I remember some time ago reading a comment along the lines of "if you guys thought the bitcoin prices have been getting manipulated in the past - just wait until the Wall Street guys get on top of it". It didn't make much sense at a time to me, someone who hasn't been active with trading or investing pre-blockchain, but seeing as how futures are now available for Bitcoin and Ethereum it is starting to get a lot more clear.
Having been into the blockchain space for some time now, I've witnessed a lot of price swings, usually they seemed quite random, some coins would go down while others up. It seems as of late it has been following this new pattern where most of them mimic the price of Bitcoin which has continued to be as volatile as ever.
To this day I still haven't looked into the stock market or other investing opportunities than crypto because I was lucky enough to get stuck and addicted on blockchain technology and the currencies that came to life through that. I consider it lucky because I know how few people were as active and interested in it back in the day, that has changed a lot now but the matter of the fact is that a lot more people had heard about it around the same time but they just didn't stick around. Hence why I consider myself lucky, for some reason I happened to have more time on my hands during that period to "waste" (as many friends and people close to me called it) into the rising blockchain awareness. If for some reason I had gotten uninterested, a few trades had gone wrong too often or something else had come along I am sure I wouldn't have continued being so obsessed about it in the lengths that it made many of my friends annoyed of me since I couldn't stop talking about it with them.
Something kept bringing me back to it though, something that felt real and valuable for maybe one of the first times in my life. I admit when the altcoins started popping up I did get a bit insecure of what it was I had gotten myself into, especially currencies like Dogecoin or other copies that were popping up, but there I was abusing my GPU to the max to turn electricity and wear and tear into "digital tokens". My gaming friends got annoyed at me when I'd skip playing because I was mining and getting a lot of Dogecoins early on, they thought I had literally gone nuts probably more often than they jokingly said it. Even though I tried my best back then to get them interested and see it the same way I do, I didn't have much luck and to be honest I couldn't even explain to them as well back then as I can now since I didn't completely get it myself either.
One thing I believe that caused me to subliminally understand the technology, what gave it value and what ensured that it would be unstoppable in the future was something similar I had encountered in the past, the early days of the internet. I was only ten years old at the time when things like Torrents and p2p sharing were getting popular, even though I didn't understand the technicals back then I was aware of how difficult it was to stop it. No matter the negative feedback they got about the main use of them being to copy things illegally, it didn't mean that it was the only thing it could be used for. I remember the time when p2p sharing was being used for other things as well, legal things such as downloading games faster because other people also downloading them would share what they already had downloaded to another person. The fact that after all the warnings, taking down piracy mass uploaders and finding them and wanting to shut it all down I realized that they can't. No one can, unless they'd shut down the internet. It was too late for that though, the internet had already become so big and a necessity for many things that shutting it down for something like content piracy was ridiculous. This is also why I believe blockchain tech with Bitcoin came out at a perfect time. Even those who saw it as a big threat to their centralized monetary systems and middlemen competition would not be able to stop it much in the same way as torrenting.
That's what got me to continue researching the tech and all the new currencies that came to life after Bitcoin, I knew that it was here to stay and change the world like nothing else had changed it before. Re-inventing the internet of money and the monetary systems.
Of course that still didn't get many of my friends interested, no matter how I tried to explain it to them. Some did listen though and trusted my judgement enough to invest some on their own or risk their GPU from overheating to mine some coins. Many of them have already seen huge amount of profits through it and many of them have just like me skipped everything else and gotten more into the cryptocurrency space.
What I want to get to with this story is that there are a lot of enemies that don't want this technology to succeed. Many who don't see things the way others do, who don't understand that we are entering a new era where manual labor is being overthrown because bots will be able to pretty much do anything much better than humans can and much cheaper. Jobs are already getting cut in many different sections and the unemployment rate is rising whether we like it or not. They are also realizing that they can't stop this technology. They can postpone it, threaten people not to touch it and manipulate it through news or markets but in the end they will realize that this technology is unstoppable and the more they fight against it the more it will hurt them in the end that they didn't get along with it.
