Isn't it a bit late for selling coins in order to buy Alibaba stock? Exchanges typically do not let you transfer fiat to 3rd party accounts. So I assume you have to transfer to your bank first, then to a stock broker. IPO was Thursday and retail sale is beginning this Friday, so the funds will probably not arrive on time to get in early?

I guess we won't see any significant upward movement until new funds arrive at the exchanges on Monday? Probably just sideways movement followed by occasional dumps until then.

Ask side on Stamp seems to be gaining some strength. Bears getting ready for another raid??

And price just broke 400 again on Stamp and Finex...

I have bad noose for you, Stamp dipped below 399 just now.

A few minutes before the rally started nearly all the bids on Bitstamp down to 360 were removed within in a second. Also quite a lot of asks were removed, but far less than bids. I switched over to the trading PC and by then everything was back to normal. Did anyone else catch that? I wonder what that was all about, there were literally only a few dozen coins worth of bids down to 360, basically just a long flat green line (on bitcoinity.org). A bug maybe? But would be a weird coincidence because it happened right before that rally.

About the rally itself: I kinda feel that this was orchestrated by a single entity, probably in order to induce a short squeeze. I doubt very much that this was "organic" buying by people who suddenly all decided to buy in unison. Or maybe I'm wrong and it was caused by a bunch of people buying because of the paypal news, but I doubt it...

I followed the rally early on and decided @ about $415 that someone was trying to squeeze those 11000 shorts out. So I went "picking up pennies in front of the steamroller" - I bought into the askwalls, then set up my own askwalls at a slighty higher price. Worked out well, but I would have been in trouble if the price had reversed suddenly. Bids were very thin, so I wouldn't have been able to sell the coins back at the price I bought them at. Was probably not a good idea, even though I made some profit.

Edit: I'm still all in fiat, and comfortably so. Still bearish in the midterm, and think that the paypal news is overvalued (although it's certainly good news, for the long term).

I'm sure I am not going to become popular with my bearish sentiment here on this board full of bulls, especially when we just had that rally upwards. But I'll give it a try:

Up only if a whale decides to push us there, and only if those walls @ $465 and $500 (Bitstamp) belong to the whales so that they can be removed quickly in order to facilitate some quick price action upwards that finally triggers all those short margin calls.

But my guess is we will go down, even if we see another small rally beforehand. Buying action was surprisingly unimpressive after we dropped into the 370s, so it's probably going to be even worse now that we are back in the 440s - despite the paypal news, which is IMHO completely blown out of proportion and will probably fail to bring in a significant number of new buyers. So we'll probably get the same combination of slowly bleeding down together with some unexpected rapid dumps that we have seen in the last couple of weeks. This is still a bear market overall, and unless something fundamentally changes it's probably going to stay that way for the next weeks.

Next stop: 350s, maybe with a short-lived dip into the $320-$330 range. There we (and especially the whales) are going to find out if organic buying pressure will finally pick up, which would mean that the bottom is probably in. Otherwise we are going down even further into the 200s.

All IMHO, of course.

lol? 29k ask wall @ $300 on stamp?? wtf???

Am I the only one here who considers the recent bullish sentiment to be irrational?

The bulls' main argument for a trend reversal seems to be the fact that, after falling ~$400 from this summer's highs, we have seen the first really significant bounce upwards. Honestly, I think that crashing really hard after a months long downtrend isn't exactly the best advertisement for potential new buyers, despite the bounce. And we urgently need those newcomers in order to absorb the constant downward pressure applied by newly mined coins.

The irrational bullishness expressed both here and on reddit indicates to me that the bulls have mostly already gone "all in", hoping to catch the start of a new bubble. And now the price is mainly pushed further up by traders on margin riding the momentum (dollar-swaps on finex touched $24M just today!) and shorts getting stopped out. I don't think this is sustainable without a significant influx of new buyers (and holders) who help to carry the price further upwards.

