Quote from: coinableS on December 03, 2014, 02:03:18 PM

Quote from: dreamspark on December 03, 2014, 01:57:43 PM

LOL, okay Citi says the coins are going to go for a steep discount, must sell all my coins, after all they are bitcoin experts Roll Eyes

Which thought is correct?

(a) They should go for somewhat of a discount because it's an auction, and they are buying in bulk.
OR
(b) They should go for a bit over the current price because one couldn't simply buy that large amount of coins regularly without causing major slippage.

If you go back this thread in June you'll see this discussed over and over again. Im going to quote oda here rather than writing lots of stuff out I hope he doesn't mind but it should give you an idea of what likely happened last time and theres not much to suggest it should be different.

Quote from: oda.krell on November 19, 2014, 02:09:00 PM

Quote from: JorgeStolfi on November 19, 2014, 12:51:22 PM

Tim Draper is holding (so he says; although his coins moved recently, it seems). Given his experience (~33% paper loss so far), the next auction winner may be a speculator who buys substantially below market to sell right away, possibly on the markets.

People (the bearish side of the forum, I mean) said exactly the same thing last time. That'd it be turned into arb profit right away (which was and is plausible, of course. iirc correctly, there was even a lady from some bank registered that *did* specialize in arb ^_^). Didn't work out that way. We don't know the exact price that the lots took in last time, but probably neither drastically above nor below market. Not drastically below, because one guy got them all, not drastically above, because the premium to get them all in one, counter party risk free lot is there, but probably not so large that it warrants, say, doubling market price.

All of the above holds this time again. Arb opportunity still exists, but requires getting the coins well below market. Will that happen? I strongly doubt it. Renewed volume across all exchanges, and several large buys of Secondmarket during the last weeks lead me to think the current price level is maybe not "stable" (nothing is ever stable in the banana republic of Bitcoin), but that it is at least as tempting to buy in at the current level than it was at the level during the previous auction, and probably more so.

Quote from: oda.krell on November 19, 2014, 02:41:52 PM

Quote from: NotLambchop on November 19, 2014, 02:29:06 PM

Not sure how you got from "two participants [going] on record [with] lowball offers" to anything meaningful. If offers were made @$100 or even $20 per, would the statements be any different?

Lowball offer based on market price means market price times some value < 1.

The lower that value, the more arb profit. The closer that value to 1, the higher the chance you'll get a chance at arb profit.

If you think they submitted a $20 offers, sure, go ahead. I sure would have liked to see the meeting the bank lady had with her superiors afterwards. Cheesy

What wraps it up is that one participant outbid all other participants on all lots. The previous auction converged around market price at the time, that's all I'm saying. I don't care if it was market +5% or market -5%, but my point is, from references to on-exchange market price plus auction mechanics and one winner of all lots, "near market" is a pretty conservative conclusion. Harping on about how it probably went away for a fraction sounds more like wishful thinking to me, tbh.