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141
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 26, 2014, 10:31:45 AM
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@Jorge
I'm curious. You're an academic, and a scientist, I believe. So any theory you hold must be falsifiable in order to be viewed as credible.
Under what criteria would you entertain the idea that you might be wrong about bitcoin, or cryptocurrency in general?
I answered this some 6,223,678,221 pages ago on this thread. "Success" will be when bitcoin (or crypto) gets used by a large number of people because it is cheaper/faster/safer/easier/whatever than the alternatives. Not because one has a BTC stash to burn, not to support the cause, not to evade taxes or make illegal payments, not because it is hip, not to speculate with, not out of curiosity, etc. Offline key/address generation and asymmetric crypto-signing of "digital checks" are undeniable wins that I am sure will be widely adopted eventually. As for the rest of the bitcoin protocol, and the Satoshi blockchain in particular, I am more skeptical than ever. |
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143
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 26, 2014, 10:05:07 AM
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I hate glitches like that because it stuffs up the view of the chart
On bitcoinwisdom you can select Settings/Chart range/Auto to clip such glitches. Jorge, dont you have a job? Or do you just take your tax payer salary, pocket it every week while you obsess over a currency you do not own? Don't you have work to do? It is 07:04 am here. My class tonight starts early, at 19:00. |
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145
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 26, 2014, 09:52:42 AM
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A few hours ago, I thought that I spotted a couple of significant transactions at Huobi that occurred below the highest bid at the time. Either that, or robots re-populated the spread after a dump with several bids, so quickly that the current price and highest bid did not change on the chart. This glitch now makes me wonder...
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147
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: The Willy Report...What do you guys make of it?
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on: May 26, 2014, 09:09:17 AM
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Lots of mom and pop businesses, hipster cafes and tech specialists, but in reality bitcoin transaction numbers are only up 2x compared to 2 years ago
And both transaction count and total BTC transaction volume have been roughly constant for the past few months. The latter is surprising since the price has fallen. The bulk of transactions (in either metric) is probably unrelated to commerce anyway. May be online gambling, fund management, mining, and/or people moving BTC between addresses that they own (such as hot/cold wallets, or attempts to make dirty money hard to trace), etc. |
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148
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 26, 2014, 03:56:41 AM
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Suddenly the price freezes, volume drops, and silence falls on the forums. It is that tense moment right before the tyrannosaur jumps out of the jungle.
Or maybe just lunchtime in China.
As a computer science professor with academic interest in bitcoin only, and not owner, not trader, the right section for you is "Development & Technical Discussion", not "Speculation". As a computer science professor who is very skeptical of bitcoin's longterm success, the right thing to do is to criticize the design of the blockchain, not to concern when do Chinese people have their lunch "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto." [Gurgle Translate] "Gay addition: humans no, for me alien male prostitute" |
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154
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: Proof of massive fraudulent trading activity and how it has affected the price
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on: May 26, 2014, 12:02:11 AM
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Also, the Chinese exchanges don't have the ID requirements of others.
After the December decree, the clients of Chinese exchanges were forced to use Chinese bank accounts, either for deposit through wire transfers or to recharge the exchanges' "recharge cards". So, in terms of ID requirements, I believe that the Chinese exchanges were effectively stricter than those outside China. Perhaps they were less restrictive before the decree, until Nov 2013. |
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155
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: Proof of massive fraudulent trading activity and how it has affected the price
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on: May 25, 2014, 10:50:40 PM
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I bet some variant of this Gox scam is still happening on Huobi or OKCoin. All the insanely big buys that pump the market globally seem to happen over there. What kind of rational person would have millions on Chinese exchanges that are in regulation violations? I will probably get back to this post once Huobi or OKCoin are exposed for continuing the Gox ponzi scheme.
A week or two ago I found a Chinese article that (through Google Translate) seemed to say that the Chinese exchanges made money from (1) interest on leveraged trading, (2) trading on insider information (e.g. about bank closures) and (3) high-frequency trading; with (2) and (3) being of course against their own clients, who were not happy once they started noticing that. (Unfortunately I lost the link to the article, so feel free to doubt my memory and understanding.) If true, those complaints (channeled through some consumer protection agency) may have motivated in part the "five exchanges's" agreement of early May; which may have caused the end of the Feb-Apr downtrend and the recent rally. |
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: The Willy Report...What do you guys make of it?
