i think anyone who does a modicum of research into the subject is aware, but that's a small minority of people. i definitely don't think it's the consensus opinion. no one in the mainstream questions these absurd fractional reserve practices. gold bugs crying manipulation are made to appear as the lunatic fringe---don't you think?
Hmm. Not sure. I've never hung out in gold bug places at length but it seems plain as you like to me. I don't really see how anyone could think otherwise with the easily accessible figures regarding paper gold. Since most everything else is pure fiction too perhaps it's only the hardened gold bugs who actually care.
They would have to spend around $38 billions to buy 25% of the supply right now, however, as you said, there would be no way to prevent the price from pumping too high. They would need to buy it slowly throughout 1 year or so and even then, what happens if bitcoin goes back to 20k?
Even if they existed they wouldn't have a hope in hell. Millions of coins are lost. Millions are in the hands of people who'll never sell. Millions more will be in the hands of people who'll only sell for many times more than the current price, the rest will be in the hands of people who'd spot someone of that ilk and gouge them until they ran out of money nowhere near their target.
If you add up all the coins on exchange books across the whole world it's probably no more than a few hundred thousand and some of them will be priced at ludicrous levels.
