Price Conspiracy

[ericools]

Now, I expect bitcoin to be volatile, and you would have to expect a pretty big drop after the rise it took, but something doesn't seem right here.

The lower the price gets the more I am considering the possibility that this is intentional. 

Two theories:

1. Banks/Credit Cards/Govt or someone else who has money and doesn't like bitcoin, is buying coins on the DL from people in places other than the exchanges and are dumping them to push the price down in the hopes of killing bitcoin, or reducing the network to the point where a hostile takeover is possible.

2. Someone who does believe in the future of bitcoin is using the same tactic to drive the price down so they can load up at a very low cost.

Thoughts?

[Brian DeLoach]

Thoughts?

Crazy.

[RodeoX]

Plenty of people have made panic posts in an attempt to drive down prices ahead of a buy. Not sure about the efficacy of this technique. If someone does a good job, it may be very hard to tell how well it worked.

[saethan]

Thoughts?

Crazy.

+1

Bitcoins are still worth a hell of a lot more than before they got media attention.

[ericools]

Well, I am a bit concerned that the network now shows 75% as other.

A bank or credit company would not care if the lost money doing this.  Bitcoin is a very small economy, and only some of it is being traded in the markets.  It seems to me this would be possible.

[saethan]

Well, I am a bit concerned that the network now shows 75% as other.

A bank or credit company would not care if the lost money doing this.  Bitcoin is a very small economy, and only some of it is being traded in the markets.  It seems to me this would be possible.

It shows a large amount as 'other' since at the moment a lot of people are switching to smaller pools because the largest pools are getting ddos'd(my primary and first two failovers are down, personally), and the not-so-large-but-still-big-pools are getting overloaded because people are switching to them suddenly, also crashing those, so the smallest pools that are not well known publicly are taking over(there are numerous pools in the <100 GH/s range that are not included in graphs and would fit in the 'other' portion).

tl;dr the hashrate of the 'top 10' pools has tanked thanks to a kind of chain-effect from the largest couple getting attacked

[memvola]

At the risk of sounding more crazy I'd say the biggest conspiracy is how people are programmed to behave in the 21st century. I'm impressed by the sheer amount of people who advocate regulation and centralization. Even more interesting is the fact that most people argue that Bitcoin is a bad idea because it's not accepted by your local grocery store. If I was pessimistic, I would believe that nothing bottom-up would ever work in the real world. The reality is, you don't need to attack Bitcoin, the drones are doing it for you.

[Giraffe.BTC]

Oh, for fuck's sake.  Bitcoin's price has dropped (and will continue to drop) because there is no real demand for them.  No one is using them as a currency.  The only significant demand has been from speculators, the net effect of which has been to transfer money from themselves to early adopters / miners.  But that's over:  pretty much everyone who has cash to invest in Bitcoins has already invested it.  Meanwhile, tons of people are holding Bitcoins in the hopes of eventually selling them for a good price, and more are being mined every day.

You don't need a conspiracy to explain the price drop, just basic common sense.  A lot of people have to keep buying coins for the price to stay constant or rise.  Where is that money going to come from?   At the same time, you have to keep all the people currently holding coins from giving up and selling them.  Why would they?  At some point, sensible people will cut their losses once they realize there's nothing to stop Bitcoins from going to $1 and lower.  At that point, it will be a race to see who can get out fastest. 

The only chance Bitcoin had to gain real value was if the technical problems surrounding its use as an online currency were resolved such that people found it more convenient, inexpensive AND secure than credit cards or Paypal.  That hasn't happened.  So now it's just a speculative commodity, backed by nothing.  Those who realize this the slowest are the ones who will be left holding the bag.

[322i0n]

no way the banks would do something so conniving not even paypal would be so cunning as to throw a few hundred thousand dollars into driving the price down to a point where miners have no choice but to switch off their rigs. I mean come on, what next? you'll be saying they are plannig a 51% attack. get real.

nah, it cant be any of that.

most likely it is an early adopter dumping some coins because he realised what a failure bitcoin is. [/fud]

[ericools]

Ok, bitcoin is a failure, So you are no this forum why?  To troll bitcoin users?

People do use them.

I used them to pay my programmer to write all the software my company uses.  I also purchased most of my computer hardware with them, and use them as a medium of exchange between myself and several friends.  They seem pretty useful to me.

Is it really that outlandish to think someone would attach bitcoin.  Pools, and exchanges seem to get ddosed pretty often.

