Bitcoin Forum

they are giving bitcoin a bad name. price will go down long term because of these disgraceful whales.

Is a whale someone who bets a lot with a high percentage?

Whales are people with large holdings in BTC..

Frankly the whales are not stupid. Anyone with half a brain knows BTC can not continue on its current path given it won't be worth anything to mine in the future if the ASIC arms race continues. :/

someone who is rich is not stupid
you may ask yourself why you are not a whale

If a whale can make some money by moving the market with his large holdings, what is wrong with it?

whales move the market up and down
I don't know what is the problem

By knocking it down too much.

They should keep it fluctuating at a level. Even if they are manipulating the market, they should keep it at one price range. It was good when they kept it at $800 or $600 but now they keep sinking it slowly. People will lose trust in BTC. The Chinese will leave. The Chinese are driving the price up and the stupid western whales drive it down. At least keep it at $500!!

I don't know who you are, but I like your words :P
Maybe he isn't whale because he is stupid or something distracting his brain.

The problem is that they don't talk to each other, don't coordinate with each other, and don't even trust each other. If one of them sells, the others have no way of knowing if he's trying to crash the market, or just buying another Lamborghini.

I would doubt that they would ever attempt to collude with each-other like that. Doing so would be very risky not only from a profit prospective but also from a potentially having to go to jail for market manipulation perspective.

i agree they probably don't trust each other, but by means of blockchain analysys it should be pretty easy for them to contact each other, they just need to find big wallets and contact them with their own big wallet. The protocol allows for this kind of messaging and once they know they are in the same boat (yacht in that case) it could become logic to not fight to each other, in that case trust should matter less than one may think

They aren't stupid. They are just taking advantage of the price and the small time holders to sell off when they feel that their holdings are crashing down in value. Usually, whales are the reason why there are ups and downs in the crypto markets. :D

Whales Gonna Whale. They are lossing money, a lot o money if they sell now.

This.
Without the poor, no riches.
There must be contrast. Otherwise life is dull.

Most people are rich due luck. Have fun being stuck on a dead end where you can't get out of poverty if that ever happens to you.

I think whales pumped the coin that it made bitcoin famouse. so it is even

if they pump it, it make the wealth spread to the world, bitcoin is a form of money spreading, money redistribution, this is thanks to the whales

When whales dump, it means at least all these BTC are going in hands of other non whale people. It only takes these people to be intelligent and not panic sell at minimum fear.

In some years from now, the trading volumes will be so high that a whale alone won't change anything.

The strategy of whales dumping is to get other people to sell as well.... and then pick up btcs at a lower price.

I wish i was a whale  ;D

I wouldn't say Whales are stupid they just know what they are doing and are smart enough to do it and make themselves rich. Any one of us could be a whale we just need to know the means and ways to be just as rich as those who are.

True. A stupid whale won't be a whale for long.  :)

it's better for them to sell at other whales , but they don't know who are the buyers

So, the implied assumption is there are no "whales" in the futures markets? forex, securities etc? Theres whales in every market, Bitcoin is no exception.  If it wasn't for these whales you speak of, bitcoin would have never rallied like it did last year.

A smart whale would never do that because it doesn't work. When the whale dumps, other people buy the dumped btc cheap. Then the price returns to normal and the whale has less than he started with.

And don't forget whale eat up all the small fish in one move be it up or down.

what people forget is that the biggest whale of all is us together as a whole :)

Its not right to call them stupid. Whales have the maximum amount of bitcoins, and you can't expect them to hold those massive amount of coins, when the price is going from 600$ to 275$ within a month. They need to protect their investments, and when the whole world panics, they will obviously not hold.

i think its nice that whale dumps his coins. Price lowers for a while so other ppl can buy coins cheaper. Bitcoin wealth distribution improves. Less whales the better, less ppl who can fcuk with market at their will. It would be perfect if noone owned more than 1 % of all coins.

And they are making big bucks so why are they stupid?

Exactly.

They see too many people trying to get on the get rich quick bandwagon and decided it is time to cash out to those bag holders.

Before we accused whale are stupid , do you know how much BTC mined everyday ?
and how many BTC dump everyday to the market ?
Miner need money to pay their daily bill.
This is not 100% fault from miner or whale.

Haiku Alert!!!

You wanted a free market, you got it. Free markets are not kind.  ;D

It's not the market, it's the people in it. A free market could be the greatest & kindest place on Earth if everyone on the planet were kind and had good morals and ethics.  ;)

That's true. I was assuming people would act in ways that are profitable and competitive. But, as you say, these are choices people may make or not make.

I think it should be a little more detailed and not as much of a generalization. It sounds like your assuming people would act in ways that are profitable and competitive no matter what ethical or moral guidelines are broken?  

I had assumed...or hoped  :-\ ... that there were other ways to be profitable and competitive and that people would act without the need to demean themselves to a lower standard just because they have a small shred of anonymity. But, alas, bitcoin shows glimmers of both extremes, the good and the bad.

I realize there will be plenty of people who are just generally bad people but I feel like there are more of the good guys then the bad, and I hope that people in the bitcoin community do not decide the only real way to make a profit with bitcoins is to start a scam, defraud someone, or manipulate the market. I think this would be bad for bitcoin.

