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

[dnaleor]

I succelfully got my BTC out of stamp. No problems at all...
Now I will need to send it back If I want do dump  

[Ivanhoe]

Expedia accepts bitcoin, yahoo finance adds bitcoin. Someone dumps 1k bitcoin and it's a bear festival in here. Keep your nerves together man

[JayJuanGee]

what is happening at bitstamp is very fishy.

Didn't you think the KYC was fishy enough? These are the signs of an exchange in trouble. It has happened before, and will likely happen again. You have all been through it before, but can you act on it? Time will tell. My coins have left stamp for now.

Posters here keep trying to make comparison of bitstamp to GOX... and there is NO there there.


There are legitimate business justifiable and practical reasons for KYC rules, and the application of these various KYC rules at Bitstamp is NOT unreasonable and it is NOT very widespread info that Stamp is actually preventing customers from withdrawing their funds.

[JayJuanGee]

why such stamp FUD?
Really, I don't see signs why there are problems at that exchange...

Then you need to open your eyes. Please try to make sense of how this is actually just normal. Remember how gox had the most irrational trading going on the last month before it closed? Well, it might not be the case, but do you want to keep your coins there?

GOX had problems for like 18 months before it closed... and 4-6 months before it closed it had more problems and then 1 month before it closed it had even more problems.  Stamp is NO where near the problems of GOX, yet....  and I have NOT really seen any evidence of any real or meaningful problems.. besides mere rumors.

[JimboToronto]

Expedia accepts bitcoin, yahoo finance adds bitcoin. Someone dumps 1k bitcoin and it's a bear festival in here. Keep your nerves together man

Well said Ivanhodl!

[JorgeStolfi]

In the real stock market, are the exchange operators alowed to trade in their own exchanges? E.g., to do arbitrage?

I would think that the exchange operator would have tremendous advantages over his clients if he could do that, since he can know the trades a few seconds before them.  Two colluding exchange owners could know each other's books a few seconds before anyone else, and thus use all arbitrage opportunities in full.  And surely there are many more ways which I cannot imagine.

I can see how Huobi and OKcoin could make big profits without charging any trade fees.  Indeed, by not charging fees they get very narrow bid/ask spreads, so that the opportunities for arbitrage between them are much more frequent.

The money that an exchange owner can make this way must come, of course, from his clients' pockets.

EDITS: grammar, sorry

[HerrAndreas]

I succelfully got my BTC out of stamp. No problems at all...
Now I will need to send it back If I want do dump  

I also tried that. "Waiting to be processed" since 1 1/2 hrs....

but I guess there is quite some queue for leaving bitcoins at the moment.

What I find really surprising is how unimpressed other exchanges are. Maybe its just the exit line which is delaying the arbitrageurs.

[Dotto]

[tupelo]

In the real stock market, are the exchange operators alowed to trade in their own exchanges? E.g., to do arbitrage?

I would think that the exchange operator would have tremendous advantages over his clients if he could do that, since he can know the trades a few seconds before them.  Two colluding exchange owners could know each other's books a few seconds before anyone else, and thus use all arbitrage opportunities in full.  And surely there are many more ways which I cannot imagine.

I can see how Huobi and OKcoin could make big profits without charging any trade fees.  Indeed, by not charging fees they get very narrow bid/ask spreads, so that the opportunities for arbitrage between them are much more frequent.

The money that an exchange owner can make this way must come, of course, from his clients' pockets.

EDITS: grammar, sorry

Your assumption is not too unlikely, but with bitcoin we have no option for high speed trades between exchanges, except if they were conducted over an interchanging platform off-blockchain.

Bitcoin arbitrage is meh, the transaction time is slightly too slow to allow consistently efficient arbitrage.

[Raystonn]

When we have a broker with instant access to multiple Bitcoin exchanges, then arbitrage will be efficient and all exchanges will follow each other closely.

[seleme]

We can't expect volume to be same when Bitcoin is 10$ and when it is 1000$ but for it to come to 1000$ there needs to be lot of money pumped in so that new money cancels part of price rise so yeah, volume usually still needs to be high to move the price - amount of base currency to trade is still about the same, it's only more USD that needs to be pumped into economy to move it further.

[MatTheCat]

Your assumption is not too unlikely, but with bitcoin we have no option for high speed trades between exchanges, except if they were conducted over an interchanging platform off-blockchain.

Bitcoin arbitrage is meh, the transaction time is slightly too slow to allow consistently efficient arbitrage.

Unless someone had accounts on both exchanges where they maintained a balance of fiat and Bitcoin depending on what Bitcoin was doing.

i.e. If someone has 100 BTC on Stamp and 100 BTC on Bitfinex, and a pile of USD on both, why not take advantage of times like these to take advantage of the cheap BTC on Stamp by switching to 150 BTC on Stamp, and 50 BTC on Bitfinex. Doing so would give the trader the same amount of BTC, but more Fiat. There must be people in Bitcoin who are set up in this way. Anyone with a considerable stake in Bitcoin must infact be set up this way.

[RoadStress]

what is happening at bitstamp is very fishy.

