What a Surprise!!

who could ever have seen this coming-

that corrupt con artists who built a massive ponzi scheme would skip town after it all comes crashing down...

ac04 said:

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weird, its almost like everything "crypto" that is not bitcoin is a huge scam and always has been like several posters here have been saying for years.

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THIS IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION

ac04 said:

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weird, its almost like everything "crypto" that is not bitcoin is a huge scam and always has been like several posters here have been saying for years.

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Fify.

Once you understand why "crypto" is a scam and bitcoin is not a scam, you've got it figured out.

Won't somebody please think of the children?!

Deluxe said:

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Once you understand why "crypto" is a scam and bitcoin is not a scam, you've got it figured out.

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Securities regulations, accounting standards, fraud controls, etc. exist to protect the average citizen. I don't know what will happen with Bitcoin specifically, but blows my mind that this marketplace has been created that can rely on people to not understand why 1 crypto is ok but the rest are not, and that people and institutions can operate this way.

You can't invest in an unregistered investment without meeting certain restrictive qualifications, but any kid with a cell phone can buy crypto.

cjsag94 said:

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Deluxe said:

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Once you understand why "crypto" is a scam and bitcoin is not a scam, you've got it figured out.

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Securities regulations, accounting standards, fraud controls, etc. exist to protect the average citizen. I don't know what will happen with Bitcoin specifically, but blows my mind that this marketplace has been created that can rely on people to not understand why 1 crypto is ok but the rest are not, and that people and institutions can operate this way.

You can't invest in an unregistered investment without meeting certain restrictive qualifications, but any kid with a cell phone can buy crypto.

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Agreed. Regulators have been asleep at the wheel over the last couple years. Part of me thinks they wanted the market to crash on its own, then crack down. As opposed to cracking down and then being blamed for the subsequent market crash. Who knows though. Either way, lots of lawsuits and jail time pending for entrepreneurs attempting to bypass securities law with their crypto products.

The difference between Bitcoin and the rest of "crypto" will be increasingly clear over the next couple years.

Is Bitcoin 1. money or 2. a rank speculation? Everyone says #1 but trades it like #2

jagvocate said:

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Is Bitcoin 1. money or 2. a rank speculation? Everyone says #1 but trades it like #2

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The Cleveland Fed says it's money. The IRS says it's property. Gary Gensler says it's a commodity. Some jurisdictions say it's currency, but most don't at this time. Volatility is driven by high leverage traders and cross-collateralization with sh*tcoins. That cleansing is occurring right now. Then regulations will tighten the space and significantly de-risk Bitcoin as an investment.

But with all that said, I'd stop trying to put Bitcoin into a defined bucket and start learning more about how it works. It will be very important.

Deluxe said:

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jagvocate said:

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Is Bitcoin 1. money or 2. a rank speculation? Everyone says #1 but trades it like #2

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The Cleveland Fed says it's money. The IRS says it's property. Gary Gensler says it's a commodity. Some jurisdictions say it's currency, but most don't at this time. Volatility is driven by high leverage traders and cross-collateralization with sh*tcoins. That cleansing is occurring right now. Then regulations will tighten the space and significantly de-risk Bitcoin as an investment.

But with all that said, I'd stop trying to put Bitcoin into a defined bucket and start learning more about how it works. It will be very important.

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This sounds a little like religion as much as a store of value

jagvocate said:

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Deluxe said:

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jagvocate said:

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Is Bitcoin 1. money or 2. a rank speculation? Everyone says #1 but trades it like #2

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The Cleveland Fed says it's money. The IRS says it's property. Gary Gensler says it's a commodity. Some jurisdictions say it's currency, but most don't at this time. Volatility is driven by high leverage traders and cross-collateralization with sh*tcoins. That cleansing is occurring right now. Then regulations will tighten the space and significantly de-risk Bitcoin as an investment.

But with all that said, I'd stop trying to put Bitcoin into a defined bucket and start learning more about how it works. It will be very important.

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This sounds a little like religion as much as a store of value

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Religion is just a form of communication a group of people agree on. Eventually the original message gets as garbled as a game of "telephone" that extends thousands of years.

Bitcoin is just superior form of communication, but is very similar, I understand the confusion.

I ponder, Personally, whether bitcoin beats religion out on communicating morality across time and space, however.

Thats gonna be fun to watch.

jagvocate said:

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Deluxe said:

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jagvocate said:

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Is Bitcoin 1. money or 2. a rank speculation? Everyone says #1 but trades it like #2

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The Cleveland Fed says it's money. The IRS says it's property. Gary Gensler says it's a commodity. Some jurisdictions say it's currency, but most don't at this time. Volatility is driven by high leverage traders and cross-collateralization with sh*tcoins. That cleansing is occurring right now. Then regulations will tighten the space and significantly de-risk Bitcoin as an investment.