As we saw recently with the Facebook scandal and Cambridge Analytica allegedly being the reason to one of Americas biggest scandals with the presidency being stolen, manipulation of news and stealing data to easier target people's thoughts and decisions is a very powerful tool. Unfortunately this is something that will happen time and time again in the cryptocurrency space too, even more so here considering every action can benefit some people who are holding a certain asset that can grow in value because of their manipulation or manipulation news of competitors for their own gain.
It might even be that most of the important people in the world have already understood the power of blockchain and that they are now manipulating the price to get the early adopters to sell so they can gather a big amount of coins that can't be inflated.
The important thing to remember here is that this technology has been invented, it exists now, it works and it can't be stopped. It is open-source, can get upgraded (forked) and is competing versus every sector that has been operating in the past with unfair cuts and costs.
I understand that people are easily manipulated by news, what other people think and say, but its good to remind them of what is important with this technology and how it has performed so far. They often get sensitive about daily/weekly/monthly movements but don't zoom out enough times to see the reality of things.
I noticed the other day that coinmarketcap has included a logarithmic scale on its charts, even though the site does not account for the price of Bitcoin since the beginning, it does show its movements since the site has been up. I found out that blockchain.info has some charts from beginning of 2009 when Bitcoin was still worthless and they also had a logarithmic scale that I wanted to show you the difference it can change in your perception of the price movements.
Here is the Linear Scale
Here is the Logarithmic Scale
Linear Scale of all currencies since 2013
Logarithmic Scale of all currencies since 2013
It's kind of hard to imagine that there could come another spike in price, say bitcoin going past 100-500k and making the recent chart look almost like a straight line like the past movements look now, but it has happened time and time again with Bitcoin and other currencies with potential that it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen again soon. It all depends on adoption and how fast the rest of the world will realize the value of this new type of money and will want to opt out of their other holdings. It's only a matter of time.
Remember that with a finite amount of tokens and only a low number of people trading them daily, people will go out of their way to try and get you to sell your holdings. The manipulations and fake news may have only just begun but I'm hoping the new web, something like the Steem platform will help deter it in the near future.
Even if you are one of those that believes its all just a big bubble that will burst sooner or later, do what I suggested some of my non-believer friends to do. Place some money you can afford to lose into it and forget about it for a few years, hodling has been one of the most profitable things for many in this space, even those who have no idea what the technology is.
Thanks for reading!
The logarithmic scale really makes you see the market from a different perspective. Blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies are here to change the world, keep in mind that technology adoption trough human history has always been slow and painful.
So far there has been a lot of FUD and naysayers but let me tell you, i believe this is only the beginning, blockchain tech is still in its infancy and stiff people will always be against advancement.
Since the start of human history, naysayers to new technologies have been there trying to stop progress, probably since the wheel was invented lol, why do i need this wheel when i can walk with my two feet? Why do i need a car when i have my trusty horse? why do i need electricity when i have a candle? why do i need a phone when i can send a letter? why do i need the internet when i can use my phone to contact people? lol the naysayers will always be there, so we have to learn to live with it and help spread the awareness of the technology and if possible help improve it :-D
I totally agree! I am extremely excited about the future of Blockchain and Crypto. I totally fell in love with it <3
Heya Acid...
I know you know stuff, as an early adopter you dominate this space much more than I do... I'm a one year old coiner...
Now, what I want to ask you is what new tokens (founded this year or the last) do you think have the brightest future?
Would love to know your opinion on this... I've been asking around knowledgeable folks such as yourself to see if I get some common pointers.
I've actually been thinking of getting back to posting about altcoin news and new ICO's I believe have potential for some time now, this recent dip might be a good time to get started.
It will obviously all be personal opinions but I haven't been doing all that bad in the past "Alt-News" I used to post and recommend some projects if you wanna google them and check them out.
Hopefully I'll have the time and energy to get back to it soon, wouldn't mind helping followers earn some money so they can increase their SP from trading/investing and thanking me by continuing to upvote my posts. :)
Definitely do it sometime soon, man. When SBD gets back up a bit and I can afford to spend some money into crypto, I'd find it pretty handy to have some suggestions from someone whose opinion I value. I put a little bit of money into Storj a few months back when SBD's were still somewhat high after you recommended that and a few other cryptos, been hodling that since :)
Go EOS Max.
