Bitcoin is thoroughly manipulated. Tether is minting a billion dollars a day now, with zero oversight and close ties to the major exchanges. Exchanges themselves have been found front running customers, running wash trades on their own coins etc etc. Fraud is rampant in this space and there is zero oversight from the normal regulatory bodies.

A trillion dollars goes into bitcoin, the price just goes up and there's no dilution.

But there is significant manipulation and absolutely no clarity about whether a trillion dollars has in fact gone into cryptocurrencies or whether things like the trillions of dollars that tether has minted affect the price more than real money flowing in. The numbers you can quote from exchanges are unaudited and highly suspect. At least those other assets have some sort of auditing in place to prevent fraud and market manipulation (which still happens, but would of course be rampant and largely hidden without regulation).

Also, Bitcoin is open source. So you can download the Bitcoin code and fork it and call it THE SUPER NEW IMPROVED BITCOIN

Ah, so the supply of this new money is in fact unlimited, since you can add new coins at any time. The supply of bitcoin may be limited (for now, by fiat), but the supply of cryptocurrencies and now nfts is constantly growing, there is no scarcity, and any we have is invented.

If you think Bitcoin is a symbol of resistance you're a mark making the likes of the Winklevoss twins and JL Van der Velde even richer. Get out now if you can.

Tether has "only" minted $78 billion, not trillions

Does anyone really believe 78,423,306,967 USD are currently invested in Tether?

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency)

Edit: I see elsewhere somebody saying "nobody in the commercial paper markets have heard of them"

So basically, like most other things they say, it's simply not credible.

https://www.ft.com/content/342966af-98dc-4b48-b997-38c008042...

That "commercial paper" could very well be IOUs from themselves to themselves

2. The rules can also be changed with a simple fork if enough users are persuaded to move (Bitcoin Cash) - and somehow the price of both is preserved (how? why? who benefits?).

3. The price is provided by unaudited exchanges and can be manipulated by manipulating linked assets and collusion with exchanges, as Tether has shown.

This is a house of cards waiting to collapse.

2) Again there is a reason why Bitcoin Cash is a fraction of BTCs value it's not the same.

3) Everything can be manipulated. You go and see how Soros did that in the 90es. But again that's not the measurement here. It can't be changed.

It's been a house waiting to collapse for 12 years now. Maybe you should ask yourself what it would take for you to admit to yourself that you were wrong. How long does this have to be a thing?

What would stop it being changed?

It's been a house waiting to collapse for 12 years now.

Tether has only been trading since 2015 and only prominent the last few years. Other cryptocurrencies have seen multiple bubbles and collapses. The thing that would convince me personally is that all the get-rich-quick marks and scammers leave the space and people start using it for actually useful things like payments.

Unfortunately distributed consensus with a global public ledger is particularly badly suited to payments or a currency, though it seems well structured for a ponzi scheme.

Your gold example is also very contrived because the futures market doesn't literally dilute away physical gold.

As for Bitcoin: You're missing the fact that while Bitcoin can't be manipulated away from 21 million, the Bitcoin markets can definitely be heavily manipulated by sufficiently large players and insiders. And there does seem to be ample evidence that this is happening.

If gold doubles, supply dramatically ramps up. Same with most commodities.

So what will the argument be when this market is regulated? Gary Gensler is obviously a fan of Bitcoin. He considers other digital assets in a different light, and seems to consider many of them to be securities. What happens when crypto exchanges are regulated and the level of manipulation is much harder, similar to traditional financial markets? The 21 million cap on Bitcoin is going to look more attractive then, I think, at least to those who aren't considering that now. Plenty of folks already consider the 21 million cap on Bitcoin very attractive, and I think this will only increase over time.

Also the other comments that I see arguing how Bitcoin could be changed tells me that those people have not followed the history of Bitcoin very closely. It seems one of Bitcoin's main goals over the past 10 years is ossification and hardening of the system, i.e. being very strict and careful about changes. This seems built into the ethos of the system. The Bitcoin Cash fork is an example of this. Bitcoin Core refused to change the block size and that led to a fork which has not done well in terms of price in comparison to Bitcoin. One could say that so far the Bitcoin Cash fork has failed in comparison.

