Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 27237. (Read 26708373 times)

The market cap is just about meaningless. Especially for Bitcoin.

And there doesn't need to be any volume for the price to shift. Though it is doubtless more healthy if there is.

I sent over some extra fiat to Bitstamp, yesterday.
Hope it gets there on time to buy up some cheap coins ...

do we all agree that we are going down? too many sell orders at $630 - $645 - $680, we are heading to $610 - $600 -$5xx

Please add to my list then. I thought it was a good list of things that actually occur on a physical level to move prices. I'd group these together into the 'physical layer'. Now there are other things you could say moves the price like "news", but that would belong to the 'cognitive layer'. Anything that exists in the cognitive layer must still be manifested in the physical layer somehow.

One of MANY ways.  In an unregulated environment, it's a printing press for bitcoin.  I've seen orders taken away from the top of the book, for example.  Hey, it was a tender.  They can't really complain if someone fills their tender, can they?  Great way to monetize liquidity.  Also teaches a lesson to the wall fakers.  Would be totally illegal in U.S. exchanges, however.
 

sobbing implies that I am sad. I'm not. I'm just being an ass.

Explanation

Whatever makes you happy. I personally think it's pretty stupid to be in fiat at any time during big pumps unless you sell in front of resistance to be on safe side and rebuy when it's broken. Otherwise you're just losing big gains while hunting small arbitrage opportunity.

Similar with btc in bear markets.

Still on that topic, an exchange owner can profit at his clients' expense, even without arbitrage, if there is a delay of a second or two between the submission of orders by clients and the display of those orders in the public order book and trade log.

Suppose that, at some moment,  the highest bid is 400 USD and the lowest ask is 500 USD.  Client A submits an order to sell 1 BTC at 420 USD.  One second later, client B, who still has not seen A's order, submits an order to buy 1 BTC at 480 USD.  The exchange operator notices the overlapping orders, and then inserts his own orders, with fake times, between those of A and B: first a buy into A's offer at 420, then a sell order at 480, which is then taken by B.   When those transactions finally appear in the trade log, both clients think that they were lucky to get their orders immediately filled; when in fact the operator took from B the 60 USD that he would have saved without his intervention.

(Why invest in bitcoin, if one can make millions *now* by opening a bitcoin exchange -- even a zero-fee one?  )

How it is not?

My night to be disagreeable I guess.  I contend that it is not only valid in a flat market.  An arbitrage strategy can be robust against trends.  You can do the arb continuously in that case, even while you participate in the trend by taking a view.  In fact, it is wise to do so, because it creates a portfolio effect.
 

Why do you excluding they bought before? Many were buying and selling at pivot points during the rise. 660-670 was the one and it looked we might go higher numerous times we were at that level.

How is this sobbing?

All you do is sob.

They clearly expected it to go to $666  

Absolutely not.  The amount of fiat burned is not equal to the market cap, ever.

What's with all the people who bought at $660? The trend was clearly breaking at $460. Why didn't you buy then? You should be up 40% right now and still be up 25% even at the bottom of the upcoming correction.  Instead I hear all these sob stories "oh no I bought at $660 after the 50% increase. How am I going to live through the correction in the mid 500s? Woe is me."

I can't help but notice that this occurs in conjunction with the bitstamp behaviour.  Someone doesn't want the tape to paint?

One does not need to move funds in real time between exchanges to do arbitrage.  Or maybe not at all.

An arbitrage opportunity occurs whenever someone posts a bid at one exchange A that is higher than the lowest sell at the other exhange B (or someone posts a sell at B lower than a bid  at A).  At that moment, an arbitrager at A, if he became aware of that situation before other clients, can sell into that bid, while his collaborator at B (need not be the same person) buys into that ask.  Both traders will then profit, relative to the mean bid-ask price that will result from their actions.  These trades are internal to the exchange, and therefore instantaneous - they do not appear in the blockchain at all.

In fact, one could view arbitrage as two people trading, each within one exchange, with the usual "buy low, sell high" rule.  The difference is that, by knowing the other exchange's order book before other clients, each trader can, in a sense, peek into the immediate the future - he gets a hint as to whether the price at his exchange is currently "low" or "high", relative to the mean price that the arbitragers themselves are about to fix.

With those hints, both traders can consistently "buy low, sell high" and keep increasing the total vaue of their accounts.   It does not matter whether price is in an increasing or decreasing trend, or varying randomly within a band; as long as the bids and asks get posted independently at each exchange, these occasions are likely to happen.

Explanation