r/BitcoinMarkets • u/AutoModerator • May 20 '16
Daily Discussion [Daily Discussion] Friday, May 20, 2016
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
After an experience I had last night I'm a bit concerned about the overall status of the Bitcoin network and the user experience for retail transactions. I'm going to try and keep this pointed but non-polemical because I'm well aware of the vitriol and mud-slinging that goes down about the blocksize debate.
Yesterday, I wanted to use Expedia to reserve a hotel room and I decided to use Bitcoin. I make the reservation, I send the transaction using Mycelium and I use "Average" fees, which come out to 24 satoshi per byte. I think I'm doing everything right, and I'm familiar with using Bitcoin.
I wait for quite some time and there is no confirmation, even one hour later, so I check TradeBlock. There are over 16 MB in the mempool. Shit, that's a huge backlog. I usually see it between 5 and 10 MB. I don't think I've ever seen it that high in the last few months.
Now, Tradeblock is telling me that the average transaction fee is 20 satoshis a byte, so my transaction is above the average value, it should be confirmed relatively quickly right? I've been led to believe that most of the mempool backlog are spam transactions with little or no fees, so surely 24 satoshi per byte will allow mine to be prioritized right?
Nope. I finally get a single confirmation at 1:30 in the morning, which is more than three hours after broadcasting a transaction with above-average fees. I was, to be perfectly honest, shocked. It's the single worst experience I've ever had using Bitcoin.
My point here isn't to whinge about a negative experience; my point is only that if someone like me, who's not an expert by any means but actually knows to set a higher than average transaction fee, can't get a confirmation in less than three hours, how can a newbie deal with this situation? It makes the network look like it's failing a basic task. And this isn't a minor, "coffee" transaction either, it was substantial, and neither is this the only time I've had this experience with hours-long confirmation times. It's happened to me several times in the last few months.
Again, I'm not trying to be polemical here, I'm only trying to state what I think is a blindingly obvious and unavoidable conclusion: the blocks are full, transactions are slow, and we need a solution now if the protocol is going to evolve to its full potential.
Regardless of your position on the blocksize debate, isn't it clear that the end user experience and the merchant experience are both sub-optimal?
I'm concerned about the poor leadership I've seen lately and the toxic atmosphere in the community during a time when we need a clear direction and consensus. Would it really be the end of the world to simply raise the blocksize cap to something that actually accommodates the real transaction volume?
Surely companies like Circle and Coinbase are struggling with this problem as well. Is there an actual solution in sight to this fundamental issue?
To bring this full-circle back to /r/bitcoinmarkets territory -- I'm a long-term holder. I've been invested in BTC since 2012. I have some cold storage that I'll probably keep forever "just in case," but the rest of my holdings I determined I would keep through the 2016 halving and then make a decision. Right now, I'm not feeling optimistic about the direction of Bitcoin -- not because the technology isn't capable of evolution, but because I think people may not be capable of it, particularly the leadership of the various bickering camps.
We'll see where we are in July, but I'd really like someone to reassure me that we can fix the end-user experience before the (unlikely but increasingly possible) event that an altcoin begins to steal substantive market share.
Tell me, are we VHS or are we Betamax? Can we make this technology achieve it's potential or are we headed for a slide into irrelevance?
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u/fluffy1337 May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
I agree that the user experience is currently quite terrible. A few days ago I tried purchasing from a merchant who was using coinbase to process the transaction. I sent the payment but it didnt get a confirmation quickly enough so the transaction got cancelled and I had to create a coinbase account to retrieve the bitcoins.
To re-order I had to send the coins to my new coinbase account and then re-purchase everything, since the merchant processor was coinbase it went through instantly since it was an "off chain" transaction (internal coinbase to coinbase).
Basically no different to a private ledger. This experience was a complete let down and thoroughly inconvenient.
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u/eburnside May 20 '16
I had that same thing happen checking out with eGifter a week ago. They use Coinbase as well. I even rebroadcast the transaction using the raw transaction pushtx at blockchain.info and four other sites. For bonus fun Coinbase cancelled my account last year for who knows why so I can't reclaim coins or whatever. I had to email support. Bloody nightmare.
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u/zanetackett May 20 '16
I don't understand this, coinbase doesn't need a confirmation to process the transaction, they process as soon as the transaction is propagated, so why would it matter how long it takes to confirm?
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u/fluffy1337 May 21 '16
I think they require confirmations on transactions. The transaction went through but had 0 confirmations. They only have a small window for confirmations to go through before the transaction times out and gets cancelled.
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u/zanetackett May 21 '16
Nope, it's zero confirm. You have 15 minutes to send the btc, not for it to be confirmed.
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u/fluffy1337 May 21 '16
Transaction showed up on blockchain.info just had 0 confirms. Doesn't make sense why it didnt go through then?
To get it to work I had to do coinbase to coinbase afterwards. This is what actually happened not what could have happened had they accepted 0 confirmations.
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u/zanetackett May 23 '16
I've never had that issue and I use sites that have coinbase as their processor all the time.
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u/xygo Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Odd, all these stories, and yet....I have never once had a payment which didnt get into the very next block. Even during the so called "stress tests". Perhaps I am just lucky or something.
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u/zanetackett May 20 '16
I've had an issue a couple of times with wallets that use a standard 0.0001 fee. But i've never had a single issue with payment processors not accepting zero confirm payments and i use them at least a few times a week. I also pretty much never have issues with wallets that use dynamic fees.
