If the following were told to me:

• Crazy manipulation by (an organized gang of?) traders on Poloniex is leaching value from BitShares, hurting the whole project
• There is a person or a body of people, trusted by the BitShares community, with the ability to fight back on Poloniex for the benefit BitShares
• This trusted entity has a trading plan which has been 'audited' to the satisfaction of the community. (Analyzed behind closed doors by a select few if necessary)
• The plan is risky and could backfire, but there is a good chance of success
• The amount of BTS needed to operate the plan is great
• The amount of BTS needed could be pooled by creating a User Issued Asset and selling it to BitShares supporters (or to people who want to speculate, anticipating a cut of any profit)
• There are loads of people on bitsharestalk who have stated that they'd like to allocate a proportion of their BTS into buying this UIA

then I would say, "Oh, I'm definitely interested in buying a chunk of such a UIA, but I know nothing about trading and would like to see what others think of this idea on bitsharestalk".

That is all...

Quote from: bytemaster on November 05, 2015, 11:32:10 PM
Just to be clear, I have never considered trading for profit because everything I have seen is a "gamble" and not a sure bet.

I think we all got a little overexcited from your questions. No worries. :)

Just to be clear, I have never considered trading for profit because everything I have seen is a "gamble" and not a sure bet.   

One more thing: it makes my eyebrows go up when everyone encourages each other to buy BTS with borrowed money. That is not investing -- it's gambling. Slow and steady wins the race.

Sorry for our loss  :(

Bytemaster, good questions. I think there is no free lunch here. Any strategy can backfire.

As outsiders, we don't see the individual margin short and long positions inside Poloniex, so it's easy to make the wrong trade. The closest we can come is what is transparent on the blockchain. For example, here's a user with 40+ million BTS that (so far) appears to be selling in sizable chunks. https://bitshares.openledger.info/#/account/trust/overview

To be honest, it concerns me that the BTS lead dev is considering trading for profit. Active trading takes practice, is risky, and is basically a profession in and of itself. The best analogy I can think of right now is that of a poker game: pros make money, but most people lose. It's wise to leave such activity to the pros (and speculators).

big whales don't know where others margin calls are or even if there are any margin longs at all.

so when they dump bts fast to try and trigger others margin calls they are kind of guessing and hoping there is a lot of margin longs.

Quote from: brads on November 05, 2015, 10:36:54 PM
Lead dev no, but you can and every BTS holder could.

yep. i'm sure what Dan said wasn't serious (well I see he already mentioned it), but let's not give fudders more ideas.

There was a situation a couple of days ago where a 50btc market buy would have been enough to double the price and a 50btc market sell would half the price.
This was on poloniex which has the deepest BTS books.

this means a whale could drop the BTS/USD feed and create black swan events on bitshares which could be beneficial.

Quote from: bytemaster on November 05, 2015, 11:02:13 PM
Not really looking to go broke :)

I was just curious on a hypothetical level how a whale with 50M BTS would profit from manipulations

The way the whales have been doing it is:


1) Put in large buy orders slightly below the current price as support (this requires BTC, not BTS, you need to not be on margin yourself to do this trick).  Place other orders well below the current price.

2) Wait until foolish BTS true believers margin up heavily, relying upon your orders that are near the price.,

3) Remove your near-the-price large buy support, and simultaneously market dump millions of BTS onto the market in a short period of time.  Watch as the foolish BTS true believers get margin called by the polo system, causing them to liquidate into your orders that were way below the previous price. 

Net result, you sold a bunch of BTS and got it right back at a lower price due to the margin calls, making a profit.


Repeat this over and over as long as you have more BTS believers willing to margin.

Not really looking to go broke :)

I was just curious on a hypothetical level how a whale with 50M BTS would profit from manipulations

I've profited 3 times margin long bts in the last few days. first time I have ever been tempted to margin trade. before I was on btc38. maybe I have been lucky. I am mostly going long around 0.003 cents. because btc is volatile I'm eager to close out my positions ASAP.

Quote from: brads on November 05, 2015, 10:36:54 PM
Lead dev no, but you can and every BTS holder could.

Yeah but I think as a community we need to be more careful.  Too many people in here got burned on this downtrend and lost their bts by margining.  Try to buy fully paid for more, and use smaller margin leverage you guys!

Lead dev no, but you can and every BTS holder could.

The lead dev of a startup company project really should not be gambling with his equity in the startup on margin. 

But thats just me. :P

Even safer, margin call buy at 600 sat with an est. liquidation price of 100 sat and add another margin buy at 150 sat. This way even (unlikely) a whale shorter put the price downto 100 sat you can mitigate the loss. 1/3 buy 600 sat (or a real buy) and 2/3 150 sat is zero risk. Anyway if price goes below 100 sat your BTS is worth nothing so...