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Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

nytimes.com

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Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#201

Post by jebeng »

jzymbaluk wrote: post #179
acct1771 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked great in 2008.

It actually did. The market was on it's way to crashing harder than the great depression, but it didn't, probably thanks in some part to government being able to intervene and control monetary policy

A very large amount of Bitcoiners absolutely insisted we were headed towards hyperinflation due to QE back then. In fact that was the very reason a lot of them were interested in Bitcoin in the first place.

Interesting how things have worked out. They were right about Bitcoin's value, but badly wrong on all of the economic related predictions.

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#202

Post by root_axis »

elif wrote: post #148
conanbatt wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most interesting thought to me right now is how the situation will develop if or bitfinex/tether crashes the market hard. I am not a fan of the SEC getting involved. Taking crypto as an experiment, I think it is better for the market to take a hit and then find organic solutions. If the SEC gets involved and busts bitfinex/tether, the community loses the opportunity to become 'unbailable'. Yes , people will lose…

coinbase already FDIC insures USD holdings, and 3rd party insures crypto holdings. risk variability is already organically controllable, and can be observed in the disparity of price movement between different exchanges (gdax is always lagged/dampened)

> coinbase already FDIC insures USD holdings

Which is totally irrelevant to the cryptocurrency.

> 3rd party insures crypto holdings.

Yes, approximately 2% of their crypto holdings, so effectively nothing from the perspective of a customer who loses funds if their cold wallets are attacked.

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#203

Post by jebeng »

duxup wrote: post #99
simias wrote: post #84

The somewhat ironic part is that one of the core concepts of Bitcoin is that you can't counterfeit it. You can mathematically prove how many coins you own, if somebody sends you 3 BTC then once it's been validated on the blockchain you know that the money is now yours, they can't have lied, it can't bounce like a cheque Except this Bitfinex thing shows that while an amount of bitcoin can't be manipulated or counterfe…

The amazing transparency of the crypto tech has been overshadowed by a total lack of transparency in every other way.

Well to be fair, the reason we're having this discussion now is because people have been watching and questioning the expansion of the Tether supply via its transparent blockchain.

Someone could probably argue this is a step in the right direction from the days of Mt. Gox and its complete lack of transparency.

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#204

Post by IntronExon »

fdchn2018 wrote: post #199
nickbauman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems we're seeing with cryptocurrencies are utterly unsurprising if you know what money really is and how it actually works. I think people who are excited about cryptocurrencies assume that money is merely a tool to facilitate transactions between parties of people. The fundamental model of this is two people bartering goods, lol, in some sort of imagined "forest primeval" before money was invented. That mon…

Finally created an account to reply to this. There is a great thread on Reddit called - Where has all the world's money gone, explain it like I'm 5. It starts from a convenient barter system. As I was reflecting on the various ICOs I realised that the technology and the blockchain makes the old barter system very efficient. So I do believe that in fact it is a substitute for that behaviour. In fact Im convinced that…

That’s a long way to go to just proselytize without addressing any of the previous concerns. You seem to be reading from the same script all of the “new accounts” use to boost cryptocurrency as well. Finally you claim governments can’t stop something which creates a cryptographically secure “paper” trail.

No.

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#205

Post by fdchn2018 »

IntronExon wrote: post #204
fdchn2018 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally created an account to reply to this. There is a great thread on Reddit called - Where has all the world's money gone, explain it like I'm 5. It starts from a convenient barter system. As I was reflecting on the various ICOs I realised that the technology and the blockchain makes the old barter system very efficient. So I do believe that in fact it is a substitute for that behaviour. In fact Im convinced that…

That’s a long way to go to just proselytize without addressing any of the previous concerns. You seem to be reading from the same script all of the “new accounts” use to boost cryptocurrency as well. Finally you claim governments can’t stop something which creates a cryptographically secure “paper” trail. No.

Everyone in crypto world knows that Tether is borderline fraud. Everyone's waiting for this correction. It's important for the coin and the people who invested in tether may get shafted. It's an important learning lesson. There are a lot of coins that may just not go anywhere. Don't read the whitepapers and make the right conclusions - and you're burned. Not defending tether at all. The top commenter is absolutely right about tether. Hope it dies fast.

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#206

Post by [deleted] »

Leszek wrote: post #145
kelvin0 wrote: post #130

My question is: what is the value of a Bitcoin? It looks to me like a great way to transfer currency and facilitate exchange of goods, but not much more than that. So 'investing' in this digital currency itself does not make much sense to me, because intrinsically it has no 'real' value. I might be misinformed about the subject, in which case I would gladly like to be shown my error. For example, why don't I invest i…

What is the value of anything, really? The value of a metal brick, or a shiny stone, far exceeds any practical utility of the physical object itself. Even the value of a "real" currency is based, in broad strokes, on what you can exchange it for.

[deleted]

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#207

Post by [deleted] »

fdchn2018 wrote: post #205
IntronExon wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a long way to go to just proselytize without addressing any of the previous concerns. You seem to be reading from the same script all of the “new accounts” use to boost cryptocurrency as well. Finally you claim governments can’t stop something which creates a cryptographically secure “paper” trail. No.

Everyone in crypto world knows that Tether is borderline fraud. Everyone's waiting for this correction. It's important for the coin and the people who invested in tether may get shafted. It's an important learning lesson. There are a lot of coins that may just not go anywhere. Don't read the whitepapers and make the right conclusions - and you're burned. Not defending tether at all. The top commenter is absolutely ri…

[deleted]

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#208

Post by jebeng »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #157

Bitcoin is a system where you can have reasonably strong trust in the ledger and absolutely no trust in any other part of the market at all. It's a demonstration in practise that pure unregulated trade in the digital equivalent of used unmarked bills leads to a broken market where literally everything is a scam, crime pays, and meaningful business cannot be transacted. Its value is being propped up beyond this techni…

In what way is a transparent blockchain where every transaction is recorded and fully public analogous to unmarked bills?

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#209

Post by Aunche »

sathishmanohar wrote: post #141
simias wrote: post #84

The somewhat ironic part is that one of the core concepts of Bitcoin is that you can't counterfeit it. You can mathematically prove how many coins you own, if somebody sends you 3 BTC then once it's been validated on the blockchain you know that the money is now yours, they can't have lied, it can't bounce like a cheque Except this Bitfinex thing shows that while an amount of bitcoin can't be manipulated or counterfe…

the simplest and most efficient scams of all time. This maybe the simplest scam but I think the most efficient one is the one being pulled by the fed.

Yes, I'm sure that Janet Yellen takes the stress and responsibility of maintaining the world's largest bank for the whopping 200k salary.

Re: Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up

#210

Post by coolspot »

cgyulay wrote: post #195

Genuine question: whether or not Tether is fraudulent, how much can a currency with a market cap of ~$2B affect the greater ecosystem, or even just Bitcoin with a purported market cap of ~$150B? Obviously a scandal of this magnitude in a major cryptocurrency is bad for the whole environment for a host of reasons...but if Tether is really just a ~$2B fabricated cash injection, how much could it really prop up BTC?

Tether does not have $2b market cap. They claim having $2b usd funds inflow.

If I sell one of my hair for $1, you could say my head has $50,000 market cap, but no one actually paid/received these $50,000.

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