Bitcoin Forum

Let's say the traditional bankers start buying large amounts of bitcoins and they success in keeping almost all of them.

Now... for what purpose they would keep it, to kidnap it, avoid bitcoin flowing and therefore destroy it. Thay way they are rescuing value on the traditional money (dollars, euro, yens, etc) that will continue flowing.

Is there any way this beast named Bitcoin can escape from such situation ?

Like the movie Dune stated... "The spice must flow"

There are still miners, so they'd have to keep buying for another 100 something years.

BTC would skyrocket, what was left would be traded in shatoshis.

The exact same thing that happens when early adopters did exactly that, artificial scarcity, rising prices, manipulated markets.  Why do people freak out when the word 'Bank' is used when the horrible activity being conducted is already being done by people with even LESS oversight and scruples then a Bank?

They could let a central authority like the euro bank (ECB), world bank, or IMF hold a key to verify certain coins are in a certain separate class, using the "rarely unused" contract and Script features of bitcoin.  Then transfer them back and forth between each other with each piece of bitcoin representing whatever value they want, say $1 billion per 0.01 coin tied to a 2010 basket of commodities.  The banks are required to have a certain reserve amount of gold or "class 1" assets.  So they would buy these things from each other and the cash is freed up for other uses, then they have this class 1 asset they made up out of thin air and extra liquidity from the cash. 

Simple...start using litecoin

The value would rise dramatically.  

If bitcoin is to become truly successful on the world's stage, banks will get involved.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, and would likely add credibility in the eyes of the public and stability to the exchange rate (albeit at a much higher price level than now).  

P.S.  I consider this co-opting bitcoin rather than kidnapping it.

Lets destroy this thing by buying it up at insanely marked up prices and make the existing holders the new wealthy elite.

Doesn't really sound like the best plan does it?

So basically they would "kidnap" the bitcoins by buying them and not spend them? What would happen is that they would spend less and everyone else would get to spend more. Win for us, lose for them. Doesn't sound so bad to me...

They would have to kidnap satoshi and get him o reveal a material hitherto undiscovered fatal flaw in the protocol

Long shot ;)

Ideally bankers would try and block money flow into the bitcoin system via banks but they cannot completely stop it...

I doubt the banks can afford to buy most of the bitcoins now, maybe if they had done it in the beggining. 

If a bank did buy up all the coins they could, what would they have then? How would it benefit them?

I'd cash out a reasonable portion of my stash and be rich.  How terrible!

Benefit is preventing the regular money loose trust and current international monetary system fail. They just need to Buy all the BTC coins tranfer it to a single wallet and destroy the wallet file (private key).

They could not buy all the bitcoins, so their plan fails there.

If somehow they convinced everyone to sell (impossible, but we'll go with this fanciful scenario again for the 1000th time), they'd be left with worthless bitcoins, everyone else would be left with whatever they bought them for.  Then we'd start mining on Bitoin v2.0 with all the mining gear still out there, and the banks would have to repeat the process. 

Good answer, this is sort of the confirmation I was looking for.

+1

I would also add that banks do not buy then destroy money. They are only interested in profit. If there is no reasonable chance of profit, it is not a plan they are interested in. How would they face their shareholders and tell them their money was spent throwing away bitcoins? And that they have nothing to show for their efforts except a higher value on the money they wasted.

For example, such as how Baidu probably did on the recent pump & dump & repurchase. Hope you saw the lame excuse in their press release that they didn't know Bitcoin was volatile.  ::)



The new wealthy elite just like the brilliant physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton?

You can't buy something that is not for sale.
If they will try to buy all the bitcoins they will end up paying trilions and at that point bitcoin will be useless , cause nobody can use it anymore since there is only one person holding them all.

Rinse and repeat with next coin.

Interesting point. so there is no point in owning too many bitcoins. Doing so will just be shooting yourself in the foot. The wealth needs to be distributed equally. Unfortunately we have a ton of greedy early adopters who are still holding their coins because they want more than the half mil or mil they already made. This will destroy bitcoin.

So it was seemingly designed to prevent this, with the limit on it, and it will eventually collapse when too many people are holding too many coins as the coins will get little use in a such a scenario.

Maybe what Im getting here is bitcoin 101? I've I knew more maybe I would have held on to the four thousand bitcoins I had a two years ago. !@#$

If all the people are keeping their bitcoins and no one spends them , Yes , we might have a problem.
But most of the early adopters are the ones actually using them for buying stuff. It's the newbies that get their hands one 1 BTC and store it so next years they will buy a Ferrari with it. Or a Lambo , since it's the new trend.

Eventually the early adopters will cashout at $1000-1500 levels, everyone needs returns to their investments at some point of time.

You realize that most early adopters got their coins at <2$.
They need to cash out less that 0.2% of their stash to get even based on the actual price.

Yes, make everyone who holds Bitcoin rich, that'll teach them.

This is basically impossible. The more they try to buy all the Bitcoins, the higher the price gets. They have to keep paying more and more money to keep buying and everyone else who holds Bitcoins gets rich as the price goes up.

The second they try to sell, the price tanks. They lose a fortune. And Bitcoin is fine.

This business model has been tried before and everyone who has attempted it has lost millions, or even billions.

Shit, I wish they would try to buy them all. I'd sell my first btc at 10 million $ and move on to the next coin.

I guess it will be much easier to send some money to congress men and try to pass a law to forbid it

What if they don't sell, they use it as currency to buy things? That's what the main purpose of bitcoin was in the first place, right?

GOD!!!! This thread was started as an assumption they will buy all the bitcoins!
You realize that you're asking just , what if they don't do what this thread is about?
Guess the answer , it won't change anything to the situation we have right now.

Looking back, I think I accidentally posted that in the wrong thread. Sorry. I actually agree with the position that an attempt by banks to buy up all the bitcoins would fail for the reasons mentioned above.

Even if the Banks tried to monopolize BTC..They can't kill the idea behind it and as long as the idea behind it flourishes and take root many alt coins will follow and help BTC along even if it does become scarcer and also like one member pointed out..there are many miners still mining that will keep it for their pensions and their kid's kids lol. :)

Those manipulating Bitcoin are smarter than that. They buy slow enough to not push up the price (or quickly in selloffs) then pump it up in the media, then sell into the rush of new fools, then repurchase on the dip. They will do this all the way up and then as the masses come rushing in, they will sell out entirely.

Only fools (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=366595.msg3937614#msg3937614) will be left holding the bag at the end.

Yes, I agree with you. I think it's pretty clear.