[XMR] Monero Speculation

[MilkyLep]

A bit of a break out after a long flat consolidation period looks pretty bullish to me.

But this gentleman already said thanks for the pump...!

sold all of my xmr.

thanks for the pump guys

[Melbustus]

...

Well I saw most of 2014 as a consolidation phase as we recovered from the bullshit Gox and China pump in 2013. Meanwhile venture capital poured in to start to build things that people might actually use, and by late 2014 or early 2015 it seemed utility, potential, and the rate of building might be starting to converge with price. Since then things seem kind of stable. At a fundamental level I think the market is waiting for developments, like whether the technology holds up, scalability is feasible, regulation becomes suffocating, something better pushes it aside, a killer app appears, etc. I don't think what Gox did matters much right now, but I could be wrong.

Agreed. Imagine the counterfactual; ie, instead of MtGox, the early Bitcoin exchange was reasonably responsible, didn't lose a ton of money, and didn't manipulate the market. What would Bitcoin's price be today? My guess is that'd it'd be the same or higher than it is today. The 4yr price chart wouldn't have spikes to the same degree, nor such an ugly bear market, in my opinion. Bitcoin has evolved tremendously in the past few years, and without the Gox mess, I think we'd see a much smoother overall uptrend.

That said, I agree with you, Smooth, regarding people likely waiting for more resolution on: the blocksize debate, regulation, killer app emergence, various other uses, etc, etc.

[Melbustus]

You should both read this comment -> https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fe92x/im_ashley_barr_aka_adam_turner_the_first_mtgox/cto1383

I definitely think the next comment has to be true if the willy bot scenario is true https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fe92x/im_ashley_barr_aka_adam_turner_the_first_mtgox/ctor4f3

It's basically this, which was very insightfully written at the time:

Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox

TL/DR: A young man had a secret.  To keep it hidden, he kept digging until the hole was a billion dollars deep.  This is a speculative tale of a great bitcoin theft from MtGox in 2011 and the efforts that this man undertook to fix it.  The tale explains the bitcoin bear market of 2011, the explosive rally of 2013, delayed fiat withdrawals, malled transactions, and a bot named Willy.

 
 
Holy mother of God.  This is it.  This makes sense. 
 
I don't know why I suddenly and instantly believe this theory, but it fits all the pieces so perfectly. 
 
...

I used to think some variant of Peter R's theory made the most sense. What I could never quite reconcile, though, was that there was no blockchain trail of stolen coins in 2011. So I figured that maybe the 2011 hack involved the hackers copying a bunch of code, finding exploits a while later (or having installed a backdoor), and then slowly bleeding Gox in relatively small amounts over the years.

But honestly, reading that Ashley Barr thread makes me think that the whole thing more likely has a far simpler explanation; ie, Karpeles just spent a few million of the fiat deposits that came into the bank account (which was his personal account(!)) frivolously, while crediting traders with BTC. Given prices at the time (mid-2011 through 2012), it would only have taken <$5m in lavish "corporate" spending to run up ~550,000BTC in liabilities. Unfortunately there's a long history of startups proving that it's not hard to blow a few million bucks on dumb stuff.

[smooth]

I used to think some variant of Peter R's theory made the most sense. What I could never quite reconcile, though, was that there was no blockchain trail of stolen coins in 2011. So I figured that maybe the 2011 hack involved the hackers copying a bunch of code, finding exploits a while later (or having installed a backdoor), and then slowly bleeding Gox in relatively small amounts over the years.

One easy way to reconcile this is that the coins were not stolen but just lost: private keys erased with no usable backup, either by a hacker (vandalism) or by Karpeles himself (error).

But honestly, reading that Ashley Barr thread makes me think that the whole thing more likely has a far simpler explanation; ie, Karpeles just spent a few million of the fiat deposits that came into the bank account (which was his personal account(!)) frivolously, while crediting traders with BTC. Given prices at the time (mid-2011 through 2012), it would only have taken <$5m in lavish "corporate" spending to run up ~550,000BTC in liabilities. Unfortunately there's a long history of startups proving that it's not hard to blow a few million bucks on dumb stuff.

