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

[billyjoeallen]

As to "freedom to choose my research topics":

How can you justify to yourself to take money from the people at gunpoint to research bitcoin for hundreds of hours? How about researching wasteful spending by tenured professors?

Hint: I am a professor of computer science.   Guess where the idea of bitcoin came out of?  

And methinks that if I could prevent a few folks here losing their life savings to scammers, Brazilian or otherwise, that may already justify my salary.   Which may be more than I deserve, but is not exactly taken at gunpoint from them,  

With Brazil's cpi at over 6% and food prices over 20% annual inflation because your government can't rob enough people fast enough, they have to print money to cover your salary. Maybe you should study how you can prevent ALL of your country's population to lose 6% of their wealth each year instead of a few people getting scammed.

NOT easy for an academic to criticize the ways of his own govt.  And to be fair, the problem with fiat is with most of the govts around the world and is NOT particular to Brazil.  Actually, a lot of countries in south america have been really screwed over the past 30 years by the IMF and forced into various kinds of cutting of social programs and specialization to serve the needs of the USA... however, several of the countries have stood up to those specialization pressures... and said screw paying back the loans through the IMF (I think Argentina is one of them) and have created more diversified and self-sustaining economies, which the USA considers a form of hostility.  Whatever the situation, there are a lot more injustices occurring through various forms of fiat manipulation rather than through bitcoin.

Nobody forced them to take out the loans in the first place. They screwed themselves over. "Those asshole lenders, they actually expect me to pay them back."  Gimme a break. These third world countries were begging for loans and agreed to conditions. Then they balked at honoring the conditions after they already agreed to them. The they begged to renegotiate the terms, got the new terms and balked at them too!  

I agree that the IMF crowd are glorified loan sharks, but if you borrow from loan sharks you should be prepared to suffer the consequences.

EDIT: and if you think Argentina's economy is self-sustaining, then you are delusional. It's a basket case.

[billyjoeallen]

Expect an unexpected candle.

That was the most predictable candle I've ever seen. You saw it coming too. I know you did. Scammers got money and now the defense of $340 support is weakened.

At what price did you get out?

[chessnut]

we are talking about a $10 candle, but who saw the bull run coming yesterday? mwa. If you are expecting an unexpected candle, I think you might just get one 

[billyjoeallen]

we are talking about a $10 candle, but who saw the bull run coming yesterday? mwa. If you are expecting an unexpected candle, I think you might just get one 

TERA saw the whole thing as it was unfolding. There is more than a $10 red candle coming. That was a pump and dump and those guys won't keep a single coin. They are just selling slowly to keep from price from tanking before they get all the way out.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[solex]

That was a pump and dump and those guys won't keep a single coin. They are just selling slowly to keep from price from tanking before they get all the way out.

You can't know that. It is a pure guess. The market is (was?) on a 4.5 month downtrend and thousands of people were watching to see a break in that medium-term trend. The rally may have been sparked by an opportunistic whale on Huobi, but it was enthusiastically joined by loads of people who are expecting Bitcoin to resume is normal multi-year trend. Maybe they are right, maybe they will be disappointed with another low to be plunged. It is the market deciding, not some grand conspiracy.

[billyjoeallen]

That was a pump and dump and those guys won't keep a single coin. They are just selling slowly to keep from price from tanking before they get all the way out.

You can't know that. It is a pure guess. The market is (was?) on a 4.5 month downtrend and thousands of people were watching to see a break in that medium-term trend. The rally may have been sparked by an opportunistic whale on Huobi, but it was enthusiastically joined by loads of people who are expecting Bitcoin to resume is normal multi-year trend. Maybe they are right, maybe they will be disappointed with another low to be plunged. It is the market deciding, not some grand conspiracy.

It's not a pure guess. It's an educated guess. When this happened in March, it took three weeks for the price to fall back because people like you and me thought exactly what you are saying now. I learned. Apparently you didn't. Look at the chart pattern and compare it to the pump to $710. Looks eerily similar, doesn't it?

[TERA]

I'm actually not 100% sure that bears are out of the woods yet.

[billyjoeallen]

I'm actually not 100% sure that bears are out of the woods yet.

Neither am I. There is still a lot of pressure on the margin shorts from $400. I'm just saying I'm not as good as you are at swimming with sharks, so I'm watching from the edge of the pool for now.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[windjc]

I'm actually not 100% sure that bears are out of the woods yet.

Neither am I. There is still a lot of pressure on the margin shorts from $400. I'm just saying I'm not as good as you are at swimming with sharks, so I'm watching from the edge of the pool for now.

Short positions have greatly reduced by about 30-35% in the last few days. I don't think as much of an issue.

However, I hope we can at least get one more push up to $510-$520.  I actually think we are at still at >50% of doing so. Otherwise, all my shorts will be standing there with no one to fill them. 

