What in the world is going on with Bitcoin?

As I write this, BTC is trading on Mt.Gox at $433, down from today's high of $446 but still up $60 from 48 hours ago. BTC is the very stuff of conspiracy theories--springing into existence in 2010, the creation of the mysterious individual or group known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, who gifted BTC to the world before promptly disappearing months later.

According to blockchain.info there is approximately 11956300 BTC in circulation which is worth about $5,224,903,100 at current prices. BTC/USD rates roughly doubled between 10/3 and 11/4 and then again by 11/13.



The last time prices soared like this was the middle of March, during the Cypriot financial crisis when banks in Cyprus shutdown BTC jumped 89% from $47 to $88 and when the banks re-opened, after a two week shutdown with strict cash withdrawal limits, a bubble formed which peaked with another 200% increase at $266.



CNN Money, the Washington Post, and Forbes contend that it's Chinese investment in BTC. The Forbes article leaves the distinct impression that it was BTC China, now the largest BTC exchange on the planet, eliminating it's trading fees in September that fueled the boom.

Looking at this BTC China chart, it seems that prices tracked pretty evenly with Mt.Gox, BTC-E, etc. It bears mention that the October 2nd announcement by the FBI of the arrest of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht would seem to be responsible for the sharp dip in prices on the same day.

Anyone who has any length of exposure to crypto mining and/or trading can attest to the shady nature of cryptocurrency--plagued with scams, cons, thefts, market manipulations, pre-mining fiascoes, use in varied criminal enterprises, etc. None of which I find surprising considering the origins of contemporary cryptocurrencies on obscure forums and in clandestine IRC channels, the almost overnight creation of many small (or not so small) fortunes and the influx of capital from less conventional investors. Imagine if we created a currency on ATS, quite a few of us got very wealthy in the process and there was little to no oversight!

So ATS, what do you think is going on? Should we buy into the conventional wisdom or is there something altogether more nefarious taking place?

chart source: www.cryptocoincharts.info...

SilkRoad 2.0 is up and running lots and lots of people trading Bitcoin there, tons of money to be made.
Good find thanks for posting!

reply to post by theantediluvian


There being heavily invested in.

They are trading at 40,000 a day, the silk road isnt even touching that. The market was unaffected by the silk road entirely.

Also there are many other websites.

Agent008
SilkRoad 2.0 is up and running lots and lots of people trading Bitcoin there, tons of money to be made.
Good find thanks for posting!

My theory is that Silk Road 2.0 is a government run honey pot, see my thread here.

Some other interesting reading:

List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses

Its an investment but don't spend more than you can lose. I wouldn't recommend mining because the cost will not be recovered, that is a scam all in itself.

reply to post by theantediluvian


Can you supply me a list of the same for real money?

JUST SAYIN

onequestion
reply to post by theantediluvian

 

There being heavily invested in.

They are trading at 40,000 a day, the silk road isnt even touching that. The market was unaffected by the silk road entirely.

Also there are many other websites.

edit on 14-11-2013 by onequestion because: (no reason given)

I bring up the Silk Road only because the timing is interesting. It's not the volume of BTC transacted on Silk Road that would have affected the markets in my opinion, but rather the amount of news coverage of its take down coupled with the psychological effect on members of the crypto community.

reply to post by theantediluvian


The Silk Road founder or whatever had I think something like a million dollars worth of bit coin seized as well during the whole shut down.

It would not surprise me that law enforcement would be using those bitcoins for honey pot transactions in order to catch folk doing illegal stuff. However it would be really ineffective for them to use it to drive the market down or make it unstable etc..

IMO the reason bitcoin is gaining so much popularity is because people who understand currency, understand that bitcoin is a more legitimate currency than paper money.

It's not surprising that people are starting to invest heavily.

~Tenth

reply to post by theantediluvian


Silkroad isn't the only site for buying any vice one wants so if it is a govornment honey pot its just one of many sites, but most of those are scams to steal your bitcoins one way or another.

It's like the Devil's stock market down there. Things will blow up/down.

onequestion
reply to post by theantediluvian

 

Can you supply me a list of the same for real money?

JUST SAYIN

Just saying what? I've been mining with a small group of friends since March (LTC mostly, 18 Radeon 7950s & 7870s, free power). I've done quite a bit of trading and worked with another of my friends on successfully building a trading bot (which is currently trading). I've lurked in the right channels, chatted in all the troll boxes, watched the pre-mined scamcoin coins pop up (even gotten in on some NVC & FTC pump and dumps), etc. I'm not speaking without firsthand knowledge.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


If anything, I think the bust would actually have lead to a rise as it might give many people an impression that BTC was being "cleaned up" a bit. I can't understand why anyone would use Silk Road 2.0 or any of the other .onion market sites that have sprung up:

1. It's just a bad idea to begin with. There's no way of confirming the identity of the vendor so the vendor could be a law enforcement agency waiting to be handed an address to go make an arrest. Traditional black markets are all about mutual trust and people knowing who they're dealing with for a reason.

2. You have no idea who the operator is. Look at The Pirate Project fiasco--the operator ran off with all the coins that he was allegedly holding in escrow.

3. The site could be a honey pot. What better way to tap into the TOR black market than setting up an .onion site honey pot? The government could have easily used the information gathered from monitoring DPR, raiding his dwelling, interviewing him and taking over the Silk Road servers to impersonate the right people.

In my opinion the recent boom in the price of bitcoin has many underlying causes. The most influential of which is the fact that outgoing international transactions are being banned by banks in the US. Another reason for the boom probably comes down to this Silk Road fiasco and all the press it has generated around bitcoin. Another is the simple fact that bitcoin mining is becoming a big industry and as it gets bigger the difficulty of mining will increase, which will drive the price up.

reply to post by theantediluvian


this is what caused the surge in the last few days

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, however, argue that the virtual currency Bitcoin can serve as a substitute to gold. Speaking on Wednesday at a BusinessInsider event in New York, the twins argued that Bitcoin is not only a permanent new feature of the financial landscape, but added that a single Bitcoin will one day be worth $40,000 (one unit is now worth a record $400 apiece).

Also there are many other websites.



Are there? I have pad and pencil ready,please could you give up some of your contacts

PhoenixOD
reply to post by theantediluvian

 

this is what caused the surge in the last few days

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, however, argue that the virtual currency Bitcoin can serve as a substitute to gold. Speaking on Wednesday at a BusinessInsider event in New York, the twins argued that Bitcoin is not only a permanent new feature of the financial landscape, but added that a single Bitcoin will one day be worth $40,000 (one unit is now worth a record $400 apiece).

I doubt that had much to do with it, I hadn't even heard of that event until now and it was surging up furiously well before Wednesday.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


do you have much invested in bitcoin?

PhoenixOD
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

do you have much invested in bitcoin?

Well I didn't invest much of my money at the time when I bought them. That was nearly 2 years ago though. Haha.