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Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.)

surlybevo

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“How Elizabeth Holmes’ noble pursuit to save lives stumbled due to technical shortcoming in the product”

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52-80

52-80 19205

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1 hour ago, Humble Beast said:

You don’t get it. That’s ok. 
 

How does pointing out repeated media dishonesty or bias equate to a right wing hellscape?

Because his ultimate fear - the harbinger of the apocalypse - is apparently a bunch of technocrats in california and a fat nerd living in the bahamas. 

 

Kinda underwhelmed by what theyve been gnashing their teeth over, tbh. 

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midtown

midtown 3346

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15 hours ago, UTGrad98 said:

I demand to be compensated by cnbc and Jim Cramer for the financial advice they give.

I get what you are saying here but this is completely different.   I do not think bitcoin with go to zero.  Blockchain and bitcoin have legit commercial utility even though its completely overblown.  Bitcoin and all shitcoins will eventually be pegged to other currencies and the insane speculation will end.   People will speculate as they do in other currencies but the arbitrage will keep it in line mostly.    If they don't; there is no way its going to gain wide public use not with such massive daily swings in the value on the downside.   Especially after this blow up.  I wouldn't be surprised actually if there is some type of shadow multiple government intervention now to get bitcoin to a low price so it can be pegged.

 

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Dahobbs

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1 hour ago, midtown said:

I get what you are saying here but this is completely different.   I do not think bitcoin with go to zero.  Blockchain and bitcoin have legit commercial utility even though its completely overblown.

 

I've yet to seen any evidence of that. People have tried to force bitcoin into utility. But any utility it has is entirely driven by the need of people who are holding coins for speculative purposes to occasionally get something out of their investment (well, that and criminal need I guess, but that isn't what I would call legit commercial utility). Bitcoin doesn't solve any problem with modern currencies, it just creates new ones. And blockchain is almost entirely useless outside of the occasional niche circumstance, and even there the utility is best described as marginal. 

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Dahobbs

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10 hours ago, 52-80 said:

Because his ultimate fear - the harbinger of the apocalypse - is apparently a bunch of technocrats in california and a fat nerd living in the bahamas. 

 

Kinda underwhelmed by what theyve been gnashing their teeth over, tbh. 

I really don't care what happens to twitter. I just saw some irony in declaring the concerns over twitter becoming a right wing hell scape as overblown while using as evidence tweets that mimic right wing talking points (MSM is evil and lying to you! do your own research!). 

Anyway, bitcoin is garbage. But I do wish I had kept the ones I mined back in the day when this was all fun and games. 

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Parliament

Parliament 14272

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I'll say again.  All these crypto folks used big words like, "blockchain," Web 3.0," etc.  I had no idea what they were talking about so I assumed they were really smart.

But it turns out they were running the old scams just with new names.  I expect more out our villains. 

Regarding the legitimate uses of crypto.  What are they?  Are regular currency transactions so inefficient nowadays?  I remember swiping my Mastercard in the Dominican Republic 25 years ago.  Worked fine.  No extra fee and the exchange rate mighta been better than at a bank. How can crypto do it better?

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Humble Beast

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6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I really don't care what happens to twitter. I just saw some irony in declaring the concerns over twitter becoming a right wing hell scape as overblown while using as evidence tweets that mimic right wing talking points (MSM is evil and lying to you! do your own research!). 

19 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

 

 

They do lie to you sometimes. As seen here. Or at least can be very dishonest in how they portray events. 
 

You don’t even have to do your own research. Just follow the events as they’re uncovered on Twitter. Holy shit, maybe that’s why the CR crew is rooting so hard against Elon/Twitter?
 

A9-E1-DDD9-893-B-486-A-83-B8-711-B3-D99-

 

 

News spreads that is different than the spin that MSM tries to put on things. Very upsetting. 
 

20 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Anyway, bitcoin is garbage. But I do wish I had kept the ones I mined back in the day when this was all fun and games. 

The saltiest are always the ones that had brushes with it, but didn’t follow through or otherwise lost interest. CaptainAntifa mined some back in the day too iirc. 

