Bitcoin Forum

First, I will be upfront that I want most of the bitcoin holders to lose money. This is mainly because of the flaming they put me through when I was bearish from the peak at $30.

I thought the manipulator was trying to keep the price up higher, but this never made much sense to me why he would financially take on this burden. How could someone with so much money be so stupid to think that bitcoins are going to increase in value. Why would he try and prop up the price, while continue to lose the battle on the way down. I just could not figure it out. Well, someone brought to my attention what the manipulator is all about. He is about taking money from many of the bitcoin buyers, or "suckers/fools".

He places these bid walls so that he can sell his own bitcoins in front of his walls to the suckers/fools. I like this because I do this on Ebay with rare antiques that I collect. When I see an antique that I want to buy, I will flood ebay with my own similar antiques. This will cause people to not bid so highly on the antique I want to buy because they see many more of the same or similar ones coming to the market. I then buy up the antique I want to buy, and then remove/end my ebay listings. Works like a charm.

I am manipulating ebay for the buying end, while the manipulator is manipulating for the selling end. We are both scamming the system, stealing from the suckers out there. We play on peoples psychology and stupidity. The manipulator makes bitcoin buyers think that there is lots of buying support, so they will pay more money. I make ebay  buyers think that there is much more items being sold, so I will buy them up cheaper.

So the manipulator is not trying to raise the overall long term price, he is about short term interests. He could care less the price of bitcoin. he is about stealing money from you suckers. In a way, his tactics will actually make bitcoin price lower in the long run, because he is robbing money from the system. He was probably the main guy who pushed bitcoin to $30.00. He surely has the money to do this, and all he needed was to spend some of it on the way up.

I like him. We will be at $1.00 before you know it. The manipulator will still be around doing his tactics. This is all funny because bitcoin is supposed to be an uncontrolled currency, but it is very well manipulated. In a way, it is being used as a way to make money from the "stupid money out there". All it is is just a way to transfer wealth around, nothing productive is created.

So go on manipulator, put your bid walls up, rob money from the suckers/fools who flamed me when I tried to help/warn them.

While I don't agree with your assumptions, I share in your desire for the end goal. He isn't buying coins to resell higher, he's desperate to keep the price high, as his whole existence is centered around a high fiat <> BTC price.

And there you have it folks. People want to drive down the value of the currency because they are bitter that they lost so much when it was at $15-$30. There is not much that can be done to stop the manipulator unless somone finds a way to punish him/them for putting up their bidwalls. Of course whoever was to do this would require a lot of capital themselves.

observation - without the "manipulator, Edward would have nothing to post about.

I'm not sure what is more difficult to believe:

1) It took you this long to figure it out, or

2) you have enough outrage to start several thread per day about something which you would do yourself....and publicly wet yourself over your own cleverness about it to boot.

I agree, i was stupid not to realize it earlier. I just didn't see how he could be doing that to make money. I saw many times his bidwalls were sold into wiping him out, only to form a new and lower bitcoin price. He then bought all those bitcoins, and now he can't push the price up higher than the point he bought the bitcoins. I think that he does lose and wins, but if he continues his tactics, he must be winning in the long run. hopefully so for his sake.

I hope he loses for bitcoins sake

He's already lost, he just won't accept it yet.

While I don't agree on the desire to harm bitcoin overall, I do agree that your theory is one viable option(and I cleaned up your post via removing all your ebay stuff).

The person has so much market power that he can make money via this tactics. He probably has the lowest fees on MtGox and hence can make money with lowest spreads.

The only way to change this is to attract more people to buy bitcoins. Once the "manipulator = big trader" does not have such a big market power any more, its over for him.

This is the key problem.  We need to attract more buyers to raise the price without making it sound like we're trying to sucker people in to a dodgy investment.  One that has fallen 93% in value from its brief peak.

Us: "Come join bitcoin.  Buy some bitcoins"

Them: "Okay, why?"

