Is this a coordinated attack?

[Severian]

I believe this is a real reason, if elites want destroy they will go easy ways via regulation and legal.

Too slow and they know it won't work. They're going to start getting serious.

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[Luckybit]

It's possible that Bitcoin itself is a pet project of the bankers. Its volatility, association with SR, and general shakiness is a good way to establish to the public that currencies only work in the hands of a centralized entity, to destroy the public's confidence in any sort of decentralized currency. It's also a very clever way to disclose the opinions of the public, sort of like detecting thought-crime. Just one theory. So who knows.

Not likely. The bankers don't support libertarian technology as pet projects and if it was one of theirs you'd see hints of their mindset in the design of the project itself. It would reek of centralization and centralized power.

There was a new Bitcoin video that popped up on Youtube recently. All computer graphics, much of which have a lot of Masonic symbolism in it. Just saying.

Masons aren't any more important than any other social club. I suppose you believe the toastmasters international are the elite? The elite don't need to join a club, they are born into their family. If you need to join a club then you aren't elite.

Yet there are Masons who are born into it. I don't buy into that idea that Freemasons are just the same as any other social club. They seem to have greater influence than say, Toastmasters, which is just a club to improve one's speech-giving abilities.

Do you know any of these masons? How many masons do you know? I've never met an elite mason or toastmaster or any other fraternity and if you think that just by joining a club that you'll become wealthy you'll rule the world good luck with that. Maybe you should join?

I suggest you actually interview someone who is a mason or visit a lodge. They don't have any power in the United States. They are no more elite than the typical country club, toastmasters, elks, etc. The only reason the masons take so much heat is because George Washington happened to be a Mason hundreds of years ago, and FDR happened to be a Mason. What about George Bush? Ronald Reagan? Barack Obama? Are you one of the people who believe they were all Masons? What about Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? or the Koch Brothers?

The way to track the elite is to follow the money. Those who are so wealthy that their children will inherit the wealth are the elite. The masons you see at the lodge aren't wealthy, most aren't even rich and are no different from anyone else. The same would apply to any other club or fraternity, the maojrity of the members of anything are just like you and me and maybe one or two might be wealthy out of thousands.

If Bitcoin were a club then I'm sure there are a few wealthy individuals involved with Bitcoin but that's not the majority and no I don't think Bitcoin is a cult but some people think it is.

[Luckybit]

ya ya yah How many out there felt it was gonna drop hard when you saw it reach 235 dollars? I think its NOT controlled at all and the old saying give them enough rope to hang them selves is the scenario here.

It went up way to fast and the crash happened just for that reason no strong hand all fluffy speculation. It takes skill like bernaki to be able to milk a currency for 40 years. They let us fuck it up.

Now there's plenty of media for bitcoin.

I believe we were rising way too fast, though that doesn't explain what's been happening. Everything about this recent runup and sell-off screams manipulation with nefarious intent to me.

The run up was real, the crash was not. The crash was a flash crash based upon high frequency trading, not a correction. Keep buying and see.

[steamboat]

I've been thinking for a while now about possible scenarios where those that stand to lose the most by bitcoins success would attack it. I find it hard to believe the world powers are dumb enough to not recognize the implications of bitcoin succeeding, and have been watching with a keen eye since before the '11 bubble. At the very least, the FBI and ECB papers give an estimate on when they began to monitor it. So I thought to myself, what would be the most efficient way to destroy bitcoin?

51% attack: This would require extensive infrastructure, even for an attack when we were at 21th/s. this would be expensive and time consuming; and while there certainly are ways to hide it, would increase the attack footprint with specialists required to set up and maintain the cluster, which runs the risk of a leak, giving bitcoin more credibility. they would also, as I understand it, need to amass a significant amount of old coins in order to continue the attack, which would only last as long as their reserves of coin.

Attack on companies offering bitcoin related services: persistent, coordinated attacks on web sites offering bitcoin services would reduce confidence in the sites, making it seem like they are run by a bunch of amateurs, reflecting poorly on the bitcoin marketplace.

Propoganda: This one is fairly obvious, and doesn't really need to be actively funded. The world governments and CBs have already invested countless dollars and man hours into brainwashing the masses. The media coverage of bitcoin is a shining example of how difficult it is for the general public to comprehend the idea of a free market and monetary system. People I have great respect for surprise me time and time again with their views of what money is.

Market manipulation: The bitcoin market is brand new, small, and fragile. It would not take much money, money they can (and do) print by the truckload every day, to orchestrate a massive pump n dump to shatter consumer confidence. The beauty of this attack is its difficulty to detect. The community would be so focused on the growth of the market and increased value they wouldn't notice the slow accumulation of wealth spread over multiple accounts. All it would take is a sudden dump of all the coins amassed to tank the value, destroying confidence in the market.

Illegal: this ones tricky due to the nature of bitcoin. It would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to make it illegal in every country, which would at best only slow adoption. History shows how difficult it is for governments to eradicate something if society demands it.

Regulation: this is a better alternative to making bitcoin illegal, though difficult given the nature of bitcoin. The easiest way would be to regulate the exchange into and out of bitcoin and fiat currencies. Vendors that accept bitcoin could be taxed on all purchases made with coins. I'm sure the government can come up with creative ways to ensure they get a slice of every pie we buy.

I believe we are currently under attack by a mix of these approaches combined to be the most effective. Who stands to gain by DDOSing bitcoin services? Who has the money to buy million dollar plus market value chunks over and over again? Greed, fear, and the inability of the current market to sustain the level of trading certainly had a large part to play in the recent crash/correction/whatever you want to call it, but what if it was something deliberate? What if someone knew the gox trading engine was maxed and they could cause a panic sell by lagging it out? How difficult would it be to spend $100 million in fiat to pump n dump the economy. Not to make a profit, but purely to destroy it? Do I have my tinfoil hat on too tight?

I suspect you could be right, but whether you are right or not it's still the community and mtGox to blame for not expecting these attacks and building it into the design from the start. Satoshi knew this was coming and designed Bitcoin to be resistant and resilient.  mtGox was not properly designed.

I completely agree. I view these attacks as a good thing. They show us where the weaknesses are and how we can reduce or eliminate them. A single exchange carrying the fiat/btc exchange rate weight of the entire network has been a weakness from the start. Hopefully we'll begin to to wider adoption of other exchanges and new ones popping up. Once the community realizes centralization is a weakness we'll be well on our way to creating the resilient infrastructure necessary to bitcoins survival