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Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#301

Post by pshin45 »

notahacker wrote: post #293
pshin45 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-si…

A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with a global decentralized currency like Bitcoin to happen to the 2 billion unbanked too. I'm not convinced that foisting 50% weekly price swings, MtGox-calibre ecosystem security and Bitfinex-style creative accounting upon poorly educated people who rely on those savings to not die is a net positive for society. Aside from the obvious…

I agree that everything you say is true or has been true of Bitcoin at some point.

However, the more important question is how all of those things will change going forwards.

Is Bitcoin's volatility decreasing? Yes.

Will Bitcoin ever become stable enough to be a reliable store of value comparable to gold or the US dollar? We'll see.

Will cryptocurrency security and management improve? Most certainly.

Will new regulations help weed out bad actors? One would hope so.

Will Bitcoin become easier to use on mobile devices? I can't see why not.

Will Bitcoin transactions become instant or near-instant? Many people in the space are working on it.

Will Bitcoin become more intuitive? I would bet yes.

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#302

Post by arisAlexis »

ComradeTaco wrote: post #124
captainbland wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In either of these situations it seems like hodling until victory pays off. The real loser is, well, the planet as the network continues to consume more and more power.

Bitcoin could go the way of any number of other cyptos; back to zero. In any case, nobody uses Bitcoin as a currency because it's logistically harder for 99.9% of people, and nobody uses it as a store of value because its insanely volitale. Bitcoin is really just a speculative asset.

can you back your claims? cause billions of dollars are stored as value and many people including me use it to buy stuff.

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#303

Post by seppel »

JackCh wrote: post #200
jrkatz wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but if they acquire $6000 for 20000 tether (that they paid $0 for), and promise that tether is full redeemable for $20000, they are $14000 short when the tether holder comes knocking.

What if tether is the tether holder and they simply decide to never call in that debt against themselves? That would mean they lost their own money, but they still may have made enough money over the course of the entire scheme to pay off their "legitimate" customers and thus avoid getting publicly called out.

> What if tether is the tether holder

Why should they print more tether if they are already holding them?

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#304

Post by arisAlexis »

briatx wrote: post #100
paulpauper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Final-Tether-Co...

This report: 1. Is not an audit to be used for assurance purposes. The disclaimer at the top states that it "should not be used or relied on by any other party." 2. Is rather old now. 3. Was conducted by a firm that no longer conducts business with Tether, probably because Tether would not comply with information requests needed to conduct an actual audit, which is not as difficult as Tether makes it sound here: http…

why is it super hard to believe they may have actually the holdings since their intetest is aligned with bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#305

Post by [deleted] »

sincerely wrote: post #269
the_gastropod wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Fed can inflate away the value of those transactions anytime they want and not only do you have zero control over this process, it is not even possible to predict it. Be real. Between USD and BTC, one has lost 70% of its value over the past ~7 months.

You're not wrong but you're also choosing a specific time frame that makes your point sound stronger than it might necessarily be. I could do something similar: >BTC is worth the same as it was in November 2017 >Between USD and BTC, one has increased ~150% in value over the last year >Between USD and BTC, only one is worth ten times as much now as it was worth two years ago At the end of the day I am pretty sure I ag…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#306

Post by mirimir »

> The new paper helped push down the already sinking price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on Wednesday. The price of Bitcoin fell as much as 5 percent after the report was published, approaching its lowest point of the year. Bitcoin is now down more than 65 percent from the highs it hit late last year.

Well, then. An obvious question is who involved in this paper has just sold Bitcoin short.

Maybe there's a disclaimer. But I've had no luck getting the paper. I've tried to get it from Sci-Hub, but they don't seem to have it yet. And Elsevier doesn't seem to accept Bitcoin. Anyone know a source?

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#307

Post by jpatokal »

What continues to weird me out here is that Tether's price is still basically $1, and there's basically no risk premium for those exchanges that trade BTC against Tether instead of actual USD. But when the two start spreading, the shit will really hit the fan...

http://www.untether.space/

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#308

Post by GalacticDomin8r »

tomkarlo wrote: post #275
josu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that an analogy with diamonds works: There is an infinite supply of lab-made-diamonds, however they are not fungible with real diamonds. Them being substitute goods, lab-made-diamonds may have negatively impacted the price, but real diamonds are still considered scarce.

There's an infinite supply, but there's non-zero cost associated with accessing incremental units in that supply. (And some would say diamonds are an artificially constrained market anyway.) With crypto, there's arguably an unlimited supply at zero cost.

> With crypto, there's arguably an unlimited supply at zero cost.

I like that one. Makes it seem like its a perpetual motion machine and we all know how that ends.

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#309

Post by zik »

arisAlexis wrote: post #299
achompas wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making people believe that the money you've created with whatever hocus-pocus is real and that investment X will just spew money indefinitely is not at all a new thing. Across so many people, and at BTC's market cap though? I think that's unprecedented. Penny stocks or pyramid schemes, sure, but they never affect this many people or hit 12-digit valuations. (By the way, fiat money doesn't count as an example becaus…

usdt is a usd peg system with no fake money. did you ever read the technical details?

But it's claimed that it's not really a peg system at all - that Tether were fraudulently created while claiming they were pegged.

Re: Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

#310

Post by JKCalhoun »

john_moscow wrote: post #122
kgwgk wrote: post #28

Today 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…

I'd say there's a simpler explanation. Bitcoin has a limited predictable supply, so its price is mostly a function of the demand. And demand correlates with expectations, that typically follow the hype cycle [0]. I'm not sure how much someone managed to single-handedly manipulate the price, but the plain old human psychology, FOMO and the positive feedback loop for media writing about bitcoin demand definitely played…

Agreed. I heard millennials (mainly) looking at the desolate financial future that awaits them and deciding to roll the dice and throw what little cash they had into Bitcoin.

Sad on many levels.

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