~26 hours ago when we first dipped down from 440 to 400 I was sleeping at the time (I'm in Europe), and I lost money by sleeping in BTC. Sold at 400 when I woke up and watched the fireworks. Last night I was up until 3am watching the price go down to 355, went to sleep for 4 hours in fiat, and woke up at 400.

What the fuck.

Am I just really unlucky or am I doing something wrong? Why do massive changes occur at roughly 3:00 am UTC? Am I missing something?

Cause the ones that have open short position will have to close them it if we should go near 500$, or they would get squeezed because their required margin would probably no longer suffice. I assume most of them the open shorts were made around or below 500$.
We saw that the last time when we had the large candle to 710$,during that time the market was also heavily shorted, i donīt have the exact numbers. But 11,197 BTC liquidated(or say 60% of it) in combination with such a small ask side, would sent the price easily 100-150$. up.
Of course the price can likely crash afterwards again.
If one whale buys now 3000BTC with an market order, al lot of stop loss would get triggered and so he could resell those 3000 for much higher price.

The bulls seem more washed out to me, I don't see many people buying at the moment.

some people are worried of being a 450 bag holder.  

WTF happened at Kraken EUR/BTC??? 

I feel for you man, but just reading around you should know rule 101 is dont listen to others about your investment decisions.

Take it as a lesson learnt, you clearly didnt get into BTC for the right reasons firstly but take the standard investment advice of;

Dont risk more than your willing to loose
Never go all in
Never go all out
Dont listen to people on the internet.

btc-e 530 LOL!!!

The real differentiator for LTC was always scrypt ASIC resistance.  Now that is utterly gone.  

Possibly the proliferation of scrypt ASICs is damaging LTC.  

Possibly the blackcoin pool is damaging LTC.  After all, BC is catching a lot of GPU miners, and the goal and purpose of the pool is to destroy competitor's value.

the only reason they were ASIC resistant because it wasn't profitable to develop and tape-out an ASIC for them, today thanks to Litecoin this is possible, and IMO small Scrypt coins will die soon and Litecoin will get all the hashing power. an average mining farm could kill 90% of all existing scam coins.

The price will go down, because this spike wasn't caused by new money entering the system, but by moving around of some money that was already in the system. And it's not a lot that's in, so it was only a matter of time when the rise gets exhausted and starts to fall back. I think that we will see some low volume aftershock waves today, and maybe even tomorrow, but it won't be long when the price drops back to sub 400. As long as there isn't new money coming in, then it's a bad call to just sit on BTC. Only thing to hope for is that the drop will be fast and not slow and ugly, like it has been for the past months.

Lol and Huobi is pulling some more fake trades out of their ass to prevent a slaughter.

I see a selling climax coming, but maybe it is too early. I could be totally wrong, but I definitely don't feel like buying right now

Ok, now I have to be that guy.

Actually bitcoin does have at least two qualities of a ponzi scheme:
1. Early investors who gradually change back to fiat are basically earning money off the last round of investors.
2. Investors heavily advertise it because they know that the more new investors join, the more they gain.

I am not denying the absolutely awesome technological wonder that bitcoin is, and the fact that I can use it to move money across countries in a breeze (operation otherwise made unnecessarily painful by the sucking bastard governments and banks involved)
Still let's admit that we are in the speculation forum watching markets because we hope to get rich, and bitcoin keeps us hooked because of 1. and 2. above.

BTW.

We have run out of sellers and buyers, but these Chinese keep on knocking at the top's door, even in their sleep.

China appears to be sleeping so US markets are having trouble trying to rally.. lol

breakout action ... do you go all in or wait for one more pullback? ... we're right on trend right now, might never see this low again is the psychological battleground.

You said yourself we are all China's bitch. Here's something that just popped into my head:

Whacky conspiracy theory:

Price is being manipulated by the PBoC to accumulate a large holdings for the purpose of adding it to it's foreign currency reserves. The ultimate goal is to make the renminbi a major world currency, possibly the world's reserve currency.

evidence for said whacky theory:

1. stochastics are funny.

2. Public airing of pro-bitcoin feature on public television followed by outright hostile words and policy, followed by...uncertainty"

evidence against said whacky theory:

1. That's the beauty of conspiracies. The lack of evidence merely shows you how deep it goes!

discuss.

Is this rally sustainable, and how long?

