Bitcoin and the future of war.

[nemo]

Dumb question for you guys:

Let's say bitcoin gets accepted by a small, poor country. Then a neighboring country follows along. How improbable would it be that one country would cash out, destabilizing bitcoin and fucking the other country over (instead of buying weapons and bombs)? Or would the massive sell off result in mutual assured self destruction? Is it no different than the US selling off all it's gold instead of buying bombs? What happens if many poor countries adapt bitcoin, and one rich fucker (as they always do) tries to reallocate wealth, and does a massive sell off, then rebuy, or pump and dump? Is it possible that bitcoin is actually a weapon alternative? It's not like the CIA is shy about destabilizing poor countries.

Disclaimer: I do a lot of drugs and this is probably spam, but I'd appreciate the civil discourse.

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[realnowhereman]

This idea of pump and dump, and price manipulation is just plain wrong.

The manipulator is the one that loses, no one else.

Look at the recent Mt.Gox hack to see what happens when someone "dumps" 500k of BTC.  The loser was the owner of the 500k of BTC, not the people who snapped them up for ten cents each.

In your hypothetical: firstly, if Bitcoin were big enough to be used by multiple countries, the scope for dumping would be severely limited.  Secondly, the dumper would drive the price down, getting less for their BTC than they were originally worth.  Perhaps they are willing to take that on the chin, but it is them that has lost.  If they have lost, then others have won.  Finally, if Bitcoin is big enough that a country is using it as their currency, there is no problem with them continuing to do so.  If the size of the economy merited $X pre-dump; then post-dump the price will recover.

[Bit_Happy]

realnowhereman has given an answer I agree with.

....
Disclaimer: I do a lot of drugs and this is probably spam, but I'd appreciate the civil discourse.

Nice touch, I like your Disclaimer.

[BubbleBoy]

This idea of pump and dump, and price manipulation is just plain wrong.

Yet spammer are doing it for years, and for decades before the internet. Maybe they don't realize how much are they loosing ?

Seriously, pump and dump works, it's about gaming the emotional response of the market. In a perfectly rational world the manipulator would have nothing to gain, but in the real world people are just to gregarious - it's in the genes. When everybody's fleeing it takes a very cool mind to chose reason over instinct.
That's because most of the time when we were evolving, the instinct was right: if every ape is running, then probably there's a lion just around the corner. The manipulators are just playing big-bad lion.

[realnowhereman]

You're right; I shouldn't have been so simplistic.

I'm not really talking about emotional pump and dump.  The original poster was talking about market actions that one country could take to damage another.  The only manipulations you can make by buying or selling are unfavourable to yourself.  Selling drives the price down, and buying drives the price up -- both the opposite of what you want after taking the action.

Emotional manipulation seem to me to be a different thing, that doesn't require an foreign exchange, it's just a con.  Cons work on doorsteps and in board rooms; and price manipulation is secondary.  First comes the con.  Unfortunately, it requires the willing participation of the victim.  Every trade requires a willing buyer and seller.  In a security that goes up and down in value, one of those two will win, and one will lose; but at the time of the trade, each of them pays their money and makes their choice.  So be it.

[killer2021]

This idea of pump and dump, and price manipulation is just plain wrong.

The manipulator is the one that loses, no one else.

Look at the recent Mt.Gox hack to see what happens when someone "dumps" 500k of BTC.  The loser was the owner of the 500k of BTC, not the people who snapped them up for ten cents each.

In your hypothetical: firstly, if Bitcoin were big enough to be used by multiple countries, the scope for dumping would be severely limited.  Secondly, the dumper would drive the price down, getting less for their BTC than they were originally worth.  Perhaps they are willing to take that on the chin, but it is them that has lost.  If they have lost, then others have won.  Finally, if Bitcoin is big enough that a country is using it as their currency, there is no problem with them continuing to do so.  If the size of the economy merited $X pre-dump; then post-dump the price will recover.

You forgot to calculate in the fact that once people start seeing the btc price drop 10-20% in one day all the idiots are going to be, "OMFG, THE WORLD IS ENDING SELL ALL YOUR BITCOINS BEFORE THEY ARE WORTH NOTHING." and drop the market another 20-30%.

Greed and fear is what drives the market and those two emotions lead to speculative booms and busts, always.

We all saw that happening when btc went from 30 to 10$.