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Comment by shut_it_down | Hacker News Reader

One of Robinhood's main business partner is Citadel (RH sells their order flow to Citadel). Citadel is also the firm that has bailed out Melvin Capital, one of the hedge funds that took a huge short position in GME.

Probably just a coincidence.

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I follow the bitcoin crowd a bit. Everyday they issue claims like 'bitcoin was made to free us from wealthy people games' it felt echo chamber / tinfoil at times. This isn't hurting their theories.

This is just shifting who's getting the unreasonable, unnecessary transfer of wealth weighted towards the earlier adopters.

They're right that wealthy people game the financial system.

They're insane (or self-interested) to pretend the same doesn't happen in cryptocurrencies.

maybe, were crypto exchanges forced to stop trades before ?

Crypto exchanges going down during times of high volume is definitely a thing, yes. For example:

https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-redoing-infrastructure-to-...

> During the recent bitcoin bull run, Coinbase has struggled to keep itself up during stretches of heavy volume, leading to snarky comments on Twitter and Reddit that it’s only news when the exchange doesn’t go down during peak periods. Given the exchange has filed preliminary documents for a public listing of the company’s shares, fixing its infrastructure has undoubtedly taken on an even greater urgency.

Going down is one degree lower than officially displaying a 'you cannot buy <security>' on your app. I know DDoS smell bad but it's not the same. And mind you I lost profits on the latest DDoS.

Coinbase suspended XRP. Not a perfect comparison, but perhaps closer to what you're referring to.

It was due to the SEC, not unofficial influences.. I think it's a different topic

Don't forget that crypto exchanges have none of the properties of cryptocurrencies themselves, in terms of censorship resistance and cryptographic guarantees. Since fiat currencies are involved and these are businesses operating in countries with laws, they have to enforce whatever the government wants to require of them. They can absolutely halt trading, or freeze funds or assets on their platform at any time.

DEXes, however, can be designed so that no person can halt trading or freeze your funds (usually you trade out of your own wallet anyway). A DEX is just a computer program running on the Ethereum blockchain. Once deployed, the blockchain is immutable, and it just sits there accepting orders.

Wealthy people games exist in bitcoin as well. Especially now with all the institutional investment and futures markets. I say this as a long-time bitcoin fanboy as well.

yeah can be to

It is not the same. Wall Street is playing with other people money mostly pensions and funds borrowed from the state.

This is the only relevant thread in this ongoing class war.

Fine, it's not on the same level, but it sure does fuck with the crypto markets.

I keep seeing this pop up everywhere; Citadel != Citadel Securities

Same group of companies, the distinction is completely irrelevant.

One’s a market maker + bank, one’s a fund. I understand it’s against the grain to hold this opinion, probably because it’s inherently not conspiratorial, but they do different things and regulated/managed entirely differently.

They are still owned by the same group of people, with conflicting interests: one side supports a trading platform, the other side just bailed out a moribund fund and needs to make that money back.

What side do you think wins given the huge hole left in Citadel after propping up Melvin?

Companies do not make decisions. People owning these companies make decisions.

You keep saying that but they are literally sub companies of the same larger conglomerate. Their CEO and founder is the same person, he is also both of their primary shareholders.

Mitsubishi Electric != Mitsubishi.

And Alphabet != Google! /s

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