Near dollar parity on MtGox

[Cryptoman]

Last trade 0.95 USD.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Wow! I saw this when I came home. Someone must have decided to just buy all they could 

This can only be good for the bitcoin economy, yes?

Anyway, I hope prices stay this high 

[ribuck]

There weren't many coins on offer between 0.51 and 0.95, so I think it's a bit early to break out the parity champagne quite yet.

[edit: if someone buys 691 coins now, it will take the MtGox price up to $1.25]

[rebuilder]

Something weird about that, though... Look at the depth of market. No bids shown... Or is there a cut-off below which bids aren't displayed?

[jimbobway]

Something weird about that, though... Look at the depth of market. No bids shown... Or is there a cut-off below which bids aren't displayed?

Seems like a Mt. Gox bug.

[ribuck]

Or is there a cut-off below which bids aren't displayed?

Yes, there is a cutoff, somewhere around two-thirds of the last trade price.

[Mike Hearn]

It's not good for the BitCoin economy. It makes it obvious that BitCoin is not really a stable currency and that single actors can significantly move the market. Wild, unpredictable fluctuations in exchange rate make business hard and make BitCoin seem flaky.

What we really need to be measuring is the GDP of the BitCoin economy, but that's hard to figure out as we don't really know which transactions in the block chain represent "real" trade and which are simply moving or consolidating coins. It'd be nice if there was some kind of way people could voluntarily mark transactions as "real" by some informal definition so we could estimate the GDP of the economy.

[cryptofo]

900+!!!

[ribuck]

I've been watching the "Asks" coming back, trickling in and gradually bringing the lowest offer back down from 0.95 to 0.64 and still dropping. I guess it will end up close to 0.50 again. I wonder if most of these are automatically or manually generated.

[Cryptoman]

Were any other accounts compromised?

[pc]

I was wondering if there might be some manipulation of Mt. Gox prices today since it's the day that counts for the end-of-January bets that were placed on BitcoinSportsBook by the end of December. Someone could perhaps even play both sides of a trade at a particular volume to try to influence the "official" number of what the end-of-month value was.

[kiba]

I was wondering if there might be some manipulation of Mt. Gox prices today since it's the day that counts for the end-of-January bets that were placed on BitcoinSportsBook by the end of December. Someone could perhaps even play both sides of a trade at a particular volume to try to influence the "official" number of what the end-of-month value was.

Could be. Could not be. Who knows?

[nelisky]

I was wondering if there might be some manipulation of Mt. Gox prices today since it's the day that counts for the end-of-January bets that were placed on BitcoinSportsBook by the end of December. Someone could perhaps even play both sides of a trade at a particular volume to try to influence the "official" number of what the end-of-month value was.

Could be. Could not be. Who knows?

Well, if that is so, that someone would have probably lost a fair amount of coins in the process, I guess. The .4 bet was already 'in the bag', and the total over .5 pot amount to 450 coins, give or take. Assuming that more than one person has placed bets, the potential gain is relatively small.

[fabianhjr]

BTC just increased in value by +50% now it is at around 0.85 USD per BTC. OMG, S3052, you were right, parity is pretty damn close. D:<

[Timo Y]

It's not good for the BitCoin economy. It makes it obvious that BitCoin is not really a stable currency and that single actors can significantly move the market. Wild, unpredictable fluctuations in exchange rate make business hard and make BitCoin seem flaky.

If Bitcoin is successful and there is adoption by millions of users, a huge increase in value, perhaps 1000-fold, is unavoidable.

Such a strong rally is desirable for a fixed supply currency because it indicates increase in adoption.

Also, the higher the value, the more difficult it becomes for a single actor to move the market.

As for wild, unpredictable fluctuations, this can be solved trivially with currency hedging and futures trading. Some are working on offering these services. Just give it some time. It's still early days.



 

[alkor]

What are the reasons for this scarcity in bitcoins for the past couple of days? If one looks at the orderbook for Mt. Gox http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html, it appears that there are very few bitcoins available for sale. Only a couple of days ago the market was full of bitcoins.

This sudden spike in prices is just completely irrational. What specific even was the trigger for such a dramatic increase in demand?  Did some oil producing country start selling its oil in bitcoins suddenly?

[fabianhjr]

No, maybe a rich kid wanted to get his hand into some goodies offered here. He might had just buy a lot(Like 10K USD) and the price spiked. It is going to fall under 0.65 soon. xD

[kiba]

No, maybe a rich kid wanted to get his hand into some goodies offered here. He might had just buy a lot(Like 10K USD) and the price spiked. It is going to fall under 0.65 soon. xD

It can easily fall to .55 because the bid volume above that is not very high.

[Babylon]

What are the reasons for this scarcity in bitcoins for the past couple of days? If one looks at the orderbook for Mt. Gox http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html, it appears that there are very few bitcoins available for sale. Only a couple of days ago the market was full of bitcoins.

This sudden spike in prices is just completely irrational. What specific even was the trigger for such a dramatic increase in demand?  Did some oil producing country start selling its oil in bitcoins suddenly?

Actually, at the moment on MTGox there are several thousand bitcoins available for sale.  However the vast majority of them are selling for $1

[ribuck]

No, maybe a rich kid wanted to get his hand into some goodies offered here. He might had just buy a lot(Like 10K USD) and the price spiked.

Rich kids are going to buy much more than 10k from MtGox. You'll know about it then!