Bitcoin, Blockchain, Battlestar Galactica

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Cascarino's Pizzeria, Feb 5, 2019.

  1. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    My recipe is more better. If you disagree you can take it up with @rslfanboy as he has been in a pugilistic mode of late! :cautious:
     
  2. song219

    song219 BigSoccer Supporter

    Apr 5, 2004
    La Norte
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Vanuatu
    Pineapple brings out aggressive tendencies.
     
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  3. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    I got your back.
    COME GET SOME!!!:mad::mad::mad:
     
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  4. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
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    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium

     
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  5. song219

    song219 BigSoccer Supporter

    Apr 5, 2004
    La Norte
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Vanuatu
    No one is going to make an uplifting movie like "It's a Wonderful Life" after this crypto collaspe.
     
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  6. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    "Aww shucks, Mr Potter. If I get 500 more suckers to buy into BaileyCoin, I can save the building & loan. C'mon - give me one last chance!"
     
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  7. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Further news on this: Three Arrows Capital (3AC) has been forced to liquidate. It's founder, Singaporean Su Zhu, can dry his tears on the fancy towels I'm sure he has in his $80 million in real estate and new superyacht being delivered soon.

    Crypto exchange Voyager, which was heavily exposed to 3AC, basically shut down today after a month of pretending to function. They were decently sized - something like $4 billion in deposits. They had a bit of a bank run in the last month, but people who think they got out in the nick of time may be in for a rude shock - they may have their withdrawn funds taken back by a bankruptcy court. And if Voyager is forced to sell all their crypto, goodbye market. But bankruptcies take years, so who knows when that will happen.

    Grayscale Bitcoin Trust also has news. The SEC has given a final no to them becoming a full ETF. Holders of Grayscale shares now want Grayscale to sell their Bitcoins, buy back the shares, and fold up the operation. A lot of people would like to get at least a bit of their money back. But the thing is... Grayscale doesn't want to. See, they have a good thing going. They make 2% fees, which means every month they sell 2% of their Bitcoins and put dollars in their pockets. Even at current low prices, that's many hundreds of thousands. That's the way you do it. Money for nothing.
     
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  8. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
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    And chicks for free.
     
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  9. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
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    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    The 2% rake has long been the gravy train of asset management.

    It's why ETFs became popular. Lower fees.
     
  10. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    You can sell your grayscale stock. Just at a discount to NAV.

    Sucks for the grayscale bagholders - they get screwed even worse than the BTC bagholders
     
  11. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    #411 spejic, Jul 6, 2022
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2022
    Core Scientific, one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies (they mined the most in 2021 of all US companies that reported such numbers) sold 70% of all the Bitcoin they held. All mining companies sold more than they produced last month. Because of the general unsteadiness of crypto finance, they can't borrow against the coins any more, and no one wants their stocks. Or stocks in general, for that matter.

    Here's the current economics of mining Bitcoin: if you are using graphic cards to mine, you are losing money period and you've probably already stopped. That's why you can finally buy those cards new in stores at or below suggested retail, or get a used one cheap (please don't get a used one - mining wears them out). But all the big firms use specialized hardware. These are still profitable (with cheap power), but not very. If Bitcoins stay at $20,000 each, it will take about 4 years before a top of the line computer earns enough to pay for itself. That's not good enough - they have to be replaced periodically and they have other expenses. All the miners tried to grow crazy fast the last two years and they're all in debt right now. So they will dump coins and continue the downward pressure on the price.
     
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  12. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    A few more exchanges and financial services are curtailing or suspending withdrawals. I had no idea how many of these things there were - hundreds.

    A number of the failures come from exchanges and services based in or heavily used by Indians. This is because a while ago the Indian government decided they wanted to get rid of all crypto (especially mining, given their general lack of energy) and taxed it all at 30%. Seems to have worked.

    Some of the failing firms are getting help from FTX, one of the top exchanges and maybe the only one with lots of real money still in their coffers. It's run by Samuel Bankman-Fried, who you may have heard of if you pay attention to politics. He isn't saving companies as much as winding them down so they don't spread contagion to the rest of the industry. Lets see how that works out.
     
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  13. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    Good write up on the collapse of the Voyager fraud.

    As usual, it raises the peculiar question of why Voyager had 660m loaned to the 3AC ponzi - surely they realised 3AC as a ponzi? Maybe these people were all true believers SBF style.

    On a Bloomberg interview with Matt Levine, SBF basically admitted all the defi/cefis are ponzis but in a good way

    Voyager is also a victim of the fallout of massive crypto hedgefund 3 Arrows Capital, who have now filed for Chapter 15 Bankruptcy after their strategy of “I hope nothing and ever happens to me!” failed. By “victim,” I mean that 58% of the loans that Voyager has issued have been to 3AC, and its loan book is 50% of its total assets. They will likely never see a dime of the $660 million they loaned 3AC.

