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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

Really?

If that was the case the bust of DPR and the downfall of SR should drive the price of BTC down, to it's knees - since it was the only market where BTC was treated like a curency. This fact shows that either BTC is not as rational as one might think or that big players (or a small team of players) are trying to keep the price as high as possible (by not selling in bulk).

Note that if A. Shamir's paper is correct, and we don't have proof of the opposite, than 98% of BTC is owned by 2% of portfolios. IF that's the case, then it's no wonder it's over-inflated.

The sad thing is some people believe, that somehow this is more liberal while might complete driven, by a small team of unknown/anonymous players.

NOTE: I'm not stating that this scenario is real, but to me seems not far fetched at all.

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I don't see why the closing of silk road should have resulted in a drop of the price if "prices rise immediately in anticipation of positive future events." The closing of silk road lead people to anticipate that bitcoin would come to be associted with mostly legitimate purposes instead of nefarious ones in the future. So the price rose. (That was only part of it though; the senate hearings had a greater effect.)

> I don't see why the closing of silk road should have resulted in a drop of the price if "prices rise immediately in anticipation of positive future events."

That's elementary: Since SR was the only place where owning BitCoin was actually useful since you couldn't buy using dollars and was a big market (in turn-over), it's seizure by the FBI should driven BTC price down because the largest btc-related goods trader closed, so all those people buying illegal products, would stop searching/buying for bitcoins. Simple as that.

So losing 40% to 50% of it's value should be expected/rational, IIRC lost from 10 to 20% for a couple of hours. The senate thing you're referring happened later on and it's still NOT clear how will end.

Then you go making an assertion... Like if anyone really cares if you buy drugs, guns or chocolate with your currency. The world doesn't work like that, no one bought/used BTC because suddenly became ethical to own one since the good BFI caught the bad Silk Road guys. If that was the case, the USD wouldn't be so widely used.

I mean, we clearly saw that the price rose. You provided an explanation for why it should have fallen. It didn't, so you are wrong. Therefore I think the world "does work like that", in some contexts.

I offered an explanation of the context in which the prices did not rose, but you clearly you don't believe that's the case.

Out of curiosity, you think that Adi Shamir is wrong?

Because people != common sense. The closing of silk road put it in the news as a currency for bad things.

It was already widely known as a currency for bad things. The closing basically eliminated that argument.

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