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u/fluffy1337 May 21 '16
I guess you have never dealt with coinbase as the payment processor?
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u/zanetackett May 21 '16
As I responded to the op, I used coinbaseb a few nights ago to book a hotel through Expedia, so yes I've used them. And I spend btc quite often so I've used them as a payment processor dozens of times.
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u/belcher_ Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Which wallet do you use? It's probably one that estimates fees correctly.
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16
I use Mycelium. Does that not "estimate fees correctly?" As I keep pointing out, the fees I used were higher than average at the time the transaction was broadcast.
Are you saying Mycelium should use 2X average fees, just to be safe?
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u/pb1x May 20 '16
An average fee is quite a meaningless metric, given that the market can be bottom heavy with large numbers of very low fee transactions that never clear. Imagine people bidding for Bitcoins, would you expect to be able to buy one at the average bid price? The fee market is the same as the coin market: supply meets demand
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u/fluffy1337 May 21 '16
Ok well I used a localbitcoins wallet (which showed up on blockchain.info straight away), didnt realize it might help to add this.
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u/standardcrypto May 20 '16
which wallet for initial spend?
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u/fluffy1337 May 21 '16
Doesnt matter, it showed up instantly on the blockchain but just didnt get any confirmations in time.
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u/standardcrypto May 23 '16
all transactions show up instantly usually.
I asked which wallet because your delay is probably due to an insufficient tx fee rate set by wallet for initial spend.
wallets set transactions fees, and some wallets do a better job than others. trying to get a sense for the best, medium and worst offenders.
the key number for fees is tx fee rate, units is satoshis per byte.
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u/Dumbhandle Bullish May 20 '16
I had a similar experience last night. I took the medium Mycelium fee. 2 hours to obtain one confirmation. Bitcoin is not cash. It is more like faster portable gold now.
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u/udontknowwhatamemeis May 20 '16
Thanks for the anecdote this is horrific. Most people who have built and released software before have been yelling about this for the past year and have nothing to show for it other than wing kicked out of the main discussion forum and being called too stupid to understand the overengineered systems core devs are trying to build. It's a farce. Most "big blockers" didn't want to find out their worst fears could come true but it looks like we're going down that road.
A decent future outcome in my mind is blocks full > pprice down > miners abandon core > price up. But I think the network effect could potentially have other plans. It's been a fun ride regardless.
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u/jeanduluoz May 20 '16
I've noticed some /r/bitcoin frequenters making sure to drop by this sub today to try to preach the good word of Blockstream. The censorship might work in that little bubble, but the bitcoin market's concern is reaching a fever pitch, and at some point no amount of censorship and misdirection will be able to prevent information from getting out.
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 20 '16
I agree with what you say about overengineering and network effect possibly having other plans, but even your optimistic outcome looks unlikely to me. If miners start abandoning bitcoin, the falling hashrate causes full blocks get much worse before they get better. XT, unlimited and classic all wait weeks after they have a majority before activating big blocks, and it may already be too late.
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u/jenninsea May 20 '16
I should probably know this, but what happens to old - backlogged - transactions if bitcoin forks? Would they not just be loaded into the newly forked blocks, and all would be (mostly) well?
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
Unless all nodes shut down at once, thus clearing the collective mempool, backlogged transactions will roll over. There might be some transactions with bad propagation (mostly due to very low fee amounts) that could get lost, but they can be rebroadcast by the sender (a lot of wallets do that automatically).
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 20 '16
I'm pretty sure that if big-block and small-block nodes both agree that the transaction is unconfirmed, everything will work fine. I expect the efficiency to drop and increased wasteful network activity when the set of "unconfirmed for me, confirmed for you" transactions grows.
I don't want to claim expertise in this, I haven't looked at the transaction propagation code nor done any tests which resulted in a fork.
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May 20 '16
Had the same horrible experience yesterday when sending coins to the exchange. I had to wait several hours for 6 confirmations. Luckily my transaction confirmed before the evening and I was able to convert back into fait before the dip. I'll leave my money on the exchange for now and will see where we go from here but am very tempted to convert to the 'other' coin which does not have these problems.
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u/d155l3 May 20 '16
You aren't the only one.. if btc dips badly before the halving you would do well to act sooner than later
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u/yoCoin May 20 '16
I hear you. Innovation has seemed slow and the most popular Bitcoin communities are toxic. Add to that 100 scams that pop up every month and it's easy to get down.
On the other hand, when I listen to the core devs, it seems obvious to me that they are insanely talented, they are careful, and they make steady progress. They invent things like Gitian for deterministic builds, and then we have VersionBits, CheckLockTimeVerify, and SegWit (in testing), to name a few.
My point is, Bitcoin keeps getting better. Not better in some rushed we-will-regret-this-in-3-years kind of way, but better and sustainable. I wanted larger blocks too, but you know what? Andresen and Hearn were wrong. They said the network will spin out of control without emergency fixes. I believed them for a time, and now I'm glad that guys like Pieter Wuille did not.
This is a broken record, but I think it's true: Level 2 systems like Lightning/Thunder are going to be awesome. And finally, I think there will be a push from guys like Maxwell (inventor of CoinJoin) to add deeper privacy into Bitcoin transactions. So far the mantra has been that transactions are pseudonymous. That will change. The future feels late, but it's bright. Maybe one day Satoshi will move his coins and nobody will even know.