Sure; however governments do dilute their share... err citizens away ;)

Bitcoin can be just as much manipulated, if not more, because there's barely any regulatory oversight. Remember the two bots that traded Bitcoins with each other on Mt Gox to drive the price up (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/29/bitcoin-b...)? What makes you think something like this doesn't exist anymore? Especially with the Tether guys at the helm, who have been proven to lie in the past (https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...), Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency investors should be worried.

indeed. decentralization of mechanical infrastructure =/= decentralization of human control over said infrastructure.

if anything, the former serves mainly to obfuscate the latter, rather than eliminate it.

Bitcoin has negative cashflow, the only way it goes up is by more people putting money into it. I'm not saying that is a bad thing. Picasso paintings also have negative cashflow when you account for storage and security of the art. The only way a Picasso goes up in value is if more people with more money want to buy one. It is unfair to call Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme because no one calls a Picasso a Ponzi scheme.

Both are immoral but only one is illegal. One can do a double-Irish-Dutch sandwich and rat fuck both employees and suppliers all in the name of creating value for the shareholders. While employees piss into bottles the forward thinking CEO engages in union busting methods to prevent them from organizing. Legal or not, why not, if you can get away by stalling until a court decides and you settle (or purge the board from the toxic elements and restart what you do with a new CEO).

¹ Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands

The way I understand it, the kind art that is most often used in money laundry schemes is the more controversial kind. When some people think that a painting is a waste of perfectly good canvas while some rick collectors think it is the expression of god himself, how can you assign a value? This extreme subjectivity is what makes it ideal for money laundering.

Bitcoin prints money ( eg tether)

Bitcoin just doesn't work. It's centralized now to fix it's issues.

Best of all, none is regulated and the whales hold the power. Even more in the future with proof of stake.

There is more dilution and misunderstanding with crypto in general then I've ever seen.

I'm not sure what your actual gripe is, but you certainly have no idea what you're talking about.

Simple example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency)

> Research by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams in 2018 suggests that trading associated with increases in the amount of tether and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange account for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017.

In practice they basically use their trusted position within an exchange (as the 1-to-1 representation of a US dollar) and simply create new Tethers from thin air, move them to an exchange, buy BTC, pump the price, and essentially act as a stabilizer whenever the price starts tanking. For instance they've printed over $2 Billion worth of Tether since Saturday, with absolutely no evidence that real people actually put $2B into exchanges to buy crypto.

It's an amazing scam since anytime it looks like the floor is about to fall out, they print billions more and keep their position alive by pumping crypto back up.

Anyways the reason it's important is because Tether and other stablecoins are supposed to be the fiat offramp in the event that you want to withdraw money from an exchange. After all, to buy BTC you really first bought Tether (or USDC) and then traded your tether for BTC a minute later. So all of the hard cash in the exchange is supposed to be represented by Tether... guess what happens when people realize their cash isn't actually there 1-to-1 like it was promised? Massive liquidity crises and all cryptocurrency falls 90%+.

Be careful my friend.

- Both are not really audited

- Both have retracted claims of being fully USD backed ( only tether had to do it after court and USDC changed it a bit later)

You've spoken to Evergrande and friends?

> to buy BTC you really first bought Tether (or USDC) and then traded your tether for BTC a minute later

Nnnnno, not everyone uses sketchy and/or first-gen CEXs...

Anyway, I agree with you, and hope Tether goes away soon.

But they are the exchange, even if they claimed for long they were not.

Tether keeps printing billions of dollars with no oversight or regulation. They lied about it being backed by cash reserves, and now make a much softer claim that its backed by "some cash" and other assets (other assets include more crypto IIRC).

Basically, it feels like tether is inflating the price of BTC, and the exchanges all have a vested interested in continuing to pretend tether is worth something. If there was a run on tether (i.e. everyone tries to exchange for fiat) it could be catastrophic for all of crypto.

(Disclaimer: I am not a financial expert, and have just picked this up from reading about tether over the last few months).

They don't claim that any more. They only claim a tiny percentage is held in cash now, the rest is in 'commercial paper' apparently.

Isn't someone just going to create a Bitcoin-denominated derivative or fractional reserve bank, assuming that hasn't already happened?