GME talk in the media could lead more people into crypto investments

[Alanin]

You probably all seen what happened to regular GME stock theese last few weeks.

All the talk and suspicion about the hedge funds and brokers being corrupted and manipulating the stock market,  has put alot of focus into the crypto world.  And i many non-forums i see more and more people dicussing crypto assets and exchanges. Also CZ recently pointed out that theres a ton of new users registrating on binance: https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1358641453908467715?s=20

This ofc, is wonderfull news. And i expect the market to stay positive for the next many weeks. Until the big guys roll out another massive media attack to rack in at the dips like usual.

[squatz1]

Not surprised on the fact that people are learning about crypto b/c of this recent fiasco. Plus you’ve got big name companies and people investing in Bitcoin which ensures that Bitcoin stays in the news cycle.

Big name examples are Elon Musk, Tesla, and some celebrities tweeting about it. When people see their favorite company, Tesla, spending $1.5B to buy Bitcoin and then saying they’re going to adopt it as a payment method in the near future - people take notice. Because that lends legitimacy to both the store of value portion of Bitcoin and the payment method portion.

[Gyfts]

GME's been great for Bitcoin, but the same market manipulation could be done if you begin to see US BTC related companies halt trading from exchanges. Imagine if Coinbase were to halt trading...and Coinbase is as big as Robinhood. Now obviously, the implication wouldn't be THAT bad because P2P trading will always exist no matter what exchange shuts down or halts trading, but this would cause the price to go down just like we saw with Gamestop.

Jus be vigilante, is all.

[squatz1]

GME's been great for Bitcoin, but the same market manipulation could be done if you begin to see US BTC related companies halt trading from exchanges. Imagine if Coinbase were to halt trading...and Coinbase is as big as Robinhood. Now obviously, the implication wouldn't be THAT bad because P2P trading will always exist no matter what exchange shuts down or halts trading, but this would cause the price to go down just like we saw with Gamestop.

Jus be vigilante, is all.

Yup, same sort of situation could occur — though the pressure to do so wouldn’t be similar as to how Robinhood was forced into doing so.

I’ve read reports saying that Citadel (one of the hedge funds that owned a stake in short selling GME) put pressure on one of the clearinghouses that Robinhood was using to force them to have more cash on hand to handle the GME trading (and only GME trading) — Robinhood could’ve just stopped margin trading for GME, which would’ve worked out, but instead they used the liquidity issue as a way to reward their friends.

Same thing can’t really happen to Coinbase. There’s no central authority for BTC trading (or any crypto trading) its just orderbooks on multiple exchanges. If Coinbase were to be pressured it would open up an opportunity for Kraken, Gemini, Square, and so on (at least on the centralized side of things)