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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

#291

Post by panarky »

Animats wrote: post #193
neiman wrote: post #157

It's impossible to have a discussion based on news reports, so here's a link for the original paper. I copied the title and abstract below. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3195066 I browsed through the paper. Their main result, if I understood correctly, is that they found "considerable evidence that Tether is used to purchase Bitcoin following Tether authorization and a drop in Bitcoin price, and…

Tether is starting to look like a Madoff-scale Ponzi scam. What maintains the $1 price of Tether is a continual net inflow of cash. Tether is known not to be backed with sufficient real assets.[1] If there's a period of net outflow from Tether, the whole house of cards comes crashing down. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tether-reverses-claim-of-1...

The difference between Tether and Madoff is that people have been loudly yelling "scam", in public, for years about Tether.

When Madoff collapsed, his investors were shocked. If Tether collapses, precisely zero people will be surprised.

When it's common knowledge that it's a scam, is it still a scam?

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

#292

Post by testrecord »

wruza wrote: post #207

For tech’s sake in this cryptoeconomy PhD thread, working with Bitfinex API was a pleasure. A simple websocket protocol with concise deterministic event packets and clear documentation. The only limitation is $1k barrier even for testing purposes, but no big deal. These guys know their ropes. Opposed to say Bitmex, which rolled out a braintrashing overengineered differential update protocol, so hard to scratch that w…

If you need public data from multiple cryptocurrency exchanges but don't want to deal with weird differences in exchange APIs, Blocktap[1] is a free GraphQL API (that I assisted in developing). We also open sourced our web socket data collection tool CCXWS[2]. It's a single, consistent Javascript API for most major exchanges.

[1] https://www.blocktap.io/

[2] https://github.com/altangent/ccxws

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

#293

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

DennisP wrote: post #185
throwawayhhakdl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always get downvoted for asking this but... doesn’t that seem like a really bad idea that makes you far far more vulnerable to physical crime? If a guy mugs you at an atm, the bank is going to flag something as suspicious. If a guy mugs you for your private key, you have no recourse for all of your holdings- and the getaway is a lot easier. Physical crypto crime feels like it would be very prevalent if it became “m…

So if you have a lot, don't keep your main stash where it's easily accessible to you.

How is crypto made non accessible besides storing your private key with a third party?

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

#294

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

askmike wrote: post #110
throwawayhhakdl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always get downvoted for asking this but... doesn’t that seem like a really bad idea that makes you far far more vulnerable to physical crime? If a guy mugs you at an atm, the bank is going to flag something as suspicious. If a guy mugs you for your private key, you have no recourse for all of your holdings- and the getaway is a lot easier. Physical crypto crime feels like it would be very prevalent if it became “m…

The idea of Bitcoin is a system without any centralized trust, eg. "what do you do if the bank mugs you" would be a counter argument. Some people used to think/want that Bitcoin was going to take over all other forms of money. I don't think many people still believe that. In that sense it's just like other forms of property that can be stolen.

That’s a pretty good counter argument tbh. I don’t think it has practical merit in the US, but I’ll give you it could be viable in other contexts

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

#296

Post by xorcist »

arcticbull wrote: post #253
repomies691 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare. I don't know much about LN and actually I'm quite sceptical about it. However I have tried it now couple of times with different wallets and it seems to work very fluently from user perspective. And saying this as a very old bitcoin user, so I'm used to sending bitcoin payments a lot, LN payme…

LN requires an on-chain transaction to open a channel and another to close a channel which means it'll take 70 years to open a channel for everyone on earth and then close it once, assuming the blockchain does nothing else. If an intermediate node loses power all your channel money is locked for over 48 hours. It's also not even Bitcoin and could work just as well with any other cryptocurrency or probably even dollar…

Is the argument here that Lightning, or Bitcoin, is useless because everyone on earth can not use it at the same time? Isn't that moving the goalposts, even a little?

Even if only a couple of thousand people could use it, as long as it is useful to them it has a niche. It might not be enough to justify insane valuations, of course, but that's another discussion entirely.

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

#297

Post by tuesdayrain »

semiotagonal wrote: post #200
strathmeyer wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who uses crypto seriously wonders how people can use banks. Your reddit link is some guy writing a couple of paragraphs about having customers too stupid to buy it themselves. Their entire job is based around keeping people too ignorant to control their money.

As long as there is a hurdle where people can be "too stupid" to use BTC without getting scammed, BTC will never see wide adoption.

Just like debit cards are not widely adopted :)

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

#298

Post by brentis »

Pretty sure lone bitcoin bear created bitcoin fall via futures as well - the CTFC.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent agency of the US government created in 1974, that regulates futures and option markets. The Commodities Exchange Act ("CEA"), 7 U.S.C. § 1 et seq., prohibits fraudulent conduct in the trading of futures contracts.

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

#299

Post by marcus_holmes »

blotter_paper wrote: post #169
marcus_holmes wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the Bitcoin community were publicly stating that Bitcoin is optimised as a "Store of value" rather than a currency to be used for transactions? Which is it?

It's properties are more in line with a store of value, especially the deflationary aspect, but the line between a store of value and a currency is blurry. Gold also has more properties of a store of value than a currency, and it's used more as a store of value globally, yet some parts of North Africa and the Middle East are using the gold dinar as a currency. It can be both.

not in a modern tax regime, not really. If it's a store of value, like say bonds, then it's property.

You have to report gold transactions, too, after all.

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

#300

Post by Nursie »

lostmsu wrote: post #282
Nursie wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pattern of issuances to market make it highly unlikely.

Can you elaborate?

It's in the source material, but crudely it looks like tether issuances were used to prop up the market as it faltered, timed as they were. Either there was a remarkably, improbably prescient actor there, or it looks fishy as f*ck.
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