But dont Go Full money. Altough i like the team, and the Idea, remember that at this moment its only promisses.
But there is potential on those promisses.
To take a chapter out of @taskmaster4450 playbook the Banksters are doing everything to feed the FUD through their media controlled companies.
Funny how you talked about Torrent and P2P as I was thinking of Napster and how record companies tried to stop it and it eventually led to the creation of technoly and services like Spotify and apple music that we enjoy today.
They can't stop the technology being developed and will be adopted to the mainstream.
sage advice there.
My response to this is like the response I gave earlier today on your post about self driving cars. Cryptos have come and they are going to stay, there's nothing that can be done about it. There will be more fight and dips than this but at the end crypto will make it out victorious. I will never make the mistake I made earlier in my crypto experience where I sold my bitcoin in late December 2016, now I have made up my mind to hold till all I have left is the will to say Kodl
As funny as it may sound, I was just going through a web page today and noticed something really striking..
Here's a look
And then I laughed.
The charts are looking a bit similar tho.
So if we say its been manipulated, I might want to agree to an extent as well as disagree to another extent too.
I agree with you 100% on this.
They can't stop it, but "it's coming" is inevitable hence its manipulation.
My friend @acidyo, I love this analysis. Would have loved to share my thoughts on all of the points you have raised tho, but then, we are both on the same page. So I'll just say "Bravo my friend"
No necessarely.
The thing is, only btc, ETH and LTC (bch maybe?)are widely traded against usd.
All other coins are traded against BTC, so changes on BTC/usd are heavily reflected on COIN/usd.
Well that's been true for a long time, the alts basically follow BTC to the T
As you can see from the charts above, an increase in price from $10 to $15 is the same as an increase from $20 to $25 on the linear chart, because both scenarios represent an increase of $5. However, a logarithmic price scale will show the vertical distance between $10 and $15 to be different than the $5 distance between $20 to $25. The reason for this is that a change of $5 when the price is at $10 represents a 50% increase, while a move from $20 to $25 is a 25% increase. Since a 50% increase is more significant than 25%, chartists will use a larger distance between the prices to clearly show the magnitude of the changes.
I don't know about 500k but i do believe that at some point it will reach 100k.Bitcoin will become a measure of wealth in the following years.Such as gold
I regret my negativity with Bitcoin (the only one I knew of before). I was telling myself that time that it is too much to invest in and I worry of losing my money. Only to be slap later on. All the "If only.." thoughts drive me crazy. If only I take a leap of faith..
As bad as the FUD already is, I expect it to get much worse. Crypto can be used by terrorists and crap like that.
But decentralization is too powerful. Early adopters (like anyone currently using the Steem blockchain) may end up very well off.
I'm surprised how crazy volatile bitcoin is that log charts are often better for long term analysis
Correct me if i'm wrong but most alt coins move with the price of bitcoin because the alts are based on the value in comparison to btc.
I just can't express myself how much I like every single line of this post. And how much I agree with you @acidyo . Almost like reading my own life story.
I'm in cryptos sice 2011.
Every single day since then.
Yes you are right to agree with you in the presence of enemies of this technology
There are also deceptive currencies when you buy them disappear and depreciate
But we hope that this project will advance the dreams of all traders
Finally, thank you for your efforts
bitcoin and gold shows very similar charts when plotting them in log scale with different time scale, check this out: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@trisolaran/striking-similarity-between-gold-and-bitcoin-charts
I really need to brush up on my maths and learn what logarithms are, as for manipulation i heard people saying this when wall street started their futures trading and although i do not know i am of the belief that this is true and am quite frankly outraged by it all...
It's very much possible huge people can be behind these price swings. Anyone can do it I guess if he has billion of dollars to spend specially when many investors can be easily scared by some BS news from social media and mainstream media. That's why investing is a battleground not a playground for kids.
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Do not open links from users you do not trust. Do not provide your private keys to any third party websites.
