Bitcoin Forum

At the time when bitcoin price is recovering, these news and reports are very sad and depressing to read..

But if the reports are true then the true  value of bitcoin should be around the value before bots were setup right, which could be around 100 $..Rest is all fake,fantasy,illusion....

www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/report-mtgox-fraud-led-to-1200-bitcoin-price/2014/05/25

http://willyreport.wordpress.com/

https://i.imgur.com/1juKsXOl.jpg

More like, 30 $(or less), since the run to 100$ was also influenced by that bot.
But that doesn't matter anyway, since the Price is now what it is and I don't see, why it should decrease. (That the increase was manipulated is no good reason for that)
In the Long run, this bot was a good Thing, as sad as it sounds.

No i think current price cannot sustain if all the price rise was because of the tradingbot...How long can people ride on a fake prices and what will happen if more and more people come to know what they pay for bitcoin was just driven by bots..

Its not a fake price though. The fact is if this report is true (and I don't think all of it is) the Bitcoins were bought with real money, the customers money yes but real money. This caused the price rise. Now, once the game was up and willy ran in reverse to try and get back the fiat debt owed as when going bankrupt and not continuing the business having the fiat was far more important than having the BTC hence why theoretically it was all sold back to customers who then held the BTC. Where does this all leave the market?

Well like I say if the report is to be believed then yes its shocking (to some anyway) but nothing has changed in the current market. The fact is 650k BTC is still missing and that hasn't changed, whether they were stolen in 2011 and sold off creating the long bear market(likely), stolen by hackers more recently and still controlled by the thief's or Mark has them the supply of coins has not changed. This is where all the money that willy used is 'stored' and until those coins hit the market, which I think they already did, then there is no reason for the price to fall other than a loss of trust within Bitcoin itself.

The crash to $30 would have already of happened if it mattered

No offense, but I don't think you understand much about financial markets.
So answer me one question: Who is gonna sell BTC for 100$? I am not, for sure.

If nobody is selling BTC for 100$, than Price is not going there.

The report suggests the opposite is true and that the fiat used to drive up the price came from nowhere. It's set out in the paragraph after the first spreadsheet screenshot.

It didn't though, it came from customer deposits hence the missing fiat and why it ran in reverse to recoup funds. It all depends how much you believe the report and his assumptions. Instead of thinking about it from the willy side think about it from the seller side. When the seller sells his $1000 BTC and then withdraws the fiat the fiat is coming from customer deposits when it is paid into their bank account so by definition its coming from customer deposits. It shouldn't have been a $1000 maybe but the fact that it is was being paid for with customer funds.

Its shocking and depressing to read that China manipulated BOTS and made bitcoin boom!

In that scenario, you have the 1000USD in the sellers account, but you also have 1000USD allocated to some random depositor's account that was secretly appropriated by willy. Effectively you have 2 people with a valid claim to the same 1000USD, in other words 1000USD has been created out of thin air.

The report is pretty clear.  Looks like a giant ponzi/pump and dump scheme.  Gox was probably in on it.  How could they not have known??? If they didn't, that was real incompetence. 

Lastly, I think the same thing is currently happening in China right now with litecoin.  If you look here http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/coins/show/ltc you can see that almost all the trades in litecoin are from CNY to LTC.  I bet most of that is bots and aren't real trades.

It isn't just bitcoin or litecoin though.  I swear just about every time I buy an altcoin on the exchanges even a small buy on my part moves the market, almost always against me.  Doesn't matter if I bought or sold.  Or maybe I am just unlucky.  But I would bet money that they are bots controlling it all.  I think the bots are pumping Darkcoin right now. 

STOP spreading FUD. Who cares what caused the price increase 6 months ago. Do you really want to sabotage the market or what? Do you want your coins to be worth less?

So I read the post you linked and I don't think how its relevant to post  6month old price rise..?

I fail to understand the point in this whole discussion.  While stabilization in the Bitcoin price is important for it as a currency it is traded.  Trading drives prices up and down.  Who cares who it is done as long as it is not a hack.

It is not FUD, it's all laid out clearly in the Willy Report. The price of bitcoin now is an aftermath of the boom 6 months ago, so it is important and a lot people DO care. Nobody wish to sabotage the market now. It has already been sabotaged, and we are trying to dig out the truth.

hmmmm.....

