BTC price on a steady decline? WHY?

I've lost about 1% over the past week. I've looked at a few charts and it doesn't look as bad as it is..i'm not sure. Anyone more experienced want to comment?

For ex, had a wallet with 52 USD. It now has about 47.50. How long do you guys expect this decline to last?

 

It fluxuates, it's kind of like stocks. I believe the past month it went from $466 to $650/1 BTC.

 

I haven't checked the news, but the latest article I've read seems to have noted that the US is planning on selling off all BTC confiscated from The Silk Road. As the above poster mention it is similar to way stocks fluctuate. Good news generally means more faith in the currency and that means rises. Bad news (such as hackings) means loss of faith and a devaluation. A fiat currency is only as good as the faith people have in it, as such BTC has no intrinsic value - meaning that it is essentially worthless beyond the perceived value. Different events will effect the market differently causing people to sell or to buy.

 

http://www.sythe.org/general-discus...k-road-drugs-site-suspect-4.html#post13592488

U.S. Government selling off their Bitcoins, it's going to lead to a decline and then hopefully it will bounce back from it.

 

As a rule of thumb, when someone asks about BTC price fluctuations explaining the inherent nature of the currency is (hopefully) not what the OP is after because that is basic and obvious information. In my case, I was trying to figure out what was going on with the market. Thank you to Nero and Dia, I'll look into the Silk Road thing.

 

If this is true I'll be looking out for sure. Purchase during the dip and trade a few weeks later.

 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=650262.0
That's the only reason
Edit: We all know that bitcoin price go down a lot when someone selling 100,1000+ coins.
I believe it is obvious what's going to happend when 174,000 coins is going to be sold.
Depends on how stupid they are,we can see another dump bubble to 300-450$.
The price drop is inevitable if they don't have good plan selling this coins in parts and at price which can bring more buyers (like with cheap coins).
If they think they can sell the coins for anything close to 600$, we will see huge price drop.
I hope they know what's going to happend with the market if they try to sell them at once public...
The best part for the Bitcoin community is big investor to take them at responsable price in chunks to prevent huge drop...

 

Hey there, you seem like a responsible investor

Hah, I might try to do some investing during the dip as well, not sure.

Any estimates on how long it'll take them to bounce back to their current state after a mass amount of bitcoins are sold? How is this currency's re-stabilization?

 

I can't really say it will the price go down or high right now because the news is from really bad to good ones.
The speculation of the market is in full speed...
But if FBI really going to sell that coins and i bet they will try that at once the market will crash hardly.
I am not actually investor,i just mined when it was highly profitable and did hold what i got.
My advice is lets wait a bit and see whats going to happend because we can only guess whats going to happend...
About the question how long it'll take them to bounce back,depends on how they are going to sell the coins,at once or in chunks.
That's a lot coins and a sell 174k btc order will turn back the bitcoin where it was years ago...
There was also many bad news in the past which didn't change a lot the price (didn't crash it hardly) so the best thing is to wait right now.

 

As a rule of thumb I assume that people with the intelligence to post a thread asking about price changes is also intelligent enough to Google the latest news on BTC.

 

Lot of misinformation going on here.

When the FBI seized the Silk Road Servers, there was about 30,000 BTC confiscated that was being used to fund operations. This is not the same BTC that they found on Robert Ulbricht's personal wallet. That wallet was over 150,000 BTC. Ulbricht has claimed that he earned these BTC legitimately and has contested their seizure. Therefore, the government can not sell these coins until proving Ulbricht earned them illegitimately in a court of law.

SOURCE: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...als-are-selling-2965651306529-bitcoin/372770/

The coins that are being auctioned are the ~30,000 seized from the Silk Road servers. Nobody has made a claim that these are from legitimate activities, because doing so would directly link whoever makes this claim to the operations of Silk Road itself. Therefore, these coins can be auctioned off by the FBI.

The announcement of this auction lead to a decline of 10-15% in Bitcoin price. While it sounds like a lot of Bitcoin, most people would be surprised to realize that miners create ~3,600 BTC every single day. The amount of Bitcoins being sold by the US Government equals only 8.3 days of Bitcoin production.

https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins

There are approximately 13 Million Bitcoins in the world. 30,000 BTC represents ~0.2% of the worldwide supply of BTC. However, this does not account for BTC which has been lost through the years. 30,000 BTC may be closer to 0.5-1% of the amount of the coins which are actively owned.

