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

[noobtrader]

The price has stagnated for a while now 300-340 USD.

It'd be nice to even have a jump of 50 dollars or something.

Yawn.

teh market is moving again  yesss

[N12]

7 days until Bitstamp seizes all BTC belonging to unverified accounts.

Criminals don't have much time left to get fake IDs, spend all their filthy fiat money buying and withdraw BTC.

Wait, are they doing this for real? Bitstamp has already slipped to the point of irrelevance, and now this? They are fucked!

https://www.bitstamp.net/article/final-notice-to-unverified-account-holders/

Any remaining balances will be subject to immediate seizure by and forfeiture to regulatory authorities.

You could view it as a donation to the UK government, perhaps in particular the GCHQ?

[grappa_barricata]

https://www.bitstamp.net/article/final-notice-to-unverified-account-holders/

Any remaining balances will be subject to immediate seizure by and forfeiture to regulatory authorities.

You could view it as a donation to the UK government, perhaps in particular the GCHQ?

Thanks for the link... Gosh this is some fucking travesty LOL



Dear Bitstamp customer:

[derpinheimer]

Triple top or breakout? We shall know soon enough.

[noobtrader]

Triple top or breakout? We shall know soon enough.

bullish !

[fonzie]

I just wrote an e-mail to all of the three big chinese exchanges in which i informed them that i have reported them to the PBOC due to the reason that they are stealing money from the hard working chinese people with price and volume manipulation. I will post their reply in here if i should get one. 

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[o_o]

Seems that price is managed by a little little quantity of volume. However, see the show of the brother winklevoss yesterday evening about the ETF 

[N12]

Winklevosses should spend less time on embarassing themselves at conferences and more time on reinstating Willy, this time preferably at multiple exchanges.

[JorgeStolfi]

[ ... ] using BTCChina to crash. Volume reported by bitcoincharts is greater than Bitstamp, Bitfinex and BTC-E together, so it could be fake.

Since about Oct/10, BTC-China's volume has been comparable to what it was in Nov 2013 (~50--60 kBTC/day). 

During the Nov bubble, OKCoin was ~30 kBTC/day, Huobi ~20, MtGOX ~25, Bitstamp ~20, BTC-e ~20, Bitfinex ~5.

After the december decrees, BTC-China they lost nearly all their volume, while Huobi and OKCoin grew.

The November bubble cannot have been solely a MtGOX internal mega-pump.  There is a plausible explanation for it, which is the opening of the huge Chinese mainland market of amateur speculators.   That demand required huge arbitrage activity, buying hundreds of thousands of coins in the "Western" exchanges (including MtGOX) and selling them to speculators and holders in China.  Arbitragers (which were probably exchange owners) must have made tons of money that month. Willy was probably the buying end of an arbitrage pump at MtGOX, the selling end being perhaps at BTC-China. 

[derpinheimer]

[ ... ] using BTCChina to crash. Volume reported by bitcoincharts is greater than Bitstamp, Bitfinex and BTC-E together, so it could be fake.

Since about Oct/10, BTC-China's volume has been comparable to what it was in Nov 2013 (~50--60 kBTC/day). 

During the Nov bubble, OKCoin was ~30 kBTC/day, Huobi ~20, MtGOX ~25, Bitstamp ~20, BTC-e ~20, Bitfinex ~5.

After the december decrees, BTC-China they lost nearly all their volume, while Huobi and OKCoin grew.

The November bubble cannot have been solely a MtGOX internal mega-pump.  There is a plausible explanation for it, which is the opening of the huge Chinese mainland market of amateur speculators.   That demand required huge arbitrage activity, buying hundreds of thousands of coins in the "Western" exchanges (including MtGOX) and selling them to speculators and holders in China.  Arbitragers (which were probably exchange owners) must have made tons of money that month. Willy was probably the buying end of an arbitrage pump at MtGOX, the selling end being perhaps at BTC-China. 

No way in hell. MtGox could not absorb hundreds of thousands of coins being taken off the market without going well in to the 10000's/BTC

It was fake money buying real BTC. Most logical explanation.

[79b79aa8d5047da6d3XX]

[grappa_barricata]

[GreekGeek]

MtGox was fake money buying real BTC.

+1

[inca]

Not seen a shred of proof that Willy was fake anywhere yet..perhaps someone could point it out for me.

