Bitcoin, Blockchain, Battlestar Galactica

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

  1. MattR

    MattR Member+

    Jun 14, 2003
    Reston
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I have a cousin (I'm Irish Catholic, I have 41 first cousins) that used to ping me with his spray-in insulation business.

    I guess it didn't do too well, because last week I got an invite to a meeting to be sure I didn't miss the massive cryptocurrency investment opportunity.
     
  2. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
  3. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Donald Trump, Crypto Bro. Cross posted with the Vance thread.


    https://archive.ph/u6pVW#selection-889.0-901.356

    Long article from the NYT by Thomas Edsall on Trump's massive financial inroads to Silicon Valley. Good article, worth at least a skim. And if anyone with actual knowledge of crypto can weigh in on its merits...good.


    Crypto companies — and the venture capitalists heavily invested in them — have returned the favor, not only throwing their support to Trump but helping Trump and the Republican Party to crack open a Democratic bastion, the high-tech industry.

    A story from April on Puck, “All-In For Trump,” reflects the changed political environment:
    "An election cycle ago, Silicon Valley Republicans had to go into witness protection to support Trump. Now, post-cancel culture and post—“All-In,” an influential cohort of billionaires and quasi-billionaires is getting ready to write checks for 45."

    William D. Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute, replied by email to my question about the evolution of Silicon Valley’s support for Trump:
    "Trump’s popularity in the tech community is highest among extreme libertarians and/or megalomaniacs like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey. They see him as a disrupter, and as the political figure most likely to reduce taxes and regulations in ways that give them maximum freedom in how they run their businesses and spend their money.

    "There is a messianic streak running through large parts of the Silicon Valley defense startup and venture capital communities that argues that they are the true ‘doers,’ the real modern day patriots, and the only ones who can restore America to dominance abroad and greatness at home — if only government would get out of their way and let them do the job."​

     
  4. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Here is a really important graph from a FDIC report on Bitcoin usage in the US.

    bitcoin deposits.png

    The dashed line is the price of Bitcoin and Etherium, the two blue-chip crypto tokens. The solid line is amount of money being deposited into exchanges. There is a pretty decent correlation between the two until about six months before the Big Crash of spring 2022. After the crash it looks like there was a little interest in getting coins on "discount", but then people's interest in sending money to exchanges vanished and it has not come back. But the price of the tokens started going up. This is pretty clear evidence that the price of Bitcoin has no connection to reality any more, not even to speculation and mania. It is complete fabrication by the people running crypto.

    And no this isn't because people moved to ETF's. That started January 2024, after the data on the chart ends.
     
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  5. 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
    Great chart and it illustrates the other huge issue.

    There is no liquidity.
     
  6. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    My mom asked me a few weeks back what crypto is. I explained it as best I could, but I basically ended it when she asked what it’s good for, and my response was that it makes it easier for criminals to get ransom payments, blackmail payments, etc.

    That’s its purpose, and until I read a convincing counter argument, that’s the only purpose it ever could have had. There was no “wrong path.” It was the only path.
     
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  7. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Bitcoin Boy tosses hard drive in rubbish. Jow can be worth half a bill. Sues council for not digging it up for him.

    Man Who Accidentally Threw Hard Drive Containing 8,000 Bitcoins Worth Half A Billion Dollars In Landfill Sues Local City Council For Not Excavating The Site

    James Howells, etched in the history books for accidentally discarding Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), which is worth more than half a billion dollars today, took a major step in retrieving them.

    What Happened: In a last-ditch effort, the Wales-based software engineer filed a lawsuit against Newport City Council for roughly 495.31 million British pounds, or about $647 million, in damages for repeatedly denying his request to excavate the landfill site housing the discarded hard drive, which contains around 8,000 units of Bitcoin, as reported by WalesOnline.

    Howells explained that the lawsuit is a strategy to convince the council to allow an excavation of its landfill, not a reflection of the actual situation.

    Howells has assembled a team of specialists to carry out the excavation at no cost to the council. He has also proposed to give the council 10% of the recovered coins’ value.

    The case is set for a hearing in December. Newport Council, however, has dismissed the lawsuit as “weak” and expressed concerns over potential environmental impacts of the proposed excavation.

    Why It Matters: The bizarre case dates back to 2013 when Howells unintentionally put a hard drive containing 8,000 BTCs in the trash while cleaning his office.

    The compensation that Howells sought was the peak valuation of the stash from earlier this year when the leading cryptocurrency spiked to a new all-time high.

    As of this writing, 8,000 BTCs are worth $514.37 million, at a market price of $64,296.34 per unit

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-...x2HdL5mhFmb2Mhyc-sCj-OfbbLfYLpanxOAN7nDXAcdBA
     
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  8. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So the Council is block(chain)ing him from digging up his money.
     
