
The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market - tpatke
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market
======
sevensor
It's interesting to see how this is playing out. Libertarians have long argued
that government-issued fiat currency is a tool of state oppression. Now we
have a real-world experiment demonstrating on a grand scale what happens when
you create a currency by consensual fiat. I'd be interested to hear what
libertarians think about this: Is Bitcoin truly the kind of currency
libertarians have been advocating? Have I mischaracterized the libertarian
position? What do you think about the concentration of Bitcoins in the hands
of a small number of people? Where is this experiment going in the long run?

~~~
clarkmoody
Government-issued currencies usually come with legal tender laws and citizens
are required to pay taxes using the government money. Since taxes are not
voluntary, this creates built-in demand for the fiat money. The creators of
alternative competitor-money are punished as well. The libertarian position is
that human interactions should be voluntary, so the coercion problem is where
libertarians find issue first.

A side note here about capital controls: Bitcoin allows money to be
borderless, which is natural. Capital controls are an artificial construct of
the state, often used to prop up the perpetually failing fiat money.

The second issue is economic. When the money supply of your currency is not
constrained (by gold, or otherwise), then it inevitably inflates, often
unpredictably and uncontrollably. The death of a fiat money usually has
disastrous effects on the people, especially on the poor. Unfortunately, fiat
money has a short lifespan, on average.

The libertarian position on wealth inequality is that as long as the
distribution of wealth was determined voluntarily (without state privilege, in
particular), then there is no problem. Bitcoin is such a system: all
participation in Bitcoin has been voluntary. Early adopters took a big risk on
a fledgling technology, and some have been rewarded with handsome returns.

Early writing about cypherpunk money usually mentions anonymity, which Bitcoin
does not have (yet).

 _> Where is this experiment going in the long run?_

Isn't that the trillion-dollar question? :-)

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>Since taxes are not voluntary

>The libertarian position is that human interactions should be voluntary, so
the coercion problem is where libertarians find issue first.

Do you believe obeying property law is voluntary? I find it to be coercive.

~~~
clarkmoody
Instead of answering your question, I will leave this:

Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural
right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and
takes it, I get upset.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>Very small children understand and recognize property, since it is a natural
right. The toy in my hand is "mine," and when some other kid comes along and
takes it, I get upset.

When a very small child in a poor family looks at what is under a wealthy
family's Christmas tree he's also going to be upset. Does that make a
relatively equal distribution of Christmas presents a natural right?

I see no basis for decrying all coercion and mandating transactions be
voluntary yet also overlooking the biggest contributor to coercion: property.

~~~
googletazer
Upset/uncomfortable - maybe, but at who? The rich family? His own family?
Himself? Society? All of those?

People on hackernews and in general tend to view "negative" feelings, envy,
etc... as generically "bad". These feelings are evolutionary signals from your
primal brain that something isn't going right. Its up to you to fix that,
however you see fit.

~~~
Daishiman
> These feelings are evolutionary signals from your primal brain that
> something isn't going right. Its up to you to fix that, however you see fit.

So rape and pillaging it is then.

~~~
googletazer
I mean those two have pretty clear risks as well. Morality might moderate
people's primal feelings but they are even better moderated by understanding
opportunity - costs of the actions. Nevertheless, there is nothing inherently
"bad" about "negative" feelings. They just tell you something isn't going
right and you have to fix it. How you do that - is up to you.

------
IkmoIkmo
There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people.
Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of
bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses.

It's not unlikely the same reasoning (i.e. 40% of coins on top 1000 addresses)
is used for the larger claim.

But that says very little. A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many
users, in the same way a bank vault can contain money from many individuals.
It's quite likely that the top addresses are held in a (semi) custodial
function by parties like Coinbase or Kraken, which have hundreds of thousands
to millions of customers, but may store their users' coins on a number of
addresses that's a tiny fraction of their user count.

Regardless, unequal wealth distribution isn't entirely unique to bitcoin,
either. The top 1% worldwide own about 50% of the world's wealth, the richest
10% own about 85%.

~~~
malikNF
While I agree with you, it would be hard to dismiss the title of the article
since looking at the btc rich list there's quite a few addresses with low
number of transactions, but massive amounts of btc in them.

