Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

singlelunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 454 posts

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#251

Post by mtremsal »

freedomben wrote: post #216
wpietri wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> inflation is a highly regressive tax

Is it? I think a takeaway from Piketty's book was that inflation was one of the rare factors that slowed down or reversed wealth inequality. Intuitively it would make sense that people drowning in debt benefit from (moderate) inflation, especially if low wages get bumped in the process.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#252

Post by eric_cc »

catillac wrote: post #205
eric_cc wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. A lot of comments in here spewing hatred toward crypto seem to come from a psychological defense mechanism. People were wrong and decided not to move to crypto and are now doubling down on that position to feel better about their poor choices.

It doesn’t seem obvious that people who didn’t put money into cryptocurrencies were wrong. Even if you happened to through sheer luck buy low, sell high during one of the pops, that doesn’t mean everyone else was wrong any more than saying someone else was wrong for not playing roulette and selecting the right ending slot.

Your “buy low sell high” take is pretty short-sighted. For many, it’s a change in currency from fiat to digital. You on-ramp in but you don’t back out into fiat.

You're speaking about a subset of crypto traders that go right back to fiat.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#253

Post by wyre »

benreesman wrote: post #94

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…

What is the reference to Island and Archipelago? I'm not familiar and my DDG skills aren't helping.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#254

Post by joering2 »

largbae wrote: post #221
eric_cc wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it affords you anonymity What? Bitcoin is radically transparent. The vast majority of crimes are committed with standard currencies like $USD. If 'crime' is the only value you see, you're extremely ignorant. What is the bull case for $USD? What properties does it have that make it superior to currencies like $BTC in your opinion?

One thing fiat currencies have that is underrated: a legal system to handle special cases. Recently, an apparently Bitcoin-rich man named Mircea Propescu died without sharing his private key(s). Now that fortune is gone with no recourse for next of kin. Maybe this is OK and everyone is happy to lose the safety net. But what about fraud? Do you want to have to take up arms to get your money back from someone who stole…

For a starters, its not Bitcoin fault that someone did not have last will, or did not include the keys or their crypto in the last will.

Second, when some large heist in the past happened on the chain, the largest exchanges announced they won't exchange proceeds from these addresses. It may still not be impossible to withdraw into fiat, but certainly it was harder. Eventually, there will be more regulation from US and other countries' bodies, some of it will benefit crypto holders, some inconvenience them some more.

One example could be of a Government Body that oversees crypto fraud. If you had some coin stolen and you are able to prove they were yours and are unable to communicate with the party who took your coins, these assets can go into some form of public "coins on red notice list", where government puts them there, and exchanges can see the addresses and know not to accept or exchange these assets. If someone tries to, exchange can show them a notice information, instead of completing transaction. Another list government can maintain is "public call notice" (I'm just making these names up) similar to how public hearings are made. In this scenario, government can call up on an owner of some specific questionable coins to explain transactions behind. If no owner comes up in 30 days, these coins could be again put on "red notice" list.

The bottom line is, since exchanges are regulated by governments, the governments will surely regulate even more. Ultimately because everything is transparent on a block chain, certain coins can become "dirty" just like money becomes tainted, and exchange or even possession of these coins can be made unlawful.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#255

Post by Tenoke »

jcranmer wrote: post #242
Tenoke wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt Tesla would survive very long in that state. Stock will crash, public opinion will sour, employees will quit etc. very quickly.

If you own literally all of the stock in Tesla... how could the stock crash? There's no stock being traded for its value to change. Of note, there are examples in the past of companies going private without falling apart--Dell is the most notable example I can think of off the top of my head.

>If you own literally all of the stock in Tesla... how could the stock crash? There's no stock being traded for its value to change.

The price will plummet in the sense that nobody would bid to buy it for anywhere as much as they would before the event.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#256

Post by reubenmorais »

wyre wrote: post #253
benreesman wrote: post #94

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…

What is the reference to Island and Archipelago? I'm not familiar and my DDG skills aren't helping.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/archipelago.asp (also talks about Island)

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#257

Post by squeaky-clean »

eric_cc wrote: post #247
CaptainZapp wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the bull case for $USD? What properties does it have that make it superior to currencies like $BTC in your opinion? That I can spend USD in just about any shop or for any transaction, legal or not. While crypto "currencies"? I'd say: not so much.

This is a short term advantage that is quickly evaporating. There are crypto credit cards now that allow you to achieve the same effect. Assuming this advantage disappears, are there any other bull cases for $USD?

I don't want a currency with a bull case. That means it discourages spending it in favor of holding it. I want a currency with an extremely slow bear case.

Also my value of USD hasn't dropped 30% in the last month.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#258

Post by latchkey »

skilled wrote: post #31

Interesting tidbit: "An aside on NFTs Because they’re “unique” objects, NFTs are a perfect vehicle for wash trading. You can easily ensure you only wash trade to yourself. The common scheme is to wash trade with yourself until some credible dunce buys the NFT from you at your manufactured “fair” value, leaving you to walk away with real money." It's such a stupidly simple idea it's actually brilliant.

Any market with insufficient liquidity and an easy way to trade, is ripe for this. I'm sure you could look at the price history of all sorts of stuff on Ebay and Amazon and see many many cases of this.

Imagine a seller buying their own products cheaply and giving reviews. Then come back and raise the prices when the product gets listed higher up in the search results.

I recently bought some KF94 masks on Amazon cause they were crazy cheap. Came back a few days later and the price went from $8->$25. A few days after that, the entire listing was gone.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#259

Post by joering2 »

skilled wrote: post #31

Interesting tidbit: "An aside on NFTs Because they’re “unique” objects, NFTs are a perfect vehicle for wash trading. You can easily ensure you only wash trade to yourself. The common scheme is to wash trade with yourself until some credible dunce buys the NFT from you at your manufactured “fair” value, leaving you to walk away with real money." It's such a stupidly simple idea it's actually brilliant.

But shilling bid is illegal regardless of how you bid. While crypto can be made harder to trace than fiat, the fact of the matter is, someone have commited crime.

With millions of dollars flying on all sorts of NFT exchanges/auctions [1], sooner or later some government will crack a case and make it very public in a form of a warning to others.

[1] https://nouns.wtf/

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#260

Post by VHRanger »

mulcyber wrote: post #241

I take advantage of the post to ask. Anyone has a good introduction to trading for engineers/mathematicians/programmers? Something that goes into the theorics and the math of the thing. Like an MIT open course or something. I'm always a bit lost with these things.

Patrick Boyle's books are a good start.

Generally I would discourage people from trading - 99% of people who try fail.

Post reply on HN