Topic: nrd525 Market Tracker - page 49. (Read 83024 times)

Well that was expected. Retail adoption of Bitcoin was never a good idea to begin with and only redditards fooled themselves into believing it was gaining any traction at all.

People might be using exchanges (especially those with zero fees) and/or gambling sites as mixers. One consequence of not having a mixer site and having a lower market cap is that LTC is less anonymous than BTC.  Which makes it easier to track ponzis and scams.

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BTC continues having problems with online payment adoption:
http://www.coindesk.com/expedia-exec-purchases-with-bitcoin-are-down-40/

Isn't this a clear businesses opportunity?

once I searched for it too and neither found a thing.

I think the LTC blockchain is the easiest piece of data for a non-Chinese speaker to analyze.

A couple years ago, after my involvement in opposing the Bitcoin Savings and Trust ponzi, I compiled this thread on ponzis which was later stickied:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-identify-a-ponzi-100696

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I'm too lazy to follow all of the outgoing transactions from the alleged LTC ponzi address.   But the ones I did follow didn't go to exchanges (they were for addresses with only a couple transactions). 

I'm guessing the LTC ponzi operator has 2-6 million LTC based on the fact that 8.6 million went through the alleged address, and the scheme operated for around 100 days.  They were paying out an average of 1.1% interest. The size of the takings is hard to estimate. On the one hand they were paying out a lot of interest, but on the other hand the size of ponzi schemes stays relatively small in their early stages (and in some cases they put investors on a waiting list).  But it does look like the people who invested were mostly getting interest payments, and very few, if any, were completely cashing out.

I'll have to look into those sources. Unfortunately good information is hard to come by about the alleged ponzi--I'm only speculating based on what I see in the market. As a trader I will take a LTC position if BTC continues to rally, though. Having traded through the 2013 bubble it makes sense to me.

Thanks for an informative post!

I am worried about a second pump (or really a third one, if you could the 2013 pump).  I'm guessing they won't do it for several months.

There are some decent facts about the LTC ponzi - including a couple forum discussions of it on Chinese forums, a video of a man speaking on behalf of the scheme to investors (also in Chinese - there is a half-decent English translation of this), and block chain evidence of interest payouts.

I did a bit of Googling and didn't find one.  There might have been LTC mixers a couple years ago.

I've heard a lot of rumors about the LTC ponzi and very few facts. Honestly I believe it was an excuse to pump LTC and push BTC over resistance.

What I do know, as I participated in the pump and watched the orderbooks closely, is that someone had a really fast bot that provided buy support right at market. When the orders were sold into, they were immediately replaced to keep the price as high as possible. These were not the actions of amateur speculators, but of a sophisticated buying campaign by large operators across multiple exchanges to push the price up.

Once the price was to their target, the LTC that the bots had collected were dumped at market on each exchange, causing the initial crash. At the same time, thousands of BTC were market bought across multiple exchanges, pushing BTC over significant resistance and buying up most of the remaining supply standing in the way of a potential bull market. (The "creek" in Wyckoff terminology) Again, not the actions of amateur market-making.

I don't have enough evidence to make a definite conclusion, but considering what I know about market structure and how large operators tend to work in the market once they've cornered the supply, I tend to think there was something larger at play.

A conclusion one might draw is that these operators are interested in LTC. It's a fairly liquid market (compared to most altcoins) so you can extract a decent profit when volume picks up. It's traded at major exchanges and tracks BTC's ups and downs. Considering how successful the initial campaign was, they will probably pump it again.

One of the goals of this thread is to use facts.  So if you express an opinion, you need to back it up with facts =)

Why is LTC a buy?

I think it is going down, because the ponzi owner(s) have up to 5 million LTC on hand and are going to at least partially cash out because they will want to diversify their assets.  The general pump from $1.40 to $9 was about 10 times larger than what it should have been based on BTC's increase from $220 to $275.  I think the pro-LTC arguments (faster confirms, BTC blocksize debate, and halving) are generally inconsequential in the medium to long run as BTC will resolve these issues and halving should be built into the price (and possibly over built into it - ala buy the rumor sell the news).  I think LTC lacks projects and uses.  And finally I think that altcoins are in a longterm bear market against BTC because BTC is a natural monopoly like Paypal, Ebay, and Amazon.

Now LTC could have a big bounce up to $5-$7.  But it would be speculation-driven, not based on value, and it wouldn't last.

No one should count out LTC at this point. It's a buy easy.

Is there a known LTC mixer site?

It looks like the ponzi operator hasn't cashed out.  They probably have a very low cost basis (as they didn't have to pay for most of them).

If they do cash out, the LTC price could go below $1.