[JorgeStolfi]

With Brazil's cpi at over 6% and food prices over 20% annual inflation because your government can't rob enough people fast enough, they have to print money to cover your salary. Maybe you should study how you can prevent ALL of your country's population to lose 6% of their wealth each year instead of a few people getting scammed.

Like, invite Daniel Brewster to restart Neo &Bee in Brazil?  (Although he may one day turn up here uninvited, like Biggs.  )

So instead of a currency controlled by the Brazilian government with 6% inflation I should tell them to use one controlled by Huobi's traders, with 350% inflation?  Er, can we wait until the BTC value stabilizes, before discussing that?

NOT easy for an academic to criticize the ways of his own govt. 

Actually we have been fortunate enough for the past 25 years to enjoy a fairly good level of freedom of speech, arguably better than Americans.  There are cases of libel laws used to silence journalists and bloggers, but they usually come from corrupt lower officials, mostly opposition, and private citizens.  The federal government (from both parties) has been admirably tolerant of criticism (and the main media have used and abused that freedom against Lula and Dilma). 

In fact, most of my public testimonials and press interviews about electronic voting have been criticism of the equipment which is the joy and pride of  the Electoral Justice,  whose president is a Supreme Court judge; and the criticism basically implies that the Electoral Justice is incompentent if or worse.   And in my tweets I have often and harshly critized both the São Paulo education secretariat,  the Federal education minister (now Dilma's Chief of Staff) and several other ministries, the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in general, and several other miscellaneous authorities.   I have been mostly ignored, of course, but I never felt any pressure to shut up; and ditto for uncountable other critics.  (Hm, after writing this list I am now starting to worry...  )

[smiley123]

YOU CAN'T KILL THE BITCOIN

Don't have to.  It's obviously suicidally seeking an undead existence:  The concentration of mining means concentration of consensus, which means centralized currency, centralized planning and control, which means we're a dead man walking; unless there's dramatic action taken, it won't be long before bitcoin is a zombie, an unnatural hollow shell of its former self.  Bitcoin as a currency will continue to function, but the bitcoin idea, the ghost in its machine, will no longer be attached to the currency.  It's also not clear how even dramatic action is capable of preventing this outcome.  Moving mining to sidechains with smaller faster block rewards is the best I can come up with, and it's not at all clear that's enough, nor even that the will to do that exists.

There's no particular reason to think this condition will affect price in the near term, however.

What concentration? I really don't see it. The vast majority of hashrate is individual miners in pools and they can switch pools whenever they feel like it. The industrialization of mining will not mean any further centralization other than possible near misses at certain times throughout the early adoption cycle. Asicminer had 30% plus of the hashrate briefly but lost that status and even with Gen 3 will likely not come close to that again with a projected 1600Ph/s

Mining in a pool is like voting for a representative who then votes for you.  Do we need to know each pool's agenda?  How many political parties are there?  Do we need a pool for each party?  Things could get very interesting if follow this line of thought.

[JorgeStolfi]

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Tuesday April 15

A trivial prediction:

Prediction valid for: Tuesday 2014-04-15, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 2919 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price: 469 USD.





Plot legend

This was an obvious break in the trend. We have a single data point for the next trend; and a mediocre one, since there was substantial volume in the three hourly intervals 18.00--20:59 (2020, 511, and 1710 BTC;  S = 0.0058, W = 0.515).  The only reasonable guess is the trivial one, "tomorrow will be like today" - namely 2919 CNY at Huobi.

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.22 CNY/USD. It was 6.38 6.21, 6.24, 6.32 at the last three Slumber Times.
 
Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Sunday 2014-04-13, 23:11 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Monday 2014-04-14, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~20 hours later)

Foiled by the devious Chinese:

Huobi's predicted price: 2575 CNY.
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 2919 CNY
Error: 344 CNY (~55 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 414 USD.
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 457 USD
Error: 43 USD
 
NOTE:
  "Never underestimate the joy people derive from
  hearing something they already know." -- Enrico Fermi

[chessnut]

the upper wedge has gravity to it. it needs to be tested before the decision point.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[aminorex]

In case anyone feels cynically disillusioned about bitcoin price manipulation, they should check out ESM4 overnight.  S&P E-minis are the heart & soul of the U.S. stock market.  One has to wonder how markets can function at all when the price of everything from interest rates to FX to entire stock markets is being set to planner targets.  Maybe they can't...not for long anyhow.

Amusingly, shortly after I wrote that, I read this:  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-14/things-make-you-go-hmmm-rigged-markets-all-them

[EuroTrash]

I'm actually not 100% sure that bears are out of the woods yet.

Aaaand.... Everyone watching China again.

[gizmoh]

I'm actually not 100% sure that bears are out of the woods yet.

Aaaand.... Everyone watching China again.

Depressing, we are hostage of chinese traders, following them blindly.

[chessnut]

wedge breakout is still valid.