Actually the dollar was still pretty strong in the 70s. It was in the 80s where the dollar started losing strength, especially with coming of "the rock star" Greenspan.
It's funny how most of the critics of the dollar are actually ultra-liberal who like the ideas of maximum freedom in markets and the private sector in general. While it was exactly that thing that started to weaken the dollar. Greenspan was the type of guy who really wanted for people to like him. He set the rules that dictated low interest rates and low regulations, where the private sector didn't have much responsibility anymore. Take as many risks as you want and do it however you want, and if things won't work out then there will be a bail-out. It's not hard to see why Greenspan was very popular among the private sector and was considered as the man of the people during the height of his reign His ultra-liberal views presumed, that people are generally decent at heart and wouldn't exploit the freedom that is given to them. It's funny because most of the bitcoin enthusiasts here share the same ultra-liberal world view, while being critics of the Fed at the same time After Greenspan there came Bernanke and he was just Greenspan vol.2, having no balls or vision to do anything differently.
Most of the regular folks who read a lot of conspiracy theory books, think that those in power are these evil geniuses with complex plans. The joke is that actually most of them are just schmucks with avarage intelligence and who got their power or money through inheritance. The main thing that they work on, is the act that they actually have a clue on what they're doing. And most of them actually like those conspiracy books that make them sound like scary evil geniuses It's like the same with Freemasons, the biggest secret they have is that actually there is no secret All smoke and mirrors, so people would stay humble and submissive.

From numerous members of the Austrian School of economics (Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, etc). Alan Greenspan was also a "goldbug" back when he was an acolyte of Ayn Rand.

The central premise is that Central Bankers cannot know how much liquidity the market needs because they don't have the ability to collect and process the information that millions of local buyers and sellers have. The natural scarcity of gold prevents them from injecting too much liquidity, which causes an unsustainable boom, which causes a bust.

Busts in fact are corrections, times where capital is transferred from incompetent managers to competent managers in order for that capital to be used in more productive ways.

In short: Central Bankers with good intentions screw things up. Central Bankers with bad intentions screw things up. The free market also screws things up, but not as badly as Central Bankers do.

I am even more liberal (in the economic sense) than the goldbugs. I think there should be no legal tender and that the free market should determine what the most liquid commodity is, and we should call that commodity "money".

Yeah, you may be right, but china is big, so their news might F??k us in the back again...hope not...

China is like Simon. Simon says Buy BTC. Simon says Sell BTC.

I know this sounds whacky, and it probably is, but the 12 HR chart on Huobi looks like one giant bot trading pattern. I have certain advanced pattern recognitions skills I have been tested for, but I can't explain how they work. It's just a feeling.  The danger is that the lower the signal to noise ratio, the greater your risk of picking up false patterns. It's not unlike Professor Nash reading Russian Codes into all those newspapers in the movie " A Beautiful Mind".

So I'm going to preface this by saying I'm probably wrong and it's most likely sour grapes from missing a bunch of trades, but I get the feeling that this is something massive, like a fraud on the scale of Mt. Gox or even greater.

I'm not a conspiracy guy. 911 truthers weird me out. I think Oswald acted alone. I don't believe in Bigfoot, Nessie or the Loch Ness Sea Monster. I think conspiracy types use the Illuminati or whatever to avoid the personal blame for being losers. So I know how stupid this is going to make me look, but something is just not right.

I don't feel like someone's out to get me. I feel like someone's out to get everyone. I'm a dude. I can't afford to make decisions based on feelings. I have to make decisions based on reason. So I need to step back and try to regain some self-awareness. This is much more likely a problem with my perception than a problem with the market, but it is such a powerful feeling of foreboding and I have no evidence at all to back it up.

why do you thin so ? I'm quite optimistic about bitcoin value, but why do you think it is about to go down?
every day i see new businesses accepting BTC, new sites with gambling accepting BTC, a lot of sites offering work for beeing paid in BTC, so trust me, BTC is not gonna just die like that, global awareness will make it's price explode sooner or later.

I was NOT putting that forward as a real working theory, but more of a joke, something that just popped in my head.  I didn't say the Chinese want Bitcoins as the world reserve currency. I jokingly said they wanted it as part of their foreign currency reserves so that the renminbi could become a major world currency. It is a whacky theory. Occam's razor applies. The simplest explanation is most likely correct.  If there is a major manipulation plan, which there probably isn't, it is most likely private actors doing it for personal benefit.

