Working hypothesis... BTC is primarily a vehicle for (1) laundering drug money, and (2) Chinese getting money out of the country, getting around government's capital controls.
The large fluctuations in price, both up and down, are because somebody with large money "badly needs" or "badly wants" to use BTC for the above or similar reasons. They don't care about the current price, high or low, because they likely won't hold them for long. They care about liquidity. Big price fluctuations come from bidding up the price and costs them some on the margin. Vice versa with selling. They don't expect to get "full spot price", as they know it always "costs" to get such transactions done... call it a "handling fee" or "the vig". They're not concerned much with the costs, just getting the net amount accomplished, whatever the vig.
So... all of you BTC players are in the right arena, for now. (Pretty cool! You're making money off of drug profits... and it ain't even illegal!)
A couple of the other cryptos may be in play for similar reasons, but the huge bulk of lesser ones probably are going to have a difficult time making any headway at all.
$.02
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-02/bitcoin-explodes-above-7000-then-crashes-600
The large fluctuations in price, both up and down, are because somebody with large money "badly needs" or "badly wants" to use BTC for the above or similar reasons. They don't care about the current price, high or low, because they likely won't hold them for long. They care about liquidity. Big price fluctuations come from bidding up the price and costs them some on the margin. Vice versa with selling. They don't expect to get "full spot price", as they know it always "costs" to get such transactions done... call it a "handling fee" or "the vig". They're not concerned much with the costs, just getting the net amount accomplished, whatever the vig.
So... all of you BTC players are in the right arena, for now. (Pretty cool! You're making money off of drug profits... and it ain't even illegal!)
A couple of the other cryptos may be in play for similar reasons, but the huge bulk of lesser ones probably are going to have a difficult time making any headway at all.
$.02
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-02/bitcoin-explodes-above-7000-then-crashes-600
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