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Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

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Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#141

Post by lawn »

jki275 wrote: post #30
nroets wrote: post #16

BitCoin was mentioned at nearly every party at the end of 2017. Google Trends showed massive growth in the search term. Many unsophisticated investors poured money in solely based on past performance. It was not a single whale. It had all the hallmarks of bubble like tulip mania or Internet stocks in 1999.

There was certainly hype and hysteria -- but ultimately every time it would look like it was going to turn down, more USDT would magically appear and prop the price up. It's really a textbook study in how to manipulate markets -- and yes, it was probably one entity doing it. Now who that entity is may be a matter of speculation, but it's likely bitfinex/tether, which are really the same company run by the same people…

It was actually easy to predict when Bitcoin would rise at that time: shortly after hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Tether were printed.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#142

Post by Scoundreller »

lentil_soup wrote: post #93
iagovar wrote: post #2

The more I know about cryptos, the more I remain skeptical. The only people I know that uses cryptos seriously are acquaintancies from latin america, and none of them for storing value, with the exception of Venezuelans. Not even argentinians, that just buy as many dollars they can. IMO this is a thread worth reading on this topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/dj2jro/the_large...

And Venezuelans don't really buy to store value either. It's just one of the ways to go around currency controls. And lately not even that, as more and more local business are accepting US Dollars either by cash or bank transfer.

Or for a while, with gas being so cheap, you could run your miners off nearly free electricity with generators. Or through AC mains.

So instead of exporting energy directly via tanker, they would export indirectly down the wire.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#143

Post by [deleted] »

leppr wrote: post #133
mrep wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTC/ETH are 0-sum games, so on average nobody earns a dime of interest I would argue it is actually negative sum as billions of dollars worth is newly minted every year and a lot of that inevitability has to be sold to pay the miners electricity bills. I'm honestly shocked they haven't collapsed due to the never ending supply side pressure requiring billions of dollars worth of capital inflow every year.

The supply of Bitcoin is by design not "never ending" [1]. The future inflation rate is known and trending towards 0, eventually turning BTC deflationary. [1] https://medium.com/@k_schellinger/understanding-bitcoins-21-...

[deleted]

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#144

Post by xur17 »

iagovar wrote: post #2

The more I know about cryptos, the more I remain skeptical. The only people I know that uses cryptos seriously are acquaintancies from latin america, and none of them for storing value, with the exception of Venezuelans. Not even argentinians, that just buy as many dollars they can. IMO this is a thread worth reading on this topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/dj2jro/the_large...

I've been using it to buy gift cards since the vendor gives a larger discount for using bitcoin. My exposure to price volatility is limited since I purchase the bitcoin a few seconds before buying the gift card.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#145

Post by this_user »

clarkmoody wrote: post #117
marcosdumay wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> none of them for storing value That one is a plus. Money is a transactional tool, speculation and storing value do not add to its main value. As an aside, everybody that I know that ever brought some crypto coin did it for speculation. The more likely explanation is that I'm looking at the wrong country, but if speculation suddenly stoped being a main use of BTC, I would start to seriously look at it.

All money has value because people demand to hold it. In a hyperinflation scenario, people are dumping the currency for goods as fast as they can. They are using the money as a transactional medium only: get paid -> rush to buy goods to capture the value of your labor in something that won't be worthless tomorrow. Dumping worthless paper currency is a form of speculation that the value won't unexpectedly rise before…

> The "store of value" proposition of Bitcoin is that it can't be printed by a central bank, so you can be sure that your holdings relative to the size of the money supply cannot be diluted.

Except that's not true. The block reward consists of newly created coins of which there are 1800 per day. Currently, that is a 3.7% annual inflation rate in supply, which is far more than the 2% target most central banks from developed countries have. In value terms, at a price of $9300 per coin, that is $16.7M that need to flow into the Bitcoin eco system each day for it to remain stable.

