Bitcoin Forum

Do you think the effect of Mark Karpeles' "Willy" buying bot is the main reason for the price correction we've been seeing over the past year?

Sometimes I hear people's guess that the price decline is because "all the miners are selling their mined bitcoins" which is causing the price to drop. But I don't think that's the significant cause of the past year's price decline. Miners have always been able to sell their coins to recoup their costs as needed. This was not a new element.

The new elements we had were two things: A.) China buying into BTC majorly and B.) this Willy Bot buying it up and artificially inflating the value per BTC.

Remember, there was only 1 major exchange at the time, Mt Gox, and Mark Karpeles (using the Willy bot) basically artificially controlled the price of Bitcoin. (Thank god there are many more exchanges now. Mt Gox goes to show what a monopoly on exhanges can do)

It would be very useful information if someone knew: 1.) how many BTC the Willy Bot bought, 2.) how much was bought by China, and 3.) how much was bought by other countries combined. Then we could make a % pie chart to see the effect of each category.

If we had that information, we could see just how much of a percentage the Willy bot might have had on the market value of Bitcoin versus the other two reasons (China, and other countries' normal purchasing).

I personally suspect Willy Bot was the major cause, and we are STILL feeling the aftereffects. But would love to be wrong because it makes me mad to think Mark not only stole people's money but also was the major reason for the market devaluation over the past year.

So in a way, Mark had a negative effect on almost every BTC buyer even if they didn't have coins on Gox which were lost, because people have been buying into an artificially inflated bitcoin price which is still correcting itself.

Does anyone have any of the above specifics/statistics (the ones marked in color), especially of what the Willy Bot did?

I wasen't here or anything close to Bitcoin community before
but what makes you guys think that what happened to Mt gox is made up and they never got hacked  for real ? :o

I think this is what you're looking for: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/29/bitcoin-bots-bought-millions-in-the-last-days-of-mt-gox

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21600736-chinese-regulators-make-life-hard-crypto-currencies-dream-dispelled

If half of all Bitcoin bought during that period were purchased by China then the balance were from the rest of the world.

Edit: Here's one more http://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/USCC%20Economic%20Issue%20Brief%20-%20Bitcoin%20-%2005%2012%2014.pdf

Probably this: http://www.coindesk.com/missing-mt-gox-bitcoins-inside-job-japanese-police/

Market manipulation may be a problem for a long time. There are laws and regulations about the topic, but enforcing them may be quite the tricky issue.

Yes, that's it. Thanks!

650,000 btc!

Doesn't that sheer quantity of manipulated BTC point to the most obvious cause for the past 12 months of price decline (aka correction)?


Yes, except we don't know how many China actually bought yet. From that article we know they traded in the range of 100,000 btc per day, but trading is much different from outright purchases for the first time.

Still need an accurate China purchase total for the time period. That may be an unrealistic request.

I think that even without the China buying figures, the 650,000 btc figure above from Willy is enough of a chunk of bitcoin to be the major cause.

Lmao. This got me laughing pretty good. This would make a great movie cover or something.

Mastermind:

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/32831_large_Karpeles_Samurai_Wide_FP.png

Are you looking for the total coins bought by people who speak Chinese?  Maybe you are talking about the volume on exchanges operated in China (with customers all over the world)?  Maybe you are talking about the CNY volume?  

http://shotcallin.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/91419384/china_effects_on_bitcoin_price.gif?force_download=1

RMB is Renminbi (China's currency)

So why is the percentage of RMB trades going up steadily as the price is going down? That again makes me think it's Willy bot correction.

The percentage of RMB trades would be going down most likely if China was exiting the market, not up.


source:

No and No

Yes

Because the country of China is where they were banned. They didn't ban Chinese speaking people in USA from buying bitcoin for example, so that would be irrelevant.

China will do what Russia already did. They will ban the websites and they will ban the exchangers accounts if they are outside of China. No chinesse will be able to send money to these exchanegrs.
Simple and efficient.

NO China, no Bitcoin

Yes this is all true, but I'm not tracking with how this is relevant to this thread.

It was China's "ban" that caused the stopping of buying for Bitcoin from the Chinese, and what made them buy in the first place was the constant uproar in price from the willy bot's buying. I'd say the "Willy" bot contributed to most of the run up, maybe 70%-80%, and the rest was everything else(People buying from the increasing Bitcoin price, Hype, china etc)

The only way Bitcoin could ever reach $1000+ again without the help of a bot artificially inflating the price, is if it becomes widely adopted, meaning millions of people are using it. As of right now, less than 1million people on this earth is using Bitcoin. That's very very small.