  9. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    The Leonard Nimoy of 2524 will do an In Search Of from a Welsh garbage dump. "Did a man really throw out a hard drive worth $500 million? On the next In Search Of"
     
  10. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Elmo moving hundreds of millions in Scamcoins somewhere, weeks before the election :rolleyes:

    Elon Musk’s curious relationship with crypto has taken another turn. According to blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence, the company has moved approximately $765 million worth of Bitcoin to unknown wallets. It’s unclear whether the EV maker, the fourth-biggest holder of Bitcoin among U.S public companies, per BitcoinTreasuries, has plans to sell.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-moves-765-million-bitcoin-154358084.html
     
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  11. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Cambodian police have raided an office park in Phnom Penh housing a crypto money laundering / gambling / pig butchering operation. Over 600 people have been detained. Most of those are probably slaves doing the work - some previous escapees alerted the police to the location. The people come from all over Southeast Asia and China.

    https://1-cc--times-com.translate.g...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
     
  12. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Michael Saylor, head of the small and slowly dying software company slash massive store of Bitcoin MicroStrategy says that he will be buying $42 billion in Bitcoin over the next couple years funded by newly issued MicroStrategy stock.

    That sounds bonkers. Trying to gin up some interest in a crypto few care about any more? Or maybe too much gin period.
     
  13. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    It might have worked, so some extent. Bitcoin's gotten a bunch of headlines as it broke $80,000, and it kinda looks like MicroStrategy's recent $2 billion spend on the crypto coin is what did it.

    In a bizarre and I'm sure totally unrelated coincidence, Tether created $2 billion out of thin air recently.
     
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  14. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    The bankrupt remnants of FTX is suing Binance for $1.8 billion. Binance originally funded the start of FTX in exchange for 20% of the ownership, something that always rankled SBF. A little before FTX fell apart, SBF bought out Binance's partial ownership. Now FTX is saying this was a illegal use of funds for a company already insolvent, so they are trying to claw that back.

    Exchanges have a lot of "value", but not a lot of cash, so Binance alone might have trouble raising that if they lose. But I'm sure the rest of the fake money universe wouldn't let that happen - they can't let the world's almost respectable entry point into crypto fall.
     
  15. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
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  16. Smurfquake

    Smurfquake Moderator
    Staff Member

    Aug 8, 2000
    San Carlos, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Here's a story about a crypto bro in LA which has lots of twists and turns. The story is from the LA Times and may be paywalled, although I was able to read the whole thing after dismissing the part where it asks you to sign in, which usually doesn't work for me. A lot of this story had me going "Oh no. Anyways." but then it got to the part where the guy had surgery to get his legs lengthened - like in the movie Gattaca, which I thought was science fiction.

    https://www.latimes.com/california/...ties-relieved-of-duty-in-crypto-investigation
     
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  17. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    If one gets blocked: https://archive.ph/xmBsf

    And this could have been in the "Adventures in Policing" thread based on this one...


    Federal court records trace Iza’s alleged crimes back to 2021, when prosecutors say he began paying Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to be his hired muscle and help him steal from his enemies.

    One of the lawmen — identified as Deputy 1 in court records — ran a private security company that Iza allegedly paid more than $100,000 per month to provide “teams of active LASD deputies” to accompany him around the clock.

    During a party at Iza’s home in Bel-Air in August 2021, his bodyguards — at least one of whom was in law enforcement — held the event’s hired planner at gunpoint, according to court filings. Iza allegedly took the man’s phone and used it to transfer money to himself because he was unhappy with the festivities.

    Iza is accused of keeping pictures of the party planner’s credit cards and enough other personal information to continue taking money, eventually depleting the man’s accounts of “tens of thousands of dollars.”

    A few weeks after the incident, according to Iza’s indictment, Deputy 1 contacted a narcotics detective and told him a confidential informant claimed the party planner had large amounts of fentanyl and cocaine at his house. Sheriff’s deputies later raided the home — but found no drugs.​

     
  18. Smurfquake

    Smurfquake Moderator
    Staff Member

    Aug 8, 2000
    San Carlos, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I was torn between this thread and the Adventures in Policing thread, since that story started with "here's LA sheriff's deputies working as private security for a crypto bro", but when it got to the part where he claimed he couldn't be held in jail because of his leg breaking procedure, it fell into the crypto bro camp for me.

    There's another story about a county sheriff which I will post in the Adventures in Policing thread - my own county, San Mateo County sheriff has been asked to resign due to allegedly hiring her lover for a make-work job at a high salary - but it looks like the people doing the alleging are the county sheriff's union, and cop unions are not very trustworthy. I think it's a case of ACAB and we'd probably be better off if both sides died in a fire.
     
  19. celito

    celito Moderator
    Staff Member

    Palmeiras
    Brazil
    Feb 28, 2005
    USA
    Club:
    Palmeiras Sao Paulo
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    Guess I am late to this one. MSTR has been on my radar for a while but I never read up on it. Yes this is bonkers. He is doing offerings and convertible notes to raise money to buy btc. As they accumulate more btc, their valuation goes up and they can do more offerings to acquire more btc. It's a feedback loop.
     
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  20. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Oh noes. Not Hawk Tuah girl!

    1864489552955756925 is not a valid tweet id
     
  21. 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
    This is elite digital content
     
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  22. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Elite-er

    1864599097165935049 is not a valid tweet id
     
  23. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    What a fascinating language you speak, alien life form

    1864503127019540912 is not a valid tweet id
     
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  24. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Ruh-roh. Coffeezilla on the case

    1864585278469390809 is not a valid tweet id
     
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