"Aaaaaaand the waaaallllls...

[gewure]

... if mr. m pulls the plug out, prices will be at 1.5 or something..

there are maybe 20k to 40k real bid walls, but the rest is mr. M and his little helpers.

im getting little bit nervous since the trading signals tell me: hold/buy, but the fake-walls tell me: sell! .. and that is exactly what i am commited at the moment: im short on bitcoinica.

[1713974063]

1713974063

[SaintFlow]

Can anyone care to explain to me why you talk about fake-walls?

I can see myself that they are moving. Thats however could
a strategy change of someone who believes he can get a better deal.

But if at anypoint a early adopter sells the entire wall away
it would have been a real wall - or am i getting something wrong here?

[ElectricMucus]

Can anyone care to explain to me why you talk about fake-walls?

I can see myself that they are moving. Thats however could
a strategy change of someone who believes he can get a better deal.

But if at anypoint a early adopter sells the entire wall away
it would have been a real wall - or am i getting something wrong here?

Yes one could sell into them with one large order.
Just look closely of how steep the wall is. It's a confidence game the steeper the higher risk that someone will sell into it but also higher effectiveness of pushing the price.

The whole point of the walls is to get better deals from the suckers who put in higher orders.
And the real irony is: That wall can be converted to a bitcoinica margin requirement in a second.

But this would dry up the markets completely, atm.

[S3052]

A smart way to outsmart him could be to place bids BELOW his Bidwalls, not above :-)

[RyNinDaCleM]

Here is what the order book could look like! Edited about 80k of what I believe are "The Manipulators" bids out!

[mjcmurfy]

Haha. I did something similar a few days ago to estimate non-manipulator demand.
It looks healthy enough to me to be honest, if we are excluding manipulation in either direction that is.
Slightly higher demand than supply - would suggest a slow upwards creep.

[RyNinDaCleM]

Haha. I did something similar a few days ago to estimate non-manipulator demand.
It looks healthy enough to me to be honest.
Slightly higher demand than supply - would suggest a slow upwards creep.

That's what I was thinking too! Though, I have seen that this indicator doesn't hold up too well in this market.
It could however, explain the slight upward pressure we've been seeing today.

[mjcmurfy]

I'd be willing to bet that a few of those ask walls also belong to manipulators. Did you cut those down at all or just leave them the way they were? (edit: nvm, just checked mtgoxlive. you left it alone). This could mean that the supply might be overrepresented too, meaning an even healthier overall situation.

I think this would actually be a halfway decent indicator of medium to long term price movement. Or at least as good as any of the technical indicators anyway. The manipulators are all about the short term swings. The long term movements will occur independent of what they do.

Maybe there could be a way to quantify the depth of any market manipulation by analyzing with some kind of bot the size of any walls that are actively moving as they are pulled and replaced. I think you might be on to something...

[RyNinDaCleM]

Nope! Just the bid side! I feel he isn't trying to keep the price down at the moment. So, any ask walls of his are probably real.

[mjcmurfy]

It is likely though that there is more than 1 manipulator in the game. There is at least one bearish manipulator and one bullish manipulator and they seem to be playing a high stakes tug-of-war game.

If you watch mtgoxlive when there are big movements, you can see large asks being pulled as the price rises in the same way that you see large bids being pulled when it falls. It could be the cumulative result of individual actors hoping for better prices though... but equally, that could explain some the bid-side 'manipulation' too.

[bittenbob]

It is likely though that there is more than 1 manipulator in the game. There is at least one bearish manipulator and one bullish manipulator and they seem to be playing a high stakes tug-of-war game.

If you watch mtgoxlive when there are big movements, you can see large asks being pulled as the price rises in the same way that you see large bids being pulled when it falls. It could be the cumulative result of individual actors hoping for better prices though... but equally, that could explain some the bid-side 'manipulation' too.

I noted earlier there appears to be more than one manipulator in the game right now and they are working against each other. As one would raise the bid walls, the other would raise the ask walls which gave us stability for quite some time. Of course this could be the collective movements of several people but with the size of the walls it at least appears to be a couple of big players.

[mjcmurfy]

I would agree. It is unlikely to be due to cumulative market actions, as the walls disappear and reappear too quickly and neatly in their new positions for it to be caused by smaller individual traders.

The existence of a bearish manipulator is often not considered though. I think it is a huge oversight to dismiss this possibility, because that would mean that some of the downward movements could well be due to bearish manipulation and a desire to buy coins more cheaply, in the same way that the bullish manipulator has a desire for price rises because he wants to sell higher.

Anyway, I try not to worry too much about the manipulators' pathetic games because I am of the opinion that the long term movements will occur independently of what they do. Smaller traders just need to have balls of steel right now, bears and bulls alike, because large upwards movements spook the bears and large downwards movements leave the bulls paralyzed. And these large movements can be achieved easily at the moment. This will change over time as bitcoin becomes more widely adopted and coins are distributed more evenly among market participants.

