Bitcoin Prices Were Manipulated

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rgMekanic

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Finance professor John Griffin, and graduate student Amin Shams from the University of Texas have posted a paper showing that the price of Bitcoin may have been manipulated late last year when it's price ran up to record highs according to an article from The Hill. The paper states:

"By mapping the blockchains of Bitcoin and Tether, we are able to establish that entities associated with the Bitfinex exchange use Tether to purchase Bitcoin when prices are falling. Such price supporting activities are successful, as Bitcoin prices rise following the periods of intervention."

The study is based on analyzing the transaction records stored on Bitcoin's public ledger. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission subpoenaed both Bitfinex and Tether in December.

What do you mean the imaginary money that lives in my computer could have it's value manipulated?! I'm shocked! SHOCKED! Thanks to cageymaru for the story.

The CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commision have been ramping up their enforcement efforts against fraudulent cryptocurrency activity and scams as Bitcoin and other digital tokens gained prominence over the last year.
 
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It is no different than the price manipulation that occurs in the Stock Market despite all the "Regulation" that is in place. It is par for the course for any type of investments and if you're a good investor. You learn to read this type of asshatery and either run from it or jump in while you can to get your piece of it.
 
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Blaze Wedgewood said:
The gold and silver markets have been manipulated for years, as have many others. I guess when you're a "too big to fail" financial institution it's all fine? *shrug*
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Investing in snake oil doesn't make you smart either whether that snake oil is called oil, silver, gold, or BITCOIN. But at least the former is tangible and actually useful as a commodity.
 
Ahh yes the "whataboutism" starts. "But what about stocks!!!111one" Seriously has to be one of the silliest deflections people do. When there's a bad story about their sacred cow, try to spin it to be "well what about this other thing!"
 
SGTGimpy said:
It is no different than the price manipulation that occurs in the Stock Market despite all the "Regulation" that is in place. It is par for the course for any type of investments and if your a good investor. You learn to read this type of asshatery and either run from it or jump in while you can to get you piece of it.
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Painful Engrish is painful.
 
I don't understand (maybe because I didn't read the article)... aren't you supposed to buy low and sell high? What's illegal about buying more when the price is falling?
 
SGTGimpy said:
... You learn to read this type of asshatery and either run from it or jump in while you can to get you piece of it.
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So smart guy, can you tell us what information you use to read this type of asshatery? Why didn't you come out with a paper at that time telling all of us this manipulation? Your delusion is just over the top. I have seen many people like you during the dotcom boom, denial, denial, denial.
 
EODetroit: The paper is about how they were able to accurately show price manipulation not buy low/sell high stock trading 101 type stuff. Dunno how you're getting that at all.
 
EODetroit said:
I don't understand (maybe because I didn't read the article)... aren't you supposed to buy low and sell high? What's illegal about buying more when the price is falling?
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They had not insignificant interest in the affected securities, and manipulated the price (through automated purchases of the securities in question) to boost confidence/hide weakness and drive more purchases from other parties. Once the value reached an acceptable level, they sold most/all their shares and made off with the profits, meanwhile the value of the securities tanked, and everyone else was left high and dry.

At least, I imagine it went something like that. That'd be securities fraud, if I'm not mistaken.
 
I vill zay nossing... NOSSING! I vill nicht speak of dis 'bitcoin manipulation'.


P.S. Ok, I lied. Fuck crypto, you can't even explain to the people who are championing it what is wrong with it. It's existence is like fashion - if you tell enough people that wearing used underwear on your head is the fashion, eventually people will start wearing soiled underwear on their head. That is the sole credibility of cryptocurrency - if enough people believe that it will work as money, it becomes money. It has no other validity. Forget about wealth dilution, volatility, manipulation, lack of regulation, dispersion gravity or the fact that it can (and will be) stolen from you without the thief even knowing your name or address ... It doesn't exist!

It was fun to play with when it was small, but it isn't small anymore. It's a California earthquake - the day is coming when the earth moves, but we don't know when, and we don't know how bad.

P.P.S. And I still have some. I refuse to cash it in because I refuse to treat it as real.
 
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Regulation is coming and has been coming out in different countries. Manipulation - well that doesn't happen anywhere else :rolleyes:, oh wait, governments, news, advertising, schools . . . Volatility - can be a good thing to weed out the bad ones, hey stock market has a hell a lot of volatile stocks. Dispersion gravity??? Wealth dilution??? Anyways anyone investing into Crypto should also be aware of the risks and that over 95% of those coins will probably not be around in 10 years - the other 5% or the ones that make it - will probably be very big in a multi trillion dollar economy.

Today's governments and banking systems have failed for about 2 billion folks who have no access or just plain fraudulent ones. Anyways now is the better time to invest with the very low market values if one does such things and not when the value is dramatically increasing way above previous values. Doesn't matter, folks will buy high and sell low then whine and complain how they lost so much because things are suppose to just climb forever to the moon.
 
seanreisk said:
I vill zay nossing... NOSSING! I vill nicht speak of dis 'bitcoin manipulation'.


P.S. Ok, I lied. Fuck crypto, you can't even explain to the people who are championing it what is wrong with it. It's existence is like fashion - if you tell enough people that wearing used underwear on your head is the fashion, eventually people will start wearing soiled underwear on their head. That is the sole credibility of cryptocurrency - if enough people believe that it will work as money, it becomes money. It has no other validity. Forget about wealth dilution, volatility, manipulation, lack of regulation, dispersion gravity or the fact that it can (and will be) stolen from you without the thief even knowing your name or address ... It doesn't exist!

It was fun to play with when it was small, but it isn't small anymore. It's a California earthquake - the day is coming when the earth moves, but we don't know when, and we don't know how bad.

