Topic: > 2.1: temporary manipulative bailout or sign of reversal? (Read 3704 times)

If I were a programmer trying to write a trading bot, it would be analyzing the current market continually, and if it ended up with $100K or 50K BTC, it would very likely create some large walls. If someone the puts in a huge sell order that hits one of the walls, the bot would naturally remove the wall to see if price will drop farther, and reanalyze the market. If you have a 10K BTC wall at $2.10 and someone sells you 2K BTC, wouldn't you drop the price to see if perhaps they'll be willing to sell you more at $2.00, or maybe $1.90?

Likewise, once the bot ends up with a lot of both dollars and BTC to work with, if it were a smart bot it would be trying to buy low and sell high, just like the rest of us. So if it starts getting a lot of BTC at $2.00 and determines there's a lot of resistance below that point, it would do it's best to drive the price higher so that it can sell at $2.50 or $3.00.

Of course, there's likely someone behind the trading bot feeding it tweaked commands, so it's not all on autopilot, but if I had 50K BTC to play with (or $250K USD), I would have to have some sort of trading bot to help out when I'm sleeping so that I don't get caught unawares. It could be as simple a directive as: "if 10% of my BTC or USD holdings are used up in a short time, drop the sell/buy order until I return."

There's plenty of reason for the price of BTC to not go much lower than $2 -- in my opinion, if it drops to $1 it becomes a purely speculative venture and has no real value otherwise. Someone suggested BTC as a medium for exchange, but it accomplishes that much better if it's less volatile, and it only becomes more volatile as prices drop. If I were to want to move $10K USD to another country without going through the regular means, using BTC might work but you'd run the risk of buying $10K USD of BTC with the intention of selling the BTC for something else (e.g. Euros); if the price happens to drop 10% while you're moving your funds, you've paid the 1% BTC conversion fees at the exchanges plus another 10% for the loss in value.

Really, I don't think BTC will succeed long-term unless something radically alters the status quo, but that's another story entirely.

I agree with most of what you have said Jonathan. But there are a few important things to remember:


Yes, he has pulled those walls in the past when the price was too high to continue, but at the level we are at now, it is VERY likely that those walls could be real. As we fall even lower, the likelihood of real bid walls becomes higher. And once he has eaten up a significant portion of the supply, the price will rise because he is likely to hold hard - maybe coupled with a strong buy from him.


How can you be sure that he is the only one to blame here? There are plenty of people with thousands of coins that might sell once the price has risen enough with the hopes of buying lower. This is not a game that he and he alone is playing so we should not blame him solely for this. This kind of thing happens in real world markets too. After large rises come large falls, and vice versa.


You might be right. But you might also be wrong. As I said, the lower the price goes, the greater the likelihood that those walls could be very real. I don't think he is losing any steam whatsoever. The price has been continuing downwards, requiring less and less purchasing power on his part. And he has taken enough profit from the higher levels to be able to provide real support at the levels we are currently at.


I agree that he will be left holding a LOT of coins if this happens. And when he is the biggest holder of coins on the market, what do you suppose is going to happen? The people who sold to him will have fiat to spend and no coins, and he will have lots of coins (and probably lots of fiat too). This is a recipe for movement in an upwards direction only.


I agree. If the walls disappear, we are going downtown. But not for long I would imagine. He will be holding too many coins at that point, and will only have one option if he hopes to ever get any of his money back. HOLD, and hold strongly.

I know we all want cheap coins, but I am going to do what the manipulator is doing.
It is a mistake to bet against someone with that level of bitcoin and fiat holdings.

That looks like a contradiction.

The Manipulator is very much a part of the market, but time and time again he has shown his true colors with disappearing bid walls. His sell offs of previously filled orders in front of his fake walls is likely not for profit, but to regain USD for his manipulative price support. The few times that he's been eaten into, I'd bet good money that those coins are re-entering the market, as demonstrated by his account balance (~$140k) being relatively static.