But with all that said, I'd stop trying to put Bitcoin into a defined bucket and start learning more about how it works. It will be very important.

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This sounds a little like religion as much as a store of value

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Is Bitcoin simply an ideology that we have become infected by?

One of the hallmarks for me of a hollow ideology is when the host humans are unable or unwilling to engage in rational debate and analysis about the merit of the ideas that compose the ideology. We see this in America today with woke ideology. In service of the ideology which they do not personally understand or agree with, host humans pivot to attempts to shut down speech and apply pejorative labels to non-conformers in an attempt to apply social pressure to conform so as to defend their own cognitive dissonance from being exposed in rational argument. Because the traditional battlefield of ideas empowered by the free speech movement of the West is a slaughterhouse for woke ideas, they attempt to decapitate their opponents before they even step in the ring.

Bitcoin is the opposite of this.

The Bitcoin Canon represents a Goliath of mathematical prowess from numerous contributors. It is a machine built atop concepts of physics and math, so immutably true and permanent that it allows Bitcoiners to scream from the mountaintops with conviction that Bitcoin is Truth!

Gabster43213 said:

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Scary to hear some crypto analysts talk about Bitcoin going to 15,000 or even lower.

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I found this tweet to he relevant.

Bitcoin doesn't have bear markets, much like the Internet doesn't have dips in adoption. Adoption is one way only. This concept is misapplied to Bitcoin by traders because it appears to have a price. Adoption is only going in one direction. Fundamental value grows with adoption.

— Yan | swan.com (@skwp) May 30, 2022

pfo said:

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My understanding of crypto and blockchain has been that you always knew where it was and where it had been. But crypto sure does disappear and get stolen a lot for something that is supposed to be so traceable and secure.

Also what's the deal with Coinbase saying if they got in trouble, your crypto might just become their crypto? That's was all I needed to know about not ever having an account if any type at Coinbase.

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that is why I bought a Ledger Nano S and learned how to move my investment from Coinbase onto a cold storage wallet

cjsag94 said:

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Reading this story on 3AC bankruptcy, disappearance of founders, movement of NFTs and digital assets to new wallets to avert obligations. I'm not saying digital currencies will (or should) go away, and the Blockchain technology has grander implementations, but these crypto market can't continue in any way in its current free-for-all form.. many many people will be harmed over time, with little to no recourse. To many people actually view it as bona fide currency.

Just my opinion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/12/founders-of-bankrupt-crypto-hedge-fund-three-arrows-go-missing.html

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Well, those people are dumbasses playing with fire. If they put more USD into it than they can afford to lose then that's on them. Anytime a new frontier is discovered the con artists are some of the first ones to arrive on said frontier and exploit the ones getting there after them. This has happened throughout human history and will always be the case.

And, I don't think most of these people view it as currency. The FOMO retail investor that got into did so to make USD. It was a lottery ticket purchase or a spin of the roulette wheel in Vegas for them. They largely did not care about the actual vision or potential utility of it. What many fail to understand is that there are two different class of people investing in this stuff (1) the true believers who are in it for the idea and (2) the retail FOMO investor in it to try and capture some USD gains.

Admittedly, I was one of these FOMO retail investors initially, but I pretty quickly educated myself on it and sold off what little I actually purchased in alternate coins and piled all of that into BTC of which I still own offline in my own wallet. It's also not an amount that we will lose our livelihood over if it turns out to be a dead end. I look at it as seed to get us up and running if the idea is fully adopted.

Thus, my investment in it at this point has nothing to do with selling it later and making USD on it. I'm invested in the idea and vision of it. A vision that everyone, regardless of your belief in its efficacy, should want to win and thrive because the alternate is Black Mirror tyranny.

The sell off of crypto right now are largely all of the folks in group #2 above. They had their fun, lost their ass in USD, and are out now. Most people still in it are in group #1. IOW, I really don't care what the price of BTC is doing right now. I don't even look at it.

Gabster43213 said:

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Scary to hear some crypto analysts talk about Bitcoin going to 15,000 or even lower.

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What about this scenario scares you?

The alternative mindset is excited to stack sats.

Bitcoin seems like a perfect tool/technology for its use case. It cannot be improved upon which is why I believe the long term value trends toward zero. There is nothing better and no more value that humans can add to BTC. Humans, however, can claim to know more than you and and extract rents from others. And the issue with BTC, is that those add-ons that intend to 'add value' only add risk and instability to the trust mechanism for which BTC relies.

I honestly think the blockchain (BTC and other cryptos) may be in the future, as fundamental to the human experience as running and lifting heavy things is to exercise, or the way mediation, prayer, and traveling is to 'finding oneself,' or the way the pulleys, hammers, shovels and wheelbarrows are to construction and farming. But the fundamental, intrinsic value of those stand alone tools/technologies is close to zero. The value add is what society does with those tools and technologies.