Huobi back at 3605 CNY.

No need to hurry boys, there is plenty of time still.

Bitcoinwisdom is still dead but shows the Huobi price: 3440 CNY, down from ~3900 some 8 hours ago.   But it was 3320 a few minutes ago.

They had better have noticed my prediction of 3750 ± 30 CNY.  They still have 16 hours left. I am sure they can make it if they really try.

Thanks!!!

(But they do not carry Huobi, of course.)

Do they? How do we know that?  What is counted as a "customer"?

I would guess that they don't have more than 10,000 active clients (distinct people who do at least one transaction per week).

They are trading perhaps 200,000 BTC per week these days.  That is an upper bound to N*V, where N = number of active clients,
V = average BTCs traded by one active client in one week (counting multiple buys and sells of the same coins).

If V is 20 BTC or more, N is at most 10,000.

Do you think that V may be much less than 10 BTC?

Thanks for the tips of alternative chart sites, but those I have checked show the price at MtGOX by default, and I can't figure out how to change that.  Do I have to subscribe?

I am NOT making fun of Doge at all. 

Bitcoin hurting Dogecoin now.

https://coinplorer.com/Charts?fromCurrency=DOGE&toCurrency=USD

Bad Bitcoin. Much bad.

A question... are paper checks still used in the US?

When I lived there in the 1980s we did not use credit cards, we paid most store purchases and bills with checks from a small local bank.  For utility bills we just placed a check in the return envelope that came with the bill, and hung it on the front door for the mailman to pick up. 

Will bitcoin payments ever be so convenient? 

Bitcoinwisdom down?...

A site that suspends withdrawals of BTC and/or currency but continues to accept deposits of any type may not be a scam site, but is putting up a good impersonation of one.  What if a client deposits without noticing the restriction, then needs to withdraw for some reason?

An ethical exchange (or any bank-like service) should suspend deposits whenever it suspends withdrawals.

Er, um, I was wrong all this time? Shame...  Why did I think it was UTC+09:00
Sorry to all of you..

Whops, they have switched to daylight savings time (used to be UTC+9:00 not long ago).  Thanks for the post!

Yes, it is 9:00 08:00 am there, those who slept like they have a job should be already awake.  But a good many of them (or robots) have been trading all night.  As they did through the night from feb/11 to feb/12.

EDIT: China switched to daylight savings time (CST = UTC + 08:00).

Yes, I would not try to guess what the price will do before or after that.

See my previous posts for the explanation of the methd and why I think it works only while Huobi's clients are sleeping.

OK, here is the Chinese Slumber Method prediction for tomorrow:

Prediction valid for 2014-02-14 19:00--19:59 UTC
Huobi: 3750 plus or minus 30 CNY (3720  -- 3780)
Bitstamp: 615 plus or minus 10 USD (605 -- 625)

For the Huobi prediction I used the last three Slumber Points (three rightmost yellow dots in the Huobi chart just posted), whose prices are ~4139, ~4006, and ~3876 CNY.  This is almost a straight descending line, with increments -133 and -130 CNY; extrapolation gives ~3748 CNY.

Note however that dots 1 and 3 are not really Slumber Points, there was significant trading going on at the time. Perhaps I should have stated a larger uncertainty interval...

For the Bitstamp prediction, I used the Huobi prediction divided by the currency factor R = 6.12 which seems valid for the last 4 Slumber Points, only a bit off for Feb/11.

These predictions are free of charge, mass, and spin.  If you lose money by believing them, you will have made at least two serious mistakes.

By popular and unpopular demand here is the check on my latest "Chinese Slumber Method" prediction

Prediction posted at: 2014-02-13 04:47 UTC
Prediction valid for: 2014-02-13 19:00--19:59 UTC (04:00 -- 04:59 China time)
Predicted Huobi price: 3970 plus or minus 30 CNY (3940 -- 4000)
Actual Huobi price (L--H): 3856--3896

The prediction is the blue rectangle at extreme right in this chart:


Obviously the prediction was a bit too optimistic.

However, note that the Huobi traders (or robots) again kept trading throughout the night, so the price at 19:00 UTC was not really a "slumber price".

With that caveat, it seems that the last three Slumber Points (three rightmst yellow dots) lie on a relatively straight descending line,

Predicted Bitstamp price: 650 plus or minus 10 USD (640 -- 660)
Actual Bitstamp price (L--H): 611--635

Again the prediction was too optimistic.  On the other hand, the Huobi price at that time, divided by the dominant currency factor (R = 6.12 CNY/USD), matched the Bitstamp price quite well.

In the following chart, the red/green strokes are the actual Bitstamp prices, while the yellow dots are the Huobi Slumber Prices (mean prices at 19:00 UTC every day) divided by the appropriate currency factor (R = 6.40 for feb/07 to feb/09, R = 6.12 for all other days):

Er.. would anyone care to know how my predictions did today?

I thought so, just had to ask, thank you. 

Thanks for the tip, I found this note from Dec 2013:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1sabze/chinas_gbl_bitcoin_exchange_operators_to_be/

Thanks!

(And "Wow!")

I just learned about GBL, the Chinese exhange created may/2013 that vanished in early november together with 4 million US$ of customer deposits.

Is there a list of all such bitcoin scams/thefts somewhere? 

A colleague teased me at lunch, "have you already opened your bitcoin exchange?".  Now I am tempted, it seems to be the best get-rich-quick system in the world.  No need to make or sell anything; just set up the site, wait until people deposit a fortune in coins and cash, then close the site an say "sorry folks". (This last step is entirely optional.)

If past history is any guide, my clients will never call the police; who knows what they will have used bitcoins for.  I can even open another exchange; some of my victims may even defend me on the forums, "let's give the man another chance, eh?"