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

[p0peji]

Anyone else feel like there will be another leg down coming up by the end of the weekend?

[JorgeStolfi]

I am guessing that chinese exchangers hold between 1/10 and 1/5 of the coins that are on bitstamp and btc-e.
There is no way they could have acquired the amount they claim out of the blue.
Time will tell , but I doubt the numbers are that wrong.

You may not know it, but bitcoins can be easily moved between markets, even across currency exchange barriers.    

Arbitragers move coins to China whenever the price there is higher than in the West.  The price shoot by a factor of 10 in October/November when the Chinese market exploded, all because of demand in China  They must have slurped most of the coins available in the Western markets at the time.  

So I would guess the opposite: last January, the coins available in the Western exchanges (not counting the large hoards of long-term investors, nor the fictitious GOXCoins) were only 1/5 to 1/10 of those that were available in the Chinese exchanges.  (That is just a guess, based on nothing more than this simplistic price argument.) But that number must have been decreasing together with the price.

EDIT: fixed(?) wrong attribution of quote.

[JorgeStolfi]

I am theorizing they have a lot of miners and or people who buy off of miners to flip on the markets

That too, there may be many miners who sell their coins at the Chinese exchanges.

[mah87]

Anyone else feel like there will be another leg down coming up by the end of the weekend?

under 300 within 2weeks

[magicmexican]

Looks like btc-e preparing for a dump in advance

[Richy_T]

PS. By the way, it is not just the Chinese exchanges that truncate the reported order books.  One could clearly see the truncation in some of the @Chartbuddy plots of MtGOX, when that exchange was alive.

The API specified by bitcoincharts is described here.  Presumably the other chart sites depend on this same API. 

I cannot see how the exchange could report their total bid/as sum through that API except by reporting the entire detailed order book.  In fact I see no reliable way to tell whether the book was truncated or not.  If the book is truncated, the bid/ask sums computed from it are wrong and mostly meaningless.

Gox actually had a couple of ways of querying the order book. I believe there was a more complete (can't remember if it was completely complete) orderbook available but it could only be queried every five minutes on the public API.

Bitstamp doesn't do this. I have to truncate myself to make the chart more like the Gox one was (I chose 10% of the current price (ish))

[ShroomsKit]

Looks like btc-e preparing for a dump in advance

Why? Or how?

[Richy_T]

Noobs be high as fuck reading the whole wikipedia entry on dinosaurs wondering how it relates to trading patterns.

Just wait till one quotes it 

Heck, it's Wikipedia. Someone go and add it

[JorgeStolfi]

Indeed, some exchanges truncate their order book (BTC-E for example).
But the bid/ask sums may not be that meaningless, their scope is just limited to the provided range of orders.
Eventually, accuracy of this metric depends on the distribution of orders in the book.

Perhaps one needs some indicator of order depth that is less sensitive to truncation? E.g., weighted total sum of order size (BTC), where the weight decays exponentially with the difference between order price and current price?

With such a formula, one could compute relatively tight upper and lower bounds for the indicator, even from a truncated order book.

[dreamspark]

Indeed, some exchanges truncate their order book (BTC-E for example).
But the bid/ask sums may not be that meaningless, their scope is just limited to the provided range of orders.
Eventually, accuracy of this metric depends on the distribution of orders in the book.

Perhaps one needs some indicator of order depth that is less sensitive to truncation? E.g., weighted total sum of order size (BTC), where the weight decays exponentially with the difference between order price and current price?

With such a formula, one could compute relatively tight upper and lower bounds for the indicator, even from a truncated order book.

Its a good idea and one that I've thought of before, its not something I have the time or maybe even the skills for but Im sure there are people who could do this, in fact Im sure some probably already have.

[magicmexican]

hm bulltrap on huobi?

[kurious]

So, since you have popped in, how long til we get a head of steam up again and this all calms down (to enable a base for a decent rise)?

I note and agree with your points about exchange confidence keeping money off the exchanges in any depth, but greed will surely conquer wariness at some point.

I would welcome your thoughts on timescale back to a decent bull market - a month, three...  longer?

