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

[Cassius]

I was just hoping you could offer more comprehensive analysis. I won't ask again.

The whole story is right here.

Can you explain your thinking?
I think you can read the number of addresses on the blockchain different ways, but I'd like to know I understand what you mean before I question it!

[rpietila]

Just take this as an opportunity to turn off the computer, get out the house and do something productive. Set an alarm if you need but theres nothing to see here  

Perhaps there is in 30 days!(TM)

Wanted to take this opportunity to publish the exchange rate prediction contest, which is now getting its final rule clarifications, will run for 8 rounds during the remainder of 2014, and has the top prize of $2,000 (or more, depending on BTC)!

[JayJuanGee]

Look, man. My post wasn't sarcastic. I was ACTUALLY asking you to make a comprehensive case. The fact that you respond by saying that I am "offended" and "dreaming" and "wrong" and offered no further bull evidence makes you look the like the one who is defensive and scared. Yeah, I made a bad trade at 475 that I admitted to. Does that make the bull case stronger? Of course not. That was on me, not the market. I didn't follow my own rules in that one particular case.

But you are the one that is coming across as desperate. I don't give a flying f*** if we go up or down from here personally. I was simply asking you to make a comprehensive case. But you seem only interested in congratulating yourself on catching this wave up. Whatever.

I think you need to work on your sarcasam skills.

desperate? me? I bought at 484, remember? Im pretty comfy. Im on a roll.

so you dont like your bad trades being poked at? hmm interesting. I haven't made any promises, so I really wouldn't feel the same. if you want to come poke fun at me in a couple of days ill be here, but at this rate, Im not going to forget this either.

Ive made a comprehensive case but you wouldn't remember the details. you seem to have made up your mind.

lol. whatever. I have about 100x times more at stake on exchanges than you do. Of course I care. I can't afford to have some unreasonable market bias.

I dont want to poke fun at you. That's the point. I was just hoping you could offer more comprehensive analysis. I won't ask again.

No need to argue, I think we can all agree that we want btc to continuously rise to significantly higher levels than we are at right now. I for one don't believe that the current market price is representative of the mass adoption that we have seen over the past few months. Yes we have had a fair share of bad news out of China, and a few other countries, but the amount of money being poured into the ecosystem developing new apps and btc businesses is not yet reflected in our prices. Once more of these startups are up and running, it is simple logic that we will see a ton more daily transactions, and therefore see higher prices.

Perhaps the market is not going to retest 340. But it certainly doesn't look like its going up.  Here we are, the day all the fresh fiat was suppose to carry us higher and we are drip drip dripping downward.

We may be in a slow grind to nowhere for a while.

I agree with your points but don't think new Fiat would have hit yesterday with the bank holidays, I did transfers to Kraken on Saturday and they haven't cleared yet and they are normally really quick.

What kind of bothers me is that some of these market dynamics are being discussed as if they are NON-manipulative and some objective measures of lack of BTC sentiments.. which really does NOT seem to be the case....

I think that there is a considerable amount of lack of confidence for investors to send fiat to exchanges.. and accordingly, much easier to send BTC to exchanges... accordingly, we get a greater amount of downward price manipulations.

Then we have some untrustworthy elements with some of the exchanges and their lack of transparency (regarding both volume and maybe even regarding whether they are engaging in any kinds of fractional reserve like practices).  I think that it remains quite a way into the future before there may be ways to truly be able to establish prices in decentralized manners that would reflect how people really felt about investing in BTC.  So in that regard, BTC prices seem to be a little depressed, and there may be continued depression of prices for months - however, at some point, the upward momentum will have to break upwards and less ability to keep the price down.

Whether I am being pie in the sky with my thinking, that is how I am currently considering the downtrend in the price matter.

[Post-Cosmic]

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??

