Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 420. (Read 2032286 times)

There is Abra which is a considerable challenge to AML/KYC laws

Yep and there's this: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2015/03/28/iowa-forfeiture-system-legal-thievery/70600856/

The country I live in disgusts me more and more every day. USSA.

Try taking my private keys Uncle Sam.

The vagaries of cash, or lessons in not controlling your funds:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/uncle-sam-may-have-picked-the-wrong-cash-cow/2015/04/14/227aa73c-de2e-11e4-a500-1c5bb1d8ff6a_story.html

Listen carefully, from smericanpegasus:

The only thing to worry about is the spread of exchanges that do not allow users to withdraw real bitcoins on the blockchain. I haven't yet seen any of those.

A the monument, I don't care how low they manipulate the price since the lower it goes the more bitcoins I can buy and transfer to cold storage each month.

The central banks only have two options:

• They can utterly destroy their respective currencies
• They can force the governments of the world into operating a balanced budget with a real surplus.

Both of those options are politically impossible, and likely to cause a spontaneous existence failure of both governments and central banks.

Bitcoin is different from gold in that it's fixed supply base is easily verifiable in real time.  message signing can be used to verify every holders BTC position as proof.  Merkle tree audits can be used to verify an exchanges holdings.  gold, not at all, being locked up in forts and vaults of exchanges in a few locations.  as a result, the paper gold mkt can be much more easily manipulated.  

but who says it is being manipulated?  i think it is in fact slowly losing its exchange value to Bitcoin.

I've been through at least 3 bitcoin bear markets (maybe 4?) so I don't think it is doom colouring my perception. Coinbase and Circle are nothing more than revamped PayPals built on top of bitcoin, not sure that BitPay is that much better. End user solutions that maximise the decentralisation benefits of bitcoin's digital cash are not even on the drawing board in USA because of absolute obsequiousness towards the Almighty State dictat there.

Inviting regulation when there was an opportunity for gaining the moral high-ground through legitimate civilian disobedience against the prevalent government push towards ubiquitous financial surveillance is a major error and missed opportunity. The bankster attack dogs will gladly regulate (and fraudulently trade for profit) bitcoin to its obscurity, just like they have done with gold.

except that shorting requires borrowing existing BTC on the exchange of which there is only a theoretically limited supply.  this is where naked shorting potentially enters the picture and any exchange who allows this should be black balled and reported to the authorities for illegal practices hopefully to be shut down.  but of course, getting them to do anything is another story.

and yes, i think you're allowing the bear mkt to influence your perception that Bitcoin isn't working in the US.  Bitcoin cannot not work in an isolated geographical region imo.  it will route around that area until it forces capitulation of affected area.

if their algos keep a continually falling lid on prices and price perceptions such that the market never "turns up" materially, funded by unlimited supplies of fiat only, then it is an effective social/economic attack that will inevitably sideline bitcoin as a useful currency. The exchanges that facilitate manipulative pricing algorithms on their platforms are accomplices in this attack on bitcoin and imho should be treated as such.

NB: this has nothing to do with my support for implementing 2-way pegs in the protocol.

i agree with most of what you say except for the above.

yes, i think they are interfering in the Bitcoin price mkt thru derivatives.  but i don't think it is sustainable and they most likely will get whiplashed to the tune of millions of losses when the mkt turns up.  we all should be keeping a close eye out for the first derivatives exchange (here's looking at you BFX) that does a force majeure that forces settlement in USD as opposed to BTC from the lack of available BTC needed to be covered.

i can see why you're so willing to allow change to the source code, you think we've lost the game here in the US and only things like SC's can save us.  have a little more faith.

tell me anybody is surprised with this?

the PPT has gotten a lot more sophisticated since the inaugural 1987 rescue, not the least because of the massive profits to be made by it's market-facing, front-running functionaries (JPM, GS, MS).

They are by now undoubtedly running HFT algorithms that monitor, trade (intervene) and control (set levels/bands) all major market pricing to such a fine scale that it is arguable as to whether there isn't ANY major market action that hasn't been officially sanctioned. Flash-crashes being the exception when the FED/USTreas PPT control systems lose control temporarily.

It's just a magic fun game hall of mirrors illusion/casino meant to keep the rubes playing the game and the man-on-street asleep to the underlying corrupt, inefficient dysfunctional financial/monetary system. It really is morphing into a modern version of the Soviet era command-economy with all financial control at the center; everything seems to grind along okay for quite a while but it is terribly inefficient economically, ripe for abuse at all levels and inevitably dies due to paralysing stagnation from gross misallocation of resources due to vibrant creative destruction being denied for decades.

