3 ms·

Not sure why an uneven distribution of btc implies currency manipulation. The author should explain how exactly this manipulation supposedly works.

lisper 13y ago
Did you not even bother to read the article? "The most damning fact revealed in the paper is not the extreme top-heaviness of the Bitcoin ownership pyramid, but rather the elaborate lengths to which the hoarders went in order to conceal their existence from “rank and file” users." I don't see how it could possibly have been made any clearer.
- grimtrigger 13y ago
  I still don't see how that is currency manipulation. Some people decided they didn't want everybody to know how many bitcoins they have. What am I missing?
  - lisper 13y ago
    It's not "some people", it's an entity or small set of entities that control a significant fraction of the total bitcoins in existence. These entities may or may not be manipulating the currency, but they have the power to do so if they choose. It is not unreasonable to be disturbed by the fact that these entities seem to have taken measures to conceal their existence.
- scotty79 13y ago
  It's just statement of the impression they got. It doesn't give any explanation why they've thought that. They apparently think that splitting money between accounts is sign of attempts to conceal wealth and that it's done not because they want protection from criminals (also governments) but to keep ordinary users in the dark. If I had 5% of all bitcoins I wouldn't keep them in single wallet either.
  - lisper 13y ago
    No, it's a paraphrase of one of the conclusions of the original source paper: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf "[W]e isolated all the large transactions in the system, and discovered that almost all of them are closely related to a single large transaction that took place in November 2010, even though the associated users apparently tried to hide this fact with many strange looking long chains and fork-merge structures in the transaction graph."

lisper 13y ago

Did you not even bother to read the article? "The most damning fact revealed in the paper is not the extreme top-heaviness of the Bitcoin ownership pyramid, but rather the elaborate lengths to which the hoarders went in order to conceal their existence from “rank and file” users." I don't see how it could possibly have been made any clearer.

grimtrigger 13y ago
I still don't see how that is currency manipulation. Some people decided they didn't want everybody to know how many bitcoins they have. What am I missing?
- lisper 13y ago
  It's not "some people", it's an entity or small set of entities that control a significant fraction of the total bitcoins in existence. These entities may or may not be manipulating the currency, but they have the power to do so if they choose. It is not unreasonable to be disturbed by the fact that these entities seem to have taken measures to conceal their existence.
scotty79 13y ago
It's just statement of the impression they got. It doesn't give any explanation why they've thought that. They apparently think that splitting money between accounts is sign of attempts to conceal wealth and that it's done not because they want protection from criminals (also governments) but to keep ordinary users in the dark. If I had 5% of all bitcoins I wouldn't keep them in single wallet either.
- lisper 13y ago
  No, it's a paraphrase of one of the conclusions of the original source paper: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf "[W]e isolated all the large transactions in the system, and discovered that almost all of them are closely related to a single large transaction that took place in November 2010, even though the associated users apparently tried to hide this fact with many strange looking long chains and fork-merge structures in the transaction graph."