[yefi]

Wow, I just had a look at the (extremely shallow, much moreso than BTC-E) order book of BTCChina and the "volume" (supposed to be x10 that of BTC-E) that it has. It's clear that almost all of it is fake.

Seems like fonzie is right, someone's trying to induce "arbitrage" and buy at other exchanges.

It is called 'speculative arbitrage', but please do not consider volume 'fake' - if it has consequences to you it ain't fake

I'm not sure that it does have consequences. What happens is magic buy and sell orders happen in the spread. These bids and aks never appear on the orderbook, and you'll never actually eat into one, even if it seems you placed your order beforehand. The stuff is indistinguishable from make-believe and that's probably because it is.

No no, orders are placed and consumed within the timeframe it take to bitcoinwisdom to update the book/trade history.

I've never seen it on their own orderbook either. Their whole site is a lag fest, yet these orders consistently get placed and consumed instantaneously with zero effect on the price. Maybe they are somebody using the API to buy and sell their own coins, although there should be a risk there that the two orders don't get placed consecutively and somebody else puts in a bid or ask, but I've never seen this - it always appears to be a riskless, inconsequential operation.

[esse83]

Not seen a shred of proof that Willy was fake anywhere yet..perhaps someone could point it out for me.

http://willyreport.wordpress.com/

[inca]

Not seen a shred of proof that Willy was fake anywhere yet..perhaps someone could point it out for me.

http://willyreport.wordpress.com/

I read that hearsay when it came out - released to do as much market damage as possible. I mean't proof, not just someone's blog.

[JorgeStolfi]

Did I? I have always viewed the volume as inflated, and I remember having said so long ago. I think they are legit in the sense that there are real people trading there. There may be some completely fraudulent volume, but the same can be said of any other exchange.

By the way, I do remember that the Chinese exchanges were supposed to abolish margin, 0% fee etc. in a plan to appease the Chinese regulators. WTF happened to that?

Obviously, trading fees inhibit trading.  People cannot have high-frequency robots exploiting every 0.2% increase in price if the trading fee is 0.5%.  But, are those micro-trades "fake"? 

One evidence that Huobi's volume is not fake is that it drops to nearly zero between 02:00 am and 05:00 am, local time; except when Great Things are Afoot and trading goes on through the night.  It also drops on major holidays when banks are closed.  (Admitted, it is only weak evidence, since those patterns could be faked too.)  OKCoin had the same daily pattern, but trading dropped to only ~10% of the daytime volume.  That 10% could be fake volume, or fully automated robots, or clients outside  China.

If there is a choice between one exchange with trading fees and one without, clients -- especially high-frequency traders (HFTs) -- will generally choose the latter.  When BTC-China added fees, its volume seems to have moved to OKCoin and Huobi.

My understanding was that the Chinese exchanges never promised to abolish the 0% fees.  In their joint statement in early May, they had pledged to end margin trading and curb HFT, as well as stop marketing bitcoin.  I don't think that they were specifically ordered to so so by the regulators (who were more concerned with AML/KYC issues).  Rather, I understood that their less-sophisticated traders were unhappy and losing confidence.  However, it is possible that those customers who lost money complained to the government, compounding to its pressure.

According to an interview with Bobby Lee, a couple of months ago, it seems that some of those exchanges later broke their pledge and reinstated margin and/or HFT.

[noobtrader]

MtGox was fake money buying real BTC.

+1

still better than  fiat money with fake valuation

The parallel investigations on opposite sides of the Atlantic could produce a collective settlement soon, rather than separate deals by individual banks, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing several people familiar with the discussions. FCA investigators hope to conclude their investigation this year, while the U.S. probes are likely to continue into 2015, the Journal reported.

The 10 banks that collectively hold the largest share of the foreign exchange market could face as much as $14.5 billion in future costs linked to the investigations, according to a Moody's Investors Service estimate issued Monday.

The foreign exchange investigations are among several multinational examinations focused on financial benchmarks that affect trillions of dollars in personal and business transactions. Separate probes have focused on suspected manipulation of oil prices, interest rate swaps, precious metal pricing and the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor — used to set rates on mortgages, credit cards and loans.

The mammoth foreign exchange currency market traditionally operated with little outside oversight. The investigations center on suspected rigging of the rates for 160 world currencies that have been calculated and distributed by a joint venture of the WM Co. and Thomson Reuters.

Investigators suspect that traders at major banks conspired in efforts to nudge rates up or down, thereby boosting their trading profits. Several banks have fired or placed traders on leave since the investigations began last year.