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on: May 25, 2014, 10:30:57 PM
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I have just posted this comment to the Willy report page on Wordpress: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
May 25, 2014 at 9:07 pm
Another possible explanation for Markus/Willy is that it was doing arbitrage with China. Namely, buying cheap coins at MtGOX and sending them to a partner in China, who sold them there (presumably at BTC-China) for a higher price.
Indeed, the report argues that Markus must have been the cause of the August rally because the price at MtGOX jumped up whenever Markus bought, and remained flat between his buys. But the price at BTC-China increased steadily through August. This suggestst that BTC-China was leading, and MtGOX was following, by discrete jumps, through Markus’s arbitrage.
I have not looked carefully at Sep-Nov, but it seems that in that interval, too, the leader was China (ultimately including Huobi and OKCoin, besides BTC-China), and Markus/Willy were following.
All that one-sided arbitrage would have required an awful amount (hundreds of millions?) of USD in the arbitrager’s MtGOX account. Since Markus/Willy paid no fees, it may have been an insider, and it may have paid with non-existent money, as the report argues. In that case, perhaps Markus/Willy expected to get the money later from the Chinese partner; but the latter defaulted, or could not transfer the money due to the PBoC restrictions.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
May 25, 2014 at 10:00 pm
PS. My chief argument for the 2013 bubbles being real, due to the huge increase in demand after the opening of the Chinese markets, is that after Nov/29 the price has reacted almost exclusively to events in China, ignoring events outside China. I don’t see how to explain that, if the rise from ~120$ to ~1200$ was due to forced buying by Markus/Willy alone.
If the theory above is correct, it would be interesting to know who the Chinese partner could be. Of course, it could be the same person that owned Markus/Willy, but could be someone else -- a Chinese national, or a non-Chinese with a presence in China. The "huge amount" is given in the report, about 110 million USD. |
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158
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 25, 2014, 09:51:07 PM
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So today is the official end of bubble day. And this is being declared on the basis of one posting on the internet. Quel dommage.
Actually, as I posted above, I believe that the bubbles of 2013 were real, due to the increased demand from the opening of the Chinese market. I see the Markus/Willy activity as being merely the arbitrage that copied that real bubble to MtGOX, using 100+ million virtual goxDollars. On the other hand, my conclusion is not very different from your mocklusion above. As I posted before, for a new bubble there must be another increase in demand comparable to that of the Chinese market in Nov 2013. It could be new community of users, or a new application that convinces some existing community to buy a lot more bitcoins. I don't see either yet. |
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159
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 25, 2014, 08:50:43 PM
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Another explanation for the Willy robot is that it was doing arbitrage with China. Namely, buying cheap coins at MtGOX and sending them to a partner in China, who sold them there (presumably at BTC-China) for a higher price.
Indeed, the report argues that Markus must have been the cause of the August rally because the price at MtGOX jumped up whenever Markus bought, and remained flat between his buys. But the price at BTC-China increased steadily through August. This suggestst that BTC-China was leading, and MtGOX was following, by discrete jumps, through Markus's arbitrage.
I have not looked carefully at Sep-Nov, but it seems that there too China (ultimately including Huobi and OKCoin, besides BTC-China) was leading, and Markus/Willy were following.
All that one-sided arbitrage would have required an awful amount (hundreds of millions?) of USD in the arbitrager's MtGOX account. Since Markus/Willy paid no fees, it may have been an insider, and it may have paid with non-existent money, as the report argues. In that case, perhaps Markus/Willy expected to get the money later from the Chinese partner; but the latter defaulted, or could not transfer the money due to the PBoC restrictions.
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160
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: May 25, 2014, 06:08:51 PM
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Re the Willy report again: it must be kept in mind that the "BTC" in the database are not actual bitcoins, but only "goxCoins". The 650'000 real bitcoins that disappeared may have been taken out at any time, before or after Willy. Or they may be still in MtGOX addresses unknown to the liquidators.
Perhaps the real coins had been "lost" much earlier, and Willy was only an attempt to hide the loss from clients.
In any case, if the owners of "Markus" and Willy" were insiders, they would not need to use the standard withdrawal mechanism to get the real coins out. Therefore, the lack of withdrawal records in the database does not mean that the coins were not withdrawn.
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