Looks pretty convincing to me.

I'd say knowing with more certainty what the faith of his >1 million BTC stash is (if he is willing to tell) will bring stability or an increase. Markets don't like uncertainty.

CCMF = caribean centre for money and finance?

The bottom is in, sleep tight guys, thanks for the cheap coins

I hear that, coincidentally, there happens to also be someone sitting on 18k this week looking to sell it off-exchange.

Your memory is short if you don't remember that the folks in Cyprus experienced nearly exactly that.
Worse, for when the bank did open a large fraction of their money was taken by the government.

Leuk plan, maar hoeveel mensen gaan voor een dubbeltje per jaar foto's zitten maken en uploaden van al hun tankbonnen?
Ik denk in alle eerlijkheid dat de meeste mensen het gevoel hebben dat ze hun tijd beter kunnen besteden.

Rate of change definately plays a role, but IMO the reverse one.
If the drop happens rapidly, it is likely to be a panic-driven selloff that quickly rebounds = instant profit for those that buy the dip.
If, however, it happens slowly (like the current trend), it reflects people slowly losing faith and I would hesitate to buy at any level until there is some clear indication of a trend reversal.

Obviously, if mining is not profitable, which seems plausible, then WHY? Even if they are taking the gamble that the rate will rise beyond break-even in the future (someone mentioned $717 before) , it would be easily more profitable to just buy BTC for the same investment at the current rate (not to mention the effort).

The only reasonable explanation is that there is something we don't know.

I think it is this:
They made a secret deal with an ASIC manufacturer: They buy non-profitable ASICs, and share the profit. They can pocket that money themselves and maintain the unprofitable mining farm. ASIC manufacturer is happy to have a customer for nonprofitable equipment, and therefore willing to sacrifice some profit. Mining operation doesn't care it is buying ASICs at a high price, because they will get a fraction of that margin. They show off on social media to attract more investments, with which they buy more unprofitable ASICs -> more money for themselves via the secret deal.

Eventually, the whole operation will collapse as investors realise their investment doesn't yield sufficient returns, but the miners don't care a they already made a profit for themselves.

I always welcome a good conspiracy theory, but this is extremely far-fetched, and (worse) there is evidence to disprove it.
There were some very well know people on the plane (eg. a member of the Dutch parliament, a very well established AIDS scientist), and some from the very town I live in (I know some of their relatives). Incidentally, to keep this discussion vagely relevant to bitcoin, it is the very same sleepy Dutch town in which the recently arrested Silk Road dealer 'Supertrips' and his 3 M$ worth of bitcoin was living (Woerden).

108 of them were going to an AIDS conference.
Most were provably alive shortly before boarding.

So, why would anyone murder these people first only to put them on a plane which is shot out of the sky shortly afterwards? (assuring their death with essentially 100% certainty).



The plane departed from the country in which these passports were issued (The Netherlands), so this makes little sense.

What is going to happen:

1. Someone buys the coins for $500.
2. Tells everyone his bid at $800 was turned down.
3. Waits until we are all done panic buying.
4. Dumps his coins with prodigious profit.

It would be wise to mistrust any information 'leaked' on this topic, especially if bullish.

The brand is associated with the worst performance in bitcoin history. It is tainted.
The lack of know-how and properly trained staff is exactly what got us into this mess.

Indeed, and importantly, it also prevents us from turning to him to resolve or decide issues. Now, bitcoin and its control truly belongs to all of us collectively. I believe it is what he wanted and explains why he has stopped his involvement.

If it wasn't for people selling and buying, how would the price get set?

Up.
Prices everywhere have been depressed by all the bad news and uncertainty of the past month. Good news = up. Right after good news would be the worst time to sell.

Gox will of course go up much faster initially, as people buy and pull their coins out.

There will not be any massive dumping of coins on other exchanges, because it will not take a lot of volume on gox to go back to the normal price level (nobody in their right mind will sell <$600) , so opportunities for arbitrage will be very limited. People that -already- bought $100 coins are going to hodl to the moon, it would be senseless to dump on another exchange only to buy back higher during the inevitable upwards ramp.

This

Either Crapeles has serious balls (not the blue bouncy kind), or he slightly underestimated the risk that some of his more shady customers may come over and try to 'convince' him to return their money.

Thanks ericmoulton for your entertaining post. True or not, at least you put some thought in it and made predictions, better than 90% of other threads here.



He wasn't unwilling to issue false statements in their message on the 10th.

In fact, he seems to deliberately wording his statements to maximally affect the market.
Look at the way that he was blaming a bug in the bitcoin protocol. He knew ofcourse it wasn't quite true but that it would have a dramatic effect on the market, and he must have profited handsomely.

While I agree the market cap is misleading, your method also doesn't yield an useful figure for BTC value.
The amount of bids in the order book at any given instant is not an accurate representation of the total amount for which coins can be sold since the order book is very dynamic. It adjusts rapidly after every trade and event, and nobody should be so foolish to dump enough coins on any exchange to take it to $0 instantly (I don't count the mtGox hack of 2011, it has nothing to do with normal trading). In case of a massive bank run, many bids will be removed or placed at very low prices quickly.

They'd have to come up with something really good then, because even after all that happened in the last two weeks it did not even cause a 50% dip. From here, by far the most likely direction is up.