Bitcoin Forum

Did Satoshi and other whales shoot bitcoin in the foot by letting the price climb too fast a year ago on the run up to $1200? Would it have been more responsible for those larger holders to sell off parts of their holdings to keep Bitcoin from rising too high too fast?  It seems now many new prospective  investors are apprehensive about investing because of the market's volatility even though thats where money can be made.  I know its easy to say what should have been done in retrospect, because most of us had no idea the value would come plummeting back down the way it did.  Although it feels like it at the moment, I don't think bitcoin is a failure because it has lost around 70% in the last year. If you look at the last four years we are still up a significant percentage, and anyone who's been around that long knows that these drastic drops in BTC prices are nothing new but can be discouraging to new investors. It seems we have found a nice floor at $300 and though this stability is not much fun for daytraders, its good for bitcoin to be used as it was intended - traded for goods and services not a speculative vehicle or get rich quick scheme.

What makes you think they "let" the price run up? What makes you think they had control over it.

Define the word responsible. If a whale owns half a million bitcoin and sells it for $500 a pop he would make 250mil. That is done for the sake of preventing the price from rising too fast. However if the guy waited and do nothing until it reaches  $1000 without intervening, he would make a steady 500mil. For a difference of 250mil, would he have chose to carry the word responsibility with him?

At $1000, he probably wouldn't be able to sell all his bitcoins.
He could have started selling at $500 and steadied the market.
That is what the OP is trying to say.

It seems you have no idea why we hit the $1,100 dollar mark
http://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report-proof-of-massive-fraudulent-trading-activity-at-mt-gox-and-how-it-has-affected-the-price-of-bitcoin/
 (http://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report-proof-of-massive-fraudulent-trading-activity-at-mt-gox-and-how-it-has-affected-the-price-of-bitcoin/)

OP's point still stands. Real coins pushing this down could have prevented the lunacy. The problem can probably be found easily enough in game theory, I imagine. Bitcoin is a bubble-bust machine; that has become one of its defining characteristics

i never read this theory before, but it does give good reason why gox didn't have available funds for most user accounts after lying that they'd been hacked.  something still doesnt jive with how "Markus"  or "Willy" could have manipulated other exchanges as much.  i know other exchanges followed gox.  but if the buys on gox were fake volume buys, then the sell side of exchanges like btc-e and bitstamp should have had more resistance since no "inside shenanigans" were going on those exchanges - unless all sellers were moving up their sell walls when they saw how fast gox was rising or moving their coins over to gox. 

well, the idea is to keep it from decreasing in value, but not rising too quickly and falling again. stability is good for the coin to be used as it was intended as a currency. if a retailer sells a $322 computer for 1BTC then the next day that same bitcoin is only worth $300, that dissuades businesses from using it.

i was also thinking that the other day really. its exact reason why we dont have any new investments entering the market - not as much as coins being mined per day. that previous pump lasr year gave too much bad publicity and did some damage in the long run. Everytime i mention bitcoin people get shooked off by the voliatility. maybe a more gradual and slow price progression wouldnt have burnt so many hands that might never return to bitcoin again. to most it just looks like classic pump and dump scenario.

Yeah, most of them do so.

Even if some of them hold, who is interested in keeping it as an investment, they could simply wait till it hits $340 to $700 before cashing out.

Not really. A sizeable portion of businesses keep bitcoins. You would be surprised to know that 4400 Bipay merchants keep all their bitcoins.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/more-than-4400-bitpay-merchants-keep-bitcoins/

same thing happened to me.  i was not interested in the speculation aspect of btc when i first started selling goods and services for BTC. just dumping as soon as i was paid the BTC. But i quickly learned the benefit of holding a portion of my coins, and quickly delved into the day-trading market to try to increase my BTC holdings.   

BTC market is very large on worldwide base, some multi - exchange companies use BTC, so it is also the sign, that BTC will be in future.

most whales don't want ti leave the game now, they are just playing with the market, but you will get 1 or two of them that just dump their early bitcoin and run away

I want to point out that you are promoting market manipulation as a solution.

Bubble bust machine with lower volatility each month/year
Once the volatolity is gone, prices will stay much more stable.

But once the volatility is gone BTC will not be so interesting anymore to play with.

If someone owns 5% of something he can make it volatile by himself.

If someone owns 5% of total bitcoin wouldn't it easier to just sell slowly and not crash the market? Volatile only scare away investor.

If they want it yes the can, but as i stated they can make it volatile by himself.

Essentially he can make it volatile, but he won't.
This is because it is not in his best interest to cause a flash crash.

But he can make it volatile in both directions so that might be in his best interest.

Honestly, a decent derivatives exchange would really help. Whales could have sold covered calls to provide liquidity without outright selling.

OP is valid. This is in fact the case. The bubble could have and should have been prevented by the big bagholders.

With Bitcoin's volatility, leveraged derivatives would really not be necessary to make money.

That's if you're using derivatives for leverage. You could just as easily use them to hedge your position without selling. I'm talking about using BTC as a financial tool, which requires stability, not as a trading instrument.

If there is any kind of exchange for derivatives people are gong to speculate, that is simply how the markets naturally work.  If you attempt to prevent speculation then the market will not be efficient.

A derivative needs two people to take opposite positions. Usually, you have a speculator on one end. Speculators provide liquidity to derivative markets and play an important role.

Absolutely. Basically what happens is risk gets traded. The speculator offloads risk from the hedger. It's a change in risk:reward balance.