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481
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 14, 2014, 12:41:06 PM
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I thought people were supposed to be buying new Bitcoins so that they could spend it on Microsoft products around Christmas time... and honestly, I'm making fun of Bitcoiners, right now, but even I expected some slight uptick in volume based on this. But ummm... doesn't appear that's happening anytime soon.
I understood that Microsoft only "accepts bitcoins" for Xbox game points, not for other products. Is that right? |
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482
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 08:10:33 PM
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[ ... ] probably not even 1 out of 100 people in the general public use BTC.
i'd be surprised if it was even 1 in ten thousand. I posted earlier that, as of 10/Sep/2014, there were only ~650'000 addresses in the blockchain with 0.1 BTC or more. I would think that it is an upper bound to the number of people who "use BTC" in any meaningful sense. That is indeed roughly 1 in 10'000, worldwide. The Bank of England published a report of bitcoin a couple of months ago. The fellow who wrote the report estimated the number of users in the UK. I forgot the number, but it was less than 50'000. That would be less than 1 in 1000 UK citizens, is that right? |
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483
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Economy / Speculation / Re: SecondMarket Bitcoin Investment Trust Observer
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on: December 13, 2014, 07:48:26 PM
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Will also be glad once all of the SR coins have been sold off.
Me too. Then this stone hanging over us is gone. There may be other auctions for other piles of coins seized in other arrests. And sometime after September 2015 the 220'000 coins salvaged from MtGOX will be returned to the former clients. |
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484
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Answer the question above with a question.
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on: December 13, 2014, 07:33:49 PM
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Are you an anagrammatist, son of Ma Attains Gram, too? If someone answers a question with a non-question, and someone else answers that non-question with a question, is that one violation of the Rule, or two? what's the question? Haven't we decided that it does not matter, as long as it is a question? |
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485
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Bitcoin / Hardware / Re: BFL fucked us over again
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on: December 13, 2014, 05:55:18 PM
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Can BFL legally declare bankruptcy at this stage?
I think (not sure at all) that all civil lawsuits against BFL are on hold while they are (were?) under receivership. But if they start operating on their own again, then the lawsuits by their creditors will resume, and they may have to file for bankruptcy (full name, ˜bankruptcy protection"), or be forced into it by the creditors; which would very likely end in liquidation. I am even less sure about the zombie "probation" state they may be now, with the FTC and the court watching over their shoulders. |
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486
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Answer the question above with a question.
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on: December 13, 2014, 05:42:11 PM
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Are you an anagrammatist, son of Ma Attains Gram, too? If someone answers a question with a non-question, and someone else answers that non-question with a question, is that one violation of the Rule, or two? |
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487
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Economy / Economics / Re: Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner
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on: December 13, 2014, 05:18:57 PM
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The methodology 31 pages ago states that a bitcoin owner is a person who "owns" bitcoins valued at least $1.
Well, that is a rather low threshold. It is not useful for investment or purchasing, not even in third-world countries. It would include many people who tried bitcoin but did not like it, were stuck with 0.005 BTC left over from their experiment, cannot spend it and see no point in cashing it out. The ownership is regardless of how they are distributed in addresses, therefore the number of owners may be higher or smaller than the number of addresses holding bitcoins that are valued at least $1.
I understand that, and agree that the total amount owned is the right metric for defining a "bitcoin holder" (although I disagree about the threshold). My premise was that *if* someone keeps their coins in personal wallets, then at least one address in those wallets must hold a significant fraction of his holdings. Said another way, someone who owns no address with more than 0.1 BTC probably does not have more than a couple BTC in his wallets. Thus, the number of addresses with at least X BTC is likely to be an upper bound on the number of people who hold at least 10*X BTC in their wallets. There are several ways of holding bitcoins that do not directly correspond to addresses. Coinbase alone is supposed to have 2.5 million clients, and they serve one country only. Similarly (I cannot divulge exactly this business-critical information) in another country, the leading bitcoin merchant has 0.6% of the country's population as clients.
