4 ms·

Main source of instability is price manipulation by big players and market inefficiency (not easy enough to arbitrage between exchanges). It would be interestin

Main source of instability is price manipulation by big players and market inefficiency (not easy enough to arbitrage between exchanges). It would be interesting to see them do the same thing if BTC market cap is in couple of trillions. For example, if you're on any exchange that lists the total amount of orders in BTC, you can easily catch when the manipulation starts by seeing out of the ordinary sums (triple the amount of usual) for open positions. Not to mention insane bot activity that is equivalent to a DDOS attack on the exchange. During the last several hours of IOTA pump, exchanges, even the IOTA tangle were, and still are unstable.

gruez 9y ago
>not easy enough to arbitrage between exchanges doesn't tether fix this?
- nlperguiy 9y ago
  for arbitrage you want to move all currencies, not just one. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets for example, bitcoin is now huge on bithumb, I'd buy it at bitstamp and sell it for 10% more, and repeat. given the slow transaction times, huge fees, large mempool, this is impossible to do. exchanges also ban you for trying to do arbitrage too, so there's a risk of losing all the funds.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    Exchanges don't ban users for exploiting arbitrage, every trade is money to the exchange and it benefits them to enable arbitrage to take place. No idea where you pulled that claim from. It's also not impossible to trade via bitstamp and bitthumb, sure it may take an hour or so to get your btc from bitstamp to bitthumb but that's not the bottleneck. Once you sell on bitthumb for USD you need to get that USD back to bitstamp. So you have to get it from a Korean Bank to your own account and then to bitstamps European bank account. Best case scenario that route takes 5-10 working days so the BTC network taking an hour or so to confirm is the least if your problems.
    - nlperguiy 9y ago
      Some exchanges offer fee-less withdrawals (like Bitstamp), which makes arbitrage more profitable. I'm pretty sure they'd ban you ASAP if you're withdrawing like crazy (they are paying your fees in BTC). As for transfer times for BTC not being a problem, 1 hour is a gamble in cryptocurrency world.
      - celticninja 9y ago
        They won't ban you for withdrawing. If you withdraw lots then you have purchased lots, the exchange makes a cut each time you buy. BTC fees are minimal and exchanges can craft more efficient transactions too, so they are not going to ban anyone for making too many withdrawals.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- empath75 9y ago
  They've printed a billion dollars worth of tether in the past few months with nothing backing it. They fixed something anyway.
Epenthesis 9y ago
Right, but given that that's true today, what makes BTC a store of value? Or should I be parsing the phrase to mean "It's not anything today, but in the long term, once the market cap is large enough, it'll be a store of value"? (I'm not being snarky; I'm legitimately confused by what people mean by the phrase.)
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  > I'm not being snarky; I'm legitimately confused by what people mean by the phrase. I am being snarky: They mean "you better hurry up and buy some bitcoin quick, so I can have some new bagholders"

gruez 9y ago

>not easy enough to arbitrage between exchanges doesn't tether fix this?

nlperguiy 9y ago
for arbitrage you want to move all currencies, not just one. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets for example, bitcoin is now huge on bithumb, I'd buy it at bitstamp and sell it for 10% more, and repeat. given the slow transaction times, huge fees, large mempool, this is impossible to do. exchanges also ban you for trying to do arbitrage too, so there's a risk of losing all the funds.
- celticninja 9y ago
  Exchanges don't ban users for exploiting arbitrage, every trade is money to the exchange and it benefits them to enable arbitrage to take place. No idea where you pulled that claim from. It's also not impossible to trade via bitstamp and bitthumb, sure it may take an hour or so to get your btc from bitstamp to bitthumb but that's not the bottleneck. Once you sell on bitthumb for USD you need to get that USD back to bitstamp. So you have to get it from a Korean Bank to your own account and then to bitstamps European bank account. Best case scenario that route takes 5-10 working days so the BTC network taking an hour or so to confirm is the least if your problems.
  - nlperguiy 9y ago
    Some exchanges offer fee-less withdrawals (like Bitstamp), which makes arbitrage more profitable. I'm pretty sure they'd ban you ASAP if you're withdrawing like crazy (they are paying your fees in BTC). As for transfer times for BTC not being a problem, 1 hour is a gamble in cryptocurrency world.
    - celticninja 9y ago
      They won't ban you for withdrawing. If you withdraw lots then you have purchased lots, the exchange makes a cut each time you buy. BTC fees are minimal and exchanges can craft more efficient transactions too, so they are not going to ban anyone for making too many withdrawals.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
empath75 9y ago
They've printed a billion dollars worth of tether in the past few months with nothing backing it. They fixed something anyway.

Epenthesis 9y ago

Right, but given that that's true today, what makes BTC a store of value? Or should I be parsing the phrase to mean "It's not anything today, but in the long term, once the market cap is large enough, it'll be a store of value"? (I'm not being snarky; I'm legitimately confused by what people mean by the phrase.)

ForHackernews 9y ago
> I'm not being snarky; I'm legitimately confused by what people mean by the phrase. I am being snarky: They mean "you better hurry up and buy some bitcoin quick, so I can have some new bagholders"