Didn't you think the KYC was fishy enough? These are the signs of an exchange in trouble. It has happened before, and will likely happen again. You have all been through it before, but can you act on it? Time will tell. My coins have left stamp for now.

Every bank in the world has KYC and they aren't in trouble. I would say that NOT having KYC would mean that they are in trouble because this way they can attract more customers than with KYC. Your logic is beyond me...

[seleme]

Your assumption is not too unlikely, but with bitcoin we have no option for high speed trades between exchanges, except if they were conducted over an interchanging platform off-blockchain.

Bitcoin arbitrage is meh, the transaction time is slightly too slow to allow consistently efficient arbitrage.

Unless someone had accounts on both exchanges where they maintained a balance of fiat and Bitcoin depending on what Bitcoin was doing.

i.e. If someone has 100 BTC on Stamp and 100 BTC on Bitfinex, and a pile of USD on both, why not take advantage of times like these to take advantage of the cheap BTC on Stamp by switching to 150 BTC on Stamp, and 50 BTC on Bitfinex. Doing so would give the trader the same amount of BTC, but more Fiat. There must be people in Bitcoin who are set up in this way. Anyone with a considerable stake in Bitcoin must infact be set up this way.

That's only valid in flat market which Bitcoin rarely is.

If you are in bull market than you don't give a shit about arbitrage and fiat, and if you're in bear market than you don't give a shit about arbitrage and bitcoins.

[JulieFig]

For those of you who feel a little uneasy because of the latest 'dip'...

I superimposed the current trend (over the last 50 days) with the run-ups to the April and November 2013 peaks.

We still seem to be right on track for a peak between $4000 and $5000...



Good news is we only need to wait a fortnight (maximum) to find out if history will repeat itself.

edit: This plot has the peak occurring in late July, which is based on the assumption that the peaks occur (approximately) every 234 days (an assumption based on historical data).

[aminorex]

No it is not. When you are trading it is the volume of the base currency that is relevant and not the volume of the quote currency.

When you are trading it is the float which floats, and not the reserve.

I'd love to see an activity distribution graph over time for the blockchain, but I've yet to see it.  Probably Risto has done one.  I have the virtues of a programmer, pace Wall, so I hate to reproduce work.

[aminorex]

This is clearly false.

Perhaps, but marketcap is irrelevant to clearing price.  Float is relevant.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[oda.krell]

Why is all this bitfinex swap stuff relevant?  I thought the whole theory behind the current rally was that it was neither bitstamp nor huobi that was leading the rally but that it was due to offline whales accumulate huge blocks and due to commercial usage, because there is clearly not enough volume on exchanges to be supporting the rally.

It probably isn't the major cause behind the rally. But it is a significant factor. $24 million in swaps is 37,000 bitcoins (or possibly more if the cost basis for the long positions is below the market price which it probably is).  And in the past, the number of USD swaps has grown faster than the Bitcoin price (eg. 2013) which means that it may continue to be a source of demand.

By contrast, the Bitcoin Investment Trust with their 105k bitcoins looks like they've really slowed down their purchases (of course that could change).

Offline whales might be accumulating large blocks, but we don't have data on that.  If we did - I'd be very happy to see it!

BTC used to do 100-200K per day of volume on mtgox. The tiny volume of 10-20K per day on bitstamp during rally is pathetic and nothing in comparison to previous volume levels. Even huobi (whatever portion is real), stamp, and btce combined are nothing compared to previous combined volume levels. A $10M increase in swaps is nothing compared to an $8Bn market cap. Obvious some other force is moving the market. If I was using Stamp's volume in my technical analysis, I would not even be here - I would have abandoned bitcoin.

You are aware that the price of BTC is massively higher now than it was last year. USD volume is the only relevant metric.

No it is not. When you are trading it is the volume of the base currency that is relevant and not the volume of the quote currency.

Rubbish. If the price of a BTC has risen 50x in a year then clearly expecting the same trading volume in BTC is ridiculous.

Exactly, compare volume in purchasing power.

Base currency volume is the only metric to measure how much of the currency itself has changed hands.

What you are saying is that $10,000,000 has the same relevance to move the market when:

1. The market cap is $10,000,000 and 100% of the coins are being purchased
2. The market cap is $100,000,000 and 10% of the coins are being purchased
3. The market cap is $100,000,000,000 and 0.01% of the coins are being purchased
4. The market cap is $10 and it is impossible to even purchase that many coins.

This is clearly false.

Correct, that's false.

But what you said earlier entails that volume in base currency needs to remain constant as price increases. This is clearly false as well, unless you want to argue that the past 3 years of growth are all going to crumble. Base currency volume is slowly falling over time, and that seems to be okay.

Which doesn't mean the current volume is enough to support the current growth. I'm pretty sure it is not, and I believe that was your point as well.

[JayJuanGee]

More FUD.

Coinbase cancelled my last 2 orders, my first cancellations in over 30 trades.

Cited risk.

But they do get their BTC from Stamp.  Maybe orders arn't being fulfilled?

I am NOT sure how that qualifies as FUD?  Did it happen or NOT?  If it did happen, then it is hardly FUD.. unless you are trying to extrapolate some larger pattern from that. 

I bought 3 BTC on Coinbase a couple hours ago... for $619