This is what I think also! And you said it well.

I don't think many people see this... I am not sure why though. They're off blaming miners for selling off. Not the reason imo.

no ... because bitcoin network have fees.

why would they use Bitcoin? Why would they trust fishy exchangers without address, identity, phone number? how can you trust your money in an anonymous system which is mainly used for black market and speculators?

yes, 500,000-1 MIL real Bitcoin users but the PR(propaganda) makes the people to think that there are millions over millions. :)

Investment purposes. Same as anywhere else right now

Don't forget arbitrage volume. MtGox by driving the price up must have created massive arbitrage opportunities so a lot of the volume on other exchanges could be abitrageurs taking advantage of the price lag to buy coins cheaper and either send them to MtGox to sell them there (a very bad idea in hindsight) or holding them to sell them back on the same exchange later after the price adjusted to close the gap with MtGox.

I hadn't thought of the arbitrage effect. Good point! Yet another side-effect of MtGod price manipulation.

edit: "MtGod" was a typo but I think I'll leave it

That doesn't say anything regarding whether they are buying or selling. The percentage of trades may be going up while chinese people are selling, thus driving the price down.

True. Good point.

In that case, then it does look like there is some degree of correlation between China activity and price drops. But I would bet not the majority causality point

Yeah it's bad. When I got into crypto I thought real fiat was pushing up the price to $1200. Now I wonder just how many of these bubbles have been artificially inflated with the hopes and dreams of all the later to be goxxed folks.

I feel the same... misguided bitcoin markets by manipulation. But at least the Willy bot thing is more difficult to pull off now that there are dozens of exchanges and not just a few... At least I think not...?

There was never a ban.  People were able to purchase CNY and pull them out of the ATM using a bank card in mainland China within hours during all of 2014.  I'm sure you're aware of the mining situation as well.  

YES ... folks NEED to understand this ... the willy bot almost entirely on it's own drove the price from a relatively stable +/-100 to around 1200 ... and more importantly , probably most importantly that people know about this is it was done with money that DID NOT EXIST ! ... because the willy bot account was created by the fraudulent mtgox exchange they just credited it with 1,000,000,000 of FAKE dollars ... as in fake non-existent *one billion dollars* ... then they spent about 2 months draining the earth of it's bitcoins whilst simultaneously driving the "real" price through the sky ... until their exchange ran out of actual fiat currency to cover their expenses and customer withdrawals ... then they shut down , ran off with the coins , and left everyone fucked ...

This is a good summary that explains it all.

And yes, if folks could understand this, we wouldn't have those countless, useless threads in the Speculation section posted by the clueless.

stop the rubbish, Willy was only active on Gox. And because LITTLE TO NO FIAT WAS LEAVING GOX, arbitrage was not possible and the price rise on all other exchanges, was driven by REAL EXISTING fiat.

sure, Gox prices were leading the way and indirectly drove up prices by motivating people to trade at higher prices everywhere else.

HOWEVER, the fiat used for these purchases was real, it came from real people, and still exists today, in exchanges and bank accounts. Prices can therefore go back to 1200 with this exact same liquidity.

It is a blatant lie and a myth if people say, BTC would be at $100 without the virtual Willy money  >:(

Bitcoiners seem to think fully regulated exchanges are evil. They would much prefer unregulated anonymous exchanges in jackoffistan.

Doesn't matter. I agree that a lot of people are pretty freaked out about the bot these days, because they believe the price was only a result of it, but it wasn't. It was just plain and old speculation like always. We don't need Willy to get to a new ATH!

lol ... yeah ... because a billion fake dollars used to buy up all the btc possible in a 2 month period on what was the most high volume exchange at the time and at a time when every btc in existence was combined valued at roughly 1.2 billion couldn't possibly have led the price of those other exchanges ... and im not saying 0 external money was input during that time period , of course there was , but the new money on the other exchanges pales in comparison to the fake billion that gox injected during that time frame ... so in short , yes they did so dictate the price ... a lot of that money that was in existence on the other exchanges was already there and simply being transferred back and forth by people who were already day trading btc ... there quite simply was not another exchange that suddenly got that kind of capital injection ... you cannot understate the effect of a fake billion suddenly injected into the market and the effect it had on driving the price ...