I'll conclude with the fact that money does not make you smart, and not having any doesn't make you stupid. It also doesn't take a genius to get rich, even the ethical way. The majority of rich people I know are NOT rich because they worked hard and earned it. At the end of the day, those rich people likely see me as one of the stupid ones, but I am OK with that.  ;D

How incredibly dumb is that logic? That's the same as saying, a communist system could be the greatest & kindest place on Earth if everyone on the planet were kind and had good morals and ethics.  ;)

See? everything can work IF everyone on the planet were kind and had good morals and ethics, IF.

This, most people that got rich come from early money distributions (just like rich bitcoin people). Once you inherit 5 millions, it's HARDER to lose them than to keep them.

If you are born in middle class, chances are you'll be stuck there, let alone being legit poor. A breakthrought through the class you are born at is nothing but luck. Working hard and saving = you may become a millionaire, but you'll get to enjoy it where, in the cementery? what a joke.

According to Forbes, 273 of the 400 richest people in the U.S. earned their way onto the list. A minority inherited their money.

It may sound the same but I think a communist system is an entirely different conversation..... your comparing a socioeconomic system with a financial market and I am not sure I can find the logic in that.

This number is really misleading because many rich people will work hard, and invest their money in order to create additional money/wealth for themselves via their own business ventures. I would argue that a good portion of the 127 of the 400 richest people would be on the list of top 400 richest people regardless if they inherited their money or not.

Take Bill Gates for example, his family was very rich prior to him starting Microsoft, he was the beneficiary of a multimillion dollar trust fund. Today he is the country's 2nd richest person.

The Forbes article has no value to me, anyone can hand select 600 "strong candidates", narrow it down to 400, and be able to spin the percentages whichever direction they want. I realize there are a group of people who everyone expects on these lists, and they have no choice to put them on, but I fear there was bias amongst the "Forbes 400 Team" doing the article. I would also argue there are people who don't want to be in the public eye that are not on the list.

Aside from all of that, focusing on the "Top XXX" group of anything shouldn't prove a thing. Especially only 400 people, but I guess its entertaining to read.  ;)


http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2014/09/29/inside-the-2014-forbes-400-facts-and-figures-about-americas-wealthiest/

what's with the whales who buy large volumes of coins?

Whales are smart, therefor they are whale!
Make yourself a whale with these cheap prices and buy them all!

No real whale would be in it for a quick trade. The quote about the ascii arms race peaking seems pot on. No new cheap coin.

Few years before quantum computing picks up the baton.

If I was whaley I'd monitor the ascii's extremely closely - once reach 10% below 'peak coin' - id begin subtly dumping for 2 years.

Then buy it all up before the next wave of tech is due.

But I is not a whale. I'm not even from Wales.

i do not think they are stupid, this is a free market and people will and have the right to decide based on individual interests. It's the rule of the game and what counts at the end is the holistic approach combined with a long-term analysis.

From my experience and stuff I have an opinion on, people who understand money and business become rich, most coming from middle income, and not inheriting that money. Those who do not understand money and business (especially budgeting, investments, and other basic household financial skills), either never get rich due to mishandling their money and spending or borrowing too much, or if they do become rich, either through inheritance or winning the lottery, very quickly lose all those millions and end up in a worse debt than if they hadn't gotten that money (known as the Lottery Curse). If you want to be rich, or at least well off, Step 1 is learn some basic finance, like compound interest, investments, how to calculate debt and interest payments, and how to budget. This should be required teaching in schools, but is pretty much never taught, so people grow up living paycheck to paycheck, and 75% end up reaching retirement with less than $60k to their name.

But he was so lucky. What if he would be born in Africa?
Would his trust found helped him to get where he is now?
Would he have trust found at all?

I don't think the comparison is whether certain regions have more access to wealth than others. That's a given. The question is, do some people in some regions have an unfair advantage over others, or is wealth the product of some individuals working harder and smarter to obtain it.

If Bill Gates was born in Africa, he probably would have tried to get an education in some American or European university (there were lots of people from Nigeria and other places in the universities I attended), and the end result may have still been similar, though it would have been harder for him to reach it.

They are very pleasurable. You know who you are.

Probability that any given altcoin will ever amount to anything = 0.001%

Probability of success in selling them short all the time = 99.999%

The question is not valid. If he were born in Africa, he wouldn't be Bill Gates, he would be someone else. You are implying that a lottery was held and some lucky person was selected to be born as Bill Gates.

Well if Bill Gates's situation was exactly the same with the exception of where he lived (in africa vs in the US) then things would have turned out very differently. The trust fund would need to stay as without it, you cannot make an apple to apples comparison (although you could argue that the trust fund could be much smaller so it could finance a similar standard of living as his "real" trust fund was able to support).

I would say that he would likely not be in the same position as he is in now as he would almost certainly not have had access to the technology that was available in the US when he started Microsoft in africa, which would mean he could never have created windows/dos. I would say that the chances of him starting Microsoft would be even greater if his trust fund was the same size as "US" bill gates had because such a trust fund would be able to sustain a much better standard of living in africa and he would have no real incentive to work for a living and start any kind of a career