Bitcoin Media: Bitcoin Euro Stories are Exaggerated

[elux]

I’ve been putting off saying anything due to dealing with the Bitcoinica issue, but this is too much.

Bitcoin euro volume has barely increased (if at all). The only thing that’s happened is that the euro has increased in price vs the dollar slightly.

This is a case of media organisations engaging in copy-cat cut and paste story writing without fact checking. I believe the stories are wrong.

http://bitcoinmedia.com/bitcoin-euro-stories-are-exaggerated/

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[Hexadecibel]

Which just means that the current rally from 5.10 - 5.65+ was a healthy one, yes?

I could live with that.

[hxtop]

MAYBE

[ribuck]

(I think the current rally is due to new users coming to Bitcoin because they've heard about Satoshi Dice. Nothing more, nothing less.)

As for the Euro, the stories are obviously exaggerated. The Greeks and Spaniards do not fear holding Euro notes, because there's no difference in value between a Euro note spent in Germany and one spent in Greece or Spain. What they do fear is for the transactions in their Greek and Spanish bank accounts being limited, or for their bank account balances being forcibly converted into "New Euros" or Drachmas or whatever. But to protect against that, it's sufficient to hold Euro banknotes under the mattress.

[Technomage]

It's true that the articles exaggerate and it's likely that the articles themselves will cause more volume increase than there has been before those articles. However this article is dead wrong on the volume increase, it's underestimating it by a large factor. Mt. Gox EUR is not much larger than the other EUR exchanges and it happens to be the one that has had by far the least amount of volume increase lately. The other Euro exchanges are up significantly.

Some numbers have been put up at the comment section. This is not at all surprising that Gox EUR is losing volume relative to other EUR exchanges. Gox is the only one that has had big issues with SEPA and it's the only one that requires verification to use SEPA at all.

[Elwar]

There mere fact that Bitcoin price vs the dollar is not declining, no less increasing while the inflation rate of BTC is up around 50% shows that there is a healthy amount of people buying BTC.

In December when that inflation rate drops to 25% and the same amount or more of interest continues, that other 25% will likely be the rate at which it climbs.

[byronbb]

I was suspicious of this article the moment I saw it. A quick check of the euro/btc volume and google trends confirmed it was nothing more than someone's working imagination.

[Saturn7]

Looks like the work of a PR company.  Simultaneous stories from different sites on the same made up topic.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Looks like the work of a PR company.  Simultaneous stories from different sites on the same made up topic.

If you trace it back to it's source, it will read "BitInstant" LOL

[istar]

Just like when they exaggerated that Bitcoin was hacked...

But sometimes a story can become the truth by simply repeating it enough times

[unclescrooge]

Euro volume keeps rising in various exchanges. This is an interesting time for bitcoin

[wareen]

I'm not saying that all the news articles reporting Europeans fleeing into Bitcoin were justified, but disputing them by saying the mtgoxEUR volume hasn't risen (much) is equally flawed. It is perfectly reasonable for Europeans to buy BTC for USD - especially in times of declining EUR/USD rate it is a wise choice to have Mt. Gox exchange the money for USD upon deposit. Even if you trade on the Mt. Gox Euro market your orders are most likely filled by automatically converted USD offers anyway because of the low volume in Euro and because of the way Mt. Gox' trading system works. Also Bitstamp (as a rather popular European exchange) is USD only.

TL;DR: the mtgoxEUR volume is a rather bad indicator for Euro influx into the Bitcoin world

[genuise]

TL;DR: the mtgoxEUR volume is a rather bad indicator for Euro influx into the Bitcoin world

but what else we have? I think actuall tarding and order book statistics is the only sources for us to have any certainty

[Bitcoin Oz]

Looks like the work of a PR company.  Simultaneous stories from different sites on the same made up topic.

If you trace it back to it's source, it will read "BitInstant" LOL

What is good for bitinstant is good for bitcoin I imagine.

As or me I am shorting fiat by buying shares on glbse to avoid the government inflation on my savings. I imagine many other people are getting bitcoins/shares for the same reason.

