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An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

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Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#401

Post by ziml77 »

jrm4 wrote: post #188
10x-dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is digital currency, in general, anonymous? Bitcoin records all of your transactions, publicly, essentially forever. If at any point in time there is a way to tie your identity to _any_ of the transactions made in your lifetime, then all of your other transactions get deanonymized retroactively. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe a bug is introduced into the Bitcoin software, maybe the government passes a new law, e…

Right. I mean, basically you're as safe as your public-key/username. If you can make your wallet in some kind of very off grid way, the same way you'd have to use Tor; cash laptop, McDonald's wifi, etc.

It doesn't matter how secretive you are when you create the wallet, that's not where the privacy issue lies. The problem comes from your use of the wallet. If you only use the wallet to pay for digital goods and only access those digital goods through multiple layers of protection, then you're probably fairly safe.

But that's not very realistic. If bitcoin were to become the primary way to pay for things, you're going to be buying physical goods with it. If you order something online then they have your shipping address to associate with your wallet. If you buy something at a physical store then they can see you and know what wallet paid them.

And lets say you maintain one wallet for the secret all-digital stuff and another wallet for everything else (or however many wallets makes sense for you), it's better that way, but all you have to do is slip up once with the secret wallet to be screwed. Everything you did with that secret wallet can now be associated with you even if the transaction happened 20 years ago.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#402

Post by errantmind »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #368
errantmind wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have provided no definition of this 'inherent value' you claim to exist. You keep stating conclusions in absolute terms with nothing to back it up.

For example gold can be used to make jewellery etc. USD can be used to pay taxes. Shares might yield a dividend. Any physical object could have some use. Crypto has nothing. The 'market' is not the be all and end all! I suppose that as crypto maintains a record of transactions, and in so far as we can tie crypto wallets to real individuals, it might be possible to unwind all the transactions and pay reparations to th…

You keep saying crypto has no value, but that is false. It may have no value to you but it has value to other people. There is no such thing as 'objective value', which is why there is also no such thing as 'inherent value'.

Some cryptocurrencies have 'valuable' censorship resistance. Cryptocurrency also enables the existence of DAOs. Just because you are fixated on a bunch of NFT scammers doesn't mean there aren't people who 'value' cryptocurrency for other purposes.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#403

Post by eric_cc »

chii wrote: post #394
eric_cc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is it luck to recognize the value in crypto and buy a bunch? Because that's not exactly luck. That's recognizing value and managing risk successfully. It's true that some people just FOMO into anything going up. But those types will end up losing all their "gains" in due time anyways.

> How exactly is it luck to recognize the value in crypto and buy a bunch? Because that's not exactly luck. that's what luck is - they didn't recognize the value, but speculated on the potential value when it originally was valueless. It could've crashed and burned, and it was luck that it didn't. It's like seeing a lotto ticket, and claiming that you recognized the value of it (after the ticket has been shown to be…

> 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.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#404

Post by _aavaa_ »

chii wrote: post #384
wallacoloo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why pay the huge transaction costs and help the current crypto-rich get richer, instead of making purpose-built chains for your future applications? the most convincing arguments i’ve heard for reusing an existing chain is 1) easier access to users, 2) easier to deploy and 3) if your application needs decentralization, a mature blockchain will be more secure (attacks like 51% attacks have higher cost) and reliable…

The regulatory arbitrage is a lie they tell themselves. Sure, drugs could be paid for by cryptos, but the ultimate utility of that money requires it to be transferred to fiat (aka, laundering). Unless all of your goods and services can be purchased using only crypto, the tax man and the gov't will always have this weak spot to target.

It's worse than that. Even if ALL your goods an services can be paid in crypto, the government can always demand that taxes be paid in fiat.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#405

Post by ptero »

mbesto wrote: post #396
ptero wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vast majority of the people buying gold bars (or their digital equivalents, like shares of physical gold holding funds) do this to hedge a variety of life risks and value a relatively low volatility. Gold prices do fluctuate, but over the long term (decades and centuries) an ounce of gold generally held its inflation-adjusted value. I suspect buyers of gold would see a lot of problems with BTC price swing…

> 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, you can pick a 5-10 year period when gold did very poorly compared to inflation (and vice versa). But the value drop is not huge. And long term, if you look at food, clothes, housing, etc. you will find that they cost roughly the same in gold 100 years ago as they do today. When I wrote that gold held its value I meant exactly that: preservation of value.

