That was just a "TA trap" 

It is surprising to see a pattern, since most of the ups and downs are clearly related to external events -- such as the "bug in bitcoin" and the Caixin article.  Perhaps these just trip the spring that some "market sentiment cycle" has strained?

# 6. OKCoin.

Trying to make sense of the Chinese price and volume:

Since it was the yuan input channels that got strangled, not the output ones, we would expect that the downtrend of the last ~3 months would accelerate, because the balance of yuan in the exchanges shoud decrease at an even higher pace.  Instead, the downtrend has apparently slowed down.

One hypothesis is that they had many clients who would repeatedly put money in, trade trade trade for a short time, then take their money out.   After the deposit channels got strangled, perhaps it was mainly this clientele who reduced their activity -- less often, with less money.  That could explain the reduced volume, and also why the decline in price slowed down instead of accelerating: namely, because those clients were also responsible for part fo the net outflow of yuan from the exchanges.

Maybe...   

The weird thing is that they appear to be continuously shuffling their orders (e.g. pulling half a dozen small buy entries just below the spread, and then posting one or two slightly larger entries, at a slightly higher price), even when no trade follows.   Why can't they decide once and for all the price they want, and stick to it? 

[ Sorry for posting in English but I do not speak Chinese and do not trust Google Translate. ]

The daily trading volume in the main Chinese exchanges (Huobi and OKCoin) was very low yesterday (Apr/23).  The volume is even lower today (Apr/24).  May be one of the lowest daily volumes of this year.

What could be the cause of the low volume?  Is today a holiday in China?

[ Google translation follows.  I hope that it makes sense. ]
[谷歌翻译如下。我希望这是有道理的。]

[对不起，张贴在英语，但我不会说中国话和不信任谷歌翻译。]

在中国主要的交流（Huobi和OKCoin）的每日成交量很低昨日（Apr/23）。体积甚至更低今日（Apr/24）。可能是最低的日成交量今年之一。

这可能是低量的原因是什么？今天是中国的假期呢？

The store may have posted it on their webpage, why not?

If not, the police may get it from "Google for cops", a variant of Google that does not automatically censor items that may be sensitive personal data, like credit cards, SSNs, passwords, bitcoin addresses (or keys)...  The bandit X may even help them by leaving the address and store name posted on some public site, such has this forum.

As a last resort, the police could ask the friends at NSA; they know everything (even who is the real Satoshi).

You mean "will not be possible an shouldnot be", right?


Sorry, my point is that bitcoin is not the solution to the problem, it is its cause.

Safe ways of storing bitcoin keys will not prevent bitcoin thefts, any more than physical safes can stop white-collar crime.

Can you suggest how the police (or the bitcoin community, or the victims) could identify a bitcoin thief -- say, the MtGOX thief -- other than by tracking the stolen coins, and hoping to find such cues?

Don't you agree that a hacker or an insider could steal half a  million bitcoins without leaving any other clues?

If the MtGOX thief gets away and keeps the stolen bitcoins, why would other people faced with similar opportunites not take advantage of them?

Someone posted on another thread an  e-mail of some e-store (Survival Food) that used MtGOX as a payment processor, presumably lost money in it, and is re-evaluating their adoption of Bitcoin because of "the Bitcoin community reaction to the MtGOX situation".  I think I know what they mean. The inevitable corollary of the dogma "government is evil, police is evil" is "there is no crime, there are no criminals and victims, only smart guys and stupid guys".   

It is too early to be sure, but it looks like the daily volume at Huobi and OKCoin for the day just starting (Apr/24 CST) will be even less than the previous one (Apr/23 CST) -- which was already among the lowest this year.

I just improved the Wikipedia article about MACD.  Then I read it to learn what MACD was. 

Er, um, sorry, but I am not impressed.  The interpretation of those crossing signs sounds a lot like haruspicy. 

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Thursday April 24

Prediction valid for: Thursday 2014-04-24, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 3059 CNY
Bitstamp's predicted price: 487 USD





[ Plot legend ]

Today's data point was rather good, (S = 0.0039 W = 0.742), and not too much below the previous trend line (by 54 CNY).  It seems still valid to use a straight-line trend, fitted by weighted least squares to the last five points, Apr/19--23.  Namely, A + B*(d-d0), where d-d0 is the number of days since Apr/19, A = 3151.11 and B = -18.42.

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.28 CNY/USD. It was 6.28, 6.34, 6.27, 6.25, 6.26 at the last four Slumber Times.
 
Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Tuesday 2014-04-22, 22:35 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Wednesday 2014-04-23, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~20 hours later)

Huobi's predicted price: 3112 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3058 CNY
Error: 54 CNY (~9 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 494 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 487 USD
Error: 7 USD
 
NOTE: "Why should someone who knows something conceal it?"
  -- Sumerian "proverb", from an Assyrian school exercise collection

For deposits, not really; although if the government did not like the bank-transfer channels, they may  not like also any workaround that the exchanges may use to get the same effect (such as Huobi's recharge cards).  But there are no news at present.

For withdrawals, the Caixin article that first leaked the PBoC circular (discounting the earlier leak, denied on the same day by the PBoC) gave April 15 at the deadline to close all ties, after a period when only deposits would be blocked.   Obviously the implementation of the circular has been happening more slowly than claimed in that article; but, apart from that, the article has been confirmed so far.  Thus there is still room for more bad news.


The news I saw were about ONE Australian bank (a government-owned one perhaps?) that decided on its own to close an exchange's account as of May 1.  Are there other similar decisions?
 

I don't follow...

The demand would go up very little if people were buying BTC for the purpose of spending them right away.  Each transaction of this type would decrease the circulating bitcoin supply (CBS) for a short time but that would be reveresed when the merchant or payment processor converts the BTC back to fiat. Therefore, the persistent decrease of the CBS from these uses would be proportional to the (total daily BTC volume V1 in these transactions) x (time T that each of those BTC stays off the system).  As long as transaction volume remains constant, this term will not change the CBS.

However, some of the bitcoin purchases are being made by people who were hoarding BTC and started spending some of them.  Assuming the coins are converted to fiat by selling on market, each of those transactions increases the CBS permanently by the amount transacted.  So these transactions keep increasing the CBS as time passes.  

I would guess that most of BitPay's 100 M$/year volume in 2013 is due to the second type of transaction, because buying bitcoins just for e-payment does not seem to be sufficiently attractive to people who do not own bitcoins already.  If we assume a 50-50 split, and off-market time T of 3 days then perhaps 0.5 M$ worth of bitcoins were taken out of the CBS temporarily by type 1 transactions, and 50 M$ worth of coins were permanently added to the CBS by type 2 transactions last year through BitPay. 

EDIT: clarified "last year"

EDIT2: Clarified "through BitPay". The same analysis should apply for commercial payments that do not use BitPay. Is there an estimate of this volume?

I don't know much, I can only guess.

Deposits via the exchange's bank account appear to have been closed in all exchanges.  Huobi's recharge cards were available for a long time before the latest tightening and probably have limits on amount per day and such. OKCoin's broker/recharge-code system seems to be cumbersome, like BTC-China's voucher system that apparently was never popular.  So, obviously, moving money into the exchanges has become more difficult now.

On the other hand, withdrawing money via bank transfers seems to be unaffected, so moving money out is as easy as before.

My explanation for the general decline since February is that the Chinese speculators are gradually cashing out and leaving, and no new investors are coming in.  (Why would anyone be tempted to invest in an item that he cannot use for anything but speculation, and whose price has been generally falling for almost 5 months?)

Daily volume V at Huobi seems rather low. It is already 08:00 pm in China and V is still less than 18 kBTC.  At this rate, by the time they go to bed it will be less than 30 kBTC.

The last times it was lower than that were

  Sun Mar/23 (18 kBTC) ,when they were DDOSed and stayed offline for 3-4 hours in the mid-afternoon, IIRC;

  Sun Mar/16 (27 kBTC), don't recall is anything special happened;

  The New Year Week Jan/29-Feb/06 (< 18 kBTC), when banks were closed.

Then, presumably,'

Bobby Lee = Chinese gubmint
Those alexeys of BTC-e = Russian gubmint
Mircea Popescu = Romanian gubmint
The guy of Bitstamp = Slovenian gubmint
Antonopoulos = Greek gubmint
Tuur Demeester = Dutch gubmint

And so on.  Geez, the whole United Nations are out to kill Bitcoin! ...

The UK government could stamp out bitcoin much more easily by declaring it private money hence illegal. (I am assuming; every government which is minimally awake should rigorously forbid privately issued currencies.)

That is why it would be interesting to know Danny's history in Britain before going to Cyprus.  Hard to believe that no one in Cyprus bothered to ask, and no reporter in England cared to find out...

Thanks!

Is there an explanation of that plot somewhere? (How can the number decrease? Because empty addresses are excluded?)
Thanks...

Thanks, will check.