Can I predict the value of BTC/USD?

[macsga]

A fellow Physicist!!! WE ARE MANY!!!

Thanks for the comments - you've wrote some of the crazy ideas I wanted to post, mentioned on the above comment... BTW: It's Poincare section.
http://www.mwit.ac.th/~physicslab/applet_04/fun@learning/JAVA/pendchao/pendchao.html

Coolness, I need help developing the bitcoin RF idea.  :-P

I'm a sucker for these kind of games...

Excellent thread.  My compliments Mac.   

Thanks KFR

[ElectricMucus]

The lowest points the double pendulum can reach is the same as a single pendulum of the same length.
The highest point is at the origin of the pendulum plus the length of the lower part of the arm.
The upper part of the arm always swings back and forth and can not flip over.

So while the overall system may be chaotic it can be predicted with specific constraints.

What you're saying can be simplified to this:

The lowest value of USD/BTC is zero
The highest value of USD/BTC is the total capitalization/BTCs produced
The value can only go up and down (well, it can also be static for a while)

Not quite, the lower arm of the pendulum can flip over.
The analogy to that would be the market can't be static after going in one direction for a longer time, but it can on shorter timescales. This is why TA, well some TA works.

[Altoidnerd]

Markets aren't pendulums.

Of course they are not, but they share dynamical behavior.  See large pictures above.

[adamstgBit]

this thread is well beyond my level of understanding, well done, you earned my respect.

[Altoidnerd]

The analogy to that would be the market can't be static after going in one direction for a longer time, but it can on shorter timescales. This is why TA, well some TA works.

The attractors.

Crazy mac is correct.  There are FOREX traders that stare at fractals all the time to study.  They do this because markets have chaotic dynamics.  My favorite is @EdMatts, I use twitter only to speak with him.  He is brilliant.

[I_bitcoin]

The analogy to that would be the market can't be static after going in one direction for a longer time, but it can on shorter timescales. This is why TA, well some TA works.

The attractors.

Are they strange?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor

[Altoidnerd]

The analogy to that would be the market can't be static after going in one direction for a longer time, but it can on shorter timescales. This is why TA, well some TA works.

The attractors.

Are they strange?

They really are.

[macsga]

this thread is well beyond my level of understanding, well done, you earned my respect.

That was not my intention; really. I really hoped to keep it simple for the masses. Thanks for the kind words though.

[BitchicksHusband]

So apparently, I'm not able to make a reasoned guess that buy and hold has a much greater than average chance of working out for me.  Once I retire next year, I'll have more time to ponder my errors.

[macsga]

So apparently, I'm not able to make a reasoned guess that buy and hold has a much greater than average chance of working out for me.  Once I retire next year, I'll have more time to ponder my errors.

FWIW: I'm all BTC and holding... (To infinity and beyooooooond!!!!)

[Altoidnerd]

So apparently, I'm not able to make a reasoned guess that buy and hold has a much greater than average chance of working out for me.  Once I retire next year, I'll have more time to ponder my errors.

Just look at the self similar price curve of bitcoin so far.  What can you conclude would be likely to happen next?  We don't know, but if nothing externally changes much, bitcoin would, I suppose, see another big run up followed by a "crash."

But there's no guarantee that the system will remain in this state!  So the answer to "what will bitcoin price do" is precisely [?].  But at the same time, I was able to take advantage of the last run up, just by looking at pictures of April, and the big $11 spike before it...

[NewLiberty]

Great and erudite analysis of why all TA is utterly useless, unless you have inside knowledge of what the big movers are about to do or know news before others do.

Which is why financial markets have a preponderance of insider knowledge cheats and market manipulators, it's the only thing that gives you an edge.

Perhaps it is possible to learn about sentiments, meaning sometimes it is possible to have a good idea of how others are likely to react - but this is again at best marginal and can of course go horribly wrong.

This thread is burning a straw man.

Having a p value of less than 100% is different from being useless.
TA is less about being always right, and more about how much confidence you put in being right at any particular point.
How much you make when you are right, vs how much you lose when you aren't is what makes it valuable or not.
For example:
RP gave himself an 80% p value for that prediction.  He may be right or not, but either way it isn't going to be indicative of whether TA is useful of not, just whether that application of it worked well or didn't.

What you have here is an analogy and a theory.  Science uses data, so from that point RP's TA is more scientific than your criticism of it.
Markets aren't pendulums.

In any efficient market TA should yield zero edge over random chance.

That said, Bitcoin markets have demonstrated, time and again, startling examples of inefficiency.

The scientific way to settle this argument is to create 30 TA algos that backtest well, simulate them them for a year, and find out if there's statistical significance.

The efficient market is like doing physics in space and discounting all variables.  

Yes, the experimentation is needed to settle it.
Its been done with the stock market extensively across backtested trade data from databases reaching back decades for every trade recorded.
This was most famously done by William O'Neil and condensed in the CANSLIM methods (which just scratches the surface now).
Having worked for O'Neil and done some programming for him a few decades ago, I developed some respect for both the scientific methods used and the effectiveness of their rigorous application.

I haven't analyzed RP's methods, but claiming that all TA is bunk based on an analogy to pendulums or any other analogy is, well...  I think you can do better.

