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  1. #2061
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed
    Quote Originally Posted by Skydog View Post
    I'm with you brother. These normies just don't get the unrealized potential of this paradigm shift because it is a threat to their antiquated patriarchal wealth suppression legacy.
    “If you don’t see the problem, you’re part of the problem.”

  2. #2062
    I am horrified that the government spent my tax dollars (causing inflation!) to protect an economy that is run by elitists.

  3. #2063
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Ashburn, VA
    Gary Gensler (SEC Chair) has a recent "Office Hours" video giving a good summary of the SEC's thoughts on crypto regulation. Only 3:55.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHQuooCiDUE

    He even gets directly addresses of my biggest pet peeves, which is this absurd deflection that's constantly rolled out about a need for "regulatory clarity". It's utterly predictable and, IMO, just dumb.

    Crypto markets suffers from a lack of regulatory compliance. It's not a lack of regulatory clarity"
    Preach!

    ----


    Also, a much longer post by David Rosenthal - "Crypto: My Part In Its Downfall"
    https://blog.dshr.org/2023/04/crypto...-downfall.html

    It gets fairly technical and/or historical at parts, but still worth reading if you want to skim thru those sections.

    The goal of Proof-of-Work in both Bitcoin and LOCKSS was to avoid the need for peers to trust each other. But this didn't mean that the system was perceived as, or was actually, free of trust. In practice peers had to at least trust the core developers of the protocol. Recent DARPA-sponsored research shows many other parties needing to be trusted
    Thus, in practice, Nakamoto's goal of avoiding trust in banks was a failure.

    Thus only 21 months after Bitcoin launched, Mt. Gox became the first significant Bitcoin exchange. As with exchanges in the real world, the quoted "price" represented what a greater fool would pay, because they believed that an even greater fool would pay an even greater "price" in the future. In Bitcoin's case, the greater fools didn't even have the reassurance of "analysts' estimates" of future earnings, because you didn't need an analyst to know that the future earnings were zero.

    So as well as continuing to trust banks, cryptocurrency users ended up trusting exchanges that were much less trustworthy. Mt. Gox, for example, was coded in PHP and run initially by one guy, who then sold it to a convicted fraudster.

    Once people tried centralized exchanges, they realized the user experience was far better than transacting directly on the blockchain, so exchanges rapidly became popular. In June 2011 Mt. Gox pioneered one of the major features of the cryptocurrency exchange user experience, getting robbed. About 25,000 BTC vanished from nearly 500 accounts.

    Nakamoto's scheme motivated early adoption by rapidly inflating the currency with large block rewards, then exponentially decreasing them, so he could claim the currency was non-inflationary (eventually). The result was that early adopters accumulated large numbers of Bitcoin, and the Gini coefficients of cryptocurrencies became extreme.

    If you are one of these early adopter "whales" your ability to buy Lamborghinis depends upon "number go up" because if it doesn't you will get a Greater Fool Supply-Chain Crisis and the number will go down. Because the Gini coefficients are so high, cryptocurrency markets are thinly traded, on occasion a sale of just 150 bitcoin resulted in a 10 per cent drop in the "price". Thus whales have the means, motive and opportunity to manipulate the "price".

    And, boy, do they ever. In Making Sure "Number Go Up" I survey research showing the prevalence of wash trading, pump-and-dump schemes, and the un-backed printing of stablecoins. The SEC has steadfastly refused to approve a Bitcoin ETF because the market is completely manipulated. So every time you hear me say "price" you need to imagine it has quotes around it
    As the downfall continued, several things became obvious. First, that the entire ecosystem of exchanges and traders was based on fraud. Silicon Valley Bank failed because many of its assets, long-dated bonds, had lost a proportion of their value when they needed to sell them. But the bulk of the assets of exchanges such as Celsius, FTX and Binance were ther own private tokens, CEL, FTT and BNB. And when they needed to sell them the tokens were worth nothing.

    Here's how private tokens work. An exchange mints a billion of them, then sells 100 of them to a straw buyer for $1,000. Now the exchange is "worth" $10B. And if, as Celsius and FTX did, they use the customer dollars coming in to buy up any tokens the public want to sell, they can keep the illusion going. Remember, cryptocurrency markets are completely manipulated. But when someone, Ian Allison in the case of FTX, points out the illusion, there are no buyers.
    To sum up, permissionless blockchain technology is clever, but the economics of applying it to the real world are stupid for the reasons I published nearly 9 years ago.. Centralization in the information ecosystem is a very serious problem, but it is driven by economics, not technology. So attempting to solve it with technology with inherent economies of scale is futile. Trying to get decentralization with permissionless blockchains comes with enormous costs (25M ASICs to produce results that wouldn't stress a Raspberry Pi), and even after paying them you don't get decentralization.
    A text without a context is a pretext.

  4. #2064
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vermont
    Breaking news from Crypto Scam Land, the SEC has accused crypto giant Binance of moving billions of dollars of client funds into a company controlled by its founder...Binance is also accused of lying to regulators and investors.
    Other than that, Binance looks like a rock solid place to put one's "funds."

