Topic: A Stonewall Example of Market Manipulation/Engineering? (Read 3088 times)

Mat you converted me to this viewpoint last week, and I posted literally 5 minutes before the $680-ish crash because ... well .. it took an IQ of twelve to figure out that's right about where they dumped last time.   

Obviously being pumped and dumped.  They don't have Gox to ride the $100 differences anymore, so they have to create their own.

-B-

Bah tried that. You get bored in a month. Ten years? He'll blow his brains out in a year most.

Watching the charts, on the other hand, is never boring, because unlikes stupid babes it does tickle your imagination

He gets to drive babes around in a sports car for ten years. You get to stay at home watching charts on a screen.

No.

There are rich people who invest out there.  Their moves will affect the market more than those investing less.  It's entirely common and predictable.

Time to fortify the 580 bulwark?  Boo..it retreats.

Don't worry. I folded my hand at $658. $10 loss per BTC.

But this is just a correction, of that I am sure. A much needed and much overdue correction.

$700-$800 still coming around the mountain.

Mat, you are the best contrarian indicator ever.

he actually still loses. you got bitcoin, likely to appreciate greatly. he got a car. it will depreciate to nearly nothing in ten years.

All trading is about figuring out what the big players are doing, or trying to do, and exploiting them. Since they deal in large positions they are hamstrung by liquidity issues and their actions move the markets; this allows the smart smaller players to extract value from them. It's like being a sucker-fish on a whale or shark.

 

No it's not. It's a technical innovation with the potential to unleash massive efficiency gains for humanity. Tech advances are what drive civilization forward, and are not zero-sum.

Mat a new bull market is now building.

In a bull market the most sudden, unexpected movements are often upwards.

It's just the natural unfolding of the market. No underlying plan being implemented by a couple of whales to see here.

Everyone else is affected by whatever circumstance a single trader cries about. Adapt or die.

You may be referring to me as one of the permabills (which I am). I did initially speculate something fishy with the swaps, ie that someone scooped up all the USD swap offers on bitfinex and held them briefly, the purpose being to prevent the price from rebounding after a flash crash (high 600s to low 600s, two days ago). But as I thought about it more, it seems unlikely that it would be a very effective strategy. There is simply too much volume on other markets; I think soaking up the swaps would not be strong enough to control the market, even for a short period of time.

The reason I thought of it in the first place was that I needed an explanation of why the USD swap offers would be disappearing during a flash crash, which means that people are selling BTC rather than buying it. But then I thought of what I think is a more plausible and less nefarious explanation: the flash crash triggered a great big slew of limit buy orders, and THOSE are what soaked up the USD swaps. Duhhh! Makes perfect sense, and I don't know why I didn't think of it the first time around ... 

In a FOREX sense; trading BTC/USD currency pair against a counterparty, yes.

Lower volatility will come with market depth.

Organic price appreciation will come with adoption (transactions)

BTC is worth what I can get for it. What I can get for it is directly related to it's USD value. It is a zero sum game. Someone has to pay.

I was talking purely in the sense of trading against a counterparty. You're alluding to overcoming the 'double coincidence of wants'.

Cheers

good point; zero-sum only if you consider btc itself as having no value.

Or that whale could use a portion of his coins and wealth to push the market around in a way that leads to positive buy signal after positive buy signal, which eventually ignites the market into action, thus multiplying the notional value of the whales BTC stash for whatever reason.

On the price action thread, when the whale made the 500 BTC market order that pushed Bitcoin up $30 in 10 seconds, some asked, "why did that whale do that?" Another replied; "altruism". I don't buy the altruism motive, but the market was looking bearish up until that point, after having plunged upon the temporary disappearance and withholding of a feasible USD swap rate on Bitfinex. It was speculated that some whale was on the main leveraged trading exchange and bought up all the USD swaps, and then started selling Bitcoin. Point is, these market actions were not and could not be coordinated by the masses, but by a powerful few, or even just one entity. Everyone, bull n bear alike, has noticed and remarked on the 'peculiarity' of the trading, and what are we left with? A bullish cup n handle chart formation, with the volumes beneath it in all the right proportions, right at the point where we surely would have had a strong retracement (loadsa folk were planning on cashing out at $700 range, perhaps not now). It also fits in nicely to an ascending triangle which if the text book guidelines are adhered to, should break above the $683 high on this move. Aided and abetted by some 600 BTC chunk being taken out the Ask wall by some whale on Bitstamp.

As for Alt-coins. The pump n dump activities in those markets are well known. There are individuals who are (in)famous for having perpetrated shitcoin pump n dumps.

I amn't calling this blatantly engineered ramp a pump n dump just yet, as objectives of those who are ensuring this rise stays on track may be much much higher reaching than simply to double/treble Bitcoins value and then cash in (they may want 10* it's value from the $340 low, for example).


I am and have been trading with it. It has just taken a while to realise which way the wind machine has been pointed whilst I have been dicking around 'taking profits', in and out market, staring at charts, doing EW looking for RSI/OBV divergences, and running Fib retracements graphs. Had I sensed or rather accepted that 'this was it' earlier, then I would still be holding my $460 position to this very moment and would be fkn laughing (still can't complain, I have done ok up until now anyhow).

It isn't and they don't. I sell BTC to you because you want BTC and I want to buy a car. You get the BTC you want. I get the car I want. We both win.

I'm gonna be really blunt here; if you're a shit trader it's because you're too emotional.

There is no 'free market'; the price is not simply supply vs demand. There is no free market in Bitcoin, there is no free market in gold, potatoes or anything else that has derivatives, shorts, options and other instruments of liquidity. The market is rigged against you. Every financial market is rigged against you. It's a zero-sum game. For you to win someone else has to loose. Stressing about the unfairness of what whale's, bots, HFTs, governments and/or fud-spreading low-life can and cannot do, is completely pointless.

As it appears you've worked out, the pretty patterns on a chart can be painted by those with the resources to do so. In a market as thin as Bitcoin 'they' could paint a giant cock and balls on the charts if they wanted to.

Accumulation, Manipulation, Profit Release*. That's how 'they' work. Accept it for what it is, trade with it, not against it.

Cheers,

Edit * -acknowledgement Martin Cole