Quote from: jibjabz on June 13, 2011, 09:07:11 PM

I skipped the thread, but hopefully someone has pointed out that what you're suggesting is a cartel. You're the millionth person to invent such a thing. They sound great in theory, but they don't (generally) work.

The reason is that it's profitable for people to cheat the cartel and therefore, inevitably, someone will. You're trying to resist the natural forces of the market.

Cartels can work when they're made up of a very small number of people (the handful of controlling interests in OPEC, the only two gas stations in a small town, etc) and/or when there are effective methods to punish cheaters who must be traceable. Bitcoin mining is almost the perfect example of a scenario in which cartels can't and won't succeed.

Yeah you shouldn't have skipped the thread, lol. That may be how this all started off but I'll admit when I'm wrong. I did the math, I ran the numbers and I figured out not too long after the original post that it was highly unlikely I'd ever get enough of a power base to pull such a thing off. I've shifted focus on my site. I'm working on extracting data from the blockchain that, combined with data from the MtGox API, might be able to give a meaningful prediction of BTC/USD value expected for a given period of time - something like an exponential moving 24-hour average but smoothed or modified by factors not necessarily available directly from MtGox. For example, I should be able to correlate transaction volume from the block chain to transaction volume as reported by MtGox and sizable differences in volume may be noteworthy predictors of dark pool action.

I plan to spend the next week in deep analysis and hopefully can come up with not just a more accurate price index for this market than the standard analysis tools might provide but also EMAs for the standard deviations such that we can try to predict the likelihood of market movement in a given direction and make the most intelligent trades possible.

I feel pretty certain that people following their natural instincts can stabilize this market over time, but that time might be shortened by smart traders having good data and THAT is what my efforts have now been turned to.