It is 8:00 am now in China.

If the news is fake, it will be several hours before the PBoC will issue a denial. (I still believe that they are not particularly hostile to the exchanges and their clieants, but they will not get out of their way to help them. It probaby has very low priority in their bureaucrats's schedules.)

If the news are real, it will be at least some hours before the local banks call the exchange operators.

Anyway it seems that the exchange managers are more cautious now than yesterday, when they were certain that it was a hoax.
 

It is 8:00 am now in China.  This new dip may be those traders who did not get the rumor yesterday, just checked the price and panicked.

It is 8:00 am now in China.  This new dip may be those traders who did not get the rumor yesterday, just checked the price and panicked.

You mean, buy one NOW?

Wow! Much friends this thread! Such nice!

I believe that the two rallies in 2013 were caused by the opening of the Chinese market, which created huge demand for BTC and sucked coins out of the Western markets.  If the ban is real (I am not convinced yet) most of the coins in the Chinese exchange accounts may be moved to the non-Chinese exchanges.  So I think this may well happen:

The black line is an exponential fitted by eyeball in log scale to the Bitstamp prices before April 2013.

But I think this it is just a possibility, I would not bet on it.  It is hard to guess what the big holders and investors will do: whether they will buy all the Chinese bitcoins, or dump those they already have.

Ok, 13.27 of your sins are hereby forgiven.

So far this dip has not yet undone the lasting effects of the 10--15% jump of Mar/03 (presumably due to the 1500 BTC buy on Bitstamp and/or Bloomberg's "important announcement" that wasn't).

The price is still higher than what it should have been according to the trend line of the Feb/10--Mar/02 period, that followed MtGOX's debacle.  (That trend apparently started 3 days earlier on Bitstamp: GOX insiders taking their coins out?)

As for 4, the Caixin reporter stands by his story and says that the document was sent by the PBoC to regional offices, not to the exchanges yet:
http://english.caixin.com/2014-03-27/100657518.html

As for 5, the PBoC has not yet denied this report. So maybe that Caixin article "we stand by our story" and the lack of PBoC denial explain this second dip.

Also, that news may be fake, but the sensitivity of bitcoin price to rumors is now demonstrated.  Some investors may be dumping because of this fact, rather than the rumours themselves.

Actually I am more bullish (?) than that.  From what I have read, I believe that the PBoC is satisfied that bitcoin is safely confined to the exchanges and cannot affect the economy or the yuan in ways that they don't approve.  So I do not expect any further action from them.

No need to take it out on me.  Price will recover today, you'll see. 3628 CNY on Huobi, 593 USD on Bitstamp, by 19:30 UTC.

Is Leah now reporting from China? 

Bitcoins would be useless to most Chinese, I believe,  They already cannot use them for anything except trading.

If the news is real, I guess that most clients of the Chinese exchanges will want to sell at any price they can and withdraw their money.

The only buyers in the Chinese exchanges would be arbitragers, or more generally people or partnerships with accounts on both Chinese and Western exchanges.  They can buy cheap bitcoins in China and sell them for somewhat higher price in the West.  That will depress the price in the West to some extent, while in China it will go to zero.

However, if the ban on depositing money is effective immediately, those arbitragers will be limited to their current CNY balances in the exchanges, so the price in China may go to zero very fast.  In any case, I suppose that all the bitcoins held by the exchanges will be sold in the West,  on the open market or off it.

The price on Huobi is holding at ~3400 now. Are they thinking that the ban may be a hoax?  Or is arbitrage propping up the price?  Or only 7% of the Huobi clients have seen the rumor?

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Thursday March 27

Prediction valid for: Thursday 2014-03-27, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 3628 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price: 593 USD.


Plot legend

Once more, Huobi saw relatively high volume at the Slumber Time (~728 BTC/h, instead of the usual 50-200 BTC), but not as much as yesterday. Today's data point had low but non-negligible weight (S = 9.349, W = 0.174).  Since the last four data points (Mar/23--26) are fairly aligned, in spite of their low weight, I assumed a straight-line trend fitted to then by weighted least squares: A + B*(d-d0), where d is the day of the month, d0 = 23, A = 3468.99, B = 39.69 (which is just a tad lower than the one used yesterday.)