It is again the gray hand of the State clamping down and strangling free markets to death, only this time in a slow painful manner. Look at what happened to bitcoin in USA since Fed/wall st. took an interest, it died.

the host, unfortunately, being WE THE PEOPLE.

speculators willingly hoover up gvt bonds knowing full well that ultimately the gvt can tax the ppl to death or mandate pension plans buy gvt bonds to keep their value propped up.  they even willingly pay for the privilege in terms of negative interest rates.  eventually, the stock mkt will be sacrificed to keep the gvt bond buying mirage intact for as long as possible.

we are all going Japanese.

Greece?!   Compared to England, France, Japan, USA, (Your Country HERE) their default won't cause much of a (ehem) ripple.  None of these people have absolutely ANY intention of paying back.  They can't even afford the negative interest rate lol  This just cannot transition smoothly.  IMF et al might be able to bail out smooth over whatever for Greece.  And Portugal. And Spain. And Ireland... What will they be able to do when the measurable economies start to default?  And They Will.  Government spending only slows when the host has expired.

tell me somebody isn't watching the chart of the Transports and stepping in to reverse almost all intraday attempts to violate this support level as evidenced by the spinning top intraday reversals; especially today after the previous singular violation on 4/6.  sure, one can just implicate speculators buying at support but otoh, it could be the Magic Hand of the PPT:

Remember a few yrs ago when greece pt 2 happened.. The fed stepped up and became a backer of the imf.. Not many ppl knew about it but essentially fed lent billions to imf for liquidity essentially putting all the eggs in one basket.. So its just that the bears went away because everyone is in it together.. It will go until fed and imf cant service the debt.

The difference is this time there are these bailout entities such as the IMF, who's sole purpose is to keep creditors 100% whole and socialize loses (on us). It's not that people believe governments such as Greece won't default, but that a bailout entity will come in and save the day.

This distorts risk by enabling credit to leverage up. Eventually it comes back down to normal levels one way or another. To give an indication of how bad the unwind can become, here is a chart of Debt vs GDP. The tiny blip caused the 2008 crash, now imagine if we go back to historically normal levels.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/04/pmr%200.0.jpg

This is bizarre,  since throughout history, it's pretty much the rule that governments default eventually.  Of course, most people these days haven't a clue about history, since they are 'schooled' by the very same defaulting governments.

That was the symptom, but not the cause.

The cause was following the LTCM blow-up, the FED made it clear to creditors that they would always be bailed out and there was no risk to lending money. LTCM was levered 50 to 1, this means that for every dollar invested they borrowed 50 dollars from creditors. When LTCM went down creditors lost billions. However the FED engineered a group bailout by the banks where equity holders lost big, but more importantly credit holders recovered 100% of their principle. This was historic and it was a first.

This action created the moral hazard where it was now known the FED would restore creditors from their bad decisions and protect them from any and ALL loses. After LTCM the credit market went wild. Credit standards crashed and no one was worried because the assumption was the FED would keep them whole.

One symptom of this was the low standard mortgage debt issued (that you mention), in 2006 no one thought they could lose money because the FED would backstop fannie mae. Another symptom was every bank was able to leverage anything (no matter how junky) and IBs went to record amounts of leverage themselves.

After Bear went down, the FED again saved creditors. But this time it telegraphed that it was worried about the current state of the credit market (which it created) and may not do this again. Smart investors understood this and started to remove their exposure to credit instruments. This in turn put pressure on the credit system.

Then when Lehman went under stress the FED finally said no more, closed their liquidity window with them, and stated creditors were on their own. The run was immediate and Lehman was bankrupt in less than an hour.

This demonstrated 1 thing:
- The entire credit market existed and depended upon an implicit understanding that the FED would bail creditors out. With this understanding default risk is removed and high leverage is possible. Without this understanding risk returns and existing leverage must unwind.

Today we see the same thing with sovereign debt. No one believes any real government will default, and that the IMF or someone will always come in and bail them out. When Greece exits the euro and defaults, creditors will see that there are risks and start to price that back in. If suddenly you become worried that default risk is real, why the hell would you lend money to Spain or Japan at < 1% rates? No upside but you risk the principle. Sovereign debt valuations are based only on the (false) belief that established governments will never default.

So it comes back to my original point. Everything is enabled, supported and depends on the central banks. They enable credit bubbles in the first place. Once they are either unwilling or unable to continue artificial support, credit will deleverage which will cause the market will go down. Their only alternative is to hit Cntl+P hard.

It crashed in 2008 because of the greed on wallstreet caused by repackaging debt of households that couldn't afford the mortgages.. the math model was assuming that a large % of people wouldn't go bankrupt at the same time which they did and caused a ripple effect. THey did make some changes but didnt make enough... however it will rise until it breaks because there is so much money just sitting around waiting to be put somewhere.