The opening price is the price of the first trade made in that interval, the closing price is that of the last trade.
So the close of one interval does not need to match the open of the next one.

PS. Unless "septic" was intented to be the term for a polynomial of degree seven (after "quadratic", "cubic", "quartic", "quintic", and "sextic").  I have seen mathematicians use other bizarre terms like "septonic" or "septemic" in a vain attempt to avoid chuckles in the audience.

Hey, I am not recommending anything.  Anyone can decide whether what I wrote makes sense or not.  Do you mean that trolls are posters who force people to think?

Argh, there goes my cover!  I confess, I am "septic" -- I am trying to infect my compatriots with deadly skepticism. 

The impending (and almost certain) closure of the bank withdrawal channels of Chinese exchanges will inevitably lead to transfer of some of the coins that are now in their client accounts to the Western exchanges.  More coins, no new dollars, can only cause the price in the West to go down. The only question is by how much.

How exactly that will play out seems still uncertain.  The Chinese exchanges have been remarkably silent after the last PBoC move, in contrast to the weeks after the late March Caixin leak.  One of them at least has said that it will avoid public announcements because it does not want to cause commotion in the market.

I wonder how far they will take this new "PR policy":

  1. The Chinese exchanges may give their clients advance warning of the bank withdrawal closure, or the closure will happen only on the May 10 deadline.  In that case I expect that there will be a rush by most Chinese clients to sell their bitcoin (which they cannot use for commerce in China, and probably do not believe it ever go to the moon) and withdraw the CNY while they can.  Other clients who have some connection to the West may choose to move their bitcoin to Western exchanges and continue trading there.  Abitragers, habitual or improvised, will use any CNY still in their accounts to buy cheap coins there and sell them in the West.  Then the price will drop in the Chinese exchanges, and the Western ones will follow.

  2. The Chinese exchanges will close CNY bank withdrawals before May 10, without advance warning.   Then many clients with CNY trapped in their accounts will try to buy bitcoin to move them out.  The price of bitcoin in China will probably rise sharply.  Arbitragers, insiders, and other clients who have other ways of withdrawing CNY will make handsome profits at the expense of ordinary clients.  Arbitrage may temporarily transfer some of that price increase to the West, but that will be counteracted by the pressure of other clients moving bitcoin to the West, even at a loss, to get their money out.  Since in the end the net amount of bitcoin in the Chinese exchanges must decrease, the latter effect must predominate, so the price in the West will decouple and fall while it rises in China.

  3. The Chinese exchanges may just shut down without any prior warning, or block bitcoin widthdrawals as well; so that both the CNY and bitcons of their clients will be trapped inside, except perhaps for some privileged users or some restricted non-bank channels.  This option seems very unlikely, considering what happened to the owners of the GBL exchange.

In any case, I imagine that some Chinese traders who keep most of their bitcoins in private wallets, outside the exchange, may want to sell them, since the withdrawal restrictions may take all the fun & profit out of the bitcoin speculation game.  Therfore some of those coins will also find their way to the Western exchanges.

My sincere apologies if I ever gave the impression that I had any sympathy or respect whatsoever for the libertarian ideology.  If you care, I could try to remove any lingering doubts you may have about my opinions on the matter.

By the way, I am still trying to figure out what exactly is the "freedom" that the bitcoin "libertarians" are so obsessed about.

It seems that most of them are in the US or "US-like" countries, so it cannot be freedom of speech, religion, travel, residence, association, study, dress, drink, sex, marriage, work, property, trade, investment, enterprise, and many other basic freedoms that the citizens of those countries enjoy to a higher degree than most other people in the world (and that bitcoin cannot do anything about anyway).

So, what exactly are those "freedoms" that the "libertarians" miss, and hope to get through bitcoin?

It was almost exactly 2 pm in China when the buying started.  It is the eve of a long holiday. Perhaps some workers got the afternoon off, some shopkeepers closed shop for the day?

For whatever it is worth.

Just in case someone doesn't know: May 1st is Labor Day in China too.  May 1-3 (Thu-Sat)  are national holidays:
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/china/
USUALLY that would mean a pretty boring market until Monday May 5, but...

Perhaps I don't.

A monopoly is the opposite of free market by definition, so how can one be in favor of the latter without being against the former?

If libertarians do not object to monopolies, why do they object to government, which has by defintion the monopoly in many fields (army, criminal punishment, money issuance, etc.)?