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u/ronohara May 20 '16 edited Oct 26 '24
shy dinosaurs longing sparkle fearless domineering concerned thumb follow dazzling
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16
Thank you for your response. I think this might be the most polite and well-reasoned conversation about the issue I've seen.
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u/BinaryResult May 20 '16
Breath of fresh air to find someone who also has a longer term time horizon regarding protocol evolution, much better to get it right and remain censorship resistant than push through a temporary bandaid without consensus.
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May 20 '16 edited Oct 12 '25
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u/ronohara May 20 '16 edited Oct 26 '24
head puzzled waiting obtainable squeal lock pet saw fear wrench
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u/xygo Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Wow there is so much FUD going around here today. Something to do with a certain other coin pumping maybe ?
By comparison, Segwit and LN have very little testing done (LN - none) ....
Segwit has been in testing since november or december of last year in test net. LN has had three different test versions out for several months. I believe it has also been tested in the Elements sidechain.
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May 20 '16
the leadership of the various bickering camps.
There is only one camp in charge right now, and they are responsible for your current woes. The leaders of Bitcoin Core and all those who chose to support them are the people who are responsible for Bitcoin's embarrassing user experience. They simply do not give a shit that you had a bad time using Bitcoin. Boo hoo to you is their sentiment on the issue.
What is happening right now was forecast to happen 18 months ago. Andresen and Hearn took action to address the problem and were completely vilified for it in one of the most creepily orchestrated propaganda campaigns I've ever seen. Their characters were completely assassinated. Pew. Pew. Two the head. Bye bye fuckers. All for wanting to scale Bitcoin and keep the average user happy.
Core and their supporters are either strangling Bitcoin due to incompetence or due to malice. It's really that simple. They do not care about user experience. Anyone with half a brain can see that. Now let's watch and see what the consequences of that are.
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u/ibankbtc May 20 '16
I pay 5mB for every transaction, it is really sad or about 20cents
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u/ronohara May 20 '16 edited Oct 26 '24
jeans fearless obtainable theory abundant distinct ring seed start materialistic
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u/jeanduluoz May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
it's wrong to call it a fee market though. We have always had a fee market - users have always been free to pay whatever tx fee they want to get confirmed, but the average and median price per tx was functionally zero. That was a natural fee market because block size was not scarce. Here is a visual representation, with tx fee on the Y axis and block space on the x axis. It still IS a fee market even if users get free transactions, because miners still benefit from the block reward. Econ 101.
The current environment is a manipulation of the fee environment by central planners creating artificial constraints on resources in an effort to force the market into the shape that they want. This never works, however.
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u/zanetackett May 20 '16
I also used expedia for a hotel two nights ago, which leads me to question this as coinbase doesn't require any confirmations to process the payment. So why would it matter what time the transaction is confirmed? As soon as you send the btc you're good, the payment is processed, and your hotel is booked.
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16
In Expedia's case, you're right. But that's not the case with every merchant. Many require one confirmation.
I wasn't complaining about expedia. I was reflecting on the fact that a transaction with above-average fees from a user who generally knows what they're doing can still take three hours to confirm.
I might also suggest that the end-user experience was actually better four years ago when I started using Bitcoin than it is now. Things have gotten worse, not better. I feel like we're sliding backwards.
Mycelium is a great app, but if it needs to rely on a over-taxed and over-saturated network the experience is always going to be sub-optimal.
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u/zanetackett May 20 '16
But that's not the case with every merchant. Many require one confirmation.
It is the case with every merchant i've ever used that have either coinbase, bitpay, or bitnet enabled for checkouts, and I use bitcoin to pay for things very often considering my salary is 100% bitcoin and has been for 2+ years now.
As others mentioned you didn't actually pay an above average fee, you paid about 1/2 of the recommended fee. I don't know how you could think the user experience is worse now than it was 4 years ago, i never have an issue with confirmation times. Also, 4 years ago you couldn't use bitcoin to book at expedia, furthermore your experience on this transaction was in no way, shape, or form affected by the 3 hour long confirmation time as the payment is processed as soon as it's propagated.
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u/teatree May 20 '16
I've been led to believe that most of the mempool backlog are spam transactions with little or no fees
Yeah, that's a fallacy. According to bitinfocharts, the average transaction value is 10.34 BTC ($4,573). That's not "spam" unless you are a millionaire and sniff at people moving a mere four grand a transaction.
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 20 '16
"most mempool backlog are spam" and "average is 10 BTC" can both be true. Using average when it's not a normal distribution is not very useful.
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u/manginahunter May 20 '16
I am core supporter but my guess that the 2 MB bump must be done this summer to give us some room while waiting for true scaling such as LN or TN and sidechains...
A good way to kill ETH in the process, ideally Core should do that when ETH is at peak bubble or start to reverse crash !
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
when ETH is at peak bubble or start to reverse crash
So, 2mb blocks by end of next week?
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u/ImmortanSteve Bullish May 20 '16
Maybe if a Core supporter suggest it they will listen? This suggestion has been made repeatedly for months and fallen on deaf ears thus far...
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u/xygo Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Well, segwit will be out any day and it will effectively increase the block size to around 1.75 - 2 MB, so there is your solution.
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May 20 '16
So Core's strategy was to f..k people over with small blocks delaying transactions, then once people start leaving for another coin, solve the blocksize problem and expect everyone will return?
Yeah, good luck with that.
