Quote from: MoonShadow on November 21, 2013, 01:40:06 AM

Quote from: waveaddict on November 21, 2013, 01:34:04 AM

From a fundamental point of view, a taper would push US treasury yields higher along with the US dollar. The combination of higher yields and a stronger dollar should pull the US stock market lower. Because bitcoin generally follows the overall trend of the US stock market, bitcoin should continue lower as well in this scenario. Although a lot of you guys believe that bitcoin is somehow different and excluded from overall risk trends, if the overall speculative environment turns bearish (the US stock market is an excellent barometer for risk-taking), bitcoin is going to suffer because bitcoin is undeniably a risky investment which people flee from during bear markets.

Is this perspective still true if Chinese speculators maintain a higher overall demand than US speculators? Or would the souring of the US outlook undermine the Chinese speculation as well?

The souring of a US outlook would almost certainly spill over into the Chinese market. The world is just too interconnected now for a US market downturn to not negatively effect the rest of the world because of how important the US economy is to the rest of the world. The crash of 2008 is an obvious example.

The fact that the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC) has been in a vicious bear market since 2007 (unlike the West) actually undermines the idea that the Chinese are willing or able to overtake US demand in something as risky as bitcoin if the US begins selling en-masse. In short, because the Chinese are in a risk-adverse environment because of their bear market, they are far less willing to take part in risky behavior compared to the US which has been in a bull market.