763
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 06:05:40 AM
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Total trade volume today (Tue Mar/11 00:00--23:59 UTC), on the exchanges that I monitor, was ~146 kBTC. That is 42% less than yesterday's, and 71% less than last Tuesdays.
Trade volume outside China fell 43% compared to yesterday (from 33 to 19 kBTC). Bitstamp (9.17 kBTC) retained its first place, but Bitfinex (3.63) fell to third place, behind BTC-e (5.09). Bitfinex fell 69% compared to yesterday.
Trade volume in China fell 42% (from 218 to 127 kBTC). OKCoin had more volume than Huobi (52% versus 43%), like it had since last Wednesday.
China's slice of the total volume remained practically unchanged at 87%
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764
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 05:50:18 AM
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Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC): ! Tue ! Wed ! Thu ! Fri ! Sat ! Sun ! Mon ! Tue ! EXCHANGE ! 03/04 ! 03/05 ! 03/06 ! 03/07 ! 03/08 ! 03/09 ! 03/10 ! 03/11 ! Currencies considered
Bitstamp | 28.03 | 12.72 | 10.40 | 21.45 | 9.70 | 9.12 | 13.40 | 9.17 | USD BitFinEx | 25.03 | 8.38 | 7.06 | 17.23 | 10.97 | 8.29 | 11.60 | 3.63 | USD BTC-e | 28.83 | 11.19 | 5.69 | 13.54 | 8.71 | 6.52 | 7.16 | 5.09 | USD,EUR,RUR Kraken | 1.81 | 0.87 | 0.71 | 1.20 | 0.55 | 0.64 | 0.57 | 0.45 | EUR Bitcoin.DE | 1.02 | 0.40 | 0.34 | 0.38 | 0.31 | 0.20 | 0.39 | 0.41 | EUR CaVirtEx | 0.33 | 0.22 | 0.22 | 0.24 | 0.12 | 0.15 | 0.13 | 0.18 | CAD CampBX | 0.14 | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.07 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.05 | 0.06 | USD
SUBTOTAL | 85.19 | 33.82 | 24.45 | 54.11 | 30.39 | 24.94 | 33.30 | 18.99 |
OKCoin | 137.35 | 286.05 | 139.37 | 109.70 | 146.46 | 136.24 | 119.00 | 68.50 | CNY Huobi | 268.47 | 196.00 | 92.40 | 96.37 | 119.46 | 103.51 | 95.10 | 55.00 | CNY BTC-China | 15.36 | 8.04 | 5.58 | 4.87 | 5.08 | 4.24 | 3.34 | 3.11 | CNY Bter | 0.64 | 0.31 | 0.32 | 0.32 | 0.28 | 0.21 | 0.27 | 0.34 | CNY
SUBTOTAL | 421.82 | 490.40 | 237.67 | 211.26 | 271.28 | 244.20 | 217.71 | 126.95 |
TOTAL | 507.01 | 524.22 | 262.12 | 265.37 | 301.67 | 269.14 | 251.01 | 145.94 |
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. 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".)
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765
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 05:49:08 AM
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There are about 4000 users currently logged onto BTCe -- I've seen it as low as a couple of thousand around this time last year and as high as 12K last November. You could make a rough guess (of an exchanges no. of users) based on these figures and taking into account an exchange's volume in relation to either the current or median figure. Add them up (I know you love these tasks Jorge ) and you may have a very rough number. I'd imagine its more than 10K though. Thanks! Would those logged-in users have any other reason to log in, other than trading? Assuming that are all traders, BTC-e's volume today was 5.09 kBTC, and the total outside China was 19 kBTC. If proportion holds, today there were about 16,000 traders loged in outside China. That ignores possible overlap (users who trade in two or more platforms), which should not be terribly significant. Today's volume was very low (1/4 of last Tuesday, for eample). Is the volume low because there are fewer traders logged in, or because the same traders generate less volume?
