Bitcoin Forum

After being wary of all those new Altcoin pump and dump twitter accounts, no one was looking in the other direction.

Lets take a moment to remember what those in power do: use that power.
With a dumbed down populace due to the great Firewall, throw some pro Bitcoin messages on the media, and buy up. When we've double topped, dump, and start the flow of bad press.

A simple yet brilliant plan at the same time.

I don't exactly think the Chinese government would need to do that in order to raise funds...

Why not? for its value per effort ratio, its very lucrative

And of course the Gov is made of people who like money

provide evidence of government involvement or gtfo.

You think if I had evidence I'd be posting here?

Just postulating what I think per human nature is most likely

I postulate that's stupid.

Its not that stupid. Governments consist of people. People in power.

The Chinese gov is far more centralized than the U.S. - it wouldn't be too hard to have regulators wait to make a cool billion. Remember the currency QQ? and China's capital controls? They wouldn't like Bitcoin normally, but are ok with making money. Hence the strict regulations now.

Let me remind of the famous NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html

"...politically connected people have profited from being at the intersection of government and business as state influence and private wealth converge in China’s fast-growing economy."

Gov is bathing in money, they for sure do not need to dabble in bitcoin, when they have proven methods of gain.

all the politicians that matter/have power re bitcoin in china have more power and money than bitcoin can provide them.

About 1-2 Billion could have been made, this is enough incentive. Remember those who have massive amounts of money have that much because 'a ton of money is enough' is not their mentality.

The point is it must have been relatively easy to accomplish this and per the value gained it must have been worth it.

Good point!

China have went from tacitly promoting Bitcoin to totally fkn nailing it within the space of just a few weeks.

In centralised command and control nation such as China, something very fishy about the whole sudden U-Turn.

China is trying to corner the bitcoin and litecoin markets by dumping the value and buying up cheap coins from panicking speculators.  We need to buy all the bitcoins and litecoins before they get them. 

Seems like another conspiracy theory to me. A lot of the money would come from Chinese people, wouldnt it be easier to tax Chinese people more instead?

I don't shy away from conspiracy like theories since Snowden. Anyways, in a troubled country like China with many poor, kept ignorant, and bathed in pollution, a way to lift money without a connection to government may be desirable.

The reality of the world is that it is a complex place, and things happen for complex reasons. Any attempt to put phenomena into a nutshell, be it an 'official version of events' or a 'conspiracy theory' is going to have shortfalls.

However, anyone with any kind of political noose can recognise that there are 'tendencies' in the world and often a simplified hypothesis can be useful in allowing the mind to get a handle on such a 'tendency'.

I found your opening post to offer a useful hypothesis.

If this was shady businessmen pumping and dumping a penny stock, the fraud squad would be on the case.

You are definitely right. I'm being too aggressive, things are probably more complicated, and the Chinese gov is probably not exactly what I make it out to be. My main goal is to provoke thought :)

Funny how 4 months later pretty much everyone thinks China is doing some degree of manipulation

China well played making a pump and dump without even being aware of really doing it
Now that is why you are the masters XD

I hope all the idiots who sell every single time China bans Bitcoin have lost a lot of money. Every time it happens I lose a bit more faith in the human race.

As far as I'm concerned China has nothing to do with Bitcoin anymore. They can't possibly say anything that would concern me.

I started to think the same about 3 weeks ago. The way these news come out, their timings, the high volume on Chinese exchanges (that everyone thinks they are fake)...

If I was working at the Chinese Central Bank, I could certainly make millions of USD just by playing with these regulations (or knowing about them in advance) and have it all work perfectly legal. In a few months I would be freaking rich...

Maybe at first they weren't aware of the impact of their regulations/news on the market. But after 2-3 announcements you realize you have a huge impact on the price... hell, the temptation to cash in on this is huge.

But if they are really that rich, wouldn't the smarter play be to just buy bitcoin up to $10000 and then sell all at the top?

Its abundantly clear that the PBOC and Mtgox before them coordinate news with impactful moments - anyone with an ounce of TA knowledge can see this.

On another interesting note, this is the final nail in the coffin to the EMH (Efficient Market Hypothesis), as markets are made up of irrational people and rational people manipulating the irrational. This has been a grand experiment of the Pavlovian effects of events on the market-mind. Markets are both prone to patterns and averse to patterns - To the degree the market knows this is manipulation, does that make the manipulation stronger or weaker?

For someone who is good at TA, selling when the tides turn and China confirming the turning is always fun to watch. TA truly leads FA.

Please correct me if I am wrong.  So in really general terms, you are saying that when basic TA suggests bullish, PBOC will release negative news.  Using more advanced TA (shorter term?) gives you a chance to sell before the full impact of the news is reflected in price?

