SEEMS LIKE LARGE BTC HOLDERS TRYING TO KEEP PRICE AROUND $800

[glendall]

Guys the market is too big for all the whales to be planning some sort of concentrated effort at manipulating the price so particularly around the world.

The bitcoin economy is not like the Federal Reserve fiat economy where this actually does happen, where you have a few dozen people setting the monetary policy for the world based on their own personal believes.  No, thank Satoshi, we have an actual free money market!

Any 'manipulation' in a free market like this is good manipulation.  Because.....any one is free to manipulate it, it is not run by a few rich bastards. It's not a monopoly like fiat currencies all pegged to the USD which is created with no backing by two companies passing IOU bonds to one another.

There is no secret cabal of old-bit miners setting any agenda.  Too many people are playing in this market, and it is too global for that. Maybe back in the days when Gox was king, there could have been some effective manipulation . But I can not believe there would be any way to effectively do this now, unless you owned like, I dunno, a quarter of all bitcoin or something.

[Lloydie]

Sure it's possible.  The other side of this is USD.  Most of the transactions are happening via BitPay, Coinbase, Bitstamp.  Coinbase or BitPay can opt to stop selling coins when it gets near $800.

[windjc]

Not a large holder but I bought some btc when the price hit $800 this afternoon. Just seemed like a good deal and i wanted to get some peer coin so I did it.

Yeah, you're not really suppose to exist based on theories of Bears.

[MatTheCat]

Zomg stable prices it must be a conspiracy. It can't be supply and demand. The whales are out to steal my day trading profits. They hate me.

U have a tendency to jump into posts with a "I knew it all along, I am so smart attitude"

However, in my last price prediction thread, whilst bitcoin was at $800, I predicted a pump/surge up to the $825-$835 level. You put your tuppence worth in, something along the lines of "Yawn, Bitcoin will stay at $800 for a long time".

You were wrong, I was dead right, again.

Will you now admit that you don't actually ever know what you are talking about?

Guys the market is too big for all the whales to be planning some sort of concentrated effort at manipulating the price so particularly around the world.

Who says that 'all the whales' are manipulating. Perhaps it is just one consortium who is active at the moment. Perhaps all the rest are just sitting, holding, and watching with amusement/boredom. Perhaps when another whale with a different agenda decides to make a move one way or the other, the whole ball game will change.

One thing for sure, is that without strong guiding hands, this market would not be behaving in this way.

[oda.krell]

Zomg stable prices it must be a conspiracy. It can't be supply and demand. The whales are out to steal my day trading profits. They hate me.

U have a tendency to jump into posts with a "I knew it all along, I am so smart attitude"

However, in my last price prediction thread, whilst bitcoin was at $800, I predicted a pump/surge up to the $825-$835 level. You put your tuppence worth in, something along the lines of "Yawn, Bitcoin will stay at $800 for a long time".

You were wrong, I was dead right, again.

Will you now admit that you don't actually ever know what you are talking about?

Guys the market is too big for all the whales to be planning some sort of concentrated effort at manipulating the price so particularly around the world.

Who says that 'all the whales' are manipulating. Perhaps it is just one consortium who is active at the moment. Perhaps all the rest are just sitting, holding, and watching with amusement/boredom. Perhaps when another whale with a different agenda decides to make a move one way or the other, the whole ball game will change.

One thing for sure, is that without strong guiding hands, this market would not be behaving in this way.