Well, that would mean that the vast majority of bitcoin holders actually holds IOUs from "bitcoin banks" like Coinbase or the exchanges. That would be a disconcerting fact if it were confirmed. Or, perhaps those companies are counting inactive users with pennies in their accounts (like MtGOX did, as you pointed out yourself). |
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488
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 04:48:54 PM
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Oh, but kind sir, you should compare since 2008/2009. BTC wasn't invented in 2013, or did your brilliant mind forget that part.
You are right. Bitcoin is a great investment. Only, when you go shopping, be sure to tell the cashier that you want to buy it before September 2013, not now. I will not be so mean as to ask how BTC has fared in the same period.
Why don't you look it up? And what does the BRL:USD exchange rate have to do with this thread? Only stupid investors will invest in a currency, anyway. Do you have anything useful to say about bitcoin, or are you here only to be a meta-troll -- a poor parody of a much better troll? |
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491
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 03:12:28 PM
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Sigh. Do I need to count the posts in this thread that claim you are a troll spamming this thread with "NO SPECULATION" yapping, which they rather see going? Please take this good advice and let Bitcoin do it's business, while you can go do some "Academic" stuff.
Sigh. Do I need to count my posts where I say that price is held up by speculation alone? (Or the posts where people seem to be irked by the "academic" in my signature and don't even bother to read what I write?) |
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492
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 10:17:02 AM
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Why do you keep droning on about pricing bitcoin based upon 'demand for use in payments'? Clearly this has never, nor will be for a long time, a decent measure of how to price btc.
Sigh. Do I need to count the posts in this thread that claim that the price must go up "soon" because "adoption is booming"? Please take issue with those who say so... |
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493
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Economy / Economics / Re: Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner
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on: December 13, 2014, 09:05:53 AM
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would love to see an update on this and compare how the statistics have changed over the past couple of years...
Me too. I'm pretty sure, for example, that in more than 1 year the estimated Bitcoin holders are, at least, doubled... and also the sentence " thanks to Mt.Gox data " should be deleted  Let's assume that a person who is really a "bitcoin holder" mus thave at least one address with at least 0.1 BTC in it. The the number of addresses in the blockchain with at least 0.1 BTC was ~450'000 in January, ~650'000 in September. Beware that these numbers are only approximate upper bounds for the number of bitcoiners. If I had less than 1 million $ in 2013, and now have less than 2 million $, I cannot assume that I have done well...
# Distribution of bitcoins by address on 2014-01-12
# From http://bitcoinrichlist.com/charts/bitcoin-distribution-by-address?atblock=280000
BTC balance ! Num.addresses ! % of addresses ! Tot BTC ! % of all BTC
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
0 - 0.001 | 24,412,755 | 95.46 | 173.217 | .
0.001 - 0.01 | 306,842 | 1.20 | 1,171.717 | 0.01
0.01 - 0.1 | 376,262 | 1.47 | 11,759.442 | 0.10
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 25,095,859 | 98.13 | 13,104.376 | 0.11
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
0.1 - 1 | 217,753 | 0.85 | 75,192.088 | 0.61
1 - 10 | 157,801 | 0.62 | 444,006.086 | 3.63
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 375,554 | 1.47 | 519,198.174 | 4.24
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
10 - 100 | 88,820 | 0.35 | 3,306,869.210 | 27.00
100 - 1,000 | 11,627 | 0.05 | 2,795,725.883 | 22.83
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 100,447 | 0.40 | 6,102,595.093 | 49.83
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
1,000 - 10,000 | 1,344 | 0.01 | 3,051,247.207 | 24.91
10,000 - 100,000 | 96 | . | 2,305,773.269 | 18.83
100,000 - 21,000,000 | 2 | . | 255,456.131 | 2.09
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 1,442 | 0.01 | 5,612,476.607 | 45.83
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
TOTAL | 25,573,302 | 100.01 | 12,247,374.250 | 100.01
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
# Distribution of bitcoins by address on 2014-09-10
# From http://bitcoinrichlist.com/charts/bitcoin-distribution-by-address?atblock=320000
BTC balance ! Num.addresses ! % of addresses ! Tot BTC ! % of all BTC
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
0 - 0.001 | 44,917,388 | 96.47 | 288.600 | .
