Where was Vircurex located (physically, legally, whatever)?  Are the owners known?

That makes sense, but I was thinking of investors who bought shares from BIT directly. (There isn't an open market for those yet.)


Er... is that written somewhere on the BIT material, or are you inferring by analogy with those other funds?

If the investors can't liquidate their positions against the fund, then what is the point of it?  It does not pay dividends, there will be no open market for the shares until Q4/2014 at the earliest, its NAV is tied to the bitcoin price... Then why is investing in BIT shares better than investing in bitcoins directly, and trading BIT shares better than trading bitcoins directly? 

If/when an open market for BIT shares exists, would it be possible for their price to be higher than their NAV?

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Monday March 24

Prediction valid for: Monday 2014-03-24, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 3316 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price: 541 USD.



The red and green strokes are actual hourly prices (Huobi on the left, Bitstamp on the right).  The olive-gray vertical band was inserted to fill 2 hours that are missing in bitcoinwisdom's plot.  The magenta square at right is the above prediction.  The blue square next to it is the last prediction (see below). The light blue-gray squares are the older predictions.   The blue dots are the Slumber Points, the mean prices ((L+H)/2) in the interval 19:00--19:59 UTC every day. On the Huobi plot, the size of the Albertosaurus under each dot indicates the night-time activity at Huobi. Specifically, the area of the reptile is proportional S = V_h/V_d, where V_h is Huobi's mean hourly volume in the three hour period 18:00--20:59 UTC (02:00am--04:59am China time), and V_d is Huobi's daily volume 00:00--23:59 UTC on the same date.  The largest Albertosauri correspond to the S = 0.010 or greater.   The size of each blue dot (on both plots) is proportional to its reliability weight, computed from Huobi's ratio S.  The brown lines on Huobi's plot are trends fitted a posteriori to the Slumber Points. The orange line is the trend assumed for the Huobi prediction above.

The trend assumed for the above prediction is the same as used for the last prediction, namely a shifted exponential A + B*Q**(d-d0), where d is the day of the month, d0 = 19, A = 2685.90, B = 1061.64, Q = 0.901.  The values of A and B were fitted by weighted least squares to the points Mar/19--22.  (It may have been more correct to include today's Slumber Point Mar/23 in the least squares fitting, but the weight 0.573 computed from its S ratio (5.278) does not does not account for the disruptive effect of the DDOS attack which put the site offline for 4 hours, 01--04 pm local time.)

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.15 CNY/USD (it was 6.09, 6.20, 6.15 at the last 3 Slumber Times).

Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Saturday 2014-03-22, 23:46 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Saturday 2014-03-23, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~19 hours later)

Huobi's predicted price: 3386 CNY.
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3469 CNY
Error: 83 CNY (~14 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 551 USD.
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 566 USD
Error: 15 USD

NOTE: "Tomorrow the price will be the same as today" may be the most accurate predictor one can get.

I have added a few more exchanges to my daily volume table:  LakeBTC, AsiaNexgen, LocalBitcoins, VirWox, Bitcurex, BitcoinCentral, and BitStock.CZ.  These were the ones available through bitcoincharts.com that seemed to have significant volume.  Only  LakeBTC (with ~3.5 kBTC/day typical) is in the "major league", competing with Bitstamp, BTC-e, and Bitfinex.

The table is still missing the next 5 big exchanges in China after Huobi and OKCoin.  If anyone knows of a convenient source for their daily volumes, please let me know.

Yesterday's table was delayed so much that it got eaten by today's.

Volume outside China this Sunday was low (19 kBTC) but almost twice last Sunday's. 

Today Huobi had a DDOS attack that shut it down for ~4 hours.  Its volume (18 kBTC) was the lowest since Jan/31, the Chinese New Year's day.  Other Chinese exchanges were slow too.  As a result, volume in the Chinese exchanges that I monitor was very low this Sunday, ~56 kBTC, a bit less than last Sunday's.

China's slice of the volume, couting only these exchanges, was 82% yesterday (Saturday) and "only" 75% today.