 Seriously, merchants don't need to keep 'reserves' of 'BTC change' in their 'digital money registers' like stores do w/ fiat. They aren't interested in speculating in BTC future price rises either. They're in fact wary of it - they just want the extra potential sales & rep from bitcoiners. That's why they use services like BitPay. Payment re-processors such as BPay also are not interested in hoarding or buying crypto. They just facilitate things by accepting a cryptopayment from end users, dumping it at market (or pretty fast in any case), giving the merchant their proceeds in fiat & keeping their cut in fiat.

 Those customers, the end-users of all these crypto-friendly merchants & services. THEY are the ones implyingly expected to cause higher prices, by buying moar BTC now that they can shop at a greater variety of places w/ it. But who are the vast majority of cryptocustomers..?? ..BITCOINERS. Enthusiasts. Folks who -already- had their stash & don't mind spending out a little of it here & there. Whatever extra BTC they may buy to shop with will be compensated by what they spend - given that the merchants & payment processors will be dumping the BTC thusly received as payment.

 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

[chessnut]

bears be weak... just need a light breeze to take us up to 520

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[rpietila]

Bitcoin can actually gather momentum quite quickly if it is easy and reliable to buy it: During my research into userbases in various countries, the best confirmed results are 0.5% of adult population in 18 months.

Worldwide, that would be 5,000,000,000 * 0.005 = 25 million users, which is 1+ million users per month.

The proliferation of Bitcoin trading and ATM's is going on everywhere. Meanwhile, this thread is the greatest trollhouse I have ever seen. I would suggest everyone to spend as much time reading something else than you read Adam Smith's Wall Observer, to have even a balanced picture of what is going on.

[rpietila]

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??
...
 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

Welcome to the forum! Hope you've had the good first 6 days. Btw. the question is off-topic for this thread but let's not be picky.

Your question is discussed for example here.

[Cassius]

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??
...
 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

Welcome to the forum! Hope you've had the good first 6 days. Btw. the question is off-topic for this thread but let's not be picky.

Your question is discussed for example here.

Ok, though it's worth noting that a 'transaction' for bitcoin generally means something different than for PayPal/Mastercard etc - especially at this point.
For current figures, most bitcoin transactions aren't purchases, they're people moving coins to and from exchanges, between their own addresses, etc. Whereas I imagine almost every PayPal transaction is someone buying a Thing of some sort.
No doubt that will change, but the current figures aren't representative of use or adoption.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[roslinpl]

Explanation

Uhm ... why so low ?  ...
I wa trying to sell some btc but I need to wait a little bit longer.

[blatchcorn]

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??

 Seriously, merchants don't need to keep 'reserves' of 'BTC change' in their 'digital money registers' like stores do w/ fiat. They aren't interested in speculating in BTC future price rises either. They're in fact wary of it - they just want the extra potential sales & rep from bitcoiners. That's why they use services like BitPay. Payment re-processors such as BPay also are not interested in hoarding or buying crypto. They just facilitate things by accepting a cryptopayment from end users, dumping it at market (or pretty fast in any case), giving the merchant their proceeds in fiat & keeping their cut in fiat.

 Those customers, the end-users of all these crypto-friendly merchants & services. THEY are the ones implyingly expected to cause higher prices, by buying moar BTC now that they can shop at a greater variety of places w/ it. But who are the vast majority of cryptocustomers..?? ..BITCOINERS. Enthusiasts. Folks who -already- had their stash & don't mind spending out a little of it here & there. Whatever extra BTC they may buy to shop with will be compensated by what they spend - given that the merchants & payment processors will be dumping the BTC thusly received as payment.

 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

More places to spend Bitcoin = More useful = Higher demand = Higher price

[aminorex]

Ok, though it's worth noting that a 'transaction' for bitcoin generally means something different than for PayPal/Mastercard etc - especially at this point.
For current figures, most bitcoin transactions aren't purchases, they're people moving coins to and from exchanges, between their own addresses, etc. Whereas I imagine almost every PayPal transaction is someone buying a Thing of some sort.
No doubt that will change, but the current figures aren't representative of use or adoption.

