Nobody Can Have Benefit From a Big Pump

[deisik]

At first, there were some problems "on the blockchain", now we have some staff working on these nonexistent issues to resolve them. What staff are you talking about? Apart from that, stuck transactions and slow confirmation times have more to do with Bitcoin miners deliberately refusing to confirm transactions (in an effort to scrounge higher fees). Obviously, this has nothing to do with exchanges allegedly withholding withdrawals in times of above average price volatility

Are you joking? Stuck transactions are due to the blocksize limit, FFS. Miners aren't scrounging fees, they're unable to keep up with the volume because they can only process 1MB every block interval.

I'm not joking at all

I'd rather say that it is you who are misinformed. Miners are doing what any other monopoly out there does, i.e. trying to squeeze as much profit as possible from their clients. In this case, it means exactly that, i.e. going for higher fees in every possible way since mining rewards are fixed and cannot be changed without destroying Bitcoin. It has been discussed many times already, some miners are not filling up blocks to the hilt, some are leaving them deliberately empty, with only one generating transaction (e.g. AntPool). Wtf, they may be spamming the network themselves. And what's ironic, it is exactly them who are declining solutions that would solve this issue. Now ask if there is a single reason not to call them rogue?

[Jherek]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

No, not really.

The speculators will definitely be able to make a quick buck or two from this. You have to realise that the price of bitcoin is determined by the last trade conducted between buyers and sellers, and that means that a trade has to actually happen.

If the price on Bitstamp for instance is $3,000 that means that the last trade conducted is $3,000. If you want to place a market order then the highest buy order might only be $2,950, but still, you CAN sell the bitcoins if there was a big pump.

[KenR]

At first, there were some problems "on the blockchain", now we have some staff working on these nonexistent issues to resolve them. What staff are you talking about? Apart from that, stuck transactions and slow confirmation times have more to do with Bitcoin miners deliberately refusing to confirm transactions (in an effort to scrounge higher fees). Obviously, this has nothing to do with exchanges allegedly withholding withdrawals in times of above average price volatility

That's non-sense.Don't have an idea how that is relevant to the topic.You want miners to use their resources for free ? The least they could do is cover up their electricity costs.

Are you joking? Stuck transactions are due to the blocksize limit, FFS. Miners aren't scrounging fees, they're unable to keep up with the volume because they can only process 1MB every block interval.

Did I quote it all wrong or you're just being a hypocrite ?

I'd rather say that it is you who are misinformed. Miners are doing what any other monopoly out there does, i.e. trying to squeeze as much profit as possible from their clients. In this case, it means exactly that, i.e. going for higher fees in any possible way since mining rewards are fixed and cannot be changed without destroying Bitcoin. It has been discussed many times already, some miners are not filling up blocks to the hilt, some are leaving them deliberately empty, with only one generating transaction (e.g. AntPool). Wtf, they may be spamming the network themselves. And what's ironic, it is exactly them who are declining solutions that would solve this issue. Now ask if there is a single reason not to call them rogue?

Again,do you have a better solution which would be profitable on both the ends ? Whining doesn't do good to anybody.

[deisik]

Are you joking? Stuck transactions are due to the blocksize limit, FFS. Miners aren't scrounging fees, they're unable to keep up with the volume because they can only process 1MB every block interval.

Did I quote it all wrong or you're just being a hypocrite ?

Yes, you seem to have quoted it all wrong

These words are evidently not my words. I don't care if you are going to apologize or whatever (I really don't care), but you'd better do for your own sake since karma is a bitch (and she certainly takes her job seriously). Regarding miners, this is sort of natural behavior (i.e. looking for more profits in every feasible way not outright banned by law or otherwise). But this still doesn't make them less rogue. Or, if you are not quite happy with me calling a bunch of dudes representing mining nowadays rogue miners, then the whole mining system in Bitcoin is rogue and corrupt. Whether or not you have an idea how that is relevant to the topic isn't my business either. Anyway, you are asking the wrong person

[abayan]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

I dont think so ,i am not agree with this because we don't know what exchanges will do. I think exchanges will to their own way to have an advantage on it .If they do so they might have a problem with their reputation.

