Bitcoin Hits $25/BTC, Shows no Resistance to Further Increases

It's been all of two weeks since Bitcoin cracked through the psychologically important $20 USD barrier, and now $25 has been breached.

At this time, the order book shows no resistance to the price moving rapidly higher. One can only surmise that this is a setup for an even larger upwards move, followed by an inevitable crash to lower support.

It would not surprise me to see a rapid move past the previous all-time high of $32, perhaps to as high as $40-$45, before a correction takes us back down to the mid twenties for a rest. One thing is for certain: the next week of trading will be exciting.

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Bitcoin Hits $20.50/BTC, Continues Climbing

Well, that didn't take very long. $120,000 of Bitcoins were rapidly purchased on the Mt.Gox USD exchange, breaking down the ask wall at $20 and pushing Bitcoin over the $20 mark for the first time since the July 2011 bubble. Resistance beyond $20 is minimal, which will likely lead to a spike into the high-twenties before trading settles down again.

(chart courtesy of bitcoin.clarkmoody.com)

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Bitcoin: The $200 Million Currency, Once Again

On January 24th, Bitcoin broke through $19.00, a price not paid for a Bitcoin since July of 2011.

Over 24 hours, 160,000 Bitcoins traded hands on the Mt.Gox USD market alone, while traders attempted to seek out a new valuation for the increasingly popular digital currency. Trading has since settled down, with the price hovering around the $17 mark.

During the fast and furious trading, the overall market capitalization of Bitcoin topped $200,000,000 for a brief period of time, coming very close to hitting a new high previously set during the infamous bubble that occurred 18 months prior.

Are the recent highs just another bubble, or a bullish sign that Bitcoin has hit the tipping point? I would speculate that it's the latter, as overall activity in the community has picked up substantially. Indeed, one of the more successful Bitcoin businesses, BitPay, just announced they have successfully facilitated 10,000 Bitcoin merchant transactions, and now have a client list totaling 2400; clearly a positive indicator for the future of Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin Surges Through $14 US, $1 Shy of 18-Month High

The currency that never sleeps hit $14.32 USD/BTC today, surging past the $14 mark for the first time since August 2012 and only $1.08 shy of a new 18 month high.

While trading was locked in the mid $13-range for over a month, recent news regarding adoption of the currency, significant investments from venture capitalists, and the success seen in the gambling sector have likely contributed to the price surge. I'm not sure we've gone mainstream yet, but when Rush Limbaugh and John Stossel start throwing around the term "Bitcoin," you know something is up.

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Meet Kronos.io: Ringcoin's Answer to Bitcoinica

As we continue to digest the news coming from Bitcoinica, another group of developers is working hard to level the playing field in the battle for the Bitcoin CFD space, which until now was monopolized by Singapore's boy-genius, Zhou Tong.

Jonathan Ryan Owens and his team from Ringcoin are fiercely putting together the final code for Kronos.io. Advertised as "Bitcoinica on steroids," Ringcoin will be leveraging their highly touted ZipConf platform to improve the Bitcoin trading experience.

Unlike Bitcoinica, Kronos will utilize the tech behind ZipConf to eliminate its hot-wallet risk, allowing for instant multi-market hedging.


With security concerns being the topic du jour, Owens seeks to reassure his future user base:

"Under the hood, ZipConf is what allows Bitcoins to be delivered instantly to remote exchanges, which is also a huge security bonus. Bitcoinica has persisted in having a zero sysadmin policy. Kronos is built by sysadmins, on top of software built by other sysadmins (ZipConf). Kronos uses SSH and SFTP to remain extra secure; I won't even have the keys!"

Planning to support three exchanges at launch (Mt.Gox, Bitstamp, and CrytpoXChange), Kronos will be faster and allow for even greater leverage than with Bitcoinica. Of course, greater leverage equates to greater risk, but Kronos promises a functioning stop loss, something Bitcoinica's users have been keen to have at their disposal.

In light of today's hack at Bitcoinica, Owens has lit a fire under his team. Originally expecting to launch in one to two weeks, the new target is three days.

Though the site might look familiar to Bitcoinica's users, that's only because it currently uses the Twitter bootstrap common to many sites. When Kronos is launched, expect to see a unique design unveiled, which Ringcoin claims will be extremely intuitive and user-friendly.

Alberto Armandi, the lead developer for the project, was quick to remind that it's what's under the hood that counts: Kronos is built on a node.js realtime price monitor developed over the last few months using jquery and ajax with a node.js backend. It's a tool that Armandi coded for his own site, BitcoinRebate.com, another interesting service scheduled to launch in the coming days.

For further information, you can contact Jonathan Ryan Owens at info@ringcoin.com. In the meantime, someone pass the methadone; this leveraged trading withdrawal is killing me!

