Bitcoin Forum

This is the most wild but compelling conspiracy theory that might have legs, all in a single chart.

In a nutshell, Bitcoins are backed by oil. Literally weeks after the European Union implemented sanctions against Iran, the price of Bitcoins started to explode.

Until that point, the Iranians were able to sell their oil to Europe as only the United States had the hard hitting sanctions. However you’ll notice almost immediately after those sanctions were implemented the price of Bitcoin went up.

http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=8854

correlation != causation 

 correlation and causation =  conspiracy theory

 ... which exactly is as advertised in the article. 

hoohoooo... big conspiracy... mad iranians... selling oil for bitcoins which they change back to petrodollars at mtgox...

Let's have another theory: Obama who runs the bear trap on mtgox. That's the way they will save the budget...

It is correlation does not imply causation. To state that correlation never equals causation is just as ignorant as the OP.

You fool! It's obviously the robot prototype JFK that has traveled to the future to hoard bitcoins, sell them on Gox, then use the USD to buy the pope mobile, and then take the pope mobile back with him to the past...to change the future. I can't believe I even have to spell this out for you!

Oh s#!t! I had tomatoes on my eyes and my tinfoil hat was way to narrow. No oxygene for what's left of my brain.

Does the Robot Prototype JFK own future BTC blocks? Did he try to sell them today on mtgox? Is that the reason for the recent lag? Please help!

Petrodollar is backed by force of the united s army. All righteous armys on earth cant change math.
Energy return on energy investment of oil has fallen by ~40% in the 21th century. Bitcoin is backed by truly free trade.
Centrally planed economics are the lie of intelligent design, the second even one variable changes all evolution brakes lose

The great question will be
What is more fit for our new world bitcoin/petrodollar/gold&sliver/barter town?

Was interesting. But seems very, very unlikely. I'm willing to eat my own words though  8)

If NK keeps at it, I'm thinking iodine shots and uncontaminated food will become pretty solid barter pieces worldwide.

To put this in a bigger geopolitical picture.

Iran is selling oil on the Iranian Oil Bourse (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse"). They sell in all currencies except the USD. Also they are accepting gold (http://"http://adask.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/iran-to-sell-crude-oil-for-gold/"). Their big trading partners are China and India. Appearantly the embargo is due to Iran accepting gold (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btaG6r83E0"), according to rumors. And there is even talk of US sanctions on India for accepting Iranian oil (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dof5e_Gvk8"), while India considers using gold to circumvent this.

At this point, trading oil in BTC is ridiculous as oil is traded in billions worth at a time, while BTC market cap is a meagre $1.5 bn.

However, Iran is clearly trying to end the USD monopoly on the oil market, in effect shutting down the petrodollar. There are even rumors that the US invasion of Iraq was due to Saddam Hussein's plans of trading oil in € rather than $ (http://"http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/").

This is where this becomes interesting for BTC. If countries stop trading oil in USD, there will be nothing left to support $ fiat and it will collapse - thus increasing BTC value as a safe haven and reliable store of wealth.

Conspiracy theories often start off that way until they become accepted as truth.

This is a very thought provoking theory. Thanks for sharing, might repost those articles on my blog if you don't mind

ftfy

what if some government organisation or the fed itself was the creator of btc ? they´d get rid of their critics/enemies and future rivals in an elegant way. they´ll annihilate us financially one day and just pull the plug. ;D
 

And how, exactly, do you suggest that they cram the genie back in the bottle?

There two things couldn't possibly have anything to do with each other; and I doubt (as in, completely disbelieve) Satoshi has anything to do with any government entity.  If it did, it wouldn't have any of the properties it has now; Bitcoin would've been inflationary, with an always increasing supply, and sending Bitcoins would not only be expensive, but it would take only slightly less time than anything else.  Oh, and it would be backed by the heart-warming smiles of politicians and advertised to death on every public news network as "the most revolutionary, 100% legit alternative to the dollar, which has never been used to traffic drugs and if you use Bitcoin, you will be fighting terrorism."  And besides, the last thing anyone wants to do is ween you off the dollar.  You might start thinking crazy things, like, "Why is my money so worthless?"

They set off EMPs which would destroy every computer making bitcoin useless.

Bitcoins are backed by a special super-strong bubble formula.  :D

how would any of this not be plausible? if you cant buy or sell anything because of who you are or what you stand for because of sanctions than get a currency that is anonymous buy what you need to buy and sell what you need to sell. makes sense to me. those who joke tell me you sit behind a computer and are not iranion or a leader of a country so why make fun? you don't and couldn't know. im not saying it did happen im just saying that if more people would listen to any and all ideas and keep an open mind and use intelligence then the world would be a better place.
 ;)

I am the President of Liberia, and I approve this message. Yuri! More guns!

Wouldn't work completely.  Not only is an EMP not very likely to do widespread damage to small, disconnected electronic devices (cell phones, Ipads, Ipods, Kindles, etc), a great many people now own computers that are moderately guarded against EMP by virtue of EMF shielding that is required due to the very high frequency rates that modern cpu's and memory buses operate at.  Without such common EMF shielding, pc would be subject to crashing anytime an old spark-gap vehicle drove past on the street or anytime that streetlamp that is going bad turned back on.  It's also a known issue, so some geeks will go the extra step and actually build their own computers into a faraday cage or buy a case designed as a faraday cage using decoupling power supplies. 

I would say, with near certainty, that a nuclear war wouldn't get every copy of the blockchain even if it can still get mine.

Well, I was just going to make a snarky comment about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but this works too.  ;D

A nuclear war would, however, get the majority of disposable power generated for a given country, as well as a good portion of the occupants of said country. A single surviving ASIC could take over much more than 51% of the blockchain. Not to mention the fact that the Internet would be in tatters.

TOR was created by "them", and it still gets bad press and misconceptions by the general public...

TOR is one thing.  Getting between America and its profits is high treason; nobody working directly beneath them would dare introduce a new currency.

Remember the game when you were a kid called Mr Potato Head? Well, now you can dress up your own conspiracy theory.
Just pick out the pieces you like from the following, and see what you can make:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012