[https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-
addresses....](https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-
addresses.html)

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Well that's sort of my point... me a large amount of coins stored in a low-
transaction account would to me be characteristic of reserve-type funds stored
by big exchanges.

In fact, many parties like Coinbase have come out and openly stated that only
a small percentage of their users' coins move around, and therefore the vast
majority can, and is, stored in 'air gapped cold storage'. i.e. on private
keys that never touched a network of any kind. This could result in a few cold
storage addresses which carry funds for orders of magnitude more users, rather
than a few individuals.

In fact, if you follow your own link you'll find many of the addresses are in
fact identified as belonging to exchanges like Kraken or Bitfinex cold
wallets. e.g. the second richest address is a $1.9 billion Bitfinex wallet.

So I don't think the title of the research '1000 people own 40%' is hard to
dismiss at all. It could well be true, but a mere list of addresses isn't
proof to that claim.

------
aaavl2821
Market manipulation is a big risk here. Basically "wolf of wall st" style
shenanigans, or the stuff that salomon brothers did in the mortgage bond
market in the 1980s.

Essentially a few big investors who've cornered the market, acting in concert,
can move the market essentially according to their own desire. I read
yesterday that the order book for btc was $33 million (don't know what the
daily volume is; could anyone enlighten me? Not an active bitcoin follower but
have experience in markets). The top 1,000 BTC holders own about $100 Billion
at current prices. Even a few of them could concertedly buy small amounts of
BTC at rapidly increasing prices, then if that leads to a huge rally and
increase in volume (like yesterday) they can sell into that volume and make a
nice profit. Lots of other things like that they can do:
[https://www.girardgibbs.com/securities-fraud/stock/market-
ma...](https://www.girardgibbs.com/securities-fraud/stock/market-
manipulation/examples/)

Not saying they do those things, but that is a real risk in unregulated,
concentrated markets where there is no real way to quantify value

EDIT: montecarl pointed me to the gdax site, also
[https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/6m/USD?c=e&t=l](https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/6m/USD?c=e&t=l)
shows price and vol data (im a noob) and it looks like volume is much higher,
on the order of 100-150k BTC / day so over $1B USD volume at $17K / BTC.

~~~
deweller
I don't understand the idea that a whale could move the market and make money
off it.

To move the market, you need to spend money.

The only way it works is if you create some kind of momentum and the market
continues to go up. But rational markets will sell into the artificial
momentum and the price will be be close to where you started. The net result
is that you lost money.

I believe there is momentum in markets (they are definitely NOT perfectly
rational). But is there enough momentum to really make money with this scheme?
I highly doubt it.

Also consider that a group of whales would have to work together to do this.
Do you really trust your whale friend to buy at the same time you do? What if
he front-runs you and you end up buy the bitcoin he just bought last week for
10% lower?

I don't buy the theory that there are a group of "whales" sitting around
planning how to manipulate markets together.

~~~
aaavl2821
You are right, it doesn't always work, but it can work, and work really well.
The way you make money is by creating volume and momentum. You buy in a low
volume market, where it's cheaper to move the market, then if volume takes off
and price momentum builds, you can sell much more volume without moving the
market. We aren't talking about people liquidating their entire stakes, but
you can make a few million here and there easy.

There is strong incentive to collude: collusion unlocks the potentially
powerful profit engine of market manipulation. You make more money working
together than you could on your own. If people try to screw each other too
much the whole thing falls apart, as market movements are no longer
predictable to the colluders, and their advantage is gone. So yeah collusion
can break down in cases but as a rule people understand they make more money
together