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766
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 05:25:23 AM
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Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Wednesday Mar/12Prediction valid for: Wednesday 2014-03-12, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after) Huobi's predicted price: 3788 CNY. Bitstamp's predicted price: 631 USD. HuobiThe red and green strokes are actual Huobi hourly prices. The current prediction is the rightmost magenta square. The blue squares are the last bullish and bearish predictions (see below), and the light blue-gray squares are the older ones. The orange and grey dots are the Slumber Points, the mean Huobi prices at 19:00 UTC every day. Each point is a Glyptodon if the hourly volume V h for 19:00--19:59 UTC is less than 0.005 times the daily volume V d 00:00--23:59 UTC; and is an Albertosaurus otherwise. The grey lines are trends fitted a posteriori to the Glyptodon Points. The orange line is the trend that was assumed for the above prediction. The Helix pomatia is a graphical indication of market sentiment as deduced from the contents of this thread. By the arbitrary criterion I have been using, today was defintely a Glyptodon (V h/V d = 195/55000 = 0.00354 < 0.005) and therefore a valid data point. The trend that included it and seemed most plausible was a shifted exponential p(d) = A+B*Q**(d-4), where d is the day of the month, fitted to the five Glyptodons Mar/04--06,09,11. It seemed reasonable to exclude the Glyptodon of Mar/08, since its V h/V d (4.27) was near the threshold and it seemed to lie outside any trend. The ratio Q was set to 0.700, giving A = 3772.33, B = 268.94). BitstampThe red and green strokes are actual Bitstamp hourly prices. The dots, dinosaurs, mammals, lines, and magenta squares are Huobi's Slumber Points, dinosaurs, mammals, trends, and new predictions, scaled by the currency conversion factor R (6.40 for Feb/07--09, 6.00 since Mar/04, and 6.12 for all other dates). Checking the previous predictionPrediction was posted on: Tuesday 2014-03-11, 01:31 UTC Prediction was valid for: Tuesday 2014-03-11, 19:00--19:59 UTC Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3802 CNY Huobi's predicted price for bulls: 4073 CNY Error: 271 CNY (~45 USD) Huobi's predicted price for bears: 3597 CNY Errors: 205 CNY (~34 USD) Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 623 USD Bitstamp's predicted price for bulls: 679 USD Error: 56 USD Bitstamp's predicted price for bears: 600 USD Error: 23 USD NOTE: Huobi's CEO denied allegations of fake trade volume, but said nothing about fake Glyptodons.
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767
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 03:19:51 AM
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The only substantial thing left is speculation. I wonder how many people are involved in that. My guess is less than 10,000, which would be less than 0.001% of the population...
Wow, that's a lot of upside! I had thought I was bullish! I cannot tell whether you are being sarcastic. Some time ago, Huobi's CEO claimed to have 10,000 active clients. Discounting for hype and adding OKCoin and the others, 10,000 active traders in China seems to be a very generous upper bound. (Of course it can be much less.) I would be surprised if there are more than 10,000 active traders in all the exchanges outside China. Is there a reliable estimate somewhere?
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768
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 03:01:11 AM
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I use [ bitcoins ] at the newsstand by my office building in midtown Manhattan, to buy chewing gum and newspapers. I use them to make charitable donations to a school in Chad and another in Kyrgyzstan. I use them to pay rent on my apartment on the UES. Eventually I should be able to replace most of my uses of fiat with uses of BTC. I will generally shop at Overstock or TigerDirect when possible, avoiding Amazon until they take bitcoin.
That is because the US Government is still lukewarm about bitcoin. AFAIK you cannot legally sell chewing gum in China for bitcoin, and I suppose that a corporate entity cannot take rent in bitcoin. If the US decides that it doesn't like bitcoin after all, you will not be able to do that in the US either. By the way, are those merchants actually accepting bitcoin, or do they receive dollars through processors like Bitpay? The dollar was banned in the USSR (and a few other states) but was still quite popular (there) by my understanding.
"Quite popular" is relative. Surely no e-commerce site in Russia will post prices in dollars or accept payment in dollars. So what things can you buy with dollars in Russia, away from hotels, airports, and other tourist-frequented places?
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769
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 02:47:49 AM
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For example, Cryptocurrency is claimed by China as commodity, not currency. But how can one get that commodity besides mining? By regulation, All banks or payment processors are forbidden to link with exchanges. This means one just can not buy bitcoin on an exchange, as he can't credit his fiat into an exchange in an allowed way.
This results in a funny situation. Exchanges, banks and traders are all doing openly, but not allowed by government. Do I understand correctly.
My question is, why the Chinese government banned Cryptocurrency but allows everything going?
AFAIK that is not correct, the exchanges are legal and people can transfer money to/from exchanges via banks. In fact, the only way to move Yuan into or out of exchanges is by bank transfer between Chinese bank bank accounts. What the Chinese banks cannot do is buy or sell bitcoins themselves, or deal with bitcoin in any way. To the banks, an exchange are just another corporate customer, and they do not touch any bitcoin, they deal with the Yuan exclusively. The Chinese government has effectively confined bitcoin to playpens --- the exchanges --- where it can have no significant effect on the economy. At that point the PBoC apparently stopped worrying about it. A commercial transaction always has two legs, the client sends the payment and the merchant sends the goods/services. Even if the first leg were safe and anonymous (which is very hard to ensure), if the transaction is illegal the government can easily catch the customer by the second leg.
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770
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 02:27:45 AM
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From what Iknow, Chinese residents cannot pay for goods or services using bitcoin; banks and other financial institutions cannot deal with bitcoin; bitcoins cannot be sold by e-commerce sites; and e-payment services cannot be used to pay for bitcoin. So what is left?
Lots of things are left - including: Storage of value, exportation of capital from country and speculation. Sorry to repeat, but they cannot "export capital" with bitcoin. When a Chinese national buys bitcoin with Yuan from other Chinese, transfers the bitcoins to another exchange outside China, and sells them there for dollars, the net result is that the Chinese national got some dollars from non-Chinese people. All the Yuan remained in China. The PBoC sees nothing wrong in that, quite the opposite. That is different from when Chinese citizens exchanges Yuan for dollars at a foreign bank, in China or outside it, since in thsi case the bank effectively becomes owner of some of China's real wealth. As for store of value, there are zillions of options that are better than bitcoin. The only substantial thing left is speculation. I wonder how many people are involved in that. My guess is less than 10,000, which would be less than 0.001% of the population...