More analysis of the LTC ponzi
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1115157.80

What do these payments look like?
http://ltc.blockr.io/tx/info/1b7a4a0c2f2ea6a0006e5336e061a58a5748e50b1a06ea49f30198c58b2cf21e
(To me they look like ponzi payouts from a scheme where most people are giving 500 LTC and are receiving 31.5 to 51.75 LTC for the time period.  Or 6.3% to 10.35% for whatever the time period is)

if you follow the incoming transactions it comes from (a couple levels up)
http://ltc.blockr.io/tx/info/8593fddcd4891f8ffde2a760368cf759e25e91ba16c5087291f52fd752896ef0
and then from:
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/LVW9rw6qQn1JrZVLAhneQzm8ZmhELpznmH

and then to (the big alleged LTC ponzi address):
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/34Ae29qWAhGGTw3cSNkPygiwsgKbbCatou


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This person appears to have sent 1000 LTC to an address, and then started getting daily payments of 11.25 LTC (or 1.125% interest/day).  They added another 3000 LTC and their payments were increased to 51.75 LTC (or almost 1.3%/day).  Though it does stop on July 12th.
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/34gNmiMVenCXsY9Kr8KvfMGcaUbWpthyoe


This person invested 500 LTC, got 4.5 LTC back (0.9%) then invested another 1000 LTC and got 18 LTC/day (or 1.2%), then another 25000 and got 51.75 LTC/day back.
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/38vTA5bi6hvqhcZC4ktHRtvacZFcK3kHiy

This person invested 2500 LTC, got 31.5 LTC back (around 1.2%), then invested another 500 LTC and got 38.25/day, then another 500 LTC and got 45/day, and it stopped on July 15.
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/334rBwn6VFCYsMf8QTJ4PeaKc4nsv91iKP


Looking at these addresses there appears to be some kind of investment scheme going on.  I don't know of any LTC swap rates (lending it out to speculators) that would be that high.

It is weird that everything seems to have stopped around July 15th.  Note: July 15th-16th was the big LTC fall from $4.60 to $3.20.


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It could also be some kind of mixer.

I started a reddit thread on the possible LTC ponzi. So far, nobody has any major new facts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/3dvboh/what_is_the_chinese_ltc_ponzi/

Some analysis of the alleged Chinese LTC ponzi address.
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/34Ae29qWAhGGTw3cSNkPygiwsgKbbCatou

It looks like the blockr.io uses EST (or realizes that I'm in EST and uses that).

Total deposits: 8.6 million LTC. This is a major operation.  Now obviously they are also paying out money, so they probably don't control 8.6 million LTC (unless they are using multiple addresses).  They probably started using multiple addresses which could explain why the account balance has fallen from 1.2 million to 400k.  

Incoming transactions are mostly in numbers with a base of 500.  So a lot of 500 LTC transactions and a smaller number of 1000, 1500, 2000, etc.
Incoming transactions dried up around July 10th.  There is one 500 LTC transaction on July 11, but that might be a mistake.  They probably switched to another address for the ponzi. But it is interesting that there is still 400k LTC left in this one.

Incoming transactions dry up between 12:00 and 17:00 (EST), during Chinese night (12 am to 5 am).

Outgoing transactions:
302k July 2, 15:14-15:23

222k July 3, between 16:08-16:19

254k on July 4,  15:51 and 16:36

255k on July 5,  19:54 and 20:04

213k LTC on July 6,  17:21 and 17:34.  This is right after LTC surged to $5.80.  Several hours later it fell as low as $4.90.  Were they cashing out?

190k LTC on July 7,  17:31 and 17:44.

214k LTC on July 8,  16:30 and 16:40.

230k LTC on July 9,  17:55 and 18:40.  An hour after LTC passed $8. An hour before a small dip to $7.40.   Ten hours before the crash to $5.  Cashing out?

670k LTC on July 10, 7:12 and 9:05.   This 2-4 hours after LTC crashed from near $9 to $5.  It is several hours before the second crash to $3.70.  Looks like they missed cashing out at the $8-$9 peak.

There is the occasional outgoing transaction that has a base of 500 LTC.  Are they cashing people out of the ponzi? If so, it seems like very few people.

Looks like daily outgoing payments or cash outs, until July 10 when they did a major transaction and may have started to use another address.

It looks like the outgoing transactions of 10k to 30k are primarily going to addresses where they are being held (and many of them have only one or several transactions of the same large size).  So there isn't any evidence that they are being sold.


This is a great chart of the alleged LTC ponzi address:
https://bitinfocharts.com/litecoin/address/34Ae29qWAhGGTw3cSNkPygiwsgKbbCatou

The first transaction was on April 14.   That is a possible approximate start date for the ponzi.  It really took off around May 20th.
 

Leaving money on an exchange long term hoping for a low bid to be hit in a flash crash? Sounds like a good way to end up with nothing.

BTC-e BTC flash crashed to $160 (while the other markets stayed at $260-$275). This is the second super flash crash on BTCe and, unlikely BFX, they don't reverse them. 

(BFX flash crashed to $100, but the trades were reversed).

If this continues to happen (impossible to predict, though it should be less often as the market matures and the order book increases), you can make a decent return by placing low bids and waiting 1-3 years.

I would stick to trading bitcoin.
The litecoin chart scares the hell out of me.
Excellent way to lose money.