Huobi's price and volume since 2014/Jan/28, from http://bitcoinwisdom.com:



Times are Local China Time (UTC + 9:00).

I am reading now about the failed Bitcoinica company and MtGOX.  I gather that Bitconica had coins deposited at MtGOX, which were not returned to the Bitcoinica liquidators.  Back in March/2013 MtGOX were even refusing to show Bitcoinica's account balance to the liquidators.

Was the issue resolved eventually?  If not, any guess at how many Bitcoinica coins they hold?

By the way, it seems that this notice was sent by MtGOX to certain customers a few days before the total suspension of BTC withdrawals:

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/26563440-MtGox-Response-to-BitInstant-CEO-Arrest

Yes, I took that class in ~1973, and the story must have been old by then.

The ladies must have been Soviet spies who promptly gave the exact location of the gold to the Soviet workmen who were waiting just below the basement. 

Sorry to disappoint, I have no idea about that. 

But shouldn't people be worried that their last "Transparency Report" was posted in mid-2012?

About my last hypothetical theory about how an hypothetical exchange could have stupidly lost 7/8 of its client's BTCs last November:  any company of MtGOX's size has a financial manager, and their financial manager must have threatened to commit seppuku if the company would sit on a pile of BTC worth tens (hundreds?) of million US$ without trying to extract some revenue from it. 

If invested into something that pays 5% per year, 100 million US$ would yield 5 million US$ per year.  Which company would pass on such an opportunity?

One of the two things that I learned from my Economy classes in college was a story about some organization of old ladies claiming that the Soviets had tunneled from Russia through the basement of Fort Knox and stolen all the gold that was then backing the US dollar.  The government (teacher told us) took the ladies to Fort Knox to show them that the gold was still there.  Moral of the story was: to preserve public trust one must take even the most ridiculous rumors seriously, and show convincing evidence against them.

As for hiring... it may be a sign that they are growing, or that they have fired key people, or that key people have left...

Friday Feb/07, what a day.

Volume surged on all exchanges. Even BTC-China traded ~18 kBTC, growing even as percentage of China's total.

Compared to Thursday, volume increased a bit less outside China than inside China.
The Middle Kingdom had fallen to a bit less than 50% of total, today it was a bit more than 50%.

BitFinEx was the most active outside China, well ahead of MtGOX.

MTGox had ~49,460 BTC traded for USD, ~5600 BTC traded for EUR, ~2300 BTC traded for JPY.

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):


               !    Tue !   Wed !   Thu !   Fri !   Sat !   Sun !   Mon !   Tue !   Wed !    Thu !    Fri !                     
  EXCHANGE     !  01/28 ! 01/29 ! 01/30 ! 01/31 ! 02/01 ! 02/02 ! 02/03 ! 02/04 ! 02/05 !  02/06 !  02/07 ! Currencies considered
 
  BitFinEx     |  13.62 |  3.87 |  8.18 |  3.91 |  4.54 |  3.15 |  3.45 |  3.36 |  5.22 |  21.11 |  66.36 | USD                 
  MtGOX        |  11.82 |  7.21 |  6.60 |  4.45 |  5.13 |  2.28 |  3.37 |  5.40 |  8.20 |  21.54 |  58.89 | USD,EUR,GBP,AUD,JPY 
  Bitstamp     |  20.04 |  7.04 | 13.13 |  7.73 |  8.30 |  4.07 |  4.93 |  7.59 |  8.48 |  20.65 |  42.79 | USD                 
  BTC-e        |  16.82 |  6.53 | 12.54 |  4.65 |  6.30 |  4.74 |  5.75 |  4.51 |  6.55 |   9.72 |  31.84 | USD,EUR,RUR       
  Bitcoin.DE   |   0.49 |  0.33 |  0.47 |  0.35 |  0.33 |  0.35 |  0.51 |  0.27 |  0.31 |   0.61 |   1.30 | EUR                 
  Kraken       |   0.54 |  0.24 |  0.37 |  0.20 |  0.23 |  0.15 |  0.21 |  0.29 |  0.23 |   0.59 |   1.45 | EUR                 
  CaVirtEx     |   0.22 |  0.21 |  0.25 |  0.24 |  0.24 |  0.20 |  0.08 |  0.17 |  0.18 |   0.39 |   1.07 | CAD                 
  CampBX       |   0.20 |  0.07 |  0.06 |  0.05 |  0.23 |  0.16 |  0.10 |  0.12 |  0.16 |   0.21 |   0.82 | USD                 
  Crypto-Trade |   0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |  0.01 |   .   |  0.01 |  0.01 |   0.04 |   0.05 | USD                 