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.12 CNY/USD (it was 6.12, 6.10, 6.11, 6.13 at the last four Slumber Times).

Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Wednesday 2014-03-26, 00:10 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Wednesday 2014-03-26, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~19 hours later)

Huobi's predicted price: 3596 CNY.
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3588 CNY
Error: 8 CNY (~1.31 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 589 USD.
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 584 USD
Error: 5 USD

NOTE: I wish to thank all the sellers who practically threw away thousands of precious bitcoins and all the buyers who wasted millions of dollars just to fullfill my prediction above.

Posts sometimes get moved to other threads, leaving a pointer behind.  Would that affect the number of pages?

I found that there is an exchange (VirWox) where one can trade BTC and other cryptocoins for Second Life's currency, the Linden dollar (L$, SLL).
https://www.virwox.com/

It seems that one can buy SLLs with cash at VirWox, to use in the game, but not sell them for cash.

What is the legal status of Linden dollars in the US?  It seems that they are not considered a currency. Are they considered valuable property?

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

                    !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !   Sun !    Mon !    Tue !
EXCHANGE            !  03/18 !  03/19 !  03/20 !  03/21 !  03/22 ! 03/23 !  03/24 !  03/25 ! Currencies considered

BSTP Bitstamp       |  14.91 |   7.08 |  10.91 |  22.42 |  13.61 |  6.10 |  13.67 |   8.11 | USD(w,c)
BTCE BTC-e          |   7.91 |   5.48 |   7.85 |  10.43 |   4.14 |  2.43 |   6.35 |   5.00 | EUR,RUB,USD(w)(1)
BFNX Bitfinex       |   7.74 |   3.44 |   8.10 |  19.20 |   6.73 |  4.83 |   9.28 |   4.90 | USD(w,c)
LAKE LakeBTC        |   3.19 |   3.24 |   4.17 |   3.57 |   3.70 |  4.01 |   3.48 |   3.79 | USD(c)
LBTC LocalBitcoins  |   1.03 |   1.11 |   0.94 |   0.92 |   0.54 |  0.37 |   1.04 |   1.14 | (c)(3)
KRAK Kraken         |   0.86 |   0.58 |   0.74 |   1.12 |   0.75 |  0.29 |   0.88 |   0.70 | EUR,USD(c)(2)
ANEX AsiaNexgen     |   1.00 |   0.88 |   0.67 |   0.87 |   0.39 |  0.52 |   0.78 |   0.44 | HKD(c)
BTDE Bitcoin.DE     |   0.42 |   0.35 |   0.38 |   0.42 |   0.39 |  0.18 |   0.48 |   0.28 | EUR(w,c)
CVIX CaVirtEx       |   0.10 |   0.13 |   0.40 |   0.14 |   0.12 |  0.08 |   0.34 |   0.13 | CAD(w,c)
BCUX Bitcurex       |   0.32 |   0.15 |   0.43 |   0.20 |   0.16 |  0.08 |   0.23 |   0.12 | EUR,PLN(c)
JUST Justcoin       |   0.04 |   0.06 |   0.05 |   0.08 |   0.06 |  0.01 |   0.04 |   0.06 | EUR,NOK,USD(c)
BCTR BitcoinCentral |   0.10 |   0.06 |   0.08 |   0.12 |   0.06 |  0.02 |   0.09 |   0.04 | EUR(c)
BT2C Bit2C          |   0.03 |   0.01 |   0.04 |   0.02 |   0.01 |  0.03 |   0.03 |   0.04 | ILS(c)
HITB HitBTC         |   0.09 |   0.04 |   0.04 |   0.16 |   0.05 |  0.03 |   0.04 |   0.04 | USD(c)
BMPL BitMarket.PL   |    .   |    .   |    .   |    .   |    .   |   .   |   0.02 |   0.03 | PLN(c)
CPBX CampBX         |   0.32 |   0.06 |   0.72 |   0.07 |   0.07 |  0.05 |   0.07 |   0.03 | USD(w,c)
FYSE FYB-SE         |   0.02 |   0.02 |   0.02 |   0.01 |    .   |  0.01 |   0.02 |   0.02 | SEK(c)
ROCK RockTrading    |   0.03 |   0.02 |   0.03 |   0.05 |   0.03 |  0.01 |   0.05 |   0.02 | EUR(c)
BCID Bitcoin.CO.ID  |   0.02 |   0.02 |   0.01 |   0.01 |   0.01 |  0.01 |   0.01 |   0.01 | IDR(c)
BITX BitX           |   0.01 |   0.02 |   0.02 |   0.01 |   0.01 |   .   |   0.03 |   0.01 | ZAR(c)
BMKS BTCMarkets     |   0.02 |   0.01 |   0.01 |   0.02 |   0.02 |   .   |   0.01 |   0.01 | AUD(c)
BTNZ BitNZ          |   0.02 |   0.01 |   0.01 |   0.01 |   0.01 |   .   |   0.02 |   0.01 | NZD(c)
FYSG FYB-SG         |   0.01 |    .   |    .   |   0.02 |   0.01 |  0.01 |   0.01 |   0.01 | SGD(c)
BSCZ BitStock.CZ    |   0.01 |    .   |   0.01 |    .   |    .   |   .   |    .   |    .   | CZK(c)