In general terms the idea he spent the money is plausible but the low level specifics don't work. He would have had to credit them with phoney fiat, not BTC. Without some other fraud, this would not affect the balance of BTC on the exchange.

[Its About Sharing]

You should both read this comment -> https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fe92x/im_ashley_barr_aka_adam_turner_the_first_mtgox/cto1383

I definitely think the next comment has to be true if the willy bot scenario is true https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fe92x/im_ashley_barr_aka_adam_turner_the_first_mtgox/ctor4f3

It's basically this, which was very insightfully written at the time:

Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox

TL/DR: A young man had a secret.  To keep it hidden, he kept digging until the hole was a billion dollars deep.  This is a speculative tale of a great bitcoin theft from MtGox in 2011 and the efforts that this man undertook to fix it.  The tale explains the bitcoin bear market of 2011, the explosive rally of 2013, delayed fiat withdrawals, malled transactions, and a bot named Willy.

 
 
Holy mother of God.  This is it.  This makes sense. 
 
I don't know why I suddenly and instantly believe this theory, but it fits all the pieces so perfectly. 
 

But when was the Willy Bot active? I understand how it could guide all markets since things all started on GOX and that is where the liquidity was.
But as other markets developed good liquidity, why would they still follow GOX so closely? At the end they stopped following GOX, right as the Shizz hit the fan.
My point is, why not ANY of that before? (Outside of a small price disparity.) This is more a practical question regarding when other exchanges surfaced with their liquidity perhaps.
Perhaps GOX just had a liquidity monopoly until, it obviously no longer had one.

[Its About Sharing]

I used to think some variant of Peter R's theory made the most sense. What I could never quite reconcile, though, was that there was no blockchain trail of stolen coins in 2011. So I figured that maybe the 2011 hack involved the hackers copying a bunch of code, finding exploits a while later (or having installed a backdoor), and then slowly bleeding Gox in relatively small amounts over the years.

One easy way to reconcile this is that the coins were not stolen but just lost: private keys erased with no usable backup, either by a hacker (vandalism) or by Karpeles himself (error).

But honestly, reading that Ashley Barr thread makes me think that the whole thing more likely has a far simpler explanation; ie, Karpeles just spent a few million of the fiat deposits that came into the bank account (which was his personal account(!)) frivolously, while crediting traders with BTC. Given prices at the time (mid-2011 through 2012), it would only have taken <$5m in lavish "corporate" spending to run up ~550,000BTC in liabilities. Unfortunately there's a long history of startups proving that it's not hard to blow a few million bucks on dumb stuff.

In general terms the idea he spent the money is plausible but the low level specifics don't work. He would have had to credit them with phoney fiat, not BTC. Without some other fraud, this would not affect the balance of BTC on the exchange.

Yeah, remember how Mark suddenly found 200k coins and no one bought it? I think he actually did "just" find those coins. Word is the place was a mess.
Those coins might never be coming back.

[TrueCryptonaire]

Smooth said earlier that the fall of bitcoin will be harsh for all the cryptoland (or something like this - I do not have time to search for the exact wordings because I am too focused on buying Moneros).

I tend to disagree, the fall of bitcoin might give room for other coins (creative destruction) to rise and it might force the big bitcoin holders to significiantly increase their holdings in altcoins (of course some of their bitcoins will be liquidated to plain fiat also but I doubt not all).

[rpietila]

The fall of Bitcoin has been harsh, but if it now loses the remaining 25% of its peak value, I think the valuation of non-BTC-clone cryptos might even go up.

BTC does not seem to lose its value now though..

[smooth]

Smooth said earlier that the fall of bitcoin will be harsh for all the cryptoland (or something like this - I do not have time to search for the exact wordings because I am too focused on buying Moneros).

I tend to disagree, the fall of bitcoin might give room for other coins (creative destruction) to rise and it might force the big bitcoin holders to significiantly increase their holdings in altcoins (of course some of their bitcoins will be liquidated to plain fiat also but I doubt not all).

