I think that the buys by Markus/Willy were indeed responsible for most of the rise at MtGOX.  But my understanding is that they were merely doing arbitrage with China where the bubbles really happened, due to huge new demand.

It is possible that the Markus/Willy operators were buying the coins from MtGOX clients with non-existent dollars, as the report claims.  If they were doing arbitrage, they must have been selling those coins in China, expecting to get the money from there later somehow.  The December PBoC decree may have thrown a wrench into those plans.  Or not.

We probably will never know, since Sunlot (who were sought by Mark as possible buyers, before closing) apparently made some deal with a couple of big clients who were suing MtGOX in the US, and may possibly take over from the bankruptcy court in Japan.  If that happens, there is no reason to expect that they will do a real audit or criminal investigation, that the former management will be punished (or even excluded from the distribution of the remaining 220'000 BTC), or that we will know what happened to the missing coins.  And nobody seems to care. 

It is Sunday 18:00 UTC, which is Monday 2am in China. Huobi traded ˜4000 BTC in the last hour.  If I am not mistaken, the last times they had so much activity at this hour were Sun Apr/27 (Mon Apr/28 in China) and May/20 (Wed May/21 in China).

I don't think that average Joe clients are under any pressure or threat.  At most they may have their bank accounts closed if they manage to use them to trade bitcoins.  If there will be penalties, they should fall only on card processors, exchanges, brokers etc..

Another totally speculative theory (was it @walsoraj's?) is that Huobi's bank account that currently allows withdrawals is about to be closed with little or no advance warning.  Then common folk who find their yuan trapped there will have to buy bitcoins from other Huobi clients and move them to another exchange that still allows yuan withdrawals.  That should drive the price up at Huobi a lot, since only privileged Huobi traders with alternative withdrawal channels  would want to sell coins. The current rally would then be those privileged Huobi traders acting on inside info, namely buying coins now in expectation of selling them at even higher prices at Huobi.  (Arbitrage should stop then, so the price may not rise on other exchanges.)

There are still ways to get money into the exchanges, at worst they are inconvenient for common folk.

As for why the sudden interest in bitcoin: no information, only guesses.

Perhaps Huobi is just about to open an offshore exchange, trading CNH ("offshore yuan") instead of CNY ("domestic yuan"). People with money in the exchanges who know that and are interested in trading CNH are buying the coins to move them over there. Perhaps.

The Dish news was carried by the e-media in China; but that seems too little, too late to explain the rally.

Could be that Facebook app?

On the 1m charts, this last spurt apparently began at 02:38 UTC on Huobi and Bitfinex, at 2:39 on Bitstamp, BTC-e, OKCoin.    Did anyone see in the trade logs which of the two was first?

Could be, but SMBIT probably has a reserve of BTC that they "sell" to themseves at the current market price when a new client comes in, and that they replenish later at their convenience, looking for the lowest price of couse.  The started with ~17'000 BTC before they had any clients.

There seem to be "newbie" accounts that use such plagiarizing bots to beef up their activity counts.

Rather "Good [afternoon/evening], here is someone from Barcelona [writing]. Hi."

The humorous(?) rant that follows does not make much sense in the original, and Google Translate only makes it worse... 

That is normal.  Well before the internet, whenever a magazine or newspaper changed the font, they would get tons of hate mail from faithful readers.  Suddenly it did not feel like "home" any more.

I personally find the new font a bit more legible (easier to tell 3 from 5 from 8 ) but it looks a bit too small for my old eyes.  I can magnify the page with CTRL+ but then the chart gets enlarged too.  

Perhaps a "small/med/large" font size setting?

The rise from the "Dead Sea Valley" (Apr/4--May/19, Huobi at ~2750) seems to have happened in a few isolated buying episodes.  Between them the price seems to have wandered either at random or with momentum gained in those spurts. 

I can see five such events  (1)--(5) on Huobi:

      ! Start Date+Time ! Length !  Rise ! Amount !                      
  Num ! (UTC)           !  (hrs) ! (CNY) ! (kBTC) ! Obs                  
  ----+-----------------+--------+-------+--------+----------------------
  (1) | May/20 02:00    |      2 |    50 |     10 |                      
  (2) | "      14:00    |      3 |   170 |     18 |                      
      | May/21          |        |       |        | slow rise then flat  
  (3) | May/22 05:00    |      3 |    90 |     21 |                      
      | May/23          |        |       |        | ramp                 
      | May/24          |        |       |        | slow dip and recovery
  (4) | May/25 04:00    |      3 |   250 |     25 |                      
      | May/26          |        |       |        | slow rise            
      | May/27          |        |       |        | dip and recovery     
      | May/28          |        |       |        | random drift         
      | May/29          |        |       |        | random drift         
  (5) | May/30 09:00    |      4 |   220 |     25 |                      

To get China local time, add 8 hours to UTC.

