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The thing I think driving Bitcoin is that all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated. A trillion dollars g

The thing I think driving Bitcoin is that all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated. A trillion dollars goes into Sovereign Debt. The government can issue endless sovereign debt to dilute that. A trillion dollars goes into the stock market. The companies on the stock market can issue tons and tons of new shares to dilute that. A trillion dollars goes into paper gold. The commodities markets can naked short paper gold for however long they want to since there's cash settlement allowed of futures contracts. A trillion dollars goes into bitcoin, the price just goes up and there's no dilution. This is what makes it a symbol of resistance against those assets and the way corporations, sovereigns and commodity market makers use their particular rules to extract wealth from their investors. Also, Bitcoin is open source. So you can download the Bitcoin code and fork it and call it THE SUPER NEW IMPROVED BITCOIN, and set the "super new improved bitcoin" generation to a trillion bitcoin an hour, but the original bitcoin nodes are still around and doing their thing. However, there's nothing stopping people who want to do it your way from using your chain.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago
Other assets classes can absorb billions of dollars because that's not a lot of money to them while it's a ton for Bitcoin.
gitfan86 5y ago
Actually the opposite thing happens in the stock market. The shareholders vote on the board of directors and the board of directors pay the CEO mostly based on the stock price going up. One way they do that is buying back shares. Another way is buy making money via positive cashflow and giving dividends to the share holders. Bitcoin has negative cashflow, the only way it goes up is by more people putting money into it. I'm not saying that is a bad thing. Picasso paintings also have negative cashflow when you account for storage and security of the art. The only way a Picasso goes up in value is if more people with more money want to buy one. It is unfair to call Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme because no one calls a Picasso a Ponzi scheme.
- manwe150 5y ago
  Picasso paintings have possible positive cash flows via tax loopholes. So they don’t call it a Ponzi scheme because they do call it (legal) tax evasion. For example: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-rich-buy-art-divyanshu-goel https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-rich-buy-art-divyanshu...
  - tata71 5y ago
    Tax evasion and avoidance are two different things.
    - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
      this argument is frequently made to defend the shifting profits away from the edge (the supply side, and the retail side) and extract value from the middle (the tax haven¹). Both are immoral but only one is illegal. One can do a double-Irish-Dutch sandwich and rat fuck both employees and suppliers all in the name of creating value for the shareholders. While employees piss into bottles the forward thinking CEO engages in union busting methods to prevent them from organizing. Legal or not, why not, if you can get away by stalling until a court decides and you settle (or purge the board from the toxic elements and restart what you do with a new CEO). ¹ Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands
- fnord77 5y ago
  funny enough, high value art is used for money laundering all the time
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    Not sure about Picassos. Picasso was a world famous artist that even those who are not into fine art know and appreciate. There is kind of a consensus on the value of his work, and even those who find it ugly won't treat it as trash. The way I understand it, the kind art that is most often used in money laundry schemes is the more controversial kind. When some people think that a painting is a waste of perfectly good canvas while some rick collectors think it is the expression of god himself, how can you assign a value? This extreme subjectivity is what makes it ideal for money laundering.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Bitcoin can be shorted. Bitcoin prints money ( eg tether) Bitcoin just doesn't work. It's centralized now to fix it's issues. Best of all, none is regulated and the whales hold the power. Even more in the future with proof of stake. There is more dilution and misunderstanding with crypto in general then I've ever seen.
- psychstudio 5y ago
  Bitcoin is completely unrelated to tether. Bitcoin is highly decentralised. Bitcoin is not moving to PoS. I'm not sure what your actual gripe is, but you certainly have no idea what you're talking about.
  - vultour 5y ago
    Bitcoin is absolutely related to tether. Tether mints a billion coins and then exchanges them for bitcoin, voila, bitcoin price goes up.
    - antb123 5y ago
      USDT: $77B USDC, 41 + BUSD 14, + TUSD 1.2 + PAX 1 = $57B and growing faster and follow US regulations.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Come again? I don't think you know what you're talking about... Simple example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency) > Research by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with increases in the amount of tether and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange account for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017.
- InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  What is Tethers relationship to Bitcoin? I thought they had their own coin.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