The Manipulator stands mostly alone, and he's slowly losing steam. No bid walls are popping up in front of his fake orders, and everyone is not only wise to his tactics, but they're fully aware that his price prop is nothing more than illusion. Perhaps there are people who haven't figured it out yet, and they think the price is going to pop back up, but that's just not going to happen before we reach a new equilibrium.

If he keeps his price support and fake bid wall up, it has approximately 48 hours to reach $2, and that's without any large sells. He's apparently the buyer of last resort, and is putting himself into an unfortunate position. If he allows his orders to be filled within the next 2 days, he owns more coins than he knows what to do with, and he'll have failed at re-igniting a rally. Further, once his wall disappears, it's a slide to $1.5, possibly a bounce to $1.7 and considering that he's likely on borrowed time/money, he'll have little choice in the matter and will probably be adding to the downward pressure on price.

i think a main reason why the bitcoin market is not yet free is caused by the lack of competition. there is no one out there beeing able to compete with the manipulator when it comes to the size of funds. maybe someone can pull one of his walls down, yes. but not 200.000$ walls. there is only one manipulator.
if there would be 2 or 3 of them, then the market would be alot more free. but there is no one (yet) beeing able to compete with his 200.000$+

I agree with you about the so called neoliberal free markets. My understanding of a truly free market is one in which prices are determined solely by market participants, and not by external forces. Is the manipulator not a participant in the market, albeit a big one?

Without people 'manipulating' the price like this, we would have an even MORE volatile market which is not desirable. No day-traded market ONLY obeys supply and demand, this is a fallacy and it cannot exist. The price is determined by psychological factors, the general sentiment of the market participants, and modulated by the forces of S&D - sometimes quite weakly.

It would seem to me also that he does indeed have competitors, those who want to sell and force the price down. There is plenty of evidence of this competition from last night. We have seen on several occasions his walls getting eaten alive. He takes significant risk with those walls, and sometimes it doesn't pay off.

The bitcoin market is as free as you are going to get. If people are capable of manipulating it, they are free to try. But if that is not what the rest of the market participants want, they will fail.

hmm.. from what i learned, a manipulated market (as long as there is only one manipulator, having a monopoly when it comes to the size of his trades) can't by definition not be a "free market". as long as there is not at least a competitor for "the manipulator" the market can't be called "free market" (exept you have the neoliberal definition of the word, where "free" means the freedom to do EVERYTHING serving onces purpose) by definition. "real" free markets lack manipulation by definition! whenever you try to manipulate a free market, another competiting manipulator should take advantage of your try and effectively rule out any serious attempt to manipulate the price in one direction other than the real balanced price.

neoliberal so called "free markets" are by definition contradictorily: they are in fact very unfree. e.g. neoliberals claim it to be "freedom of market" when they lobby for import taxes on markets they own, while whining about the "lack of freedom of market" when there are import taxes on markets they don't own. you get it? they call everything "unfree" which goes not in there subjective direction. following this logic everything in the market that may lower the own profit is "unfree market" and everything that may increase the own profit is considered "free market", even if e.g. import taxes clearly provoke market failure and are therfore defined as contradictorily to "real" free markets.

fuck the neoliberals, they speak with forked tongues, want to make you believe the fight for free markets, while they are in fact free markets worst enemies.

 

I understand all of that, and agree with you for the majority of what you said. But what you are failing to understand when you said that the 'free bitcoin market' wants to trade below $2 is that the manipulators are PART of the free market. They have vested interest and naturally will tend to protect those investments. There is nothing wrong with this, it is a result of the free market itself.

Yes his walls have disappeared before, but at this price level it is MUCH cheaper for him to keep those walls up than it used to be. It gets easier and easier for him to manipulate and put up REAL walls as the price falls lower and lower. At the level we are currently at, it is trivial to him considering the amount of fiat profit he has already made.