0.001 - 0.01 | 468,390 | 1.01 | 1,815.552 | 0.01
0.01 - 0.1 | 545,136 | 1.17 | 16,415.880 | 0.12
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 45,930,914 | 98.65 | 18,520.032 | 0.13
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
0.1 - 1 | 300,665 | 0.65 | 104,450.810 | 0.79
1 - 10 | 214,170 | 0.46 | 605,575.673 | 4.57
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 514,835 | 1.11 | 710,026.483 | 5.36
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
10 - 100 | 99,925 | 0.21 | 3,557,378.156 | 26.85
100 - 1,000 | 13,813 | 0.03 | 3,145,684.530 | 23.75
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 113,738 | 0.24 | 6,703,062.686 | 50.60
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
1,000 - 10,000 | 1,445 | . | 3,210,486.390 | 24.23
10,000 - 100,000 | 95 | . | 2,178,395.722 | 16.44
100,000 - 21,000,000 | 3 | . | 426,872.355 | 3.22
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
SUBTOTAL | 1,543 | . | 5,815,754.467 | 43.89
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
TOTAL | 46,561,030 | 100.00 | 13,247,363.668 | 99.98
---------------------+---------------+----------------+----------------+-------------
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494
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 08:52:41 AM
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How many have all BTC on an exchange(s) though? Not terribly secure, but do you think it is uncommon? I bet the number is significant.
That should be less common now after the MtGOX fiasco. Anyway, back in january Huobi's CEO claimed that he had a few tens of thousands active clients. MtGOX apparently had 70'000, IIRC (much less than the 1-2 million that they claimed). |
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495
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 08:47:25 AM
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As of September 10, there were only ~650'000 addresses in the blockchain with at least 0.1 BTC (~50 USD).
That is a really interesting statistic. How did you get these numbers, and would it be possible to see how this number decreased or increased over let's say 2013 and 2014? Sorry, I should have given the link: http://bitcoinrichlist.com/charts/bitcoin-distribution-by-address?atblock=320000Those tables are updated infrequently, apparently every 40'000 blocks. The most recent is up to block 320000 (2014-09-10). The next one may be block 360000. By block 280000 (2014-01-12) there were ~450'000 addresses with 0.1 BTC or more. Addresses with 10 BTC or more were ~101'000 in january, ~114'000 in September. Those indicators suggest that the number of people who own BTC (whether or not they use it for payments) has been increasing in 2014. However, the BTC price fell almost by half in that time span: 0.1 BTC was 90$ in January, 50$ in September. It would be interesting to compute the number of addresses with 50$ worth or more (rather than 0.1 BTC or more), on both dates. Also, as times passes we can expect that people who have 1000's of BTC will accumulate more and more "crumbs" in their wallets -- addresses with small amounts over 0.1 BTC. Said another way, those numbers are only upper bounds on the number of bitcoiners; and if the upper bounds increase, it does not mean that the quantity increases. ("I am doing well, because my net worth was less than 1 million US$ in 2013, and is less than 2 million US$ now.") |
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496
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 08:14:02 AM
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If we assume that adoption drive prices, then a metric of adoption would be the price itself. This will tell you that adoption has not grown in the past year.
If instead, we assume that adoption doesn't drive prices then the discussion is irrelevant for future prices.
I believe that demand for use in payments, by itself, would not support 100 $/BTC, maybe not even 10 $/BTC. What keeps the price up is speculation: people buying BTC to hold for weeks or years, waiting for better prices. That locks up most of the existing 13 million BTC, and makes them scarce on the exchanges. Assuming that BitPay processes 1 million $/day, I would guess that the total traffic for e-payments now may be perhaps 5 million $/day. Let's say that bitcoins bought for that purpose stay out of the market for 5 days on the average, before being sold by the payment processors. Then, at any time, that use would lock up 25 million $ worth of bitcoins. If there was no speculation, and all 13 million BTC were on the exchanges, that demand would perhaps support a price of 2 $/BTC. |
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497
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 07:42:47 AM
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Don't know the the Bitpay wallet statistics, but would be interested. Any link for it?