But publicly traded companies don't dilute their shareholders away. Those shares either have to be sold (meaning the company takes in proportional amounts of cash, driving the value up) or issued as compensation (which you can't just unilaterally in a publicly-traded company). Your gold example is also very contrived because the futures market doesn't literally dilute away physical gold. As for Bitcoin: You're missing the fact that while Bitcoin can't be manipulated away from 21 million, the Bitcoin markets can definitely be heavily manipulated by sufficiently large players and insiders. And there does seem to be ample evidence that this is happening.
- Lifelarper 5y ago
  Many gold mines across the planet reopen and shutter solely based on price. If gold doubles, supply dramatically ramps up. Same with most commodities.
- JacobThreeThree 5y ago
  BTC futures moves the price of BTC. So you don't even need any BTC to manipulate the price of BTC.
  - theK 5y ago
    No, you need real money backing a credit line and collateral. Same as in any other futures business. This isn’t a new correlation, it is society driving the value of society’s creations.
    - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
      Right, and futures markets have been proven to be the preferred vehicle for price manipulation.
- siwatanejo 5y ago
  > But publicly traded companies don't dilute their shareholders away. Sure; however governments do dilute their share... err citizens away ;)
4512124672456 5y ago
> The thing I think driving Bitcoin is that all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated. Bitcoin can be just as much manipulated, if not more, because there's barely any regulatory oversight. Remember the two bots that traded Bitcoins with each other on Mt Gox to drive the price up (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/29/bitcoin-bots-bought-millions-in-the-last-days-of-mt-gox https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/29/bitcoin-b...)? What makes you think something like this doesn't exist anymore? Especially with the Tether guys at the helm, who have been proven to lie in the past (https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...), Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency investors should be worried.
- ChainOfFools 5y ago
  > Bitcoin can be just as much manipulated indeed. decentralization of mechanical infrastructure =/= decentralization of human control over said infrastructure. if anything, the former serves mainly to obfuscate the latter, rather than eliminate it.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> A trillion dollars goes into bitcoin, the price just goes up and there's no dilution. Isn't someone just going to create a Bitcoin-denominated derivative or fractional reserve bank, assuming that hasn't already happened?
- lottin 5y ago
  Not just a derivative, bitcoin itself can be inflated via partially-backed bitcoin deposits at exchanges. In other words, the moment exchanges decide to lower their reserve ratio from 1 to less than 1, the supply of bitcoins in circulation will increase as a result. And, as you point out, we don't know that this hasn't already happened.
  - shawabawa3 5y ago
    However at least with bitcoin you can easily self-custody, and be sure you're holding a real bitcoin and not a fractional one in an exchange
    - zaphar 5y ago
      Shove some cash under a mattress or store it in a vault and you can be sure you are holding real dollars not fractional ones. Just holding a real dollar says nothing about the value of the dollar you are holding. Same as just holding a real bitcoin says nothing about the value of the bitcoin you are holding. Outside forces affect the actual value of what you hold fractional or not. The ability to self-custody affords you nothing. The value in either case can plummet completely outside of your control.
grey-area 5y ago
all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated Bitcoin is thoroughly manipulated. Tether is minting a billion dollars a day now, with zero oversight and close ties to the major exchanges. Exchanges themselves have been found front running customers, running wash trades on their own coins etc etc. Fraud is rampant in this space and there is zero oversight from the normal regulatory bodies. A trillion dollars goes into bitcoin, the price just goes up and there's no dilution. But there is significant manipulation and absolutely no clarity about whether a trillion dollars has in fact gone into cryptocurrencies or whether things like the trillions of dollars that tether has minted affect the price more than real money flowing in. The numbers you can quote from exchanges are unaudited and highly suspect. At least those other assets have some sort of auditing in place to prevent fraud and market manipulation (which still happens, but would of course be rampant and largely hidden without regulation). Also, Bitcoin is open source. So you can download the Bitcoin code and fork it and call it THE SUPER NEW IMPROVED BITCOIN Ah, so the supply of this new money is in fact unlimited, since you can add new coins at any time. The supply of bitcoin may be limited (for now, by fiat), but the supply of cryptocurrencies and now nfts is constantly growing, there is no scarcity, and any we have is invented. If you think Bitcoin is a symbol of resistance you're a mark making the likes of the Winklevoss twins and JL Van der Velde even richer. Get out now if you can.
- ThomPete 5y ago
  Everything can be manipulated, but bitcoin compared to any other asset we know, is the only thing that cant be changed. You can create a new bitcoin but you cant create the same bitcoin and thats makes all the difference in the world.
  - grey-area 5y ago
    1. The rules can (and have) been changed by whoever has commit permissions on the repo, they are not immutable. 2. The rules can also be changed with a simple fork if enough users are persuaded to move (Bitcoin Cash) - and somehow the price of both is preserved (how? why? who benefits?). 3. The price is provided by unaudited exchanges and can be manipulated by manipulating linked assets and collusion with exchanges, as Tether has shown. This is a house of cards waiting to collapse.
twox2 5y ago
This is an aside. DAOs/Web3 doesn't run on bitcoin.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago

Other assets classes can absorb billions of dollars because that's not a lot of money to them while it's a ton for Bitcoin.

gitfan86 5y ago

Actually the opposite thing happens in the stock market. The shareholders vote on the board of directors and the board of directors pay the CEO mostly based on the stock price going up. One way they do that is buying back shares. Another way is buy making money via positive cashflow and giving dividends to the share holders. Bitcoin has negative cashflow, the only way it goes up is by more people putting money into it. I'm not saying that is a bad thing. Picasso paintings also have negative cashflow when you account for storage and security of the art. The only way a Picasso goes up in value is if more people with more money want to buy one. It is unfair to call Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme because no one calls a Picasso a Ponzi scheme.

manwe150 5y ago
Picasso paintings have possible positive cash flows via tax loopholes. So they don’t call it a Ponzi scheme because they do call it (legal) tax evasion. For example: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-rich-buy-art-divyanshu-goel https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-rich-buy-art-divyanshu...
- tata71 5y ago
  Tax evasion and avoidance are two different things.
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    this argument is frequently made to defend the shifting profits away from the edge (the supply side, and the retail side) and extract value from the middle (the tax haven¹). Both are immoral but only one is illegal. One can do a double-Irish-Dutch sandwich and rat fuck both employees and suppliers all in the name of creating value for the shareholders. While employees piss into bottles the forward thinking CEO engages in union busting methods to prevent them from organizing. Legal or not, why not, if you can get away by stalling until a court decides and you settle (or purge the board from the toxic elements and restart what you do with a new CEO). ¹ Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands
fnord77 5y ago
funny enough, high value art is used for money laundering all the time
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Not sure about Picassos. Picasso was a world famous artist that even those who are not into fine art know and appreciate. There is kind of a consensus on the value of his work, and even those who find it ugly won't treat it as trash. The way I understand it, the kind art that is most often used in money laundry schemes is the more controversial kind. When some people think that a painting is a waste of perfectly good canvas while some rick collectors think it is the expression of god himself, how can you assign a value? This extreme subjectivity is what makes it ideal for money laundering.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Bitcoin can be shorted. Bitcoin prints money ( eg tether) Bitcoin just doesn't work. It's centralized now to fix it's issues. Best of all, none is regulated and the whales hold the power. Even more in the future with proof of stake. There is more dilution and misunderstanding with crypto in general then I've ever seen.

psychstudio 5y ago
Bitcoin is completely unrelated to tether. Bitcoin is highly decentralised. Bitcoin is not moving to PoS. I'm not sure what your actual gripe is, but you certainly have no idea what you're talking about.
- vultour 5y ago
  Bitcoin is absolutely related to tether. Tether mints a billion coins and then exchanges them for bitcoin, voila, bitcoin price goes up.
  - antb123 5y ago
    USDT: $77B USDC, 41 + BUSD 14, + TUSD 1.2 + PAX 1 = $57B and growing faster and follow US regulations.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Come again? I don't think you know what you're talking about... Simple example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency) > Research by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with increases in the amount of tether and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange account for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017.
InvertedRhodium 5y ago
What is Tethers relationship to Bitcoin? I thought they had their own coin.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

But publicly traded companies don't dilute their shareholders away. Those shares either have to be sold (meaning the company takes in proportional amounts of cash, driving the value up) or issued as compensation (which you can't just unilaterally in a publicly-traded company). Your gold example is also very contrived because the futures market doesn't literally dilute away physical gold. As for Bitcoin: You're missing the fact that while Bitcoin can't be manipulated away from 21 million, the Bitcoin markets can definitely be heavily manipulated by sufficiently large players and insiders. And there does seem to be ample evidence that this is happening.