[macsga]

The analogy to that would be the market can't be static after going in one direction for a longer time, but it can on shorter timescales. This is why TA, well some TA works.

The attractors.

Are they strange?

They really are.

X^. | = | sigma(Y-X)
Y^. | = | rX-Y-XZ
Z^. | = | XY-bZ.

Only 3 differencial equations are able to predict the long run of a chaotic system. So yes. They're strange!

[Altoidnerd]

FWIW: I'm all BTC and holding... (To infinity and beyooooooond!!!!)

BTW for you - I have assessed the large time behavior of bitcoin before.  If you address the problem as a perfect product, the demand for which is always equal to precisely the number of people who have recognized its existence, the price would go like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function

So for small times, the growth is approximately exponential.  So I tend to take price data into excel, take the logarithm and try this:



The choice of your fitted price at t=0 presents a problem!  The price on the day of the IPO of BTC was, 50 or 5 cents?  Whatever it was, it was arbitrary.  I believe I ended up dividing by the IPO price normalizing that price to "1". 



This fit was done in early November, during the time when the price was rising quickly.  There is a good explanation then, why the fit so badly missed the moment when the price would hit $1k.  Left an as exercise.

[NewLiberty]

This would need to be modified by the limits of communication, and population.
In the early days, the chances of someone you talk to already knowing about bitcoin were about zero
Today it is greater than zero.  as adoption increases, the rate will necessarily slow by the percentage of folks that are already in.

[Altoidnerd]

This would need to be modified by the limits of communication, and population.
In the early days, the chances of someone you talk to already knowing about bitcoin were about zero
Today it is greater than zero.  as adoption increases, the rate will necessarily slow by the percentage of folks that are already in.

Yes, I posed this question in a heavy math sub as the probability of being told a secret in a room of identical people who behave a certain way e.g. tell 2 people 1 minutes after being told, then have a 20% prob of forgetting after 5 minutes...etc... the results weren't that satisfying.  Here it is:

http://www.reddit.com/r/puremathematics/comments/1q7rfa/to_quantify_the_process_of_diffusion_of_a_secret/

[macsga]

FWIW: I'm all BTC and holding... (To infinity and beyooooooond!!!!)

BTW for you - I have assessed the large time behavior of bitcoin before.  If you address the problem as a perfect product, the demand for which is always equal to precisely the number of people who have recognized its existence, the price would go like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function

So for small times, the growth is approximately exponential.  So I tend to take price data into excel, take the logarithm and try this:


This fit was done in early November, during the time when the price was rising quickly.  There is a good explanation then, why the fit so badly missed the moment when the price would hit $1k.  Left an as exercise.

Yes; I've figured out that far myself. I do have several other things to attend to during my days (and nights recently...) that really leaves me with minimal time to go as deep as I wanted to. This thing is definitely huge. IMHO, there's no need someone to risk his holdings in order to make them more. Especially people who don't know what they're doing.

The efficient market is like doing physics in space and discounting all variables.  

Yes, the experimentation is needed to settle it.
Its been done with the stock market extensively across backtested trade data from databases reaching back decades for every trade recorded.
This was most famously done by William O'Neil and condensed in the CANSLIM methods (which just scratches the surface now).
Having worked for O'Neil and done some programming for him a few decades ago, I developed some respect for both the scientific methods used and the effectiveness of their rigorous application.

I haven't analyzed RP's methods, but claiming that all TA is bunk based on an analogy to pendulums or any other analogy is, well...  I think you can do better.

1. I'd say you're right (that's why several times they're wrong - they should ACCOUNTING all variables)
2. It's like Risto Pietila's method of selling your bitcoins gradually (and vice versa if you're not sure if they go down or up respectively). As I previously wrote I'm a bit hostile at economic "scientists". They're no scientists at all to me. I may begin a big flame war here (which I will miss because I will have to go to sleep soon) but that's my opinion and I've no intention to change it.
3. I did not claim that ALL TA is bunk. I wrote (I'm not copy pasting) - did you ever read what I wrote on the 5th-6th paragraph?
4. I may be able to do better; but that's who I am, and I will probably wont!  

[Altoidnerd]

... that really leaves me with minimal time to go as deep as I wanted to.

You mean you don't have infinite time to play with bitcoinz?  My girlfriend hates me.

Also...
Question: What the hell is "TA"?

[macsga]

... that really leaves me with minimal time to go as deep as I wanted to.

You mean you don't have infinite time to play with bitcoinz?  My girlfriend hates me.

YES! MY PRECIOUS!!! 

Question: What the hell is "TA"?

Technical Analysis

[TiagoTiago]

I once had Eureqa find a function that seemed to predict the price within about 2% accuracy, using data with 6 hours resolution; unfortunately i never tested how it would hold against new data.

I need to figure out a way to get a finer resolution set covering the whole history; and need to get a better PC to process that without having to worry about overheating the CPU and trashing the HDD with too much use of the swap file.


Obviously, i would expect the model would only be good for doing very short term predictions, and would need to be updated as new data comes in order to retain any level of accuracy; but very short term might be enough for daytrading.