Here comes the correction folks.

Can we just stop following China! This is ridiculous. Damn sheep!
Also the chance of new China FUD is quite big and we all know how that will go. Is that really what people want? We can avoid it. Stop following China!

Had to laugh at the quote above "The Silly Americans are selling on this news" both sides blaming each other

We'd probably correct at about these levels anyway at some point. But the fact that any Chinese fart of the news can cause such moves is not doing any favour to Bitcoin and us who'd like to trade it. There's just no safety anymore that you could rely on charts, orderbook, momentum, fundamentals when any moment some shit could come from China and cancel all that.

I mean what's the point of waiting 3d MACD to cross when China could cause a hit to the price any moment.

There's no easier way on the Earth to make money than crypto trading in normal circumstances.

Trading is gambling.  You can make a living doing either.  Or you can lose everything doing either.  Once again, as has been shown today, I feel compelled to re-state that TA does not work with bitcoin.  Anyone who thinks it does has either simply got lucky a few times and so concludes that their TA is accurate, or they simply use it as a psychological support tool.

There are two reasons I want to leave btc trading and go to forex and stock trading:

1. My money is not safe on unregulated overseas crypto exchanges.


2. When I trade bitcoin I do not feel like I can be 'flat' on the market. There are two positions:

a. BTC. I am betting on the rise of BTC, but if I'm wrong, I lose value in USD and am 'losing money'.
b. USD. In this case I am betting on the fall of BTC, but if I'm wrong, I lose value in potential coins to buy and am 'losing coins' or 'missing the train'. Since bitcoin is in a huge historic uptrend, the implications of losing coins are high. Some bitcoiners even measure their wealth in coins and not dollars. In addition, when I hold USD I am also taking risk and betting on the safety of the funds on an exchange (see a).

So there is no position where I am 'flat on the market' and not making some type of bet and am content on leaving. I am tied to the market 24/7 to make sure I'm in the right binary position.

 In forex, on the other hand, being in USD is always perfectly fine and you don't obsess about missed opportunity costs in one of the dozen currencies (or hundreds of other assets besides forex) you can trade.

Price is way overdue for correction with or without news a drop to at least $450 some time in the next week is likely.

I was wrong about the 3220 wall, it was broken with more bullish sentiment than expected. But the chart I posted yesterday is still following the same pattern, just at a slightly higher price than expected.  we are in a very similar situation to march 4th / 5th at the moment, and the markets are behaving almost exactly the same.  

Not many interested in buying in this uncertain climate, so the best guess I can form is, the same as what happened in march.  I think we will settle at around 490 and go sideways again...  until the volume goes very low.

All this can change, based on (valid) news or well executed FUD.  (possessive or negative).

A simplistic way of looking at the market, yet quite often effective.  History repeats itself imho.  

ok so we've just touched the upper resistance @550 today and didnt break it, so down we go.. the only question is what will drive the price further down... i wouldnt be surprised if we have some new leak from the PBOC in the coming weeks ^^

Do all you guys shouting your TA around realise that in this instance the TA had nothing to do with it? We only bounced from your resistance levels due to the 'news', who knows what it would have done otherwise

. This was the inevitable consequence of their neo-mercantilist foreign trade policy, as it was for Japan and every other country that tried it.

Everyone just shut up and trade. Thank the Chinese for all this magnificient volatility and profit making opportunities. It's not like you don't get ample TA indicators to tell to buy and sell when the trend is changing. The candle didn't just go straight down to 700 to 340 or straight up from 340 to 540 or straight down thereafter and then just die at the new level. No. There are ample bounces, indicators, and opportunities. You have hours to realize the 1H MACD is going down and then days to realize the 4H and 1D are going down before most of the damage is gone. But instead of paying attention you sit there in some state of denial complaining about how chinese shouldn't be able to control the trend. You ignore the chart indicators because of your belief, and then complain later and ask why you are losing. "but... but... it's just china fud. the west should control bitcoin". Well that's too bad. You just have to accept reality and roll with the punches.

"TA can't possibly give you a greater than 50% edge" sounds awfully similar to "it is impossible to make a living by playing poker it is all just luck" to me.

Speaking as someone who doesn't day trade, doesn't know much about TA but makes a living from poker.