Regardless, price impacts from these types of sales are often over reactions. A sale of ~$19 Million USD in BTC by the US Government on assets which were knowingly seized ~1 year ago should not drop the value by 15%. The sale also sends a signal to the market that the US government views Bitcoin as a legitimate asset which can be bought and sold.

So this was a good time to increase your position IMO. These coins will be sold to private buyers who are spending millions at a time. To buy these coins in bulk and attempt to resell them on the open market would not be profitable. People buying these coins are looking to hold. The purchases have the safety and security of being done through the US government, which is much more attractive than wiring millions of dollars to Slovenia (Bitstamp) or Bulgaria (BTC-e). There will be no shortage of big name buyers who will be looking to open / increase their position in Bitcoin.

 

Google would've given more misinformation, read below..much better to ask real people and have real discussion over the topics. I could read an article, but I can't have intelligent market discussion with a wall of text.

Thanks man, very informative. It sounds like you personally see bitcoin increasing in the long term? I know on the current long term graphs it's definitely on the rise but..what's the cap going to be? It's kind've strange how we so often trade in fractions of "1 unit of currency".

Also, is there any way to even make a somewhat accurate estimate as to "how many coins have been lost over the years"? I suppose some sort of a crawler program that could report back any coins that have been inactive on the public ledger for more than..6 months or so? Would that be feasible/has it been done?

 

This is why btc will take decades to succeed. Everyone wants fiat profits instead of the usefulness of the virtual currency.

 

It went way up due to a craze and now it is leveling out.

 

I would really want to believe r2p and the speculators also but eveything is just speculating and blind shots.
We are waiting bitcoin to rise from six months so far...
I am true believer of it,don't get me wrong but,i don't see bitcoin going any close to 2-3k$ as everyone expect.
1200$ mtgox price was abused by bots and also fake volume.
I was stupid enough to sell small part of my coins then and sell around 600coins after 50% crash...
Well,yeah i am also more interesed on real money than any virtual currency.
I don't dream Bitcoin to become legal everywhere and gouverments just let it...
Believe me,the true scammers "gouverments" won't let such a project as bitcoin to be "alive" long time.
There will be 1 or 2 big bubbles more in the future,that's what i think personally.
I really hope to be wrong but i see bitcoin dead soon (2015-2016).
If i am right,i will loose a lot of money,because no matter what,i am still going to hold big part of my bitcoins just to support it and see where it will go.
Some of us mined and brough cheap coins in 2011 and hold them just because we had dream,our dream is already true,not sure why we need all that greed...
I hope the newcomers won't loose their life spendings when they catch the bitcoin "train".
For me,its not worth the nervs and the time,because more or less you get addicted.

 

Yeah bud I see where you're coming from. It seems like you easily have 500+ BTC. Personally, I'd either sell it off right now, trade it for a more predictable currency, or really ride it out and wait for the 800-1,000 mark, which I do see as possible..it'll just take awhile.

It's all speculation but I'll go with popular belief here, a hard crash due to the US government selling a lot of BTC and then a slow rise. And it's been pointed out, the hard crash may not be so hard after all. Stocks always fall for "no reason" due to fear. The millionaires that buy the coins will most likely not try to flip them immediately for a profit. and we can of course always pray more bitcoins fall out of circulation.

 

Can you elaborate on how anything that was said above was "misinformation"? All you did was further explain exactly what I posted.

 

My original comment was to the user "thatdefgirl" because she stated an inherent quality of the cryptocurrency, no new information.

Nero replied, I replied..

The "misinformation" bit was, as I said, something that can naturally arise from just reading text. I'm not nearly as experienced as lets say CoinKing and so his take on the article is worth far more to me than the article itself, ya know? I wasn't trying to fight with anyone, just saying that stating "BTC is like stocks" is completely worthless information.

Nothing you said was misinformation. If you scroll up I thanked you and Nero for your input.

 

Well, to start with, you didn't separate between the coins the FBI seized from Ross Ulbricht and the coins they seized from the Silk Road operations. The coins from Ross are not being sold, only those from SR operations.

Furthermore, Coin King said over 170,000 BTC were being sold, which also implies that Ulbricht's coins are included in the sale, whereas only the 30,000~ coins from SR operations are being sold.

So to sum up, my response was to the thread as a whole, not simply to your one line post (which was a very vague description regardless).