Lifelarper 5y ago
Many gold mines across the planet reopen and shutter solely based on price. If gold doubles, supply dramatically ramps up. Same with most commodities.
JacobThreeThree 5y ago
BTC futures moves the price of BTC. So you don't even need any BTC to manipulate the price of BTC.
- theK 5y ago
  No, you need real money backing a credit line and collateral. Same as in any other futures business. This isn’t a new correlation, it is society driving the value of society’s creations.
  - JacobThreeThree 5y ago
    Right, and futures markets have been proven to be the preferred vehicle for price manipulation.
siwatanejo 5y ago
> But publicly traded companies don't dilute their shareholders away. Sure; however governments do dilute their share... err citizens away ;)

4512124672456 5y ago

> The thing I think driving Bitcoin is that all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated. Bitcoin can be just as much manipulated, if not more, because there's barely any regulatory oversight. Remember the two bots that traded Bitcoins with each other on Mt Gox to drive the price up (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/29/bitcoin-bots-bought-millions-in-the-last-days-of-mt-gox https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/29/bitcoin-b...)? What makes you think something like this doesn't exist anymore? Especially with the Tether guys at the helm, who have been proven to lie in the past (https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...), Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency investors should be worried.

ChainOfFools 5y ago
> Bitcoin can be just as much manipulated indeed. decentralization of mechanical infrastructure =/= decentralization of human control over said infrastructure. if anything, the former serves mainly to obfuscate the latter, rather than eliminate it.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> A trillion dollars goes into bitcoin, the price just goes up and there's no dilution. Isn't someone just going to create a Bitcoin-denominated derivative or fractional reserve bank, assuming that hasn't already happened?

lottin 5y ago
Not just a derivative, bitcoin itself can be inflated via partially-backed bitcoin deposits at exchanges. In other words, the moment exchanges decide to lower their reserve ratio from 1 to less than 1, the supply of bitcoins in circulation will increase as a result. And, as you point out, we don't know that this hasn't already happened.
- shawabawa3 5y ago
  However at least with bitcoin you can easily self-custody, and be sure you're holding a real bitcoin and not a fractional one in an exchange
  - zaphar 5y ago
    Shove some cash under a mattress or store it in a vault and you can be sure you are holding real dollars not fractional ones. Just holding a real dollar says nothing about the value of the dollar you are holding. Same as just holding a real bitcoin says nothing about the value of the bitcoin you are holding. Outside forces affect the actual value of what you hold fractional or not. The ability to self-custody affords you nothing. The value in either case can plummet completely outside of your control.

grey-area 5y ago

all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated Bitcoin is thoroughly manipulated. Tether is minting a billion dollars a day now, with zero oversight and close ties to the major exchanges. Exchanges themselves have been found front running customers, running wash trades on their own coins etc etc. Fraud is rampant in this space and there is zero oversight from the normal regulatory bodies. A trillion dollars goes into bitcoin, the price just goes up and there's no dilution. But there is significant manipulation and absolutely no clarity about whether a trillion dollars has in fact gone into cryptocurrencies or whether things like the trillions of dollars that tether has minted affect the price more than real money flowing in. The numbers you can quote from exchanges are unaudited and highly suspect. At least those other assets have some sort of auditing in place to prevent fraud and market manipulation (which still happens, but would of course be rampant and largely hidden without regulation). Also, Bitcoin is open source. So you can download the Bitcoin code and fork it and call it THE SUPER NEW IMPROVED BITCOIN Ah, so the supply of this new money is in fact unlimited, since you can add new coins at any time. The supply of bitcoin may be limited (for now, by fiat), but the supply of cryptocurrencies and now nfts is constantly growing, there is no scarcity, and any we have is invented. If you think Bitcoin is a symbol of resistance you're a mark making the likes of the Winklevoss twins and JL Van der Velde even richer. Get out now if you can.

ThomPete 5y ago
Everything can be manipulated, but bitcoin compared to any other asset we know, is the only thing that cant be changed. You can create a new bitcoin but you cant create the same bitcoin and thats makes all the difference in the world.
- grey-area 5y ago
  1. The rules can (and have) been changed by whoever has commit permissions on the repo, they are not immutable. 2. The rules can also be changed with a simple fork if enough users are persuaded to move (Bitcoin Cash) - and somehow the price of both is preserved (how? why? who benefits?). 3. The price is provided by unaudited exchanges and can be manipulated by manipulating linked assets and collusion with exchanges, as Tether has shown. This is a house of cards waiting to collapse.

twox2 5y ago

This is an aside. DAOs/Web3 doesn't run on bitcoin.