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

                    !    Sat !   Sun !    Mon !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !   Sun !
EXCHANGE            !  03/15 ! 03/16 !  03/17 !  03/18 !  03/19 !  03/20 !  03/21 !  03/22 ! 03/23 ! Currencies considered

BSTP Bitstamp       |   2.20 |  3.30 |   9.17 |  14.91 |   7.08 |  10.91 |  22.42 |  13.61 |  6.10 | USD(w,c)
BFNX Bitfinex       |   1.74 |  1.90 |   3.76 |   7.74 |   3.44 |   8.10 |  19.20 |   6.73 |  4.83 | USD(w,c)
LAKE LakeBTC        |   3.10 |  3.30 |   3.05 |   3.19 |   3.24 |   4.17 |   3.57 |   3.70 |  4.01 | USD(c)
BTCE BTC-e          |   2.55 |  2.62 |   3.90 |   7.91 |   5.48 |   7.85 |  10.43 |   4.14 |  2.43 | EUR,RUR,USD(w)(1)
ANEX AsiaNexgen     |   0.37 |  0.93 |   1.02 |   1.00 |   0.88 |   0.67 |   0.87 |   0.39 |  0.52 | HKD(c)
LBTC LocalBitcoins  |   0.52 |  0.32 |   1.08 |   0.99 |   1.08 |   0.89 |   0.89 |   0.51 |  0.36 | (c)(3)
KRAK Kraken         |   0.35 |  0.16 |   0.48 |   0.86 |   0.58 |   0.74 |   1.12 |   0.75 |  0.29 | EUR,USD(c)(2)
BTDE Bitcoin.DE     |   0.12 |  0.12 |   0.40 |   0.42 |   0.35 |   0.38 |   0.42 |   0.39 |  0.18 | EUR(w,c)
VWOX VirWox         |   0.10 |  0.10 |   0.14 |   0.14 |   0.14 |   0.11 |   0.13 |   0.12 |  0.15 | SLL(c)
CVIX CaVirtEx       |   0.06 |  0.06 |   0.10 |   0.10 |   0.13 |   0.40 |   0.14 |   0.12 |  0.08 | CAD(w,c)
BCUX Bitcurex       |    .   |   .   |    .   |   0.32 |   0.15 |   0.41 |   0.18 |   0.16 |  0.07 | PLN(c)
CPBX CampBX         |   0.03 |  0.02 |   0.07 |   0.32 |   0.06 |   0.72 |   0.07 |   0.07 |  0.05 | USD(w,c)
BCTR BitcoinCentral |   0.03 |  0.01 |   0.07 |   0.10 |   0.06 |   0.08 |   0.12 |   0.06 |  0.02 | EUR(c)
BSCZ BitStock.CZ    |    .   |   .   |   0.01 |   0.01 |    .   |   0.01 |    .   |    .   |   .   | CZK(c)

SUBTOTAL            |  11.17 | 12.84 |  23.25 |  38.01 |  22.67 |  35.44 |  59.56 |  30.75 | 19.09 |

OKCO OKCoin         |  55.40 | 40.00 |  59.00 |  82.70 |  95.00 |  58.30 | 190.00 |  79.10 | 35.90 | CNY(w)
HUBI Huobi          |  36.50 | 27.00 |  63.80 |  84.10 |  62.40 |  48.10 | 154.00 |  53.60 | 18.00 | CNY(w)
BTCC BTC-China      |   1.13 |  1.51 |   2.74 |   3.70 |   3.79 |   2.85 |   9.79 |   3.06 |  1.57 | CNY(w,c)
BTER Bter           |   0.35 |  0.28 |   0.34 |   0.27 |   0.35 |   0.36 |   0.66 |   0.32 |  0.28 | CNY(w)

SUBTOTAL            |  93.38 | 68.79 | 125.88 | 170.77 | 161.54 | 109.61 | 354.45 | 136.08 | 55.75 |

TOTAL               | 104.55 | 81.63 | 149.13 | 208.78 | 184.21 | 145.05 | 414.01 | 166.83 | 74.84 |


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,CZK,DKK,EUR,GBP,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.