I think I said that a while back in the context of an lack of speculative enthusiasm for crypto generally, and that has mostly played out over the past 18 months or so. Monero hasn't really gone anywhere against the backdrop of a weak Bitcoin market, and neither have most other coins.

If you are referring to the comments about Bitcoin failing or being surpassed by another coin (which is FAR from happening at this point of course) being very bad for crypto overall, I don't think I've ever said that and i don't particularly believe it. But it is a popular view among intelligent people so it deserves some consideration.

[smooth]

But when was the Willy Bot active? I understand how it could guide all markets since things all started on GOX and that is where the liquidity was.
But as other markets developed good liquidity, why would they still follow GOX so closely? At the end they stopped following GOX, right as the Shizz hit the fan.
My point is, why not ANY of that before? (Outside of a small price disparity.) This is more a practical question regarding when other exchanges surfaced with their liquidity perhaps.
Perhaps GOX just had a liquidity monopoly until, it obviously no longer had one.

It doesn't really matter if it was guiding the markets or just part of them. It was constant buying pressure, with no limitation of available funds (since it didn't actually have any funds anyway) or lack of willingness to pay higher prices in an otherwise rising market. That's explosive.

Of course that's the theory of Willy. I don't know that it has been proven.

[TrueCryptonaire]

Hi everyone,

lets predict the pirce of monero for 2016 and 2017

what are your thoughts about the price in one year, will it hit the $10?

I think we can have a stable price of 2 USD/XMR at the end of the year, maybe we had a spike towards 5-10 USD in between, hard to tell.
Next year XMR will enter top5 and probably top3 on coinmarketcap. I'm guassing a "stable" exchange rate around 10-20 USD
In 2017 we should become the strongest "altcoin" with an exchange rate of at least 50 USD, probably more (maybe 200-500 USD)
Why? If LTC can hit 50 USD with a supply 4*BTC, then XMR should be able to hit at least 4*50 USD with a supply comparable to BTC.

After 2017? I don't know, will XMR overtake BTC in the end? No clue.

BTC better be a lot higher than 200-500 by 2017 or it is going to be a long, cold, hard winter in crypto land. If it is, you can pretty much forget about these bull run scenarios for XMR. If BTC does perform, then there is plenty of running room for XMR without wondering about overtaking.

Now I found the exact quote to which I refered.
Cryptoland most likely will not be cold and hard even if btc will not run, or why should it be so bad for crypto?

After all, btc has its issues. The only advantage it has is its network effect which was created by the extreme bull markets. However, the bull markets do not need to be that extreme to gain the new adaption. Especially if you want to attract traditional fiat money - all you need is to offer more than the stock markets can do and you pretty much have a door open for tens of billions of dollars (potentially). Crazy pumps and dumps (such as dot com bubble) might harm more than benefit even though the price tend to be higher after the bubble than it was before the bubble. The bubbles might bring the class of bitter bagholders who are living in denial and their denial to admit the mistake keeps the price somewhat floating.

[smooth]

Hi everyone,

lets predict the pirce of monero for 2016 and 2017

what are your thoughts about the price in one year, will it hit the $10?

I think we can have a stable price of 2 USD/XMR at the end of the year, maybe we had a spike towards 5-10 USD in between, hard to tell.
Next year XMR will enter top5 and probably top3 on coinmarketcap. I'm guassing a "stable" exchange rate around 10-20 USD
In 2017 we should become the strongest "altcoin" with an exchange rate of at least 50 USD, probably more (maybe 200-500 USD)
Why? If LTC can hit 50 USD with a supply 4*BTC, then XMR should be able to hit at least 4*50 USD with a supply comparable to BTC.

After 2017? I don't know, will XMR overtake BTC in the end? No clue.

BTC better be a lot higher than 200-500 by 2017 or it is going to be a long, cold, hard winter in crypto land. If it is, you can pretty much forget about these bull run scenarios for XMR. If BTC does perform, then there is plenty of running room for XMR without wondering about overtaking.

Now I found the exact quote to which I refered.
Cryptoland most likely will not be cold and hard even if btc will not run, or why should it be so bad for crypto?

