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An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

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Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#421

Post by grog454 »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #410
eric_cc wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like seeing a lotto ticket No, it’s nothing at all like that. The value of crypto was obvious very very early on. It was never going to crash and burn. Sure a black swan event could have wiped it out and still may. But based on what’s knowable, the value has been obvious since day 1 of bitcoin.

Most of the people I'm lumping into this did not and usually still do not understand why or how cryptocurrencies can solve problems.

This seems to be true of most people period. If there is a lump of people where a majority do understand crypto I haven't found it, possibly outside of tiny academic circles.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#422

Post by acjohnson55 »

syntaxing wrote: post #82

I don’t have enough mathematical knowledge in this subject to back this statement up but I swear I noticed this for SPACs too. There’s these really odd spikes up and down that does not make any sense according to public information

Most SPACs are very lightly traded and are prone to weird patterns.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#423

Post by mbesto »

ptero wrote: post #405
mbesto wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but over the long term (decades and centuries) an ounce of gold generally held its inflation-adjusted value. You sure about that? You woulda been better off holding SPY for 50 years than gold. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/08/gold-as-an-inflation-hedge-h... https://www.wsj.com/articles/gold-as-an-inflation-hedge-what... Now if you're talking about centuries then sure, but thats a pretty much impossible comparison to…

> You sure about that? You woulda been better off holding SPY for 50 years than gold. Holding its value in inflation-adjusted terms is very different than getting the highest return. I think most gold investors want the first and ignore the second: if I want profits, holding a piece of metal is the last thing I would do long-term; no question there. The links you posted did not convince me, sorry (no offense). Yes, y…

> When I wrote that gold held its value I meant exactly that: preservation of value.

Re-read the articles. If you're looking for short/mid term inflation protection (5~10 years) then gold doesn't hold (unless you happen to get lucky for that period over a 100 year period). If you're looking for long term inflation protection (50+ years) then it doesn't either. If your assumption is that gold is valuable because it stood the test of time during the 1700's and 1800's then

> If fit hits the shan, it could buy my family a passage and some time of living expenses somewhere quiet and far away

If shit really hits the fan, you wouldn't be able to convert to a currency that you could actually live on so this point is moot.

> I have seen, twice, the currency of the country where I grew up become worthless over a pretty short term

This context makes more sense than anything else. I'm talking about USD here.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#425

Post by wpietri »

ravar wrote: post #292
wpietri wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more morally repugnant because it's much less transparent. Casinos are exploitative misery factories and I'd be happy to see them vanish forever. But they're at least carefully regulated to exploit people at an agreed-upon level and with all the rules known beforehand.

Personally I am ok with both crypto and Casinos existing, just because some people are stupid doesn't mean i should have my freedoms restricted. Stupid Should Hurt. As an aside crypto has the potential to change the world for the better if it ever becomes used as a real currency. I think the people that stand to lose in that situation love spreading FUD about crypto. However it is probably not bitcoin that is going t…

Perhaps consider that this isn't about just you?

It's bad for society to let scam artists operate unfettered. It doesn't just harm the scammed. For one, you've given terrible people more money to run bigger scams. Two, it misdirects resources to negative-sum activity. Third and most broadly, it reduces trust in anything that looks vaguely similar, which increases transactional friction and reduces available investment capital, making society poorer as a whole.

And that's before we even get to your illusion that you are safe from being scammed because only stupid people get suckered and you're one of the smart ones. There are scams for everybody. The whole "crypto" space is proof of that.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#426

Post by wpietri »

kergonath wrote: post #415
jayd16 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>punishing gamblers, eventually people will learn to stay away from it Just like casinos?

Casinos are deemed acceptable and gamblers are (somewhat) protected instead. Instead of avoiding the bad situation, it makes it less bad. It’s just a different risk management strategy; prohibition would not be ideal either.

I think jayd16's point is that everybody knows that casinos are negative sum and have for a long time. But still, they continue to exist. So we can't assume, as ravar does, that in the long run the market will eliminate negative-sum things.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#427

Post by wpietri »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #377
mcguire wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming the two systems are equivalent.

Ironically a lot of people that would have before criticized Wall Street now seem to be spending more effort criticizing cryptocurrencies ? (Even though they are the same kind of people that created and popularized cryptocurrencies to deal with Wall Street's issues in the first place ?)

I have no problem criticizing both.

Indeed, one good criticism of cryptocurrencies is that the are sucking up a lot of the attention and money that could go into actual reform.

For example, contrast Bitcoin usage in emerging markets with something like M-Pesa. They both started at the same time, but M-Pesa has been a huge boon to the unbanked, whereas Bitcoin is a rounding error in those markets.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#428

Post by kergonath »

wpietri wrote: post #426
kergonath wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casinos are deemed acceptable and gamblers are (somewhat) protected instead. Instead of avoiding the bad situation, it makes it less bad. It’s just a different risk management strategy; prohibition would not be ideal either.

I think jayd16's point is that everybody knows that casinos are negative sum and have for a long time. But still, they continue to exist. So we can't assume, as ravar does, that in the long run the market will eliminate negative-sum things.

Right. My point was that we don't punish gamblers. instead we regulate the environment in which they gamble to limit the extent of the damage.

Otherwise, yeah. Negative things don't disappear just because they are negative.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#429

Post by mcguire »

Tenoke wrote: post #395
chii wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't get anywhere as much as the price was beforehand. that's not a conclusion, but an assumption you make. The price of a stock can only be found by transacting, and if this isn't taking place, you cannot draw any conclusions about the price of a stock. You can only guess it - via some method like cashflow analysis, or some other model.

It's pretty obvious we are indeed guessing given that this is a hypothetical. My guess is that if suddenly I own 100% of Tesla, the company will be worth a lot less after that. It is clearly not based on actual transactions or offers to need to specify that it was a guess.

That is true, but only because a) the market for entire companies is fairly small, and b) Tesla, overall, is vastly overvalued.

If you look at other companies like Dell, or the various acquisitions of Berkshire Hathaway, you would find plenty of examples of people deciding the market price of companies was less than the value, doing exactly what you are arguing can't happen, and making money from it.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#430

Post by bogomipz »

benreesman wrote: post #418
bogomipz wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might you or someone else explain what these things and how they are used/exploited? > Undocumented, conditional, non-displayed order types. Routine wash trading. Shear-but-don’t skin multi-venue arbitrage.

So electronic financial markets (whether ARCA/NYSE or Binance) have a number of ways that they can advantage certain participants at the expense of others. One of many is to make certain types of orders difficult or impossible for certain actors. Broadly speaking lots of very conventional order types are "conditional" (limit orders are technically conditional), but various exchanges have at various times allowed the…

Thanks for the wonderfully detailed response and perspective. I appreciate it. Cheers.
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