Us: "So that the price of bitcoins will rise"

Them: "Who holds the existing bitcoins?"

Us: "We do"

Them: "So, why exactly is it in my interest to buy them and help you out?"

Agree, cluster.

It is about the symbiosis of 1) more investors and 2) a sustainable growth in the bitcoin economy.

It doesn't seem very logical to assume the buyer right now intends to drive price down further. The volume is just too high, he'd be hitting the size of the market. Some people bought all that volume, and assuming the majority did that to dump them again while the crash is going on sounds insane. If a large player were to panic sell 400k BTC, just half of the current weekly volume so far, he'd neither get much money out of it nor much larger additional panic volume to profit from.

This thread also confuses all big movements to come from the same person. While it's true that the bids look like a large player is involved, it's absurd to assume that person to be responsible for every large move in the last months.

Current tactics of the large player on the buying side are fairly obvious: buy in the range 1.8-2.5, maximize BTC volume. I'm not even certain he really cares about price in this range, he just buys with power. So, if he is indeed the same person as the seller, which I'm not so certain about, he would be using exactly the tactic Edward50 described in the Ebay example: try to collect as many BTC as possible, killing the short sellers in an evil squeeze.

I have very similar thinking, so if I had a lot of money, I'd be doing pretty much what the large buyer does now. But I can only hold weakly against the panic, even with the bubble in June I'm not rich yet. Too bad, eh? :P

There is plenty of supply from miners capitulating once the price raises above a certain level. All he can hope is squeezing out people who short independent of technicals and at full margin and he is loosing every time he pushes too hard..

"Losing" is such a strong word in a probabilistic environment.

Anyone buying only ever loses if Bitcoin actually dies or he sells low. If it recovers in two years, the speculation still brings an extremely massive profit in very little time, no matter what happens in between.

So by placing a massive buy wall, he's risking the chance that others will dump tons of coins on him (which he allegedly doesn't want) in order to sell a few coins marginally higher than he otherwise could?

And such a strategy has been occurring since the high in the $30's?

And yet even with such a high profile and public discussion of this strategy on the Bitcoin trading forum there is still nobody that is able to predict and counter these moves?

Doesn't really pass the straight-face test.

I am an atheist. I believe that "the Manipulator" does not exist. It is a product of your imagination.

Someone with $100 000 and / or 50 000 BTC could easily manipulate the whole market.

Are you saying these sorts of people do not exist ? 

You are a douchebag.

What is it about sarcasm that seems to go over the heads of certain people?

This post leaves me flabbergasted. I like you Edward, and you did help convince me that there was a manipulator, but what the hell? How did you not realize this sooner? Have you not been 'watching' the manipulator for months and months? I'm slightly disappointed to be honest, for someone who seemed otherwise quite perceptive.

It is also rather incongruous that you have been posting this whole time about 'helping' people, yet admit that you want the majority of them to lose money. And you have described the manipulator on several occasions using highly perjorative terms, yet admit to using similar types of tactics on ebay yourself? If so, you should have been more aware of what was happening.

Not quite sure how to respond. You are a hilarious enigma.

I still question on whenever a single individual was responsible for any price movements recently.

The Manipulator is most likely different people who have access to enough funds to corner the market at the time. As for the recent situation consider this...

Mtgox codes can be transfered from and into an bitcoinica account without delay. So if someone has a lot of USD on either platform this becomes a viable option:

Wait till enough bidders have accumulated high enough. Short into it. Place several limit orders to liquidate on the panic sells. Once the storm has settled transfer the balance to your mtgox account and place bid walls and remove them once enough bidders have accumulated high enough....
Rinse and repeat.

Tried imagining Edvard dealing with rare antiques, all i could come up with is seeing Edvard with piles of old comics: The Batman, The Superman, The Superwoman, ... The Manipulator!

How about that 500k BTC transfer?

Last time that many bitcoins were transferred in the blockchain, it was MagicalTux sending 424,242.42 BTC to prove control of MtGox deposits.

