Bitcoin Forum

Is there a critical mass so to speak where,  holders of huge amounts of coins will diminish through these mass sell-offs and we will reach a point when the price can continue to rise almost uncontrollably?

Its assumed that there are still some fat cats out there with large stores of coins,  and that the mining companies have huge stores, but everytime someone sells off a few thousand coins the wealth is dispersed into a possibly more long-and-bullish crowd.  Causing price rallies that go so high even I consider dumping my measly stash.

What do you think? 

sure, there's whale sellers. what about all the whale buyers? their coins don't disappear, you know.

Absolutely,  I know there is a lot of wealth in the world that could buy massive piles of coins, however as the mining game gets longer in the tooth and the price of btc continues its ascension,  let alone if it followed difficulty entirely.  I would think that it becomes prohibitively expensive to be a whale buyer, It would take increasingly bigger whale buyers (which could happen for a while) to keep enough coins in few enough hands to enable forced volatility.

I guess what I am getting at, is that I sense after watching the stupid charts and live feeds so much is that the price would skyrocket almost out of control if there was several times less large holders all chomping to sell at $238 USD.

The FBI has 173k+ bitcoins ;).

I thought it was only 20k, and they couldn't get at the rest?

DPR gave up his main wallet in order to save himself.

https://blockchain.info/address/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH

The earlier coins are at a different address that I'm to lazy to pull up.

It's a good thing that this is in the speculation forum and not being presented as fact since I do not believe there has been any official word on how the private keys were obtained.

Yep, for all we know -- and this is supported by other facts in the case -- dude was just sloppy as all hell.

Putting aside the FBI for the moment, there are at least a half-dozen (possibly over a dozen) users who each have over 400kBTC apiece.

Of course, they might all be turbobulls who will never sell until bitcoin is current money and they can spend their stashes directly. There's no way to know for sure.

But because there's no way to know for sure, I don't think this is a scenario which will ever really leave the realm of possibility (unless, y'know, bitcoins become current money and cashing in your stash stops requiring that it be sold).

I think sell-offs are more as result of herd mentality than people with large stashes. Large holders are motivated to avoid dumping large amounts, so I think the danger is low. Furthermore, it is the panic that follows is what really drives down the price. As a result, I don't think that fewer large holders will change anything. There will always be sell-offs, and we will never reach a point when "the price can continue to rise almost uncontrollably." Plus, the perception that a price will always continue to rise is a primary cause of a bubble -- we really don't want to reach that point.

You guys are correct.  It is not known, but it was most likely he struck a deal or he was sloppy.

I agree with this. It doesn't take much in the way of dumps to start panic selling, which is fueled by all the fish.

Then again, hard to not be "sloppy" when the FBI has a keylogger on your machines.  Again, don't know this, but it's a strong possibility.

Waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay?