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A comment on Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power. Parent comment

Re:Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power by eighthnate on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @03:57PM (#15707681)
> Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends

Bitcoin is tiny as currencies go or as industries go. What is it $100 billion "market cap"?

> Whales are not gods.

Sure. But in such a tiny volume entity like bitcoin, any large player can easily move markets.

It doesn't even have market makers or any real rules yet.

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Re:Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power by freeloop3 on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @04:06PM (#15707797)
The volume today was over $4 billion. Let's say you'd need 5% of that to move the market enough for people to take notice. (Given the large volatility, this actually seems conservative) Are you suggesting that there are people who are regularly buying and selling more than $200 million worth of cryptocurrency a day?
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Re:Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power by lend000 on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @04:11PM (#15707839)
> It doesn't even have market makers or any real rules yet.

Blatantly false -- you clearly don't monitor crypto exchange order books full time (I do). Even most small-cap altcoins have active market makers running 24/7 for ALT/BTC, ALT/ETH and ALT/USD (where supported).

> But in such a tiny volume entity like bitcoin, any large player can easily move markets.

Do you know from experience? There are some extremely low market cap altcoins -- you should give it a try. I do not think manipulating markets for any length of time is as easy as sideline commenters seem to believe, and it certainly is difficult to make it profitable.

Also note that many of the highest market share Bitcoin investors were early crypto enthusiasts or wealthy venture-cap-type investors, not professional/active traders. If and when there is concerted market manipulation with hundreds of millions behind it, these early adopters are certainly taking heavy losses.

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Re:Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power by sillysaurus3 on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @04:49PM (#15708170)
Do you know from experience? There are some extremely low market cap altcoins -- you should give it a try. I do not think manipulating markets for any length of time is as easy as sideline commenters seem to believe, and it certainly is difficult to make it profitable.

Ripple (XRP): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15203894

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