If it was bots that did this, it still requires real money, no?

The overall situation does not make sense because bots are all over all the exchanges pushing prices up and pulling them down as they desire.

Bots also manipulate the stock market and many other things in the financial world. This does not make the outcome any less or more realistic. It just is what it is.

Think about it like counter strike with the bots ;), yeh its sad, yeh noone likes it BUT it happens.

I for one am grateful for the current price, bot or not. <3

Yes, the real Money of the People who traded on MtGox, not the real Money of the maker of the bot. That's the huge difference here.
Otherwise you would be right. Bots in financial markets are nothing Special.

I'd imagine we would've seen an epic crash to double-digits if rise in the price of BTC was purely triggered and sustained by bots. The report is probably correct in that there is a lot of insider-trading going on, and it'll continue until there are appropriate measures put in place, or exchanges become decentralized.

ignoring very important things and brushing them under carpet is as bad as spreading FUD

This, Karples got WTF BBQ SAUCE RAPE PWNED for what he did with his bots.  The bots merly started the bull run.  He figured he could rise up the market, crash it and get all the BTC back.. he rose the market up but.. Bitcoin is underestimated and the crash was not what was expected.  He couldn't crash it back to sub 100, and got Fed.  Now we see him burn.

If you really think that ONE bot on ONE exchange is capable of being the major (or one of the major) cause of a bubble like that you are a poor fool.

What about the huge volume on the other exchanges aside from mtgox?
The panic buys were real. The chinese buying were real. The (media) hype was real.
If willy had any impact it was only to facilitate and accelerate the process of the bitcoin november bubble, with a maybe slightly more dramatic effect.


Surprise for the permabears: price doesn't give a flying  about this willy thing (and believe me, it would have crashed by now if it did) . And in fact it is headed to $600, which could be reached today or tomorrow.

It was probably the way the Mtgox bitcoins were stolen.
If it was Karpeles, why changing his user ID to the same as his own account "MagicalTux"?   You gotta be an idiot to do such a sloppy work.
I don't think whoever pulled this whole willy thing can be called an idiot.

Willie account was posted at least 4 months ago on Reddit  HERE (http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1uhjrb/intriguing_bot_activity_on_gox_for_the_last_2) and HERE (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20k4zc/free_willy_identifying_the_gox_buy_bot/) with the suspicious trading activity and potentially inflated prices.

Article is lifted from old material, although well pieced together with pictures and charts.

It's old news, market has already priced it in.

Well it could be a mix of idiot and arrogance, which kind of matches karples perfectly.

i think it is possible arbitrage could explain that price rise across all exchange

How exactly willie story is disproved? or proved?

because both can have a lot of effect over the market

I think we all know the value of bitcoin
It was never real even now
We all know that there is someone playing with price

Likely it will never be proved or disproved as even though you could theoretically prove it was from inside Gox you can't prove they were operating them or knew.

I like how you say stop spreading FUD, then you go right on to trying to suppress facts or a dialogue from happening. Talk about a close minded idiot, you are spreading F'ING BS by even posting here.

Are there bots working the chain right now?

Yeah Shamu this time

Shamu is a killer!

How could one arbitrage if no one could withdraw fiat (in massive amount, millions of dollar per day) from gox?

From the reports it seems that those who instantly needed withdrawals were given fiat available because there are lot of fiat deposits from the long term holders...this could go as long as say 20% were arbitraging traders, but when everybody asks their fiat at the same time, then the problem arises

LMAO!

funny but sad !

It's a crazy world we're living in. :o





...unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
― Blaise Pascal

Stabilization is not "important" at all for BTC. Fiat debt is at insane levels and Bitcoin will be a popular safe haven as paper money becomes trash. Expect and enjoy volatility, since "stability" (vs fiat) is not a long-term option.

You're right, the current price cannot sustain, because Bitcoin today is under-valued by 9999%.

QFT, the fiat house of cards will be collapsing soon. You don't want to have your money there when it does.

There are bots everywhere. I get hundreds of e-mails a month for forex bots alone. The current market says no big deal and I tend to agree with it. 

Just like they caused every boom and crash in history.

Well, not robots but the original stock ticker (Named so because it ticked like a clock) was a machine.

Bots are used in every exchange and are built to favor the growth of the stock's price rather than penalizing it. 

