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It’s interesting and a little surprising to me that people selling almost $8 billion in BTC found ready buyers such that the market clearing price only dropped

It’s interesting and a little surprising to me that people selling almost $8 billion in BTC found ready buyers such that the market clearing price only dropped 10%. That’s a lot of money to move, and implies that a lot of other people saw this as a chance to buy a dip.

tedunangst 6y ago
I think these were futures contracts?
Traster 6y ago
Alternatively it could be as simple as lots of people having a crap execution strategy. I’m sure there are thousands of people who just have orders in the book that got swept and others with simple python scripts that “buy the dip” with no concept of risk or stop loss. The question is whether those people need to get out of their positions in the next few days causing a further drop or whether they can hold in which case the price will stabilise and eventually continue to run up.
cperciva 6y ago
You're assuming that there actually was $8B in transactions. It's possible that there was $800M in transactions and $7.2B in tape painting.
ullevaal 6y ago
Yes, for someone whose prior has been: “The price will crater and most people will lose interest”, I think that the thousands of hours of developer time and institutional interest is probably starting to pay of in terms of more mature markets. I still have problems with the idea that people are able to pick the correct winners. When the blockchain finally gets its killer mainstream app, why not do a new ICO on a restarted blockchain instead of a billion dollar wealth transfer to early adopters?
- xur17 6y ago
  Because all of the money and users that you hope use your killer mainstream app have to come from somewhere - a brand new blockchain makes your app that much harder to launch. In addition, your killer mainstream app may only be useful inside of an existing ecosystem. Ex: Uniswap is pretty useless if you don't have any assets that people want to trade.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  I think Bitcoin’s biggest strength (and weakness) is hype and FOMO. If another coin comes along that gets more attention (see Dogecoin), you’ll see the Bitcoin community try to discredit for the same reasons that Bitcoin is currently dissed for right now.
purple_ferret 6y ago
Or look at it this way, 8 billion gives you a lot of buying power if you're going 10x+ long. How much of this market is propped up by these speculators

tedunangst 6y ago

I think these were futures contracts?

Traster 6y ago

Alternatively it could be as simple as lots of people having a crap execution strategy. I’m sure there are thousands of people who just have orders in the book that got swept and others with simple python scripts that “buy the dip” with no concept of risk or stop loss. The question is whether those people need to get out of their positions in the next few days causing a further drop or whether they can hold in which case the price will stabilise and eventually continue to run up.

cperciva 6y ago

You're assuming that there actually was $8B in transactions. It's possible that there was $800M in transactions and $7.2B in tape painting.

ullevaal 6y ago

Yes, for someone whose prior has been: “The price will crater and most people will lose interest”, I think that the thousands of hours of developer time and institutional interest is probably starting to pay of in terms of more mature markets. I still have problems with the idea that people are able to pick the correct winners. When the blockchain finally gets its killer mainstream app, why not do a new ICO on a restarted blockchain instead of a billion dollar wealth transfer to early adopters?

xur17 6y ago
Because all of the money and users that you hope use your killer mainstream app have to come from somewhere - a brand new blockchain makes your app that much harder to launch. In addition, your killer mainstream app may only be useful inside of an existing ecosystem. Ex: Uniswap is pretty useless if you don't have any assets that people want to trade.
blueblisters 6y ago
I think Bitcoin’s biggest strength (and weakness) is hype and FOMO. If another coin comes along that gets more attention (see Dogecoin), you’ll see the Bitcoin community try to discredit for the same reasons that Bitcoin is currently dissed for right now.

purple_ferret 6y ago

Or look at it this way, 8 billion gives you a lot of buying power if you're going 10x+ long. How much of this market is propped up by these speculators