You don't understand how Bitcoin works, and that's okay, but you need to do your homework before you make foolish comments like this.

Bitcoin's supply is regulated via a timed algorithm, meaning, it doles out an increasingly diminished amount of Bitcoin on a pre-timed cycle that will end in ~2140. In order to get that Bitcoin, "miners" need to perform work (via calculation of a nonce which as an auto-adjusting difficulty of computation—the "proof of work") that can't be faked or manipulated.

The beauty of that is that, unlike a central bank, no one can go and change a variable in a database to say "omg we have more money now!"

Looking at how Bitcoin's price has fluctuated over the years, it should be pretty obvious by now that manipulating, inflating, and devaluing a currency doesn't only happen through releasing new notes. Bitcoin isn't immune from manipulation just because the supply is pre-decided.

Bitcoin's price has fluctuated because of the same market dynamics that play out everywhere.

Most people are panicky and hair-triggered, very few are patient. Especially with a new technology that has the potential to make outsized returns early on, of course, you're going to get a lot of gamblers entering and exiting the market.

This is why you see dips when headlines like "China bans mining!" or "Crypto is doomed, look at Luna!" are printed. It conflates things and uses people's ignorance against them (not unlike traditional financial markets/instruments).

Correct, and all of that stuff is subject to manipulation, often by powerful actors behind the scenes or by grifters playing off of people's insecurities, fear of missing out, etc...

Controlling the supply of a coin does not mean the coin's actual value can't be manipulated by dedicated actors, and in the case of cryptocurrency, the "mystique" of the tech behind it, the ease of creating new systems on top of it that are complicated for ordinary users to understand, and the general fear people have of missing out on a speculative investment (as well as the general fear they have that they might be in a speculative bubble) make coins like Bitcoin particularly vulnerable to specific kinds of social manipulation, scams, and phishing, all of which end up affecting the price of the coin.

The fed can't release new Bitcoins, sure, but in exchange, now random celebrities on Twitter can cause sell-offs and spikes in value; random Discord groups can pump coins so they can sell off and make a profit before they crash. You haven't gotten rid of currency manipulation, you've just changed who's doing it.

> The fed can't release new Bitcoins, sure, but in exchange, now random celebrities on Twitter can cause sell-offs and spikes in value; random Discord groups can pump coins so they can sell off and make a profit before they crash.

This is why anything that isn't Bitcoin is referred to as a shitcoin, and why the conflating of Bitcoin with everything else is so problematic. The former is designed to prevent that manipulation, the latter leverages it.

Then we get back to looking at Bitcoin's price chart, and I still think looking at the level of volatility in Bitcoin's price over time shows that it is not really immune from the kind of manipulation you're saying it resists.

I mean, if nothing else, shitcoins crashing/spiking regularly cause Bitcoin's price to adjust as well. Tera isn't Bitcoin, but that didn't make Bitcoin immune from volatility when Tera's price crashed; the manipulation techniques that work on shitcoins seem to fairly regularly have knock-on effects on Bitcoin as well.

I don't buy that social manipulation has no influence on Bitcoin.

The focus on price relative to USD is too short-term of thinking. The reason I hold the opinion I do is related to scale. A system like Bitcoin if adopted at a standard-level (i.e., long-term prospects) would not see fluctuations in price because it wouldn't be able to—the market would naturally stabilize as people would be able to use it to pay bills, buy groceries, and the sheer scale of the market couldn't be dictated by a single "whale." Technically that can happen today, but there's a massive psychological gap that needs to be crossed.

> The focus on price relative to USD is too short-term of thinking.

What is the incentive for Average Joe to use BTC for transactions while USD exists?

For the average Joe? Nothing. Just like there was no incentive to use Facebook when MySpace existed.

The average Joe will be the last person to use it daily, just like every other technological invention. That's why they're average.

I'm curious how you expect Bitcoin to obsolete every single alternative currency/value-store we have today including longstanding systems like gold, when you're telling me that Bitcoin's price stabilizing is reliant on it being the only possible currency that people can use.

> I'm curious how you expect Bitcoin to obsolete every single alternative currency

I didn't say that.

> you're telling me that Bitcoin's price stabilizing is reliant on it being the only possible currency that people can use

Nor did I say that.