But "store of value" also means something beyond just money supply, namely stable buying power. And that is not something that Bitcoin has ever offered on account of being more volatile than a micro cap biotech penny stock. Bitcoin may very well be one of the worst stores of values imaginable.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#146

Post by SilasX »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #126
SilasX wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the ecosystem has decided one exchange is the lead price, then they manipulate the price without needing the underlying assets. Okay, but I think there's a big difference between: A) Some whale committed bottomless resources to keep bidding up an asset whenever it fell in price, leading to a much higher price over six months, vs B) Some whale caused a one-day surge in price of the asset, which got the asset atten…

It’s somewhat of a stretch, for sure. I’d normally expect “one whale caused the rally” to mean that the whale started buying arbitrary amounts of bitcoin at a price near the top of the rally. But I think any other description is more of a stretch. If (B) is correct it’s a speculative bubble, which happened in response to the whale’s activity, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the whale.

>But I think any other description is more of a stretch. If (B) is correct it’s a speculative bubble, which happened in response to the whale’s activity, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the whale.

That's what I dispute. If that one-time spike was enough to set off that kind of activity, then it was probably going to happen eventually, and the whale, at most, hastened it.

And yes, it gets kind of tricky, because most of us, including me, are comfortable saying, "This jerk tossing his lit cigarette caused this massive fire", even if the whole place was a tinderbox just waiting to turn into a blaze from anyone's single spark.

But the point is, when people write these articles, they're promoting the narrative that this single whale is the major determinant of the price. I dispute that narrative, just as I dispute that one cigarette-jerk's ability to determine how many forest fires there will be.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#147

Post by txru »

xur17 wrote: post #144
iagovar wrote: post #2

The more I know about cryptos, the more I remain skeptical. The only people I know that uses cryptos seriously are acquaintancies from latin america, and none of them for storing value, with the exception of Venezuelans. Not even argentinians, that just buy as many dollars they can. IMO this is a thread worth reading on this topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/dj2jro/the_large...

I've been using it to buy gift cards since the vendor gives a larger discount for using bitcoin. My exposure to price volatility is limited since I purchase the bitcoin a few seconds before buying the gift card.

That's just arbitrage, though. You're converting your liquid cash assets into another differently liquid type of cash using a less liquid form of currency, because you have special knowledge about the transfer process.

Bitcoin in this is a material asset, like a house to flip in an underappreciated/subsidized market.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#148

Post by sodafountan »

sp332 wrote: post #136
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #71

Get in now, because it will do it again after the next halving in May 2020. https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/UuzUBUTa-Bitcoin-4-...

-

That's the minimum, the chart predicts bitcoin being anywhere between 4,500 and 11,000

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#149

Post by xur17 »

txru wrote: post #147
xur17 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using it to buy gift cards since the vendor gives a larger discount for using bitcoin. My exposure to price volatility is limited since I purchase the bitcoin a few seconds before buying the gift card.

That's just arbitrage, though. You're converting your liquid cash assets into another differently liquid type of cash using a less liquid form of currency, because you have special knowledge about the transfer process. Bitcoin in this is a material asset, like a house to flip in an underappreciated/subsidized market.

That's fair. That said, I have been getting more comfortable with refilling less frequently and just holding a buffer in BTC.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#150

Post by mraudiobook_com »

DagAgren wrote: post #99
StavrosK wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I try to add it to all my side-projects that accept payment. I looked at a few payment providers and settled on OpenNode, as they had the right mix of an easy API, quick support and good documentation, though I would like it if they supported more cryptocurrencies. If you want cryptocurrencies to succeed, you need to make them widespread as a form of payment. I already lament Steam and Stripe removing Bitc…

Unfortunately, Bitcoin as designed is technically incapable of being in widespread use for payment, due to a severe lack of network capacity, and a complete lack of interest in ever changing this. Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare.

and a complete lack of interest in ever changing this.

Excuse me, Bitcoin Cash?

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