It was at the top of my post: http://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/BitPay.comThere are several others, but I don't see Coinbase: www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/I can't find an explanation of how that site works, but I guess that it looks for transactions with 2 or more inputs, and assumes that those input addresses belong to the same owner (because one needs all their private keys on hand to sign the transaction). Then one takes the transitive closure of those pairs (if addresses A and B are inputs to one transaction, and B and C are inputs to another one, then A and C must belong to the same owner too.) That logic breaks the addresses into clusters, which the site calls "wallets". Anyway, in my opinion there are two general problems with your counter-arguments to the adoption evidence.
(1) Presented with several metrics that intuitively seem to be half-decent proxies for "adoption", you find fault with any of them on the basis of what I'd call minor problems.
They are not minor problems... The USD volume (minus changebacks) is flat since April, and still less than January; and, among the metrics you showed, that should be the one most directly related to adoption. That metric being flat, one must conclude that the other blockchain metrics, that show increase in 2014, must be useless to measure adoption. In fact, the discrepancy between those metrics makes them all suspect, including the USD volume. And I gave very strong arguments -- China, and the big peaks -- showing that the trade volume at the exchanges is totally unrelated to use in e-commerce. If it makes you more inclined to see it my way, I will admit this much: I agree. We cannot be absolutely sure adoption is growing based on those statistics. They could be (partially) fake. They could over-represent non economically significant transactions. And so on. However, they are the best approximation we have, and by and large, they point to increasing adoption. So while I agree that there remains some epistemic uncertainty perhaps, there is little aleatoric uncertainty that adoption grows given this data. (2) You don't really follow the Copernican principle applied to time when you only concentrate on a very narrow range in the very recent past where adoption did not soar like it did before, and conclude from it that there seems to be no further adoption - ignoring that overall the adoption metrics are significantly up compared to where they were a year ago, and vastly up from 2 years ago. [ ... ] In May 2013 Bitpay had a volume of 5 million USD per month processing transactions on behalf of their merchants. (source)A year later, May 2014, it's 1 million USD per day. (source)Time for the same spiel again? "Maybe it's up from May to May, but how can we be sure that from May to now adoption continued?!" Yes, I will give the same spiel again. As I wrote before, adoption surely increased from 2012 to 2013 to 2014. But I do not see any clear signs that adoption has been increasing over the last year. The most germane indicators that you use as evidence of year-to-year increase show a decrease and stagnation since January. The BitPay wallet above shows the same thing. Here are preliminary plots of the inputs and outputs in that wallet: Bitcoins per day, 2013-01 to 2014-11Transactions per day, 2013-01 to 2014-11(The second plot is not quite transaction counts; it is more like count of inputs and outputs of transactions that go into or out of the wallet. There are some puzzling details on those plots that I still must look into. Also, the first plot shows ~1000 BTC/day of inputs, on the average, unchanged since 2013-01; which would be 0.5 million USD/day -- only 1/2 of what Bitpay claimed above. Perhaps the wallet is incomplete, or perhaps they picked one good day in May. Note that the scale is logarithmic, and the traffic does reach 2000 BYC/day sometimes.) The fact that Bitpay and the other payment processors are not giving monthly statistics is also a hint that those numbers are not good. |
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498
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Bitcoin / Hardware / Re: BFL fucked us over again
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on: December 13, 2014, 06:13:40 AM
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Legistration isn't law, if you are a man (human) you are above legistration but if you go in as a person or company you are not. You see, man created LAW and so the law serves the man. Soon as you are a person/company you sign all your rights away. We have something called queens bench in the UK and the us I believe which scares the shit out of alphabet soup and people procicuting a MAN. It costs them $40,000 a day as well.
And its OK to go into court proclaiming your an idiot as the real meaning g of the word is that you don't understand law.
Legistration is for persons and companies, not man!
In theory, in the UK, perhaps, the Queen's Bench is not bound by law. In practice, individuals are punished if they are caught breaking the law, even in the UK, no? |
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499
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 13, 2014, 06:05:24 AM
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Right now there is a group of people (ranging between 2-40 million in number) who are willing to hold ~$5 billion worth of value in bitcoin is as much as you can say with confidence.
