For this "micro-crash", it seems that Bitstamp (12:30) was ahead of Huobi (12:32). 

Apart from a few scattered transactions, Bitstamp's volume was and remains very small (a couple of BTC/min); while Huobi's rose to about 100 BTC/min after the micro-crash, and is still at that level.

Thus, I find it hard to beleive that Bitstamp was the prime mover of this event.  Any negative news on the forums?

Do you know what fees they will charge?

MtGOX's volume was falling relative to other non-Chinese exchanges, and it had already lost its first place among them.  As you can see from the tables that I have been posting, after they locked their exit doors their trade volume paradoxically exploded, from ~15 kBTC/day to ˜100 kBTC on certain days.  Who knows how much of that is legitmate and how much is generated by the exchange itself.

I noticed on other threads that many people make a wrong assumption about the charts: that the summary of the order book covers the entire order book.  So for instance they will say "only 2000 coins left to buy at SuchExchange", etc.

Consider writing "..." when the summary ends prematurely because the order book received from the exchange was truncated.

I think that Huobi had larger-than-usual drops 1 minute ahead of Bitstamp at 12:30 UTC, and a couple of minutes ahead at 12:37.

That is easier to explain: MtGOX is a roach motel -- what goes in presently cannot get out, and perhaps never will.  Except for naive investors who sell coins at other exchanges and sink their money into MtGOX, there is no communication between that market and all the others (which appear to be fairly well connected by arbitragers).

As others have pointed out, what the charts show for MtGox is trade of virtual "goxBTC" for virtual "goxUSD", that may be convertible one day to actual BTC and actual USD, at some unknown "exchange rate" between 1 and 0 (inclusive).

Just because I wrote that...   

It is 8 pm already in China and volume is very low, about 2 kBTC/h.  Looks like the price is going to stay where it is, for the rest of the day.

However, last time they had such low volume was on feb/09.  Could this be just the quiet before the storm, again?

There is a small bug in the crosshair cursor.  In the 1h chart, when I put the cursor over either the 08:00 bar or the 09:00 bar, the moving label at the bottom of the cursor says "0" instead of "8" or "9".

Other times seem to display fine.

I am on Brazilian savings time (BST) that is 3 hours West of Greenwhich, so those times are 11:00 and 12:00 UTC. 

Could this be another tiny argument for using UTC time instead of local time? 

I was thinking of an international society with no other power than to write standards and grant "seals of approval" to exchanges that want to get them.   There are many examples, like ISO, CIE,  ANSI, W3C, NERC, ... 

Some governments may make their standards mandatory or even delegate their enforcement to them (e.g. NERC in the US) , but the origanizations themselves are non-governamental.

Is that for me? I did not complain of anything, someone just had asked "who has 1 million coins".

Oops, thanks! 

I am sorry, which word should I have used?

++

Net says that Satoshi owns 1 M pre-mined BTC, perhaps other "founding fathers" too?  Although of course they are not "known people".

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):


             !    Sun !    Mon !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !
  EXCHANGE   !  02/09 !  02/10 !  02/11 !  02/12 !  02/13 !  02/14 !  02/15 !  02/16 !  02/17 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp   |  15.06 |  71.86 |  40.06 |  15.51 |  28.15 |  63.38 |  20.76 |  26.40 |  19.90 | USD
  BitFinEx   |  12.07 |  41.98 |  39.54 |  12.85 |  17.17 |  53.68 |  10.83 |  16.75 |  15.69 | USD
  BTC-e      |  12.51 |  47.04 |  28.64 |   9.97 |  18.53 |  52.18 |   9.16 |  21.75 |  15.07 | USD,EUR,RUR
  Kraken     |   0.45 |   1.45 |   1.11 |   0.58 |   0.93 |   1.79 |   0.41 |   0.91 |   0.89 | EUR
  Bitcoin.DE |   0.47 |   1.54 |   0.67 |   0.51 |   0.78 |   1.63 |   0.22 |   0.57 |   0.57 | EUR
  CaVirtEx   |   0.23 |   0.77 |   0.53 |   0.29 |   0.41 |   1.16 |   0.15 |   0.15 |   0.15 | CAD
  CampBX     |   0.24 |   0.37 |   0.11 |   0.10 |   0.21 |   0.41 |   0.05 |   0.07 |   0.28 | USD