The higher the amount of transactions, the bots do it automatically to sell more of that stock and crank up the price.

Not much difference with any other market...  However, when prices crash, the bot follows along to fill the sale demand.

Not depressing, it's facts of life :)

so they can increase price anytime
and can play with us

When a bot raises the price so much that it becomes out of proportion to the float (the amount willing to be sold) then the market will crash, but as long as people are willing to buy and sell, it will be okay.  On Forex the bots push the price up and up and up and then cash out.  The last people to have bought are bag holders.  This is also a constantly repeated in crypto over and over.  The bots are making a killing at day trading.  I think darkcoin was recently pumped too.  NXT seems to have been pumped but is holding its price now just like bitcoin.   

interesting news indeed. although i don't find it too shocking,  one way or another there's always some sort of heavy manipulation going on with things involving money...whether it be stocks, commodities, bitcoin etc etc.

I read over the entire thing (which took quite a while) and I left without an opinion one way or another myself. We can read into it and make assumptions like the writer did, or we can think critically and all come up with other opinions as to what happened and who did it. I am reserving judgement myself.

There are bots in stock exchange aswell. They are accepted as part of the equity ecosystem. I admit the gox bot is different. They are trading vapour fiat. The bots are not the only reason we get those booms, they only accelerated them.

The market inevitably corrects these bubbles no matter how they are created. Watch the stock markets when the fed finally starts raising interest rates.

 willy the trading bot just bought my coffee and blew the change  :-\

http://www.waleg.com/images/obama-jproboto-funny.jpg

Thank you.  nuff said here.  you can close the thread now.

It's shocking and depressing reading how stupid you people are.

QFT

What is driving the BTC price now? Is it bots?

So the argument is that Bots secretly control the price
I think it overvalues the influence the bot has

Places like Facebook, eBay and PayPal are driving it with their news I think. There hasn't been anything "official" yet, but all three have been in talks about accepting Bitcoin lately.

i remember in the 2013 china buy up
btc china had a consistent 20% markup on price vs bitstamp and more volume too
so willy may have had an impact but it would be small compared to china

How does it even matter if bots had anything to do with the price? As long as there are people who are willing to purchase at a given price,then that price is the one that matters.

I think it upsets people because of the community aspect. When one person buys, others view that as being an accurate description of its value. When the bots buy 10k BTC at fake rates, others feel that it must be how the market is doing when it's really not. This causes the prices to go up (or down) according to fake data.

The whole story about bots is pretty much irrelevant because there were probably layers of shenanigans going on at Gox.
Gox prices were out of line with the rest of the market and couldnt be arbitraged back because
of the withdrawal issues.

If manipulation were to start occuring a major brokerage or exchange right now
(bots or no bots), they would lose money to arbitragers.

I do agree that the bots are less relevant than the other things that were happening towards the end, but the bots were an issue long before Gox started having their withdrawal problems and everything else. If you follow the story, this was all months prior to that (and may have contributed to the issues Gox ended up facing, though it's hard to tell).

This is a truly free market. It will correct itself over time. There are a lot of people smarter than me that say BTC is still under valued. I tend to believe them.

it really doesn't matter.  if the purchases are real , then bots are just
an extension of traders activity.  Theres tons of algorithmic trading
in the forex world (the majority in fact).  Is anyone saying "oh nooo bots"...?
of course not.

The bots in the forex world are doing REAL trades. They aren't magically making money pop out of nowhere. They aren't buying gold at $10 million an ounce on the record, while never actually making that purchase. There are huge differences here.

That's my point.  It's not the bots.  Its the fake activity that was going on at gox.
Gox was the biggest exchange and many foolishly kept their coins there,
and even more foolishly kept their coins there when red flags abound.

I doubt that could happen today in Bitcoin, at least not to nearly
the extent because there are many choices in exchanges and
there is better flow of information (forum), many news sites,
more common knowledge about security, etc.

Well, my understanding (and I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I won't say I agree or disagree) is that the bots were supposedly run by Mt. Gox to create the fake trades. They weren't normal ones, but were made to do the fake activity you were talking about. This is why people are so upset about them.

sure.  my point is , there's nothing to worry about. 

