Quote from: odolvlobo on April 27, 2013, 08:01:16 PM

Quote from: jzcjca00 on April 25, 2013, 03:52:09 PM

I believe a small group of people with millions of dollars in resources is manipulating the Bitcoin market, artificially injecting extreme volatility and reaping huge profits.

Do you have any data under your tin foil hat to support this claim?

I don't have proof, but there are signs.

There was this report posted:

Quote from: Elxiliath on April 14, 2013, 08:56:08 PM

First there was a huge increase in users regeristing with My.Gox which started to cause the system to lag, then there was a huge sell order in the range of 5000 bitcoins which caused the price to go down as they were sold and created latency as it filled current buy orders. That initial large drop greatly affected the price causing nervous traders to sell because of this and the current price at the time. The continuous sell from nervous sellers, selling lower and lower to get out from under there bitcoinx crashed the market. Then Mt.Gox shut down trading and has been repeatedly hit with DDoS attacks causing further doubt in the trading system most base bitcoin prices on.

It seems that the crash was caused by two separate events: a huge sell order of 5,000 BTC, followed by a massive DDoS. The combination of those two events was much more devastating than either would have been alone.

Was it just bad luck that the DDoS started shortly after the huge sell order? To me it seems more likely that they were two prongs of the same attack plan.

If the primary motive was hatred of Bitcoin and a desire to see it crash and burn, then a two-pronged attack was the best way to accomplish that goal. However, it seems like a lot of trouble to go to just for hatred.

I believe money is a more likely motivation. We know that they had 5,000 BTC, which means they had invested a great deal of money in the scheme, probably over a period of several weeks at a minimum. We know they sold at the top, presumably making a lot of money in the process. My guess is that they also bought at the bottom, or that they are accumulating now in preparation for another attack.

If it's NOT someone manipulating the market to make a lot of money, there are a lot of outstanding questions to be answered. Why did someone dump 5,000 bitcoins all at once? What is the purpose of the DDoS attacks? Was it pure coincidence that the two events happened at the same time?

At this point market manipulatin for monetary gain seems the most plausible explanation to me.

It's not as if market manipulation is unusual. People do "pump and dump" all the time. Do you really find the idea so crazy that you accuse me of wearing a "tin foil hat?" Or was that just supposed to be a funny remark? Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a post is intended as an insult or a joke.