[rglover]

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!"

[danShumway]

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.

[rglover]

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).

[danShumway]

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.

[rglover]

> 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.

[danShumway]

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.

[rglover]

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.

[fleddr]

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.

[danShumway]

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.

[fleddr]

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

[garbanz0]

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

[danShumway]

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.

[vkou]

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

[rglover]

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").

[danShumway]

- "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.

[rglover]

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.

[danShumway]

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.

[rglover]

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.

[yunohn]

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

[vkou]

> 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.

[rglover]

That's not a direct means of manipulation.

[danShumway]

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.

[rglover]

> 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.