So, anyone have thoughts on the recent market crash? Are Futures Contracts causing instability? Market manipulation? Seems rather odd how quickly it happened and, how deeply. Also odd how one commercial trader predicted it almost exactly...
There is a lot of politics in the background of course, but honestly a crash was imminent anyway. Bitcoin is a constantly uptrending roller coaster. And a roller coaster sometimes goes a little down to then go up even faster. Bitcoin will recover regardless of Roger Ver and the crap he is talking all day.
I'm going to have to disagree with your roller-coaster metaphor dzonikg28, but stand with you on your intended points. In fact, I'm going to go a step further. Roger Ver is talking about the weaknesses of bitcoin and this seems to be hurting its value. The more the large holders and miners see value being hurt by disfunctionality in bitcoin, the more they are likely to support genuine improvements to its code. And the more the code behind bitcoin improves, and the more useful bitcoin is, the higher its true value can climb.
As for futures contracts and commercial traders manipulating the price, I think it is unlikely. I have no doubt that given the skill and opportunity, they would certainly do it. And I imagine that the current low is a great time for them to buy a reserve to sell futures against. I just don't think they've got what it takes to pull it off. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been an incidental effect. It is hard for the whales to cash-out a significant amount without impacting the price. But selling a chunk to futures traders is a good opportunity and it is possible that taking advantage of that has hit the price a little.
This article from a couple of days ago talks about the concept:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-21/bitcoin-billionaires-may-have-found-a-way-to-cash-outBut I'm most comfortable putting it down to the range of complex influences that have caused previous dips in prices. Some of it might be algorithmic trading. Maybe after watching it climb fast, unreasonable expectations have made the slight slowdown seem worrisome. Possibly the fact that bitcoin has attracted many inexperienced investors to try their hand means the market is more emotional and reactive than more standard types of investments. Maybe the weather has more to do with the price of bitcoin than its functionality does. How about Christmas putting a pinch on budgets causing investors to cash in despite a drop in price? If the Christmas budget theory is correct, maybe we can expect a leap in price as people invest their cash presents where they'd never risk money earned through hard work.
So the only thing I know for sure is that Jamie Dimon is green with jealousy that the market ignored him, but reacts when Roger Ver goes public. But you've got to be enjoying the media circus that spends a month calling bitcoin a bubble, and then when the price dips, writes pages speculating about what strange thing could have interrupted such a strong climb.