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25 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I really don't care what happens to twitter. I just saw some irony in declaring the concerns over twitter becoming a right wing hell scape as overblown while using as evidence tweets that mimic right wing talking points (MSM is evil and lying to you! do your own research!). 

Oh no the mimicry!

He literally said all the detailed reporting broke on Twitter, which it did. And NYT wrote puff pieces, which it did. 

If that to you constitutes doom, and fulfills your apocalyptic expectations, im so sorry this is happening to you. 

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Humble Beast

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6 minutes ago, Parliament said:

I'll say again.  All these crypto folks used big words like, "blockchain," Web 3.0," etc.  I had no idea what they were talking about so I assumed they were really smart.

But it turns out they were running the old scams just with new names.  I expect more out our villains. 

Regarding the legitimate uses of crypto.  What are they?  Are regular currency transactions so inefficient nowadays?  I remember swiping my Mastercard in the Dominican Republic 25 years ago.  Worked fine.  No extra fee and the exchange rate mighta been better than at a bank. How can crypto do it better?

Blockchain and Web 3.0 are all hand waving terms crypto people use. You have to separate bitcoin from “crypto”. 
 

Bitcoin is a digital asset/money that people can hold themselves. It can be used to transact with others without using a third party intermediary, similar to cash. Also similar to cash, it is censorship resistant meaning you can spend it on what you want, however much you want, unlike the funds in your bank account. It’s different from cash in that it cannot be debased by the Federal Reserve. There’s a verified, fixed number of units. 21 million bitcoin. In contrast to cash, you can personally hold any amount up to billions of dollars on a small wallet. Also, it’s not a liability of anyone else if you hold your own coins. 

 

As for sending or spending, the Lightning network being built on bitcoin allows for quick transactions and settlement finality in seconds. Its utilization is steadily growing. Not sure what all will come of it. What applications can come from streaming micropayments etc? 
 

 

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Dahobbs

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Posted (edited)
41 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

They do lie to you sometimes. As seen here. Or at least can be very dishonest in how they portray events. 
 

You don’t even have to do your own research. Just follow the events as they’re uncovered on Twitter. Holy shit, maybe that’s why the CR crew is rooting so hard against Elon/Twitter?
 

News spreads that is different than the spin that MSM tries to put on things. Very upsetting. 
 

The saltiest are always the ones that had brushes with it, but didn’t follow through or otherwise lost interest. CaptainAntifa mined some back in the day too iirc. 

I have no problem believing the Bankman-Fried is a criminal/huckster because I think pretty much anyone shilling Bitcoin is a criminal/huckster (or a troll aiming to destabilize western interests).  

30 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

Oh no the mimicry!

He literally said all the detailed reporting broke on Twitter, which it did. And NYT wrote puff pieces, which it did. 

If that to you constitutes doom, and fulfills your apocalyptic expectations, im so sorry this is happening to you. 

You're way more worked up about this than I am. I found the comment mildly humorous due to the irony. And I don't know where "doom" and "apocalyptic expectations" come from. Twitter turning into a right wing hellscape just means that it wouldn't be functionally useful anymore and would die off, just like the old shag did after the change over. 

Anyway, here is some mainstream media totally not covering the disfunction and potential fraud with FTX: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.html

Quote

 

But the corporate dysfunction at FTX, he said on Thursday, is the worst he has ever seen.

In a blistering court filing, Mr. Ray described an astonishing level of disarray and said he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate control.” He listed a series of “unacceptable management practices,” including the use of an unsecured group email to access sensitive data, and said the financial information maintained by FTX was deeply untrustworthy.

“From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented,” he wrote in the filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

FTX collapsed last week after a run on deposits exposed a deep financial hole in the business. Last Friday, the company filed for bankruptcy, and its chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, resigned. The collapse has kicked off investigations by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission focused on whether FTX improperly used customer funds to prop up Alameda Research, a trading firm that Mr. Bankman-Fried also founded.

 

 

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Captainant

Captainant 27690

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Posted (edited)

It's really funny seeing all the cryptobros leaning hard into the protection of daddy elmo and falsely claiming that there's some mass fear of twitter "right wing hellscape", because that's not what the tenor of that thread or the discussion has been.

