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Whenever you see cryptocurrency prices suddenly rise, that's probably why:
We're not just a couple of weeks into 2023 and crypto prices are spiking. Seeing number go up might entice you to throw some money into Bitcoin or Ethereum. After all, maybe this is the beginning of another crypto bull market? You wouldn't want to miss out!
Well, just wait a minute. Consider this first: Why are crypto prices suddenly rising?
There are plenty of analysts out there trying to make logical sense of the recent bump in cryptocurrencies value – inflation is slowing, belief that the Federal Reserve is done with hiking interest rate hiking, bullish news on crypto – but no, that's not really it.
There's been no big positive news in the industry. There aren't reports of some new, mainstream avenues of adoption. Sure, the stock market is up a bit right now in the new year, but not at the same level cryptocurrency is.
So, what's going on here? Market manipulation.
[...] As longtime cryptocurrency writer and critic David Gerard explains: The big players in the industry are "buying" in order to control the market.
"The bitcoin price is whatever the large players need it to be," writes Gerard. "The market is very thin and trivially manipulable with the billions of pseudo-dollars in unbacked stablecoins on the unregulated offshore exchanges. The price needs to be high enough so the big boys' loans don't get liquidated; but it needs to be low enough so that the bagholders don't attempt to cash out."
John Reed Stark, a former SEC official, concurred with Gerard's assessment.
"A recent Forbes analysis of 157 crypto exchanges found that 51 percent of daily bitcoin trading volume being reported was likely bogus," tweeted Stark, referring to a Forbes report from last summer.
[...] It's just yet another way the big crypto companies and investment funds manipulate the market.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by number11 on Thursday January 19 2023, @07:30PM
The US has been printing money for quite a while. And the US is a net exporter of oil.
There's no particular reason why the oil market should be dominated by USD, except that after WW2 the US was the dominant economic power, since it was not only a major player, but also the only one whose economy hadn't been trashed by war. Maybe that's not true any more, and there should be a new way to value oil. Whether a basket of various currencies or gold (there isn't any other nation with economic power comparable to 1950s-1960s US). The mixed currencies is more likely, gold is a PITA.
But if the oil economy becomes based on gold, gold will flow to the US. Why is that a problem (for the US)?