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Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Hold Up.... Quick question. How is the price of bitcoin suppose to fall to 1BC = $30 when they're going to DDOS all the exchanges except for BitStamp?! People can't sell their bitcoins and cause a devaluation if they aren't able to login. A tiny percentage of bitcoiners actually have auto-bidding set up, and if BitStamp is the only one up, won't it get flooded with traffic and possibly go down too?

Anyway, assuming this is true....

I guess this will finally show how self regulation doesn't work when profit is the motive. Then again, this leaking is proof that at least one individual is attempting to self regulate.

This is the very thing that will scare people further away from Bitcoin. Knowing it's this easily manipulatable. Knowing Reddit I'm pretty sure they'll try to spread the news of this as far as the internet reaches. However most bitcoin owners will never find out.

I guess in 24 hours we'll see if it works or not.

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This is just some random Bitcoin hater trying to spread FUD. There's no coordinated operation and there's most certainly no group of people willing to dump 250k BTC at once.

That's exactly what a member of that group would say!

Trying to deny it - now that your document surfaced, huh? ;)

https://www.bitstamp.net/ is down ( just getting a CloudFlare error ), so looks like they can't rely on BitStamp for this operation at list.

Bitstamp: "We are under attack. Will be back as soon as possible." 12:25 UTC https://twitter.com/Bitstamp/status/326295596963090432

It seems someone doesn't want this operation to commence.

If you're holding bitcoins, reading r/bitcoin is pretty much mandatory.

[X] Vehemently disagree.

Not to mention the absurdity of "spreading bogus AP press releases"

Yes.

While (British) newspapers are happy to print any old nonsense so long as they can source it to "somebody said", bogus AP press releases is just daft.

I enjoy shenanigans and trolling, but it has to be done better than this for it to be any fun.

> People can't sell their bitcoins and cause a devaluation if they aren't able to login

If I have my bitcoins in my own wallet (not in the one at the exchange which might be down) then I could sell them at any exchange which is not down.

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That seems like an awfully risky gamble to make. Alternatively, enough people may flock to BitStamp once they see the "cheap" BitCoins being dumped to be able to buy up their entire supply, and this group ends up selling at a massive loss.

> I guess this will finally show how self regulation doesn't work when profit is the motive.

No, it exposes risks, which can be a market differentiator for exchanges that examine and provide plans to mitigate the risks (and sell services on those points).

So all we need is regulation against DDoS and concentrated sale orders and we are all warm fuzzier again? Great! Who wants to lead the SRO?

Or does more regulation do anything?

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or 18 U.S.C. §1030

As far as the large sell order/volume strategy is concerned, that's just a market and the sellers would be taking a market risk with this behavior. It's not naked shorting.

Dumping shares into a thin market is a standard practice in every single regulated market around the world. LBO/Hedge Funds firms frequently engage in this practice to undermine confidence in a company with lots of debt and thin margins to scoop up the secured debt/preferred equity at a corresponding discount a gain control of the company.

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