Huobi's "updates" on bitcoinwisdom have been frozen for 7 minutes now.  Is it my impression, or does that happen mostly when the price is falling?
EDIT: maybe lots of transactions?

Gigven that
   Network block mining rate: BMR = 0.00185 blocks/s (1 every 9 minutes)
   Total network hash rate: NHR = 65'000'000 GH/s [Source: blockchain.info estimate.]

We must conclude
   Expected number of hashes needed to successfully mine a block: HPB = NHR/BMR = 35'000'000'000 GH (35 quintillion hashes)

Is this right?

... and Brock Pierce will not step down from The Shrem Karpeles & Friends Foundation.
http://www.coindesk.com/brock-pierce-bitcoin-foundation-will-not-step-down/
That's actually good news, replacing him could only dilute the substance of the Foundation.

Of course there are only a few reasons for him to step down, and 220'000 reasons or him to hold.

For whatever it is worth:

CoinDesk 2014-05-19
OKCoin and Huobi Discuss Bitcoin in China and Plans for Survival
http://www.coindesk.com/chinese-exchange-ceos-regulations-future-plans/

Quite meh, i would say.

That does not seem to violate capital controls...

Note that no euros, real or virtual, left Cyprus; they aonly moved between Cypriot bank accounts.  Meanwhile, some bitcoins that were out there somewhere in the ether and were owned by one Cypriot became owned by another Cypriot.  The total wealth of the Cypriots, whether measured in euros, bitcoins, or material goods, was not changed by that operation.

Or am I missing something?

They must have asked a bitcoin believer to write that section; it could have been a Coindesk article. What about altcoins, for one thing? Why should volatlity decrease?

I am curious about the statement
I wonder how that worked out exactly?  How would someone with euros in a Cyprus bank use bitcoin to move the money to a bank outside Cyprus?

Yeah, that was a very good excuse, wasn't it? 

Thanks, but I posted that link here a couple of days ago  I found it through an article referred by @Walsoraj.


Up to 10--15 years ago, many long-term projections were made based on Moore's law, which was then interpreted as clock speed increasing exponentially.  While CPU manufacturers competed for clock speed, their number decreased; until only very few were left by the time the clocks had reached 2-3 GHz.  All of a sudden the speed stopped increasing.  Could it have been really phyiscal limits, or was it an agreement among the manufacturers to stop that competition, for their common interest? At that point the market was no longer free, various factors prevented some new company from coming into the market with a faster and economically competitive CPU.

One hurdle that is often mentioned but apparenty not resolved is the concentration of mining into a few large corporations.  IIRC it is already the case that 3-4 companies have more than 51% of the network's harshrate.  If a mining cartel were able to keep competition out, they would end up being just as nasty as the banking cartel is today, and will surely cooperate with them on fees, government corruption, etc.

Banking would be wonderful if it were a really free market.  In particular, international money transmittal fees would be a tiny fraction of a percent, and there would be no economical justification for bitcoin.  Will bitcoin mining continue to be a free market?

This is a plot of the transactions at Huobi on May/18 around 23:30 UTC (Monday 07:30 am in China):

[ full-size version ]

Each dot is a transaction. The dot's size represents the amount of BTC, and the vertical axis is price (CNY).  The blue dots are the transactiions with amount = 0.01 BTC exactly, the red dots are all the other transactions. 

This plot catches the time when trade started Monday morning.  The 0.01 BTC "ping-pong" robot trades slowed down but did not stop.

A very similar "ping-pong" robot operated for some time in January at MtGOX: 

[ full-size version ]

Thanks! Yes, pretty impressive.

All my computing life I have been taught and taught students how to compute things in the most efficient way.  It turns my stomach seeing that much computing power (and electrical power) wasted. 

Do you people really believe that big miners will be more honest and less greedy than big bankers?

Thanks! That makes more sense... 

Huobi's 1m chart is crazy.  There is a relatively large actual spread, and an ongoing fight between the "0.01 BTC" ping-pong robot, whose purpose apparently is to keep the price near the top of the spread, and other users who are trying to sell.

I have looked a lot at Huobi's data for the last 3 months, especially at late night hours, and never saw such pattern.  Volume was usually very low and irregular between 02:00 and 06:00 local time, which is 18:00 and  22:00 UTC.  This steady background started suddenly today at 18:11 UTC. 

This backgound, if it continues the whole day, will add ~2700 BTC to Huobi's daily volume (which was 9279 BTC yesterday (Sat May/17), and looks like it will be amost the same today.