  5. #2065
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed

  6. #2066
    Wall Street strategist Tom Lee discusses his view of crypto as an unvestment opportunity at 2:18 or so of this video:

    https://vimeo.com/showcase/thestreetinvestorpanel

  7. #2067
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Ashburn, VA
    Quote Originally Posted by YmoBeThere View Post
    Wall Street strategist Tom Lee discusses his view of crypto as an unvestment opportunity at 2:18 or so of this video:

    https://vimeo.com/showcase/thestreetinvestorpanel
    I tried to watch but only made it about 20 minutes in - somewhat painful to hear talking points still repeated that I stopped taking seriously quite a while ago.

    He predicted BTC to 100K in 2021, then 200K in 2022. Now he's saying 250-500K soon, echoing Cathie Wood.
    I'm not sure what his funds investments are, but the presentation sure sounds like someone heavily invested who's looking for his exit strategy.

    He made several statements that were just plain wrong or ignored some really important factors.

    He cites law firm Cooper & Kirk's report about "Operation Chokepoint 2.0" and claims it led to FTX's implosion. Uh, ok, but no. And I read the beginning of this C&K report, and it seemed pretty crypto shilly to me, repeating numerous crypto cliches throughout. ( https://www.cooperkirk.com/wp-conten...-Point-2.0.pdf )

    And then he draws attention to everyone's favorite log-scale price history graph and makes some technical analysis about the future repeating cycles of the past, ignoring some really important pieces that differentiate this time (notably, average retail familiarity/exposure/awareness/burntness and also the role of Tether printing).

    He also continues to harp on Bitcoin as a good hedge against inflation, whereas the past 18 months have proven the exact opposite.

    I again stopped just over halfway thru, but I'm curious if the phrase "lack of regulatory clarity" got used. That's always my favorite on the buzzword bingo card.
    A text without a context is a pretext.

  8. #2068
    Quote Originally Posted by snowdenscold View Post
    I tried to watch but only made it about 20 minutes in - somewhat painful to hear talking points still repeated that I stopped taking seriously quite a while ago.
    I stopped listening to him about a quarter of a century ago. I never found value from his “insight”.

  9. #2069
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vermont
    Bitcoin is s great hedge against reality

  10. #2070
    Quote Originally Posted by budwom View Post
    Bitcoin is s great hedge against reality
    Must spread sporks and all

  11. #2071
    Quote Originally Posted by budwom View Post
    Bitcoin is s great hedge against reality
    That’s the best buy reason I’ve ever heard. Please stop tempting me!

  12. #2072
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North of Durham
    I still will never buy it, but Bitcoin is up over 80% YTD, currently trading over $30k.

  13. #2073
    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyNotCrazie View Post
    I still will never buy it, but Bitcoin is up over 80% YTD, currently trading over $30k.
    Thus, creating even more doubt about the Efficient Market Hypothesis. IMO, EMH has a very hard time battling a new one being born every second!

  14. #2074
    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyNotCrazie View Post
    I still will never buy it, but Bitcoin is up over 80% YTD, currently trading over $30k.
    The trading volume is down significantly from the beginning of the year. Funny things happen with prices when that happens. It still needs a run up of about 104% to reach its high. I’m wondering if the high interest rates are having a persuasive effect on Bitcoin. Usually with low rates people chase yield. With relatively high rates are people getting greedy for more?

  15. #2075
    Quote Originally Posted by Kdogg View Post
    The trading volume is down significantly from the beginning of the year. Funny things happen with prices when that happens. It still needs a run up of about 104% to reach its high. I’m wondering if the high interest rates are having a persuasive effect on Bitcoin. Usually with low rates people chase yield. With relatively high rates are people getting greedy for more?
    Are there any estimates on how much bitcoin has been lost?

  16. #2076
    Quote Originally Posted by PackMan97 View Post
    Are there any estimates on how much bitcoin has been lost?
    20-25%. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the lost bitcoin was from early in it's life cycle when it was trading at a fraction of today's price. People weren't as aware of it's unrecoverablity. It was so cheap back then people probably didn't lose sleep over it.

  17. #2077
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed
    Almost afraid to see if my NFTs have doubled in value or not. I’ll just assume that they have.

  18. #2078
    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    Almost afraid to see if my NFTs have doubled in value or not. I’ll just assume that they have.
    Trump astronaut or Trump cowboy?

    Also if you are in the NFT business it’s best not to actually physically blind your best proponents.

    https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/...-and-skin/amp/

    “ Bored Ape creator says UV lights at ApeFest burned attendees’ eyes and skin”

  19. #2079
    Quote Originally Posted by OldPhiKap View Post
    Almost afraid to see if my NFTs have doubled in value or not. I’ll just assume that they have.
    Best to buy & fold!

  20. #2080
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    Number Go Up

    I posted this in the SBF thread, but for those of you who don't follow that thread, I highly recommend the book Number Go Up, by Zeke Faux. It's a really interesting read about the whole crypto currency debacle.

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