would have been for the miner and give the miner a better deal than he would get if he sold the coins himself.  Then withdraw the cash and wash, rinse, repeat, until mining difficulty and expenses catches up.

[jl2012]

http://www.coindesk.com/krakens-audit-proves-holds-100-bitcoins-reserve/
No fractional reserve goxbux and goxcoins with kraken and bitstamp and that's provable.

Kraken’s Audit Proves it Holds 100% of All Bitcoins in Reserve
Bitcoin exchange Kraken has passed a cryptographically verifiable proof of reserves audit with flying colours.

The audit, which was carried out by Stefan Thomas on 11th and 22nd of March, proved that more than 100% of Kraken’s bitcoins are held in reserve.

The process was designed to allow the auditor to verify that the total amount of bitcoins held by Kraken matches the amount required to cover an anonymized set of customer balances.

An audit that aims to prove that an exchange is honest cannot assume that it is honest.

There are two easy ways a dishonest exchange could fool such an audit (and they are even mentioned in Greg Maxwell's write-up).

First, the exchange could exclude some customers from the ledger given to the auditor, or list them with reduced balances.  The Merkle tree allows an ordinary customer to verify that his own account was included in the audit; but accounts that belong to the exchange owners or conniving customers (which are suspected to have existed at MtGOX) can be omitted without risk of being caught by this test.

Second, the exchange may have sold the coins to a long-term investor, who, being an accomplice to to a theft, would want to help the exchange pass the audit, and therefore provide whatever proof of bitcoin ownership that the auditor requests -- such as moving the coins in the way specified by the auditor, or some other crytography-based technique.  It seems very difficult, if not impossible, for A to prove to B that A knows the private keys, without revealing the private keys to B, in a way that cannot be simulated by the real owner C and passed off by A as having been done by himself.

I already commented on Coinbases's "audit" by Antonopoulos, which Greg compares to Ver's "audit" of MtGOX, and was flawed on both counts: according to his report, it did not verify that the total balances provided by Bitstamp were accurate (not even by the Merkle tree test above), and relied on the "move your coins" test to verify their holdings.  Bitstamp't "audit" cannot have been better than that.

Greg's paper discusses ways to fix some of those auditing flaws, but the major exchanges do not apply them yet.

In any case, an audit does not guard against the risk of a "100% honest" exchange suddenly folding, with loss of all client bitcoins.  There is currently no way to prove that an alleged hack or key theft was not done by the owners themselves, and (as the MtGOX case shows) there seem to be no effective way for the clients to recover their "stolen" bitcoins, or even to identify them in the blockchain.

Yes, these audit flaws and risks also exist for ordinary public corporations and banks; Enron, Worldcom, Madoff, Lehmann Bros and other famous failures are proof of that.  But traditional audits are much more thorough, and rely on lots of information that is known to many staff members and/or can be independently verified, such as bank statements, payrolls, tax reports and other official records, transactions with suppliers and retailers, and so on.  Moreover, it is much harder for the owners to steal half of the company's assets without being caught and having their loot seized.

And I know of no case where a hacker invaded a bank, stole all of its clients's money, and got away with it.

So? The lesson is never put money on an exchange more and longer than really needed

[Richy_T]

Ill buy when I see an order for 250 Bil.... right then, sheep be sheep.

FTFY

[roslinpl]

I just hope till summer time price will get high

I need a vacations ..

[Biontic]

I also saw a thread here on btt where bitmain was selling his 12k coins earned from s1.

Bitmain looking to unload over 17K BTC now - https://blockchain.info/address/1QB8Ds5KbGYBLQa5RyDQ2sVUeSKWf7qgkZ

[boumalo]

does this look like a perfect double, nay tripple-bottom to anyone else?

It needs more time if you ask me.

and more volume.

this is just some guy dumping his coins down to 550.

maybe big asic farms? sam from knc, or valery and ghash?

I also saw a thread here on btt where bitmain was selling his 12k coins earned from s1.

so it doesnt matter really.

It could be an early adopter, a company, a miner or a whale that bought up in 2013 but hopefully it is not someone with inside infos that the price will go down more bc of bad news

I want to accumulate some coins before the bull market resumes, the price has been going down for 2 months now

[JorgeStolfi]

Any link to Greg Maxwell's writeup?

Linked from that coindesk article:
https://iwilcox.me.uk/2014/proving-bitcoin-reserves

[fotosonics]

I want to accumulate some coins before the bull market resumes, the price has been going down for 2 months now

QUICK, PANIC BUY EVERYONE

[JorgeStolfi]

The lesson is never put money on an exchange more and longer than really needed

It is good advice for long term investors and people who buy/sell bitcoins for commerce purposes.

As others have observed, however, speculative traders need instant access to their coins with no prior warning; and they seem to be responsible for almost all the trade volume on any exchange, and most of its total account balance.  The exchange, on the other hand, needs to ensure that its clients will honor their sell offers immediately. 

[soullyG]

Any link to Greg Maxwell's writeup?

Linked from that coindesk article:
https://iwilcox.me.uk/2014/proving-bitcoin-reserves

Just posting this for clarity - that particular paper is actually by someone called Zak Wilcox, not Greg Maxwell

[boumalo]

The lesson is never put money on an exchange more and longer than really needed

It is good advice for long term investors and people who buy/sell bitcoins for commerce purposes.

As others have observed, however, speculative traders need instant access to their coins with no prior warning; and they seem to be responsible for almost all the trade volume on any exchange, and most of its total account balance.  The exchange, on the other hand, needs to ensure that its clients will honor their sell offers immediately. 

A prudent bitcoin trader will divide his business on a few exchanges and cash out some of his winnings not to risk everything but it is convenient to have all its cash on one exchange instead of paying fees all over the place and not having enough cash to buy when needed

[JorgeStolfi]

Any link to Greg Maxwell's writeup?

Linked from that coindesk article:
https://iwilcox.me.uk/2014/proving-bitcoin-reserves

Just posting this for clarity - that particular paper is actually by someone called Zak Wilcox, not Greg Maxwell

Oops, sorry, I did not notice that (it is linked in the Coindesk article as if it were by Greg).

[ChrisML]

$570

NOMNOMNOM/.

[fotosonics]

...
Oops, sorry, I did not notice that (it is linked in the Coindesk article as if it were by Greg).

Informative though, cheers (not finished reading it yet).

Stamp's getting interesting, wonder if more illogical dumps will follow.
EDIT: Looks like bitfinex led with stamp a few min behind.

Of course. This Is BITCOIN!! <kicks logic down the pit of no return>