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Curious - does anyone not think Bitcoin or any other cypto coin is being manipulated?

• recursive 5y ago
  Me. I don't have an opinion.
  • likecarter 5y ago
    Great analysis.
• temp8964 5y ago
  What coin is not being manipulated? Even USD is being manipulated by the fed. All the countries manipulate their coins. So the real question is whether a coin is being manipulated, but what kind of manipulation you can accept.
  • mbesto 5y ago
    First, let's start by using a valid comparable. Fiat currency has the feature of "medium of exchange", at present BTC does not (technically it does but its adoption for exchange is abysmal). > So the real question is whether a coin is being manipulated, but what kind of manipulation you can accept. The NYSE is a better comparable. In the US we have the SEC which does regulate against market manipulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation I do believe there is some level of market manipulation not captured by the SEC, however there is at least some baseline level of control against it.
    • SilasX 5y ago
      >First, let's start by using a valid comparable. Fiat currency has the feature of "medium of exchange", at present BTC does not (technically it does but its adoption for exchange is abysmal). You're changing the topic. You asked whether BTC was being manipulated, and were asked to compare to the US dollar. Whether the dollar is as "medium of exchange" has no bearing on that, you're just unhelpfully switching to an unrelated issue that will make the dollar look better in orthogonal ways.
      • mbesto 5y ago
        > and were asked to compare to the US dollar. The original blog article was about the BTC/USD market being manipulated; hence the title "Bitcoin price", in which "price" assumes you are converting one currency to another (in this case USD/BTC). The person that replied to me asked "so what, every coin is being manipulated". If anything the replier was changing the topic. The assertion that the coin itself is being manipulated is irrelevant and a red herring. In the context of the US stock exchange the SEC defines manipulation as "transactions which create an artificial price or maintain an artificial price for a tradable security". This concept isn't even a concept when it comes to the value of the medium of exchange for a currency, hence why I posited "why is this even relevant"?
        • SilasX 5y ago
          You're claiming the dollar can't be manipulated and/or no one is allowed to care about it, because one agency doesn't have jurisdiction over said manipulation?
          • mbesto 5y ago
            No, I'm not claiming anything about a currency being manipulated. I'm saying the idea that a currency in and of itself is being manipulated is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Currency manipulation, in the context of the OP's discussion, implies one currencies relation to another one, in this case USD and BTC. Federal interest rates affecting the value of your dollar making purchases for goods and services is completely irrelevant.
            • notch656a 5y ago
              I knew when I bought crypto it was being manipulated. I don't give a fuck, I use it as a medium of exchange usually dumping it within a few minutes of buying it in order to buy some goods online to avoid credit card fees (precious metals). It's true dollar is manipulated. It is true crypto is manipulated. It is true many people such as myself purely is it as a medium of exchange. Just like with dollars, I dump it as quickly as possible to buy physical assets or other investments, lest the government inflate my fiat or manipulators manipulate my crypto. In short, currencies are usually bad choice for store of value. Fed intentionally destroys USD by target of 2% a year to intentionally sabotage store of value. Back to the point. Pretty much all coins are manipulated. Even commodity money. Best to avoid regulation so government's hand is out of the pot. Also I recommend people not use crypto as investment, that is probably not smart idea to consider long chain of cryptographic signatures and hashes as a large portion of investment on your future. Or piece of paper with a president and a number on it on it either.
• DJBunnies 5y ago
  Does it matter either way?
• ptero 5y ago
  Depends on what you mean by the manipulation. Many stock, future, precious metal prices are affected by actors who want to temporarily move it for profit. Some are illegal, some perfectly legal. In what way do you expect Bitcoin to be different? This is a technical question, once you define it one could debate if this particular behavior is present in BTC.
  • mbesto 5y ago
    > Depends on what you mean by the manipulation. Fair point. I'll use the SEC's definition: "transactions which create an artificial price or maintain an artificial price for a tradable security". What the author described is exactly this. > Some are illegal, some perfectly legal. Agree. My point is probably more about the ease of manipulation when you have a completely deregulated environment.
    • ptero 5y ago
      With this definition my guess is there is likely to be some manipulation. But as BTC is not regulated by the SEC I personally do not see a major problem with it, either. My guess is that most people that I know that buy BTC, either directly or via some holding schema, do it for the speculation and in this environment they should expect other players to use any method available to them which is not explicitly prohibited. I would treat it like a poker game, where some action happens outside the strict definition of the gameplay (reading facial expressions, probing reactions, etc.). Just my 2c.
      • mbesto 5y ago
        > My guess is that most people that I know that buy BTC, either directly or via some holding schema, do it for the speculation I think you're right. But then isn't it essentially just a digital form a gold bar with less utility?
        • ptero 5y ago
          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 swings and risks that it would be outlawed or restricted in some unknown ways.
• SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I don't think it's being manipulated in only one direction, does that count?
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    It does, I think, and you make a good point; there's big players who bet on it going down, there's big players that bet on it going up. In a perfect world, their intents would cancel each other out.
    • mbesto 5y ago
      PS - I'm an investor in a fund that trades on it both going up and down (i.e. volatility).
      • mthoms 5y ago
        How does one find such a fund?
        • mbesto 5y ago
          I've been told there are hundreds of crypto hedge funds operating now. I happen to have a connection to a friend who runs one. Since most of them can't actively advertise and only cater to accredited investors, I suspect it's harder to "find" them.
• sosuke 5y ago
  I think that every and all markets are manipulated by groups with money and power. Everyone wants to game the system to act in their favor right? What would I want with more money? To earn more money of course.
• eric_cc 5y ago
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Is it illegal to manipulate crypto? If so, then how many people have been prosecuted for manipulating crypto? I think all of it is manipulated at a scale never before seen.
• deleted 5y ago
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