Topic: 2018-06-13 Bitcoin 'whales' pulling cryptocurrency strings (Read 178 times)

That's what central banks do: they try to use monetary policy to influence the trading price of the currency they issue. It's the least capitalist way to handle a currency near enough, besides outright pegs. Central banks exist to intervene in currency markets, not to let them function. They also now intervene in basically every financial market, not just currencies.

There wasn't a line in "1984" that said "Communism is Capitalism!", but there should've been.

True. Monetary policy is set by controlling the money supply or changing interest rates. The rate of increase in money supply is pretty much set in stone, by the algorithm.
Why do people confuse the price with monetary policy? Whales may be able to influence the market, but this will decrease with time.

Where you do you hear out that 10 millions is on idle or arent moving? Im not totally aware on such situation where only 7.5 coins are in circulation or on active movement. When it comes to monopolized then we should not really be surprised of. Elites or whales would always be there accumulating as much as they can yet this do signifies power if they would hold up huge quantities or volume of bitcoins.
For now the thing we should mind of is on how to utilize their possible movements for us to make profits.

Where did you get this information? 35% of bitcoins is about 6 million coins. I've heard that about 10 million coins are on the wallets without movement. About 7.5 million are in constant turnover. What part of these coins belongs to whales nobody knows. The bitcoin market is very monopolized and this is the main reason for the fall in prices.

Oh no! Large amounts of a tradable item can be used to influence the market! We can't have that, y'know, market prices being determined by trading!

Someone ought to ask these "experts": if regulated market prices aren't being governed by the outcome of trading, then what the fuck is setting the price?



Oh I see, so the most abused monetary policy instrument in the history of all centrally issued currencies (supply) is in fact NOT controlled by the largest Bitcoin holders, but instead by the (dare I say it) regulation of the protocol?

The only reason why these "experts" talk shit about Bitcoin is precisely because of Bitcoin's regulation: because it's fair regulation, that doesn't allow these manipulative parasites the ability to suck the whole market dry of everyday investors' capital

I also questioned the coordinated sale. How will one whale know each other? Isn't it the bitcoin wallet doesn't have any names? And it doesn't makes sense to talk to other whales because you are giving them a hit that you might possible dump your coins and other whales might grab more and stash it somewhere. Yes, this kind of articles is truly garbage and we don't know where the hell the author get all this idea and numbers from. To be fair, there are still good authors out there, but this one is one of the worst I have read in the last couple of months.

Whenever an article brings up this well-worn misconception, you know that the rest of the article is full of mistakes and misunderstandings.

Just ignore all this nonsense. It perfectly demonstrates how due to a lack of interesting subjects they just skim through the blockchain to drop a bunch of random numbers and percentages. All these articles don't even take all different variables in consideration since their only incentive is to make a story interesting and exciting to read for newbies. Everything containing whales and manipulation translates into clicks and traffic, and thus income.

That's actually a percentage also based on non verifiable information. We don't know who owns what. We can only assume that the elite holds the majority of the circulating supply.

Also, you should thank holders for current levels, not whales. Holders make sure they are taking loads of coins out of circulation. These whales use their holdings against you, which is way more harmful if you don't know how everything here works.

11 million bitcoin users?From where the author of the artcile has that info?How can he verify that the global amount of bitcoin users is exactly 11 million?There`s is too much speculation and no facts.Thank god we have the big whales,who own 35% of all BTC.Without them the price will be less than 1000 USD per btc.

"They can "dictate monetary policy, which is normally the function of a central bank or a government", he said."

I do not think so. The monetary policy is determined by the algorithm already.

LONDON - Bitcoin, the star of the cryptocurrency world, is widely seen as a freewheeling tool as open as the internet itself.

But analysts have cast doubt on the veracity of that perception, highlighting that the bulk of bitcoin is in fact heavily concentrated in the hands of a powerful few.

Some 1,000 bitcoin holders -- out of a total 11 million -- hold some 35.4 percent of currency, according to BitInfoCharts.

These bitcoin "whales" -- a word popularly used for big money players in financial markets -- "literally control the currency", said Bob McDowall, an expert in cryptocurrencies.

They can "dictate monetary policy, which is normally the function of a central bank or a government", he said.

Unlike central bank-issued denominations, virtual currencies are produced, or "mined," by banks of computers solving complex algorithms and freely traded online.

The other key difference with typical currencies is that the number of bitcoin in existence can never exceed 21 million.

There are currently some 17 million bitcoins in circulation.

Bitcoin's surge in value from a few cents to a peak in December 2017 of $19,500 turned some of its first investors into billionaires.

The BitInfoCharts study also found that the top 10 account holders held 5.96 percent of the bitcoins.

Experts cautioned that the statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, however, as several individuals could be behind a single account and one person could hold several accounts.

'WHALES' WITH POWER

In a 24-hour period between Monday and Tuesday, the 100 biggest bitcoin transactions out of 200,000 accounted for 24 percent of the money volumes -- an unimaginable level of concentration compared to other markets.

"In the currency market for example it's such a huge market with so many transactions in a day that a pure actor can't have any influence on a market," Craig Erlam, an analyst for Oanda, a currency trading platform, told AFP.

Big bitcoin players, by contrast, can hold a lot of sway over the market.

To try and prevent excessive falls in the value of the currency, observers believe that the "whales" may be checking with each other first before putting in major orders, leading to suspicions of fraud in this unregulated market.

US authorities in May opened a criminal investigation into possible market manipulation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, suspecting traders of "spoofing" -- putting in false orders and quickly withdrawing them to move the currency.

But Aaron Brown, former director of AQR Capital Management, who runs a bitcoin fund, said the role of "whales" is being exaggerated.

He admitted that a coordinated sale of bitcoin by the biggest accounts could cause the value of the currency to plunge but said that the risk was theoretical and that major historical investors in the currency have a strong sense of community.

Since the end of 2017, the concentration of bitcoins has decreased, according to a study by Chainalysis, a think tank.

Several long-term investors have sold their bitcoins and a new type of player has entered the scene -- speculators, who tend to hold fewer bitcoins but carry out more transactions.

"The supply of bitcoin available for trading has increased by 57 percent since December 2017," the Chainalysis study found.


Source: http://news.abs-cbn.com/business/06/13/18/bitcoin-whales-pulling-cryptocurrency-string