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Obsoletion of the incumbent options will come through a few means:

1. Hyperinflation (where I think we're headed). Basically, what happened in Germany in the 1920s. Instead of a Rentenmark, though, we'll get CBDCs which are a hyper-limited, state-issued digital currency that's used as a political weapon. They'll give it to people for "free" to encourage adoption (because they can mint as much as they want) but not tell them that it expires or can't be used for certain purchases the regime disagrees with. This will create a financial caste system where free/wealthy people use Bitcoin and the proletariat use the CBDC (i.e, they become slaves of the state). I think this is most likely as state power will fight to the death to not give up control of money (that's their only control against the people) but they will tolerate an "elite" class that can bribe their way out of control.

2. Natural transition. As more options for accepting Bitcoin (e.g., if Square/Block add lightning payments to their terminals, circumventing Visa/MC/etc.) become available and people understand it, they'll be incentivized to use it via discounts, perks, etc. Think early days of "order online" and how a lot of people scuffed at that.

> 1. Hyperinflation (where I think we're headed)

It would be unfortunate then if there was a large amount of evidence that Bitcoin's price was partially tied to the stock market's health, and that global volatility and market issues in general affected the value of cryptocurrency just like they affect the price/value of everything else.

> 2. Natural transition

I think this is what a lot of us are getting at; Bitcoin as it stands is worse at transactions then pretty much every other currency and platform today. It's not competitive with those platforms for most people. That's not to say that it has no usecase at all, but for mass-market adoption and for the average person's use-case, Bitcoin is an awful transaction method.

So when people tell me that I need to think long term, I'm curious how they expect to get to the long term given that in the short term Bitcoin is basically awful for mass-market usage and isn't going to be adopted by ordinary people for ordinary transactions until after its fundamental problems like volatility are solved. So it all feels pretty circular.

You're telling me that stabilization requires increased use. In your words, "a system like Bitcoin if adopted at a standard-level (i.e., long-term prospects) would not see fluctuations in price because it wouldn't be able to".

I am telling you that Bitcoin won't get increased use if it doesn't (at least) stabilize. So it doesn't really matter whether Bitcoin would have fluctuations at that point, because nobody who's not a speculative investor, dedicated to the cause, or an extremely niche user wants to deal with the fluctuations in order to use it as a currency today.

You need to be more accurate in your language.

Bitcoin's supply cannot be manipulated, unlike fiat. The currency pair BTC/USD is very much manipulated, as is pretty much any asset paired to USD.

These are two different concepts.

The effect of those concepts are the same, and pretty much no end user cares about the difference.

And it's worse than just that the currency pair BTC/USD is manipulable. USD prices have a loose mapping to actual value, the relationship between BTC/USD isn't just arbitrary numbers. It's not just that the exchange rate between BTC and USD is changing, independent of the USD the actual market value represented by a Bitcoin is changing.

In other words, you do not need to manipulate the supply of a currency in order to manipulate the amount of purchasing power or value that each "unit" of that currency represents.

Bitcoin proponents often try to bring up supply manipulation like it's some kind of unique category, but it's really not. Currency manipulation does not require control of the supply.

The supply part is the long term value, similar to gold.

Bitcoin's price relative to the dollar fluctuates, but it can't be inflated.

The purchasing power of a Bitcoin changes. That's the only thing an end-user cares about.

Do you think that people care about inflation because there are more dollars in existence? No, they care because they can't make the same level of purchases with the dollars they're holding.

Bitcoin's price relative to the dollar indicates what you can buy with it; when that price changes it's no comfort to people that technically the same number of coins exist. They care about what the coin is worth, and Bitcoin's worth can be manipulated regardless of what its supply is.

Tether exists, and turning the magical Tether printing press on and off is how BTC is manipulated.

If Tether collapses, you can certainly expect a panic in all cryptocurrency markets, but it has no direct means of manipulating Bitcoin.

Only 6.02% of their reserves are held in "digital tokens," the rest are held in traditional assets and cash: https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports (scroll down to "Reserves Breakdown").

- "you can certainly expect a panic in all cryptocurrency markets"

- "but it has no direct means of manipulating Bitcoin."

How do square these two parts of the sentence? The ability to cause a panic in the Bitcoin space on command by crashing another cryptocurrency sounds a lot like manipulation to me.

Direct implies that you can manipulate Bitcoin at the protocol/technology level.

These are indirect effects as they are events that occur outside of Bitcoin but cause people who have Bitcoin to sell or trade it.

You can cause panic in traditional finance markets, too. It's the exact same principle at play.

As an end user, why should I care about a technicality over how exactly someone is manipulating a currency that I own? Why does it matter whether manipulation is direct or indirect?