I don't thing they are "controlling the spread", it seems that they have plain stupid bug in their chart data server.

A large number of the "ask" orders (from the current price ~3466 ¥ up to ~3478 ¥) are moved to the "bid" side.  Then, a few seconds later, those same orders are moved back to the "ask" side.  The current price  is not affected; all trades occur near ~3466 ¥, none occurs near ~3478 ¥. This has occurred continuously since Huobi came back online after the DDOS attacks today.  I have pointed this out to the bitcoinwisdom owner, he says it is their bug, not his.

Hybrid paper/digital seems safer than both; successful fraud requires attacking both sides at very different times and with very different methods.

Preventing ballot stuffing in paper-only systems is not trivial but is doable.  Some simple material things help, like translucent ballot boxes and ballots countersigned on the spot by the Table officer; but the most important thing is to keep the ballot box under many critical eyes, all the time, until the box is opened and votes are counted.

The main advantage of paper-only systems is that everyone can understand the risks and apply the necessary security precautions; people know what to watch for, just by common sense.  For digital and hybrid systems, only few people among the public understand the risks, and even fewer (or none) can do anything about them on election day.

The puzzling thing is why people are so obsessed at "improving" an activity that occurs only once every few months at most, and need not take more than half an hour -- much less than eating an hamburger, or the average urban commuting trip.  Brazil's 400,000 electronic voting machines collect at most 400 votes each during 8 hours every 2 years, and typically need to be replaced after 10 years -- that is, each machine gets discarded after 40 hours of use and collecting less than 2000 votes.  The machine itself costs only ~300$, but  storing, transporting, checking and loading the software into it, at every election, costs a lot more.  It must be a record for inefficiency...

BTW, I have a couple of stories about internet voting fiascos in Brazil, too. 

Speaking of Karpeles, it occurred to me that MtGOX not only was the largest exchange outside China, but may also have been the largest bitcoin-related enterprise ever (with more than 500 M$ in nominal assets, not considering the theft).  Is that correct?

I heard that Mark Karpeles may step down from his post as chief computer security specialist of the global bitcoin economy.  Perhaps he can be recruited to take care of internet voting, once the dinosaurs get extinguished. 

No, it is not that. (In fact, the companies that sell digital signatures would surely love internet voting.)

The problem is ensuring that voters can vote according to their free choices without fear of punishment - by government at all levels, employers, mafias, family members, etc...

Icelanders may not feel that that is a problem now, but it is a serious and real problem in  many parts of the world, including many parts of Brazil.  Indeed, putting an end to such "leash votes" was the main excuse the governmetn used when it pushed electronic voting in 1996.  Even where it is not a problem now in your country, it may become one when some fascist group becomes strong enough to scare voters, or when a president turns out to be corrupt -- and by then it will be too late to switch to a safer system.

To prevent voter coercion, the system must ensure that no one can know how another person voted.  More than that: the system must make sure that no voter can prove to others that he voted in a particular way.  At the same time, it must ensure that even skeptics -- especially the losing parties -- can be convinced that the votes have been correctly added.

It is not trivial, but also not too difficult, to ensure these requirements with traditional paper voting.  It is more difficult, but still possible, to ensure them with properly designed hybrid paper/digital systems.  It is mathematically impossible to get all three with purely digital systems, including voting by internet.  The latter obviously fails the first requirement: one's vote can be snooped either at the terminal end (by the husband/boss/mafioso in person), in transit, or at the receiving end (by corrupt government officials).

I recall a complicated cryptographic internet voting proposal that claimed to protect voting secrecy from corrupt government officials (thus only part of the problem).  It almost worked -- except that one could still identify how each person voted by capturing the received data and processing it offline, simulating an election closure after each vote cast and comparing the totals.

I have learned many interesting stories about electronic voting but they are too long and too off-topic to tell here...

Sorry if I gave that impression.  No, I came here to learn about bitcoin -- the non-technical aspects that one does not see in Coindesk or Bloomberg.  It is the one place where tips and links to all sorts of topics get posted, from the economics of mining to whether it is prudent to trade while drunk.

