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A lot more than 177k BTC changed hands yesterday. You don't see it on the block chain because most of it is transacted off-chain: 788k BTC were sold and bought

by mrb 12y ago

A lot more than 177k BTC changed hands yesterday. You don't see it on the block chain because most of it is transacted off-chain: 788k BTC were sold and bought on Bitcoin exchanges in the last 24 hours - http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=24h http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=24h So 50k BTC is really nothing (~6%) compared to what the market usually handles every day.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago
> because most of it is transacted off-chain Does this come with risk? Shouldn't all transactions be on the chain?
- wmf 12y ago
  On-chain transactions are much slower which is a different kind of risk.
- nitid_name 12y ago
  Yep. Look what happens every time a bitcoin bank folds. Everyone who had coins in that bank rather than in their own wallet suddenly loses every coin they have.
- GrinningFool 12y ago
  I'm not sure why this was downvoted, it's a legitimate question. The problem is the sheer quantity of transactions that occur on the various exchanges. Adding that volume to the public chain would make the public chain significantly larger than it is. The bitcoin.cc wiki Scalability page [1] does a better job of documenting the constraints than I could in this space. The flip side of this is that there's a required level of trust when doing business with an exchange. Thus far no exchanges that I know of are actually publishing their ledgers - so we really have no way to know that all trades are made in good faith and all funds are properly managed by the exchanges. Unlike regulated government currencies, there are no audit requirements. This means there is nothing that actually requires an exchange to be operating in good faith. I'm actually surprised that there are not yet any private exchanges[2] with public/open ledgers, in response to Mt Gox and various other scams (both for bitcoin and other currencies). Seems the market has to be there for it, after people have been burned so many times. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability [2] that I know of. I know there are protocols under development intended to handle this, but no actual exchanges that simply publish all transactions for the world to see. [edit] can't believe I used 'shear' instead of 'sheer'.
- patio11 12y ago
  Bitcoiners strike a balance with on-chain and off-chain transactions because Bitcoin has several properties which make it undesirable for many sorts of transactions. A short list would include 20~60+ minutes for transaction capture, lack of a way for merchants to initiate transactions (the dominant method in B2C commerce in the US), user-unfriendliness of much of the ecosystemic software, etc.
dwaltrip 12y ago
I wouldn't blindly trust the volume from the Chinese exchanges (over 80% percent of the entire volume). Some of them have zero fees, so you can essentially "sell" to yourself for free and generate fake volume.

by mrb 12y ago

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

> because most of it is transacted off-chain Does this come with risk? Shouldn't all transactions be on the chain?

wmf 12y ago
On-chain transactions are much slower which is a different kind of risk.
nitid_name 12y ago
Yep. Look what happens every time a bitcoin bank folds. Everyone who had coins in that bank rather than in their own wallet suddenly loses every coin they have.
GrinningFool 12y ago
I'm not sure why this was downvoted, it's a legitimate question. The problem is the sheer quantity of transactions that occur on the various exchanges. Adding that volume to the public chain would make the public chain significantly larger than it is. The bitcoin.cc wiki Scalability page [1] does a better job of documenting the constraints than I could in this space. The flip side of this is that there's a required level of trust when doing business with an exchange. Thus far no exchanges that I know of are actually publishing their ledgers - so we really have no way to know that all trades are made in good faith and all funds are properly managed by the exchanges. Unlike regulated government currencies, there are no audit requirements. This means there is nothing that actually requires an exchange to be operating in good faith. I'm actually surprised that there are not yet any private exchanges[2] with public/open ledgers, in response to Mt Gox and various other scams (both for bitcoin and other currencies). Seems the market has to be there for it, after people have been burned so many times. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability [2] that I know of. I know there are protocols under development intended to handle this, but no actual exchanges that simply publish all transactions for the world to see. [edit] can't believe I used 'shear' instead of 'sheer'.
patio11 12y ago
Bitcoiners strike a balance with on-chain and off-chain transactions because Bitcoin has several properties which make it undesirable for many sorts of transactions. A short list would include 20~60+ minutes for transaction capture, lack of a way for merchants to initiate transactions (the dominant method in B2C commerce in the US), user-unfriendliness of much of the ecosystemic software, etc.

dwaltrip 12y ago

I wouldn't blindly trust the volume from the Chinese exchanges (over 80% percent of the entire volume). Some of them have zero fees, so you can essentially "sell" to yourself for free and generate fake volume.