In an article not long ago, Marc Andreessen declared that he himself owned no bitcoins.  Smart guy?  

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In case someone here is interested:
   
  U.S. judge freezes assets of Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange boss
  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=511675.msg5649623#msg5649623

Total trade volume today (Tue Mar/11 00:00--23:59 UTC), on the exchanges that I monitor, was ~146 kBTC.  That is 42% less than yesterday's, and 71% less than last Tuesdays.

Trade volume outside China fell 43% compared to yesterday (from 33 to 19 kBTC).  Bitstamp (9.17 kBTC) retained its first place, but Bitfinex (3.63) fell to third place, behind BTC-e (5.09).  Bitfinex fell 69% compared to yesterday.

Trade volume in China fell 42% (from 218 to 127 kBTC).  OKCoin had more volume than Huobi (52% versus 43%), like it had since last Wednesday.

China's slice of the total volume remained practically unchanged at 87%

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


             !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !    Tue !                     
  EXCHANGE   !  03/04 !  03/05 !  03/06 !  03/07 !  03/08 !  03/09 !  03/10 !  03/11 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp   |  28.03 |  12.72 |  10.40 |  21.45 |   9.70 |   9.12 |  13.40 |   9.17 | USD                 
  BitFinEx   |  25.03 |   8.38 |   7.06 |  17.23 |  10.97 |   8.29 |  11.60 |   3.63 | USD                 
  BTC-e      |  28.83 |  11.19 |   5.69 |  13.54 |   8.71 |   6.52 |   7.16 |   5.09 | USD,EUR,RUR         
  Kraken     |   1.81 |   0.87 |   0.71 |   1.20 |   0.55 |   0.64 |   0.57 |   0.45 | EUR                 
  Bitcoin.DE |   1.02 |   0.40 |   0.34 |   0.38 |   0.31 |   0.20 |   0.39 |   0.41 | EUR                 
  CaVirtEx   |   0.33 |   0.22 |   0.22 |   0.24 |   0.12 |   0.15 |   0.13 |   0.18 | CAD                 
  CampBX     |   0.14 |   0.04 |   0.03 |   0.07 |   0.03 |   0.02 |   0.05 |   0.06 | USD                 

  SUBTOTAL   |  85.19 |  33.82 |  24.45 |  54.11 |  30.39 |  24.94 |  33.30 |  18.99 |                     

  OKCoin     | 137.35 | 286.05 | 139.37 | 109.70 | 146.46 | 136.24 | 119.00 |  68.50 | CNY                 
  Huobi      | 268.47 | 196.00 |  92.40 |  96.37 | 119.46 | 103.51 |  95.10 |  55.00 | CNY                 
  BTC-China  |  15.36 |   8.04 |   5.58 |   4.87 |   5.08 |   4.24 |   3.34 |   3.11 | CNY                 
  Bter       |   0.64 |   0.31 |   0.32 |   0.32 |   0.28 |   0.21 |   0.27 |   0.34 | CNY                 

  SUBTOTAL   | 421.82 | 490.40 | 237.67 | 211.26 | 271.28 | 244.20 | 217.71 | 126.95 |                     

  TOTAL      | 507.01 | 524.22 | 262.12 | 265.37 | 301.67 | 269.14 | 251.01 | 145.94 |                     


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.

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".)

Thanks!

Would those logged-in users have any other reason to log in, other than trading?

Assuming that  are all traders,  BTC-e's volume today was 5.09 kBTC, and the total outside China was 19 kBTC.  If proportion holds, today there were about 16,000 traders loged in outside China.

That ignores possible overlap (users who trade in two or more platforms), which should not be terribly significant.

Today's volume was very low (1/4 of last Tuesday, for eample).  Is the volume low because there are fewer traders logged in, or because the same traders generate less volume?

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Wednesday Mar/12

Prediction valid for: Wednesday 2014-03-12, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 3788 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price: 631 USD.