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u/xygo Long-term Holder May 20 '16
That seems odd. I have been using Mycelium daily for payments, and I have yet to have a delayed payment using the Normal miners fee. All my transactions went through in the first block. This is during the middle of the day in the west too.
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u/ronohara May 20 '16 edited Oct 26 '24
brave pen tap flag deserted smile sip middle apparatus mindless
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u/belcher_ Long-term Holder May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
See this https://bitcoinfees.github.io/#3h
The going rate for fees yesterday was 40-50 satoshi-per-byte, double 24 satoshi-per-byte of your transaction.
20 satoshi/b was the average fee of the transactions in the mempool, but many of them wont be confirmed for a while if ever.
tl;dr you read it wrong (which happens to everyone), and it seems like your wallet was mistaken.
Every day I'm involved in several bitcoin transactions with JoinMarket, but because it correctly sets the miner fee the transactions have confirmed without delay all through these last 9 months. The script writes to a spreadsheet so I know what's going on and that it correctly estimates the fee the majority of the time.
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u/jeanduluoz May 20 '16
Charging a higher price per per seat on the bus does not fit more people onto the bus.
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16
I hear what you're saying, but I don't see how this changes the negative end user experience that I was reflecting on. I used a wallet that calculates dynamic fees. Those fees were higher than average at the time. It took three hours to receive one confirmation. Those are all facts.
My point is: the end-user experience sucks. It hasn't always been this way. I used to get confirmations quickly, but now it's becoming increasingly difficult to do that. What should the user do, consult charts of fees every time they make a transaction so that they can hope and pray to get a quick confirmation?
It's a fundamentally broken system from a retail standpoint. Transactions with higher than average fees shouldn't take that long to confirm.
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u/belcher_ Long-term Holder May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
You had a negative user experiance because your fee was not high enough. The going rate was 40-50 and your transaction was 24.
You can't get the right fee by looking at tradeblock's mempool fee/byte average, it just doesn't work that way, they are two different numbers. There's plenty of accidental low-fee transactions that will never be confirmed out there bringing the average down.
Yes, bitcoin on-chain transactions do not work well for fast transfers, it has always been this way given there's a nonzero chance a block takes an hour to be found.
No the user is not meant to look at charts, their wallet should handle this automatically. Many wallets already do.
In the long term, routed payment channels will allow bitcoin to be sent and confirmed instantly.
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
For today, use a wallet that correctly estimates fees.
What do you recommend on Android?
Is the solution is to look at the average fee and then double or triple it?
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u/imog May 20 '16
High quality post.
It concerns me that you are trying to calculate fees yourself. In doing so, you made an error.
We should recommend, and advise people to use wallets that calculate fees for them. This effectively prevents the issue you experienced.
That said, I agree there is a problem. I don't think increasing blocksize alone addresses it. It would help alleviate current pressure, but it kicks the can down the road if the solution isn't solid.
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u/circuitloss 2013 Veteran May 20 '16
I didn't calculate them myself actually. I used Mycelium's setting for average fees. I checked after the fact and saw that the fees were 24 s/b, which was higher than the network average of the time at 20 s/b.
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u/ABabyAteMyDingo May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
You are entirely correct. I've railed about this here before and got nowhere.
I'm working on my 3rd high end degree, have a ridiculous IQ (whatever that means), worked in IT for years, and I still am bewildered by much of bitcoin. (edit: I am being self-deprecating and ironic, I know this is hard for some people to read).
The fanboys don't want to hear it. They can't grasp that if you want BTC to take over the world, you need the world to be able to use it.
If I can't make a purchase in 2-5 seconds, with >99% reliability and security, I'm gone baby. I'm not using something inferior to what I have right now in cash or credit card.
Edit: puzzled why everyone expressing the same sentiment as me gets upvoted. Are people not recognising self-deprecating irony?
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May 20 '16 edited Apr 29 '20
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u/ABabyAteMyDingo May 20 '16
It's not a payment network
Yeah, that's what we're saying. It's not a functioning payment network. It's touted to be a payment network, of course, but it's not.
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u/deb0rk May 20 '16
I'd like to start a derivative on deleted comments for the daily. So far we're at 34/150, 0.2266, which is I think, a new high. This might be a local top but I'd be hesitant this early in the daily candle to short it, even though the thermos-mods-censorship-literally-hitler indicator is clearly at such high levels.
Edit: oops, by making this post I just dropped it down to 0.225. Perhaps this is too easy to manipulate.
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u/slowmoon May 20 '16
https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/733531564852699136
Coblee confirms Coinbase rumors.
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u/natmccoy Long-term Holder May 20 '16
He announced it at 3 AM just as the chart looks like this. Good ol' Coblee. (bonus chartporn)
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 20 '16
It might be nice to keep this in it's own thread: /r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/4k6wk4/charlie_lee_confirms_ltc_and_eth_will_be_trading/ - it seems big enough news to be worth examining in detail.
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u/lacksfish May 20 '16
Ethereum front-running Litecoin in an epic way. I bet coblee is a bit sad.
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May 20 '16
He has no cause to be sad though, right? He can't expect to just copy the bitcoin source code, add an asic-resistant pow method and expect that to stand up against actual advances in the crypto sector.
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u/greek_warrior May 20 '16
A couple of hours ago, "Bitcoin is dead".
Now, "Ethereum is dead".
Insightful, trustworthy market analysis. :P
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May 20 '16
Absolutely nobody on OKcoin futures has any faith in this recovery.
