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An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

singlelunch.com

211–220 of 454 posts

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#211
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counterpoint would be that what some call the intrinsic value is the expected future share price based on expected future revenues. There might or might not be future revenue for SNAP, but there is no revenue for a digital currency. But I do think digital currency has intrinsic value, in that for now, it affords you anonymity to commit crimes in a way that ordinary currency does not. I’m not happy about it, but thi…

Right, because cash has never afforded anonymity... always good enough for the government agencies. This is an entirely boring and tired trope. How about the simple ability to transfer value across international borders, free of extraneous % fees imposed by unnecessary middlemen? That alone is enough of a use case to justify adoption. Banks have reaped rewards unearned for long enough. Those capable and responsible e…

Uhm... there is something called law in most of the world which kind of regulate how and why you can or cannot send money across international borders, I will never understand that "crypto let us do it better than banks".

You can send 10BTC to me, you're from Azerbaijan and I'm from France, all cool and nice until I want to cash out on that 10BTC... do you think I can receive 380k EUR on my bank without some government agency knocking on my door and accusing me of money laundering, asking me where this money comes from, asking me to pay taxes on it?

If you are forbidden by law from sending money from A to B you cannot send it, either because you cannot send from A, you cannot receive in B, a mix of the two or whatever. You can send me crypto but since I cannot buy food with crypto I need to cash out sooner or later so that's end game.

If you can send money from A to B it's way cheaper and more secure to send it using our current banking system. And BTW you pay a fee to turn money into crypto, in many cases you pay a fee to send crypto and lastly you pay another fee to turn that crypto back into money, sending crypto is not free.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#212
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. I'm just saying that the other process is much, much worse than that.

thats like, your opinion bro. In all seriousness I am ok with crypto punishing gamblers, eventually people will learn to stay away from it, or be forced to stay away from it because they have nothing left to gamble. I don't see how this is more morally repugnant than casinos which are legally accessible in most of the US.

>punishing gamblers, eventually people will learn to stay away from it

Just like casinos?

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Market makers can't just conjure up a counterparty. The spread widens because lack a liquidity increases directional risk. If it were truly riskless, others would jump in to close the spread.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#214
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it like this. If you suddenly owned 100% of Bitcoin, then you wouldn’t actually have anything valuable - nobody would buy it off you. If you suddenly owned 100% of Tesla then you’d be able to extract a lot of value.

If I suddenly own 100% of Tesla the stock would crash. I'll extract some value but it would be a pittance.

You seem to ignore the fact that you would then have access to 100% of the revenue that Tesla makes by selling cars and other things.

(This in turn sort of guarantees a price floor for stocks in public companies: the price of a stock shouldn't really go below the net asset value of the company.)

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#215
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counterpoint would be that what some call the intrinsic value is the expected future share price based on expected future revenues. There might or might not be future revenue for SNAP, but there is no revenue for a digital currency. But I do think digital currency has intrinsic value, in that for now, it affords you anonymity to commit crimes in a way that ordinary currency does not. I’m not happy about it, but thi…

Right, because cash has never afforded anonymity... always good enough for the government agencies. This is an entirely boring and tired trope. How about the simple ability to transfer value across international borders, free of extraneous % fees imposed by unnecessary middlemen? That alone is enough of a use case to justify adoption. Banks have reaped rewards unearned for long enough. Those capable and responsible e…

That's just tax evasion and/or smuggling.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the truth is that the vast amount of control that we've seen develop in the past century (and especially in the past two decades) were just to protect people from said muck. Think of the children! Do you really believe the vast amount of centralized control is to protect the poor stupid people? I think this is an incredibly naive and gullible take. The vast amount of controls in place are to solidify power amongst…

Two things can be true at the same time. Power systems do tend to work for the powerful. But that doesn't mean they can't also be valuable to everybody. Or even valuable to the average person much more than the powerful person. Look, for example, at food regulation. Anybody who has worked in a restaurant can tell you a) how important food safety is, and b) how much health department regulations contribute to keeping…

It seems pretty hard to me to look at charts of inflation, income inequality, and quantitative easing and compare them to stock market values and not see how the system is allowing the rich and powerful to use inflation to suck money away from everyone not heavily in the market (especially the poor as inflation is a highly regressive tax) and into their own pockets through increases in valuation.

And then look at the barriers that regulation throws against the average person to keep them from the most lucrative investments (like required accreditation) and protecting the people stops feeling like a primary (or even tertiary) goal.

I don't doubt that initial push for regulation was at least in part to protect people from the sharks, but it sure doesn't seem like that's the driving motivation anymore.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of "manipulated" which allows "the dollar and BTC are both being manipulated" to resolve as true is so broad that it is effectively meaningless. The dollar is not being manipulated in the way that reasonable people understand the word to mean. BTC obviously is.

No true [reasonable] Scotsman would believe monetary policy by fed is manipulation. Got it; your definition of unreasonable is so broad that it is effectively meaningless.

The Fed has a mandate to act in the broad interest of society. It doesn't manipulate currency by any non-conspiratorial definition of manipulate, no.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#218
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems sarcastic but the amount of resources that has went into building all casinos, casino sites, and everything related to the industry dwarfs the amount of resources that have went into bitcoin by a lot. If it seems otherwise it might be because you see articles on Bitcoin's energy consumption all the time, and not as much about casinos.

I look forward to seeing your math on that. But for a fair comparison you can't just look at "casinos to date" and "Bitcoin to date". After all, as Bitcoin proponents never tire of telling us, this is supposedly the early days.

Some of the most expensive casinos (just the building) to build are:

Venetian Macau – $2.4 billion, Wynn Las Vegas – $2.7 billion, Resorts World Sentosa – $4.53 billion, Marina Bay Sands – $5.36 billion, CityCenter Las Vegas – $9 billion.

That already likely costs more than the combined electricity used by Bitcoin so far, if it doesn't you can easily reach trillions by combining the costs of just Casino buildings. Money roughly translates into resources, so I can't see a way in which the gambling industry hasn't consumed much more than Bitcoin as of right now. Maybe in a century if Bitcoin keeps going really strong it can start to catch up.

0. https://casino.partycasino.com/en/blog/the-most-expensive-ca...

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you're simultaneously buying and selling the same product in the same order book.

How's that even possible? Suppose the bid is at $95, the ask is at $105, and you receive a buy order for $100, you can't "simultaneously" sell that and make a profit.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#220
There's a hype cycle right now with the claim that Walmart is going to issue NFTs, or get into cryptocurrencies, or something.[1] Walmart is not saying that. They filed for a trademark for "WALMART" for the trademark class that includes cryptocurrencies. Which means only that WalMart, Inc. spent $400 to protect their brand name from someone creating "WalMartCoin". WalMart, asked for a statement, said they had no immediate plans in that area.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/16/22887011/walmart-metavers...

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