  SUBTOTAL   |  41.03 | 165.01 | 110.66 |  39.81 |  66.18 | 174.23 |  41.58 |  66.60 |  52.55 |

  Huobi      |  64.08 | 134.09 | 120.08 | 131.86 |  82.39 | 236.27 | 122.80 | 110.57 | 130.41 | CNY
  OKCoin     |  34.63 |  70.49 |  64.22 |  60.79 |  62.49 | 147.26 |  51.45 |  63.63 |  63.05 | CNY
  BTC-China  |   5.75 |  18.23 |  11.17 |  11.01 |   8.02 |  24.87 |   7.55 |   9.08 |   7.86 | CNY
  Bter       |   0.33 |   0.85 |   0.76 |   0.69 |   0.65 |   1.54 |   0.74 |   0.56 |   0.48 | CNY

  SUBTOTAL   | 104.79 | 223.66 | 196.23 | 204.35 | 153.55 | 409.94 | 182.54 | 183.84 | 201.80 |

  MtGOX      |  23.48 |  50.07 |  18.70 |  25.21 |  33.85 |  79.56 |  60.15 | 104.46 |  65.69 | USD,EUR,GBP,AUD,JPY

  TOTAL      | 169.30 | 438.74 | 325.59 | 269.37 | 253.58 | 663.73 | 284.27 | 354.90 | 320.04 |



All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

The exchange Bter was added to Bitcoinwisdom's menu on 2014-02-15; its volumes for 02/07 to 02/14 have been added
retroactively to the table.

Coinbase is said to use Bitstamp for currency conversion.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

NOTE: A few days ago, MtGOX has suspended withdrawals of Bitcoins and national currencies.  Therefore it is essentially isolated from other markets, and its price is completely out of the norm.  The exceptional trade volumes above may be meaningless.

Poetry to fill a Dull Chart Moment:

  Naive you are
  if you believe
  life favours those
  who aren't naive.

       --Piet Hein

I don't think that the Bitcoin Foundation can or should be salvaged.  Since the other board members haven't given any sign that they are displeased with Mark's actions at MtGOX, one cannot assume that they are better than him.  

Besides, it is not clear whose interests the Foundation is supposed to represent: small investors, big investors, traders, exchange owners, developers, or people who just want bitcoin to be used for commerce?

Methinks that bitcoin owners should create an independent Bitcoin Investors Association, supported by fixed low fees and accepting no donations (so that it does not become a Bitcoin Whales Association).  Its first priority should be to write a set of standards for exchanges (including transparent accounting), audit them, and certify them for compliance.

PS. I should add that the slope of the current "slumber trend" in Huobi's price (yellow line in the previously posted chart) seems consistent with my theory for the cause of such trends: namely, a gradual decrease  in the CNY/BTC ratio circulating in the Chinese bitcoin markets.

The money supply may be decreasing due to  unlucky traders leaving in frustration after losing money, while new investors are kept away by bad press and/or the general downward trend of the price over the last month. 

The coin supply may be increasing due to mining and/or inflow of bitcoins from  non-Chinese markets through arbitrage trading.

But, while the trend now seems real, these explanations are just guesses.

OK, so here is the new hot Chinese (True) Slumber Method prediction for tomorrow:

Prediction valid for: Tuesday 2014-02-18, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price:  3860 -- 3920 CNY (3890 plus or minus 30)
Bitstamp's predicted price: 625 -- 645 USD (635 plus or minus 10)

The prediction for Huobi above was obtained by fitting a least squares straight line to the True Slumber Points, namely the mean prices at February 10, 12, 14, 15, and 17, 19:00--19:59 UTC (yellow dots in the previously posted chart), and extrapolating that trend line for one more day.  The prices are ~4080, ~4006, ~4004, ~3961, and ~3905, respectively; which extrapolate to ~3890 CNY. 

The prediction for Bitstamp, as usual, is that for Huobi divided by the normal currency factor R = 6.12.

NOTE 1: Those predictions are conditional to Huobi's clients and their robots being all in bed by Feb/18 19:00 UTC.  Otherwise the Method offers no prediction.

NOTE 2: Beware that extemporaneous epiphanies may unexpectedly open wormholes in ontological space and send the market's collective weltanschauung to another galaxy.