Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000 • Hacker News Board

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#151

Post by mike10010100 » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #132

bduerst wrote: post #83

The number of seemingly throwaway accounts (created in the last few days) commenting on this thread is interesting too: - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=astund - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=simplemath__ - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zhjansbnas - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=barbegal

Thanks for the info. To me, just about any HN post about XYZcoin is a minefield these days. The sentiments seem to all be unrealistically positive and the derision of the glaringly insane XYZcoins are just swamped in whataboutism and thread-derailing. I know it's a hot market and there is a lot of stuff going on, so these threads themselves are warranted, yet the comments in them are just clownshoes.

Reminds me a bit of how the Russian bots operate. Any indication whether or not this is in any way related?

The more I think about it, the more it seems like the entire proliferation of cryptocurrency is an attempt to sponge money out of the hyper-capitalistic West. Too many bots/fraudulent trades, and too much hyper-positivity online. It feels incredibly skeezy, even coming from the usual online trader bros.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#152

Post by astund » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

mike10010100 wrote: post #151

Balgair wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the info. To me, just about any HN post about XYZcoin is a minefield these days. The sentiments seem to all be unrealistically positive and the derision of the glaringly insane XYZcoins are just swamped in whataboutism and thread-derailing. I know it's a hot market and there is a lot of stuff going on, so these threads themselves are warranted, yet the comments in them are just clownshoes.

Reminds me a bit of how the Russian bots operate. Any indication whether or not this is in any way related? The more I think about it, the more it seems like the entire proliferation of cryptocurrency is an attempt to sponge money out of the hyper-capitalistic West. Too many bots/fraudulent trades, and too much hyper-positivity online. It feels incredibly skeezy, even coming from the usual online trader bros.

Dont think too much about it. Some of us linked in the parent comment dont post here a lot...and my comment wasnt pro-cryptocurrency.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#153

Post by swimfar » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

xenadu02 wrote: post #81

krisives wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair regulated markets are vulnerable to manipulation today

That’s like saying the recent California wildfires are equivalent to the Great Chicago Fire. Both are tragedies and both have a certain element of scale to them, but the Chicago fire was actually much much worse. It killed far more people, made far more people homeless, and destroyed far more economic value (adjusted for inflation). Yes the current regulated markets have serious problems and are in need of reform. Bu…

Just some interesting trivia. Two days after the Chicago fire which killed ~300 people, there was a much bigger fire in Wisconsin that killed 1200-2500 people. Over 300 people just from the town of Peshtigo died. It was a town with only about 1700 residents. It didn't get much media attention, however, because of the Chicago fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#154

Post by kleer001 » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

b1daly wrote: post #122

michaelchisari wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is the rhetoric around cryptos as a populist movement. There's so many people on reddit that claim that trading cryptos is how they're going to get out of the 9-5 working man grind. That it's a way to end the dominance of the wealthy banking elites. And yet, the wealth inequality in cryptos, especially bitcoin, makes our current economic situation seem like child's play. If bitcoin ever does go "to…

That’s one reason Bitcoin won’t “go to the moon.” Real currency represents a claim on current production in the economy. If Bitcoin were to continue its exponential price rise, we would have a situation where the people who amassed Bitcoins early could claim wildly disproportionate amounts of the current wealth of society. There is simply no reason wealth holders are going to turn over real wealth to folks who happen…

The only problem with calling the "top" is that this latest bubble is the 8th crash. Of course depending on what we qualify as a bubble and as a crash. It could also be the 5th if we look at round powers of 10 being breached then recovered from.

Just look at the full historic price of USD:BTC in a log graph and you'll see what I mean.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#155

Post by AboutTheWhisles » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 3:30 AM UTC

davej wrote: post #137

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Why does hackernews seem to be biased towards BTC over BCH? In my opinion, any honest examination of the tradeoffs between block size, orphan block rate, cost to run a non-mining node (which do not contribute to network security except indirectly via serving SPV wallets), and mining fees, will show that a 1-1.7MB block size limit is just too low for current tx volumes. The current BTC network is unu…

Increasing block size is not a sustainable solution for scaling transactions. Transaction fees are too high and BTC should move to 2MB as a short-term fix but the long-term fix is off-chain solutions like Lightning.