I guess the crux of this argument is whether you think he will hold this time or not. He might, and he might not. But making your judgement about what he might do based on what he did in the past is a sure fire way to get screwed out of a lot of money.

everytime he sets up his huge walls, he puts > 100.000$ at risk. often enough there have been huge sells into his wall, shrinking the worth of his investment dramatically. his "nervous cancel finger" also suggests, that it is no 'ease-cheese lets manipulate with fun!' thing for him. it is probably desperate, dangerous, unfunny and absolutelly not profitable. that is my sentiment.

when it comes to his manipulation of price, experience shows us one thing: his walls disapear. there are ~7200 coins everyday sold into them, and demand (as the SHOULD-HAVE-HAPPENED-DROP yesterday showed) is not balanced with a supply at $2.X.

conclusion: within the next 4 weeks, we are right into the $1.X - his walls did always disappear, regardless how hard he struggled.

the manipulator just has to accept now, that the free market (everyone else exept him) trades/wants-to-trade bitcoins LOWER than 2$.
the faster he accepts this fact, the better for bitcoin. cause that stupid,obvious,trivial trollfacestyle-manipulating serves no purpose but to hurt the free bitcoin markets real balance and exchance. you can see that easily with looking at what happens to the orders after the manipulator pulls up his walls: SILENCE. no orders at all. everyone ignores him. evertime he puts in his walls, he effictively destroys all balanced trading/volume/volatility.

Real Bitcoin Price Equation:

P* = (Demand - manipulation)/ Supply            --> clearly lower than 2$ at the moment

I really think $2 is tough to pass.  I continue to transfer more money up to mtgox.  If these things his $1... I think I'll have trouble not selling my car to get more cash to buy them...

I was watching just as it happened, btc prices were tumbling down, and then all of a sudden 100k usd just showed up, dispensed between 2.00-2.20.

As long as things lump sum is in place, you will not see <2.

Yet, there they stand. Just because we 'would have... if', does not make it so unfortunately.

Like others have been saying, it is trivially inexpensive to do this. So how can people expect that a 'manipulator' with potentially tens of thousands of coins is going to sit back and let his investments sink lower when he can simply spend a puny few thousand dollars to raise the price each time the water is tested?

He has made enough fiat profit to do this for as long as the bears are willing to try. Well, maybe. We will all find out soon enough.

very clearly we would have seen < 2 today if there would not have been mr. supermanipulator funded with 200.000$ cash, setting up insane arbitrary walls.

Lately, all the ideas seem to have been extremely bearish with some prolific loudmouthing going on. There has been very little bullish sentiment around this place for a while. I'm far from a permabul, but it's hard to get a word in edgewise with the lust for cheap coins whipping the bears up into such a frenzy.

All I'm saying that if there was ever a time to take advantage of the general consensus, today was it. Everyone was talking with such certainty that we would see <$2, and boasting about their shorting positions. You should never claim to be as certain as some of the people here seemed to be.

We might well see <$2 though, and I will be ready to take up appropriate positions - but not without a fight apparently.

Hardly anyone (bidding), other than bot orders, will go anywhere near these steps. The majority of the volume is coming from people selling into the steps. There has been very little positive movement since they were placed.


I try to take read all the ideas, then sift out the BS, and compare with available info to make my own predictions. There is so many conflicting arguments in here, you can't just pick one and roll with it. That would be silly!

I have found that doing the opposite of what is said in this subforum usually pays off.
Perhaps the 'manipulators' are watching this place like hawks, trying to trade against the general sentiment. Who knows.

I am 50% in fiat and 50% in bitcoin right now. That is the best way to deal with uncertainty like this.

In that market I can't even make up any resistance level.
I think, right now the price could move between 1.5 and 3 based on the decision of the guys cornering the market.

What you'd have to do is try to predict what they'd do next, not easy...

My take on the market (disclaimar: I have no experience) is that if we break 2.3 we have crossed the resistance line and are likely to reach 2.6 where the next resistance is.

Definitely not reversal.

They aren't already?