[webtricks]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

First of all few hours is too less time for more than 130% pump at the price of $1300 !!
Secondly, how exchange gonna know btc is going to be $3000 or even more before hand, its people who makes prices. Thirdly, if exchange stops exchange how can price keeps climbing?
Fourth and most important, Exchange will not be in losses, it is not exchange who buys your btc but the people in form of buyer, rather exchange will make money in form of commission from increased transactions.

[deisik]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

First of all few hours is too less time for more than 130% pump at the price of $1300 !!
Secondly, how exchange gonna know btc is going to be $3000 or even more before hand, its people who makes prices. Thirdly, if exchange stops exchange how can price keeps climbing?
Fourth and most important, Exchange will not be in losses, it is not exchange who buys your btc but the people in form of buyer, rather exchange will make money in form of commission from increased transactions.

I think I can successfully challenge all of your points

First, with markets thinning as it seems to be the case with prices climbing, we can see both dramatic price spikes as well as price crashes. Empty (well, mostly) orderbooks make it possible for someone either to sell through all the liquidity provided or to satisfy all demands for liquidity (or both at once), and thus prices can be however low or however high at a given exchange. And this is not just dry theory, I've seen it many times at small exchanges when orderbooks get empty by some huge buy or sell order. Second, the exchange does know where the price is going beforehand since, technically speaking, it is them who are placing the orders, not traders, i.e. they see the orders even before they are placed. So no problem here either. Third, prices may be rising at one exchange but trades can be halted at another. As simple as it gets. Fourth (and that's the tricky part), you can't know for certain that exchange is not actively trading itself, so the answer is yes, they can be in losses, and thus may have an incentive to halt trading

[classicsucks]

At first, there were some problems "on the blockchain", now we have some staff working on these nonexistent issues to resolve them. What staff are you talking about? Apart from that, stuck transactions and slow confirmation times have more to do with Bitcoin miners deliberately refusing to confirm transactions (in an effort to scrounge higher fees). Obviously, this has nothing to do with exchanges allegedly withholding withdrawals in times of above average price volatility

Are you joking? Stuck transactions are due to the blocksize limit, FFS. Miners aren't scrounging fees, they're unable to keep up with the volume because they can only process 1MB every block interval.

I'm not joking at all

I'd rather say that it is you who are misinformed. Miners are doing what any other monopoly out there does, i.e. trying to squeeze as much profit as possible from their clients. In this case, it means exactly that, i.e. going for higher fees in any possible way since mining rewards are fixed and cannot be changed without destroying Bitcoin. It has been discussed many times already, some miners are not filling up blocks to the hilt, some are leaving them deliberately empty, with only one generating transaction (e.g. AntPool). Wtf, they may be spamming the network themselves. And what's ironic, it is exactly them who are declining solutions that would solve this issue. Now ask if there is a single reason not to call them rogue?

Your theory is off. First off, miners are not a monopoly, they are the people who secure the network from hacks. The miners want to increase blocksize, to increase capacity for more transactions, which Blockstream/Core has been blocking for 3 years. Fees rising astronomically may be good for miners in the short term, but they are smart enough to know that people will abandon Bitcoin if fees get too high (witness the precipitous drop in BTC dominance). More total transactions is the key to profits for them as the block reward continues to drop. This has been discussed to death here, and you're simply out of the loop on this topic.

Miners are opposed to Segwit because it will move transactions off the BTC chain to Lightning Network/Blockstream control. Obvious.

Lots of people could have an incentive to flood the mempool for many reasons. Personally I believe it's Core supporters trying to FUD people into adopting Segwart.

[bajing]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

Do you mean price increase in one day ?? Yes it is possible that no transaction occurs because it is impossible in one days the price will rise so high. no no, exchanger will never suffer losses because there is a turnaround that occurs and they are merely intermediaries.

[KenR]

Lots of people could have an incentive to flood the mempool for many reasons. Personally I believe it's Core supporters trying to FUD people into adopting Segwart.

