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

[wachtwoord]

Where's our buddy mah?

Bankrupt.

[jl2012]

Indeed, and that is the problem:  many external factors are sudden and unpredictable, and the magnitude of their effect is largely unpredictable as weel.  But, in retrospect ,the causal connections are very clear.  

One cannot predict, from price analysis or any other way, whether and when there will be further moves against bitcoin by the Chinese government.  One can say however that if that happens then the price will probably fall by tens or dollars or more, depending on the severity of the move.  And if the PBoC reverses its policy about banks x exchanges, then the price may shoot up by hundreds of dollars.  On the other hand one can predict that if another store chain accepts bitcoin through BitPay, then the price will hardly twitch.

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market, another rally to 10'000$ would require opening another market even bigger than the Chinese one.  Perhaps some big regulatory change would attract big investors in the US or Europe; but who can predict that?

It is not rational to expect that new markets will continue to open at regular intervals, each 10x bigger than the previous one, just because there were three such events before with roughly similar spacing.

Your whole argument fails here. BTCChina was established in 2011 after the $32 bubble. Bitcoin has been opening to Chinese since that was only $2

[Cassius]

Most of the large moves in the past year had very obvious and plausible explanations.  The closing of SilkRoad, the opening of the Chinese market, the Chinese decrees and workarounds, the MtGOX "bug" announement, the Caixin leak and the workarounds, etc.. 

Please tell me how it was obvious the price would almost half and then bounce straight back after silk road got shut down?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Indeed, and that is the problem:  many external factors are sudden and unpredictable, and the magnitude of their effect is largely unpredictable as weel.  But, in retrospect ,the causal connections are very clear. 

One cannot predict, from price analysis or any other way, whether and when there will be further moves against bitcoin by the Chinese government.  One can say however that if that happens then the price will probably fall by tens or dollars or more, depending on the severity of the move.  And if the PBoC reverses its policy about banks x exchanges, then the price may shoot up by hundreds of dollars.  On the other hand one can predict that if another store chain accepts bitcoin through BitPay, then the price will hardly twitch.

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market, another rally to 10'000$ would require opening another market even bigger than the Chinese one.  Perhaps some big regulatory change would attract big investors in the US or Europe; but who can predict that?

It is not rational to expect that new markets will continue to open at regular intervals, each 10x bigger than the previous one, just because there were three such events before with roughly similar spacing. 

Sure. That's a bit of a straw man, though.
Very few people know about bitcoin and few of those own any. Few of those own any real quantity.
The rest is just supply and demand.
For what it's worth, every article you publish brings bitcoin to greater public awareness.

[gentlemand]

Where's our buddy mah?

Bankrupt.

Not so fast. If you take mah87 and take out some letters and add some new ones you get - Jed Mccaleb.

[FNG]

Indeed, and that is the problem:  many external factors are sudden and unpredictable, and the magnitude of their effect is largely unpredictable as weel.  But, in retrospect ,the causal connections are very clear.  

One cannot predict, from price analysis or any other way, whether and when there will be further moves against bitcoin by the Chinese government.  One can say however that if that happens then the price will probably fall by tens or dollars or more, depending on the severity of the move.  And if the PBoC reverses its policy about banks x exchanges, then the price may shoot up by hundreds of dollars.  On the other hand one can predict that if another store chain accepts bitcoin through BitPay, then the price will hardly twitch.

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market, another rally to 10'000$ would require opening another market even bigger than the Chinese one.  Perhaps some big regulatory change would attract big investors in the US or Europe; but who can predict that?

It is not rational to expect that new markets will continue to open at regular intervals, each 10x bigger than the previous one, just because there were three such events before with roughly similar spacing.

Your whole argument fails here. BTCChina was established in 2011 after the $32 bubble. Bitcoin has been opening to Chinese since that was only $2

heh..he believes markets are entirely saturated already.  lol

Compare the marketcap to single companies, single individuals..it's laughable.

Maybe he needs to read what Marc Andreessen wrote about it today

[Cassius]

Indeed, and that is the problem:  many external factors are sudden and unpredictable, and the magnitude of their effect is largely unpredictable as weel.  But, in retrospect ,the causal connections are very clear.  

