Live data from Hacker News

An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

singlelunch.com

161–170 of 454 posts

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like MSFT issuing MicrosoftDollars to pay their dividents.

The MicrosoftDollars they issue to pay their employees seem to be getting them some talent!

Well, great then, they just need to apply the same strategy for their shareholders!

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#162
post #149

Dumb question, but is price manipulation wrong when it's for something that doesn't have a "true" price? Like I get why it should be illegal for stocks. If you pump it and the price reverts back to some true price (calculated from expected future earnings or whatever), then people who bought it expecting it to be at an efficient price will lose money. In the case of crypto where everything is driven by supply and dem…

Because (layman here) you could still pump & dump and influence prices. Perhaps it’s tougher with bigger established coins BTC or ETH, but it’s still a thing afaik.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#163
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looming rate hikes combined with ever increasing correlation of Bitcoin to equities suggests you may even get your day this year.

It's sad to see people genuinely wanting to watch others lose wealth so they can relish in it.

It's always jealousy. People see someone they view as "undeserving" doing better than themselves and react with hatred.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I considered this, but rejected most of those hypotheses. > Retail and futures traders create instability by placing leveraged trades and stop orders that amplify swings. True > Market makers are aware of instability and design their bots to turn off so that they don't end up on the wrong side of a liquidity cascade. Algorithmic traders, yes. Market makers absolutely not. MMs want to be there as much as…

Market makers don’t print riskless money, they are affected by a very real risk of divergence loss.

You dont have a risk of divergence loss if you're simultaneously buying and selling the same product in the same order book.

Bid/ask spreads were as wide as double or triple digits during the liquidation event. At this point the only limit to riskless profits is your liquidity and the speed at which you can execute.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#165
post #108

Eh 20-ish years ago the shit happening on Island and Archipelago would blow most people’s minds. Undocumented, conditional, non-displayed order types. Routine wash trading. Shear-but-don’t skin multi-venue arbitrage. The ECNs were the Wild West. Smoke-filled dark pools. Island and Arca are NASDAQ and NYSE now. But Ben, US equities have intrinsic value unlike this BTC garbage! Well unless they pay no dividend, have du…

> US equities have intrinsic value Really? My impression is that many US equities in 2022 are more like Reddit up/downvote scores than a reflection of intrinsic value. Which isn't a bad thing in my opinion, by the way.

Firms used to give out dividends, that would make it easier to claim it had intrinsic value (future cash flows discounted). Now it appears the only intrinsic value is how much another firm would pay to acquire the company and do X with it.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#166

Eh 20-ish years ago the shit happening on Island and Archipelago would blow most people’s minds. Undocumented, conditional, non-displayed order types. Routine wash trading. Shear-but-don’t skin multi-venue arbitrage. The ECNs were the Wild West. Smoke-filled dark pools. Island and Arca are NASDAQ and NYSE now. But Ben, US equities have intrinsic value unlike this BTC garbage! Well unless they pay no dividend, have du…

With crypto these days alpha is still very easy since it's a small backwater. Microstructure is all complete bullshit (and has been as long as these markets existed), and leverage is basically unlimited. A huge sell order is more likely to indicate buying than selling, for example. At least liquidation cascades don't literally hit 0 like they have in the past, which is an improvement. There are also all sorts of unpu…

Haha, Alameda or Wintermute? :)

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#167
post #149

Dumb question, but is price manipulation wrong when it's for something that doesn't have a "true" price? Like I get why it should be illegal for stocks. If you pump it and the price reverts back to some true price (calculated from expected future earnings or whatever), then people who bought it expecting it to be at an efficient price will lose money. In the case of crypto where everything is driven by supply and dem…

This is only a partial answer: broadly, we lose as a society. Openly fake markets and obvious manipulation erode trust in systems that, even when corrupt and manipulated, are ultimately tied to real value (people’s labor, their retirement accounts, &c.)

None of what we have is great, and I’m not going to bother justifying traditional financial markets. But cryptocurrencies represent a massive moral hazard to our handling of hundreds of millions of peoples’ economic security.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there is no revenue for a digital currency Isn't there? Ethereum kind of has revenue in that transaction fees for smart contract execution are burned (effectively a stock buyback) It has around ~$19B in revenue extrapolated at the current rate (although it's issuing more than $20B a year for now, planning to reduce issuance some time later this year)

That's like MSFT issuing MicrosoftDollars to pay their dividents.

People spend fiat to buy ETH for transaction fees. Value is value. If the value of the transaction were less than the fee, they wouldn't transact.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not here to defend Elon Musk, but since he is tentatively experimenting with accepting crypto as payment for some of his products, I assume crypto is in his wheelhouse

That would be a wrong assumption, I believe. You don't need to know much about crypto to be able to accept it.

Hopefully, one of his reports knows something about it
Post reply on HN