Meanwhile, the chart on google trends for "bitcoin" is going back down after that last disappointingly small spike which was probably caused by both the recent crash and the release of the "rise and rise" documentary.

The chart for number of transactions may be increasing, but the ones for transaction fees and dollar-value of the transactions are going sideways. I consider especially the transaction fee chart as noteworthy, because it actually costs money to manipulate the chart and because it is not influenced by old coins moving around. My logic is that more transaction fees being paid could indicate more newcomers coming in, who only have non-fee-free coins to move around (besides indicating an increase in "real, non-manipulative" movement of coins, of course).

Volume seems to be decreasing for now, too.

Media hype is also not there, and I don't perceive the interest regarding bitcoin outside of the bitcoin related message boards as especially encouraging.

My personal guess is that bulls aren't going to give up yet and will try to give it another push to higher price levels. But I would be surprised if we actually made it to $450. From there on I expect the rally to fizzle away like the one in summer. We couldn't sustain a bull rally back then, even though there were significantly fewer coins in circulation at that time. We couldn't even sustain prices above $400 after that,. And I don't see how suddenly we could sustain such prices now. Nothing really has fundamentally changed after that crash below $300. So I predict the continuation of the downtrend after the next push upwards.

All IMHO, of course.

Hi inca,


It just sounds to me as if the main argument for the bullish case boils down to: "We crashed really hard after going down for months. But we didn't crash even harder. Therefore up it goes". It's just not very convincing for me.


I'll probably step on a lot of toes now, but I consider (most) TA as hokus-pokus. I follow r/bitcoinmarkets closely, and it seems to me that trading contrary to what their indicators and squiggly lines say would have made for much more successfull trading than actually following their predictions.


A chicken and egg problem then? I think without new buyers we are doomed to go lower. Old-timer bitcoiners trading back and forth among themselves does not create a sustainable rally.


I expect the bear market to end with a panic that gets incited when market participants realize we are going down into the 200s, and that we will stay there for a while. I assume we will see real panic selling then, with people jumping over each other to reach the exit before it is (seemingly) too late. Where every move upwards will be seen as a good opportunity to get out, and not as the beginning of a new bubble (the way it is happening right now). It will surely seem naive to most here, but I am actually convinced I will be able to buy back in much cheaper then. It's far from guaranteed, of course.

I am not short, but seriously considering doing so once we go back into the 400s.

Again, all IMHO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit:
Newly mined coins water down the supply side and therefore apply downward pressure onto the price. I find it hard to argue against that? Maybe you are assuming that all newly mined coins go straight to cold storage and stay there? I see no indications for that being the case, though.

Sure, good point. But I'd assume that rising prices will bring mining operations back in as the profitability of mining increases again, and inflation will pick up again. So I'm not sure if this will help a sustainable rally to develop.

Are you talking about the inflation before the first halving? Yes, it was higher. But even the halved mining rewards didn't really help us to keep the price at the highly elevated levels that were reached during the hype phase at the end of 2013. Now the hype is gone, but many market participants still try to cling to these high price levels as if they were the new norm and refuse to accept that without the hype they are actually unsustainable. And from my perspective, I don't see a significant influx of new buyers coming in to re-incite the hype.

 

First off, I never talked about coins being dumped on exchanges. Maybe you are mistaking me for someone else? Also, my assertion still stands that a continuously watered down supply side increases downward pressure on the price, and I see no use in arguing that. Maybe your position is that there is no intersection between the OTC market and exchanges, but I have no reason to believe that this is actually the case. Actually, one obvious counter-example I can spontaneously think of would be the user "loaded", who is participating both in the OTC market and on the exchanges.