In my baseline scenario, we close April at above 500, and 1000 will be breached in July.

Then there is the slower scenario but I am quite hopeful that 2014 will be a year of a new ATH nevertheless.

As everyone (including me) expect a 2-3 month plateau, perhaps that is not what will happen 

Yes, I think the fast bounce back was extremely positive over Thursday night - for me it showed there is buying to defend the price a fair bit over 300.  This makes the room on the downside look far smaller and is therefore reassuring.  I know you were buying, as was I (but not on the same scale).

I don't know if it will turn before the end of the month, either - but I do agree it should before autumn.   I hope you are right.

[mah87]

hm bulltrap on huobi?

The whole month is just a fat bull trap

[fonzie]

hm bulltrap on huobi?

The whole month is just a fat bull trap

Please stop quoting the trolls, thanks!

[razibuzouzou]

Indeed, some exchanges truncate their order book (BTC-E for example).
But the bid/ask sums may not be that meaningless, their scope is just limited to the provided range of orders.
Eventually, accuracy of this metric depends on the distribution of orders in the book.

Perhaps one needs some indicator of order depth that is less sensitive to truncation? E.g., weighted total sum of order size (BTC), where the weight decays exponentially with the difference between order price and current price?

With such a formula, one could compute relatively tight upper and lower bounds for the indicator, even from a truncated order book.

Its a good idea and one that I've thought of before, its not something I have the time or maybe even the skills for but Im sure there are people who could do this, in fact Im sure some probably already have.

Interesting idea, I'll try to look around to see if something like that already exists ; could be a good addition for Coinorama

[magicmexican]

Looks like head&shoulders failing to materialize @huobi, buy buy buy

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[billyjoeallen]

If it's not obvious which direction to trade, don't trade. These consolidations are here to give you a break.

That's the problem. It's not obvious, but are you going to sleep in fiat or BTC? I think it's going down, but I don't want to miss the opportunity to lock in my BTC profits. I have enough cash to buy lower if and probably when that happens. AT LEAST one more test of support is very likely, IMHO. It may even go down to $266 support or lower. This is Bitcoin.

You're very good at what you do, Tera, but none of us is omniscient. I can't follow your advice on when to sell if I don't have any to trade.

[Adrian-x]

I am guessing that chinese exchangers hold between 1/10 and 1/5 of the coins that are on bitstamp and btc-e.
There is no way they could have acquired the amount they claim out of the blue.
Time will tell , but I doubt the numbers are that wrong.

You may not know it, but bitcoins can be easily moved between markets, even across currency exchange barriers.    

Arbitragers move coins to China whenever the price there is higher than in the West.  The price shoot by a factor of 10 in October/November when the Chinese market exploded, all because of demand in China  They must have slurped most of the coins available in the Western markets at the time.  

So I would guess the opposite: last January, the coins available in the Western exchanges (not counting the large hoards of long-term investors, nor the fictitious GOXCoins) were only 1/5 to 1/10 of those that were available in the Chinese exchanges.  (That is just a guess, based on nothing more than this simplistic price argument.) But that number must have been decreasing together with the price.

EDIT: fixed(?) wrong attribution of quote.

I live in Vancouver it is full of Chinese, there is lots of new Chinese wealth here, they keep our real estate market out of wack with the world.

I have been told by guys in the moving coins off market industry that before the last bubble that liquidity dried up and lots of new Chinese were buying for the first time and sending coins to china to for friends to sell.

I import a lot from China and experimented with paying suppliers by selling on exchange over there, my fiat to fiat conversion via Bitcoin gave me a 10-15% conversion advantage.

Unfortunately short lived fiat out became problematic, even getting my Bitcoin back was a change. As payment reconciliation with BTCchina was a mess.

[pjviitas]

I don't know if anyone has noticed but the long term charts do not look good...even in log scale.

All this volatility all the way down since Nov-Dec may be great for day traders that know how to spin this however most of us mortals don't have those kinds of skills.

I am going to sit tight on my fiat until the long term charts show a clear uptick.

Just my 2 cents.