Excuse me if I'm missing something but how does flooding the mempool benefits anybody ?How would dust transactions give incentives ? This doesn't seem like it has a technical point of view,humans are a complicated race.

[cipherer]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

If exchange itself is not trading, they basically don't care

More specifically, they care for fees, and trading fees obviously come from trades, so when there are abrupt price movements the trading volume spikes too. And it doesn't matter whether the price flash crashes or flash surges. So, they are in fact interested in volatility and price being "alive", therefore prices pumping to 3,000 dollars per coin would provide exactly that, i.e. insane levels of volatility

Agree:
1. Most fees are a percentage, so higher price, higher fee
2. When one analyses the fee structure, it will show that a sellingfee is a higher percentage than a buying fee.

[louisvuitoon]

If Bitcoin price pumps from $1300 to $3000 in few hours, nobody would make profit from it, because the exchanges wouldn't allow you to sell your Bitcoins and make the fast profit, it would bring a big loss for exchange sites.

Do you agree with this?

If exchange itself is not trading, they basically don't care

More specifically, they care for fees, and trading fees obviously come from trades, so when there are abrupt price movements the trading volume spikes too. And it doesn't matter whether the price flash crashes or flash surges. So, they are in fact interested in volatility and price being "alive", therefore prices pumping to 3,000 dollars per coin would provide exactly that, i.e. insane levels of volatility

Agree:
1. Most fees are a percentage, so higher price, higher fee
2. When one analyses the fee structure, it will show that a sellingfee is a higher percentage than a buying fee.

exchanges are just middlemen who take a commission from filling orders. I doubt they care about people pumping and dumping. as long as trading volume is high, they are happy.

[EthSports]

Yes, for sure investors will going to grab the chance to make exchange to have some profit and after they will going to wait again it crashes again then after they will have to buy coins in the low price then wait to pump up again and sell. This process goes on and off for the traders and this is their skill to get profit by just the pump and dump of the coins.

[iqlimasyadiqa]

Yes, for sure investors will going to grab the chance to make exchange to have some profit and after they will going to wait again it crashes again then after they will have to buy coins in the low price then wait to pump up again and sell. This process goes on and off for the traders and this is their skill to get profit by just the pump and dump of the coins.

Many do that nowadays. But many investors who just stay and wait until there is a bitcoin price increase again. This is a normal thing because everything has its own strategy. Every decision will definitely have results to be had. The better the decision then the greater the benefits that can be achieved.

[deisik]

At first, there were some problems "on the blockchain", now we have some staff working on these nonexistent issues to resolve them. What staff are you talking about? Apart from that, stuck transactions and slow confirmation times have more to do with Bitcoin miners deliberately refusing to confirm transactions (in an effort to scrounge higher fees). Obviously, this has nothing to do with exchanges allegedly withholding withdrawals in times of above average price volatility

Are you joking? Stuck transactions are due to the blocksize limit, FFS. Miners aren't scrounging fees, they're unable to keep up with the volume because they can only process 1MB every block interval.

I'm not joking at all

I'd rather say that it is you who are misinformed. Miners are doing what any other monopoly out there does, i.e. trying to squeeze as much profit as possible from their clients. In this case, it means exactly that, i.e. going for higher fees in any possible way since mining rewards are fixed and cannot be changed without destroying Bitcoin. It has been discussed many times already, some miners are not filling up blocks to the hilt, some are leaving them deliberately empty, with only one generating transaction (e.g. AntPool). Wtf, they may be spamming the network themselves. And what's ironic, it is exactly them who are declining solutions that would solve this issue. Now ask if there is a single reason not to call them rogue?

Your theory is off. First off, miners are not a monopoly, they are the people who secure the network from hacks. The miners want to increase blocksize, to increase capacity for more transactions, which Blockstream/Core has been blocking for 3 years. Fees rising astronomically may be good for miners in the short term, but they are smart enough to know that people will abandon Bitcoin if fees get too high (witness the precipitous drop in BTC dominance). More total transactions is the key to profits for them as the block reward continues to drop. This has been discussed to death here, and you're simply out of the loop on this topic.