For someone who, just a few posts above, feels justified to rip others a new one for "pretending to know it all", you sure like to pretend to know it all yourself ("anyone who doesn't see price is being propped up artificially is an IMBECILE I tell you" /paraphrase). No, no, don't strain yourself, I already know your answer: you're objectively right, the others are delusional bulls. It's just that simple

[dynodog]

Hope these "guiding hands" know what they're doing.  My guess is that while they have good intentions, they have no idea what the unintended consequences of their actions are.  Yes, less volatility is an ultimate goal, but bitcoin is so young, and they better be careful to not extinguish the fire by trying to control it.  Big moves to the upside should be taking place when major currency problems in various countries exist - that was one of the fundamental reasons that bitcoin was created (to provide an alternate currency or store of wealth so that people were not crushed by governments who print money at will).  Bitcoin is not just about a new way to move money around at a lower cost.  When currency problems arise (like they are big time in Argentina and Turkey), I would expect to see rallies in bitcoin.  It's almost like if Cyprus happened right now, the price would not budge bc these guiding hands think they know best.

[akujin]

I bought at 796.8 and i'm thinking about selling it now at 800... Just enough to pay for the 0.4% trading fee i lost.. LOL!
Seems like btc-e is not getting any higher than 800  

[davidgdg]

The major BTC holders want to lower volatility, so more people trust, and buy bitcoin, which could make the price much higher than the $1,000 level

My head hurts 

[MatTheCat]

For someone who, just a few posts above, feels justified to rip others a new one for "pretending to know it all", you sure like to pretend to know it all yourself ("anyone who doesn't see price is being propped up artificially is an IMBECILE I tell you" /paraphrase). No, no, don't strain yourself, I already know your answer: you're objectively right, the others are delusional bulls. It's just that simple

Yeah I must admit, I am also a bit of an opinionated cocknose. But in my defence, the majority of my calls on Bitcoin have been pretty good since I have taken an investment interest in Bitcoin, and much of my unpalatable behaviour has involved me being in heated arguments with bull-tards who are pouring scathing derision and criticism on moves and calls that I am making, which turn out to be dead right, going right back to the ridicule that I took from the Bitcoin Nutters on here when I stated I was selling $1100 btc at a loss in order to minimise damages (btc still in $1000 range).

Right now, I am not making any calls on Bitcoin because I have no confident notion of what it is going to do next. I am not shorting Bitcoin and I certainly am not going long Bitcoin. The present market action is having the effect of keeping fresh speculative money away whilst providing no real reason for existing speculative capital to flee Bitcoin. This might all just be an entirely coincidental unintendend consequence of 'innocent' market action, but it is well known that there are whale consortiums out there who have business interests that are frying much bigger fish than merely upping the nominal value of their Bitcoin holdings. The sheer volume of times that the negative aspects of Bitcoins high volatility or the need for stability was mentioned by some of these consortiums in the NY hearings should tell anyone with a modicum of sense (yup, I am at it again) that if these entities with broader Bitcoin business interests who are seeking a stable Bitcoin price think that they can engineer it via a dominant presence on the exchanges, then they are certainly going to attempt to bring it about. Wouldn't you do the exact same if you were in there position?

Of course, this doesn't mean that whoever is trying to hold the Bitcoin price in this range will succeed as there may be other more powerful whale entities out there with different plans. Indeed, the hands which are holding Bitcoin in place may only be doing so on a short term basis before allowing the market to do its own thing. Who could possibly know? One thing I do know is that for the past week, Bitcoin has been more stable than the precious metals and many actual currencies. This is clearly not a natural state of affairs.

[Lloydie]

New "floor" seems to be $780. Around 4000 coins dropped to achieve that. So around $3.6 mill to move a $10 billion market down, or 0.036% of market cap. Most people appear to be hodling. Big players have very much outsized impact. I am somewhat comforted knowing they have millions invested in the success of bitcoin. Could be why andreesen didn't buy more than a single coin.

[MatTheCat]

New "floor" seems to be $780. Around 4000 coins dropped to achieve that. So around $3.6 mill to move a $10 billion market down, or 0.036% of market cap. Most people appear to be hodling. Big players have very much outsized impact. I am somewhat comforted knowing they have millions invested in the success of bitcoin. Could be why andreesen didn't buy more than a single coin.