Second, I am doubtful that large industrial-scale mining operations engage in the speculation business on top of their main (mining) business. They most likely have massive regular expenses for employees, electricity, rent and of course for new hardware in order to stay competitive in the race for a large slice of the hash rate pie. I'd say this indicates that a certain amount of coins has to be sold in order to keep the operations running. And even if they are engaging in speculation - this just means that another failed attempt at a sustained rally will force them to sell a bunch of their held-back coins as soon as they realize that new buyers are not coming in to carry the rally further. So, that gives me one more reason why I suspect this current rally to fail spectacularly once the bulls run out of steam and momentum begins to decline.

Third, you are arguing on the basis of a rally that has not materialized yet. All I see right now is an insignificant bounce that hardly registers on the 2y chart, which may or may not develop into something bigger. Which brings me back to my initial posting, where I suggest that the bullish sentiment is irrational at the moment: We just crashed from the worryingly low sub-400 levels to the shockingly low sub-300 levels. Not too long ago the vast majority here seemed to be convinced that we would never revisit such low prices again. Now we FINALLY had the first significant bounce after going down ~$400 all the way from $660 since this summer, but we are still struggling to even break back above $400. This does not seem very bullish to me, in fact I find it quite worrisome.

Also, we had a similar high-volume bounce situation back in march, right before the failed summer rally that couldn't carry itself beyond the $660 point, despite the bulls being immensely euphoric and going all in (as indicated by the all time high in the number of usd-swaps on finex). I don't see why it should turn out any different this time. A high volume bounce obviously does not guarantee a sustainable rally afterwards, but this seems to be the bulls' main argument for why the bear market is now supposedly behind us.

Ok, fair enough. Thanks for the link, this is actually interesting.

I'm curious though if such miners will keep their faith and hold on to their coins with an iron fist even if the bear market continues into 2015. Time will tell, I guess.

Edit: On second thought, if large parts of the mining industry are subventionized by VC like that... how low would the price be without such subventions that allow miners to keep their coins off the market?  

Ascribing all downward movements to an evil manipulator and all upward movements to organic buying gets old after a while. Manipulator or no manipulator, the demand is obviously just not there to push prices further up. Simple as that. Bulls seem upset 'cause they probably went all in sub $400 and are now getting itchy for their long promised bubble.

Sub $300 by next week. And we already had our rebound back in October. It's over bulls. I'm sorry, but it's time to face the truth.

Falllling was one of the main reasons why I sold all my coins before the big crashes. At one point I realised that if a ridiculous troll like him makes just as much sense as all the irredeemable permabulls, then it must be time to sell.

Edit: True story!

Ah, I see you have discovered the wonders of Technical Analysis for yourself!

It's that awkward moment where you realise even ShroomsKit makes more sense than the permabulls... 

(sorry ShroomsKit, still love you  )

Bidwalls on Finex blinking in and out of existence (bitcoinity.org)? A bug? Or really just one guy controlling half of the bids down to $300?

I think that wall on btcchina just got refilled after being completely bought up? Can anyone confirm? I haven't been following closely enough...

I wonder how many more coins are still to come?

Is there any rational reason for selling your coins like that?

rebuilder, it's a bug on bitcoinity. I had the same issue, hit f5 a couple of times and it should be back to normal.

I'll give my amateurish observations on the matter:

Whale #1 was busy all day slowly buying up coins on Stamp. That thinned the already meagre ask side out even more. Then s.o. placed a ~700BTC wall @ $329 on Finex, which scared the market up on both Finex and Stamp. As $330 swiftly broke on Stamp, whale #2 got FOMO and threw ~1mil. in fiat onto the market on Finex. Together with a bunch of shorts closing this caused Finex to go up $10. The price was then driven down slowly by 2000BTC in ask walls (Finex) until they got eaten in one swoop by s.o. going margin long, and got immediately replaced by ~2000 coins worth of bids which have kept us in this price range since then.

So I'd say it's just some big players trying to accumulate while the price is still (perceived by them as) low.

Bids are immediately getting refilled after a sell, asks are not. I'm switching over to bullish for the moment. Not convinced that this will be a sustainable rally though. Once the support from these massive bidwalls is removed I expect us to resume bleeding down again.