Miners are opposed to Segwit because it will move transactions off the BTC chain to Lightning Network/Blockstream control. Obvious

If it is so obvious (which I totally agree with), why is it not as obvious to you that there is no "long term" for miners in that very case (as opposed to short term)? As I've already said it a few times, their days are numbered unless they can successfully prolong the current Core versus Unlimited showdown as long as possible or even indefinitely (note that this is equally applicable to miners supporting SW/LN as well as their opponents supporting BU). Regarding mining monopoly, I don't see how this monopoly excludes securing the network from hacks (which seems to be your point). In other words, monopoly doesn't mean that whoever participates in it refuses to do their job (though this still doesn't completely eliminate such a possibility either)

It is primarily about requesting too much for doing the job (due to lack of competition)

[European Central Bank]

if there was a surge like that and you couldn't get a sale, most of the time it's down to the exchange failing. bitfinex have done it in the past, kraken does it all the time, with alts poloniex has done it too.

could they be hitting a button somewhere? it's possible. it's not against the law and there's money in it

[webtricks]

~snip~

~snip~

I think I can successfully challenge all of your points

First, with markets thinning as it seems to be the case with prices climbing, we can see both dramatic price spikes as well as price crashes. Empty (well, mostly) orderbooks make it possible for someone both to sell through all liquidity provided or satisfy all demand for liquidity, and thus prices can be however low or however high at a given exchange. And this is not just dry theory, I've seen it many times at small exchanges when orderbooks get empty by some huge buy or sell order. Second, the exchange does know where the price is going beforehand since, technically speaking, it is them who are placing the orders, not traders, i.e. they see the orders even before they are placed. So no problem here either. Third, prices may be rising at one exchange but trades can halted at another. As simple as it gets. Fourth (and that's the tricky part), you can't know for certain that exchange is not actively trading itself, so the answer is yes, they can be in losses, and thus may have an incentive to halt trading

Yesterday I was reading about 'Perfect Competition Market' in economics book. There was a full fledged chapter, I think consisting 20-25 pages. I started enthusiastically but lost my all interest right after reading first line. The line was-
"Perfect Competition Market does not exist in real, it is just a theory".
Your take on my post remembered me the same thing, human race has reached far ahead of reality in the ideology based world with assumptions only, no reality. 

[pitham1]

if there was a surge like that and you couldn't get a sale, most of the time it's down to the exchange failing. bitfinex have done it in the past, kraken does it all the time, with alts poloniex has done it too.

could they be hitting a button somewhere? it's possible. it's not against the law and there's money in it

I doubt if they could legally do so. If there is an investigation, they would be in trouble.
They make money when trades happen and it is in their best interest to facilitate trades.

[deisik]

~snip~

~snip~

I think I can successfully challenge all of your points

First, with markets thinning as it seems to be the case with prices climbing, we can see both dramatic price spikes as well as price crashes. Empty (well, mostly) orderbooks make it possible for someone both to sell through all liquidity provided or satisfy all demand for liquidity, and thus prices can be however low or however high at a given exchange. And this is not just dry theory, I've seen it many times at small exchanges when orderbooks get empty by some huge buy or sell order. Second, the exchange does know where the price is going beforehand since, technically speaking, it is them who are placing the orders, not traders, i.e. they see the orders even before they are placed. So no problem here either. Third, prices may be rising at one exchange but trades can halted at another. As simple as it gets. Fourth (and that's the tricky part), you can't know for certain that exchange is not actively trading itself, so the answer is yes, they can be in losses, and thus may have an incentive to halt trading

Yesterday I was reading about 'Perfect Competition Market' in economics book. There was a full fledged chapter, I think consisting 20-25 pages. I started enthusiastically but lost my all interest right after reading first line. The line was-
"Perfect Competition Market does not exist in real, it is just a theory".
Your take on my post remembered me the same thing, human race has reached far ahead of reality in the ideology based world with assumptions only, no reality. 