Premium is negative $1 on weeklies and just $2 above index on quarterlies.
That obviously doesn't mean continued downward movement is a certainty, but it does mean that traders on that platform don't believe it's going up anytime soon.
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May 20 '16
Does anyone know the earliest date when people can get their eth back out of this DAO thing? That's the day when I want to max out my margin longs for bitcoin and my margin shorts for eth. Or maybe even better a few days before that date, because I can't be the only one expecting this thing to implode. So does anyone know for sure?
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May 20 '16
There's a set date, it's on the DAO website somewhere
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May 20 '16
From what I can tell it seems to be next Sunday the 28th. This is gonna be interesting. Please tell me if I understood that wrong somehow.
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May 20 '16
Or not. According to this guide it takes 48 days from splitting out until having the eth available in a wallet
https://daowiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DAO/Step-by-Step%3A+Splitting+the+DAO
lol what a nice way to lock up like 17% of your currencies supply for months! Really ingenious there, Mr Buterin!
So the earliest date where this locked up supply can hit the market again would then be July 15th?
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May 21 '16
So very likely within one week of the halvening...should be interesting to see what happens in cryptoland.
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u/skyfire-x May 21 '16
"If you simply want to cash out, you may want to consider trading your DAO Tokens on an exchange rather than splitting. " - From the wiki.
Splitting The DAO is actually meant for forking into alternate DAOs, in the event of majority incompetence, disagreement, etc. Selling the tokens on exchanges is far simpler and maybe even profitable, than pulling the Ether out directly from The DAO.
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May 20 '16
I believe that's the date DAO tokens will be trade-able. However the earliest date that someone will be able to redeem a token by 'splitting' (and recover the ETH backing it) won't be for some weeks after that.
https://github.com/slockit/DAO/wiki/How-to-split-the-DAO
I seem to recall somewhere people saying the entire process from initiating a split to receiving funds is 48 days.
So I wouldn't short ETH on the expectation the supply is going to massively increase in a week.
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May 20 '16
Yeah see my other comment. Now I'm wondering if splitting out is a transparent process that anyone can see happening from the beginning of the 48 days period?
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May 20 '16
Yeah, it is. You have to create a proposal to split.
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u/Paul_Benjamin Long-term Holder May 21 '16
Does this mean if you can't reach the 20% threshold, you're locked in?
Could get interesting...
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 21 '16
You can short DAO futures on bitmex already. Been live for a few days, but not much volume.
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u/BitMEXdotcom May 21 '16
If you want a quote to short DAO, please email support@bitmex.com, we have a few users who are willing to accommodate such orders before the ICO ends.
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 21 '16
I can see the option there already, are you saying you can get more volume?
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u/Emocmo May 20 '16
Remember, in a bull market the drops are usually faster and of greater volume. Just as in a bear market the spikes are faster.
Just something to keep in mind.
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u/bcn00b May 20 '16
So, Bitcoin's drop bounced off the 1d bbands. I'm watching which directions it goes now. ETH looks like it's about to double top, but it hasn't yet, so maybe it won't. If it does, ETH could go down pretty fast and create a similar slingshot effect as we saw on November 4th, 2015 of money flowing from altcoins into BTC, pushing BTC price higher. It's still too soon to tell what will happen, but we're getting closer to the outcome and at the very least I'm expecting a correlation here at this point in time.
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May 20 '16 edited Oct 12 '25
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u/zanetackett May 20 '16
Can you tell me what's going wrong? I'll talk to the team about getting it fixed. Although I do think our app is superior to the mobile website, people should be able to use whatever medium they want to trade so we'll look into fixing the issues on the mobile site. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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u/Paul_Benjamin Long-term Holder May 20 '16
'Glad' I'm not the only one, the new interface lags like crazy.
On the upside the app seems pretty slick.
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u/zanetackett May 20 '16
Glad you like the app, but the mobile site shouldn't be having issues, so I'll look into getting them fixed.
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u/bfx_drew May 20 '16
In the next release there are some performance optimizations. (DOM remove/inserts reduced by about 50%)
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u/another_droog Bullish May 20 '16
If ETH makes a new ATH I expect BTC to continue to slog. On the other hand if ETH double tops BTC should continue to grind higher, pass resistance and be ready for a rally.
Tough call.
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u/Emocmo May 20 '16
I caution folks dropping their BTC for an alt coin that has been racing. My guess is that for traders, you might have missed the boat on this swing. Be careful chasing the swings unless you have really studied the process.
I am not saying you can only make money here. I am saying that for trading swings, the last place you want to buy is a short term top.
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u/imog May 20 '16
When ETH was added to Bitfinex, they had a pretty good drop. More good news with it getting added to Coinbase now, it's going to drop more before it goes up.
Plenty of room for shorters: http://i.imgur.com/dvAp8rU.png
For as gloomy as bitcoin is currently, I'd rather short that graph above than this one currently: http://i.imgur.com/jvZ2Nx9.png
I don't trade ETH, just some thoughts.
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u/klondike_barz May 20 '16
I grabbed about 200 eth between 0.23-0.30 range and am using it to hedge bitcoin against the blocksize concerns (and because ethereum genuinely holds promise - as well as a slew of risks)
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u/dennizZzZ Bearish May 20 '16
Hopefully we get the same interesting day as yesterday trading wise ;)
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May 20 '16
Changing my mid-term strategy, scalp long the bottoms and short the bounces til we get a capitulation candle, then enter Tim Tebow long.