 

I mean, yeah, if you're mainlining cucker tarlson and other disinformation sources you might believe that, but it's objectively not a serious thing people are discussing here on Surly lol. I'm sure there's someone somewhere bemoaning it, but that's not really an honest representation of the norm on surly

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52-80

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10 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

 

You're way more worked up about this than I am. I found the comment mildly humorous due to the irony. And I don't know where "doom" and "apocalyptic expectations" come from. Twitter turning into a right wing hellscape just means that it wouldn't be functionally useful anymore and would die off, just like the old shag did after the change over. 

Anyway, here is some mainstream media totally not covering the disfunction and potential fraud with FTX: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.html

 

Darling, try to keep up. That article just came out today, postdating the puff pieces, which lags the comprehensive picture that had already been composed  and available. 

Which is the point that Brian Armstrong said. 

Where did the accusation of “evil MSM” came from.  You were worked up by his post?

As if criticism of certain media reporting is some brand new, *radical* idea that had never surfaced before, and only *now* allowed on Twitter.  I find it funny that that was exemplary of a *rightwingism* to you.

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Humble Beast

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38 minutes ago, midtown said:

I love financial disasters like this because twitter is fing hilarious

 

Great question!

Evidently he used Emsam patches. Those are for Parkinson’s. I’d never heard of them being used for alertness, but I’m guessing they don’t suppress appetite like adderall. Caroline looks like an adderall fiend. 
 

29 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I have no problem believing the Bankman-Fried is a criminal/huckster because I think pretty much anyone shilling Bitcoin is a criminal/huckster (or a troll aiming to destabilize western interests).

He hated Bitcoin. Spoke poorly about it all the time.

 

 

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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14935

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Posted
Blockchain and Web 3.0 are all hand waving terms crypto people use. You have to separate bitcoin from “crypto”. 
 
Bitcoin is a digital asset/money that people can hold themselves. It can be used to transact with others without using a third party intermediary, similar to cash. Also similar to cash, it is censorship resistant meaning you can spend it on what you want, however much you want, unlike the funds in your bank account. It’s different from cash in that it cannot be debased by the Federal Reserve. There’s a verified, fixed number of units. 21 million bitcoin. In contrast to cash, you can personally hold any amount up to billions of dollars on a small wallet. Also, it’s not a liability of anyone else if you hold your own coins. 
 
As for sending or spending, the Lightning network being built on bitcoin allows for quick transactions and settlement finality in seconds. Its utilization is steadily growing. Not sure what all will come of it. What applications can come from streaming micropayments etc? 
 
 

It’s been super useful to ransomware criminals.
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Dahobbs

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1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

Darling, try to keep up. That article just came out today, postdating the puff pieces, which lags the comprehensive picture that had already been composed  and available. 

Which is the point that Brian Armstrong said. 

I have no doubt that crowd sourced social media news moves faster than traditional news. That has been shown time and time again. But, a lot of that ends up being built on suspicion and speculation rather than actual facts. Sometimes the suspicions end up being correct. Other times they don't. It is like watching an investigation in real time rather than just seeing the final product. As a result, I don't think crowd sources news and traditional journalism are 1/1 replacements of each other. They serve different purposes. 

And yes, that article came out today. That's why I posted it. I also read the original NY times "puff piece" that was cited and found it very unpuffery. 

Quote

 

Where did the accusation of “evil MSM” came from.  You were worked up by his post?

 

His post? I was responding to your post sweetie. You're the one that brought up "right ring [sic] hellscape." You're the one that got worked up. I just found it funny.   

Quote

As if criticism of certain media reporting is some brand new, *radical* idea that had never surfaced before, and only *now* allowed on Twitter.  I find it funny that that was exemplary of a *rightwingism* to you.

Criticism of certain reporting certainly isn't new. But concern that "mainstream media" as a whole is lying has been the cause du jour of the right for some time now. So no, I don't think finding a connection there is all that radical. 

Anyway, cryptocurrency is a scam, a hustle. If you're in it, you're either being played or trying to play someone else. That's about it.  