For me (and I am not claiming that this is a universal approach), physical gold is a catastrophic risk protection. I have seen, twice, the currency of the country where I grew up become worthless over a pretty short term: a bill that would be sufficient for a vacation earlier would not buy a loaf of bread anymore. And 5 years earlier I would never have thought it possible.

So I am perfectly happy to put 1-2% of my net worth into gold. If fit hits the shan, it could buy my family a passage and some time of living expenses somewhere quiet and far away; if it does not, my grandkids can laugh about their crazy old man while enjoying most of the value that I originally put into it.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#406

Post by catillac »

eric_cc wrote: post #352
catillac wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed making money was your metric, but if the metric is “change in currency from fiat to digital” I would argue that after nearly fifteen years of little adoption for mainstream, lack of ability to use cryptocurrency for anything but black market goods and super niche products, and what seems like an utter chaotic ecosystem dominated by con artists, cryptocurrencies are a pretty abject failure on that metric as…

> lack of ability to use cryptocurrency You can transact at any store that accepts credit cards with a crypto credit card. There are countless uses for blockchains now from DeFi, gaming, social networks, NFTs, entertainment streaming, DAO’s and decentralized governance, and on and on the list goes. I recommend you catch up to 2022 crypto if you don’t already know that.

The other poster roundly dispatched your comment about using a “crypto credit card” so I’ll defer commentary on that.

On the others: the crux of my argument was adoption and usage, with the implication that cryptocurrency was better for the usecase than traditional methods. Of course you can shoehorn a blockchain or “the chain” into any usecase, just like I can use C to write a frontend service, but it doesn’t make sense because C isn’t the best or even a good tool for the job. I can buy bananas and put them on the blockchain, doesn’t mean there is any reason to do so aside from pumping up any cryptocurrency holdings I might have, perhaps BananaCoin or BananaICO or Gorilla NFTs, which I just invented right now.

In the end your pithy comments aren’t going to convince me to start shoehorning blockchain into my day to day transactions — as much as I might long for a decentralized currency — and my fact-based analyses aren’t going to convince someone who has a financial or psychological interest in bitcoins or cryptocurrency or NFTs to abandon them. I suggest we just agree to disagree.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#407

Post by spurgu »

dougk16 wrote: post #157
10x-dev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is digital currency, in general, anonymous? Bitcoin records all of your transactions, publicly, essentially forever. If at any point in time there is a way to tie your identity to _any_ of the transactions made in your lifetime, then all of your other transactions get deanonymized retroactively. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe a bug is introduced into the Bitcoin software, maybe the government passes a new law, e…

Look into privacy coins like Monero.

He mentions Monero.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#408

Post by headsoup »

joering2 wrote: post #254
largbae wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Sounds like you're just talking the banking system and cash. Anonymity + regulation. They already regulate credit and banks have systems for fraud.

What again does Bitcoin solve for over this?

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#409

Post by mcbishop »

jcranmer wrote: post #43
mcbishop wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk in the exchange above: > I think I have a pretty deep understanding of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis, because of PayPal. His comments in the exchange seem insightful to me. I assume you didn't bother reading them.

I read them. "Insightful" is not the word I would use. For example, one of the points is that the current financial system is problematic because it runs on COBOL. There's no actual criticism as to why running on COBOL is bad, other than the indirect insinuation that COBOL is old , not modern, and therefore it sucks. Basically, it's futurism for the sake of futurism--new is inherently better than old, and anything th…

I appreciate your feedback. But I agree with the other poster's comment that the reference to COBOL is a shorthand way of indicating that it's antiquated. Ways this manifests for the user are evident enough (e.g. 2-3 day ACH transfers).

The idea that Musk only thinks COBOL sucks is because it's old... well, most of Tesla's self-driving code is written in C (invented in the '70s).

Overall, I maintain that Musk's opinion is at least relevant. PayPal was disruptive to the financial industry, and Musk was very technically engaged there.

Like the OP, I'm not a Musk fanboy. But I appreciate his perspectives and contributions. Maybe any ire would be better directed towards corporate raiders that aren't manufacturing anything valuable for society, etc.

Re: An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation

#410

Post by R0b0t1 »

eric_cc wrote: post #403
chii wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly is it luck to recognize the value in crypto and buy a bunch? Because that's not exactly luck. that's what luck is - they didn't recognize the value, but speculated on the potential value when it originally was valueless. It could've crashed and burned, and it was luck that it didn't. It's like seeing a lotto ticket, and claiming that you recognized the value of it (after the ticket has been shown to be…

> 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.
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