As of September 10, there were only ~650'000 addresses in the blockchain with at least 0.1 BTC (~50 USD). Assming that a bitcoin user must have at least one address with 0.1 BTC in it, that its an upper bound to the number of bitcoiners. There may be bitcoiners who have their coins scattered into many addresses, all with less than 0.1 BTC. Or bitcoiners who happened to be out of bitcoins on that date, but had more bitcoins at other times. On the other hand, there must be many bitcoiners who own several addresses with more than 0.1 BTC. Threfore, "650'000 bitcoiners" is more likely to be too high than too low. |
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500
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 12, 2014, 07:56:11 PM
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I'm more interested in your claim that "We don't really know if adoption is growing". We've had a similar discussion before, iirc, but anyway, here's my argument in a nutshell:
(a) We actually can be pretty damn sure adoption is growing, unless you willfully ignore data (or start dismissing sources without any evidence to motivate that dismissal)
I agree that adoption, in any reasonable sense, has grown between 2013 and 2014. However, I see no clear evidence of it growing since February, and some evidence that it is not. Given that through 2014 there was substantial increase in the factors that are supposed to push the adoption -- penetration of BitPay and Coinbase among merchants, venture capital investment, promotion in the media, etc -- that stagnation in the numbers cannot be just statistical noise. The evidence people usually give is the number of transactions, number of blockchain.info wallets, and the number of merchants "adopting bitcoin". I have explained before why those data are not reliable and do not really measure adoption. I have also pointed to the presumed BitPay.com wallet which does not show inceased inputs since February. The [number of transactions] data is not likely to be significantly "faked". Why? Because the faker would do a piss-poor job in that case.
I don't know if someone is generating fake transactions intentionally. However I suspect that 95% or more of the transactions are not payments, and the variation in that traffic is not related to variations the payment traffic. So the number of transactions chart is useless to analyze actual usage. Moreover, note that the number of transactions has been steadily increasing through 2014 while the USD volume (minus changebacks) is stagnating. So the average USD per transaction is falling sharply. That seems easier to explain if most transactions are non-payments. Here's another good one, [ ... ] trading volume is "usage" as well - the distinction between "speculative" buying and "usage" buying is (mostly) arbitrary. Trading volume (in USD) over all USD exchanges, last 2 years:  And the same for CNY:  Trading volume is not related to adoption. Consider China, for example, where usage in commerce is null, and yet has many times the trading volume of the rest of the World combined. Or note that the peaks in trading volume occur when the price is changing fast, up or down; why would that trigger a frenzy of bitcoin spending in commerce? Now here's maybe one of the strongest arguments in favor of (b) - adoption / usage is growing, but slower, based on USD tx volume: 1) USD tx volume is still below the peak which isn't such a surprise considering that it shoots up during a rally / at an ATH, but more problematic is 2) it is growing only at a rather comfortably slow pace (NB: linear chart)  USD tx volume should be a reasonably good measure of the 'medium of exchange' aspect of Bitcoin, because for most goods purchased, the unit of account in which the goods are priced is USD, so a growing USD tx volume despite falling prices is a sign there is more medium of exchange usage - but it's not exactly skyrocketing either - since the middle of this year, it's been steadily climbing up (despite falling BTC/USD), but not going through the roof exactly either. Well, to me this chart does not show any growth at all in 2014. There were some small peaks in June and in the last few weeks, but they did not reach the levels of Jan--Feb 2014, and the volume quickly returned to the baseline that has been in rule since March. But, anyway, even this chart does not show use in commerce; it is merely the total BTC output of all transactions (minus estimated changebacks) times the BTC price. So it includes an unknown but large percentage of non-payment transactions. Perhaps the USD volume of payment transactions are increasing, or perhaps it is decreasing; we cannot tell from that chart. I insist, neither blockchain statistics nor trade volumes give us any useful insight on actual adoption as means of payment. The traffic in the BitPay and Coinbase "wallets", as gathered by that Czech site, would be a more direct evidence (assuming the wallets were correctly identified, which I cannot tell for sure). As I wrote, I have had a look at the Bitpay wallet, and did not see growth in 2014 either. But please check yourself. |
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