If you don't buy that theory, id recommend reading about Solomon brothers or
even watching the wolf of wall st. Martin shkreli did this stuff too. I think
it was Jim cramers tactic for a while (talk your book on tv, get retail volume
in small cap stocks and sell into that) JP morgan and other early wall st
financiers did this sort of stuff. It happens in the real world even now; I've
heard from friends at big banks that they know people who will sometimes do
stuff like this

market manipulation is how people make real money in unregulated markets.
cornering the market is and always has been the holy grail for market
manipulation and profiting in unregulated markets. It's why regulation exists.
Its a theory in the same way that evolution is a theory

~~~
pc86
> _We aren 't talking about people liquidating their entire stakes, but you
> can make a few million here and there easy._

This is the important part that took me a while to get.

This isn't someone with $100 million in BTC selling their entire stock for
$150 million. This is someone with $100 million in BTC spending $200k to
jumpstart a rise in price and selling off $3 million in the process and ending
up with more-or-less $100 million in BTC.

------
marsrover
I really enjoy investing in cryptocurrencies. However, I have a lot of doubt
this is going to make the world a more fair or better place. It's going to
create a wealth gap like has never been seen in first world countries.

~~~
simias
It seems pretty obvious to me as well. Given huge speculation surrounding them
at the moment I'm surprised we don't hear more people warning about these
things. I don't think I want to live in a world where BTC replaces the
USD/EUR/...

Untraceable money means that corruption and tax evasion would be easier than
ever. Democratic governments would be worse off in dealing with that, because
unlike totaliatrian regimes they won't be able to round up BTC-rich people and
break their fingers until they give their secret keys.

Deflation means that the rich will get richer doing nothing while the poor
won't be able to get a loan to bootstrap their businesses. Forget about
trickle down economics, this is downright "trickle up".

I have yet to hear a reasonable rebuttal to these claims. Every time I see
these points brought up in the bitcoin community it's met with a bunch of hand
waiving and claims that they're "FUD" and that the poster doesn't know what
they're talking about. So please, BTC enthusiasts, educate me so that I can
stop spreading this "FUD", where's the flaw in my reasoning?

~~~
knocte
> Untraceable money

Bitcoin is not untraceable money, it can be even more traceable than normal
currency. It could be stablished as a law that public money when being spent
in the blockchain needs to be auditable by the people (identities of sender
and recipient known), and this way you would end up with even less corruption
than the current system.

> Deflation means that the rich will get richer

Wrong. Rich people don't have money, they have holdings. Most of the holdings
that rich people nowadays have are not money. Deflation just benefits the
savers, as opposed to the spenders. Some savers might be rich but not all.
Incentivising saving instead of consumption may make the planet a bit greener.
Plus, if one day we stop measuring cryptocurrency value with a fiat-unit of
measure, maybe we find out that the cryptocurrency value is actually the
stable value. The asset that is not stable is the fiat currency because it's
being depreciated all the time. The day all stores in the planet denominate
prices in cryptocurrency, the bad consequences of deflation (hoarding for the
sake of profit) will be almost imperceptible.

~~~
simias
>> Deflation means that the rich will get richer

>Wrong. Rich people don't have money, they have holdings. Most of the holdings
that rich people nowadays have are not money.

Isn't one reason for not hoarding cash (and instead investing it in various
holdings, stock market, etc...) is that money loses value? If I was a
millionaire in dollars I definitely wouldn't keep that on my bank account,
slowly having it lose its value. If I was a millionaire in BTC I'd have a
hardware wallet with my secret keys in a safe and that's about it.

>Deflation just benefits the savers, as opposed to the spenders. Some savers
might be rich but not all.

Sure, but conversely I can tell you that the people who don't save money are
overwhelmingly poor. For a big chunk of humanity saving money is a luxury.

>Incentivising saving instead of consumption may make the planet a bit
greener.

Coin mining will take care of filling that gap, don't worry.

If rich people reduce their investments because of deflation how do you
redistribute wealth?

>Plus, if one day we stop measuring cryptocurrency value with a fiat-unit of
measure, maybe we find out that the cryptocurrency value is actually the
stable value.

Well yeah, 1BTC == 1BTC, that's stable I guess. If BTC replaces fiat it'll
stabilize eventually but it will still be deflationary. My arguments were
about that, not the current instability.

>The asset that is not stable is the fiat currency because it's being
depreciated all the time. The day all stores in the planet denominate prices
in cryptocurrency, the bad consequences of deflation (hoarding for the sake of
profit) will be almost imperceptible.

That's kind of the hand waving I was talking about in my previous comment. I
don't see how you can justify you jumping to that conclusion.

