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Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

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Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#101

Post by Khoth »

xg15 wrote: post #95
davidgerard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's weird stuff going on with Tethers, which are supposedly pegged to the dollar and fully backed, being created apparently out of nothing when Tether has no US banking arrangements, and these being used to prop up margin trading on Bitfinex. The price then goes up on Bitfinex, then on other exchanges. The upshot is: every time margin gets too deep on Bitfinex, another batch of Tethers is created out of thin air,…

> ... which are supposedly pegged to the dollar and fully backed, being created apparently out of nothing ... Amateur here, but how is that not a contradiction?

"supposedly fully backed" isn't the same as "actually fully backed". If they are being created out of thin air, it would mean the claim about them being backed by dollars was a lie.

Edit: Although, whether or not they're backed by anything isn't really all that relevant, considering that their terms of service[1] say: "There is no contractual right or other right or legal claim against us to redeem or exchange your Tethers for money. We do not guarantee any right of redemption or exchange of Tethers by us for money."

So backed or not, nobody has any obligation to give you dollars in exchange for your tethers.

[1] https://tether.to/legal/

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#102

Post by turk183 »

ortusdux wrote: post #32
Lerc wrote: post #17

Aren't ICOs more of an altcoin phenomenon? How does this impact upon Bitcoin? To me It looked like Bitcoin just bounced off a psychological ceiling at 5000USD. It has done this with various round number levels in the past. It makes a bit of sense if you consider people are inclined to think something like "I'll sell when it reaches $5000" There also seems to be a tendancy to use evocative language (collapse,tumble,co…

This article from Business Insider has a better explanation. http://www.businessinsider.com/initial-coin-offering-china-b... Namely: "However, the wording of the PBoC edict also suggested that trading and usage of all cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, could now be illegal in China. The PBoC said that virtual currencies that are "not issued by the monetary authorities... do not have legal status equivalent to money…

The Iron Curtain is alive and well. We should be helping the Chinese break free of these economic terrorists--how hard would it be to watch your meager savings in Yuan be inflated away so badly each year?

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#103

Post by turk183 »

rebuilder wrote: post #74
modeless wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't buy and sell ICO tokens with fiat, they do it with bitcoins. If a bunch of people want to sell their ICO tokens for fiat, they first end up with a bunch of bitcoins, and then they need to sell bitcoins for fiat. This pushes the price of bitcoins in fiat down. It's a temporary phenomenon, but the price going down can make the price fall farther, because there are a bunch of amateur traders who think it's…

To go from altcoins to fiat, one needs to first buy Bitcoin with altcoins, then sell Bitcoin for fiat. Why would this not be price neutral for Bitcoin?

If you go back and read what you wrote, you will realize how insane this all sounds.

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#104

Post by turk183 »

Iv wrote: post #75
sgtnasty wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an ICO?

A new way to fund companies. Instead of selling parts, issue tokens that work like a cryptocurrency and promise they will entitle to some profits. Sell these for bitcoins. Recently some companies raised a billion USD that way (yes, billion) The concern, that I share, is that this system is very vulnerable to Ponzi scheme. And unlike Bitcoin, the crash of the pyramid is not a feature in this system. I think people are…

The reason a lot of Wall Street finance types are running to these altcoins is exactly what you say--it's the new penny stocks. There's no regulation and so they are free to manipulate prices however they wish. I'm not sure it's a Ponzi, but it's definitely manipulated by the insiders.

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#105

Post by turk183 »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #71
okket wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love buying cheap bitcoin. Can it fall a bit more, please?

people are going to make a serious killing selling puts on this when the regulators and industry get it together

But they never did that with pink sheets penny stocks. It all collapsed for different reasons.

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#106

Post by turk183 »

gruez wrote: post #2

why does it feel like every time bitcoin goes up, the chinese government has some sort of announcement to bring it back down? see: last time when they prohibited banks from buying/selling cryptocurrencies. does someone there hope to earn some quick $$$ from shorting bitcoin (profit motive), or are they doing it to cool down a bubble (protect chinese investors motive)?

Maybe it's part of the scam?

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#107

Post by Cybourgeoisie »

vkou wrote: post #88
whiskyant wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of bitcoin was correcting many hours before any news of the China ICO restriction. So yeah probably completely BS correlation.

Or, more likely, informed insiders capitalized on this information.

While I'm inclined to believe this, the big sell off triggered by this news started at the same time that the news was made public. You can view the rapid drop in Neo (heavily affected by the ban) started in the same 15 minutes when the news broke.

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#108

Post by subru »

sidthekid wrote: post #87
subru wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago deleted it

Then how do we validate your claims of accurate prediction?

Please don't. It's irrelevant.

The short 5k-5.5k idea could be a bust anyway; maybe we do rally to 6k from here. I am concerned with managing risk, less so with any particular idea itself. That's why I thought it was funny that another posted how I was "very wrong" about how I described volatility. Who cares who is right or wrong? It doesn't matter. Just be safe, that's all that matters. Protect capital.

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#109

Post by DennisP »

cslarson wrote: post #96
DennisP wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true of almost all ICOs launching ERC20 tokens because on Ethereum you can write code that automatically turns your ETH into ERC20 tokens. A couple pages of code and it all just happens on the blockchain by itself. If you take bitcoin contributions, you need something offchain to track who contributed what, and issue a bunch of minting transactions. Some ICOs do that, but if it's ERC20 that's generally in additi…

Most SNT trading is against BTC on the Bittrex exchange. It's 5x the trading as against ETH. https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/status/#markets

You're talking about trading after the ICO, I'm talking about the ICO itself.

Re: Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal

#110

Post by yebyen »

grubles wrote: post #7

Strange title considering Ethereum tumbled from nearly $400 to $275 because of the ban.

At-large people are more interested in Bitcoin in the news. I personally agree with you at Ethereum being more interesting, and much more central to the ICOs issue, but it's also less stable (bigger swings in price), and higher risk (risk/reward) while being newer, and more unknown in the market.

My dad has started sending me Bitcoin news. I'm so proud. I was proud at first when he was able to find Bitcoin news in his regular news sources. I'm even more proud now that he's sending me news with relevant, quality information that I hadn't already heard!

It is not that strange though, when you consider the market cap of Bitcoin today is $71B and the cap of Ethereum is $28B (and is measured in bitcoin, at least on the first Google result that I was able to find.) Is a 30% drop in ETH prices really bigger news than a 20% drop in Bitcoin prices?

Bitcoin was the first mover, basically made the market, and has all of the mindshare. It's basically the USD of cryptocurrencies.

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