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771
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 01:24:58 AM
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China may have realized that it cannot stifle bitcoin.. and china has a mixed set of motives including a desire to have some kind of investment vehicle separate from the dollar... .. so China is likely torn about bitcoin and about whether they like it or hate it... maybe they are frienemies with bitcoin?
From what Iknow, Chinese residents cannot pay for goods or services using bitcoin; banks and other financial institutions cannot deal with bitcoin; bitcoins cannot be sold by e-commerce sites; and e-payment services cannot be used to pay for bitcoin. So what is left? I believe there are other cointries which have taken similar measures; Russia and India, perhaps? (A thread was started in this forum to build a list the legal status of bitcoin in each coutry, but it never got beyond the first draft.) Some countries (like the US) have not banned crypto-coins explicitly, but their existing regulations alerady prevent some of those uses. If crypto currencies will only be used for clandestine commerce between peers, under risk of legal penalties, they will have failed in their goal.
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772
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 12:52:39 AM
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Btw. I am in the process of coauthoring (with sirius) an e-book about "History of Bitcoin Economy". What would you like to have discussed?
Are you going to discuss [ ... ] the fact that governments may see their abilities and efforts as very difficult to regulate and/or stifle bitcoin given the P2P nature of it... I think that he said "history" and not "fairy tales". Bitcoin is very easy to regulate and stifle, see China for example.
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773
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 12, 2014, 12:47:40 AM
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Just writing my thoughts, why usual people are probably not interested in buying Bitcoins.
First, they don't know what it is. Second, they don't have easy access (say buy BTCs with paypal) Third, they don't see the point - right now. Fourth, they don't understand how an online currency can work. Fifth, they smell a scam. In the early 90s, the Brazilian branch of Amway started an obnoxious Ponzi/pyramid schema here. To become an Amway representative, you had to pay a few hundred dollars, ostensibly for some sketchy sales training. Then you could make a little money by buying their detergents and such by the box, and selling them by the bottle to your friends. Or you could make a lot more money by recruiting more representatives, and receiving part of their joining fees as commission. Naturally Amway gave out brochures with photos of people in luxury boats and cars, all suposedly bought with those fat commissions. Soon we were running into Amway recruiters everywhere. Saying "no thanks" to strangers was easy; dismissing relatives and friends, sometimes in financial difficulties, was not. We ended up joining only to preserve one of those friendships; but of course we did not even try to sell anything, or bestow the same annoyance onto others. Like US schools, this university instructs prospective grad students to solicit letters of recommendation from former teachers or advisors. Once we got a letter that said only "I do NOT recommend this student because he has joined Amway". Fortunately that application was rejected for other reasons, otherwise we would have been faced with a thorny ethical dilemma. (Amway in the US doesn't seem to be so obnoxious. Perhaps the Brazilian "Amway" was only loosely connected to them. Eventually the Brazilian justice stepped in and stopped their worst abuses.) The point of this story is: It is quite easy to tell wheter someone wants you to invest in something because he is genuinely enthusiastic about it and want to share it with you, or because he expects to pocket some of your money. The latter types are terribly annoying, and often end up losing their friends along with their money. Be careful not to become one.
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775
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 11, 2014, 06:04:24 PM
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Basically, Li thinks that a platform will need to make its revenues from value-added services rather than trading, which he sees as a basic service and a commodity that should be free for consumers.
What services are they selling? Let me guess, premium memberships that include a pause button to execute your trades before non-premium members? Good question. Apart from "selling their clients' coins" of course. Perhaps bitcoin lending (don't they do that already?). Priority in the placement of bids/asks (a subtler alternative to a "pause" button? In my understanding, bitcoin as a currency of e-commerce or as a bona-fide financial instrument is dead in China, and I don't see that changing in the future.
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780
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: March 11, 2014, 07:21:28 AM
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This may be of interest too: @rpietila claims that MtGOX had less than 70,000 clients, counting all accounts with at least 0.001 BTC: MtGox leak analyzed
69266 951441 mBTC+ # #BTC avg 10 000k 5 130 809 26161,8000 1 000k 96 212 762 2216,2708 100 000 1266 318 490 251,5719 10 000 7291 219 331 30,0824 1 000 17851 62 630 3,5085 100 16389 6 834 0,4170 10 13675 528 0,0386 1 12693 57 0,0045
It seems that among the claimed 1 million Mt.Gox users, there was 69266 accounts with a balance of at least 1m BTC. In total, they were supposed to hold BTC951,441. [ ... ] => Due to findings above ("j", median, and the fact that Gox had only 70,000 customers despite the claims), I will be prompted to revise the Bitcoin # number of users downward from the 2.0 million in the previous month. EDIT: markup
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