Indeed right now there is a very steady background traffic of ~1.8 BTC/min, started not long ago.  Check the 1m chart.

I recall seeing a similar steady background activity at MtGOX in December 2013, for days at a time.  And OKCoin may have had it, but much larger, since I started looking. 

Is that some bizarre tradng strategy, Huobi getting desperate about the low volume, or what?

OK, could you please confirm that this basic data is correct:

Protocol-defined data:

  Network block mining rate: BMR = 0.00185 blocks/s (1 every 9 minutes)
 
  Reward per block: RPB = 25 BTC  (currently, expected to be cut down by 50% in 2017 and every 4 years thereafter).
 
Network-dependent data:

  Total network hash rate: NHR = 65'000'000 GH/s

    [Source: blockchain.info estimate.]

Location-dependent data:

  Electric energy cost: CPE = 0.028 USD/MJ  (in rural US, 0.1 USD/(kW h))
 
    [Source: @aminorex]

Technology-dependent data:
 
  Cost of equipment: CEQ = 2000 USD/(GH/s) (modern equipment)
 
   [Source: @aminorex]

  Energy consumption: EPH = 0.2 J/GH
 
   [Source: @aminorex]
   
  Cooling and other costs: 30%--50%
 
   [Source: paper]

Bitconomy-dependent data:

  Average transaction rate: ATR = 0.73 trans/s (63'000 trans/day)
 
    [Source: blockchain.info]

  Average bitcoins output rate: ABR = 7.12 BTC/s  (615'000 BTC/day)
 
    [Source: blockchain.info]
 
  Average transaction fees rate: AFR = 0.00015 BT/s (13 BTC/day)
 
    [Source: blockchain.info]
 
[I wonder especially about the "Total network hash rate: NHR = 65'000'000 GH/s", is that really per second, per day, or what?]

There seems to be another misleading detail in the order book summary computed from a truncated order book: the accumulated volume of the last line displayed may be incorrect.

Suppose that the ask summary has price increments of 10 dollars starting from 450, i.e. 450, 460, 470, etc..  If the book returned by the exchange is trucated after an entry with price=461, it seems that the last entry printed on Bitcoinwisdom's summary will be "up to 470", but the total shown for it will actually be "up to 461" only.  Traders will then draw the wrong conclusions about the liquidity of the market. 

If this is indeed the case, please consider printing only summary lines that are known to be correct.  In that example, the last entry in the summary should be 460, not 470.  More generally, an ask line with price X should be printed only if the order book returned by the exchange has at leat one ask entry with price strictly greater than X.

With this rule, at least one entry from the returned order book will be omitted.  Then it would make even more sense to print "..." after the last line, if there is space left on the chart. 

I don't want to save anyone on this thread. I assume you all are adults and know the game you are gambling in.  I feel that I have an obligation to warn people who may be lured into investing in bitcoin with false promises, but they are unlikely to be reading here.

Part of the volume on the Western exchanges has always been arbitrage with the Chinese ones.  Arbitrage moves equivalent amounts of BTC or money on both sides, so, as percentage, it is is more significant on the smaller ones.

The word for "fear" in investment is "prudence".  

But, frankly, I have no idea of what the BTC price will be six months from now.  I can't understand why "the market" thinks that 1 BTC is worth 450$, rather than 45'000$ or 4,50$; so how could I guess what it will think then?

I do expect the price to fall further in the short term, for the reasons that I already gave (and may repost tomorrow if I get a round tuitt).  How far down? We have seen it drop to 350$, it certainly could go down to that.

The CEOs of the Chinese exchanges have given some gloomy statements to the press (links will follow) but have been mostly quiet since the end of April.   There are no new announcements on the sites.  With diminished volume and without the fees from leverage trading, their revenues must have fallen sharply, and their prospects for moving the exchanges outside China aren't great (they would be competing for customers with the Western exchanges, which all together still have less volume than Huobi).  I give high prob to their closure within a couple of months at most.

So I am puzzled by this calm, I can't understand what those Chinese sellers are waiting for.  

There are 5000+ BTC for sale on Huobi for 2900 CNY or less, 120 CNY (20$) above the spread.

On the other hand, the bid side below 2760 is hidden, apparently because there are zillions of tiny bids between 2770 and 2775 CNY (and only in that range).  Could it be on purpose?  If truth is being hidden, it must be ugly...