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

[chessnut]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

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[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[billyjoeallen]

It's based on Austrian Business Cycle Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_business_cycle_theory  Bitcoins need to flow from the people who use them less productively to the people who use them more productively. You can't have sustainable growth when incompetents control all the capital.

Okay, now that's one of the most absurd misapplications of business cycle theory that I've ever seen.

Is it? Who owns the most Bitcoins right now? Capitalists with experience in wealth creation outside of Bitcoin? No. It's largely people like me who bought them by maxing out credit cards. So how do capitalists acquire capital? Do they enrich reckless speculators or wait until the speculators are forced to partially or completely liquidate? 

I'm not saying I know that a sufficient number of coins hasn't already changed hands. That's possible, but what's certain is that selling pressure continues until all the people with the need to sell have sold. The people with the need to sell are people with negative cash flow outside of Bitcoin appreciation.

Is your capital structured is such a way that time is your friend or your enemy? If you are positioned well, you shouldn't care if the market goes up down or sideways.

[y3804]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

Well it's unlikely that they will sell 380,000BTC for the full $173M they are worth. Someone will get cheap coins

[cbeast]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

The congressmen probably used 5 year weighted price averaging to give themselves a sweetheart deal.

[billyjoeallen]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

"However, perhaps most interesting about the story is that the government has already sold more than $3m in the proceeds from Slomps’ crimes, Assistant US Attorney Randall Samborn told CoinDesk, though he declined to offer any further specifics about the sale."

I read the article to.  Its too short and mainly discusses the silk road scandal.  Even the comments show more interest in the selling.

I think they sold a portion of the coins (3 million worth).  I don't know if it was all, a fraction etc (most likely retail or close to retail since not much else is disclosed and (I base somewhat on the quote I added)

That is what is so frustrating. A major factor in recent price drops could be those coins being bought below market and dumped on the market, but without knowing how much has been sold, we don't know when the downward price pressure will end if it hasn't ended already.

EDIT: there is a less probable but remote possibility that the dumping hasn't even started yet.

[derpinheimer]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

The congressmen probably used 5 year weighted price averaging to give themselves a sweetheart deal.

RTFA

the government has already sold more than $3m in the proceeds from Slomps’ crimes, Assistant US Attorney Randall Samborn told CoinDesk

[JayJuanGee]

I may sound like a broken record as I keep saying I'll deposit money and don't mostly due to having satisfied my short range target btc holding with a 540 Avg buy in price. Goxxin and China bans didn't surprise me as I was fielding these questions from friends in November. I know not everyone has great foresight but...to get caught up in the political and monetary motivations of a Communist country that isn't really communist, kind've shocks me. I mean they are trying to ban the internet before it becomes the internet, as we know bitcoin is currently used mainly as a payment system / speculative play, but can become something so much more then this and it is silly to act like it can be stopped cause people fear financial risks that their populations speculators are taking in the early stages, especially when we have bigger criminals robbing us on the daily.

Also in some sense Bitcoin / a Blockchain embodies the idea of communism ( in the sense that we all help to sustain or maintain the blockchain p2p ). Makes me laugh that China probably is more afraid of bitcoin damaging the USD $'s global value in the coming years, and they got all that American Debt they need to offload first.

Personally, I sense that the Chinese BTC investors are just going with the flow to take  advantage of the BTC hype, and the average Chinese BTC investor is probably NOT considerably affected by whether there is a "ban" or NOT. 

The Chinese BTC investors are just riding the BTC wave, and in the future will still be into bitcoin, so long as bitcoin continues to be a likely better store of value than the RMB, the dollar or even possibly gold... Just a means to speculate and store value and to be able to retrieve that value overseas, if necessary.  So diversification of assets will likely continue to justify holding some wealth in BTC..... b/c BTC continues to have upside potential with increased world-wide BTC and other crypto currencies adoption.

[Markus11]

www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/
However, perhaps most interesting about the story is that the government has already sold more than $3m

[njcarlos]

www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/
However, perhaps most interesting about the story is that the government has already sold more than $3m

Read a few posts up.

[billyjoeallen]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

Well it's unlikely that they will sell 380,000BTC for the full $173M they are worth. Someone will get cheap coins

Bitcoins are fungible, so even if they don't get dumped on the market, other coins that would have otherwise gone to the purchasers of the seized coins will get dumped on the market. Mathematically it is irrelevant if the result is selling pressure or lack of buying pressure. There is a downward price effect on the market either way.

[Bitcoin_is_here_to_stay]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

Well it's unlikely that they will sell 380,000BTC for the full $173M they are worth. Someone will get cheap coins

Bitcoins are fungible, so even if they don't get dumped on the market, other coins that would have otherwise gone to the purchasers of the seized coins will get dumped on the market. Mathematically it is irrelevant if the result is selling pressure or lack of buying pressure. There is a downward price effect on the market either way.

+1 Same goes for 200,000 Gox BTCs to be liquidated.

And US goverment has now more than  500,000 BTC ?!? 30+k from Silk Road, 130+ personal Ullbricht stash plus 385k from this new drug dealer?

[JayJuanGee]

OK cheaper coins coming in, but not that I have $22,000 per day to invest, but that is not a lot of cash globally needed to come in to the average exchange to keep demand higher than production.
I'm banking supply dries up when AM gen3 chips are implemented and push up that difficulty.

In my thinking pushing up mining difficulty does NOT necessarily affect the BTC supply, it only concentrates the BTC supply into a smaller number of hands.    A smaller number  of miners holding BTC may mean that they are more likely to liquidate their coins, as part of their business model,.... rather than HODL.... or in the end, whether they HODL or dump could be a wash.... in other words it is NOT clear that increasing difficulty increases directly affects whether BTC are dumped or HODL'd.