I am wondering if the manipulator waited for the market to naturally bottom out before getting back into it. Testing the waters to see how far it would drop before he came back with his money to buy as many coins as possible. The $2 invisible wall was hit and now he is showing off by putting a real (although perhaps temporary) wall at $2. Before he got back in there was a lot of volatility but now it seems to have stabilized quite a bit. So either we are saved or about to head to another big drop.

which transfer, blockexplorer link?

Of course such an amount could explain these tactics too.

It was linked in the press thread:  http://siliconangle.com/blog/2011/11/17/500000-bitcoins-transferred-in-one-exchange/

And I followed the change to this addresss where it is currently:  http://blockexplorer.com/address/1CKmEA8NcSASCwbByFGQXbsnvWz7K5p7hs

Its probably MagicalTux consolidating coins, has anyone asked him on IRC?

first of all: hello, fuck you too!  :D
second: what you do is illegal
third: you are a free markets enemy
forth: i hope you feel bad about it

.. btw, congratulations for trolling me. i am here since a month or so, have not read anything about you. but your ebaymanipulations makes you very unsympathic.i think you are the kind of person, who would sell their grandmother (and even bid for other grandmothers, just to higher the price of yours), impure drugs (regardless of the outcome for the consumer) and afterwards be proud of oneself cause you made a higher profit. yay. the other ones are so stupid, omgf!! funny this must happen all the time also to you. what do you think how do the multinationals act like? ;)

whatever, i am not idealistic, so i know there are alot of people around like you when it comes to economy, beeing the selfserving not only unethic but also illegal (if it is still rational, like in your case) manipulator of free markets. corporations, individuals and cartels acting like you are the number one reason there are still market failures out there. maybe i should overthink my ideal of free markets as totally utopian :(

but i still claim jurisdiction responsible at some point: there are laws against this sort of manipulation, just not beeing executed good enough.

I watched the manipulator lose big time on the way down. I saw many of his bid walls being sold right into, and the price of bitcoins just went lower from that point. He bought many bitcions at prices where bitcoin never hit again. So he took a loss on all those coins. It did not seem like he was using his huge market share to try and make a profit. However, lately it seems like he is doing just that. Or at least it is working more now as the drops in bitcoin are not as extreme.

To me it looked like the manipulator was all along trying to hold up the bitcoin price with his bidwalls. however, come to think of it, sombody with that much money would not be stupid enough to catch a falling knife for so long.

I still think that he lost money with his tactics because he did not expect the price of bitcoin to fall for so long and as much. He figured on more stable prices, and figured his bid walls would push the price of bitcoin more in his favor.

Either way he undermines the trust in bitcoin and that should lead to a more lower price in the long run. If I was to buy bitcoins right now I would be worried about them falling if the manipulator pulled out. The price of bitcoin is without a doubt being controlled right now to an extent, and that is not something you want to invest in as the manipualtor has pulled out of the market too many times.

true

unless the manipulator has unlimited funds, this issue will disappear naturally once more funds are added by more investors and traders.
The couple of hundredthousands he has in mtgox are still small overall in the financial world.
But you are right, there must be first some kind of trust of new investors... Or: one big investor just has the guts to make the manipulator look like a fool, with one big 500 k investment.
We know that this happens in the bitcoin economy. Back in Dec 10 - Apr 11 this is what actually happened.

If someone has sold 16.6K bitcoins at 30 that would equal to 500K USD on mtgox.

For me that is all the explanation I need.

if there's a manipulator foolish enough to buy, there's 10 more willing to sell.

Once those 10 have sold all their coins, what then?

There are 7200 new coins every day and most miners have to pay their bills with their coins. Also from past experience the bidwall gets usally pulled out after enough other buyers piled up in front of it.

Most miners are not mining hundreds of coins per day and racking up huge electricity bills that are so enormous that they need to urgently liquidate their bitcoin positions. How many of those 7200 coins do you think actually NEED to be sold to pay bills? Very few I would imagine.

