Bitcoin Forum

Did anyone ever consider the possibility that bitcoin would create a prisoners dilemma problem among the worlds most powerful elites?

Basically the logic works something like this. They run the worlds financial system which is incredibly beneficial to the group as a whole. But if any one individual actor decided to quietly buy up huge amounts of bitcoin than give the go ahead to pump it on his media networks than this would offer more advantage to him personally than he could ever gain from sharing his usually scheduled portion of the fiat pie with all other elites.

Some economics buffs might recognize this as the same mechanic that prevents cartels from being able to price fix in a free market.

Every national government will have to decide if Bitcoin is going to remain legal. If you are the issuer of a weak or threatened currency, how cool is it that your citizens buy Bitcoins to hedge against inflation?

FinCen and now CyFin are oiling the machine for global easy legal Bitcoin use. However governments have a choice to make if Bitcoin is not going to be the reserve currency of choice, for a lot of nationalities. I can't imagine China allowing Bitcoin for international trade and a lot of other countries too would feel the same.

So OP, you are right we might already have passed the point of solely national attitude towards Bitcoin as important.

If Bitcoin can exist, it will by itself be king of all other fiats.

Yep, that's exactly what it does. It's awesome and exciting.  :)

Btc might just dunk them head first in the icy waters of a free market whether they like it or not. If they are forced to adapt and learn how to operate like their great grandfathers (elites who were actually beneficial to society on net) or parish, than these will be exciting times indeed.

The problem with the world is not some Illuminati elite cartel. The governmental restrictions on the trade and transfer of funds cause the desire for something like Bitcoin. Store of wealth does not though, gold has very good properties in that respect (a non-arbitary, ancient standard).

Bitcoin speculation is nothing more than speculation. Just because you're wealthy you can't make some huge armed mob cede control over trade.

What is proposed in the OP is pump and dump and illegal in most jurisdictions. A player abusing media power to make something spike faces the risk of getting arrested. Also, he'd rather start with something that is currently cheap with respect to its underlying market.

who ever said anything about dumping. I only talked about pumping. As far as i know pump schemes are not illegal. Persides if you become wealthy enough in the process of the "scheme" than you become wealthy enough to buy your way around any law. Rupert murdock for example might have the ability to dominate the power of the Rothschild or who is more powerful than he is by going rogue with is media network.

also i never said anything about the illuminati. All im talking about are the incredibly influential power brokers, military officials and capitalists that we all know exist and benefit from fiat money.

I can certainly see the possibility of single actors buying up btc on the side as a speculative endeavor. However, the idea that said actor will use their media strings to promote it is extremely unlikely to me, as their risk (attack from other influentials, possible social/financial ostracism, assassination if one wants to don that cap) far outweighs the potential benefit (a nebulous amount of one-time profit that may or may not be greater than what they make off of the current system).

Your theory is correct qualitatively, I just disagree on a quantitative basis. I don't think that anyone with enough power to do what you describe would make more from doing so than from continuing on as they are.

Maybe. Im not saying that this is necessarily the case. Only that it might be the case. John d rockerfeller was the kind of man who would have put everything on the line for even a shot at becoming the most powerful man in the world, and these men are the decendents of men like JD. How much they are really like him though i question, a lot of time has passed since then, many generations.

oh also you have to consider that being ultra wealthy in a free market society will buy you a lot more than being ultra influential in statist society. Look how much power kim il sung has compared to the average north korean but look how many luxuries he can afford compared to idk JayZ, a man whos influence over the average american is eclipsed by the influence kim il sung has over the average north korean, but still lives in greater luxury because the american society is so much more productive than the north korean society because we are that much freer.

Cult leaders like Molyneux may preach such things all day, but this just fails at reality. The devil just always shits on the greatest heap, as we say in Germany.

Regulation is necessary, in a less hierarchical society it's just that it must happen in bottom-up initiatives through the people.

its "kim jong un" now. and he can play with nuclear toys.

