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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

#331

Post by bripeace »

qyv wrote: post #244
FireBeyond wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they are doing a REALLY bad job at managing their presence, because "Transparency" is one of their hallmarks: https://wallet.tether.to/transparency ... supposedly. Those are very specific numbers to be touting without anything supporting them.

People will simply look the other way on this as long as it benefits their worldview. Once things go south the cries will be "Tether lied to us, how could we have known?"

I don't know. There's a certain level of cognitive dissonance required. They will say...

Tether was FORCED to print, even if they didn't have the USD. The amount of FUD, and active attacks from the traditional banking system suppressed the price of bitcoin. Tether were trying to SAVE us... and so it goes.

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

#332

Post by mirimir »

grafporno wrote: post #317
mirimir wrote: post #306

> 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 di…

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3195066

Nope. I clicked "Download This Paper" several times, and nothing happened. But then, I don't have an SSRN account, so that's not too surprising.

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

#333

Post by Izkata »

King-Aaron wrote: post #319
outworlder wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I am playing a game, my computer's power consumption increases by a lot. I am using more energy and ultimately generating more entropy in the universe. Is it worth it?

Depends on the game.

While this was almost certainly a joke, to the downvoters: Did you know about Foldit [0], the protein-folding game that actually contributes to scientific research?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit

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

#334

Post by xapata »

achompas wrote: post #238
joe_the_user wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating billions of dollars’ worth of value with a ridiculous perpetual-motion fake-dollar-printing machine is a real innovation. Creating money by printing is not a new thing. 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. It is one very standard old thing. That by itself doesn't prove bitcoin i…

> 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…

> unprecedented

Mortgage crisis?

Sure, Bitcoin is different. But it's kinda the same...

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

#335

Post by [deleted] »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #221
jaredklewis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2016, it seems SF median household income was $96,677 [1] and that the median house price was $1.31 million [2]. Couldn't find more recent number for income. That a 13.6 median price to income ratio. 2018 median house price is $1.61 million, so for wages to keep up the 2018 median income would need to be $118,382 to maintain the 13.6 ratio. Edit: I agree with parent it probably still doesn't make sense to compare…

SF median household income is vastly distorted by rent control and prop 13, which allow very many people to live there who otherwise would not be able to afford to live there. Therefore the above measure is not an apples-to-oranges comparison to the Japan data.

[deleted]

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

#336

Post by FundThrowaway »

One part of the article I really don't understand, "The researchers relied on the millions of transaction records that are captured on the public ledgers of all virtual currency transactions, known as the blockchain, to spot patterns." Why is he looking at the blockchain for trading irregularities? Nearly all of the big exchanges just use a database to record trades and no actual cryptocurrency is transferred around except at withdrawal and deposit, so how can the blockchain possibly provide any insight?

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

#337

Post by nostrademons »

headsoup wrote: post #330
nostrademons wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24h trading volume for BTC/USD (excluding BTC/USDT and all non-USD fiat currencies) is over $500M [1], and has been at that rate or higher since last December. That's over $90B in real money that has exchanged hands for Bitcoin. It's not quite the same as the Madoff Ponzi scheme, because in that, all the money went into Madoff's firm, and relatively little came out as redemptions. In a trading market, every dollar th…

That would assume that it is 'different' money changing hands would it not? I.e. that %500M and $90B is unique dollars being transacted and not just promises being passed back and forth.

It does, and that's an assumption that probably doesn't hold.

Most things in the economy work that way though - the total supply of hard currency in the economy is only $3.6T, so when you speak of the $18T US GDP or the $20T US national debt or the $524T value of the derivatives market, it necessarily accounts for the same dollar changing hands multiple times. That's what makes it a currency, that it can circulate and change hands while holding its value.

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

#338

Post by King-Aaron »

Izkata wrote: post #333
King-Aaron wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the game.

While this was almost certainly a joke, to the downvoters: Did you know about Foldit [0], the protein-folding game that actually contributes to scientific research? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit

Precisely what I was getting at :)

http://www.eternagame.org/web/

https://eyewire.org/explore

https://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca/

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

#339

Post by joosters »

notahacker wrote: post #296
joosters wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South Sea bubble is by far a better comparison. It even had ICOs (sort of) and token trading!

Someone really needs to do a "For carrying-on an undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is!" ICO

Hey, some ICOs even make it clear that you won't get any of the profits, so perhaps the description can be reduced to just 'For carrying-on an undertaking but no-one to know what it is!'
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