  SUBTOTAL     |  63.76 | 25.50 | 41.61 | 21.58 | 25.31 | 15.11 | 18.40 | 21.72 | 29.34 |  74.86 | 204.57 |                     

  Huobi        |  92.88 | 32.14 | 29.27 | 15.26 | 28.86 | 26.27 | 24.77 | 18.65 | 19.55 |  39.97 | 131.91 | CNY                 
  OKCoin       |  52.37 | 29.11 | 18.56 | 17.11 | 20.38 | 20.00 | 18.09 | 12.77 | 12.33 |  26.07 |  74.37 | CNY                 
  BTC-China    |   6.45 |  1.94 |  1.99 |  1.17 |  2.31 |  2.21 |  1.70 |  1.33 |  1.54 |   4.09 |  17.66 | CNY (NOTE 1)         

  SUBTOTAL     | 151.70 | 63.19 | 49.82 | 33.54 | 51.55 | 48.48 | 44.56 | 32.75 | 33.42 |  70.13 | 223.94 |                     

  TOTAL        | 215.46 | 88.69 | 91.43 | 55.12 | 76.86 | 63.59 | 62.96 | 54.47 | 62.76 | 144.99 | 428.51 |                     



All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

Coinbase is said to use Bitstamp for currency conversion.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

(NOTE 1) On 2014-01-30, BTC-China had a burst of extremely fast, regular and atypical transactions, all with similar amounts (a few tens of BTC) and prices (~4836 CNY), adding up to about 41,050 BTC.  The burst started suddenly around 17:00 UTC and and stopped suddenly around 19:30 UTC. Presumably those transactions were made by a faulty robot trading against itself or some other robot, and did not represent actual exchange of money and bitcoins between distinct individuals. Therefore those anomalous transactions were subtracted from the BTC-China volume for Jan/30.

Now the bulls come out to fight the bears. This is going to be bloody. Or spinachy, depending on the sign of the victors.

(Er, what is the collective noun for bears?
  "pack"?
  "pride"?
  "prejudice"?
  "yogi"?
  ...?
)

Perhaps... but they had a 10% premium at leat since Sep/2013 (I did not check earlier than that).  Did they already have USD withdrawal problems back then?

It's 8:00 07:00 am in China. Huobi's Bears suddenly poured out of their dens, angry and hungry.

Hm, from what I have been reading, I would think that MtGOX maintained that 10% premium over market price to (a) encourage people to deposit BTC there, and (b) discourage clients who had USD balance from converting it to BTC and moving these out.

Since they have now stopped all BTC withdrawals, pure and simple, those two reasons do not apply any more...

Tens of millions of dollars in total.

According to this article,

http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/04/major-bitcoin-exchange-not-executing-withdrawals-now-owes-clients-38m-in-disappeared-money/

the failed/stuck coin withdrawals alone, at that time, amounted to about 38 million US$; and the author claims to have "a six-figure amount" locked up there. 

Does anyone have an estimate for the total current balance of all Mt.GOX accounts, in USD and in coins? 

To me, it is obvious that this mini-crash was started and driven mostly by China.  

Just check the price and volume charts.  The drop started at the same time in all exchanges, which happens to be Feb/07 07:00 06:00 am in China; and things calmed down again at the same time, which is about 02:30 01:30 am in China.   There was a smaller drop yesterday, which started at 08:00 am sharp - China time.

Since the Nov/2013 rally, and probably since much earlier, the Chinese exchanges have been running the show and defining the Bitcoin price.  BTC-China was the leader at first, but since mid-December it has practically died and Huobi and OKCoin have taken the lead.  They usually account for 70% or more of the total volume at the exchanges monitored by the main charting sites.  