Also, how many people do you suppose are mining because they actually want bitcoin rather than fiat? Mining is the most inexpensive way to obtain coins, and if you wanted to invest in bitcoin but not pay the premium charged on the exchanges, mining is the best way to subsidize the cost you would otherwise pay.

This is of course speculation. I am far from certain because there are too many unknowns, but what I want you to admit is that you cannot be certain either. So stop pretending that you are. We all know that you are shorting on bitcoinica. Might I ask what at what position you are shorting from?

EDIT: I just saw your title text. Ok, so your posts consists of opinion and not fact. Still, opinions that are not based on fact should never be held that strongly. And my question still stands.


You might be right. This has happened a lot, and the trend IS your friend...
Except of course when it's not, and you get sucker punched in the face.

Ok not most miners, just those big ones which do not want to (or can) pay the bills with their regular income. I'd imagine there are quite a few out there but eventually even that wall has to come down if fundamentals don't change.

Which brings me back to the trend & getting punched in the face: As long as bullish arguments are based on the attempt to induce fear I'd remain bearish.

If what I said seemed to you like an attempt to induce fear, I think you might need to re-evaluate your market position. If uncertainly induces fear in anyone, then they should not be trading at the levels they are trading at.

Ahh reverse psychology....
So what exactly is a sucker punch?  ::)

An unexpected attack.

In the context in which I used it, an unexpected price movement that would trigger your stops. But since you said in another thread that you don't use stops, more likely it would cause a margin call or liquidation, wouldn't it? My meaning was the folly of being certain in the face of uncertainty.

As I said, if people are fearful after reading my post, then they are either trading at levels they really should not be trading at, or else they are more uncertain about their positions than they would care to admit.

If there is an unexpected rally which liquidates my position so be it.

But it would have to be large enough to be market reversal at the same time and in that case that happens now I don't wanna have anything to do with bitcoin. So for me subjectively that is a win-win situation. (while is objectively be not)

I'm not sure what you mean. Why would you not want to have anything to do with bitcoin if the exchange price were to rise?

I have no problem with rising prices, but I'm interested in a currency and monetary system not a commodity with artificially inflated prices.
I want prices to rise because of real demand not because people withhold them from the market to increase scarcity.

If you want bitcoin to be a currency, then stop buying and day-trading it and start exchanging goods or services for it instead. Provide some REAL value! Complaining about the commodification of bitcoin while actively trading it for profit is utter hypocrisy.

If people are withholding from the market, it means they are unwilling to sell at current prices or else they have no interest in selling it in the first place - at any price. Does that mean the price is being artificially inflated? Whoever is giving away these incredibly rare tokens for $2.20 a piece is absolutely insane.

Basing the worth of a bitcoin on a manipulated rate quoted on an extremely thinly traded commodity market with very few participants, is an absolutely horrible way of valuing it. Of course the exchanges are going to be open to manipulation, of course people are going to get screwed by people with large amounts of purchasing power. The best way to deal with it and to move bitcoin into the realm of an actual currency is to just ignore the exchanges completely, to stop depositing bitcoin with them, and let the value of a bitcoin be determined by real world assets instead of fiat. Money is cheap and abundant, hard assets are expensive and rare.

The btc:fiat exchanges are blinding people to the true utility and value of bitcoin.
We are all getting blinkered by MtGox, and failing to see the forrest for the trees!

Bitcoin is abundant based on its current userbase. Its growth potential is uncertain at best so based on that assertion bitcoin is overvalued.

I am guilty of hypocrisy? Daytrading though a market maker only has an effect on the coins and fiat money already in the exchange. It does nothing to the system. All the bitcoins I ever possessed were either spent or used for trading.

Please do not compare bitcoin to an hard asset, gold, silver are limited by the laws of nature. I cannot substitute it with anything. Bitcoin is still more sane than fiat money but you are comparing apples, oranges and watermelons.