All we have to watch out for today, is any exchange
where withdrawals are delayed (especially for long periods).
Obviously, such an exchange can become insolvent,
as gox did in fact, but also they can be manipulating
prices because there is no arbitrage opportunity.

comparing the entire event to a fictional story for easy understanding...


Dogecoins are available cheap around 70 satoshi, but if there is an exchange like cryptsy programmed with bots to buy dogecoins daily at an increasing price but with no underlying bitcoins paid to exchange..This would drive the price of dogecoins very high..As long as the people cashing out are less than people buying in, this would not put the exchange in problem to withdraw funds, but this is exactly what will happen in a buyers market which is happening.

Even arbitrage and free market wont drive price lower because there is constant ballooning of price at one exchange which is fundamentally a fake activity..

This could even continue until the price of each dogecoin is one million, people around the world believe that each doge is worth a milion and buy and sell for that price, but when this fake activity is exposed then the price will collapse because fundementally the supply demand of dogecoin does not fix the price at one million a coin..this will cause a panic sale at first and then slowly declining price until it is finally back to 70 satoshi or slightly above than that because free market utlimately corrects all manipulations...

Applying this to bitcoin, the price of bitcoin then should be around the price before this fake bot activity started, which is around 100-200$..

but all these is only when these reports are proved to be true..

Some suggest previous bitcoin booms were also because of this fake activity,in which case it is shocking to estimate what is the true value if bitcoin without all these manipulations.

There have been numerous articles/discussions regarding the "true" or intrinsic value of bitcoin. The intrinsic value of a few virtual numbers is zero. No-one was buying bitcoins in 2009,were they? The value of bitcoin is what people are willing to pay for it. It doesn't matter how that price is reached,bots or not.

The true value of Bitcoin is whatever price it is. 'willy', if its true, has been off since Feb so how do you suppose that the price people are paying now is fake ?

What's really shocking is the amount of morons that will believe anything written on the internet if it's referred to as "NEWS"

Nonsense.
Arbitrage by definition involves more than 1 exchange/place to buy and sell.

Precisely, if there wasn't enough fiat or people willing to pay whatever price then arb just wouldn't be possible at any real volume.

It's neither shocking or depressing.

The faster we inflate the value, the sooner I can retire. There's no shame in this game.

The whole point of this thread is not about bots being used but the way they are programme to buy with fake or no money

This. Apparently people don't read anything anymore; they see titles and make statements based on that.

The issue isn't bots; it's with fake trades created from an *internal* bot (whether Mt. Gox ran it or some third party isn't relevant for this discussion).

One thing you are failing to factor into your equation is that Gox, China, IRS, Bots etc all added exposure for an idea that was not that well known. It spread news of bitcoin more into the mainstream consciousness. And while all of these news events were bad this was counter balanced by the fervor of the bitcoin community responding with its knowledge.
Add so in the past year more places are accepting bitcoin, there are more forums, there are more books, there are more start up companies and venture capitalists, ATMs, exchanges, apps, software maturity, etc. The infrastructure technological, societal and even Governmental has developed as a result of the exposure. And all of that adds value to bitcoin. It'll never see $100 again.   

This explanation really makes sense...
+1

Whether information can damage the market price or not, it may still be worth knowing. this is why this is true.

Is it important though ? The market doesn't seem to think so.

It doesn't but that's possibly also related to natural increase in the price due to adoption and investments. It's hard to tell what the actual effect of the bot situation was, but history that is ignored is bound to repeat itself.

depressing? i'd say yeah.. but shocking? nah, i am desensitized to that shit, but the madness happens every day.

I was thinking about this explanation for sometimes,it really makes sense, but do you also realize that for such an exposure to happen  for bitcoins among the mainstream consiousness, a lot of people had to lose a lot of money and cry(i am talking about the Mt.Gox depositors)..

I may be cold in my thinking but I have never had much sympathy for those that don't do their research when it comes to money. Laziness and greed are what cause most people to lose financially. Was there any reason to suspect that Mt. Gox would implode? Some, but not really. Was it easy to know that you shouldn't leave tons of liquidity in any online exchange. Hell yes. A tiny bit of research into the nature of bitcoin (and computers) and one knew to keep the bulk of your bitcoins offline in multiple 'accounts', backed up and with the keys solely in your possession.

The world is cold and in the end only you can protect yourself, by doing the work and taking personal responsibility.