Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 19880. (Read 26609043 times)

just got back frmo some serious drinking

going to sleep before I do something stupid...

oke we stable at $420-$430 again
about where we will go to the moon? or we will climb the roller coaster again  

Well not quite as exciting as last night, but I am pleased with were we are at with BTC  

7,961,281 PetaFLOPS
7,961 ExaFLOPS
8 ZetaFLOPS

You can't call out 'Finex like that on the 2nd leg of the most epic bull run we've seen in a full year They will up and:

Naaah - not a problem for investors. There is a simple calculus involved. Figure out if you like the long-term prospects of bitcoin. If so, buy as much as you can afford. Hodl. Done. No detailed info needed.

Day traders, well, that's a different problem.

Coin



Explanation

Bitstamp has been called Bearstamp for the last month because its price is always behind the other exchanges. Tonight Bitfinex's price is lower than Bitstamp's so perhaps it should be known as Bearfinex until it catches up with Bullstamp.

[edit]

Typical, the very next post after this one shows Bearstamp's price has fallen back below all the other ChartBuddy exchanges, including Bullfinex.

Arbitrage is to place what speculation is to time.
I don't see how the method you have outlined would work: you don't level communicating vessels obstructing the connection.

Because bitcoin can drop 20% of it's value in a day. Because bitcoin can't buy shit in the real world, really. Because bitcoin's value isn't guaranteed or protected by the government. Because bitcoin etc etc etc.
Bitcoin does one thing well, it transfers fiat - which is how it's being used.
Next question, hopefully more difficult to answer?

Nice.

It isn't arbitrage this way round - i think he's saying that the Chinese are prepared to take a hit just in order to acquire USD.

And we also are taking a hit in order for them to do so. Unless you know the timings of course, which, as Jorge says, is best known by the exchanges themselves.

.... why should I help you out? You sound a bit too slow to be helped that much tbh.

I'm still weighing SegWit's costs and benefits... but I know it will be controversial. In fact it seems to be your camp that is suffering defections.

You made the bed with Mircea, now lie in it.

I don't know much about arbitrage (the players seem to be a rather discrete bunch).  This is what I can infer and guess:

Arbitragers are racing against each other.  As soon as they see an arbitrage opportunity -- an "ask" at one exchange that is significantly lower than a "bid" at the other -- they must quickly execute the trades, before some competitor does it and destroys the opportunity.  

Typical delays seem to be tens of seconds or less.  There is not enough time to actually send the coins from one exchange to the other, not to mention fiat.  So arbitragers must keep fiat and BTC balances in both exchanges.  

While the price is wandering randomly, the trades tend to go both ways, so the accounts only need occasional adjustments.  When there is a big rally pulled by one of the two exchanges, however, the trades will happen mostly in one direction, so the arbitrager may run out of reserves.  

For example, if Huobi is leading a rally and Bitstamp is lagging, the arbitrager keeps buying BTC with dollars at Bitstamp and selling BTC for yuan at Huobi -- until he runs out of dollars at Bitstamp, or of BTC at Huobi. In the first case he must withdraw the yuan, convert them to dollars, and deposit the dollars at Bitstamp.  In the second case, he must withdraw BTC from Bitstamp and deposit them at Huobi.  

In the first case, he is out of the game for a couple of days (unless he has some faster channel to convert the currencies).  In the second case he will be out for an hour or more, including the 20 minutes for the two blockchain transactions and maybe another 30 minutes for extra confirmation of the deposit.  (Someone who claimed to be an arbitrager said that he used litecoins to transfer bitcoins between exchanges, because of the much faster block time.)  If all arbitragers between the two exchanges run out of funds, the price difference will start to grow, until they can top up the accounts.

Effective arbitrage also requires fast access to the order books at the two places.  For that reason, I suspect that the main arbitragers (at least between the Chinese exchanges) are the exchange owners themselves, or certain privileged clients.  The owner can see the order book several seconds before anyone else.  If the two exchange owners cooperate, they can beat any independent arbitrager.  (Unlike stock exchanges, nothing prevents owners of bitcoin exchanges from trading at their own shops, for front-running or arbitraging.)


Could be.  Whether a price situation is an arbitrage opportunity depends not only on the currency exchange rates, but also on the cost of currency conversion and transmission, and on factors that affect the effective value of each currency to the arbitrager, like the one you mention.

Coin



Explanation

.... guess you missed the friday night dump in your razor-sharp focus there? 29k in 3 mins, probably some room for chinese btc in that flood.

My favorite

heh, so that's the disingenuous spin you guys are going to use for redditard herp's consumption is it? Any of the latest breakthrough improvements that are not approved by the benevolent, wise, central committee guardians and protectors of the free shit derp army are now going to be a "controversial overhaul of the system" ??

Unless of course we raised blocksize (bigger fat wheels are ok for the beer-can hat brigade).