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Buzzrock

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I've yet to seen any evidence of that. People have tried to force bitcoin into utility. But any utility it has is entirely driven by the need of people who are holding coins for speculative purposes to occasionally get something out of their investment (well, that and criminal need I guess, but that isn't what I would call legit commercial utility). Bitcoin doesn't solve any problem with modern currencies, it just creates new ones. And blockchain is almost entirely useless outside of the occasional niche circumstance, and even there the utility is best described as marginal. 

I’ve seen some interesting use cases in the ESG space, like:

https://www.green-token.io
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Captainant

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Posted (edited)

I genuinely don't think humbleGRUvibes reads any info sources aside from his cryptotwitter feed and jabronis with substack pages lol. Everyone he posts is [brand/meme].[substack/eth] lol

 

Also, lulz at the preemptive bitching about the upcoming investigation from committee chair who's about to lose her chair position

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52-80

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24 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I have no doubt that crowd sourced social media news moves faster than traditional news. That has been shown time and time again. But, a lot of that ends up being built on suspicion and speculation rather than actual facts. Sometimes the suspicions end up being correct. Other times they don't. It is like watching an investigation in real time rather than just seeing the final product. As a result, I don't think crowd sources news and traditional journalism are 1/1 replacements of each other. They serve different purposes. 

And yes, that article came out today. That's why I posted it. I also read the original NY times "puff piece" that was cited and found it very unpuffery. 

His post? I was responding to your post sweetie. You're the one that brought up "right ring [sic] hellscape." You're the one that got worked up. I just found it funny.   

Criticism of certain reporting certainly isn't new. But concern that "mainstream media" as a whole is lying has been the cause du jour of the right for some time now. So no, I don't think finding a connection there is all that radical. 

Anyway, cryptocurrency is a scam, a hustle. If you're in it, you're either being played or trying to play someone else. That's about it.  

Pepperidge Farms remembers when it was popular belief that media peddles alarmism (eg war on terror era)

Now, people participate in alarmism (Twitter takeover will kill democracy!), and questioning the media is castigated as fringe conspiracies. 

How the turntables. 

Twitter had as a key characteristic being an aggregator for speedy news.  Then it was frightfully predicted to crumble into nazism…and turns out, this episode proves, its central feature remained as an aggregator for speedy news! Who wouldve thunk it!

And you take that somehow as validating your doom hypothesis is kinda sorta funny  

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Dahobbs

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10 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

And you take that somehow as validating your doom hypothesis is kinda sorta funny  

This is my last post to you on this side topic. You keep suggesting that this is my belief. I was just responding to your post. I don't care about twitter in the slightest. I've never suggested anywhere that it is going to lead to doom. It is a thing that exists. Maybe it will go the way of myspace in a few years. Or maybe it'll stick around. I really don't know or care. 

41 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


I’ve seen some interesting use cases in the ESG space, like:

https://www.green-token.io

I just read the whitepaper posted there. It is pretty light on details. It says blockchain is important for scalability of their process. But it isn't clear that the two proof of concept examples used blockchain at all. I can see how aspects of their system could be useful. 

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midtown

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Welp.  Bass just threw some shade on the whole thing yesterday.   Esp Tether.   

“What is Tether? What is this $66 billion behemoth that has its headquarters at a small bank in the Bahamas, that’s literally a hop skip and a jump from Sam Bankman-Fried’ lair? I haven’t been able to find a dealer who says they do business with Tether.”

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38130

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Posted
2 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

Blockchain and Web 3.0 are all hand waving terms crypto people use. You have to separate bitcoin from “crypto”. 
 
Bitcoin is a digital asset/money that people can hold themselves. It can be used to transact with others without using a third party intermediary, similar to cash. Also similar to cash, it is censorship resistant meaning you can spend it on what you want, however much you want, unlike the funds in your bank account. It’s different from cash in that it cannot be debased by the Federal Reserve. There’s a verified, fixed number of units. 21 million bitcoin. In contrast to cash, you can personally hold any amount up to billions of dollars on a small wallet. Also, it’s not a liability of anyone else if you hold your own coins. 
 
As for sending or spending, the Lightning network being built on bitcoin allows for quick transactions and settlement finality in seconds. Its utilization is steadily growing. Not sure what all will come of it. What applications can come from streaming micropayments etc? 

