8 ms·

Wow, this paper's conclusion is delayed by 3 years. Willy and Markus bots are old news for anyone who has been following bitcoin closely. The source of all thes

Wow, this paper's conclusion is delayed by 3 years. Willy and Markus bots are old news for anyone who has been following bitcoin closely. The source of all these allegations was this blog appearing in 2014: https://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report-proof-of-massive-fraudulent-trading-activity-at-mt-gox-and-how-it-has-affected-the-price-of-bitcoin/ https://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-repor...

agumonkey 9y ago
Any recent manipulations ? especially in 2017 end ?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- oldstrangers 9y ago
  Theres 'Spoofy': https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4 https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-domin... Then of course there is the Tether debate. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/mystery-shrouds-tether-and-its-links-to-biggest-bitcoin-exchange https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/mystery-s... Both probably related.
- wcoenen 9y ago
  Tether claims to be backed by USD but could easily be a money printing press injecting fake value into the crypto markets. According to their own data, they have created $1.6B worth of tethers: https://wallet.tether.to/transparency https://wallet.tether.to/transparency
  - paulmd 9y ago
    Don't worry though, they have $900k of assets backing up that $1.6B of Tethers! No problemo! 1800x leverage is a walk in the park right guys? /s
    - dannyw 9y ago
      The USD backing Tethers could be used to buy Tethers! Instant capitalisation!
      - qubex 9y ago
        That’s comfortingly close to fractional reserve banking (which unfashionably I’m a big fan of).
        Kelbit 9y ago
        Except in a real fractional reserve system, the central bank usually sets reserve and/or capital requirements.
        qubex 9y ago
        Yep, but that’s a legal requirement tacked on by governments, not an actual theoretical requirement.
        notahacker 9y ago
        Sure, but assuming Tether are lying about their instrument being fully backed it doesn't meet any of the theoretical requirements either. Fractional reserve relies on banks being strongly incentivised not to issue too many bank notes because they earn profits only on repaid loans issued to creditworthy borrowers, not from the act of printing the bank note to sell for currency. Even in the absence of regulation, centralised clearing and interbank loan markets and a central bank as lender of last resort, fractional reserve depends on bank notes circulating and retaining value because enough people actually need them to meet debt repayment obligations, not on sufficient numbers of people believing that it's fully backed by the financial asset they actually want in their portfolio. (Also, the history of bank runs suggests the legal requirement might have been a rather good idea)
        qubex 9y ago
- arcticbull 9y ago
  Most recently, there's the tape-painting bot Picasso: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/meet-picasso-the-painter-on-gdax-c478ff8f50e5 https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/meet-picasso-the-painter-on-g... If you were paying attention in the week that followed this post, the spread between GDAX and the other major US exchanges narrowed from $1000+ per coin to just about $11 right now, and trade volumes on GDAX plummeted. Maybe theres's some other reason, though there's some crazy correlation there at least. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about that.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    lmao, I imagined doing this one night, as a thought experiment. smh
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    His case relies on random assumptions.
  - fpgaminer 9y ago
    Looks like that article was written on the 23rd of December. That's the same time period around which Coinbase abruptly released Bcash. That time period was a barrage of negative kerfuffles for them. Historically Coinbase/GDAX has enjoyed "inflated" BTC/USD prices because of their trustworthiness. Contrast with Bitfinex which does not serve US customers, has been hacked in the past, and is (last I heard) in debt from said hack. Or contrast with any of the other exchanges which are either questionable or located outside the U.S. Gemini is the only other state-side trustworthy exchange besides them. (I say inflated, but it's probably more appropriate to say that the price is a discount on all other exchanges; a discount which accounts for the counterparty risk and difficulty moving USD in/out of them.) The late December fiascos that Coinbase suffered has likely shaken that sense of trust, at least in the short-term, resulting in both reduced trading volume and reduced prices relative to other exchanges. So the question is, which theory is more likely? That a single trading bot has complete control over Bitcoin's price and its discovery has resulted in the dismantlement of the program? Or that traders are reacting to the news of "insider trading" by Coinbase employee's? Or maybe it's as simple as being the end of December. The winter holidays slow down markets.
- aviv 9y ago
  You'll find out in 3 years.
- brentm 9y ago
  I couldn't point to anything specific besides general human nature and in my opinion that suggests that if it can be done for a profit it will be done. So to me it seems highly unlikely that there isn't some flavor of manipulation going on. There are random alt coins with multi-billion dollar market caps. There are fortunes being minted, people are surely manipulating something. I think the interesting question though is will the world long term become the new manipulated view or will it eventually all just fall part.
- mercer 9y ago
  The Tether 'situation' worries me most. As far as I can tell Kraken is the only exchange that even allows tether to fiat trade, and that's just the first thing about the whole story that worries me.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Any recent manipulations ? especially in 2017 end ? Personal guess: none needed. The massive value drop right before Christmas was IMHO a combination of Christmas shopping (people cashed out their new riches to surprise their loved ones) and the end of FY2017 (tax gaming). [disclosure: owning ~500€ in BTC, did not sell/buy during that period]
avip 9y ago
prev. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 [EDIT] >Further proof that the absurd run-up in November when bitcoin reached $1,200 was illegitimate. That's 4 years ago.
zmk_ 9y ago
This is how research in economics works. It can take even 5 years to get a paper published, although these guys seem to have written the paper quite recently. Turnaround was quick for them... Pre-publication version of the article is available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2977479 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2977479
- sarajevo 9y ago
  SSRN charges for access to the file ($5) - the three links below have a free version (the first link is the site where the file got originally published) >- WEIS - The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security http://weis2017.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/WEIS_2017_paper_21.pdf http://weis2017.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2... >- Semantic Scholar: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c592/1dd0d1176278a644d06d1fb6e38efe687bf8.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c592/1dd0d1176278a644d06d1f... >- archive.is - Webpage Archiving Tool http://archive.is/jRZw0 http://archive.is/jRZw0