The numbers in the "Amount" column are not very meaningful, though: they are just the total Huobi trade volume in those time intervals.  They are almost certainly over-estimates since they must include lots of coins sold at Huobi by arbitragers, as well as coins bought and sold multiple times during the rise.  The presence of arbitrage also means that one cannot add the amounts from different exchanges.

This pattern of isolated spurts does not seem to be caused by a broad rise of optimism in the market (except for the optimism induced by the spurts themselves).

Perhaps one or two of the spurts were sudden decisions by rich individual traders, for random motives. (A suitcase of cash being successfully delivered to a Chinese exchange, perhaps?  A client tryng to escape through the BTC door from Bitstamp's more demanding KYC procedures?)

Or perhaps each spurt is a trader of group of traders obtaining some insider information (such as the imminent opening of the offshore versions of Huobi and OKCoin, trading CNH insteadof CNY?)

Sigh. Dear @aminorex and others, please note that my opinion is not important for this issue.  Neither is your opinion, or that of anyone in this thread.   What matters is the opinion of the other 7 billion people on Earth, and especially of some of them:


Can you see now why I think that irreversibility is going to be a problem for bitcoin -- not for me?

PS. As for all the others who insist on discussing ME instead of bitcoin (and post 10 replies for each post of mine, with nothing but comments about ME, and then blame ME for it): I am sorry to break your hearts folks, but I am already married.

I confess that my math has not got there yet (sincerely). What will happen then? Will the miners start charging fees to make up for the difference?  Or is the price of bitcoin expected to double at that moment?  Or none of the above?  Or both of the above?

Right. Thanks to SMBIT, traders only have to worry about the destination of ~27'000 BTC per week, rather than 28'000. 

Seriously, there is at least another bitcoin fund similar to SMBIT (Pantera Bitcoin Partners, PBP).  Does anyone know how much they have and are buying?

Thanks!

But when did he became aware that the company was insolvent, and what did he do then? 

This is rather, er, strange.  I understand that in bankruptcy proceedings, claims by the management are invariably considered only after all other creditors have been paid, even if there is no evidence wrongdoing -- because they are "guilty" of the company's failure, at the very least.  Moreover, in the case o MtGOX there clearly were many actions by the management that were unfair to the clients, such as allowing them to deposit and trade without warning them of the insolvency situation.

I understand this to say "there is no contract with PwC; Sunlot may propose to pay 0.01$ to PwC for the audit, and if PwC does not accept, then Sunlot alone will decide who will do the audit and how it will be done, while the Class Counsel will have to sit and watch."

Anyway, thanks for your answers.  Their former clients can have their opinion, but as a mere inhabitant of the same planet, I must say that I am quite upset at the idea that MtGOX's management may escape impartial investigation, and even be rewarded in the end.   That will only encourage them, or others in similar situations, to do the same thing again, to other victims. 

There is indeed a conjecture that SecondMarket's BIT fund buys much more on Thursdays than in other days (and, of course, only if they get more investments than liquidations in that week).  Uncharacteristically, they bought 300 BTC yesterday, May 28.

However, they are not big buyers.  They bought 5865 BTC on Apr/10, but since then they have bought~1000 BTC/week net.  In comparison, miners are producing ~28'000 BTC/week.

I cower in fear. 

That is true... and they also may reveal the person's depth...

Gee thanks...   

(Speaking of "reality funnier than fiction", are you acquaninted with the doings of John Dee and Edward Kelley?  If not, I may try to find some links among my old files...)

I don't know how easy it is for foreigners to open an account on those exchanges.  They deal only in yuan so far, and you need a Chinese bank account to withdraw yuan, if not to deposit.  And then there is the language barrier.

There is a Chinese language sub-forum in this forum.  Surely there are many forums in China.  

You can find Chinese sources by Googling "比特币" ("bitcoin"), with quotes.  Good luck with Google Translate.

EDIT: you may want to add "5月27日" (with quotes too) to get news with date "May 27" on/in them.

ARGENTINA's? Now THAT does it.  Getting all the silos in ready-to-launch status...