I guess in this case there is no place for ideology

Since it is an obvious case of practice being a lot more complicated and convoluted than a theory describing these events or processes up to a point where in reality you get the opposite results in respect to what theory (or just conventional view) suggests. In other words, "in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, though in practice there is"

[classicsucks]

At first, there were some problems "on the blockchain", now we have some staff working on these nonexistent issues to resolve them. What staff are you talking about? Apart from that, stuck transactions and slow confirmation times have more to do with Bitcoin miners deliberately refusing to confirm transactions (in an effort to scrounge higher fees). Obviously, this has nothing to do with exchanges allegedly withholding withdrawals in times of above average price volatility

Are you joking? Stuck transactions are due to the blocksize limit, FFS. Miners aren't scrounging fees, they're unable to keep up with the volume because they can only process 1MB every block interval.

I'm not joking at all

I'd rather say that it is you who are misinformed. Miners are doing what any other monopoly out there does, i.e. trying to squeeze as much profit as possible from their clients. In this case, it means exactly that, i.e. going for higher fees in any possible way since mining rewards are fixed and cannot be changed without destroying Bitcoin. It has been discussed many times already, some miners are not filling up blocks to the hilt, some are leaving them deliberately empty, with only one generating transaction (e.g. AntPool). Wtf, they may be spamming the network themselves. And what's ironic, it is exactly them who are declining solutions that would solve this issue. Now ask if there is a single reason not to call them rogue?

Your theory is off. First off, miners are not a monopoly, they are the people who secure the network from hacks. The miners want to increase blocksize, to increase capacity for more transactions, which Blockstream/Core has been blocking for 3 years. Fees rising astronomically may be good for miners in the short term, but they are smart enough to know that people will abandon Bitcoin if fees get too high (witness the precipitous drop in BTC dominance). More total transactions is the key to profits for them as the block reward continues to drop. This has been discussed to death here, and you're simply out of the loop on this topic.

Miners are opposed to Segwit because it will move transactions off the BTC chain to Lightning Network/Blockstream control. Obvious

If it is so obvious (which I totally agree with), why is it not as obvious to you that there is no "long term" for miners in that very case (as opposed to short term)? As I've already said it a few times, their days are numbered unless they can successfully prolong the current Core versus Unlimited showdown as long as possible or even indefinitely (note that this is equally applicable to miners supporting SW/LN as well as their opponents supporting BU). Regarding mining monopoly, I don't see how this monopoly excludes securing the network from hacks (which seems to be your point). In other words, monopoly doesn't mean that whoever participates in it refuses to do their job (though this still doesn't completely eliminate such a possibility either)

It is primarily about requesting too much for doing the job (due to lack of competition)

It seems that we don't disagree on what's happening, more the reasons why.

Miners aren't "requesting high fees". People are paying progressively higher fees to get their transactions confirmed. Have you looked at the mempool in the last week? It has broken new size records: https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size?timespan=60days  Today it's at new ATH, over 110MB. That means the blocks are full, and hundreds of thousands of transactions are unconfirmed, likely the sub-$1 fee transactions and the complicated transactions (lots of inputs).  The reason for that is that the blocks are full. Miners could easily clear that mempool (and would love to) if the blocks were a mere 2MB. The blocks could've been made 2MB without issue 3 years ago with a one-line code change and a quick consensus hard fork (not as scary as Blockstream would have you believe), and still could be.

Ergo, fees are high because the network is over capacity. The network is over capacity due to Blockstream's monopoly on development and deliberate blockage of many proposals to increase the blocksize. Blockstream has explicitly stated that Bitcoin won't scale past 1MB blocks and Segwit with Lightning is the only way forward. However, due to the market's rejection of their FUD, Blockstream's monopoly on development has ended, with Unlimited being a candidate to replace them. As we all know, Unlimited development is not great, but another challenger will arise soon. Segwit is dead in the water with Litecoin dumping and Lightning not working yet. Time is not on Blockstream's side - they no longer have credibility as the de facto developers of the bitcoin software. If they continue to ignore market sentiment about Segwit, eventually there will be a  viable code fork of version 0.12 that works and has 2 or 4 MB blocks. Alternately, the blocksize will remain 1MB forever and bitcoin will continually lose market share until and altcoin surpasses it. 

It could be argued that miners have a sort of monopoly. But then, when did they not have this monopoly?