Bitcoin price moves when the Chinese are trading; it stagnates when they go to bed, go on vacation, or are hung over from the previous night's party.  Arbitrage trading, preumably by a small group of professional traders, must be spreading the price swings in China to all other exchanges.   Traders outside China are then spurred by those price swings to react, at weird hours of the day.

My theory for the cause of this mini-crash is that the Chinese banks have re-opened after the Chinese New Year holidays (some on Feb/06, most today).  That made it possible for the Chinese investors to again withdraw money from the exchanges.  At that point, many of those who had become disillusioned with bitcoin during the week choose to dump and withdraw.

I don't think that the Apple ban had much impact on traders' mood, in China or elsewhere.  Most bitcoin investors were attracted by the promise of quick huge profits, not by the long-term dream of electronic payments without banks.   And the typical Chinese investor probably does not know or care about non-Chinese exchanges, Mt.GOX included.  

Consider this plot of the BTC price at Huobi over the last 2.5 days:



Note that the volume plot at bottom is roughly mirrored on the price plot, as deviations from the almost straight trend line (in blue).

It is as if Huobi's clients wanted the price to be much lower, but are fighting against a "force" that wanted the price to follow that trendline.   So the price falls while they are active, but springs back towards the trendline when they slow down for lunch or go to bed.

What could be that mysterious force?

It does not seem to be the bulk of traders at the non-Chinese exchanges, since their activity rises and falls in sync with Huobi's volume -- that is,
on China's clock, rather than Canada's or Bulgaria's -- and they seem to be just following Huobi's price fluctuations. 

If "the oldest and once largest" Bitcoin exchange were to fold, hundreds if not thousands of people would probably lose tens of millions of dollars.  That would be news in mainstream media, and it would make it even harder to sell Bitcoin as a solid investment.  Without new investors, the price will not rise.

So the efects on the price would not be immediate, but would be spread out over the coming months.

Actually, my guess is that the current mini-crash was not caused or influenced by Mt.GOX's possible demise, nor by the Apple and Russia news.  Mt.GOX means nothing to the Chinese, and non-Chinese traders have grown immune to bad news, it seems.  I still think that it was the opening of banks in China that caused it.

It's 3:00 am in China but a few bears and bulls are still fiercely fighting at Huobi. 

For a couple of hours it looked as if they would make a truce at 4600 CNY, but then a bull trespassed and fighting resumed over the nextt 100 CNY. Outcome is still uncertain.

Bulls have on their side a pesky robot that makes a 0.01 BTC transaction at the top of the spread whenever someone clears the road down  by dumping a few dozen coins.  Not fair.

Methinks people should pay more attention to Huobi.  In spite of all robots, I think that their price plots and transaction logs look more "natural" than those of the non-China exchanges. To me, it looks like the latter are trying to follow Huobi, but often over-react to its moves.

Nice chart, thanks! (Except that the colors of the lines are too similar, it is hard to tell which is which.)

May I ask how you got the Huobi price data?  (I have been downloading from bitcoincharts.com but they omit Huobi and OKCoin)

The non-Chinese exchanges seem to have calmed down, I see ~5 transactions per minute or less on Bitstamp, BTC-e, MtGOX.

But Huobi is still very active; 3--4 times as many transactions/minute, even though it is already past 23:00 there.

Yesterday some of their clients kept trading up to almost 03:00 am. 

The "Huobi USD price" you see on chart sites is computed by them using the official exchange rate (6.06 CNY = 1 USD),   Actually there is no BTC/USD trading at the Chinese sites.

I suppose that the effective exchage rate (assumed by arbitragers) is somewhat less than 6.06.  That would explain the apparent difference.

But their BTC/JPY volume is tiny; ~500 BTC/day usually, 1400 BTC today.

The BTC/USD trade used to be ~5000 BTC, is already 33,000 BTC today.

 

"Dear clients, we sincerely apologize for your frustration, but for the last two months we have been having technical problems with our outgoing mail. We tried to stick the envelope with your check into the mailbox but we missed the opening. We concluded that having more than one envelope to mail was too much for our brain, so we gave up and tore up all the checks. But we still owe you."