Its a little more complicated usually, in that when the price gets too close to the point of breaking out of a trend, and presumably when certain people have fully dumped, the news comes along. Usually its a window of time that such news will come out, and the bearish signal is usually already there. So perhaps yes the when the more basic TA suggests bullish, this could happen. However better TA will see this coming and broadcast a bearish signal before the event.

It doesn't even have to be the whole chinese government really. I just has to be one chinese official that is able to direct PBOC policy or at least send official letters from them, thereby making himself and a few partners that are invested in bitcoin rich, irregardless of what the rest of the chinese government is doing.

This thing started by couple of half-witted Chinese officials f**king-up and getting pulled into the BTC hype, that included the idea that BTC is competitive against the dollar. In communist regimes, it's not unusual to have officials in high position who didn't get there by their competence, but by loyalty.
It just took some time for smarter officials to join in and explain to everyone in power, that by letting the Chinese people pump BTC, will only make money flow out of China and into the pockets of westerners who own most of the coins in existence.

That is the reason why China and Russia wants nothing to do with bitcoin but the western powers don't mind.

Exactly! But that won't stop you as an official working in the Chinese Central Bank to cash in, by shorting right before releasing some bad news. The price swings are pretty big. You could easily make lots of cash by doing so... and NO ONE will ever be able to bring you to court or accuse you of anything.

Hahaha. Yes, in communist regimes as you specified. Meanwhile in the USA gov't everybody is competent and go to their position through competence. As we've seen. :D

Anyway there's no reason for somebody who can just take a huge bribe on a construction project to learn about pumping & dumping bitcoin. Gov't associated old farts in the west haven't understood btc and keep saying it's a waste of time; hard to believe the Chinese are that much smarter. Also gray markets actually tends to benefit China and any corrupt officials worldwide.

If you must see an adversarial angle here then how about this: at first China/PBC thought bitcoin is an oppositional force to dollar dominance and encouraged it. Then they realized most bitcoin are owned by westerners, and pumping it actually is profit to the west more than it is to the Chinese. So now it's discouraged.

Anyway I for one am buying now that it's low. Let whoever thinks like Buffett that btc has no intrinsic value be left behind.

Heh the foundation probably is controlling the price look who has relationships with the biggest exchange BTC China 

BTCChina has very little volume these days, but there are those that think the foundation are basically scammers... They talked with Mark every week, possibly knew more about Gox... But the most likely is the constant fud from China.

Recalling one of my old charts, Gox released bad news in a similar manner to China (when it matters per TA). While I don't think the foundation was involved, I'm very suspicious of Gox...
https://www.tradingview.com/v/zamIjVDH/ (https://www.tradingview.com/v/zamIjVDH/)

Well your on the right track actually, there are some things going on in the background that can't be discussed good old backdoor dealing :)

In capitalist regimes, competence always plays a bigger role then in communism regimes, where loyalty to the top officials and to the ideology is valued more. I have lived in both communist and capitalist countries, so I can tell the difference of the two worlds.
West understands BTC perfectly well, and that's why it doesn't care. It's not a quality currency because it can't even give itself value without USD, not even mentioning it's inability for price stability. It's just a system to transfer USD at best, so those who want USD to rule, don't really have anything to worry about.


Erhm... did you just rephrase a part of my previous post and present it as something different?


You go ahead and buy those "low priced coins". I for instance, think that there is no such thing as a low price in the general perspective. There is only the price that is relative to the current situation.
The China pump in November, took bitcoin to these heights on a presumption, that bitcoin will soon get institutional backing from China. This didn't happen. Now, the plan B is to get institutional funding from Wall Street. If they are able to pull this through, then the current price is low indeed. If not, then the current price is too high, not too low. I personally don't have much faith in Wall Street funding, because the history of bitcoin is too tainted and the crew that is lobbying bitcoin in Wall Street, doesn't exactly include the sharpest fellows. Barry Silbert tried to promote bitcoin by promising another bubble ffs.
So, I'll just wait and see what happens. If the improbable outcome happens and bitcoin will get institutional funding, then I'll buy some, and not bitcoin but probably a bunch of low priced well-built altcoins. Otherwise, there are always better investment opportunities, that don't have to be supported by weak presumptions.

It is possible, but improbable that someone would take the risk. If the ideology is against bitcoin and you'll caught with doing shenanigans with bitcoin, while being a public official, then you don't have a future in China anymore. And it's not very hard to get caught for doing this.
I find it more probable, that PBoC is just gradually toughening the laws to save face and to lower the chance of an public incident. If they would have frozen all of the accounts + banned all the exchanges in one fast swipe, then this would have created an incident with a lot of public outcry about the hardline politics of China. It's more convenient to enforce the laws gradually, so bitcoin will just slowly die in China without a major incident. If I would like to root out bitcoin, then I would use the same soft tactics, so that the bitcoin enthusiasts couldn't spin the story in their favour with presenting themselves as martyrs.