How can you assume that switching from an inflationary to a deflationary
economy "will be almost imperceptible"?

~~~
knocte
> If I was a millionaire in BTC I'd have a hardware wallet with my secret keys
> in a safe and that's about it.

Lending or investing your BTC would always make you net more than just
hoarding it (at least when all prices are denominated in BTC already).

> Sure, but conversely I can tell you that the people who don't save money are
> overwhelmingly poor. For a big chunk of humanity saving money is a luxury.

True, I didn't say that low-class can save. But most savers are middle class
IMO.

> Coin mining will take care of filling that gap, don't worry.

Wrong, 2 links:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin-i...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin-
is-greener-than-its-critics-think)

[https://blog.bitcoin.org.hk/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-
consum...](https://blog.bitcoin.org.hk/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-
consumption-4526d4b56186)

> How can you assume that switching from an inflationary to a deflationary
> economy "will be almost imperceptible"?

Because when all prices get denominated in BTC, you won't see your holdings
appreciate. The only effect you will see, caused by deflation, is that prices
of things diminish over time. Which is kind of what happens nowadays with
hardware (because it's the goods where the effects of technology improvements
are noticed in the most sensible way), however I don't know anyone that hoards
their holdings to be able to buy a better and cheaper computer tomorrow.

~~~
ufo
The problem with a deflationary currency is that prices, wages and income go
down over time. Someone borrowing 100 BTC today will have a hard time paying
back that 100 BTC one year from now (let alone the interest) because they will
be earning less than they do today.

~~~
knocte
So loans would need to be short-lived and with high scrutiny, to make sure
they are payed back. I consider this a good thing, as opposed to the other
extreme: give everyone a loan no matter what (the root cause of the 2008
financial crisis).

------
FLUX-YOU
>Holders of large amounts of bitcoin are often known as whales. And they’re
becoming a worry for investors. They can send prices plummeting by selling
even a portion of their holdings.

That's not indicative of something that's a store of value.

~~~
davidmr
Is there any currency or commodity or derivative for which that statement is
not true? It seems self-evident that if you own a lot of something like gold,
dollars, BTC, sterling, etc. and you sell it, its value relative to what
you're selling it for declines.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
I'd bet that large holders of gold sell small amounts all the time without the
market going nuts and kicking off volatility swings. But I could be wrong.

It's less the mechanism and the implication that people imply by following
whales. Why should a store-of-value market react when someone sells a small
amount regardless of their current holdings?

~~~
pc86
I agree with you but this is an apples to oranges (or perhaps apples to 747s)
comparison. The top 1000 holders of gold don't have anywhere _near_ 40% of the
market. Not to mention that 40% of the market for BTC is only a few million
coins.

~~~
avar

        > The top 1000 holders of gold
        > don't have anywhere near 40%
        > of the market.
    

You're right, they have a lot more than that. Total world gold reserves are
around 30K tons. The US alone has 8K tons, Germany 3K, IMF 3K, Italy 2.5K etc.

So just the to 2 holders of Gold have almost 40% of the market, and the top 10
have 80%.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve)

~~~
specialp
I guess you didn't read the article you posted as evidence. In that article it
says all the gold ever mined is 187,200 tons. Percentage of reserves !=
percentage of gold market. That would have the USA at ~5% and that is a
country of 300+ million people. This is a lot different than 1000 individuals.

~~~
avar
In the context of this discussion, which is gold holders hypothetically
pumping & dumping the market it's pretty much only the big reserve holders
that matter.

How do you think someone who's gold holdings are 1 kg in a warehouse embedded
in motherboards is going to extract that to dump it on the market? Most gold
by weight is effectively illiquid, while every Bitcoin is equally liquid.

As the source the article uses[1] discusses the breakdown of those 187,200
tons is:

* Jewellery: 89,200 tonnes, 47.6%

* Private investment: 40,000 tonnes, 21.4%

* Official sector: 31,500 tonnes, 16.8%

* Other: 26,500 tonnes, 14.2%

* Below ground stocks: 57,000 tonnes

So around 50% of the number you're quoting is gold still in the ground. To
repeat your snarky remark: Did you read the article?