[unclescrooge]

I'm not saying that all the news articles reporting Europeans fleeing into Bitcoin were justified, but disputing them by saying the mtgoxEUR volume hasn't risen (much) is equally flawed. It is perfectly reasonable for Europeans to buy BTC for USD - especially in times of declining EUR/USD rate it is a wise choice to have Mt. Gox exchange the money for USD upon deposit. Even if you trade on the Mt. Gox Euro market your orders are most likely filled by automatically converted USD offers anyway because of the low volume in Euro and because of the way Mt. Gox' trading system works. Also Bitstamp (as a rather popular European exchange) is USD only.

TL;DR: the mtgoxEUR volume is a rather bad indicator for Euro influx into the Bitcoin world

I dunno, I'm suming all the euro volume accross the exchanges. In the last two days for exemple it has rised to more than 10% of all currencies volume (which is itself rising).

This is the data I've got right now (it's not very extensive, but imho it gives a certain snapshot of what is happening):

[rudrigorc2]

I'm not saying that all the news articles reporting Europeans fleeing into Bitcoin were justified, but disputing them by saying the mtgoxEUR volume hasn't risen (much) is equally flawed. It is perfectly reasonable for Europeans to buy BTC for USD - especially in times of declining EUR/USD rate it is a wise choice to have Mt. Gox exchange the money for USD upon deposit. Even if you trade on the Mt. Gox Euro market your orders are most likely filled by automatically converted USD offers anyway because of the low volume in Euro and because of the way Mt. Gox' trading system works. Also Bitstamp (as a rather popular European exchange) is USD only.

TL;DR: the mtgoxEUR volume is a rather bad indicator for Euro influx into the Bitcoin world

I dunno, I'm suming all the euro volume accross the exchanges. In the last two days for exemple it has rised to more than 10% of all currencies volume (which is itself rising).

This is the data I've got right now (it's not very extensive, but imho it gives a certain snapshot of what is happening):

How you get this data? Please PM me.

[wareen]

TL;DR: the mtgoxEUR volume is a rather bad indicator for Euro influx into the Bitcoin world

but what else we have? I think actuall tarding and order book statistics is the only sources for us to have any certainty

There simply is no publicly available data capturing the EUR influx. I personally traded considerable amounts of EUR for BTC in the last few weeks for various people but you won't see that volume in any of the EUR markets. The non-public data of the exchanges is the only reliable information in that regard so I wouldn't dismiss their announcements that easily.
If Charlie says they had rising volume from Europe then you are of course free to doubt it, but you certainly can't disprove him by pointing at mtgoxEUR.

Sure you can look at the volumes on all the EUR markets combined but the argumentative power of these numbers is still rather limited. There simply is not a very large incentive to trade EUR for BTC directly atm.

[unclescrooge]

How you get this data? Please PM me.

A small excel monitor I made, PM sent

[unclescrooge]

TL;DR: the mtgoxEUR volume is a rather bad indicator for Euro influx into the Bitcoin world

but what else we have? I think actuall tarding and order book statistics is the only sources for us to have any certainty

There simply is no publicly available data capturing the EUR influx. I personally traded considerable amounts of EUR for BTC in the last few weeks for various people but you won't see that volume in any of the EUR markets. The non-public data of the exchanges is the only reliable information in that regard so I wouldn't dismiss their announcements that easily.
If Charlie says they had rising volume from Europe then you are of course free to doubt it, but you certainly can't disprove him by pointing at mtgoxEUR.

Sure you can look at the volumes on all the EUR markets combined but the argumentative power of these numbers is still rather limited. There simply is not a very large incentive to trade EUR for BTC directly atm.

Yes it's hard to monitor otc transactions, but I think trends seen in exchanges should match approx. trends seen otc

[wareen]

Yes it's hard to monitor otc transactions, but I think trends seen in exchanges should match approx. trends seen otc

True, but I was not talking about OTC - I was talking about exchanging your EUR for USD first and then trade them for BTC. The exchange fee is lower than what the EUR/USD rate went down the last weeks and since there is so little volume on the pure EUR markets your orders are most probably filled by converted USD offers anyway. In the end you're better off doing the conversion as soon as possible (=on deposit) and then placing your orders on the USD markets.