Huobi

The red and green strokes are actual Huobi hourly prices.  The current prediction is the rightmost magenta square.  The blue squares are the last bullish and bearish predictions (see below), and the light blue-gray squares are the older ones.  The orange and grey dots are the Slumber Points, the mean Huobi prices at 19:00 UTC every day.  Each point is a Glyptodon if the hourly volume V_h for 19:00--19:59 UTC is less than 0.005 times the daily volume V_d 00:00--23:59 UTC; and is an Albertosaurus otherwise. The grey lines are trends fitted a posteriori to the Glyptodon Points. The orange line is the trend that was assumed for the above prediction. The Helix pomatia is a graphical indication of market sentiment as deduced from the contents of this thread.

By the arbitrary criterion I have been using, today was defintely a Glyptodon (V_h/V_d = 195/55000 = 0.00354 < 0.005) and therefore a valid data point.  The trend that included it and seemed most plausible was a shifted exponential p(d) = A+B*Q**(d-4), where d is the day of the month, fitted to the five Glyptodons Mar/04--06,09,11.  It seemed reasonable to exclude the Glyptodon of Mar/08, since its V_h/V_d (4.27) was near the threshold and it seemed to lie outside any trend.  The ratio Q was set to 0.700, giving A = 3772.33, B = 268.94).

Bitstamp

The red and green strokes are actual Bitstamp hourly prices.  The dots, dinosaurs, mammals, lines, and magenta squares are Huobi's Slumber Points, dinosaurs, mammals, trends, and new predictions, scaled by the currency conversion factor R (6.40 for Feb/07--09, 6.00 since Mar/04, and 6.12 for all other dates).

Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Tuesday 2014-03-11, 01:31 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Tuesday 2014-03-11, 19:00--19:59 UTC

Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3802 CNY
Huobi's predicted price for bulls: 4073 CNY
Error: 271 CNY (~45 USD)
Huobi's predicted price for bears: 3597 CNY
Errors: 205 CNY (~34 USD)

Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 623 USD
Bitstamp's predicted price for bulls: 679 USD
Error: 56 USD
Bitstamp's predicted price for bears: 600 USD
Error: 23 USD

NOTE: Huobi's CEO denied allegations of fake trade volume, but said nothing about fake Glyptodons.

I cannot tell whether you are being sarcastic. 

Some time ago, Huobi's CEO claimed to have 10,000 active clients.  Discounting for hype and adding OKCoin and the others, 10,000 active traders in China seems to be a very generous upper bound.  (Of course it can be much less.)

I would be surprised if there are more than 10,000 active traders in all the exchanges outside China.  Is there a reliable estimate somewhere?

That is because the US Government is still lukewarm about bitcoin.  AFAIK you cannot legally sell chewing gum in China for bitcoin, and I suppose that a corporate entity cannot take rent in bitcoin.  If the US decides that it doesn't like bitcoin after all, you will not be able to do that in the US either.

By the way, are those merchants actually accepting bitcoin, or do they receive dollars through processors like Bitpay?


"Quite popular" is relative.  Surely no e-commerce site in Russia will post prices in dollars or accept payment in dollars.  So what things can you buy with dollars in Russia, away from hotels, airports, and other tourist-frequented places?

AFAIK that is not correct, the exchanges are legal and people can transfer money to/from exchanges via banks.  In fact, the only way to move Yuan into or out of exchanges is by bank transfer between Chinese bank bank accounts.  What the Chinese banks cannot do is buy or sell bitcoins themselves, or deal with bitcoin in any way.  To the banks, an exchange are just another corporate customer, and they do not touch any bitcoin, they deal with the Yuan exclusively.

The Chinese government has effectively confined bitcoin to playpens --- the exchanges --- where it can have no significant effect on the economy.   At that point the PBoC apparently stopped worrying about it.

A commercial transaction always has two legs, the client sends the payment and the merchant sends the goods/services.  Even if the first leg were safe and anonymous (which is very hard to ensure), if the transaction is illegal the government can easily catch the customer by the second leg.

Sorry to repeat, but they cannot "export capital" with bitcoin.

