Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 33713. (Read 26712938 times)

Perhaps "they" aren't threatened by BTC in itself, but only by its interaction with fiat-based economy?  In other words, if BTC was only traded for goods, its threat would be minimal. At this point, BTC is used primarily as a vehicle for currency speculation, and as such not only devalues fiat, but highlights its intrinsic flaws.  
If that's the case, attacking businesses & institutions engaged in exchange is both simple & logical.

am I right in saying ripple has yet to prove itself in the wild?

Bitcoin on the other hand has a wealth of developers and investments right now working on developing the infrastructure, and the decentralised nature is inherently very important.


on the image issue, I think you are right to a degree, but images can change very quickly. Also if you look at fiat money for a minute, do people not use money because it's "got an image problem"? Because people use it to buy drugs?

You overestimate the negative sentiment the masses have on financial institutions and governments.  Yes, everybody complains but most are content with what they have.  It's certainly not so drastic that people will go through the incredibly difficult processes of setting up wallets, getting money into the system, buying BTC and then finding a way to spend them, which we know are far and few between. 

Not to mention, Bitcoin is becoming a bad word associated with all things criminal much faster than it's becoming some "beacon of light" as it relates to currency.  It's highly volatile, it's clunky, difficult and confusing and it's absolutely vulnerable to far too many variables. Image is everything and Bitcoin is losing that battle.  It's attractive to diehards and high risk investors sure, but most of them have no clue what mainstream wants because they are completely out of the loop. 

Bitcoin is like Napster.  It has shown us the way but an "iTunes" is coming to do it right.  My guess is that's Ripple.  They have the advantage of being able to take the high road and separate themselves from the black market, money laundering stigmata that Bitcoin has developed, while still accepting Bitcoin as a currency.  This is good for Bitcoin and it's last gasp at mass adoption.  If the masses are more concerned with low transaction fees and ease of use, than they are having actual stores of wealth, the XRP will reign because an IOU will be sufficient. 

anyone noticing the perfect bounce along the 114 line for the last 2 hours?

+1

yep, and if there is one thing I've learnt from spending too much time in the speculation forum, it's that this subgroup of bitcoiners are WAY too sensitive to news about bitcoin, positive or negative and they/we certainly thrive on every little bit of drama and enjoy taking things to extremes. The DHS issue is a grey area in the negative, on the other hand. VC investments and other developments are grey areas in the positive. Nothing is clear cut one way or the other

From what I have read the arbitragers were using dwolla to transfer between MtGox and BTC-e

I think we are complicating things here, by "we" I mean you and a few others judging the severity of the DHS news.
First, regarding "not many options left" - that is just no longer true. MtGox is no longer the center of the BTC universe, though it is still too large. This news will actually help level things and probably open other doors.

Second, stability is a ways off. We are just starting the "government/banking" journey. This news was NOTHING. Really, they aren't even going after BTC. The reason being, there are no laws which allow them to do so. Governments at this stage are afraid to, and actually don't have a clue, as what to even define BTC as. I'm afraid, for them, it is just like Internet PII. They will just be too slow to react. The only thing they can hope for is to somewhat regulate it. The banks will push for that to a point. But, we are just too small to do much about. Stopping it, being that the world will likely support it (all the while having a float of less than 11 million BTC's) is not really an option at this point. It will continue to be attractive to too many people unhappy with the state of things.

Just look at the slowness of things. And, again, they are not even attacking BTC (maybe with words) but they are just making sure regulations are being followed. And the Dwolla Gox thing is really really gray. I mean MtGox spent, what? 25 million getting things in order in the last year for this? This screams of either being overblown or too little too late.

Anything is still possible, but unless the internet gets shut down or the like, we probably continue for months if not years before we see what can amount to anything huge. And by that time we will probably be too well established imo.

Another noob question:  Why is Mt.Gox<->BTC-e price difference so great?  Obviously something's making arbitrage unprofitable, but what? What would the total transaction costs be for Mt.GoxBTC -> BTC-eBTC->BTC-e $ -> Mt.Gox $?  edit: forgot the final ->Mt.GoxBTC

Generally the prices are higher on mtgox so its the best place for miners to sell stock.

liquidity.

I was away a couple of days, did I miss something important?
I see we finally been to 106/107, even a bid lower, better late than  never
what's next?

Mtgox USD -> AurumXchange -> Liberty Reserve

No. The price is stable as all poor souls locked with FIAT in MtGox try to buy BTC a get the hell out of MtGox ASAP. And Mr. Karpeles' silence just worsens this.

And no, there are not many options left. International wire is quite expensive, SEPA takes several weeks to finish. So many just buy BTC as soon as it lowers a bit. Thats what you call "stability".

I agree. The fact that the price is more or less the same as before the news gives me a strong assurance that we are indeed stable to some degree.

I'm beginning to think the DDoS was meant to stop the crash, which is even more disturbing.

BTC? Stable? I don't know about that.