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I'm really disappointed with this latest pump. It looked like the perfect setup for inciting a nice rally: Large, intimidating bidwalls placed where many were expecting the price to bounce. Stealthy accumulation the day before the pump began. Multi million dollar market buys.

But after the last 2 dumps there is no effort to go back up. Low volume. Already went below 340 again on Finex despite the weak askside there. Lots of shorts closed, hardly any new longs opened.

I've honestly tried to be bullish, but...

 
What? How are you getting your updates on our beneficent reptilian overlords then if you have NotLambchop on ignore?  

Blasphemy!

Funny, for me it's the opposite:

Best case rice and beans - I love me some rice and beans for dinner.

I wouldn't want prostitutes and cocaine even for free. 

No, some swap offers on Finex have fixed rates. It can be beneficial to reserve those if you intend to hold your position for a long time and/or if you expect a sudden increase in the demand for swaps.

It's not possible, therefore:

There aren't enough USD swap offers left on Finex to eat just through that one wall. Also, USD swap numbers are higher now than they were during all of the rally before, over 25 million $. Many of these swaps were probably opened when the bid side became super thin as we approached the peak at $475, so I'd assume that a lot of these swap takers couldn't close their longs and are sitting on a big unrealized loss. Also, swap rates got obscenely high during the rally (up to ~1% per day!), so those margin longs will probably get closed sooner than later.

Forget about bitcoin for a moment. Instead, come on over to Flappyparty and show off your rad flapping skillz!

Flapping for life, bro!!

I'll give you 0.1 bitcoin if you can outflap me 

He's back!

Old ATH of 266: broken!

Pfffft. These guys are absolutely irredeemable. Right now they are probably busy coming up with even more ridiculous reasons why this is actually a bullish situation

I see permabulls have changed their narrative from
"bearmarket officially over, we go only up from here"
to
"price doesn't matter to true technological visionaries like us, only lowly peasants care about such mundane things like price".

 

New ATH by next week? 

New poll plz!

Moon?!

Nonsense. We just hit new short term all time high. Bear market officially over. Only up from here.  

Classic launchpad pattern forming on all exchanges. This thing is about to blow up. Hold on to your hats and expect $500 by tomorrow. Last chance to buy cheap coins.

It's easy if you are as experienced with TA as I am. Just trust me and get ready for liftoff.  

Buy now or cry into your pillow later!

197 on Finex already! OMFG!!!

Smart money is moving into this with breathtaking pace. Pick up them cheap coins before it's too late!


Oh, just the usual stuff. 3D Ronald McDonald, sometimes also the Random Squigglyline Indicator. Once you're as knowledgeable as I am you don't even need to bother with indicators any more. Just squint at the charts and voilá!

200 incoming on Finex. Told you so. Bullishness is off the charts!

All aboard!

No such thing as a bulltrap happening. We are just experiencing a minor shakeout before we go back on track. Shortsqueeze will begin any second now!

Tomorrow bears be like this:



 

Choo Choo, my friend. It's what bitcoin will do any minute now. You just wait.

Up more than $40 already from Stamp low today. Insane upward momentum. Bulls gonna stampede all over this.

Join us on our glorious ride to the moon. Bulls can't be stopped now. 211 on finex and rising. Sorry bears, but you should have listened...

Buying at the top? Don't worry, we aren't anywhere close to $10,000 yet. 

Man, I should have actually gone long @180 and sold @210 instead of just bulltrolling.  

Didn't actually expect this to go up this high, lol.

I'm sorry, I'm still learning. 

Not really sure, but they seem to be four guys. And they enjoy drinking punch. That much is certain.

I called it! 

Bears are going down! Or... up, in this case.

All deposits from people who want to buy the dip should have arrived by now. Buying pressure still seems ridiculously low compared to what we saw after the drop to $275 last year. I'm expecting another large drop this weekend. Will probably go short here. Maybe good news revealed during the Miami conference could save us though.