...and this could well occur if there was more faith in the exchanges and greater liquidity. As your case study explains, it's hard to trust sending off x dollars to an exchange in Japan with (probably) 0 legal recourse if things go wrong, even if you do want to trade.
I would speculate that the amount of traders out there who are interested in taking a punt, but are holding back due to these issues far exceeds those currently involved. I can also provide my own anecdotal evidence of friends who had very little idea about BTC a month ago, even in the immediate time frame around the bubble, and now have read investment newsletters/articles or discussed with friends the possiblity of buying a few BTC as a speculative investment. This includes web developers and also a bunch of Goldman Sachs employees.
on a different topic slightly. I love reading comments from a traditional traders perspective, it helps put things in context. I also think that those used to normal markets may well be missing the instinct that early adopters may have for price swings and the general BTC market sentiment. Bitcoiners will know what is likely to affect market sentiment on a more fundamental level, as well as likely be more in touch with historical resistance points etc. While Rampion has claimed to have sold at the bottom several times, I still think certain elements of "old timer" wisdom can be very helpful.
This is my "holistic" take, as I've said in previous posts I'm no good at maths etc...
Absolutely! That's why I joined this forum, to try to tap into some of that market sentiment. However, how significant is that sentiment now that the majority of trades (in terms of volume) are carried out by unsentimental conventional traders?
My guess would be that there is still a majority of BTC in early adopters hands (pre Feb 2013), but that is totally insubstantiated.
I wonder how many straight traders there are, as opposed to programmers/IT guys masquerading as traders
my understanding of the BTC universe comes largely from this forum, but I can imagine that there are a bunch of traders who don't post here or even grace us with their presence.
I also sometimes wonder about the larger manipulation, and what kind of ratio (at the moment) comes from early adopters who've been around playing the same old games since 2011 (Blitz mentioned something that other day about manipulation in the form of 50k BTC walls etc in the past), and what ratio comes from those with a few million to spare who have been involved only in the last few months. It's interesting that you say the price now is largely goverened by manipulation
because traders have got involved.
I had fantastical idea the other day that these dumps were perhaps attempts to totally bottom out the market and provoke a downward trend, but then this massive 15k buy comes along and brings us right back up to 110... There's gotta be more than one whale out there right? I wonder if rpetila got excited about being sub 100 and instigated that big buy (just a bit of fantasy there... but he is a supernode after all
). The big buys and sells can't all come from one player, but I do imagine there is one very active whale who has dominated a lot of these big moves... I just wonder how much.