I wouldn't be speaking so confidently about that if I were you. Perhaps those 4000 BTC was the wall of defence wall put up by the 'hold Bitcoin at $800 society'. Certainly the Bid wall on Bitstamp has been decimated in size whilst the Ask wall remains pretty much the same as it always was. Any further large selling volume like what was seen today will send Bitcoin crashing down.

Earlier on today I wouldn't have made a call either way on Bitcoin, now I would say it must surely go down from here.

[Lloydie]

I'm not confident at all. I acknowledge I'm speculating with limited info. Thanks for your thoughts though. I also think it might fall. Roughly one day's worth of mined coins is enough to drop the market 2.5%.  On the other hand, the BIT is buying up coins. Overall, I would still say the tendency is for people to hoard rather than dump. The merchant expansion and motivation to "encourage" merchants is having more of a short term impact for now. But I think people will go back to hoarding soon once the novelty of online retailers cools somewhat. Afterall, how many bed sheets do I really need?

[Lloydie]

I think one of the reasons people have a negative reaction to you, mat the cat, is your tendency to say "it must surely go down from here". What makes you so sure? Do you have confirmed sources?

So, I tend to ignore that and assume you are desperately trying to manipulate the price down so you can buy cheap coins. This just makes you come off looking desperate and not credible, in my eyes, even if you have something valuable to add.

[MatTheCat]

I think one of the reasons people have a negative reaction to you, mat the cat, is your tendency to say "it must surely go down from here". What makes you so sure? Do you have confirmed sources?

So, I tend to ignore that and assume you are desperately trying to manipulate the price down so you can buy cheap coins. This just makes you come off looking desperate and not credible, in my eyes, even if you have something valuable to add.

It is the fault of the English language. We lack a proper subjunctive case for our verbs.

P.S. I have been mostly bearish since early December and it has to be said, I have mostly been right and am thousands of pounds richer because of it.....and yeah, looking at the charts now, I am sure. If am wrong then y'all get to laugh and point at me next week when Bitcoin is at $850 or whatever.

[Lloydie]

Plus I know from past interactions you mentioned your circumstance and the fact that you are a trader, so overall I can see you are keen for the market to move in the direction you want it to move. However, please note that no one here, individually, really has the money to move the Btc markets anymore. The big guys will do what the big guys want to do. The small guys will be influenced but won't make a difference.

PS: don't use the word sure at all. No one can be sure. By using the word sure, you are flagging to everyone you are, essentially, unreliable.

[MatTheCat]

PS: don't use the word sure at all. No one can be sure. By using the word sure, you are flagging to everyone you are, essentially, unreliable.

I was trading both ways for a short time, but I have decided that I don't trust the only exchange that I know of, where I can short sell, so now I am just looking for long opportunities or rather, thee long opportunity. If had option of shorting Bitcoin at the moment, I would short Bitcoin at $789 on Bitstamp, right now. To do that, I would need to be pretty sure......I would however place stop losses at $800, just incase.

[Lloydie]

There right there, the stop loss, proves you are not sure! 

[MatTheCat]

There right there, the stop loss, proves you are not sure!  

ok.

If I had 10K right now that I was being forced to place on Bitcoin and wasn't allowed to cash it in for another week minimum, with no sitting on the sidelines allowed, I would be going short without giving the long bet even a second thought.

It is true, there are seldom times when I am 100% sure.

[Lloydie]

But you don't have 10k, and there is a reason why that is. Sorry to be blunt but one cannot know what happens tomorrow, let alone a week. 

[MatTheCat]

But you don't have 10k, and there is a reason why that is. Sorry to be blunt but one cannot know what happens tomorrow, let alone a week.  

I actually have 20K (USD) allocated to my Bitstamp account. I would like to say that probably 8-10K of that is profit from Bitcoin trades but that would be bullshit. I have totally fkn burned money on absolute shit since I started getting small windfalls through Bitcoin. So all that money is my own hard earned cash, and I aint away to piss it out on Bitcoins in what seems like to me, a very shaky market destined for some considerable down time yet.