One cannot predict, from price analysis or any other way, whether and when there will be further moves against bitcoin by the Chinese government.  One can say however that if that happens then the price will probably fall by tens or dollars or more, depending on the severity of the move.  And if the PBoC reverses its policy about banks x exchanges, then the price may shoot up by hundreds of dollars.  On the other hand one can predict that if another store chain accepts bitcoin through BitPay, then the price will hardly twitch.

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market, another rally to 10'000$ would require opening another market even bigger than the Chinese one.  Perhaps some big regulatory change would attract big investors in the US or Europe; but who can predict that?

It is not rational to expect that new markets will continue to open at regular intervals, each 10x bigger than the previous one, just because there were three such events before with roughly similar spacing.

Your whole argument fails here. BTCChina was established in 2011 after the $32 bubble. Bitcoin has been opening to Chinese since that was only $2

heh..he believes markets are entirely saturated already.  lol

Compare the marketcap to single companies, single individuals..it's laughable.

Maybe he needs to read what Marc Andreessen wrote about it today

Link?

[JorgeStolfi]

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market

Well, I disagree with the premise.

Then how do you explain that the price crashed after the Chinese government decree of Dec/14, that it has reacted (amost?) exclusively to events and rumors that were relevant only to the Chinese market, and has not reacted to events that were relevant only to the Western market?

 

[bitcoinsrus]

Indeed, and that is the problem:  many external factors are sudden and unpredictable, and the magnitude of their effect is largely unpredictable as weel.  But, in retrospect ,the causal connections are very clear.  

One cannot predict, from price analysis or any other way, whether and when there will be further moves against bitcoin by the Chinese government.  One can say however that if that happens then the price will probably fall by tens or dollars or more, depending on the severity of the move.  And if the PBoC reverses its policy about banks x exchanges, then the price may shoot up by hundreds of dollars.  On the other hand one can predict that if another store chain accepts bitcoin through BitPay, then the price will hardly twitch.

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market, another rally to 10'000$ would require opening another market even bigger than the Chinese one.  Perhaps some big regulatory change would attract big investors in the US or Europe; but who can predict that?

It is not rational to expect that new markets will continue to open at regular intervals, each 10x bigger than the previous one, just because there were three such events before with roughly similar spacing.

Your whole argument fails here. BTCChina was established in 2011 after the $32 bubble. Bitcoin has been opening to Chinese since that was only $2

heh..he believes markets are entirely saturated already.  lol

Compare the marketcap to single companies, single individuals..it's laughable.

Maybe he needs to read what Marc Andreessen wrote about it today

Link?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/21/marc-andreessen-in-20-years-well-talk-about-bitcoin-like-we-talk-about-the-internet-today/
I think this is the link he is referring to (not sure though)

"The investor and Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen thinks we'll all look back in 20 years and conclude that Bitcoin was as influential a platform for innovation as the Internet itself was. He says that tech companies think their meetings with President Obama on privacy are a waste of time. And he calls net neutrality a "lose-lose." In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post this week, Andreessen painted a picture of a future that's distributed, messy and fraught with tension. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation."

[BBmodBB]

Uncanny resemblance to a dinosaur.

bitcoin dragon clawing north!!! muuhahahahha

[soullyG]

Maybe he needs to read what Marc Andreessen wrote about it today

Link?

I think it's this article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/21/marc-andreessen-in-20-years-well-talk-about-bitcoin-like-we-talk-about-the-internet-today/

[BBmodBB]

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market

Well, I disagree with the premise.

Then how do you explain that the price crashed after the Chinese government decree of Dec/14, that it has reacted (amost?) exclusively to events and rumors that were relevant only to the Chinese market, and has not reacted to events that were relevant only to the Western market?

 

chinese officials finally got their butterflylabs orders delivered so now they lift the ban lol ;-)

[BBmodBB]

Explanation

/\
BTC PUMPING HARD TO 1000!!!WEEEEEEEEEEE1337+

[aminorex]

I definitely do not share your faith in blind extrapolation.

This is not blind extrapolation, but frequentist statistics applied to a structural model.  There is a difference.   By the first method, if it was dry yesterday and raining today, tomorrow would be an apocalyptic flood.  By the second method, tomorrow might be dry again, but colder.  Many improvements on the model I quoted are feasible, and may narrow the range substantially.  Only time and labor will tell.  (Also, I might observe that the estimate was for a decline in euro purchasing power, which is counter-trend, and hence is very very obviously not a linear extrapolation.)