    In very simple terms, Voyager lied to customers about whether their funds were insured as a means of conning them into investing with Voyager. At the same time, Voyager issued loans to hedge funds like 3 Arrows Capital, assuming that nothing bad would ever happen to them, Voyager, or the crypto markets. While it’s not obvious exactly what underwriting went into these loans, my technical assessment is “it wasn’t enough” because they loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to them based on what appears to be the assumption that nothing bad was ever going to happen.

    https://ez.substack.com/p/when-vibes-arent-enough?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
     
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  14. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
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    Bayern München
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    Jul 23, 2004
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    This is perhaps the most insane part - because you could borrow crypto by staking less than 100% surety, this created insane chains where you borrow crypto which you then stake to borrow even more crypto

    this was all possible because you needed little actual USD liquidity - you can just use ponzi tokens

    what could ever go wrong????

    What may be becoming obvious to some of you is that the crypto industry was built off the back of everybody writing poorly-collateralized and poorly-underwritten loans for incredibly large amounts of money. Based on further analysis, traditional financial institutions weren’t offering this “because the loans were incredibly ********ing stupid, and the people loaning the money did not appear to abide by any kind of fiduciary sense.” Crypto lenders have been lending money to other companies so that they can take loans out with other crypto lenders and then use the profits from those loans to invest in more loans with more companies. When these loans fell through, or the time came for further collateral, these companies scrambled to sell off assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum to cover these losses, putting massive sell pressure on the crypto market.​
     
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  15. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Yes, I have fun keeping track of crypto news, the horrible scams and the utter failure of abhorrent political views when put in practice. Cryptocurrency isn't a small deal, but it isn't that big either - it's erasure won't affect the greater economy that much, and some of those effects would be positive.

    But the thing is... it could have been a whole lot worse. We really dodged a something that needs a better metaphor nowadays. Because for the last six months the big players in the crypto field have been spending large amounts of money - over $100 million - in lobbying state and federal government officials to make crypto much more mainstream. A lot of it was trying to make legislation to make sure the field was even less regulated than it is. They were also actually within sight of making crypto a valid way to pay taxes in Colorado and Utah. The slo-mo crash has made all this less feasible. I can't imagine how much worse things could have gotten if cyrpto was officially recognized this way, how many more people - or even institutions - would have thought to "invest" in this.
     
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  16. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    It's almost as if a govt. agency should be investigating these scammers.

    Signed,
    A Licensed Individual Who Is Regulated
     
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  17. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
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    Exactly - e.g. i do not understand why you can offer defi/cefi which are obviously unregistered securities

    I can just about accept bitcoin itself as a commodity. But the other stuff are clearly investment scams which should come under the regulators
     
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  18. Khan

    Khan Member+

    Mar 16, 2000
    On the road
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  19. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    Celsius insolvency reveals long suspected aspects of the Tether scam

    1547585232563347456 is not a valid tweet id
     
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  20. Khan

    Khan Member+

    Mar 16, 2000
    On the road
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  21. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
  22. Dyvel

    Dyvel Member+

    Jul 24, 1999
    The dog end of a day gone by
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    Nat'l Team:
    Ireland Republic
    I've been living in Nyack, NY for 2.5 years now and I can confirm that riding fancy bikes whilst draped in lycra is not just for Legacy Americans anymore. Route 9W is a major route for the biking set. All manner of people who are not Traditional Americans ride their bikes up and down 9W. As well as past my house, which causes me no end of grief as I try to back out of the driveway.
     
  23. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    I saw a pileup at the Bour de France the other day. It'll be a top highlight along with whatever dude rides around the Arc d Triumph on day 165.
     
  24. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    'Cassandra' Coppola has a deep dive into the 3AC insolvency

    What I am struggling to understand, is how 3AC could have been anything but a ponzi? There seems to have been a wide spread hallucination that somehow the likes of 3AC, Celsius etc had solid investment strategies despite no one being able to say what they were.

    https://www.coppolacomment.com/2022/07/where-has-all-money-gone.html
     
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  25. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
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    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
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    This is an example of the insanity

    Voyager was supposedly a serious player, yet lent over 25% of it's assets to 3AC. Did they just make these kinds of 'investments' because it was a way to get yield which they could return to their own customers to keep the ponzi going?

    So basically, Voyager, a ponzi, invests in 3AC a ponzi, because they didn't realise or didn't care that 3AC must also be a ponzi?
     

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