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Cryptocurrency proponent Andreas Antonopoulos speaks about the fear that Bitcoin invokes around Wall Street. Even though there are burgeoning Bitcoin futures markets, and so a level of interface, there remains a diametrically opposed ideology between the two.
Bitcoin Terrifies Wall Street
In a recent interview, Bitcoin advocate, Andreas Antonopolous spills the beans on Wall Street’s fear of Bitcoin. As well as why any attempt, by Wall Street, to corner the Bitcoin market will only result in skyrocketing prices.
Alex Saunders of Nugget’s News, opened the discussion by highlighting the irreconcilable philosophical differences between Bitcoin and Wall Street. He then raised the point that Wall Street is attempting to “tame the beast” and bring it into the fold. To which Antonopolous replies:
“Let them try…Here’s the interesting thing, the idea of open competition and open markets actually terrifies financial services companies. Financial services companies are absolutely terrified of capitalism.”
Antonopolous then expands on this statement by pointing out an often overlooked detail, that is, regulation is contrary to capitalism, in its truest sense. And that Wall Street has reaped the benefits of decades of favorable governance, until now.
“They have got accustomed to working in this strictly controlled regulatory environment where they don’t get any competition. Unless that competition is approved by regulators, forced to compete at their scale, and follow the same rules. And is therefore defanged and not disruptive. And anyone who doesn’t comply is sued, bought or extinguished until they comply…It’s a cosy parasitic oligopoly, a cartel basically. It doesn’t represent the free market at all.”
Skyrocketing Prices
On that note, Antonopolous remains confident that Bitcoin, the antithesis to all of this, is superior, and will “win” on the grounds of being a better system. And in terms of the threat posed by Wall Street, Antononpolous believes any attempt to buy all of the Bitcoin will result in skyrocketing prices.
“What will happen is, they will try to buy it. I’m not selling, are you selling Alex? So what happens then? The price goes up, and now I’m not selling even more. So now they’re throwing more and more worthless fiat at less and less very, very, very worthy crypto that has limited supply. And all they’re achieving is driving up the price, and not buying up all of the crypto.”
Even so, Antononpolous downplays the effect of manipulation by saying Wall Street risks heavy exposure in manipulating markets. And that this is a practice that cannot present itself all of the time.
“They can manipulate the price some of the time, and some of the places. But not all of the time and all of the places. And in the end, these are very dangerous games for a fragile system. The fragile system is of course the traditional financial system.”
Market Manipulation
All the same, market manipulation remains a fundamental problem with Bitcoin. And while Antonopoulos believes the risk exposure is too great for Wall Street, that doesn’t take away from the fact that other parties, with vested interests, have the motivation and means to also manipulate the Bitcoin price.
Only last week, Bitfinex and Tether filed a motion to dismiss a $1.4 trillion lawsuit on claims of market manipulation. With the worst possible outcome being a collapse of the Bitcoin price, and complete loss of investor confidence.
. @bitfinex and @Tether_to once again will shield our industry from all the nonsense that few are try to spin around to demolish the hard work made by many of us. https://t.co/8xcGf6WIgC
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) November 15, 2019
And as much as Bitcoin is sound money based on a decentralized peer to peer system, that alone is not enough to “win.”