Well according to all the nice 2011-2013 graph overlays we are right on track for the long and painful slide.

Maybe it would be if the market had any volume, but since mid April/early May the market moves exclusively at the whims of traders who have 6 or 7 figures. There's little to no combined influence from a multitude of smaller players to offset the manipulation attempts of traders with huge amounts of fiat on the exchanges. People with a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of dollars can't move the market. Their combined activity can, but as individuals, they can't. So when volume is low and the price just sits there, whether a trade is profitable or not comes down to what move the whales make, because there's no market momentum because nobody wants to trade when the price is above 100 unless it's rippling from a large move. You can't tell what move one or two people with that much manipulative ability are going to make via TA.

The run we just went through to 135 after the 60-166-79 correction, once it rallied above 105ish, only happened because one or a few people would show up in the early morning or the middle of the night and shove the market up with a 5,000BTC buy, let the market settle, and then do it again the next day or the day after that. The moves raised the price because speculators decided to take a shot on riding the train, that kind of a move doesn't incite a panic sell, and the other whales won't dump against you because it's more profitable to wait for the combined momentum of smaller players who are buying to fizzle out before dumping. It is pretty much exactly what has been happening since the dumps below 120 last week as well.

The market doesn't have confidence in the price above $100, period. The only reason it's been floating here since the post-166 correction is because the market is entirely speculation and bots. Bots give the illusion that trades are happening and the market is moving upward and a whale comes behind that illusion (probably because it's his bot) and plays against it. Low volume is very dangerous.

If people thought the price was profitable we'd see the kind of volume you see between 80-90-100. People are only buying right now because they're short term speculating, exchanging B for fiat for their business, or buying and holding and not giving a fuck about what happens on smaller time frames. The price isn't dropping because a few people with 20 or 200B simply can't affect market depth.

And even when they all sell at once and do affect market depth, you still get phenomena like the other day when someone showed up and bought 15kB from 101 to 111.

Under this kind of circumstance a hard, downward, long term correction is inevitable and it's only a question of how to make money in the interim.

Manipulation like this is actually very damaging to the market because when the correction does come and it makes the news, it makes a lot of the potential newcomers to Bitcoin feel the whole system is a fraudulent scam. You only saw the massive swing from doubles to 250+ because of a huge influx of new players. If that phenomenon never happens again, you can completely forget about ever seeing $200B again, let alone higher.

That's simply false.  Or, rather, what you're calling "next to zero impact" is in fact significant, the very thing that makes X twice as likely as Y, and separating blind gamblers from informed traders.  Not that at any given moment, a gambler couldn't win while a trader loses.  No.  All this means is that statistically, the trader will fare better than the gambler.

In other words, going on above info & nothing else, the smart money is always on X, no matter the time span.

So to rephrase it in a more positive light, aren't you also saying that all BTC needs is a huge influx of new players for a massive swing from the low $100B to $200B+ again?

Or massive inflation

No, that's entirely wrong (the text I've made bold). If you're in it for the medium to long term then yes, I agree with you. But I'm not (at the moment).  It entirely depends on your timescale. I don't want to get into a protracted and largely meaningless to-and-fro, but my experience is that long term trends do not affect short-term traders.  They affect long-term traders.

Statistically, long-to medium term, I agree with you, so peace.

I think you mean deflation

...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?