It's easier than ever for people to moonlight as a spy and get away with it. You'll probably only get caught if your adversary has the means and motivation to counter.
Most people in civilian/domestic situations are unable to defend themselves. Thus, amateurs get away with spying more easily. They can work alone more easily and have a wider variety of commodity spying tools.
It's not technically incorrect to say there is manipulation in the US markets, but comparing bitcoin exchanges to US exchanges is a bit laughable.
The US Federal Reserve has (had) what amount(ed) to a printing press, associated with "working groups" a.k.a. PPT. However, major US exchanges themselves, whether stock, futures, etc., are far more regulated and mature compared to a bitcoin exchange. The manipulation to which you're referring is far more indirect.
The crypto markets are pretty close to OTC markets. Any significant flow will shift markets. The only problem, IMHO, is that traditional investors are looking at it.
Lets talk about QE-1-4, the printing of money and bankers being bailed out. Your argument does not stand by any measure of reason or logic. Lets also talk about investment bankers and VC's who are completely being disrupted.
We know about that. Let's not bother to talk about it; it smells like trying desperately to change the subject. We're talking about how, with all that you said about financial markets, bitcoin is worse. Saying "but the financial markets are manipulated" doesn't refute the claim we're talking about whatsoever.
Bitcoin topped out as soon as the futures went live. Massive contango on a regulated futures market may have been a factor in "reeling in" price. The spot market is so thin that it didn't seem to take much open interest in the futs to whip the underlying.
It's conceivable that some spot exchanges are or were still from 2017 to now, either malicious and/or incompetent, which would facilitate the continuation of such behavior, likely by more players than one or two.
On contango: I would not call what the futures market is experiencing "massive" contango. There is a very slight premium to further dated futures ($35/btc Feb over Jan, and $5 Mar over Feb contracts on CME), but this is very normal for a commodity and logically in place for exchange/spot holding risk. I would call the average settlements over the past month of futures being listed very normal contango. And I don't think the contango itself had anything to do with "reeling in" price. The futures finally being listed perhaps.
"The spot market is so thin" I also think is incorrect. GDAX is normally 0.01 USD wide (albeit for small amounts) and often-times under $1 wide for many BTC. I would call the spot market very thick, if anything. You can get off what appears to be very large amounts of BTC with minimal slippage most times of the day.
"didn't seem to take much open interest in the futs to whip the underlying" -- are you saying a futures move would lead the market? I respectfully disagree. All the entities I know price futs from spot and are generally putting on the arb in this order, not the other way around.
> You can get off what appears to be very large amounts of BTC with minimal slippage most times of the day.
I wrote a script[1] that pulls down the public order books for Bitstamp, GDAX and Bitfinex, because I was interested in seeing the depth of the BTCUSD market, and right now you can offload:
258, 301 and 325 BTC on GDAX, Bitfinex and Bitstamp, respectively (total: 884 BTC), at 1% slippage for 3,544,921, 4,152,783 and 4,452,134 USD, respectively (total: $12.1m).
Those market depth numbers are probably thinner than they seem, there is no regulation of spoofing/layering and it would be instructive to look at the cancellation rate of passive orders originally placed deep in the book when market price subsequently approaches the resting limit price.
Of course if you want to move larger amounts there are specialized OTC markets that handle large block trades, e.g. Cumberland Mining. Of course the lit exchanges are important for price discovery.
It would be interesting to compare the BTC market depth as a percentage of market value to other exchange traded assets.
I would be skeptical of strong claims about how Bitcoin futures have affected its price significantly so quickly, mainly because their volume is very low when compared to Bitcoin exchanges and even other unregulated futures (such as Bitmex's future contracts, which have been around for much longer than CME and others have).
It makes sense the price has stabilized recently due to how strong the recent bull market was, it will likely need some time to relax and consolidate before it decides what direction to push next.
Perhaps, but bitcoin futures are advertised like crazy on the the futures exchange, but volume is completely minuscule compared to other commodities (and crypto exchanges for that matter).
I'd expect traditional future buyers (if that is the correct term?) to be much less likely to be swayed by advertisement than the new market segments that could be attracted with bitcoin futures. Kind of logical to focus advertisement activity on the latter group.
since the futures are cash settled, is it really possible for there to be such a tight correlation?
also, I surmise that a major factor in the correction we've witnessed in the past month or so has been the congested mempool (high fees and slow tx times).
Yes, the futures price settles daily based on the reference rate. Eventually such correlations become more efficient once you have a real market. (As another poster pointed out it's still thin).
Nobody else besides me has received a second alert, that I know of, I've posted it like 30 times on twitter under #Hawaii and #MissileAlert etc
Context: I tweeted to someone who was upset about it all, "All your alert are belong to us", then immediately received the second false alarm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGnAMp9Nvk
In the US, one can fill out a police report, but that doesn't mean that the police will opt to press charges. If one contacts the police to report a crime, they still need probable cause to press charges.
As for witch hunts, folks do get burned in the digital age, whether as result of posts on a public twitter feed, or worse yet in some cases, privately via other social media channels or other (digital) communication mechanisms. Publicly outing someone or a group is perhaps a last resort, but necessary in some cases.
In the meantime, a high level of technical proficiency is needed to defend against monolithic personal computing environments that are hostile by design.
* Assume personal computing environment is hostile
* Use an external firewall and have a whitelist-only policy
* Use an external NIDS
* Physically disable all hard-connected non-wired interconnectivity
Monitors and keyboards ("I leave message here on service but you do not call") still leak, of course, but this is a good start, and most people need to be concerned with practical attacks that could be carried out over the internet.
New Year's 2018 resolutions: 1) Review backup policy including backup testing procedures 2) Implement personal digital security measures
I've often thought that the current mentality of a "convenient" monolithic personal computing environment (whether an iPhone, laptop, or PC) doesn't properly assess threats.
When broadband internet first became popular in my area growing up, it was acceptable practice (and recommended by ISP's) to simply plug your non-firewall'ed DSL modem ethernet directly into your computer. It truly was unprotected sex in the worst possible way. Perhaps the next evolution will fundamentally reconsider personal computing design from a security-first perspective.
Your reasoning has merit, of course. And, that's a sad commentary on the current state of affairs, in which one cannot trust a firewall appliance to do its job.
Perhaps the movement for open source hardware should focus on minimal security appliances.
In some ways, the story of someone getting ripped off like that leaves the victim with a better story for themselves than simply being a guy who has four super bowl rings even though he doesn't actually play football.
Which is not to applaud theft, but rather to highlight the unsympathetic qualities of the victim.
Why would anybody downvote me on THIS site for opposing Trump? Do you like the bitter Steve Bannon attacks on the tech industry? Do you think immigration is a bad idea? Do you find him to be an honest, decent, likeable man? Do you agree with his moves to get science out of scientific policy-making? Do you favor his attitude of "Truth is whatever I tweet it is?"
Most people in civilian/domestic situations are unable to defend themselves. Thus, amateurs get away with spying more easily. They can work alone more easily and have a wider variety of commodity spying tools.