Quote from: HairyMaclairy on January 25, 2018, 04:29:19 AM

Hey Roachiepoachie

Mr Hayes said the rise of bitcoin had contributed to the flow of money out of precious metals over the past year, exacerbating a broader collapse in demand for bullion coins that had hurt the mint's bottom line

Yes, I already addressed that earlier. Just like interest in sound money decreases in Russia when the Mavrodi MMM scam rolls through, such is the same effect with the bitcoin pump and dump:

Quote from: realr0ach on January 24, 2018, 10:09:37 PM

Quote from: OROBTC on January 24, 2018, 04:36:56 PM

THREE coin dealers here in my city have confirmed to me personally that "Bitcoin is sucking the oxygen out of the room" re physical gold buyers. But, this is perhaps fashion.

Of course it's "fashion". The overwhelming majority of people are completely clueless when it comes to economics or investing and simply fall back on human herd mentality. Since they know nothing, they see an asset rise and then believe, "well, there must be people who are more knowledgeable than me investing in this and I will thus defer to their opinion and buy some too since everyone else is".

This is why pump and dump scams never cease to stop working. Humans have a finite lifespan so there literally is a sucker born every minute. The price of bitcoin has been controlled almost entirely by a single entity painting the tape and spoofing walls mostly operating on Bitfinex ever since the price was $200. I'm probably the first person to talk about this, and then later even Zerohedge wrote articles about it calling him "the Bitfinex spoofer". One scammer can create an army of zombies to follow him.

Just like all artificially rigged pump and dumps, bitcoin will fall out of fashion, the lemmings will sell their bitcoin post-collapse at the same price or lower than what they bought in, and then say "darn, I wish I bought metals before gold went up 10x and silver went up 20x. I guess i'll buy some now!". To actually make money, you have to be somewhat of a contrarian investor and buy cold markets while immediately dumping any market full of dumb money lemmings.