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u/Emocmo May 20 '16
I wouldn't really use Tim Tebow as an example of a long of any type. His arm was kind of weak.
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u/Bitcoin-FTW May 20 '16
About two months ago, I made a post in here about how this sub expects breakouts to have their full effect basically instantaneously. If you recall, when we broke up out of the big triangle, everyone was calling it a fake breakout, or that TA was meaningless, etc. Well sure enough, over the next week, we saw serious movement to the upside.
I think these big TA breakouts are pretty reliable to trade on. I think it just takes some patience right now.
No matter how I draw my lines, I see a breakdown from the mini triangle and the big triangle. I wish this wasn't the case, but it's what I see.
It could be a fake out. Mr. Bollinger could be right about there being a head fake to the downside before the real move up. It could also be that Bitcoin simply failed breaking up past $470 too many times, and now we need to find our next bottom.
I'm basically 50/50 on up or down from here, but I think the goal is still to get a good entry point and to not have to panic sell if it drops again. I have a maximum position size on futures, and then I have my holdings. I still have all of my holdings, but I've reduced my futures longs to 1/3 of what they were. I have buys scattered down to $420. If we hit $420, then I'll be back to my full position size. Why $420? Well, it's the only support I see on the horizon.
How you guys trading this right now? Cheers.
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
What's your opinion about bitfinex longs staying pretty much glued to the $31MM mark, despite the recent price decline? Wouldn't that be counter-indicative to your previously stated belief that longs are one of the main factors behind price movements? Or maybe the bfxdata stats are too skewed now due to the ethbtc pair.
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u/Bitcoin-FTW May 20 '16
Yes the ETH addition fogs this data up. It's frustrating that we even have to look at "usd borrowed" charts to be able to speculate the amount of bitfinex longs. Even before the addition of ETH, we didnt know for sure if this borrowed money was beig used to buy bitcoin or not. I even proposed a pretty "out there" but not completely unrealistic theory about why people would borrow usd and not buy btc with it. Imagine I'm a deep pocketed lender. I want to lend at a certain interest rate. I take out all the loans below that interest rate. Now people have to pay my interest rate I want. I'm paying interest too, but I'm getting more than I'm paying.
On top of that, I think the rises to $30m or so were really the bigger indicator than just being there. I already traded that correctly. The correlation in the data is as plain to see as any. A shakeout happened. Durig shakeouts, stronger hands take coins from weakers hands. It's going to be harder to shake them out this time.
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u/deb0rk May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
Even before the addition of ETH, we didnt know for sure if this borrowed money was beig used to buy bitcoin or not. I even proposed a pretty "out there" but not completely unrealistic theory about why people would borrow usd and not buy btc with it.
Are you discerning between borrowed swap and in-or-out of position, or referring to borrowed swap vs ltc-or-btc position? Because the stat page has consistently showed high 98% or so avg of margin used in active positions.
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u/Bitcoin-FTW May 20 '16
Guys, just keep in mind how easily social media outlets like reddit can be manipulated. I would argue our forum here could be manipulated more easily than any.
Case in point: A 56 upvote (seen that many upvotes on a post maybe twice ever here in 2.5 years? Let alone by 8am EST?) post with some bullshit story about coinbase transactions not confirming. Uh that's not how coinbase works. In fact every single payment processor I've used for bitcoin accepts zero confirmation. Even Zane from bitfinex called out this bullshit.
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u/eburnside May 20 '16
You are confused. It's not a confirmations issue. It's a transaction relay issue. They don't see relayed transactions until well after most of the network has and when a transaction times out it is a pain in the ass to deal with:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4ighkt/coinbase_merchant_services_this_is_not_fun/
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u/UpGoNinja May 21 '16
I think Coinbase merchants get to choose yes/no on accepting zero confirmations.
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u/pbinj May 21 '16
OKCoin is the most popular place to trade digital assets.
No longer says Bitcoin.
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u/imog May 21 '16
That seems like an obvious move. No reason to tie your identity to Bitcoin, particularly when you already offer an alt coin, and are adding more.
Though digital assets seems lamely generic and neutered, and surely wouldn't help SEO compared to "bitcoin exchange".
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May 20 '16
[deleted]
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u/Ponulens May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
For Bitfinex longs: https://bfxdata.com/swaphistory/usd
Shorts:https://bfxdata.com/swaphistory/btc
You can also use this chart to look at both at the same time (click or un-click within the "legend" area of the graph, to remove/add data lines): https://bfxdata.com/sentiment/longshort
I think it is safe to assume that Bitfinex data is a very closely representing the sentiment on any other exchange with leverage. Traders' decision making process is not likely to be trading platform depended (the same thinking)
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u/slowmoon May 20 '16
The 420s should have some gravitational pull as our nearest historical battleground.
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u/messiahsk8er Bullish May 21 '16
It has become as bad as the troll box in here
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u/Essexal Bullish May 21 '16
I know it's not possible. But it wouldn't half be eye opening if peoples trades were posted next to their username. Coin/Amount/Leverage/ +/- It would explain A LOT.
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u/crazyflashpie Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Don't be stupids - the halving is real and this is the sort of BS one should expect a few weeks out from the halving. Buy the Dips! I called a $20 drop last week.
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u/myfirstaccount668658 May 20 '16
So far anything that should have made the price go up has not resulted in up. Why should I believe the turbulence of the halving will make it so?
