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Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
251–260 of 400 posts
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#252I am fully prepared to receive negative points for this comment, but I do not believe there is anything new here. This narrative has been pushed by the media for almost a year now. The article even claims: > This method is not conclusive, but it has helped government authorities and academics spot suspicious activity in the past. I haven’t read the entire 66 page report yet, but assume for a second that the relations…
The issue with using Tethers to pump up the price is that it implies there's billions of U.S. dollars backing up that Tether. If there isn't billions of USD to be found then... what? The USD pumping up the stock market is undeniably there, but if the Tether pumping up BTC isn't real (real being defined by the 1 USDT = 1 USD), then the price is essentially being pumped up by nothing.
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Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
One problem with the market price for tethers is that it is actually very hard to sell them for USD. For example, Bitfinex does not allow USD withdrawals, only Bitcoin withdrawals.
>it is actually very hard to sell [tether] for USD Kraken offers a USDTUSD pair. How is that hard at all? https://blog.kraken.com/post/206/kraken-announces-support-fo...
Very little trading volume, and I'm not sure how easy it is to withdraw USD from them either. There's generally a lot more volume and market depth available for trading Tether to Bitcoin and that to USD. Also, for some curious reason, during most of the time the Bitcoin price was going through the roof that Bitcoin was actually worth more USD than it was USDT - the effective exchange rate via this route valued Tether at a small but very noticable premium to its face value.
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#254What I don't get about the theory that Tether was used to intentionally manipulate markets, is that if you have a money-printing machine, you don't need to manipulate markets as a business model. You can just print money, that's the business model. Of course it's possible that that influx of capital will move a thin market. But Occam's razor seems to imply that that's a side effect rather than the intent.
> if you have a money-printing machine, you don't need to manipulate markets as a business model
"Money laundering involves three steps: The first involves introducing cash into the financial system by some means ('placement'); the second involves carrying out complex financial transactions to camouflage the illegal source of the cash ('layering'); and finally, acquiring wealth generated from the transactions of the illicit funds ('integration')" [1].
TL; DR If Tether just printed Tethers and sold them for dollars, people would catch on. Tethers being printed to buy Bitcoin (placement), such Bitcoin then being exchanged for other coins or tumbled (layering) before being sold for real money (integration) is tougher to untangle.
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, as I mentioned in a sibling comment, to put those numbers in context, Bitcoin consumes as much power globally as a single large power plant, and roughly 10% of the world's data centers [1]. To be sure, it's the growth rate of that consumption that is more concerning. But at the same time, there are lots of reasons to believe that Bitcoin's electricity consumption will naturally moderate and flatten over time.…
1% chance of changing the world for the better says nothing unless you also specify how much better. Local bakery makes world a bit better, but not really worth if you needed a whole power plant to run it (intentionally ridiculously extreme for demonstration purposes).
> unless you also specify how much better.
That is impossible for anyone to say with any certainty, because the future impact of new technologies are, by their nature, impossible to predict.
The oft-cited statistic is that 2 billion adults worldwide are still completely “unbanked” and don’t even have a basic checking or savings account. One percent of 2 billion is 20 million people (roughly the population of a mid-size country), many of them living in poverty.
A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with M-Pesa in Kenya to happen more easily in any country in the world.
I've written about this as well. You can skip to the section titled "How Bitcoin can help the poor and unbanked" to read data on how m-Pesa has improved life for many poor and rural Kenyans.
https://medium.com/@petershin45/hate-bitcoin-this-might-chan...
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#256Omg, no shit?
(If you downvote it’s fair, I just couldn’t resist it)
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, as I mentioned in a sibling comment, to put those numbers in context, Bitcoin consumes as much power globally as a single large power plant, and roughly 10% of the world's data centers [1]. To be sure, it's the growth rate of that consumption that is more concerning. But at the same time, there are lots of reasons to believe that Bitcoin's electricity consumption will naturally moderate and flatten over time.…
If there is one percent chance of bitcoin making world somehow better place, I wonder what are the odds bitcoin makes world somehow worse place ( e.g. fostering criminal endeavours, pseudolegal scams,failed monetary policy and environmental problems) and how does those odds change the equation?
The same could be said for any new technology – they are always a double-sword, and it's our responsibility as technologists to do what we can to maximize the upside and minimize the downside.
The internet has changed society for the better in innumerable ways, but it's also robbed us of privacy and freedoms. Cars allow greater access to economic opportunities for people living outside urban centers, but they are also responsible for most of the world’s air pollution, and millions of people are killed each year as a result of traffic collisions.
This is the reality we have to face as people who work in technology.
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#258Today Matt Levine talks about this paper in his daily column: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-13/judge-rul... "of these two explanations— 1) Bitcoin’s rapid and sustained rise is due to the fact that it satisfies a real economic need in an elegant way, and people have responded to that; or 2) Bitcoin’s rapid and sustained rise is due to a magical fountain of fake dollars that everyone just decided to…
Levine (assuming he is not being deliberately dishonest) clearly has no knowledge of history of currency because the thing he calls more impressive is a fairly routine failure mode (even when not a deliberate outcome of a planned scam) of privately-issued currencies, especially but not exclusively those pegged to national currencies, and a not infrequent failure mode of national currencies themselves which both the modern government taking a general monopoly on many forms of such currency and the common structure of independent central banks is designed to mitigate, as in part are securities regulations which affect many currency-like instruments that don't fall into the scope of prohibition of government monopolies.
It occurring in a currency affected by actors acting either outside of or in wilfully defiance of the regulations designed to mitigate it is about as impressive as an unlicensed, untrained, underage, blind, drunk driver managing to get into a collision.
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
not too hard. kraken and bittrex both do USD/USDT pairs (which, at 1.0 is a good metric of USDT health)
True for Kraken (although their USD withdrawal policies are very restrictive, so not a huge improvement over getting your money from Bitfinex). Bittrex has a public pair between Tether and "True USD" [1], but their fiat USD market is not yet available to the public, and I don't know where we can find pricing data for the non-public market. [1] https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=USDT-TUSD
> although their USD withdrawal policies are very restrictive
What is "very restrictive"? Cap on max amount for a given period?
Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the supply really "limited"? Sure, there's finite number of "coins" that can be generated. But unlike physical objects, there's not really any special property of that unit. Also, you can just generate a new currency of more units and similar utility (as has happened many times recently.) Objects in the real world have utility that's directly linked to their unit value. That's not necessarily true for Bitcoin... i…
while the supply of digital coins is infinite (you could fork btc, or any other chain, or create different coins that could then be forked) the supply of Bitcoins is finite & knowable. this is a component of the argument by "maximalists" who suggest that alternate coins/tokens are bullshit by design, and anybody who thinks they aren't is necessarily in favor of inflationary money. > Objects in the real world have uti…
Bigger diamonds are more desirable than larger diamonds, not because of the price, but because they look better and are sparklier and harder to lose and all sorts of other real-world metrics.
If I want $1000 of bitcoin, I don't care whether that value is in 1 BTC, 100BTC, or 0.0001BTC. They are otherwise identical to me.
Therefore, the fact that the total of all bitcoins in circulation can't exceed 23 million is irrelevant unless you care about the value of 1 BTC, which is only the case if you are trying to sell them for more than you paid.