Quote from: BitcoinAshley on February 08, 2014, 01:20:27 AM

Quote from: Kaiji on February 08, 2014, 12:52:00 AM

Can someone tell me what triggered this sell off? I know people were speculating that there was some manipulation to keep prices constant.

If gox fails does it really matter anymore? Most exchanges don't even follow gox's prices anymore.

The news was that Gox is imploding and Russia banned bitcoins.

(Unlike China, Russia actually did BAN them.)

But keep in mind. The idea of trading is to make money. So when whale daytraders, or any one trying to make money on swings, hears bad news... they tend to sell. Hopefully they sell before everyone else does. Smashing 1700BTC sell orders into the buy walls is a great way to make others panic and sell too. Then, at the bottom, trickle buys bring things back up and the people who bought and sold at the right spots make mad profits. Those who didn't time their orders right get fucked.

So, in a sense, the news did not cause the price crash. Obviously Gox is not particularly relevant since it's been a long time since it had 80% market share, lol. And the people who sold, were not necessarily selling because they all of a sudden decided "This news will have a HUGE effect on BTC, it is the end of BTC as we know it!" It was more like "Other people are probably going to sell on this news, so if I sell, I'll profit!" Others sold because they panicked. Still others sold because they wanted to cash out anyways and figured that price might go lower in the mid-term future so now was their best bet. There is no such thing as single cause->effect when it comes to market psychology. The same event might cause different people to sell for different reasons.

So a combination of bad news plus people selling to make a profit plus a whale dumping. The price has been stagnant for so long now that there are 2 types of people left in trading. One type assumes it will go up and are holding tightly. The other type is waiting for a crash to buy cheap coins. A whale dumping can change the balance easily with holders panicking.