After all, btc has its issues. The only advantage it has is its network effect which was created by the extreme bull markets. However, the bull markets do not need to be that extreme to gain the new adaption. Especially if you want to attract traditional fiat money - all you need is to offer more than the stock markets can do and you pretty much have a door open for tens of billions of dollars (potentially). Crazy pumps and dumps (such as dot com bubble) might harm more than benefit even though the price tend to be higher after the bubble than it was before the bubble. The bubbles might bring the class of bitter bagholders who are living in denial and their denial to admit the mistake keeps the price somewhat floating.

Good point. Yes, I do think that it is a very long shot possibility that BTC languishes while leadership shifts elsewhere (invalidating my above model) but as I said, a long shot.

The issue I see is that with the amount of venture capital investment going into Bitcoin now and over the past year, if it doesn't perform over the next couple of years, then early stage and speculative investors will largely lose interest, pull back to a much more conservative posture. and not just shift to building liquidity and infrastructure for another coin (whether that is XMR or anything else). If Bitcoin does perform then more investment money will come into crypto and some of that will flow to good coins/projects/technologies like XMR.

Longer term, anything can happen. I don't think BTC's leadership is very meaningful until it gets to 10-20% adoption minimum.

EDIT: Looking at it now, I think I misread the post to which I was replying as saying that BTC would be 200-500. Also when i say "investment going into Bitcoin" above, I mean bets on Bitcoin. Most of the investment is going into Bitcoin-based companies not Bitcoin itself, i think.

[dreamspark]

Definately echo what your saying smooth in regards to btc needing to perform. I think that to most of the outside world cryto=bitcoin. If people loose money investing in bitcoin and its infrastructure its going to take a lot to convinve people oh hey why not invest in x,y or x alt.

[futureofbitcoin]

Yes, people needs trust in crypto itself, and come to accept that its not fake money. At that point other cryptos can flourish.


But right now crypto = bitcoin, so bitcoin needs to succeed first. It's highly, highly unlikely that bitcoin will be displaced before that, I think.

[canth]

Yeah, remember how Mark suddenly found 200k coins and no one bought it? I think he actually did "just" find those coins. Word is the place was a mess.
Those coins might never be coming back.

I think most would prefer that the coins were lost/destroyed rather than stolen. At least then everyone's remaining holdings are worth slightly more rather than having enriched some thief, whether an insider or outside in the Gox operation.

[dreamspark]

Yeah, remember how Mark suddenly found 200k coins and no one bought it? I think he actually did "just" find those coins. Word is the place was a mess.
Those coins might never be coming back.

I think most would prefer that the coins were lost/destroyed rather than stolen. At least then everyone's remaining holdings are worth slightly more rather than having enriched some thief, whether an insider or outside in the Gox operation.

Imo they were stolen in the 2011 hack. It explains everything perfectly including the need to suddenly try and buy the coins back, running up the price.

[medusa13]

busy day but still all going easy, volume is UP, i hope this is just the beginning. the only doubt i have is polo, after all it kind of became the burden we have to grow over.

the wall pulled like expected, the bulls regained some confidence, but are not yet back to old pride. 1w macd going green, could it really be? positions got increased, but most seats are allready occupied.
hope we see some traders with leverage jump in soon, maybe it allready happend (shame on you poloniex for still not publishing this data, pfui!)

could be a small bump or could be moontrain just leaving right now, i think the later is true but i'm also not the one to give an objectiv statement here
a new tagged release and the party would be perfect!

fly safe people  

[Bassica]

1W MACD turning green would be interesting, 7 more days...  

Edit: this is also the deadline for btc's cup 'n handle to trigger (if). 

That would be an epic moment for us Monerians

[rangedriver]

1W MACD turning green would be interesting, 7 more days...  

I think it will be a little longer than 7 days. Currently we're at the top of the upward channel - if it holds then the logical destination is 0.002 with an ETA of just under a week.

This would keep the 1-week MACD in the red for the next couple of weeks.

[smooth]

kenji's mental breakdown post was removed