Dear, @acidyo When using a logarithmic scale, the vertical distance between the prices in the scale will be equal when the percent change between the values is the same. Using the above example, the distance between $10 and $15 would be equal to the distance between $20 and $30 because they both represent a price increase of 50%. In general, most traders and charting programs use the logarithmic scale, but it is always a good idea to explore other approaches to determine which is the most suitable for your trading style.
HOW TO PREPARE YOUR CRYPTO HOLDINGS FOR BIG GAINS
Cryptos are ending the week a bit flat. It looks like there may have just been a bit of a bounce, but it will probably just be back to where we were a few days ago. Although the news is a bit more optimistic, we don't expect much activity over the weekend.
Many of you have asked about allocation of your crypto holdings. Today we just want to give a few different ideas to consider...
1.) Buy only the top market cap cryptos and hold. Some just hold BTC, ETH, and nothing more. Others only hold the top 5 by market cap. For us, we have some of these that we got in quite early on and do plan to simply hold for the 2-5 year range, but we don't put 100% of our holdings in these. One reason is because other cryptos may have more potential room to grow than these that already have huge market caps. If you do this, you don't have to check prices much and can pretty much snooze through these ups and downs.
2.) Put your holdings into the top 20-30 cryptos by market cap. We see a lot of people doing this. However, it's not good to do it just based on popularity. It is good to have cryptos and projects that have real concepts, products, services, and ideas that can be executed on in the marketplace. We have seen scammy ones like BitConnect, with a bug market cap...crash. We do think only 20-30 may survive, but that doesn't mean it will simply be the current top cryptos. Other new ones may come along.
3.) Watch CoinMarketCap for the coins with the most recent big percent gains. We don't do this and would suggest not doing it. Simply looking at growth means almost nothing.
4.) Focus on high risk high reward small coins, ICO's, etc. We do allot a portion of our crypto holdings to new projects with a lot of room to grow. In fact some of our best gains have been from this, but also, the risk is much higher.
5.) Trade in and out and don't give much attention to the type of coin. We do like to trade in and out of some coins, but only to generate funds for putting in longer term holds.
Summary: We have things split into 4 "pools." We like to have some cryptos that will just sit there like investing in a startup and that money is effectively "gone." It maybe will go close to $0 or pay off well in 2-5 years and we won't take it out for any reason unless there are substantial gains. These are the "Big 3," BTC, ETH, and LTC. Then, we have some in smaller cryptos. Ones that have really good potential and fundamentals, we will hold, but trade in and out of portions of the holdings. For example, if one "moons" we may take profit on 30-50% and then reinvest on a dip. Then, we have higher risk new projects, ICO's, etc, that we do not put big amounts into that can pay off big returns. And lastly, we trade in and out of coins (generally using Kraken) to try to grow funds to put into these other 3 "pools." We can't say how you should split them up, but ours are broken up close to evenly around 20-30% of total funds per pool.
We hope this helps you see how you can play with these to profit in the crypto market. For example, right now the market is slow, but perhaps you can take some from pool 2 and put it in a trading pool to trade bounces, and so forth.
We are going to have more information next week about different ways to profit in the crypto-markets.
Please Follow me on steemauto.
To me i think the rise and fall of Bitcoin controls the price and value of other coins. That goes in line with that word "manipulation". Am not a crypto analyst, am yet a newbie but i think their is a manipulation trend between bitcoin and existence of other currencies
I think the big businesses are trying to get people to sell their positions so that Bitcoin will fall as low as it can before they swoop it all up and make a fortune off of it. That way they can screw the little people and also make a big profit.
we have to be careful though, you can keep saying this as the price goes down
Well, my recent observation is that when BTC drops, all the crypto drop. However in recovery phases the third gen cryptos like EOS recover stronger than bitcoin or ETH which may indicate a starting pattern of decoupling cryptos from The King.
the reality of the market ...
The blockchain and its peers are the logical evolution of currencies in the digital era. It had been talked about and researched for a long time. It didn't boom into existence but grew gradually and has been shown to be extremely reliable.
In today's globalised market, I see it as very unlikely that they're going to go down in history as the second tulips bubble. But I could accept that cryptocurrencies are overrated right now, perhaps, as if people had gone crazy and invested all their time and resources into p2p file sharing. It was just another technology.