Fisher's quantity law does not care what use is made of a transaction.  It only cares about the valuation of the transaction.  An internal transaction will never contribute to the network value of a currency, but every external transaction will.  The quantity valuation of a currency is independent of utility.  That's why it is so useful.

Every time bitcoin is used, that is use.  Everyone who begins to use bitcoin is an adopter.  Any other definitions are obfuscatory.

Attempting to introduce utility functions into the pricing model is a daunting task.  As long as we can accomplish useful analysis using mechanisms which are independent of utility, which is a subjective and endlessly debatable quality, we should prefer the route of clarity.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[TERA]

I was drawing a short term chart with a triangle with logarithmic lines. Then I extended it out and discovered I had inadvertently drawn a long term chart as well.



Bonus feature: An observation of 1W EMAs. New candle drawn tomorrow.

[rpietila]

Breakout is imminent. Good.

(If it goes up, it's about time. If it goes down, it still does not stop bitcoin adoption & infrastructure growth, just makes more coins go from unbelievers to believers and newcomers.)

[boumalo]

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??
...
 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

Welcome to the forum! Hope you've had the good first 6 days. Btw. the question is off-topic for this thread but let's not be picky.

Your question is discussed for example here.

Ok, though it's worth noting that a 'transaction' for bitcoin generally means something different than for PayPal/Mastercard etc - especially at this point.
For current figures, most bitcoin transactions aren't purchases, they're people moving coins to and from exchanges, between their own addresses, etc. Whereas I imagine almost every PayPal transaction is someone buying a Thing of some sort.
No doubt that will change, but the current figures aren't representative of use or adoption.

They still are to some extent; if the transactions represent real people who need to do the transactions; a growing number of transactions means growing adoption

[dreamspark]

 Is there any evidence to the belief that expansions in the bitcoin ecosystem, services & economy actually increase the price..??

 Seriously, merchants don't need to keep 'reserves' of 'BTC change' in their 'digital money registers' like stores do w/ fiat. They aren't interested in speculating in BTC future price rises either. They're in fact wary of it - they just want the extra potential sales & rep from bitcoiners. That's why they use services like BitPay. Payment re-processors such as BPay also are not interested in hoarding or buying crypto. They just facilitate things by accepting a cryptopayment from end users, dumping it at market (or pretty fast in any case), giving the merchant their proceeds in fiat & keeping their cut in fiat.

 Those customers, the end-users of all these crypto-friendly merchants & services. THEY are the ones implyingly expected to cause higher prices, by buying moar BTC now that they can shop at a greater variety of places w/ it. But who are the vast majority of cryptocustomers..?? ..BITCOINERS. Enthusiasts. Folks who -already- had their stash & don't mind spending out a little of it here & there. Whatever extra BTC they may buy to shop with will be compensated by what they spend - given that the merchants & payment processors will be dumping the BTC thusly received as payment.

 So why in the WORLD is there this MYTH continuing about merchant adoption, growing ecosystem = higher price? Wtf? What am I missing..?

More places to spend Bitcoin = More useful = Higher demand = Higher price

Only if they hold BTC, if they convert straight to fiat as most do then it actaully creates downward pressure on the market.

[minerpumpkin]

Breakout is imminent. Good.

(If it goes up, it's about time. If it goes down, it still does not stop bitcoin adoption & infrastructure growth, just makes more coins go from unbelievers to believers and newcomers.)

Good! Care to drop some change in order to kickstart the train? 

[kehtolo]

Only if they hold BTC, if they convert straight to fiat as most do then it actaully creates downward pressure on the market.

This is a good point, that often gets overlooked (I know some on here have previously, raised this)

So, with increased BTC retail sales comes increased numbers of BTC being immediately sold for fiat at market, creating downward pressure?

(Inversely, would we be going up without wider merchant adoption??)

At some point, will come the tipping point, where this downwards pressure cannot contain the upwards pressure, Then we will see the next rally.

As an aside, and as a bit of speculation, i can see sideways movement until around the end of May.

This is based on Tera's charts above, and my own (amateur) reading of the tea leaves charts.