I guess counting the official sector and private investment the top 10
official holders "only" have around 30% of the liquid market, which is way
more distorted than Bitcoin, and very comparable in this context of a few
owners of large liquid assets being able to distort the market.

1\. [https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold-
mining/how-...](https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold-mining/how-
much-gold-has-been-mined)

~~~
pc86
> _it 's pretty much only the big reserve holders that matter_

We're talking about the entire BTC ecosystem. You can't compare that to a 16%
sliver of the entire gold market because that fits your argument better.

> _Most gold by weight is effectively illiquid, while every Bitcoin is equally
> liquid._

Which was basically my point, is that BTC-to-gold is an apples-to-airliners
comparison and is at _best_ a strained analogy.

------
bufferoverflow
Most of these "whales" are hot and cold wallets for various exchanges,
investment fund holdings, seized coins waiting to be sold.

It's nearly impossible to map an address to its owner (or owners).

~~~
ct0
Isn't the US Gov one of these whales ever since SilkRoad was seized?

~~~
charlesdm
These coins were mostly sold off to venture capitalist Tim Draper, for $50m:
[https://hacked.com/tim-draper-has-made-over-110-million-
sinc...](https://hacked.com/tim-draper-has-made-over-110-million-
since-2014-with-his-bitcoin-investment/)

Might sound like a success story now, but at a certain point he was down 70%
on his investment!

~~~
ct0
Wonder if he sold them after he made his 10% or so

~~~
charlesdm
I think he still owns them, according to a recent interview.

------
mmgutz
I read an interesting analogy yesterday in a poker chat of all places.

The guy basically said, let's put bitcoin to buy a coffee litmus test. If I
were to buy a cup of coffee in the current frenzy, I would be at the cashier
waiting a day for the transaction to go through and when it does go through
the fee for transaction would be greater than cost of the coffee.

If that is true, how is bitcoin better? Would that transaction even go through
considering miners would prioritize transactions with larger fees.

~~~
beager
The narrative has shifted as the dynamics and value have shifted. It’s more
like gold now. You wouldn’t pay for coffee with gold.

~~~
mmgutz
Right, I wouldn't. Maybe it's better termed cryptomineral instead of
cryptocurrency.

------
ggm
In classic gambling, whales are the people you comp high worth rooms, food,
drugs to, because they are willing to drop huge sums on the games of chance.
You nurture whales, to make a living off whales. You fly your whales to
interesting casinos and then quietly wait for the odds to fall in your favour.

Is this the metaphor the bitcoin-digerati want?

~~~
cantrip
The whale metaphor in this sense means something completely different.
Language is highly subjective, so no the gambling metaphor is not applicable
here.

~~~
ggm
the whale metaphor is subject to multiple interpretations and gambling is
pretty much what hodl is.

------
drcross
Whales can only sell once. It's also not in their self interest to make a
market collapse, why would they depress the price of the thing they are trying
to sell? When whales do sell many smaller buyers then take ownership of their
coins decreasing the chance of future volatility. These concerns are being
exaggerated too much.

~~~
neaden
It's not in their interest but things happen. Lots of these people live in
China right? Let's say some economic downturn happens in China, or government
policy changes or something and they need to liquidate some of their bitcoin
assets in a hurry all the sudden you could have a market collapse.

~~~
drcross
The same can be said of gold, or anything else. I don't see why this is
significant. Whales being forced to sell would allow people to buy coins at
cheap rate and solve the problem that the article is reporting on.

------
b111coins
So let me get this.. 40% isn't being traded, 30% isn't yet mined, say 10% lost
in between. Are we left with 20% that is being traded?

------
SkyMarshal
Second to last paragraph provides some perspective:

 _" Among the coins people invest in, bitcoin has the least concentrated
ownership, says Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at
Blockchain Capital. The top 100 bitcoin addresses control 17.3 percent of all
the issued currency, according to Alex Sunnarborg, co-founder of crypto hedge
fund Tetras Capital. With ether, a rival to bitcoin, the top 100 addresses
control 40 percent of the supply, and with coins such as Gnosis, Qtum, and
Storj, top holders control more than 90 percent. Many large owners are part of
the teams running these projects._"

------
crazypyro
Is this really that surprising? To me, it just seems to be mirroring wealth
inequality. 63% of total private wealth in America is owned by the 1%[1]. I'm
sure the top 1,000 have a significant amount of that 63%.

[1][https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-16/the-u-
s-i...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-16/the-u-s-is-where-
the-rich-are-the-richest)

------
jackpeterfletch
If they have access to their wallets.

------
EGreg
That means Bitcoin has a lot more to grow. That 40% can be sold off to many
more people eventually.

What worries me more is the elextricity consumption:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3za/bitcoin-
co...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3za/bitcoin-could-
consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020)

