So what was the solid evidence for (and against) conspiracy, as opposed to the null hypothesis that this is just one week in a bubble on its way down?
Neither of those are true (probably).
The price is the result of normal market forces, not a “conspiracy’ to decrease the price, or ‘manipulation’ upward last november due to bots. All of the ‘manipulation’ talk is complete bullshit. There is nothing at all unusual in the price movements of bitcoin. It is completely normal for an asset that is growing from essenitally no value, into the billions of dolalrs range, in five years.
If there was a startup company that went public with shares at its inception, until a point of it having a $10 billion market valuation, over a 5 year period, it would look a LOT like the bitcoin price chart. Huge, massive increases in value as it reached new milestones of adoption. Massive contractions as it looked like it might fail. But the thing is, you DONT see the valuation of startup companies like this, because they are owned by a small number of founders and venture capitalists and angel investors. So the bitcoin price looks unusual to most people.
So the first hypothesis: “there is a conspiracy to manipulate the price”, is complete BS. (There are tons of idiots on places like bitocintalk.org that beleive things like this, because they are clueless. But this is not a truth about reality. it is a rationalization made up after the fact by people for whom bitcoin is essentially a religion that you must take on faith, to explain why the price is now going down).
The second hypothesis “Bitcoin is a bubble on the way down”, is also probably not true. (Though the chance that it is true is a lot greater than the idiotic manipulation theory). The reason why this is unlikely is that the blockchain is a truly revolutionary technology, whose impact on the world is goign to be MUCH greater than a mere 10 billion dollar company. (If you look at bitcoin’s market cap as a valuation of a company, it peaked around $10 billion).
It might be true that the bitcoin blockchain is about to be surpassed by a competitor. That is, if you think of bitcoin as a startup, as the first startup to pioneer a technology, it is possible that now it is losing its place to a competing startup. If this were true, maybe bitcoin is going down because some altcoin is doing a much better job and is going to surpass it.
Even if bitcoin is going to be eclipsed by a competitor, it is much more likely that bitcoin would have another rise, but during that rise, its successor will greatly outperform it, and eventually surpass it.
To summarize:
Chance that the bitcoin price movements, in the long term, are due to a conspiracy: Close to 0%.
Chance that the blockchain technology will just die, and bitcoin and all altcoins will just die: Very Low.
Chance that bitcoin is currently going straight to $0 because a competitor blockchain technology is surpassing it right now: Low.
I do think that bitcoin is at risk of being surpassed by competing blockchains in the future, but not so imminently that it is going straight to zero right now. I think that in the end, both bitcoin and a few different other blockchains will survive. Most of those probably have not even been created yet.
In the same way that there is not only one surviving internet company today, and in fact there are many, in the future there will be many surviving blockchain technologies. This is true, even while the vast majority of the coins currently in existence will fail, just as most of the dot com bubble companies failed.
Neither of those are true (probably).
The price is the result of normal market forces, not a “conspiracy’ to decrease the price, or ‘manipulation’ upward last november due to bots. All of the ‘manipulation’ talk is complete bullshit. There is nothing at all unusual in the price movements of bitcoin. It is completely normal for an asset that is growing from essenitally no value, into the billions of dolalrs range, in five years.
If there was a startup company that went public with shares at its inception, until a point of it having a $10 billion market valuation, over a 5 year period, it would look a LOT like the bitcoin price chart. Huge, massive increases in value as it reached new milestones of adoption. Massive contractions as it looked like it might fail. But the thing is, you DONT see the valuation of startup companies like this, because they are owned by a small number of founders and venture capitalists and angel investors. So the bitcoin price looks unusual to most people.
So the first hypothesis: “there is a conspiracy to manipulate the price”, is complete BS. (There are tons of idiots on places like bitocintalk.org that beleive things like this, because they are clueless. But this is not a truth about reality. it is a rationalization made up after the fact by people for whom bitcoin is essentially a religion that you must take on faith, to explain why the price is now going down).
The second hypothesis “Bitcoin is a bubble on the way down”, is also probably not true. (Though the chance that it is true is a lot greater than the idiotic manipulation theory). The reason why this is unlikely is that the blockchain is a truly revolutionary technology, whose impact on the world is goign to be MUCH greater than a mere 10 billion dollar company. (If you look at bitcoin’s market cap as a valuation of a company, it peaked around $10 billion).
It might be true that the bitcoin blockchain is about to be surpassed by a competitor. That is, if you think of bitcoin as a startup, as the first startup to pioneer a technology, it is possible that now it is losing its place to a competing startup. If this were true, maybe bitcoin is going down because some altcoin is doing a much better job and is going to surpass it.
Even if bitcoin is going to be eclipsed by a competitor, it is much more likely that bitcoin would have another rise, but during that rise, its successor will greatly outperform it, and eventually surpass it.
To summarize:
Chance that the bitcoin price movements, in the long term, are due to a conspiracy: Close to 0%. Chance that the blockchain technology will just die, and bitcoin and all altcoins will just die: Very Low. Chance that bitcoin is currently going straight to $0 because a competitor blockchain technology is surpassing it right now: Low.
I do think that bitcoin is at risk of being surpassed by competing blockchains in the future, but not so imminently that it is going straight to zero right now. I think that in the end, both bitcoin and a few different other blockchains will survive. Most of those probably have not even been created yet.
In the same way that there is not only one surviving internet company today, and in fact there are many, in the future there will be many surviving blockchain technologies. This is true, even while the vast majority of the coins currently in existence will fail, just as most of the dot com bubble companies failed.