Everyone is mightily impressed!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/43fd4de8753b6f67f9c258653faaf85e/tumblr_mkfreha74x1r8asibo1_500.jpg

im sorry you cant think through the logic of the position yourself

Well unfortunately, reality is a bit more complex than this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOBD6v8g1F4 

i wouldn't contest this statement.

Kim Il Sung is dead. ???

ya ur right he was the first one.. the new one is kim jong un right? sorry bout that

And?

But they still price fix. Just look at cable and phone bills. Data usage plans and text plans.

Sending texts actually costs wireless providers nothing. Every time your phone checks for a signal, it sends an echo request consisting of 160 gibberish characters, and does this around every second. When you send a text, instead of sending gibberish, it sends meaningful text. The "cost" to the provider is literally zero. You might ask yourself, then, why doesn't one service provider just offer free texting and gain a huge competitive advantage over all the other companies? Then they would all have to offer free texting to survive, but none of them want to. So... price fixing is alive and well, whether legal or not.

This assumes that the phones companies operate in a true free market. In a true free market (without government-imposed artificial barriers to entry) then YES, entrepreneurial small companies could easily start up and try their luck by competing with free texting. If it's feasible to be profitable doing that, then they would gain market share and thrive and other companies would have to compete with them, possibly offering free texting as well.

Some economics buffs might recognize this as the same mechanic that prevents cartels from being able to price fix in a free market.

This is interesting.  I could see it happening, but unlikely due to the reasons other commenters have brought up

I think the bigger bitcoin gets, the more challenge it will have from governemnts. I remember back at $100 the bulls were telling us not to worry about governments at all because bitcoin was currently tiny and was too small to even provoke their interest. Then $1,000 must have been the critical level where this safety popped and finally some governments started taking action against bitcoin. During the next bubble when bitcoin breaks $1,000 and goes to higher levels, we'll probably see even more objection from more governments. Eventually bitcoin could get so big where it actually causes currencies to decline rather than just the fear that they will decline and then we could see a whole new wave of action.

Once bitcoin catches on enough, at least 1 of these extremely rich guys will definitly buy a shitload of them.

I heard bill gates is already bullish on bitcoin, Altough I don't know if he has some. I don't know if you qualify him as global elite either.


By that time they can't stop it anymore. They will try but many would be upset if they threaten their bitcoin. It's like stealing everyone's gold and making it illegal for individuals to hold gold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)

If the world economy has another liquidity crisis (runs on banks by other banks) like in 2008/9, I'm looking forward to the possible moment when a few financial insitutions start using bitcoin as collateral for overnight swaps/repo. Those guys have so much money it could get really interesting at that point.

This would piss off their peers, certainly, but it's all dog eat dog when either you or the next bank will go bankrupt the next morning :)

I found this on the web, on an interview of him:
What are your thoughts about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?    
The foundation is involved in digital money but unlike Bitcoin it would not be anonymous digital money. In Kenya M-pesa is being used for almost half of all transactions. Digital money has low transaction costs which is great for the poor because they need to do financial transactions with small amounts of money. Over the next 5 years I think digital money will catch on in India and parts of Africa and help the poorest a lot

"Bitcoin is a technological tour de force."

The cartels are not an organized group that is why they cant set the price.

In the end is supply and demand that will dictate price. Whether the elitists can hoard enough to constrain supply to increase the price is noteworthy.  We know more than half has been mined already and there is an arms race on the ASIC battlefront to get the rest.

In your example they didnt do the free texting first because they can make more money by still charging until something revolutionary comes along, its all about profits.  If you can get away with it do it and help to pay the bills and fatten your pocket until you are forced to adapt.

This is the same thing when the Chinese asic companies went independent and blew the market away late 2013 and early 3014.  Now they know they can design and manufacture and bring to market the asic machines faster then anyone else they stay just below the other companies, US and Europe that people will still but their equipment, and will keep competitively lowering prices as difficulty changes and other players come on board.