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

The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 327 posts

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#11

Post by kazen44 »

davidmr wrote: post #7
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #4

>Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are often known as whales. And they’re becoming a worry for investors. They can send prices plummeting by selling even a portion of their holdings. That's not indicative of something that's a store of value.

Is there any currency or commodity or derivative for which that statement is not true? It seems self-evident that if you own a lot of something like gold, dollars, BTC, sterling, etc. and you sell it, its value relative to what you're selling it for declines.

the major difference between fiat and bitcoin in this case seems to be that the whales in case of fiat currency are either the central banks (like the FED and ECB) or large international banks who own a lot of currency?

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#12

Post by empath75 »

kazen44 wrote: post #11
davidmr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any currency or commodity or derivative for which that statement is not true? It seems self-evident that if you own a lot of something like gold, dollars, BTC, sterling, etc. and you sell it, its value relative to what you're selling it for declines.

the major difference between fiat and bitcoin in this case seems to be that the whales in case of fiat currency are either the central banks (like the FED and ECB) or large international banks who own a lot of currency?

in the case of diamonds, it's deBeers.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#13

Post by bufferoverflow »

ct0 wrote: post #9
bufferoverflow wrote: post #5

Most of these "whales" are hot and cold wallets for various exchanges, investment fund holdings, seized coins waiting to be sold. It's nearly impossible to map an address to its owner (or owners).

Isn't the US Gov one of these whales ever since SilkRoad was seized?

Not anymore, they all got auctioned off. Cheaply too, they averaged around ~$290 per bitcoin.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/acting-manhattan-us-att...

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#14

Post by charlesdm »

ct0 wrote: post #9
bufferoverflow wrote: post #5

Most of these "whales" are hot and cold wallets for various exchanges, investment fund holdings, seized coins waiting to be sold. It's nearly impossible to map an address to its owner (or owners).

Isn't the US Gov one of these whales ever since SilkRoad was seized?

These coins were mostly sold off to venture capitalist Tim Draper, for $50m: https://hacked.com/tim-draper-has-made-over-110-million-sinc...

Might sound like a success story now, but at a certain point he was down 70% on his investment!

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#15

Post by drcross »

Whales can only sell once. It's also not in their self interest to make a market collapse, why would they depress the price of the thing they are trying to sell? When whales do sell many smaller buyers then take ownership of their coins decreasing the chance of future volatility. These concerns are being exaggerated too much.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#16

Post by FLUX-YOU »

davidmr wrote: post #7
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #4

>Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are often known as whales. And they’re becoming a worry for investors. They can send prices plummeting by selling even a portion of their holdings. That's not indicative of something that's a store of value.

Is there any currency or commodity or derivative for which that statement is not true? It seems self-evident that if you own a lot of something like gold, dollars, BTC, sterling, etc. and you sell it, its value relative to what you're selling it for declines.

I'd bet that large holders of gold sell small amounts all the time without the market going nuts and kicking off volatility swings. But I could be wrong.

It's less the mechanism and the implication that people imply by following whales. Why should a store-of-value market react when someone sells a small amount regardless of their current holdings?

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#17

Post by charlesdm »

empath75 wrote: post #12
kazen44 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the major difference between fiat and bitcoin in this case seems to be that the whales in case of fiat currency are either the central banks (like the FED and ECB) or large international banks who own a lot of currency?

in the case of diamonds, it's deBeers.

Used to be. Don't think they have the power over the market they used to have.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#18

Post by astura »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #4

>Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are often known as whales. And they’re becoming a worry for investors. They can send prices plummeting by selling even a portion of their holdings. That's not indicative of something that's a store of value.

It's not unprecedented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#19

Post by yellowstuff »

davidmr wrote: post #7
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #4

>Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are often known as whales. And they’re becoming a worry for investors. They can send prices plummeting by selling even a portion of their holdings. That's not indicative of something that's a store of value.

Is there any currency or commodity or derivative for which that statement is not true? It seems self-evident that if you own a lot of something like gold, dollars, BTC, sterling, etc. and you sell it, its value relative to what you're selling it for declines.

Buying any asset pushes the price up and selling pushes the price down. It's a matter of sensitivity. The Chinese government could probably push down the price of USD a few percent by announcing a policy change today, but one guy could potentially push Bitcoin prices down significantly with a keystroke.

Re: The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market

#20

Post by simias »

marsrover wrote: post #2

I really enjoy investing in cryptocurrencies. However, I have a lot of doubt this is going to make the world a more fair or better place. It's going to create a wealth gap like has never been seen in first world countries.

It seems pretty obvious to me as well. Given huge speculation surrounding them at the moment I'm surprised we don't hear more people warning about these things. I don't think I want to live in a world where BTC replaces the USD/EUR/...

Untraceable money means that corruption and tax evasion would be easier than ever. Democratic governments would be worse off in dealing with that, because unlike totaliatrian regimes they won't be able to round up BTC-rich people and break their fingers until they give their secret keys.

Deflation means that the rich will get richer doing nothing while the poor won't be able to get a loan to bootstrap their businesses. Forget about trickle down economics, this is downright "trickle up".

I have yet to hear a reasonable rebuttal to these claims. Every time I see these points brought up in the bitcoin community it's met with a bunch of hand waiving and claims that they're "FUD" and that the poster doesn't know what they're talking about. So please, BTC enthusiasts, educate me so that I can stop spreading this "FUD", where's the flaw in my reasoning?

Post reply on HN