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Wednesday April 30

Prediction valid for: Wednesday 2014-04-30, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 2720 CNY
Bitstamp's predicted price: 439 USD





[ Plot legend ]

Today's data point, like yesterday's, was fairly good (S = 0.0035, W = 0.778), and not very far from the previously assumed trend line.  Again two choices for the trend seemed reasonable, the straight line determined by the last two points only, or a straight trend fitted by weighted least squares to the last five points (which would ignore yesterday's given its low weight).  I chose the latter, but multiplied the Slumber Weight W by a "remoteness" weight WF = K**(DF-d) where K = 0.8 and (DF-d) is the number of days before the last data point (Apr/29).  The fitted line was A + B*(d-d0), where d-d0 is the number of days since Apr/25, A = 2813.92 and B = -18.83.

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.20 CNY/USD. It was 6.25 at today's Slumber time, and 6.05, 6.09, and 6.05 for the Slumber Times at Apr/28, Apr/26, and Apr/25.
 
Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Tuesday 2014-04-29, 02:44 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Tuesday 2014-04-29, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~16 hours later)

The prediction for Huobi was rather off:

Huobi's predicted price: 2684 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 2761 CNY
Error: 77 CNY (~12 USD)

The prediction for Bitstamp was almost exact, but only because the R factor changed:

Bitstamp's predicted price: 443 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 442 USD
Error: 1 USD
 
NOTE: "Man differs from the animal only by a little; most men throw that little away."
    -- Confucius

You mean into the Chinese exchanges?  Is that a fact?

Huobi has not modified their homepage or posted new notices for the last 12 days.  The homepage still shows their prepaid cards (火币   点卡充值) as the only deposit method. Perhaps the cards themselves cannot be recharged, if they depended on 3rd party payment processors or bank deposits.   I could not fiind Huobi's client blog, it would be interesting to see what is there.  Will they gox their clients without prior warning?

Over the weekend I poked abit into OKCoin's blog and their reddit thread.  Their "recharge code" system based on (two) private brokers seemed to be working, not clear how effectively; but in the end OKCoin said that they would not post any more public announcements about that system in order to not perturb the market.  Will they [ ditto ]?

No, I mean technical aspects of the issue.  If it were a theft of chemical formulas they would hire chemical experts, if it was a theft of computer chip designs they would hire chip design experts, etc..

The police in countries like the US and Japan is quite compentent by now in the investigation of cybercrimes.  Bitcoin is not more complicated than the things they have already mastered.

On the other hand, the "crowd detectives" who poke at the blockchain so far have made a lot of noise, but have no concrete result to show, have they? In MtGOX or any other theft/scam...

The police certainly has a better chance than a team of unknown managers who MAY bring in the police (but almost certainly will not).

It is 4:00 am there.

I have yet to know a "bitcoin entrepreneur" to whom I would lend a pen without removing the cap first.  For one thing, Karpelès was one of the top board members of the Bitcoin Foundation.

Lawyers can and will hire experts to handle the technicalities, in bitcoin or any other field.

The thief (or embezzler, or fraudster) responsible for the missing MtGOX coins must be found by teh police and punished by law.   The issue is not just return the coint to his victims, but deterrence of future crimes.  If he walks away with his loot, why should not every exchange owner do the same?

Also, how can we trust that a private investigation by the new management into possible wrongdoings at MtGOX will be carried out earnestly and impartially, in the best interest of the former customers, and without regard for who the guilty parties may turn out to be?

Theft and fraud are common crimes that must be investigated by legitimate authorities.  The "bitcoin community" has no right to declare itself outside the reach of the law.

Mr. Gay-Bouchery and Mr. McCaleb are said to be defendants in the earlier class-action suit (whose terms I have not had time to read yet) and to agree with this plan.  If this deal is approved by the court, will they be freed of any responsibility for their roles in MtGOX's collapse?

Isn't it ironic that the libertarian bitcoiners, champions of laissez-faire capitalism, are betting all their life savings on the hope that the Satoshi Bitcoin will be one day the only cryptocurrency in the market, so that they can charge monopoly prices for it? 

Thank you! 

(In fact, my family name is Italian but clearly of Germanic origin, and I never figured out how exactly it come about.  The name "Astolfo" was known in Italy in the 1600s at least, but "Stolf" and "Stoffel" also occurs in German-speaking countries. And yes, I know what "stoffel" means in colloquial German, and "stolti" in Italian.  )

Well, you can go to Google Translate, paste "火币" to the window, select "Chinese" and click on the louspeaker.  It is "Huǒ bì in the pinyin phonetic script.

Great job Huobites, 2684 CNY as I told you.  Now please STOP TRADING AND GO TO BED. 

Aren't people fed up with zombie movies yet?  

EDIT: @billyjoeallen beat me by a nose....