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This is What I Look Like When I'm Day Trading Bitcoin

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Bitcoin Primed for Next Rally to $8.00+

Phelix from bitcoinx.com has posted one of the best Bitcoin charts I've ever seen, and it speaks volumes:

See Phelix's post for a full explanation. The important stats to take away are:

- The total order book (bids and asks combined), as depicted in the middle graph, is near a peak for the last month;

- Bid depth is near a record high for the last month (bottom graph, blue line, ~1.5 million USD), nearly double what it was prior to the start of the last rally from $3.00;

- Ask depth is crashing rapidly (bottom graph, red line, ~1.3 million USD);

From the above, it's clearly just a matter of time before a new rally kicks off to push us past the pesky $7.20 resistance. This is a great buying opportunity that will probably disappear within 48 hours.

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Shades of May 2011 as Bitcoin Tops $6.00

In a round of extremely volatile trading, Bitcoin hit $6.00 today and is now up 200% from the November 17th low of $1.99, and up 27% in only the first four days of 2012.

24 hour volume on the Mt.Gox USD market is in excess of 151,000 BTC, representing a very busy day on the Japan-based exchange.

$6.00/BTC was last seen on September 21st, only a couple of weeks after Bitcoinica first opened its doors and gave Bitcoin traders the opportunity to short the market. Interestingly, if Bitcoin crosses through $8.00, it will be theoretically impossible for any legacy short positions to still be in-the-money, as shorting the market was not possible above those prices.

What's to blame for this bullish market? It could be anything from recent positive media coverage to new software and service announcements. Whatever the case may be, clearly, people want their Bitcoins in a way that hasn't been seen since last May.

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Bitcoin Rings in New Year with 18% Pop - Threatens 3-Month High

Bitcoin trading continues to be very bullish, with $4.995 USD/BTC hit on the Mt.Gox USD market at approximately 1300 GMT thanks to a couple of very large trades.

The market has since consolidated in the $4.65-$4.70 range, but looks primed for another push to break through the psychologically important $5.00 mark, last seen in early October.

Seemingly in response to this renewed market optimism, a new exchange was launched today. Geared toward the European market, BitcoinMarket24 promises nearly-instant SEPA deposits. Premiums to use this service appear to be on the order of 12% (3.99 EUR/BTC) when compared to the Mt.Gox EUR market (3.55 EUR/BTC), though the convenience is likely to be highly attractive to Bitcoin users.

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Imminent Long Squeeze?

There has been an interesting development over at Bitcoinica, everyone's favourite broker for leveraged trading in Bitcoin land.

Several users reported errors when trying to cover their short positions or establish long positions. Zhou Tong, Bitcoinica's founder and lead developer, responded to the unusual occurrence with the explanation that the brokerage had run out of funds in their Mt.Gox account, thus preventing any further purchases of Bitcoins:

We seriously apologize for any inconvenience.

When Bitcoinica was first built, we included a circuit breaker feature to stop trading at one direction when we are out of USD or BTC. However, it has almost never been triggered until today.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of long positions are we're currently unable to fulfill everyone's request to buy. Even though we do not want to interrupt regular market trading activity, we have no case because we don't want to be trading against our customers in this extreme situation.

Liquidation of short positions is also affected but we had no choice. Withdrawal in USD is obviously, also affected. When some more people decided to liquidate their long positions or go short, or more USD funds are deposited, we will adjust the redflag accordingly to allow buying trades.

TL;DR: Bitcoinica can only sell for you at the moment.

Zhou Tong also suggested that a long squeeze was imminent, due to the large number of long positions which would be liquidated in the event of a large sell order hitting the market. Whether there is actually anyone out there with enough Bitcoins to test that theory, remains to be seen, as there is currently $250,000 ready to gobble up 65,000 Bitcoins on Mt.Gox between $3.80 and $4.20.

In a nutshell, leveraged or not, no one appears willing to let go of their Bitcoins.

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A Tough Day for Silver and the Euro

Silver was absolutely obliterated today, and is continuing to drop on the Hong Kong market, now down more than six percent in the last 24 hours. The drop is partly a result of a strengthening US dollar, as capital continues to seek shelter in the world's reserve currency.

The Euro is now flirting with new 52 week lows, dropping through the 1.30 USD level for the first time since last January as the reality of the pan-Eurozone sovereign debt crisis begins to hit home.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, continues to gain strength on the Mt.Gox USD market, up nearly 2.5% over the last 24 hours on relatively light trading.

Market depth on the bid side has grown substantially over the last few hours, indicating that further gains on the Bitcoin market are imminent.

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Bitcoin Building Substantial Support Above 4.00 USD

Over the last 24 hours of Bitcoin trading, support above the $4.00 mark on the Mt.Gox USD market has grown from being non-existent to over 8,000 BTC and is continuing to climb. Selling pressure is proportionally minuscule, although there is still a bounty of offers in the $4.15 to $4.30 range, totaling nearly 12,000 BTC.