agumonkey 9y ago

Any recent manipulations ? especially in 2017 end ?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
oldstrangers 9y ago
Theres 'Spoofy': https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-dominates-the-price-of-bitcoin-39c711d28eb4 https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how-a-single-entity-domin... Then of course there is the Tether debate. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/mystery-shrouds-tether-and-its-links-to-biggest-bitcoin-exchange https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/mystery-s... Both probably related.
wcoenen 9y ago
Tether claims to be backed by USD but could easily be a money printing press injecting fake value into the crypto markets. According to their own data, they have created $1.6B worth of tethers: https://wallet.tether.to/transparency https://wallet.tether.to/transparency
- paulmd 9y ago
  Don't worry though, they have $900k of assets backing up that $1.6B of Tethers! No problemo! 1800x leverage is a walk in the park right guys? /s
  - dannyw 9y ago
    The USD backing Tethers could be used to buy Tethers! Instant capitalisation!
    - qubex 9y ago
      That’s comfortingly close to fractional reserve banking (which unfashionably I’m a big fan of).
      - Kelbit 9y ago
        Except in a real fractional reserve system, the central bank usually sets reserve and/or capital requirements.
        qubex 9y ago
        Yep, but that’s a legal requirement tacked on by governments, not an actual theoretical requirement.
        notahacker 9y ago
        Sure, but assuming Tether are lying about their instrument being fully backed it doesn't meet any of the theoretical requirements either. Fractional reserve relies on banks being strongly incentivised not to issue too many bank notes because they earn profits only on repaid loans issued to creditworthy borrowers, not from the act of printing the bank note to sell for currency. Even in the absence of regulation, centralised clearing and interbank loan markets and a central bank as lender of last resort, fractional reserve depends on bank notes circulating and retaining value because enough people actually need them to meet debt repayment obligations, not on sufficient numbers of people believing that it's fully backed by the financial asset they actually want in their portfolio. (Also, the history of bank runs suggests the legal requirement might have been a rather good idea)
        qubex 9y ago
arcticbull 9y ago
Most recently, there's the tape-painting bot Picasso: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/meet-picasso-the-painter-on-gdax-c478ff8f50e5 https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/meet-picasso-the-painter-on-g... If you were paying attention in the week that followed this post, the spread between GDAX and the other major US exchanges narrowed from $1000+ per coin to just about $11 right now, and trade volumes on GDAX plummeted. Maybe theres's some other reason, though there's some crazy correlation there at least. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about that.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  lmao, I imagined doing this one night, as a thought experiment. smh
- lostmsu 9y ago
  His case relies on random assumptions.
- fpgaminer 9y ago
  Looks like that article was written on the 23rd of December. That's the same time period around which Coinbase abruptly released Bcash. That time period was a barrage of negative kerfuffles for them. Historically Coinbase/GDAX has enjoyed "inflated" BTC/USD prices because of their trustworthiness. Contrast with Bitfinex which does not serve US customers, has been hacked in the past, and is (last I heard) in debt from said hack. Or contrast with any of the other exchanges which are either questionable or located outside the U.S. Gemini is the only other state-side trustworthy exchange besides them. (I say inflated, but it's probably more appropriate to say that the price is a discount on all other exchanges; a discount which accounts for the counterparty risk and difficulty moving USD in/out of them.) The late December fiascos that Coinbase suffered has likely shaken that sense of trust, at least in the short-term, resulting in both reduced trading volume and reduced prices relative to other exchanges. So the question is, which theory is more likely? That a single trading bot has complete control over Bitcoin's price and its discovery has resulted in the dismantlement of the program? Or that traders are reacting to the news of "insider trading" by Coinbase employee's? Or maybe it's as simple as being the end of December. The winter holidays slow down markets.
aviv 9y ago
You'll find out in 3 years.
brentm 9y ago
I couldn't point to anything specific besides general human nature and in my opinion that suggests that if it can be done for a profit it will be done. So to me it seems highly unlikely that there isn't some flavor of manipulation going on. There are random alt coins with multi-billion dollar market caps. There are fortunes being minted, people are surely manipulating something. I think the interesting question though is will the world long term become the new manipulated view or will it eventually all just fall part.
mercer 9y ago
The Tether 'situation' worries me most. As far as I can tell Kraken is the only exchange that even allows tether to fiat trade, and that's just the first thing about the whole story that worries me.
mschuster91 9y ago
> Any recent manipulations ? especially in 2017 end ? Personal guess: none needed. The massive value drop right before Christmas was IMHO a combination of Christmas shopping (people cashed out their new riches to surprise their loved ones) and the end of FY2017 (tax gaming). [disclosure: owning ~500€ in BTC, did not sell/buy during that period]

avip 9y ago

prev. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796748 [EDIT] >Further proof that the absurd run-up in November when bitcoin reached $1,200 was illegitimate. That's 4 years ago.

zmk_ 9y ago

This is how research in economics works. It can take even 5 years to get a paper published, although these guys seem to have written the paper quite recently. Turnaround was quick for them... Pre-publication version of the article is available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2977479 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2977479

sarajevo 9y ago
SSRN charges for access to the file ($5) - the three links below have a free version (the first link is the site where the file got originally published) >- WEIS - The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security http://weis2017.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/WEIS_2017_paper_21.pdf http://weis2017.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2... >- Semantic Scholar: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c592/1dd0d1176278a644d06d1fb6e38efe687bf8.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c592/1dd0d1176278a644d06d1f... >- archive.is - Webpage Archiving Tool http://archive.is/jRZw0 http://archive.is/jRZw0