I'll make my own cryptocurrency, with blackjack, and hookers! - modified bender quote

No currency or commodity exists in a vacuum.  All are compared against at least one other value metric.  Even the best commodity with a proven track record over thousands of years (gold) is priced in US dollars.  Without that metric, how would one buy a piece of gold?  What is its value?  The exact same is true for bitcoins.  You can mine them yourself, just as you can go out and find a piece of gold in the ground.  But there are real costs associated with both actions.  

Even if we price bitcoins in ounces of gold that doesn't change the fact that bitcoins will always be compared to the value of other currencies, either by one or maybe two degrees of separation.

BTW, bitcoin is not a hard asset.  It has no intrinsic value in itself and doesn't even exist in what most people would consider physical form (no, burning it to a ROM or CD doesn't count).  Bitcoin is an agreement between multiple people who agree to give it value.  Yes, there is a limited number that will ever exist, but in every other way it's the same as any other currency.

Both of you are the epitome of the kind of blinkering that I was referring to in my post above.

If bitcoin is to be a currency in and of itself, it's value should not be pegged to ANOTHER CURRENCY!! And an inferior one at that. It has to be valued based on the hard assets, goods and services that people are willing to exchange for it, just like the USD is today. I am in no way saying that bitcoin is a hard asset. Read my post again, as both of you glaringly failed to understand it.

Like you said cluster2k, gold is priced in USD (and other fiat currencies, but primarily USD because of the global economic hegemony of the United States). We need it to also be priced in bitcoin independently of the bitcoin:usd exchange rate, and the same goes for other hard assets. That can only happen when people trust it as a medium of exchange and have a rough idea of it's purchasing power in their minds i.e. I can buy X loaves of bread with 1btc, or Y gallons of gas, or Z oz's of gold etc. Wide adoption is first necessary for this.


I had to quote this for fear you would go back and edit it out of shame. How would we value gold if it were not priced in USD? Are you actually serious cluster2k? This illustrates a conspicuous lack of fundamental economic knowledge on your part. Gold used to be the medium through which other things were bought and sold. Gold has purchasing power and intrinsic value not because of the fact it is priced in usd, but actually in spite of it! It used to be the other way round you silly person, the USD itself only had value in the first instance because it was pegged to the value of gold. And the value of gold comes from the reliable forces of supply and demand. The supply is very low, while the demand is extremely high. That is why it has purchasing power.

Yes bitcoin will inevitably be compared to other currencies by speculators, but without any hard assets in the bitcoin economy i.e. people willing to exchange these assets for bitcoin, it is a pointless comparison. YES there are 'real' costs associated with any bitcoin business that needs to be currently paid for in fiat, but they don't have to be paid for in fiat. Once people are willing for these costs to be paid for in bitcoin, then the exchange of bitcoin for fiat will not be necessary. This is why it is so crucial that we begin to offer goods and services in exchange for bitcoin, independently of a manipulated exchange rate.

Then, and only then, will bitcoin be a currency proper. As it stands now, the bitcoin economy is FAR too heavily reliant on fiat exchange services. It is almost akin to getting paid in USD for your goods or services, but having to pay all of your costs in cheese wheels that must be purchased by trading your USD for cheese on an usd:cheese exchange. Until businesses can pay other businesses in bitcoin for the majority of their expenses, it can only be a speculative trading vehicle with some very limited utility as a currency.

The last time "the Manipulator" was around it was found to be the owners of Bitcoinica changing the price to short squeeze people.

Be careful if you have bitcoins on an exchange.

Bitcoinica eventually got "hacked" and a lot of people lost money.

MtGox was also manipulating the price too.

Way to necro post!

Looks like e-bay needs to start limit people from removing listings for high priced items expensive items.
Good to know stuff like this is going on I guess  :-\

If your trying to sell something rare on e-bay looks like you really need to start watching all similar listings and pull your listing if some tries to screw you over in this manner.