[RyNinDaCleM]

I have ZERO doubt that there are a few rather large players at work here. But, I think there is only one person/group/entity that has nearly bottomless pockets/wallets that can place 50k+ walls on either side or both, as we have seen a few months ago.

Anyway, I try not to worry too much about the manipulators' pathetic games because I am of the opinion that the long term movements will occur independently of what they do. Smaller traders just need to have balls of steel right now, bears and bulls alike, because large upwards movements spook the bears and large downwards movements leave the bulls paralyzed. And these large movements can be achieved easily at the moment. This will change over time as bitcoin becomes more widely adopted and coins are distributed more evenly among market participants.

Absolutely! I was just showing the balance. We may actually be at an equilibrium. The price remains fairly stable... for now!

[bittenbob]

I have ZERO doubt that there are a few rather large players at work here. But, I think there is only one person/group/entity that has nearly bottomless pockets/wallets that can place 50k+ walls on either side or both, as we have seen a few months ago.

Anyway, I try not to worry too much about the manipulators' pathetic games because I am of the opinion that the long term movements will occur independently of what they do. Smaller traders just need to have balls of steel right now, bears and bulls alike, because large upwards movements spook the bears and large downwards movements leave the bulls paralyzed. And these large movements can be achieved easily at the moment. This will change over time as bitcoin becomes more widely adopted and coins are distributed more evenly among market participants.

Absolutely! I was just showing the balance. We may actually be at an equilibrium. The price remains fairly stable... for now!

Its a lot of fun seeing one manipulator raise bid walls when they want to get rid of coins and the other manipulator raise the ask wall simaltaneous as to say f**k you lol. Definitely more than one big player at work for anyone watching MTGox live. Either that or one really dumb big player.

[mjcmurfy]

It's pretty difficult to understand their true motives. I've been trying hard to understand the psychological games they are playing.

The bullish manipulator wants price increases so he can ultimately SELL high.
He puts up bid walls, sells, then pulls his walls and causes panic to buy back lower.
Meaning he is actually a bear in bulls clothing.



The bearish manipulator wants price decreases so he can ultimately BUY low.
He buys a little, puts up ask walls, sells then drives the price down, and buys in again at a cheaper rate.
He is likely in fact to be a bull at heart.



And then again, it could be just as likely that NEITHER of them care one way or the other about the long term direction bitcoin will take, and instead are doing this solely for fiat profit, slowly sucking market capital away while retaining their existing bitcoin holdings.

It's so damn confusing.

[Technomage]

Whatever the motives, there are now 126 000 BTC in the bid walls supporting $2. That's a massive amount, there are only a few people in the world who could single handedly sell through those walls. Not that I think the walls are legit, probably most of them aren't. But even if some are, it's a tough challenge for the sellers.

I'm fairly bullish right now and I'm starting to think that there's maybe a 60% chance that we did hit triple bottom and we will not see $1.x anymore. This makes the current price an excellent re-entry point for whatever strategy, mine happens to be of the very-long kind.

However I still think that it's smart to have a fallback strategy in case a crash to $1.5 is imminent.

[Technomage]

An update. There are now 135 000 BTC supporting $2. I have never seen anything like this and I believe there have never been such walls in the history of BTC trading. Not that it proves anything, but I feel it does matter.

On the other hand, walls of the sellers have shrunk. There is only around $85 000 worth of BTC from the current price to $2.8. For comparison, the bid walls supporting $2 are worth approximately $285 000.

The selling pressure required to sell into those walls and to pressure the fake walls to disappear is so massive at this point that it feels almost like an impossible challenge. Especially taking into account that most traders are probably holding more USD than BTC at the moment. I would bet my net worth that there are more USD on the sidelines waiting to buy, than there are BTC waiting to sell. We don't really have a way to find out, but anyway.

Triple bottom, anyone?

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

An update. There are now 135 000 BTC supporting $2. I have never seen anything like this and I believe there have never been such walls in the history of BTC trading. Not that it proves anything, but I feel it does matter.

On the other hand, walls of the sellers have shrunk. There is only around $85 000 worth of BTC from the current price to $2.8. For comparison, the bid walls supporting $2 are worth approximately $285 000.

The selling pressure required to sell into those walls and to pressure the fake walls to disappear is so massive at this point that it feels almost like an impossible challenge. Especially taking into account that most traders are probably holding more USD than BTC at the moment. I would bet my net worth that there are more USD on the sidelines waiting to buy, than there are BTC waiting to sell. We don't really have a way to find out, but anyway.

Triple bottom, anyone?

Personally I'm expecting an incredible Thanksgiving show.

[BadBear]

If there was more activity I would be more optimistic.  I expected more of a spike, but it isn't happening and people are gonna get nervous soon.  I'm also expecting a lot of those walls to drop when the price gets closer, in anticipation of new lows and lower buy ins. 

[Technomage]

If there was more activity I would be more optimistic.  I expected more of a spike, but it isn't happening and people are gonna get nervous soon.  I'm also expecting a lot of those walls to drop when the price gets closer, in anticipation of new lows and lower buy ins.

The spike you're talking about just happened.