Bitcoin is an asset in the sense that beanie babies are assets. They both exist. There is a finite number of them (21 million), and the value is made up out of thin air. They have no intrinsic value. It is not similar to cash in any way. The only benefit is the decentralization, you know it is “censorship resistant”, lol. But yeah the government can’t seize your funds for funding terrorism, or money laundering, or not paying child support, or tax evasion, or fucking kids, so that’s a plus to some 

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Dahobbs

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50 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Bitcoin is an asset in the sense that beanie babies are assets. They both exist. There is a finite number of them (21 million), and the value is made up out of thin air. They have no intrinsic value. It is not similar to cash in any way. The only benefit is the decentralization, you know it is “censorship resistant”, lol. But yeah the government can’t seize your funds for funding terrorism, or money laundering, or not paying child support, or tax evasion, or fucking kids, so that’s a plus to some 

It is also odd to say that owning your own bitcoin prevents it from being a liability for anyone else as if that is somehow different than cash. If you hold your own cash, it isn't a liability to anyone else. But, most people prefer to put it in a bank for both convenience and for the interest. The primary reason anyone thinks this is a disadvantage of cash vs bitcoin is that people treat bitcoin as a speculative investment rather than as a currency. Also, all the places that hold bitcoins tend to not be very safe places to actually put your assets. So, like banks, but worse in every conceivable way. 

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Humble Beast

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1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

It is also odd to say that owning your own bitcoin prevents it from being a liability for anyone else as if that is somehow different than cash. If you hold your own cash, it isn't a liability to anyone else. But, most people prefer to put it in a bank for both convenience and for the interest. The primary reason anyone thinks this is a disadvantage of cash vs bitcoin is that people treat bitcoin as a speculative investment rather than as a currency. Also, all the places that hold bitcoins tend to not be very safe places to actually put your assets. So, like banks, but worse in every conceivable way. 

Paper currency is a liability of the Fed. 
 

As for interest, no you can’t earn interest on a deflationary asset. It’s like gold. If someone had a scheme where you deposited gold and they paid you interest that would clearly be a scam because you can’t print more bitcoin to pay out in interest. 
 

 

Anyway, this latest string of mishaps is once again highlighting the importance of self custody. Not your keys, not your coins. Also when you leave your coins on exchanges it’s pretty clear that they run fractional reserves and “sell” you bitcoin they don’t actually have. 

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HRSchenker

HRSchenker 2271

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I don't know why some of yall act shocked and deny that FTX was running a ponzi scheme. Bloomberg has a podcast where they interviewed the guy and he pretty much admits that it's a ponzi scheme. It's a great re-listen in hindsight. Glad I stayed away from SBF.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sam-bankman-fried-and-matt-levine-on-how-to-make/id1056200096?i=1000558582549

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Humble Beast

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1 hour ago, HRSchenker said:

I don't know why some of yall act shocked and deny that FTX was running a ponzi scheme. Bloomberg has a podcast where they interviewed the guy and he pretty much admits that it's a ponzi scheme. It's a great re-listen in hindsight. Glad I stayed away from SBF.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sam-bankman-fried-and-matt-levine-on-how-to-make/id1056200096?i=1000558582549

Is anybody denying it’s a ponzi? 
 

That interview is wild. This podcast has like a 3 minute clip where Sam breaks it down pretty clearly. The hosts are pretty shocked. Beware if you listen more than 3 or 4 minutes you’ll be subjected to bitcoin maxi talk. 
 

 

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bullzak

bullzak 422

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Posted

I just love all this. Been having to field client questions about crypto for years and we told them it isn't our thing. 

Always have felt its a greater fool theory deal. Yes, like beanie babies. Problem is when the last fools in the chain get left holding a bag of dogshit there aren't many fools left. 

BTC will probably survive because how else can criminals launder money with no rules in place? 

At least there aren't many left to tell me its money, a store of value, or an inflation hedge anymore. Thats all bullshit. 

But hey, if youre long it, and you like it, go for it. Just dont cry on anyones shoulder when all that shit goes to money heaven. 

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52-80

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28 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

Alt-right darling huh?

I’ve not seen her categorized as anything like that online. And I’m there quite a bit. 

Hellscape 

 

You know how them alt-right folks typically love cryptography, software engineering, math, and Harry Potter. 

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