~~~
rednerrus
What should worry you is more than 200K transactions sitting in the queue and
not being able to get confirmations for 3 days.

------
tudorconstantin
Wow, such FUD, much propaganda lately, all against BTC.

Is it risky? sure. Do you HAVE to buy? of course not. Anybody can sit on the
sides and shout "bubble, ponzi, pyramidal scheme", but then don't whine when
the early adopters and risk takers got to buy it at just $16K and 3 years
later it trades at $1M.

------
bruno2223
Btc prices can still being manipulate by whales? (Honest question)

I know shitcoins can, because the Market Cap is low and it is easier for
whales to manipulate the market.

But... This also happen with BTC now days? There are millionaires who puts all
their BTC in one exchange? Jesus.. they are crazy.

------
QML
Additional article of how “decentralized” cryptocurrency is:
[https://news.earn.com/quantifying-
decentralization-e39db233c...](https://news.earn.com/quantifying-
decentralization-e39db233c28e)

------
PrimalDual
I am very curious to see what this will do to Chinese style capital controls.
They probably have started cracking down on exchanges but even with an
outright ban it sounds like a more powerful method to get money of of the
country.

------
NathanCH
Wasn't there stories recently about how just nine people had 50% of the
world's wealth?

Edit: Nevermind, it was eight people.

------
knocte
Large holders of bitcoin are probably believers so I don't think they would do
any detrimental action to the ecosystem on purpose. Plus, if they wanted to
sell BTC they would not be so stupid to do it with a large market order
(because it would act against their favour), OTC market exists (or even limit
orders, which don't move the market but if anything, they make it more price-
stable).

~~~
tehlike
How about their heirs?

------
tantalor
> Because bitcoin is a digital currency and not a security

And in that statement, there is the fraud.

~~~
AdamSC1
No one has classified Bitcoin as a security.

Per Wikipedia:

>The U.S. Treasury classified bitcoin as a convertible decentralized virtual
currency in 2013.[1] >The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC,
classified bitcoin as a commodity in September 2015. >Per IRS, bitcoin is
taxed as a property.[2]

[1][https://www.fincen.gov/news/testimony/statement-jennifer-
sha...](https://www.fincen.gov/news/testimony/statement-jennifer-shasky-
calvery-director-financial-crimes-enforcement-network)

[2][https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-
guidan...](https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance)

In the US it is classified either as a currency, piece of property or a
commodity, and as of Monday it will also be available as a futures contract of
a commodity.

Neither commodities nor futures contracts are consider securities, as they
fail the clause of the Howey Test that would make them dependent on a single
entity or management group.

This is why commodity futures trade is managed by the CFTC (Commodity Futures
Trade Commission) rather than the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission).

In fact, while some other tokens and ICOs have been found to be securities
both in the US and abroad, no country has formally noted Bitcoin as a security
- many treat it as a currency under a new classification for eMoney, Digital
Currency or Virtual Currencies.

------
zencash
these are exchange accounts that hold volumes of BTC.

------
foobarbecue
Whales or sharks?

------
iliicit
There is so much volume and volatility in Bitcoin markets that a whale can
sell insane amount of coins (e.g. 10k) in within days without much effect on
price. Placing limit orders in front of the best ask and moving them in case
the price goes down will do the trick. Bitfinex traded over 100k coins within
last 24 hours. it's reasonable to assume that you can capture 1% of this
volume on the daily basis using the limit orders. Selling 10k Bitcoins can be
easily done within 10 days without pushing the price down. I think it's
possible to do this within 1 day.

