Have 118K BTC? It's profitable to massively market buy!

[Raystonn]

It really amazes me how small the market depth for Bitcoin exchanges really are.  I'm used to much larger markets.  I was doing a bit of bistro math on a napkin and found that the market is so small, it's possible to simply buy the price up yourself and profit.

The market is at about $600 / BTC right now.  The historical average is for a 10x gain per year.  That's about a 21.2% average increase per month.  Looking strictly at Bitstamp (and yes I'm aware you'd need to do this on all the exchanges, and not just Bitstamp), it would cost about USD$7,840,000 to reach $727.20, a 21.2% price increase, plus another USD$7,272,000 for a 10,000 BTC buy wall at that price.  Anyone with over 118805 BTC will make more money from the price increase than spent performing this operation.

Now imagine you made an announcement that you will be buying the market up 21.2% higher than your last purchase every single month on the 1st of the month, and moving the wall up there as well.  I can guarantee you there'd be a great deal of buying by others over the course of each month as everyone scrambles to become part of the rally.  That would make it even cheaper to increase the price.  In fact, most of the price increase would probably be done for you after everyone grew to count on the monthly increase.

Food for thought on the kind of things we might see when Wall Street quantitative analysts really start looking into BTC.

[TrollinU]

LOL
You would be sold into if you move the market that far in one move and then placed a 10k wall above $700. The short term traders would feast on that wall. You would run yourself out of money trying to do this even if not the first spike. This is not the way to P&D the price.
On top of that, good luck exiting the market with all those coins.

Again, LOL

[vuduchyld]

Take a look at some pump and dump alts.  You could run up a price with $10K, create a frenzy, and sell into it.  Orchestrate that buy with some kind of mumbo jumbo announcement about cryptology, and enough people would see the volume increase and price running away that you could easily sell into it.

Hell, what am I saying, that's exactly what they do!

[Raystonn]

It's quite possible to corner the Bitcoin market.  There won't be enough coins in others' hands to break through your buy wall at that point.  Just like the Jesse Livermore days again...

[Possum577]

Not sure about all the announcement and wall tactics, but that is what drew me to Bitcoin early on.  Some rich person could just take the price anywhere he wanted and change the value perception.

Only, back then the ecosystem was a shadow of what it is now.  With all this infrastructure being created, a few fund managers could slowly push it and the "fundamentals" would keep up.

What fundamentals? There aren't any revenue, debt, P/E, earnings, or EPS metrics to value this currency!

Technical analysis on the trading, the swings, the moving day averages and stochastics, maybe...but fundamentals? What fundamentals are used to evaluate the Dollar or the Euro?

[bigasic]

I wonder whats going to happen when DPR's personal coins are sold, I believe there are 147k of them. Granted, they wont go up for sale until his trial and all appeals are exhausted. The 27k that were just sold really didn't effect the market because they didn't touch any market, yet. But when those 147k are sold, I think that will change. I guess we will have to see what the market is like then..

As to your theory, I don't think it would work as the real world is very much different than scenarios.

[Benjig]

Dont try to manipulate the market, just wait until real money flows into it, pump and dumps are for alts not for bitcoin.

[piramida]

The 27k that were just sold really didn't effect the market because they didn't touch any market, yet. But when those 147k are sold, I think that will change.

you think that based on what, your proven track record of thoughtful analysis which turned out correct? Or "wow 147 > 27 we die"? Why do you think any future auction would go any differently, and not be all bought out at a premium to market price by a wealthy individual(s)? hmm...

[DrG]

Unless those 147K hit the market unannounced the market will take that into consideration.  People will either buy ahead or holding purchasing depending on which way they think the price will go.  Seeing as how Draper's 27 did nothing, 147 might not do anything.

[keithers]

I wonder whats going to happen when DPR's personal coins are sold, I believe there are 147k of them. Granted, they wont go up for sale until his trial and all appeals are exhausted. The 27k that were just sold really didn't effect the market because they didn't touch any market, yet. But when those 147k are sold, I think that will change. I guess we will have to see what the market is like then..

As to your theory, I don't think it would work as the real world is very much different than scenarios.

They may hold another auction kind of similar to the one already hosted. I would think that the goverment would require the buyer or buyer's identity be known. Who knows... He could still be found not guilty. Speaking of Silk Road, have u guys been getting PMs to your inboxes in regards to the Cantina Drug Bazaar that recently opened? I haven't checked it  out, but the overall idea of the place is intriguing