Resistance on the way up to $5.00 remains substantial. The last foray into these prices lasted over a month, between September 8th and October 15th, on the way down to an eventual low of $1.94 on November 19th.

The spike to $4.50 on December 20th, followed by the dive down to $3.50 on December 22nd and subsequent rise back into the $4.00 range is very bullish, indicating that we are becoming less and less likely to re-visit the $3.xx range.

I suspect that the recent slew of "maybe there's something to this Bitcoin thing after all" press is likely partially responsible for this change in market sentiment.

Edit: Only two hours later, there is now 13,000 BTC support above $4.00.

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Mt.Gox Foreign Currency Markets

In case some of you do not understand how Mt.Gox's foreign currency markets work, I will provide a brief explanation.

On September 2nd, Mt.Gox announced the opening of 15 new currency markets:

EUR - Euro
CAD - Canadian Dollar
GBP - British Pound
CHF - Swiss Francs
RUB - Russian Rubles
AUD - Australian Dollars
SEK - Swedish Krona
DKK - Danish Krona
HKD - Hong Kong Dollars
PLN - Polish Zloty
CNY - Chinese Yuan
SGD - Singapore Dollars
THB - Thai Baht
NZD - New Zealand Dollars
JPY - Japanese Yen

What should be clarified, however, is that you do not always trade on a separate market, unless there are Bitcoins already available for sale in your currency. Instead, when you trade in a currency other than USD, you are more than likely still trading on the USD market, except there is a premium added to the asking price.

Example:

The current USD/CAD exchange rate is 1.029 (Yahoo Finance). The Mt.Gox lowest ask is 3.92 USD, which should be 4.03 CAD when converted at the going exchange rate, but the lowest ask on the Mt.Gox CAD market is actually 4.19 CAD, which is 4% higher. On average, when I've traded on the Mt.Gox CAD market, I've paid 2.5% more than what would be expected from converting the USD market rate to CAD. That 2.5% fee turns out to be exactly the same fee you would pay for converting your currency to USD in the first place.

I hope that makes things a little clearer for any of you looking to buy Bitcoin with a non-USD currency on Mt.Gox.

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Bitcoin Posts Most Winning Month in its History

Between November 19th and December 19th of this year, Bitcoin has had 22 up days, 8 down days, and one flat day on the Mt.Gox USD market, better than in any previous month of trading.

Chart courtesy of BitcoinCharts.com

The second best month of trading was from April 5th to May 5th, when a record of 22-9 was posted, which eventually led to a 900% increase in Bitcoin's value by June 8th when the peak of $32 was hit. Interestingly, on May 5th, Bitcoin had a weighted trading price $3.41, exactly the same as on Dec 19th, to the penny!

Will this current winning streak lead to another record run? Unlikely, but trading is undoubtedly bullish and should be exciting to watch for anyone holding a long position.

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All the Cheap Bitcoins are Gone

Chart courtesy of BitcoinCharts.com

This has got to be one of the most lopsided Bitcoin depth charts I have ever seen. Relatively speaking, there are almost no Bitcoins for sale beyond $3.50!

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Bitcoin Christmas Rally in Full Effect

After spending a week in the $3.10 to $3.30 range, Bitcoin has made a strong 12% move to the upside on the Mt.Gox USD market, hitting $3.70 and threatening to take out the seven-week high of $3.82 previously hit on October 29th.

Chart courtesy of BitcoinCharts.com

The month-long bull market has been confirmed in a big way. Pay attention, stock markets, this is what a Christmas rally is supposed to look like.

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Is Bitcoin's Liquidity Improving?

Today, a $50,000 purchase of Bitcoins on Mt.Gox would move the price from $2.46 to $2.60, a 5.7% increase. A sale of $50,000 worth of Bitcoins would take the price down to $2.30, or a 6.5% drop.

On October 16th, a $50,000 purchase would have moved the price from $3.40 to $3.92, a 15.3% increase. A sale of $50,000 worth of Bitcoins would have taken the price down to $3.03, or a 10.9% drop.

Unfortunately this is all the data I have, but it definitely seems, from the type of trading action we've been seeing, that it's taking a lot more capital to move Bitcoin's price in either direction. Are we starting to see the realization of the second Wagner Criterion?

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Bitcoin Volume Traded Hits All-Time Record

Over 250,000 BTC have now been traded on Mt.Gox within the last 24 hours, an all-time record. The scary part? The day just started.

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$125,000 Waiting to Buy Bitcoins

Regardless of these price swings, there is definitely a lot of money sitting in Mt.Gox's accounts, waiting to pick up some Bitcoins.

Wait, make that $250,000:

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45000 BTC Sold!

I can't imagine this was done on a whim. Will we discover the motivation behind this massive sale?

Edit: Probably 35,000 sold and 10,000 bought within that short period of time.

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