[JayJuanGee]

its already turned around its just not Obvious yet.

price is NOT high, and its not going lower.

Winklebros bought a long time ago, we were in the teens i think

That's what Rpietila said.   

[JorgeStolfi]

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Tuesday April 29

Prediction valid for: Tuesday 2014-04-29, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 2684 CNY
Bitstamp's predicted price: 443 USD





[ Plot legend ]

The data point from yesterday (Sunday Apr/27 19:00-19:50 UTC) was one of the worst on record: Huobi had little volume during the day, but traded heavily during the night (S = 0.0343, W practically zero).  Today's data point however was fairly good (S = 0.0037, W = 0.758).  Two choices for the trend seemed reasonable, the trivial "tomorrow like today" predictor (which would give 2715 CNY), or a straight line trend fitted by weighted least squares to the last four points (which would ignore yesterday's given its low weight).  I chose the latter, namely A + B*(d-d0), where d-d0 is the number of days since Apr/25, A = 2836.60 and B = -38.22.

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.06 CNY/USD. It was 6.05, 6.09, and 6.05 for the last three Slumber Times, skipping yesterday's.
 
Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Saturday 2014-04-26, 22:21 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Sunday 2014-04-27, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~21 hours later)

Foiled again by the treacherous Chinese. But I got the right digits, only in the wrong order:

Huobi's predicted price: 2876 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 2678 CNY
Error: 198 CNY (~33 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 471 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 440 USD
Error: 31 USD
 
NOTE: "A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." -- W. C. Fields

[thezerg]

OK cheaper coins coming in, but not that I have $22,000 per day to invest, but that is not a lot of cash globally needed to come in to the average exchange to keep demand higher than production.
I'm banking supply dries up when AM gen3 chips are implemented and push up that difficulty.

In my thinking pushing up mining difficulty does NOT necessarily affect the BTC supply, it only concentrates the BTC supply into a smaller number of hands.    A smaller number  of miners holding BTC may mean that they are more likely to liquidate their coins, as part of their business model,.... rather than HODL.... or in the end, whether they HODL or dump could be a wash.... in other words it is NOT clear that increasing difficulty increases directly affects whether BTC are dumped or HODL'd.

Calm down.  They never said they had 385k -- that's his total gross.  That's ~$200 million in todays valuation.  If they had found that many, this arrest would be front page news.  He probably spent most of the coins or has them hidden away.  Since no specific numbers of impounded assets were mentioned, its possible that all they have (and sold) is his portion of the SR coins.  They can't sell those coins until they get a conviction, right?  Its not their coins until the conviction.  This guy pleading guilty freed up his SR coins...

[y3804]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

Well it's unlikely that they will sell 380,000BTC for the full $173M they are worth. Someone will get cheap coins

Bitcoins are fungible, so even if they don't get dumped on the market, other coins that would have otherwise gone to the purchasers of the seized coins will get dumped on the market. Mathematically it is irrelevant if the result is selling pressure or lack of buying pressure. There is a downward price effect on the market either way.

+1 Same goes for 200,000 Gox BTCs to be liquidated.

And US goverment has now more than  500,000 BTC ?!? 30+k from Silk Road, 130+ personal Ullbricht stash plus 385k from this new drug dealer?

This. The amount of seized BTC that has  to be auctioned and dumped on the market is so high... At least 400K (GOX+Silk+others), if not more, probably sold well under $250 for each coin, ready to be dumped on the market at any point. Truth is, even a relatively small 20K dump could totally crash BTC's value to $50/coin.

I could literally wake up one day and see BTC's value drop 50%. This will kill BTC's  long term value, seriously scary stuff

[JorgeStolfi]

the government has already sold more than $3m in the proceeds from Slomps’ crimes, Assistant US Attorney Randall Samborn told CoinDesk

It is certain that those "proceeds" that were sold were bitcoins?  Could they be euros, merchandise, etc.?

[durrrr]

Any thoughts on this one? News released today. This could crash the price hard. 385000BTC for $3M USD? what?

http://www.coindesk.com/us-government-sells-silk-road-users-seized-bitcoins-for-3-million/

if they sold 380,000 btc for 3m, that would be $12 each. - must be a portion, or Im missing out on some seriously 'cheap coins'

Well it's unlikely that they will sell 380,000BTC for the full $173M they are worth. Someone will get cheap coins

Bitcoins are fungible, so even if they don't get dumped on the market, other coins that would have otherwise gone to the purchasers of the seized coins will get dumped on the market. Mathematically it is irrelevant if the result is selling pressure or lack of buying pressure. There is a downward price effect on the market either way.

+1 Same goes for 200,000 Gox BTCs to be liquidated.

And US goverment has now more than  500,000 BTC ?!? 30+k from Silk Road, 130+ personal Ullbricht stash plus 385k from this new drug dealer?

This. The amount of seized BTC that has  to be auctioned and dumped on the market is so high... At least 400K (GOX+Silk+others), if not more, probably sold well under $250 for each coin, ready to be dumped on the market at any point. Truth is, even a relatively small 20K dump could totally crash BTC's value to $50/coin.

I could literally wake up one day and see BTC's value drop 50%. This will kill BTC's  long term value, seriously scary stuff

there will always be some sort of drop possibilty in the price. in reality even the usd could lose 50% of its value by tommarow morning and all hell would break lose. and if btc price did drop 50% i really think bitcoin would stay low and even crash. too many investers and not enough users.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation