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

[grappa_barricata]

Absolutely false on its face.

All trade is by definition positive sum, and a market is merely the aggregation of all trades. This arises because the preferences of individual participants are not monolithic.

The whole anti-TA strain I can understand is very compelling from a sense of misguided skepticism and not wanting to be made a fool, but all of these knee jerk non-criticisms transparently come out of a lack of understanding of what TA even is in the first place.

Imagine this scenario:

10 men are locked in a room. They are given different quantities of 2 assets each. They start exchanging those 2 assets among them, effectively creating a 'market' and determining a 'price' of asset A measured in asset B and viceversa.
This price is recorded day by day, and a graph drawn on the wall of the room.

Now, as times goes on, 9 of these 10 men start seeing things in the graph. They seems to fool themselves into thinking that somewhat future prices are determined by previous ones. They take rules and compasses and start identifying 'trends' and 'patterns' in the graph. They think: "price has gone up for the last 3 days, it is more probable that it will go up today, instead of going down". They completely forgot the base mechanics, as you recall correctly: trades and trades alone determine price.

The 10th man, more wise, don't believe this mumbo jumbo. He understand the mechanics. He also know, now, that another mechanic has been added to the game: beliefs.

So at the start of the day he buy a bit of B, fooling the others into thinking: "see? what did i told you? trend is up". And they buy, and buy...
It is at that point that our trading hero sell.

So, while these 9 men think they are smart because they can see 2 moving averages cross, the other one fool them. A lot.

After a year the room is unlocked. Every pieces of A and B are in the pockets of our hero. The others pockets are empty.

Here endeth the lesson.

[falllling]

time to kiss $500 goodbye

[hmmmstrange]

time to kiss $500 goodbye

Agreed,
$600 here we come.

[falllling]

time to kiss $500 goodbye

Agreed,
$600 here we come.

wrong, bitcoin is dropping to $485 very soon

[JCviggen]

geeez, why do bulls look so weak?

Well, the bulls here don't seem to actually buy enough to make much of a dent in the charts. They're mostly hodling. They are bullish about some whales hopefully driving the price up, but that's about the extent of it.

[bitcoin carpenter]

So your saying that all the bulls are castrated?

.. When the bulls blow all there money it's time to hibernate.
I'll come back to invest when the bears feel ready to fatten up

[billyjoeallen]

These are the times that try a Bitcoiner's soul. Every time this happens--on average once a year--I get amazed at how painful it is.  This is the kind of market that separates the men from the boys. I've been monkey-hammered in trade after trade, so I forget that I'm still up over %10,000 in fiat terms from my original investment. Bad things seem to happen all at once, and my personal life and net worth get crushed simultaneously and every time I have to slowly claw my way back. Many of you are in a similar situation. Take heart. We are making history.  If this trip throws your life out of balance, then take a break. we'll still be here when you get back.  I was up to two cartons of cigarettes a week and letting my life go to shit. That means I care too much to make objective decisions.

I'm still bullish long term, but I just don't what's going to happen next. I just know that I'm either going to make a lot of money or I'm going to learn something. I can live with that.

[Mervyn_Pumpkinhead]

TA can work in a transparent enough market, that isn't heavily concentrated. But, the bitcoin market is far from being transparent and the ownership is probably also heavily concentrated.
Not to mention the lack of laws, that would at least slow down the insider manipulation done by those, who own the major exchanges.
Because the lack of transparency and the heavy grip that the exchanges have over the market, bitcoin is more of an gamble then an investment. Doing TA with bitcoin is mostly to justify ones gambling addiction, or some could even use it to hide the fact, that they are actually connected with the insiders.
With bitcoin, the only ones who know the future, are the ones who have enough power to create the future. The market is too immature to offer any stability for serious TA. TA that you see here, is mostly just lines drawn at a direction of own personal hopes.

[billyjoeallen]

TA can work in a transparent enough market, that isn't heavily concentrated. But, the bitcoin market is far from being transparent and the ownership is probably also heavily concentrated.
Not to mention the lack of laws, that would at least slow down the insider manipulation done by those, who own the major exchanges.
Because the lack of transparency and the heavy grip that the exchanges have over the market, bitcoin is more of an gamble then an investment. Doing TA with bitcoin is mostly to justify ones gambling addiction, or some could even use it to hide the fact, that they are actually connected with the insiders.
With bitcoin, the only ones who know the future, are the ones who have enough power to create the future. The market is too immature to offer any stability for serious TA. TA that you see here, is mostly just lines drawn at a direction of own personal hopes.

T/A has limited value, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. Over time, the coins do get concentrated in the hands of a few smart people. These people use T/A, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Luck plays a role, but so does skill. Professional poker is also a zero-sum game, but there are guys who can make a living at it.  The more bets you make, the more success is skill and less random chance because tiny percentage advantages compound over time.

[Mervyn_Pumpkinhead]

T/A has limited value, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. Over time, the coins do get concentrated in the hands of a few smart people. These people use T/A, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Luck plays a role, but so does skill. Professional poker is also a zero-sum game, but there are guys who can make a living at it.  The more bets you make, the more success is skill and less random chance because tiny percentage advantages compound over time.

If the bitcoin market would be poker, then it would be a variation where the dealer can play, and be the only one, who has the ability to look at the cards of others.
I can't see how skill has a lot to do with determining the winner in this game..

[rpietila]

Over time, the coins do get concentrated in the hands of a few smart people.

It has to be noted that persistent hoarding by these smart people greatly increases the value of everybody else's coins. The market cap of the unhoarded stock grows larger when the hoarded stock grows larger.

[Newbie1022]

Bitfinex blocking shorts, again. The last time this happened we had the crash off the dead cat bounce to $525-$530 in the middle of the downturn a few hours later. Connected? Maybe. My hunch is that they get a suspicious order or a big short and delay it to control the impact. At the same time, it leaves people in a position to get screwed. And yes, I reserved coins through total return swaps before trying to place the order and had tons of margin available for a fairly small order. Be careful. I know this is FUD. Frankly, I don't give a s---.

[Wandererfromthenorth]

Regarding TA:

It's simple:


Some people don't know how TA works or what it's supposed to do.
The same folks try to apply what they think TA is but they lose money.
Their conclusion: TA doesn't work.


The End.

[Newbie1022]

You know... that s--- is so rigged. Those scumbags at Finex have no problem putting my orders through when they go against me, but when they are going to go in my favor they f--- me. Done with them. Probably done with all of this s---. Fuck!! And yea, I should go post this somewhere else, but that's bull----, too because people ought to know when the fix is on. That's what a speculation board should be for. This f---ing bulls---.

[cbeast]

T/A has limited value, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. Over time, the coins do get concentrated in the hands of a few smart people. These people use T/A, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Luck plays a role, but so does skill. Professional poker is also a zero-sum game, but there are guys who can make a living at it.  The more bets you make, the more success is skill and less random chance because tiny percentage advantages compound over time.

If the bitcoin market would be poker, then it would be a variation where the dealer can play, and be the only one, who has the ability to look at the cards of others.
I can't see how skill has a lot to do with determining the winner in this game..

This.

[billyjoeallen]

Over time, the coins do get concentrated in the hands of a few smart people.

It has to be noted that persistent hoarding by these smart people greatly increases the value of everybody else's coins. The market cap of the unhoarded stock grows larger when the hoarded stock grows larger.

There is an element of Austrian economics at play. There is no point is having lots of coins if you don't spend them eventually. If the hoarders never spend (or lose their private keys), then everyone else's coins become more valuable. If they do spend them, the the coins do eventually get distributed. I may not have my wealth properly diversified, but It's a no-brainer to always hold at least somecoins. The risk/reward ratio makes Bitcoin a far better than even money bet. Through quantitative easing (money printing), fractional reserve lending and artificially low interest rates, fiat is a poor bet by comparison. It has the advantage of being far more liquid, but coins can be converted to fiat at any time pretty quickly. 

[klee]

I have a lot of people wanting me to help them enter in the Bitcoin/Cryptos (like a broker).

When they see the alts they all want to buy them too, so I advise them to diversify 2-5% of their capital in them.

This is fresh fiat that would go into BTC if it wasn't for the alts.*

I bet my clients are not the only ones doing so.

On the other hand *they have to buy BTC first in order to buy alts, though this is changing fast.

Opinions?

[fonzie]

Now up from 75000 to 200000 LTC shorts in ~48h. Highest amount ever in the history of Bitfinex @ one of the lowest LTC/USD prices in the last months, lolololol



This might end bad for some people.

[Wandererfromthenorth]

You know... that s--- is so rigged. Those scumbags at Finex have no problem putting my orders through when they go against me, but when they are going to go in my favor they f--- me. Done with them. Probably done with all of this s---. Fuck!! And yea, I should go post this somewhere else, but that's bull----, too because people ought to know when the fix is on. That's what a speculation board should be for. This f---ing bulls---.

Yeah Finex is having some issues lately, I suggest you avoid margin trading and play only on Exchange for now, or does buying/selling also have problems? 

[billyjoeallen]

I don't know a single high profile Bitcoin enthusiast with an IQ below 130. I would say most are three standards of deviation above the mean. Now I may not quite be a genius myself, but it's only logical to do what smart people do if you want to succeed at least as much as them.  This is how technological revolutions begin. The Winklevi were in Facebook before there was  Facebook. They got screwed over by Zuckerberg, but I think they learned a lesson from it. They are not lazy people. They are Olympic-level athletes.
They are not unsuccessful people. They may come from money, but the vast majority of their wealth was self-made.

Of course their are insiders, but it's still a far less rigged market than stocks, bonds or even real estate. Especially centrally-controlled fiat. The fluctuations are greater, but that just means the time scale is ramped up. Everything you do is risky and that includes doing nothing. The way smart people do it is to diversify, exercise discipline, and hope you make more good bets than bad.

Cheaters don't keep their money because they didn't earn it and so they don't value it as much as those who had to sweat and work hard. They waste wealth and that just means that honest people can buy it from them at a discount. Life is far from fair, but everyone reading this at least has an internet connection so you should probably be happy life is unfair. You are likely a beneficiary of that unfairness if you look at the big picture.