Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up
The somewhat ironic part is that one of the core concepts of Bitcoin is that you can&#x27;t counterfeit it. You can mathematically prove how many coins you own, if somebody sends you 3 BTC then once it&#x27;s been validated on the blockchain you <i>know</i> that the money is now yours, they can&#x27;t have lied, it can&#x27;t bounce like a cheque<p>Except this Bitfinex thing shows that while an amount of bitcoin can&#x27;t be manipulated or counterfeited, their actual value is relatively easy to influence <i>because</i> it&#x27;s mostly unregulated. I mean think about it, <i>if</i> Bitfinex is lying about their dollar reserves this might be one of the simplest and most efficient scams of all time. They&#x27;re literally making up money as they see fit. Hundreds of millions at a time. Just like that.<p>Now of course maybe they&#x27;re not actually crooks and they do have the money, it&#x27;s kind of a schrodinger&#x27;s cat scenario at the moment. Still, the fact that nobody manages to know for sure the truth of the matter shows that they <i>could</i> be doing it and we&#x27;d be none the wiser. People are buying and selling for million of dollars of these things, not knowing if they&#x27;re trading digital dollar bills or monopoly money.