P.P.S. And I still have some. I refuse to cash it in because I refuse to treat it as real.
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Cool Story. I will continue paying my mortgage with my RX VEGA farm ;)
 
noko said:
Dispersion gravity??? Wealth dilution???
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Dispersion gravity is a form of manipulation, but it is the idea that dense pockets of a type of wealth can affect the value of that wealth without overt action. First used to describe the controlled valuation of diamonds through the New York diamond market by controlling the release of diamonds to different industries.

Wealth dilution is the big thing that crypto fanboys don't see. Suppose you had a small country of 100,000 people, and that country decided to mint one million gold coins as its official currency. Then someone stood up and said, "I'm going to make a currency out of wood chips that I have autographed. Bring me two wood chips of perfect size, and if I like them I will sign them, and I'll take one and you can have one, and you can spend them as money." Eventually he did this so often that people started trading the wood chips as money. If they are generally recognized as a form of money, and he signs a number equal to the number of the gold coins, then the value of the gold coins should drop by half - the nation had one million gold coins as a representation of its internal wealth, and now it has one million gold coins and one million wood chips. This is bitcoin - a currency created from nothing that represents nothing but is valued at levels great enough to buy houses and cars.


I'm not saying that the age of currency unregulated by national or international money markets isn't coming. We all know it's coming, it's a canon of science fiction. But bitcoin isn't it, it isn't fast enough, it isn't really mobile enough, it isn't trustworthy, and it doesn't represent any form of value. I'm not even against bitcoin, but I am against thinkers who only see the current effect and so champion it without understanding that the emperor has no clothes.
 
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spintroniX said:
In b4 the faithful defend their magic coins
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Called it back in November last year.

https://hardforum.com/threads/bitcoin-plummets-below-7-500.1953936/page-6#post-1043471620
https://hardforum.com/threads/bitco...-reaches-300-billion.1949105/#post-1043346560

Kdawg said:
just like how the biggest players manipulate stocks.
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Big players in stocks issue unlimited quantities of counterfeit unbacked securities that have the same convertibility rights as carwash tokens, and then use said tokens to bid up prices of stocks to astronomically irrational highs? Does the SEC know this?
 
opfreak said:
This is not possible because block chain.
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You forgot the sarcasm emote, :)

I am sure this is not a surprise to anyone. A handful of people control the cryptocrazed market while the little guys run around with thier hair on fire defending their choice to be a part of the manipulated market. The guys doing the manipulation have to be laughing their arses off.
 
Not sure I understand something here. Although it was stupid speculation, I don't recall anyone claiming it was manipulated up. Some of the Alex Jones crowd claimed it was manipulated down. I mean if the price is changing dramatically a certain way, you will get seemingly collective behavior from purchasers. There is undoubtedly a group that does not see a bottoming on the horizon. So that group if they see falling prices will naturally buy, buy, buy. Not sure if that qualifies as 'manipulation'. Seems like a FUD attack on Bitcoin.
 
ccityinstaller said:
Cool Story. I will continue paying my mortgage with my RX VEGA farm ;)
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Confusing your electric bill with your mortgage does tend to be a side effect of mining ;)

I have no skin in this one way or the other, other than I would have hoped graphics card pricing would be a lot lower by now. Scams in crypto is not surprising, but everything goes through headaches in its infancy. I'd be good with a digital currency as that is basically what I have now... some number at a bank, pay with a credit card, and then pay the credit card with a digital number I have at a bank.

Sounds like a seamless transition really :)
 
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From the outpouring of hate from gamers, I guess investors manipulating values on exchanges somehow undermines the underlying technology?

BUT MUH GAMING CARDS, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
 
jpm100 said:
Not sure I understand something here. Although it was stupid speculation, I don't recall anyone claiming it was manipulated up. Some of the Alex Jones crowd claimed it was manipulated down. I mean if the price is changing dramatically a certain way, you will get seemingly collective behavior from purchasers. There is undoubtedly a group that does not see a bottoming on the horizon. So that group if they see falling prices will naturally buy, buy, buy. Not sure if that qualifies as 'manipulation'. Seems like a FUD attack on Bitcoin.
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Did you actually read the article? Because your entire post suggests you didn't.
 
thebufenator said:
From the outpouring of hate from gamers, I guess investors manipulating values on exchanges somehow undermines the underlying technology?

BUT MUH GAMING CARDS, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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How dare people want to use a product for the primary purpose.
 
Just OPEC and Russian oligarchs boosting their profits when the oil crashed.
 
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Like it or not digital assets are a thing, it's 2018, and it's only going to increase in the increasingly digital world. I've been in the game since the days of mining on 6950's and 7970's and pretty damn well for myself over the years as a hobbyist in the field.

For much of the past, it's akin to gambling in a way. I've never put in my own money, just mining, trading, and more mining with strategic cashouts when I feel like it. It can crash to zero tomorrow and I'm out nothing :)
 
Blaze Wedgewood said:
The gold and silver markets have been manipulated for years, as have many others. I guess when you're a "too big to fail" financial institution it's all fine? *shrug*
Click to expand...


Yeah I finally got round to watching 'The Big Short' last week. It's a rigged game from start to finish.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Like it or not digital assets are a thing, it's 2018, and it's only going to increase in the increasingly digital world. I've been in the game since the days of mining on 6950's and 7970's and pretty damn well for myself over the years as a hobbyist in the field.

For much of the past, it's akin to gambling in a way. I've never put in my own money, just mining, trading, and more mining with strategic cashouts when I feel like it. It can crash to zero tomorrow and I'm out nothing :)
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Good for you. I'm curious, though: in 2008, had you personally issued a large number of sub-prime mortgages? Did the fact that you hadn't somehow make you immune to the downturn?
 
Is this why you are not supposed to invest in unregulated markets?
 
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