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by loceng 1957 days ago
There's been research done to show that multiple times just a few people manipulated the price of Bitcoin to its heights - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-14/research-... - and the Bitcoin community main mantra is "HODL" and they call themselves the "army of the HODLers" for a reason: they're waiting for enough of society to be manipulated/trick people into thinking the history of the "steady" increase to "$100,000+" is because people many people are actually valuing it (which they're arguably not) - using that as a proof point to decide to buy; which has been done by 1) misappropriating Bitcoin as being akin to a stock in the stock market, especially the term ICO - "Initial Coin Offering" vs. Public Offering, and 2) misappropriating the term currency calling them "cryptocurrencies" - in an attempt to additionally legitimize it.

I believe Bitcoin likely started to exponentially take off when the online marketing forums started rallying to put their efforts behind promoting it. Eventually then the VC-finance industrial complex joined in - and mainstream media then has been promoting it as if Bitcoin et al are stocks and a new currency. All the while the army of HODLers is growing - all incentivized to promote Bitcoin et al, and those who speak of a counter-narrative aren't financially incentivize to do so, and actually should fear doing so due to the mob; a partner at a top, international investment firm, Ray Dalio at Blackwater recently said as much - "while those who are against it (which are a few scared souls cowering in a corner)" - in his article "What I Think Of Bitcoin" - https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/ray-dalio-...

The VC-financially industrial complex with billions have started to jump into the speculation game, the MLM, and with their billions I believe have stared to attempt to invest just enough to offset crashes in price - along with the "army of HODLers" learning to be more obedient and listening to their war mantra of HODL, along with Coinbase likely purposefully engaging in price manipulation by multiple times making their platform unaccessible to users - so those who would impulse sell when the price starts to skyrocket are blocked long enough for them to instead hold; I'm guessing Coinbase also have a certain amount of large buy orders from large institutional investors that they manage, and they use these funds in part to counter a crash from happening.

This same price manipulation happens in the stock market - https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/lg0ial/jim_cramer_e...

I also believe Tesla's recent acquisition of Bitcoin was to seem aligned with the growing mob of HODLers - who you don't want to be maligned with if you want them to speak positively about your product and buy your product, or in reality be less critical of you and your company because you're then financially aligned; Elon Musk recently tweeted "Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money" - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340588909974200321

Unfortunately the world may go mad, greed taking over, regulatory capture occurring where a generally small amount of people could lead to trying to engage most of society in helping realize whatever value Bitcoin et al reaches - unreasonably and unnecessarily transferring wealth from later adopters to earlier adopters. It could be the next war to be fought after tyranny is solved - Bitcoin in fact making tyranny easier as you can't implement policy like the Magnitsky Act; it's always a non-response when asking a pro-Bitcoiner to address this question/problem.

I believe an organization needs to be started and funded somehow to put a concerted effort to organize and educate people by creating, compiling, everything necessary - and making whatever easy to understand educational material to go along with it - and to be promoted, along with as a resource for people to reference when they're in discussion with others.

1 comments

The money transfered from late adopters to early adopters is the massive amounts of old money mad from the wealth of kingdoms and colonialization. Personally I think having an infinitely divisible, fixed asset, protected by cryptography and not statutes, is a democratic upheaval of captured financial systems. You dont need blood, legacy, heritage to capture these assets, just information.

Maybe having physical wealth ripped from my family multiple times in the past 150 years makes me feel this, this asset is a bit more useful than gold or jewelry when dealing with an uncertain future.

I like that you brought up money of old - and find it disturbing that people are happy to repeat the same pattern - "they did it, so why can't we;" two wrongs don't make a right.

So great, we have regulatory capture of financial systems - and you want to replace it with a system that can't protect against bad actors via financial punishment for known bad behaviour e.g. via the Magnitsky Act? Don't you think that's a problem?

You like Bitcoin because it allows you revenge - but the problem is it's not taking out revenge on the people who may deserve it, it's taking it out on all of society. That's disturbing that you, and I imagine others, aren't thinking critically of those consequences - or if you are that you don't care; in fact this is a fundamental element of Bitcoin and how the mob/"army of HODLers" grows - the price drops and the buy people who bought later, at or below the current price, have now lost money and haven't realized any - so they are now entrenched in the MLM scheme.

Do me a favor and watch some of this class by the future SEC head https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-s1...

I dont think the current thresd we are on is useful and you are misunderstanding my point of view. The class above gives some background to my points of view on Bitcoin and Blockchain.

Ultimately, I think blockchain is an interesting technology that necessarily has value, hopefully our regulators can understand its nuances and find ways to channel it to provide more security to every human around the world, (like vaccines or education) than the currently impeded(for whatever reason, its gotta deal with alot of red tape and hundreds of noncoordinated jurisdictions) financial systems.

There is value in having centralized and decentralized finance. The world rewards/will reward recognizing that.

citation needed, most of the increases in global wealth and output are due to technological innovation and increased trade and improved governance. If you are going to claim that all the worlds wealth is just extractive you are going to need a big source for that. Most economic historians disagree with you.