If the claim is that Bitcoin is only immune to specifically direct manipulation (where direct is a narrow sub-category of manipulation techniques), then... sure, maybe that's true, but it's also not that impressive and doesn't change all that much about the end-user's risks, since the more general forms of currency manipulation still seem to be entirely possible.

> You can cause panic in traditional finance markets, too. It's the exact same principle at play.

I don't think that's being debated, people are just pointing out that Bitcoin's price can be still be manipulated by powerful actors.

Bitcoin's price, yes, but not the actual currency itself. That will be the major psychological void to fill in for people: thinking about Bitcoin as a currency, not an investment or gambling device.

I expect that to take decades as the government/media are and will continue to attack Bitcoin and influence public opinion as it directly interferes with their business model.

Two things. First:

> Bitcoin's price, yes, but not the actual currency itself.

Again, as a user, who the heck cares? The Bitcoin in your wallet changes how much it's worth, it's the same outcome as normal currency manipulation. If the effects are the same, and the changes to the value of the currency are the same, then the specific details about how that effect was caused don't matter to end users.

Second:

> That will be the major psychological void to fill in for people: thinking about Bitcoin as a currency, not an investment or gambling device.

I just finished talking to someone a day ago on this very site who argued with me for ages that Bitcoin was a store of value and shouldn't be thought of a currency and accused me of not understanding the history of the coin because I pointed out correctly that many early proponents of Bitcoin were pushing it as a currency for regular everyday transactions.

And I am so not willing to have the same exact conversation a second time just with the the details and direction swapped out. All of these arguments always being with, "hah, people should research Bitcoin more before criticizing it", even though everyone in the community who says that is constantly making contradictory claims while arguing that they represent some kind of community consensus or coordinated effort.

But to summarize the problems with the specific claim being made this time around:

Bitcoin is bad at everyday transactions for a dozen reasons that have been already explored in depth over and over again in the past and that are easy to research. If your goal is to make an everyday transactable currency, Bitcoin is a bad choice for that, for obvious reasons -- even without getting into the technical reasons why a deflationary asset is in general a bad fit for transactions, all you need to do is look at the history of Bitcoin's price; that's not a chart that indicates a healthy currency intended to be used for normal purchases. Honestly, the characterization of Bitcoin as a rarely-transferred store of value is a stronger argument, and even that isn't a particularly strong argument.

First BTC has to do better than USD at transactions. It clearly isn't there now, and I'm not sure I see a path where it achieves that. USD will continue to exist as long as the US Government does, and if that falls, then, well, I've got other problems more pressing.

Stock markets aren’t manipulated at the technology level either - it’s large flows of capital, insider trading, pumping dumping, and other shady business.

> but it has no direct means of manipulating Bitcoin.

Imagine I am the director of Tether.

I print $1 billion in Tether out of thin air.

I then buy bitcoin with it on a UST/BTC exchange.

Bitcoin price goes up.

That's not a direct means of manipulation.

Direct or not, in that scenario the Bitcoin price is still being artificially increased for the benefit of a private malevolent actor.

If you want to call that something other than manipulation, then :shrug:, more power to you. But my main takeaway is still going to be that banannaise's original comment seems to be mostly accurate.

> But my main takeaway is still going to be that banannaise's original comment seems to be mostly accurate.

I'd highly recommend taking the time to rethink that position. The systems being implemented now will permanently enslave you. Bitcoin is the only escape. And no, I'm not being hyperbolic.

> The systems being implemented now will permanently enslave you.

Recognizing that there are significant problems with current financial systems does not automatically imply that Bitcoin in specific is a reasonable or feasible alternative to those systems.

Candy bars are unhealthy for me, and I can recognize that, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to eat dirt. In other words, it's not enough for Bitcoin proponents to point out that traditional fiat systems have problems, they need to prove that Bitcoin meaningfully solves those problems or improves upon them. All of you've done so far in this thread is argue about how narrowly people should apply the word "manipulation", you haven't demonstrated that banannaise's original comment is wrong in a way that ordinary currency users would care about.

I think most of the real-world evidence we have shows that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are just as manipulable as existing systems regardless of whether or not they have a fixed supply, and in fact are currently somehow impossibly managing to be regularly manipulated to an even higher degree than existing fiat systems.

> you haven't demonstrated that banannaise's original comment is wrong in a way that ordinary currency users would care about.

I already did but you didn't like my answer.