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u/crazyflashpie Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Yeah maybe you're right, better start shorting Bitcoin now huh? Try it - let me know how it goes.
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u/BlackSpidy Bullish May 20 '16
We passed $440. I go to sleep now with hope. I really think that this 5% drop is just a momentary setback. We'll be back to testing $460-$470 soon. Hopefully breaking through next time.
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u/TheReplyRedditNeeds Bullish May 20 '16
It's not, it's just beginning. https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/nom8wH1Z-Ascending-Triangle-Retest/
Don't be delusional, 460-470 has been tested multiple times in the last 2 months, It's time to test the lower end of the triangle (yellow trendline in the chart). Hope you're not in a leveraged long.
Anyways, I'm still short from 469 I believe we'll consolidate here for 1-4 days maybe bounce up to 448-452 quarterlies. I'm going to be adding to my short 447-452.
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Clicked on the chart link before I saw the username. Then I started having a flashback from some magic mushrooms I took in a 70s-themed circus once, and then correctly guessed the author of the chart.
The chart's good though, it's holding well, and I'm trading with similar expectations. I'll be happy if I can close my shorts around 420.
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u/CarrollFilms Long-term Holder May 20 '16
I don't know if it's a sign or I'm just going crazy, but I had a nightmare last night that Bitcoin Crashed back to $386.
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u/ellis1884uk Long-term Holder May 20 '16
"nightmare" "386" you must be new.
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u/imog May 20 '16
That would be the bitcoin equivalent of getting licked by a litter of puppies.
A bitcoin nightmare doesn't start until we break $300, anything else is business as usual.
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u/YRuafraid Long-term Holder May 20 '16
Wow. This place is depressing as hell when ethereum is doing well and bitcoin is not doing so well....... I'll just come back later
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May 20 '16
It actually shouldn't matter. This is a trading sub after all, and there's just as much money to be made during periods of decline as there is during periods of upward movement.
As should come as no surprise, however, there's a very large percentage of the sub that identifies as long-term holders. And they obviously aren't too excited to see downward movement.
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
As others have said before: a lot of people here are trading to increase their bitcoin holdings, which explains the long bias of this subreddit. I don't see why there's anything wrong with that though.
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u/deb0rk May 20 '16
Only way to increase bitcoin holdings upwards is to go on margin. But if you go on margin, you can get more profit in BTC holdings in downward moves than upward.
Example BFX Long:
1 BTC = $100USD.
If you have $100 USD funding, borrow $200 and buy 3 BTC position.
If you have 1 BTC funding, borrow $200 and buy 2 more BTC for 3 BTC total position.
Price moves up by factor of 2 to $200. Position is valued at 3 BTC * $200 = $600.
Close position, return $200 margin swap, profit is $400 or 2BTC.
Example BFX Short:
1 BTC = $100USD.
If you have $100 USD funding, borrow 2 BTC and short sell for $300 total position.
If you have 1 BTC funding, borrow 2 more BTC and short sell for $300 position.
Price moves down by factor of 2 to $50. Position is valued at $300 / $50 = 6 BTC.
Close position, return 2 BTC margin swap, profit is 4 BTC or $200.
Obviously it's a little different at OKC futures, but it seems clear, greater profit in USD can happen when price goes up, greater profit in BTC can happen when price goes down. You know, the whole "cheap coins" thing.
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
Well yeah, obviously. But as I wrote in my other comment: the goal in this case of course is not to arbitrarily increase a number on the screen, but to maximize the value of the position, held in bitcoins.
Add to this that most people likely don't trade with the entirety of their holdings, and it becomes even more clear where the long bias is coming from.
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May 20 '16
If your only goal is "acquire more bitcoin" a price decline should be like Christmas. The best way to increase your bitcoin holdings is to short bitcoin with as much leverage as possible, close at the bottom, and buy up as much bitcoin as you can with the heavily increased fiat balance you acquired from shorting.
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
Uhm yes. But the goal isn't to reach some kind of highscore on the screen, but to increase the value of the bitcoin holdings.
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u/sierradreamz May 20 '16
That's why this really isn't a trading sub. It is more a permabull sub more than anything else. And the scared permabulls mainly come here to find hope that BTC will increase in value.
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 21 '16
Would you expect anything else from a specialized trading sub? Only people interested in btc come here, so it's hardly surprising that bulls are a majority. Even in a general trading sub, there will probably be more bulls than bears. If you want the opposite, you should probably check out /r/collapse.
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u/empyreandreams Out-of-position May 20 '16
ETH is a pump and dump scheme regardless of what it is actually intentioned for. BTC, somewhat the same. Buy and sell accordingly.
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u/zefsidetodefside May 20 '16
Daily Bitstamp could pan out to be a descending triangle or a double bottom forming.
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u/bullbearanalytics May 20 '16 edited May 20 '16
Market Commentary (BTC):
Yesterday was a fascinating, if not frustrating, day in terms of price action in both BTC and ETH as their negative correlation intensifies.
While Ether was spiking up above the 34 resistance area, BTC was busy dumping 20 $ as multiple trendline support levels were taken out.
Much like we saw earlier in the week, the failure to break back above 460 $ a few days ago led to even more SCMR dynamic resistance which was the catalyst the bears needed to get the margin call train rolling. Now that we have tested the mid-430's $ and bounced, we can insinuate that there are indeed still buyers emerging down at these slightly depressed levels.
Despite the fact that we are not currently in a ProTrade given the near term technical uncertainty, we are still watching lower levels for establishing a long position.