However, cryptocurrencies solve a strong need in globalisation to be able to trade against the wills of the regional limiters. Governments always want to tax and regulate the daily activities of people. I believe that the blockchain will disrupt these efforts and, in the rise of the age of information technology, will rise as the giver of freedom that people always seek.
In these so favorable waters, I see no chance of the fleet sinking.
I’m trying, @acidyo, as much as I can afford, to hold onto my crypto. Recently, put all my Litecoin & Ethereum into Steem/Steemit, to put my money where my mouth is...
Now, all I’m left with is Bitcoin (which I hope not to have to dig into anytime, soon).
Thanks, for the reassurance of this post; my wife tends to agree - and she’s done a fair amount of research, as a financial analyst- that Good Things are round the bend 🌈
What valuable information have you shared with us @acidyo, even though I am not an expert, reading something like that is encouraging, since with your observation we can share your experience. Thank you!!
It takes a big heart to invest in something that might take years to generate its worth but reading through your post, I know its gonna worth the risk.
The best advice ever, throw away a certain amount of money investing it in crypto and forget about it for years. Am sure those who boughy bitcoin in 2009 started smiling when the value skyrocketed. Lets hope this manipation doesn't get to steem. Steemit is the future
Yeah, manipulation is everywhere and I think cryptos are being manipulated big time. All the news that have been coming out lately, most of them spread FUD to make the prices go down.
It's indeed best to just invest what you can afford and just forget about it for a while. Cryptocurrencies have been growing each year and I don't think it will stop any time soon.
I remember a few years ago, someone told me that cryptocurrency is for criminals, they use it so they can't be tracked, and that we shouldn't invest in it because criminals use it.
But of course criminals use it, they're always look for new ways not to get caught. In fact, the first ever trade made online, was a drug trade.
So just like you said, the technology exists and it's not going anywhere. So we need to embrace it, learn everything about it and then use it to our advantage. If we don't, you can bet your ass that the criminals will.
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did someone or group maybe? who manipulate that?
I totally agree that alot of manipulation is coming our way, before I came to Steemit,I was certian that this is all a bubble. A month into Steemit I understand that Blockchain is here to stay.
Thank you for sharing your experience
I was literally holding my hand on my Nano Wallet to make some short trades before going back to holding.
But now... nah, screw it. I'll just hodl.
I had the opportunity to inveSt in Bitcoin some years back, I didn't. That regret has made me its biggest believer. Crypto cannot be denied and bitcoin is the future
If only I had something to hold.
Only my old pink pants long forgotten under my bed and a couple of poker chips(
Maybe lady luck kisses me with better times!
Interesting post. I upvote, resteem and follow your posts.
Bitcoin is the best store of value dollar value may fluctuate but if you practice proper security you will still have your btc 10 or even 100 years from now and by that time I would not be surprised if we see 100k per coin
I believe in the future of blockchain. I resteemed this post.
I feel like bitcoin and co has had a lot of growth and might not increase in value as much as something like steem which is relativity unknown and has lots of things going for it. I recently sold all my crypto to buy steem, do you think that was wise or should I keep some BTC/ETH holdings?
I was one of those people that knew about bitcoin very early on and only got negativity from my family about it, also I was just a kid with no money and sold way too early; I kick myself every day for that but hey, what can you do right.
I'm giving away free DogeCoin to the first people to respond here
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ianmcg/free-dogecoin-giveaway-on-steemit-pilot-promotion-start-using-dogecoin-today
13 spots left. just like the post. No strings attached or any stupid lottery. Just post your address and get coin!
Hopefully Steem follows the same upward path after the HF 20.
Wao, incredible research, my most sincere congratulations. I think that this world of cryptocurrencies we must defend it, especially the Steem since it is very interesting and helps many people to eat and get ahead, in my country for example that happens, I have seen many families eat thanks to this server called steemit. Thank you very much @acidyo.
Actually all cryptocurrency market are so down but now this time increase of every cryptocurrency coin.I hope that now this time of buy this coin.
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U did not show a similar chart for other conventional asset for comparison
For future viewers: price of bitcoin at the moment of posting is 8460.78USD