The Bitcoin Unlimited team has tested 1 GB blocks and presented their research and findings at conferences already.

That being said, the least sustainable solution is to keep blocks at 1 MB for btc. The core group have ousted and alienated everyone who made bitcoin work originally. The fees have priced out everyone who created the ecosystem originally. It is crystal clear to anyone even slightly paying attention that they have done nothing but lie and censor.

If you are getting all your information from /r/bitcoin you should know that it is censored into oblivion and has been nothing but propaganda for years now. Bigger blocks obviously work and the 'lighting network' not only has raises enormous questions about how it can work, it has been promised as just around the corner for multiple years now.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#156

Post by AboutTheWhisles » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #139

fyi1183 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really meant for the 10x to only be an example, you should have clearly stated that.

You're being exceedingly rude and we're done here.

Don't try to make yourself in to a victim, no one was being rude.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#157

Post by zik » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 3:58 AM UTC

astund wrote: post #57

I suspect this is going on today. Cryptocurrency traders place a lot of faith in the exchanges. A bad actor at an exchange could manipulate a price upwards: - Create a ton of volume and potentially and upward trend (two bots trading with one another, increasing the price each time) - Generate hype around a coin - Let FOMO take over If things start to go south, disable withdrawals, deposits, or freeze the market until…

There are a lot of accusations that Tether is being used to do this kind of fraudulent price pumping right now.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/mystery-s...

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#158

Post by fjsolwmv » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:03 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #108

qubex wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s comfortingly close to fractional reserve banking (which unfashionably I’m a big fan of).

Fractional reserve guarantees that the max multiplier between money in motion and money at rest is never more than 10x. If I’m supreme ruler of the world and I replace all currency with Hinkley Bucks, 100 of them in total, and I put them in the bank, they loan 90 to a guy who builds a house. The builder and all their suppliers and employees put that 90 in the bank, and the bank loans 81 to a guy starting a grocery st…

Those $900 of extra assets are balanced by $900 of extra liabilities. 0 net money is created.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#159

Post by fjsolwmv » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:08 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #128

beefield wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in theory you could run fractional reserve bank by letting your deposit customers decide whether they want or not be making deposits to you at any deposit rate you are offering. This would work if you disclosed your balance sheet and your customers were smart enough to make proper capital adequacy calculations on that. In the real world, however, I am not sure if disclosing the balance sheet matters, expected o…

Tragedy of the commons? I want all of my money lent out, but I also want the bank to have a reserve in case I need it, which means none of your money lent out. The only way out of this is for customers to bargain collectively for the proper reserve ratio.

It just needs to hold each account in a separate trust with a specified policy.

Re: Researchers find that one person likely drove Bitcoin from $150 to $1,000

#160

Post by dang » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:39 AM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #132

bduerst wrote: post #83

The number of seemingly throwaway accounts (created in the last few days) commenting on this thread is interesting too: - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=astund - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=simplemath__ - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=zhjansbnas - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=barbegal

Thanks for the info. To me, just about any HN post about XYZcoin is a minefield these days. The sentiments seem to all be unrealistically positive and the derision of the glaringly insane XYZcoins are just swamped in whataboutism and thread-derailing. I know it's a hot market and there is a lot of stuff going on, so these threads themselves are warranted, yet the comments in them are just clownshoes.

There have been a lot of low-quality comments posted on both sides of this hot topic. That's because hot topics attract low-quality comments. It's certainly not true that "the sentiments" are all positive, and I guarantee you that people who hold the opposite views to yours see "the sentiments" here as all the other way. We really need a name for this cognitive bias.

Also, "whataboutism" has become the worst internet cliché in recent memory and I'm starting to feel like we should add software to just autokill comments that use this word, since it's such a strong signal of unsubstantive bickering.