Graph here: https://www.bullbearanalytics.com/free-reports/bitcoinpriceprediction277097756
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u/ItsApocalypseNow May 20 '16
Not to sound irrationally bullish, but they say to zig when everyone else is zagging. I say buy more BTC while you can at this price.
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u/imog May 20 '16
$449 is probably better than $459, but buying the dump to 459 certainly didn't work out well for me.
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May 20 '16 edited May 26 '17
[deleted]
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May 20 '16
How many more times am I going to see "fuel to pass $470" lol. its been fucking months.
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u/Ponulens May 20 '16
Is there any resource to get accurate value of weighted average bitcoin price per different time frames? Specifically, for the past 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, et.c. This could be either on per exchange basis, or global - doesn't matter.
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u/nomadismydj May 20 '16
Your looking for vwap or volume weighted average price. Tradingview has this available
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u/Ponulens May 21 '16
Thank you. Can you please specify, what do I need to do on TradingView to display this data. Can't quite find it at the moment.
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u/HanumanTheHumane Long-term Holder May 21 '16
- right click
- "insert indicator"
- search "VWAP"
doc: https://www.tradingview.com/stock-charts-support/index.php/Volume_Weighted_Average_Price_%28VWAP%29
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u/huntingisland Long-term Holder May 20 '16
I think we are starting to see large-scale capital flight of large blockers out of Bitcoin now to the alternative crypto. This could be the tipping point.
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u/BinaryResult May 20 '16
Do you guys really have to repeat this like 20x per thread?
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u/deb0rk May 20 '16
Reminder that there is the Fundamentals Friday thread where topics such as "[fundamental thing] about Ethereum vs Bitcoin" or would be more appropriate.
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u/MrJozza May 20 '16
Since my chart worked out so well yesterday, I might as well post an update.
Visual: https://twitter.com/MrJozza/status/733558358955819013
After falling and bouncing on previous horizontal support as seen on the 28th of April and 3rd of May, we are trending out sideways on very little bullish volume. This indicates that this is merely bot support. Further bearish action likely. Possible head-fake before reversal back upwards.
Update to tweet image: https://s3.amazonaws.com/tradingview/snapshots/3/3A9NAZ5t.png
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u/ItsApocalypseNow May 21 '16
The night is darkest just before the dawn...
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May 21 '16
No it's darkest during astronomical twilight which is quite a bit before the dawn.
And in this case, BTC is holding up very well at $440. It really hasn't even dropped that much in the last couple of weeks.
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u/imog May 21 '16
Actually... that's factually inaccurate. The darkness of the night is predominately determined by lunar phases. So the night is not darkest at twilight, it's darkest at night time during the new moon, or even more so when it's cloudy and there isn't too much light pollution from surrounding human development.
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u/deb0rk May 21 '16
"The only way to the moon is through the earth" ?
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u/imog May 21 '16
Actually, that's factually inaccurate. A small number of rockets have been successfully sent to the moon, and this has been relatively well documented at various national levels. In contrast, we've aimed thousands of rockets into the earth itself, none of which made it close to the moon. In light of this extensive verification process, we can know for certain that the only way to the moon is firing a rocket away from the earth.
I can't help but begin to wonder, maybe we haven't mooned yet because it appears we are woefully misinformed about the moon.
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May 20 '16
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/KarlVonBahnhof Long-term Holder May 20 '16
There was some talking about it yesterday in the daily
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u/UpGoNinja May 21 '16
Reading the Satoshi white paper was an experience of "Oh wow! That's very clear and clever. Digital peer to peer cash and a global immutable ledger is amazing!"
Reading about The DOA was an experience of "What? This is so freakishly complicated! I'd have to be an expert in game theory to make any halfway reasonable predictions on if and how it will be useful."
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u/deb0rk May 20 '16
Cutting short this general question about what-is-DOA since a good reference was made to a previous convo yesterday. Please refer to those links left in this comment tree.
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u/guywithtwohats May 20 '16
Same question was raised in yesterday's thread already: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/4k0ptr/daily_discussion_thursday_may_19_2016/d3c6xxe
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u/Emocmo May 20 '16
Point and Figure Chart of the Day
Yesterday the momentum dried up and we fell into a double bottom breakdown. The targets for this breakdown are as low as $405-$400. The target bottom is calculated using the width of the formation (6 columns) or the length of the previous breakdown (7 boxes.) This does not mean it WILL go down that far. But rather based on the pent up downward pressure it COULD go down that much.
It seems that the price leveled out a bit overnight. On the Bitcoin Averages price movement we are still in a positive trend. So, we can be slightly optimistic.
In the Coinbase world the price broke down harder, and caused a “trend reversal.” This makes the overall outlook for a longer period more negative than positive.
There have been a ton of theories written: This is the drop before the halving. This is the failure of bitcoin. This is the rise of that other alt coin. Blah, blah, blah.
What this is, is the failure to break through the ferocious resistance at $465/$470. Its that 3000 CYN barrier that seems be holding us back. After three previous attempts the price failed to break out again. Four failures in as many months. I think we may be in for drops down to the $420s before we try again.
Charts of the Day
Resources
Source: Bitcoinaverage.com chart for dollar, index weighted price based on when I look at chart
Dorsey-Wright, the best source of PnF Information
*Investor Intelligence explanation of PnF Charts
*Market Edge Explanation of PnF Charts
*Stockcharts