I don't think they see BTC as a threat. They could take control if they wanted just through huge BTC purchases with newly printed dollars. They're leaving it alone. I think there are other plans in the works for BTC.
They don't need to print anything. The manipulation mechanism for BTC is through the news.
One bad news report = investors offloading / Elite controllers buying low.
If you repeat the cycle of rise and fall for like a few hundred times where you get like 3-5-10% differences (and there are cases where the drop is more impressive like from 1200 down to 700), it's just a matter of time before you end up with half the BTC supply in your hands.
Control the political decisions & the news = control the market. And they are doing that alright because people are ignorant of the dynamics.
damn, I wish you weren't so on the money.
In finance knowing/forecasting the future is the second most prized ability.
The first most prized ability is being in the position to actually control the future landscape by designing the parameters, thus being able to know how the market is going to move and capitalize on it against all the others who live in ignorance and uncertainty.
For "commoners", the most prized ability is knowing the above two rules of finance. And yes, it's a sad reality with the economic patterns but the elite will simply do what they know how to do. The manipulation patterns in Bitcoin are no different than the patterns used in the past for oil, gold etc. You could have soaring demand and actual shortages in physical gold and then an item pops up that "Cyprus is selling its gold" and you have the price tumbling when people can't even find the actual metal on the market.
The changes between commodities and btcs are mostly in the nature of the news items and political decisions as well as the lack of financial instruments for the bitcoin market (unlike paper gold / paper oil with multiple size trading than the actual commodity). If they make financial instruments for bitcoin = they have indirectly legalized it so they have to play the news game more.
Hey, just make sure you shut down your virtual machines so you can keep your $200, you have 27 days to use it! Don't leave them running! I'm not on trial anymore I pay as I go but I'm shutting them all off at retarget minus my home setup :\.. I'll be at a huge loss at that point