[Giraffe.BTC]

Ok, bitcoin is a failure, So you are no this forum why?  To troll bitcoin users?

I'm on this forum because I think the concept of Bitcoin is interesting, even if the actual execution has been a complete trainwreck.  The fact that so many posters here can't bear to hear anything but "rah rah go bitcoin!" cheerleading is sad, and has kept the focus in the wrong areas for quite a while.  If you were actually trying to get a P2P cryptocurrency going, you'd discourage the mindless faith posts and focus on identifying and attacking the many, many barriers to widespread adoption.  But once the price shot up, greed-fueled optimism/delusion and political ideology has replaced critical analysis. 

People do use them.

I used them to pay my programmer to write all the software my company uses.  I also purchased most of my computer hardware with them, and use them as a medium of exchange between myself and several friends.  They seem pretty useful to me.

No one who isn't a true believer uses Bitcoin.  If I want to buy something online, why would I use Bitcoins instead of my Visa card?  My Visa card costs me nothing, is accepted by 99.99999% of online merchants and fully protects me from being ripped off.  What advantage does Bitcoin have to the average online consumer over Visa?

Is it really that outlandish to think someone would attach bitcoin.  Pools, and exchanges seem to get ddosed pretty often.

It's outlandish that you think there needs to be a conspiracy to explain the price drop of something that has failed to achieve objective value. 

[repentance]

I used them to pay my programmer to write all the software my company uses.  I also purchased most of my computer hardware with them, and use them as a medium of exchange between myself and several friends.  They seem pretty useful to me.

Are you paying your programmer the same amount of Bitcoins per hour for their work as you were 3 months ago?  Will 100 BTC buy you as much computer hardware now as it did 3 months ago?

The purchasing power of your Bitcoins has declined significantly.  More importantly, the total purchasing power of the "Bitcoin community" has a whole has declined significantly.  For many people, this greatly diminishes their usefulness.  People need some kind of predictability about what they'll be able to purchase tomorrow and next week with the currency they hold today.  Even those services which accept Bitcoin typically adjust their BTC prices as the BTC/USD exchange rate changes so that they're still charging roughly the same USD equivalent.

For most people, it's simply not as convenient to be paid in Bitcoins as by conventional means because converting them back to cash attracts fees, takes time, there are and there's no guaranteed exchange rate.  Even if the actual conversion process wasn't a pain in the ass, how many people want to risk this week's pay-packet being worth 25% less by the time they convert it - something which can easily happen right now?

[repentance]

I used them to pay my programmer to write all the software my company uses.  I also purchased most of my computer hardware with them, and use them as a medium of exchange between myself and several friends.  They seem pretty useful to me.

Are you paying your programmer the same amount of Bitcoins per hour for their work as you were 3 months ago?  Will 100 BTC buy you as much computer hardware now as it did 3 months ago?

The purchasing power of your Bitcoins has declined significantly.  More importantly, the total purchasing power of the "Bitcoin community" has a whole has declined significantly.  For many people, this greatly diminishes their usefulness.  People need some kind of predictability about what they'll be able to purchase tomorrow and next week with the currency they hold today.  Even those services which accept Bitcoin typically adjust their BTC prices as the BTC/USD exchange rate changes so that they're still charging roughly the same USD equivalent.

For most people, it's simply not as convenient to be paid in Bitcoins as by conventional means because converting them back to cash attracts fees, takes time, there are and there's no guaranteed exchange rate.  Even if the actual conversion process wasn't a pain in the ass, how many people want to risk this week's pay-packet being worth 25% less by the time they convert it - something which can easily happen right now?  I want you as my employer to be assuming the risk of BTC declining in value rather than risk effectively risking 25% less for my services.  Most people simply can't afford the risk of their wage packet being worth significantly less from one day to the next.

[bitcoinminer]

There is also the possibility of a simpler explanation...

If you imagine a chart, with the price of bitcoin versus how cool it is, the price went up as coolness went up.

Inevitably though, things return to their actual value.  As the coolness wears off, BTC approach their inherent value, which is zero.  As long as there is $2 worth of "cool" factor, they will be worth $2.  When 50% more people stop thinking it is cool, it will reach $1.

It will never reach zero, as there will always be some cool factor to it.

That being said, if the difficulty decreases by 90%, it will be worth $2 to mine a bit coin, but it is unlikely if difficulty decreases 90% that the price will stay at $2.