In general it is not wise to argue "I am ignorant, therefore everything is unknowable".  I understand that it can be a persuasive and comforting argument, to the naive.  But rest assured that someone who is not a cognitive nihilist will be your master in that case.

[JorgeStolfi]

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market,

Your whole argument fails here. BTCChina was established in 2011 after the $32 bubble. Bitcoin has been opening to Chinese since that was only $2

In early 2013 Bobby Lee joined tiny Shanghai-based BTC-China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC_China  With experience from other large companies, he apparently improved their marketing and operations.  That seems to have coincided with the start of the early 2013 rally.

Shanghai is a special economic zone of China; I don't know whether that was a limiting factor for further expansion of BTC-China in the rest of the coutry.  In any case, Huobi and OKCoin later opened in Beijing, offering zero-fee trading.  Again, the time of their opening (second half of 2013) seems to coincide with the start of the October-November rally, whose first signs are detectable in late September.  (Looking at the daily volumes, it seems that they stole most of BTC-China's customers.)  

A couple of months ago, China had about 95% of the worlds trade volume.  People have claimed that most of their volume was fake, but I have not seen any sign of that.  (On the other hand, a large fraction of the volume in Western exchanges must be merely arbitrage with China.)  And, even if half of the Chinese volume was fake, the other half would still  be 90% of the world's total.

As I just posted, until last month the Chinese traders were obviously setting the price, and the rest of the world was just following the,.  (That may still be the case now, not clear yet.)

[dreamspark]

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market

Well, I disagree with the premise.

So do most people with an iota of common sense. Jorges argument is  that it was the reason for the last rally due to the price dropping after the pboc news. He ignores the fact that surely it should have dropped to the same levels if that was the sole reason. He ignores the fact that Bitcoin was traded in China way before Nov 13. He ignores the amount of infrastructure, adoption and business being built because he cannot fathom that something can happen that he doesn't understand. He ignores that the Chinese doesn't or didn't own 90% despite touting it around as fact. He ignores the fact that the Chinese exchanges had 0% fees which explain the much higher volume, he ignores you could trade 100BTC volume in a day even with one coin. He also says that we need to keep getting bigger and bigger markets. Its just not true, the whole worlds the market and it just so happened that a small section of that market tried to put the brakes on.

[bigdave]

I'd love to see us drop one more time to 500 so I can get some last second buy-ins.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[jl2012]

Since the last rally was due to the opening of the Chinese market,

Your whole argument fails here. BTCChina was established in 2011 after the $32 bubble. Bitcoin has been opening to Chinese since that was only $2

In early 2013 Bobby Lee joined tiny Shanghai-based BTC-China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC_China  With experience from other large companies, he apparently improved their marketing and operations.  That seems to have coincided with the start of the early 2013 rally.

Shanghai is a special economic zone of China; I don't know whether that was a limiting factor for further expansion of BTC-China in the rest of the coutry.  In any case, Huobi and OKCoin later opened in Beijing, offering zero-fee trading.  Again, the time of their opening (second half of 2013) seems to coincide with the start of the October-November rally, whose first signs are detectable in late September.  (Looking at the daily volumes, it seems that they stole most of BTC-China's customers.)  

A couple of months ago, China had about 95% of the worlds trade volume.  People have claimed that most of their volume was fake, but I have not seen any sign of that.  (On the other hand, a large fraction of the volume in Western exchanges must be merely arbitrage with China.)  And, even if half of the Chinese volume was fake, the other half would still  be 90% of the world's total.

As I just posted, until last month the Chinese traders were obviously setting the price, and the rest of the world was just following the,.  (That may still be the case now, not clear yet.)

All events are confounded

The early 2013 rally followed block reward halve and the release the AVALON, the first ASIC

The late 2013 rally started 10 days after the death of SilkRoad

So I could say both rallies were triggered by improvement in fundamentals, not speculation

[dreamspark]

All events are confounded

The early 2013 rally followed block reward halve and the release the AVALON, the first ASIC

The late 2013 rally started 10 days after the death of SilkRoad

So I could say both rallies were triggered by improvement in fundamentals, not speculation

+1

Stop talking sense though, the fundamentals of Bitcoin and why people have, want and use it is clearly too much to grasp.

[ShroomsKit]

I'd love to see us drop one more time to 500 so I can get some last second buy-ins.

No. Stop hoping for cheap coins. You've had months and months. It's time to move on.