When a Chinese national buys bitcoin with Yuan from other Chinese, transfers the bitcoins to another exchange outside China, and sells them there for dollars,  the net result is that the Chinese national got some dollars from non-Chinese people. All the Yuan remained in China.  The PBoC sees nothing wrong in that, quite the opposite.

That is different from when Chinese citizens exchanges Yuan for dollars at a foreign bank, in China or outside it, since in thsi case the bank effectively becomes owner of some of China's real wealth.

As for store of value, there are zillions of options that are better than bitcoin.

The only substantial thing left is speculation.  I wonder how many people are involved in that.  My guess is less than 10,000, which would be less than 0.001% of the population...

From what Iknow, Chinese residents cannot pay for goods or services using bitcoin; banks and other financial institutions cannot deal with bitcoin; bitcoins cannot be sold by e-commerce sites; and e-payment services cannot be used to pay for bitcoin.   So what is left?

I believe there are other cointries which have taken similar measures; Russia and India, perhaps? (A thread was started in this forum to build a list the legal status of bitcoin in each coutry, but it never got beyond the first draft.)  Some countries (like the US)  have not banned crypto-coins explicitly, but their existing regulations alerady prevent some of those uses. 

If crypto currencies will only be used for clandestine commerce between peers, under risk of legal penalties, they will have failed in their goal.

I think that he said "history" and not "fairy tales". 

Bitcoin is very easy to regulate and stifle, see China for example.

Fifth, they smell a scam.

In the early 90s, the Brazilian branch of Amway started an obnoxious Ponzi/pyramid schema here.

To become an Amway representative, you had to pay a few hundred dollars, ostensibly for some sketchy sales training.  Then you could make a little money by buying their detergents and such by the box, and selling them by the bottle to your friends. Or you could make a lot more money by recruiting more representatives, and receiving part of their joining fees as commission.  Naturally Amway gave out brochures with photos of people in luxury boats and cars, all suposedly bought with those fat commissions.

Soon we were running into Amway recruiters everywhere.  Saying "no thanks" to strangers was easy; dismissing relatives and friends, sometimes in financial difficulties, was not.  We ended up joining only to preserve one of those friendships; but of course we did not even try to sell anything, or bestow the same annoyance onto others.

Like US schools, this university instructs prospective grad students to solicit letters of recommendation from former teachers or advisors.  Once we got a letter that said only "I do NOT recommend this student because he has joined Amway".  Fortunately that application was rejected for other reasons, otherwise we would have been faced with a thorny ethical dilemma.

(Amway in the US doesn't seem to be so obnoxious.  Perhaps the Brazilian "Amway" was only loosely connected to them.  Eventually the Brazilian justice stepped in and stopped their worst abuses.)

The point of this story is:

It is quite easy to tell wheter someone wants you to invest in something because he is genuinely enthusiastic about it and want to share it with you,  or because he expects to pocket some of your money.   The latter types are terribly annoying, and often end up losing their friends along with their money.  Be careful not to become one.

So that people know that bitcoin is not only scam but also spam.   

Good question.  Apart from "selling their clients' coins" of course. 

Perhaps bitcoin lending (don't they do that already?).  Priority in the placement of bids/asks (a subtler alternative to a "pause" button?

In my understanding, bitcoin as a currency of e-commerce or as a bona-fide financial instrument is dead in China, and I don't see that changing in the future.

Thanks!

In what sense is it "preparing"?

The market is just a bunch of traders.  How is each trader "preparing", for what, and why?

Huobi looks like it will have only 1/3 of yesterday's volume - ~30 kBTC.
OKCoin BTC/CNY may have 1/2 of yesterday's volume.
OKCoin LTC/CNY also looks like 1/3.

I did not find anything about today being a holiday in China.  Mar/12 is arbor day, but is a business day as usual.

Things feel strange... Huobi's volume is VERY low and falling... No TA postings in this thread... No exchanges have been robbed today... What is happening?

This may be of interest too: @rpietila claims that MtGOX had less than 70,000 clients, counting all accounts with at least 0.001 BTC:



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