[jago25_98]

Are you paying your programmer the same amount of Bitcoins per hour for their work as you were 3 months ago?  Will 100 BTC buy you as much computer hardware now as it did 3 months ago?

The purchasing power of your Bitcoins has declined significantly. ...

For most people, it's simply not as convenient to be paid in Bitcoins as by conventional means because converting them back to cash attracts fees,
[/quote]

Getting people actually thinking in BTC takes time because that thought in the head is competing for previous currencies. It's like going on holiday - even though you know the prices from conversion it's not instinctual. This takes a very long time. Until then it's conversion from another currency.

The price can crash within days but USD can crash very quick too. Of course we now think it's less likely, especially with USD. But what about Libian Dinar, they didn't see it coming that much did they? Perhaps for them it was as unthinkable as multinukes on the USA. Of course I agree that USD is more stable than BTC but wait,
 by buying USD you are giving power to the FED. It's a political action. Nobody ever thinks like this. You should. South American USA hating countries... and then they keep savings under the matress in USD. The thinker creates the world.

Still, what if you're in a country with Pesos. Plenty of countries with pesos have had limits on exchanging USD and gold in the past and still have 10-30% inflation now. BTC isn't great but it isn't terrible.

Next up, international transfers. If you got family in the USA and you live in the EU you can transfer to BTC via Intersango, send to an exchange with a presence in the USA and withdraw as USD. If you're worried about BTC stability then it's only exposed for 24hours. Depending on the exchanges you can also get some anonimity (such as OTC). You're getting access to the community. It's more accessible. What's the alternative? Western Union at $40 a pop when you're a migrant worker? It's extremely useful already for people who travel.

Also useful for purchasing gold with some anonimity if you are worried about possible future gold confiscations.

Next one I see a lot here is just being able to post donation addresses. Closest thing to that would be paypal and posting an email address. You'd have to use an email just for that as you'd get spammed. Plus we all know paypal is a pain. It seems more accessible than flattr to me.

Even for the desperate survivialist who really thinks that any currency he tries to hide is under threat - gold, USD, everything right now, BTC is still a useful thing. I don't think the recession has started...

Those are the killer app / unique selling points of BTC I've seen so far that I can think of right now. I haven't seen other blockchains add much. Yet.

The price is in the toilet, get over it. You can look at the pattern to try to figure out why it's going down. For example, is it a case of now the rate is following mining. I expect mining to continue seeing as if people have the hardware they're probably going to find it hard to hit the off switch emotionally.

[saethan]

If the difficulty dropped by 90% I'd be profitable at $0.20 a coin.   

AFAIK in any one retarget the difficulty can only change by what, -75% or +300%?  i.e. the biggest change can either be a retarget to 1/4 * current diff, or 4 * current diff

[plastic.elastic]

Next up, international transfers. If you got family in the USA and you live in the EU you can transfer to BTC via Intersango, send to an exchange with a presence in the USA and withdraw as USD. If you're worried about BTC stability then it's only exposed for 24hours. Depending on the exchanges you can also get some anonimity (such as OTC). You're getting access to the community. It's more accessible. What's the alternative? Western Union at $40 a pop when you're a migrant worker? It's extremely useful already for people who travel.

Oh and it costs you nothing to send money using bitcoins?

Stop being a dumbass. The exchange rate alone might cost you more than $40 if you send any usuable amount of money.

[bitleaker]

Thoughts?

I'd suggest you try some.

[oOoOo]

2. Someone who does believe in the future of bitcoin is using the same tactic to drive the price down so they can load up at a very low cost.

Thoughts?

Highly unlikely.
With a drop like that (+93%), the reputation of bitcoin is probably already damaged to the point where it will never return to previous highs, or even close. Thereby rendering any effort to "load up" and sell later for profit a futile endeavour.
.

[Nagle]

I'm on this forum because I think the concept of Bitcoin is interesting, even if the actual execution has been a complete trainwreck.  The fact that so many posters here can't bear to hear anything but "rah rah go bitcoin!" cheerleading is sad, and has kept the focus in the wrong areas for quite a while.  If you were actually trying to get a P2P cryptocurrency going, you'd discourage the mindless faith posts and focus on identifying and attacking the many, many barriers to widespread adoption.  But once the price shot up, greed-fueled optimism/delusion and political ideology has replaced critical analysis. 

That's one of the best summaries of the situation I've seen in a while.