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Yeah, I wrote a long rambling comment which said pretty much what you just said. Mt. Gox manipulation plus desire to speculate equals $1,100/coin, and now peop
by sillysaurus3 12y ago
Yeah, I wrote a long rambling comment which said pretty much what you just said. Mt. Gox manipulation plus desire to speculate equals $1,100/coin, and now people's desire to speculate is settling.
Maybe Mt. Gox's initial manipulation caused the price to curl upwards just enough to entice everyone else to jump onto the bandwagon back in August of 2013, but the manipulation probably wasn't the reason for the surge to $1,100. That was probably herd dynamics, like you said.
(To be clear, there's some pretty hard evidence that Mt. Gox was manipulating the market, so if you're asking whether any manipulation ever occurred, it seems pretty clear it did: 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...)
- maxerickson 12y agoI would call that article "speculation", not hard evidence. This article makes the point that the large round number trades could simply be large round number trades: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/05/27/mtgox-willy-markus/ http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/05/27/mtgox-willy-markus/ A key statement: Slow, structured buys are designed to avoid, not cause, jumps in prices. Note, I'm not defending Mt. Gox, just pushing back against a quick conclusion about what they did.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoWhy did trades continue to execute even during Mt. Gox's downtime? The website and API were both down, yet trades were still being made by the bot. The reasonable answer is because the bot was running within Mt. Gox itself.
- maxerickson 12y agoPerhaps Mt Gox offered high deposit customers an order fulfillment system. Again, my argument is "Be careful in ascribing moves in the price of bitcoin to the intentional acts of Mark Karpeles.", I'm not defending Karpeles or Mt Gox.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoWell, yes, we can come up with a bunch of explanations. But there's no evidence any such fulfillment system ever existed, except a little bit of handwaving from Mt. Gox insinuating it might have existed. (I know you're not defending anyone, and I really appreciate having a good debate partner. Certainly not looking for an echo chamber. Just wondering how the simplest explanation isn't the best, in the absence of evidence.)