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Bitcoin falls from $266

data.mtgox.com

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Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#231

Post by bdr »

wcoenen wrote: post #201
dia80 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary this is just the most pronounced in a series of recent coordinated DDOS / aggressive selling attacks designed to (successfully) inspire panic. The attackers unload their bitcoin before the price gets smashed and presumably buy it all back again from frightened speculators. If anything it might be a positive sign for bitcoin that the attackers are keen to acquire it! On another note, mtgox.com the main…

> On the contrary this is just the most pronounced in a series of recent coordinated DDOS / aggressive selling attacks designed to (successfully) inspire panic. The bitcointalk forums and /r/bitcoin are full of paranoia like this. After months of stress trying to divine market patterns, people see market manipulation and conspiracies everywhere. The simple truth is that there was an agressive bubble. The doubling per…

> paranoia

MtGox has said they were subject to DDoS attacks: https://twitter.com/MagicalTux/status/317423311174909954

> If you looked at the log plot[2], it still looked exponential!

Trying to divine future price movement from looking at a graph has been proven definitively, repeatedly to be foolish.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#232

Post by endijs »

Looks like paranoia is over. Spread returned to reasonable amount (1$) and price is steady going up - at the moment 190$. Fun day for Bitcoin holders. And someone made a lot of money today.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#233

Post by ashray »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #229
ashray wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's because those governments have allowed their currencies to be free float currencies or something like that. Buying and selling an Indian Rupee for example is quite heavily restricted. Probably to prevent instability caused from speculation. BTC never had that from the start because it's pretty much unregulated from the get go.

> "However, BTC China is still trading at above $275! That's the beauty of bitcoin, it isn't restricted to just one region in the world." This is a flaw, not a benefit. I want to know what the value of my BTC are. Not what they are here, vs China, vs Canada, vs Australia... > "Buying and selling an Indian Rupee for example is quite heavily restricted. " What do you mean, "quite heavily restricted"? It's far harder fo…

The Indian rupee is not a free float currency. That means that the reserve bank of India tries to make sure it doesn't fluctuate too much in value. While India is trying to move the currency towards free float, it isn't done yet. Basically, if anyone tries to speculate large amounts in rupees, the reserve bank will try to prevent fluctuations by speculating as well, or placing some sort of controls. This happened last year when the rupee started crashing and lost about 20%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_floating...

In that respect BTC is similar to the USD/Euro/etc.

Also, Indian citizens are pretty heavily restricted from selling large amounts of rupees for dollars, etc. You need a lot of permissions and clearances for large amounts. (>$1M equivalent, earlier the limit used to be $1000!!)

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#235

Post by bjcubsfan »

sliverstorm wrote: post #41
clicks wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Is that really a fair criticism of BTC? Because afterall, our beloved US currency is fiat based, and often subject to whims of geopolitical games.

US currency isn't backed by gold- it is in a sense backed by the US government. BTC is wholly unbacked.

Bitcoin is backed by a faith in the algorithms that enable Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#236

Post by eah13 »

As I've said before, daily volume is the stat to watch. There's been a huge spike in trading today: 2.3m btc on Mt Gox alone, up from 150k yesterday. If markets stay this liquid (or some multiple of their normal liquidity) it'll be a hugely positive sign. We're up to $200m+ of BTC traded on Mt Gox today, and that's a huge fraction of the total value of bitcoin (~$1b). Great sign if volume stays high from here on: the volatility should be dampened quite a bit.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#237

Post by L0j1k »

awj wrote: post #198
DanBC wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't the DDoS attacks count as evidence?

What DDoS attacks? So far I've seen no compelling evidence that this is anything but high volumes of legitimate usage.

As a long-time (since 2010) miner, I can tell you first-hand that there are massive DDoS attacks taking place against not only MtGox (who has already described DDoS against their infrastructure) but the pools as well. In fact, Reddit's pool (MtRed.com) is completely DOWN at the moment because of a larger DDoS than we've ever seen.

You can keep drinking the "everything's fine" koolaid, or get with the reality that currency manipulators have arrived on the Bitcoin train, and are using all the tools they have available to do their job.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#238

Post by riffraff »

Torgo wrote: post #195
pseudonym wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to vote on the side of "people hitting bitcoin related sites to figure out why the price is dropping so fast", as opposed to an "actual" DDOS. The result, however, amounts to the same thing.

At about the same time as mtgox was slammed with a DDOS, Dwolla (which is a common intermediary to get money in and out of mtgox) was too. The timing seems highly suspicious.

just to keep the discussion going, I'm also going to vote on the side of "people hitting bitcoin related sites to bring money in and out of it", as opposed to an "actual" DDOS.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#239

Post by dgroves »

mayneack wrote: post #215
coldtea wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's until one-two major governments decides to make it illegal to deal in bit-coins that it's price will drop to zero. It doesn't matter if they can't enforce it 100% (or even 1%). What matters is that it will kill almost all opportunities to use it as regular money for legitimate purchases by major companies etc in the future. And that it could also land your ass in jail (with ISP monitoring and such being what it…

That will keep it down, but never zero (because of that). There's a real value to the illicit transactions. Even if it's merely a way to exchange dollars into something like silk road points, that's worth enough to enough people to keep it at some non zero value.

or make it skyrocket - think about the prohibition or drugs.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#240

Post by stonemetal »

ritchiea wrote: post #67
baddox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intrinsic value is derived from what you can do with something So then, the market price of any good is its intrinsic value? Under this definition, if I can sell a bitcoin for x USD, then its intrinsic value is x USD.

Intrinsic value and market price are slightly different. I imagine the difference brings us back to the fact that bitcoin is unbacked by any government. There is a worst case scenario that bitcoins are worthless. Government backed currencies despite not being tied to the standard of a physical good have a sovereign entity responsible for their value thus they are as valuable as your trust in that sovereign.

What does it mean to trust in a sovereign in this case? If I take a $20 from my wallet down to the county court house, or any other government building you like, what should I trust to happen?
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