SUBTOTAL            |  38.20 |  22.77 |  35.63 |  59.87 |  30.87 | 19.07 |  36.97 |  24.94 |

OKCO OKCoin         |  82.70 |  95.00 |  58.30 | 190.00 |  79.10 | 35.90 |  82.30 |  92.60 | CNY(w)
HUBI Huobi          |  84.10 |  62.40 |  48.10 | 154.00 |  53.60 | 18.00 |  73.60 |  56.50 | CNY(w)
BTCC BTC-China      |   3.70 |   3.79 |   2.85 |   9.79 |   3.06 |  1.57 |   4.84 |   2.28 | CNY(w,c)
BTER Bter           |   0.27 |   0.35 |   0.36 |   0.66 |   0.32 |  0.28 |   0.47 |   0.32 | CNY(w)

SUBTOTAL            | 170.77 | 161.54 | 109.61 | 354.45 | 136.08 | 55.75 | 161.21 | 151.70 |

TOTAL               | 208.97 | 184.31 | 145.24 | 414.32 | 166.95 | 74.82 | 198.18 | 176.64 |


NOTES:

(1) The USD volumes for BTC-e obtained from Bitcoincharts are consistently smaller than those obtained through Bitcoinwisdom. Using the latter.
(2) Bitcoinwisdom lists only BTC/EUR for Kraken, not BTC/USD.
(3) Bitcoincharts lists Localbitcoins with many currencies, most of which appear to have negligible volume.  This line counts only AUD,BRL,CAD,CHF,CZK,DKK,EUR,GBP,RUB,SEK,THB,USD.

All numbers were collected by hand or copy-paste from the sites http://bitcoinwisdom.com (w) and http://bitcoincharts.com (c). 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.

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 the same period may span part of day 01/14 or part of day 01/16 in your local time zone.)

WARNING: There are at least five additional large exchanges in China that are not on this table because they are not covered by Bitcoinwisdom: FxBTC, ChBTC, BTCTrade, BTC100, and BTC38.  Together they may have as much volume as Huobi or OKCoin.

Hm, how do you know that?

Every dollar that one client withdraws from an exchange was deposited by some other client.  If one client has profit (withdraws more USD than he deposited), some other client will eventually have a loss (withdraw less than he deposited).  So the sum of all profits and losses is zero; actually a bit negative because of fees.

Are you counting profit in BTC, or discounting BTC holdings as investments? That makes things more complicated, but in the end trading does not create dollars nor BTCs, so if one wins, someone else must lose, no?

That still doesn't say how many traders make a profit or loss; it could be that only a few smart traders make huge profits and everybody else loses, or vice-versa.

Yeah, them too.  (Hm, now I get it, MtGOX and all that are bitcoin's strategy to be accepted by Wall Street...   )

The FBI will clarify that bitcoin is a terrorist weapon, since its stated purpose is to destroy the US government and economy.

And the DEA will consider it an addictive drug, for War on Drugs purposes.
 

Yes, bitconwisdom's owner confirmed that it is a bug in Huobi's server that reports the order book. Several consecutive bids at the top of the bid list get reported as if they were on the ask side, then moved back to the bid side whenever there is a trade, over and over. There are no trades corresponding to those moves.