I do read and occasionally post to other threads, and other forums; but their cycle time is days, here it is seconds.  (It is like trading at CampBX vs trading at Huobi, I suppose  )

Yes, I was being a bit of a troll there.  But just a bit. 


I appreciate your advice and offer for help, and I am sure it is made with the best of intentions; but do you realize that it sounds like "you speak badly of dugs, here, try some crack and I am sure you will change your mind." 

Seriously: In one of his articles/interviews, Mark Andreessen made it a point of saying that he did not own any bitcoins himself.  Can you guess why? (I believe I know.)


I guess we don't have enough common ground to discuss those issues then... 

Actually the very point that I have tried to drive, in my occasional role as a safe voting advocate, is that no amount of cryptography can make a fully digital voting machine safe; on the contrary, such machines are inherently more INsecure than paper-backed machines, or even plain paper voting.  This is not my opinion by the way, but that of every expert in electronic voting in the world (including Ron Rivest, co-inventor of the RSA public key cryptography).   

And internet-based voting is much worse, because no technological fix can prevent voter coercion or and ensure secrecy unless the vote is cast  in a strictly controlled environment.

But one thing that I learned in those efforts is that, no matter how much and how clearly an army of experts explains something to someone, he will never understand it if his income depends on him NOT understanding it.   


As opposed to fake Bulgarian, Slovenian, or Hongkongian exchange data? 

What exchange closure? Bitcoinica? MtGOX? GBL?


Oh, we are back to discussing my person... looks like someone really needs that lesson.

But how do you convert 10,000 BTC to 5 million USD without being caught by the police?  Unless you sell privately to other criminals (after making sure that they are not undercover agents), which does not change anything.

I pity the FBI, they must be having a terribly hard time with all those criminals who believe that bitcoin is a safe way to move illegal money or evade taxes.   

Something weird is going on at Huobi (in bitconwisdom's charts).  A large chunk of the lowest "ask" list (from ~3460 to ~3478)  is being moved to the "bid" side and then immediately moved back.  But the only trades are in the ~3460 range.  A bug in bitcoinwisdom's scripts, or in Huobi's chart server?

Something weird is going on at Huobi (in bitconwisdom's charts).  A large chunk of the lowest "ask" list (from ~3460 to ~3478)  is being moved to the "bid" side and then immediately moved back.  But the only trades are in the ~3460 range.  A bug in bitcoinwisdom's scripts, or in Huobi's chart server?

The theft is a problem.

The unwillingness of the community (including members of the Shrem Karpeles & Friends Foundations who allegedly lost money in MtGOX) to call the cops is another -- it only encourages other bitcoin businessmen to do the same.

And 10% of all the money that exists being owned (note, "being owned", not just "having passed through the hands of") thieves and scammers is another.  Although it is only a detail of the bigger problem of 100% of all the money that exists being owned by a few thousand people.

That case (like Silk Road and Charlie Shrem) is an example of people being prosecuted for other crimes that just happened to involve the use of bitcoins.  BTW, I found another case, of hackers in Germany caught for spreading a bitcoin-mining virus.

The GBL case in China is the only one I know of someone being prosecuted for stealing bitcoins (or collecting money through some bitcoin business, such as an exchange, and then failing to deliver the bitcoins).

Here is a link for German hackers and GBL: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25217386

Actually "liquidity will begin no later than March 2014" seem to have meant "on March 31st, 2014 we will tell you that liquidity will begin sometime in April". 

Liquidity may force BIT to sell some of their bitcoin holdings, therefore the date and conditions are (or should be) of interest to other bitcoin investors too.  Uncertainty may push the price down throughout the whole month.

AFAIK, HODL is a typo that someone made in this forum (maybe on this thread, was it?) which later became a backronym for "Hold On for Dear Life".

It is the advice given by those who want to dump to those who are supposed to sacrifice their money for the noble cause of pushing the price up.  

Huobi is back on line. Let's see whether the prices will realign.