"Wash trading" is when one person (or company) trades with itself, to make the price seem higher. The text you're quoting suggests that a trader uses two different "bots" (computer software) to trade - right now the BTC/USD price is around $360, and this trader sets one of the bots to offer 1 BTC for $365. The other bot then accepts the offer (it buys the BTC), and the BTC/USD is now $365. At this point the trader hasn't gained or lost any money - they've paid an extra $5 for 1 BTC, but they paid it to themselves. Next, they try and sell more BTC for $365, but to a "real" trader. If they succeed, they've driven the price of BTC up and made a small profit.

I'm sure this does happen, but I'm not convinced it's that big a problem. There's a great book about a stock trader from around 100 years ago. One of the pieces of advice he gives is "As I have said a thousand times, no manipulation can put stocks down and keep them down." In other words, it is possible to manipulate markets and change the price for a short time, but keeping the price at a "fake" level is much harder.

That's pretty easy to do with stocks - the exchange simply says a condition of being listed on the exchange is that it's solely listed on that exchange, and no others.

I'm not sure it's possible with FX, though - the market is decentralised already, you can trade Renminbi (CNH) in London, GBP in Singapore and USD pretty much anywhere.

Ultimately I think it'll be the BTC market maturing that'll have the best chance of solving this. (Though I can still remember Soros manipulating GBP in the 80s, so a perfect solution may not be possible).

Tell me again about your fine English. Sorry, I'm making a gross assumption. I'm assuming that this is an example of your language skills, but I suppose you may simply not realise that when people sell their homes it normally - via various lawyers' accounts - results in money entering their bank account. Not for very long, typically, because they'll probably want to buy a new house to live in as soon as possible. But still - money in their account.

Wee lamb, I'm sticking you on ignore. No doubt you or an alt will carry on without me. Go wild.

Yup, it's the wee lamb. Lamb, maybe go back and read what you're replying to, and your own posts. Take your time. Your language skills aren't great, and one area they really seem to fall down is when dealing with non-native English, but what megges said is perfectly clear. Desperately trying to read too much into what other people have said is one of your more obnoxious tells.

Incidentally, there are terraced houses down the street from me that cost more than £400k. The poor lower-middle class families who reside there will love to know you're so concerned about what they'll do when they sell their homes, should British banks follow this German example.

Deutsche Skatbank, late last year:


You need to re-read megges' post. They didn't say they'd use credit when then had money in a negative-interest account. Both halves of the sentence started with "if" - the point was that the banking industry gets you both ways. Bit weird, if you ask me, that you'd immediately assume stupidity rather than good faith. A bit... lamby.

CEO of "cloud mining operation" charged with running a ponzi.

Not scrypt.cc (yet), but it highlights the risks with cloud mining - both for potential investors, and (fortunately) for scammy CEOs etc.

Please tell me you don't play professional poker or work for an espionage agency, wee lamb. Your tells are as blatant as they are cutely naive in a "I'd be offended at the gross and incorrect assumptions, if I didn't know the poor wee lamb has a saviour complex and deserves our pity, not our scorn" sort of way.

I skimmed them on the way to the "report" button. Sadly there was no new FUD It was all copy-n-paste trollery.

It's not all sad, uninspiring news however. We can deduce from the trollage that the trolls' pay-master wants to buy, albeit at slightly cheaper prices. Bullish?!

Agreed. I think his position is mostly reasonable, to be honest. You know his saying about his aunt, that if he can't explain an investment to her he won't recommend it? I think that's a great policy, and I think it's only sensible that he stays away from  Bitcoin. (Obviously, I believe I can explain Bitcoin to my aunt, and I do hold and trade BTC).

Where I think he's gone too far is in attempting to explain Bitcoin. I'd have a lot more respect for him if he said something like "I don't understand Bitcoin, so I can't recommend it" instead of (paraphrasing) "I think I understand Bitcoin and it's like cheques or money orders or something and I wouldn't invest in them, so I can't recommend it".

I always assumed that the people selling coffee to idiots wouldn't be paying the spot price for coffee but instead paying a premium for coffee forwards or futures, so they could guarantee they stayed in business if the spot price suddenly rocketed.

Their customers are still idiots, though.

According to the Wikipedia article on Sergei Mavrodi (the creator of both the old - ponzi - MMM and the new MMM) it's a pyramid scheme. I've seen an article where Mavrodi acknowledges pyramid schemes are illegal in the EU, but wants to expand into the EU anyway.

Ponzis and pyramids are similar. The main difference is that with a ponzi Mavrodi would act as a "hub", and payments would flow to him. With a pyramid scheme payments are made to the person "above" you in the pyramid - typically the person who recruited you to the scheme. Mavrodi sits at the top of the pyramid, and will gain from payments from the people immediately below him.

Bitcoinwisdom too. Almost an hour flat-lining. Looks like it's recovered now, though.

Oops, shoddy copying and pasting It was the last part of the URL - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zczsg2015-10-31zeg2015-11-30ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

I don't know if that was a typo, but it went beyond 500 USD on most exchanges in early November.

If you were Bitpay and had OTC customers lined up - you'd unload BTC on exchanges?

We should enter into a business partnership - I have one meelion BTC and a bridge to sell.

Or, you know, post in the relevant section. I'm assuming you don't go to the supermarket and ask to see a doctor, right? Or go to the library to fill your car up with petrol? By partitioning the forum into different sections it's possible to have these new things called "on-topic discussions" that the kids seem to be into.

Discussions like yours take place all the time in the Politics and Society section, a section of this forum devoted to discussing politics, society, and their relevance to Bitcoin. This section of the forum is for discussing speculating with BTC. Think about it - are you really going to post in the Speculation section every time something happens in the world? There's a massive crisis in Northern Syria right now, with things happening every day. If these events had any significant impact on the price of BTC don't you think we'd have evidenced that by now? Despite your high hopes, we didn't see a major rise when that Russian jet went down - in fact we saw a fall a few days later. These events you're posting - I understand that they seem really important (from a BTC-perspective), but honestly - they're not.

I think someone else in this thread has already tackled the "war == profits!!!1!" belief far more eloquently than I could, but honestly I see these mini-war posts as leading to the same nonsensical argument - if the major powers get drawn into a hot conflict between themselves, instead of their proxies, it is not going to be Bitcoin's golden age - it's going to be war, and it's going to be hell.

PS. That image you posted. The Russian jet went down towards the end of the steep rise, a rise that had gone on for a couple of months. BTC prices fell a few days later. If you want credible evidence for your assumption, go back over a few years and compare geo-political events with BTC price. If you can't be bothered doing that, at least cherry-pick your data a bit more carefully.

Coinut do binaries, as well as European-style vanillas. As far as I know Coinut are the only site to do vanillas, but there are a few sites doing binaries - I've only tried Coinut however (buying and selling - from memory at least one of the binary-only sites only allowed buying options, not selling/writing).

There was a discussion above about whether binaries are gambling. My understanding is that there are differing views - in the UK they were until recently classified as "fixed odds bets", but are now being reclassified as "financial instruments". Other regulatory authorities have different and sometimes contrary views.

Any unrest might stimulate bitcoin... - might, yes.

...as it is not influenced by any government politics or economic problems. - like Greece, Cyprus, the imposition or relaxation of capital controls in China? Nope, I'm calling "nonsense" on this part.

If this stuff keeps escalating it might become interesting. - it's interesting now, it's just not interesting in a "Bitcoin speculation" sense, but in a "Politics and society" sense.