Its kind hard to know what is really going to happen in the future with Bitcoin and that is because the value of Bitcoin is always changing so that is really bad of course because you dont even know what will happen later in the future.
But there will be a chance that is can disappear because the value will go down or something.
Bitcoin is
decentralized and the market is a
true market. True free markets without intervention will be prone to ups and down, but the overall trend has always been UP. Everytime bitcoin crashed, it set a new floor.
Neither is true. Bitcoin has long ceased to be decentralized, and I don't really see why severe market manipulation cannot be called intervention of sorts. At lest, interventions usually aim to stabilize the markets (i.e. make less volatile), not to shake them either to boost the price up or crash it down. If you question the latter (i.e. market manipulation), you should first refute the former (i.e. Bitcoin centralization)...
Since manipulation directly follows from centralization
Bitcoin is not decentralised in the sense that ownership of coins is very unequal (someone should measure a Lorentz curve coefficient, actually), but I believe it very much is in terms of hashpower (as a cursory look at the block signature estimates of Blockchain.info would reveal), so it is important to get our terms right; perhaps the poster referred to the mining power. Even if it is the ownership and it is rather centralised, that does not mean that market manipulators have full control. It is limited by those that hold their coins untouched in places due to legitimate economic activity, or have simply forgotten about them (c.f. Satoshi himself, for one)
No, I didn't mean wealth inequality. I assumed myself that the poster referred to the mining power as a representation of Bitcoin decentralization, while in fact it is severely centralized. I'm also looking at the hashrate distribution estimates given at Blockchain.info, the screenshot of which I just made and insert below
By any means, I can't call Bitcoin mining power
decentralized. Now we have 7 major players which swallow up about 90% of all hashing power out there. What is it if not an example of extreme centralization? If we consider Bitcoin as a global currency, then all major fiat currencies taken as one will be more decentralized than Bitcoin
I agree, it could be better, but you have to be pragmatic about it. In Britain, at least, there are only five major energy companies, similar story with supermarkets. Telecoms provision in the United States is essentially a duopoly, from what I remember. Having seven main mining pools is relatively secure (doesn't help that a large portion of the hashpower is in one country, granted, but I think it's safe for now). They're also comprised of individual miners, who receive the profits and decide what to do with them, rather than a single entity (the pool). Though some miners may have greater hashpower than others, I think the overall scheme is one of independence of one another. Also, if pools exert dominance, individual miners exert their free will to switch (as I believe occurred after GHash.IO's 51% gambit) and the system is rectified.
I refute the premise that market manipulation is conducted for stabilisation purposes. What rational agent (other than a government - though admittedly it is questionable we apply "rational" to such an actor) would take on such risk to stabilise prices for others? None; as with the archetypal example of the London bond market and the Battle of Waterloo (whether or not you believe it) and later examples such as Barclays' shorting, market manipulation is conducted to push the price in a certain direction, fast, and according to the insider position.
But that was not my premise. I meant to say that centralization inevitably leads to (a possibility of) market manipulation. In other words, if a market is highly
decentralized (neither a single major player nor a group of big players are present), it is next to impossible to manipulate the market. This seems to be self-evident (well, at least to me). But nevertheless, regarding market manipulation for stabilization purposes (which should rather be called market intervention), for example, it is not uncommon for a Central bank to intervene in foreign exchange markets with the intention of influencing the exchange rate of its currency. In fact, there is nothing extraordinary in such
interventions, which happen on a regular basis in many countries...
They are carried out with the aim of stabilizing the exchange rate for all domestic economic entities, and still more so for those entities which trade internationally
To the prices, the only reason I could think of miners wishing to manipulate the market is to increase the sale-price of newly mined bitcoin, which I believe usually is sold instantly as they don't want to hold volatile assets and seek to lock-in the profit. If we assume this is not true, the only manipulation that can be done is to hold mined coins to artificially reduce supply, but their capacity to do this naturally declines spectacularly after every 210,000 blocks and is a futile endeavour. Consider too that the fractional expansion with each block reward is only very slight and this seems less important than the manipulation downward that might be exerted by the Winklevosses or Satoshi. Central banks would intervene perhaps for protectionist purposes, or to influence trade in some way. They have the backing of government, and taxation, if they seek to act unilaterally, and that is a bad thing. Currency intervention does not always work, depending on the actors involved. Britain had to leave ERM II in the early 1990s as a result of George Soros' bearish pressure; the BoE piled cash into the affair but the Bundesbank refused to help; a failure. Markets prevail, and very easily; it's the inertia of the huddled masses. I'd like to be able to know what proportion of circulating bitcoins are in active exchange (I know the volume can be seen, but how much of this is back and forth game-playing?)
it's good it force a price increase, it rise demand also it allow bitcoin to grow slowly
It does not
force a price increase. Price is determined by the amount of fiat traders wish to exchange on exchanges; it is an influencing factor, but ultimately the two affairs are very much divorced.
My honest reflection on the halving is that it can be positive for bitcoin; many factors are at play, but we must consider what happens to mining and the security of the network. Many miners will be made unprofitable. The only way they can regain this profit is by refusing to process transactions unless they make up the shortfall (though this is $5/tr, half of Blockchain.info's $10). This is ridiculous, extortionate, and people will not pay. The bitcoin becomes nothing more than a speculative asset, and price may decline (it's been shown to correlate to volume before). Either way, miners are against the wall. The least profitable eventually switch off their ASICs (or mine altcoins, affecting their dynamic in untold ways, or perhaps contribute to breaking the SHA-256 for common passwords if they feel up to the challenge). What we see is a decline in hashpower, but not necessarily a decline in security, as long as there are enough independent players. A mining pool may make a 51% in such an instance; miners will just switch, as they did with GHash.
I believe that's the long term solution; BTC is being "over-mined" at the moment. We can cope with less hashpower.