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>If the ecosystem has decided one exchange is the lead price, then they manipulate the price without needing the underlying assets. Okay, but I think there's a

by SilasX 7y ago

>If the ecosystem has decided one exchange is the lead price, then they manipulate the price without needing the underlying assets. Okay, but I think there's a big difference between: A) Some whale committed bottomless resources to keep bidding up an asset whenever it fell in price, leading to a much higher price over six months, vs B) Some whale caused a one-day surge in price of the asset, which got the asset attention, which had numerous cascading effects over the next six months, including greater attention for the asset, which led to a bigger, deeper reserve of demand for it. It feels like a stretch to refer to B) as "one whale causing the entire rally", as there is a more complex network of effects at play.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
It’s somewhat of a stretch, for sure. I’d normally expect “one whale caused the rally” to mean that the whale started buying arbitrary amounts of bitcoin at a price near the top of the rally. But I think any other description is more of a stretch. If (B) is correct it’s a speculative bubble, which happened in response to the whale’s activity, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the whale.
- SilasX 7y ago
  >But I think any other description is more of a stretch. If (B) is correct it’s a speculative bubble, which happened in response to the whale’s activity, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the whale. That's what I dispute. If that one-time spike was enough to set off that kind of activity, then it was probably going to happen eventually, and the whale, at most, hastened it. And yes, it gets kind of tricky, because most of us, including me, are comfortable saying, "This jerk tossing his lit cigarette caused this massive fire", even if the whole place was a tinderbox just waiting to turn into a blaze from anyone's single spark. But the point is, when people write these articles, they're promoting the narrative that this single whale is the major determinant of the price. I dispute that narrative, just as I dispute that one cigarette-jerk's ability to determine how many forest fires there will be.

by SilasX 7y ago

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

It’s somewhat of a stretch, for sure. I’d normally expect “one whale caused the rally” to mean that the whale started buying arbitrary amounts of bitcoin at a price near the top of the rally. But I think any other description is more of a stretch. If (B) is correct it’s a speculative bubble, which happened in response to the whale’s activity, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the whale.

SilasX 7y ago
>But I think any other description is more of a stretch. If (B) is correct it’s a speculative bubble, which happened in response to the whale’s activity, and wouldn’t have happened if not for the whale. That's what I dispute. If that one-time spike was enough to set off that kind of activity, then it was probably going to happen eventually, and the whale, at most, hastened it. And yes, it gets kind of tricky, because most of us, including me, are comfortable saying, "This jerk tossing his lit cigarette caused this massive fire", even if the whole place was a tinderbox just waiting to turn into a blaze from anyone's single spark. But the point is, when people write these articles, they're promoting the narrative that this single whale is the major determinant of the price. I dispute that narrative, just as I dispute that one cigarette-jerk's ability to determine how many forest fires there will be.