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Just people are very cautious online with signaling that they have any crypto.
I don't buy that. What's the threat vector? Are you not able to be anonymous with an HN account if you choose? So much so that creating multiple accounts doesn't matter?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just people are very cautious online with signaling that they have any crypto.
I don't buy that. What's the threat vector? Are you not able to be anonymous with an HN account if you choose? So much so that creating multiple accounts doesn't matter?
If you had millions of dollars in crypto you would too. It's not nearly the same as having it in a bank or mutual funds which cannot easily be taken from you in a flash.
People can simply hack your laptop or bludgeon you with a hammer until you give them up instantly.
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I don't buy that. What's the threat vector? Are you not able to be anonymous with an HN account if you choose? So much so that creating multiple accounts doesn't matter?
The threat vector boils down to using a phone number porting attack to gain access to Coinbase, and maybe also email. It has happened to many public owners of crypto.
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That’s comfortingly close to fractional reserve banking (which unfashionably I’m a big fan of).
Except in a real fractional reserve system, the central bank usually sets reserve and/or capital requirements.
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I don't buy that. What's the threat vector? Are you not able to be anonymous with an HN account if you choose? So much so that creating multiple accounts doesn't matter?
You are able to be anonymous on HN by creating a new account which is not tied to your regular account history. If you had millions of dollars in crypto you would too. It's not nearly the same as having it in a bank or mutual funds which cannot easily be taken from you in a flash. People can simply hack your laptop or bludgeon you with a hammer until you give them up instantly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are able to be anonymous on HN by creating a new account which is not tied to your regular account history. If you had millions of dollars in crypto you would too. It's not nearly the same as having it in a bank or mutual funds which cannot easily be taken from you in a flash. People can simply hack your laptop or bludgeon you with a hammer until you give them up instantly.
I mean, if bludgeon you with a hammer is part of your threat model, I think there's still some concern that people will bludgeon until you agree to make a bank transfer.
I suspect this is going on today. Cryptocurrency traders place a lot of faith in the exchanges. A bad actor at an exchange could manipulate a price upwards: - Create a ton of volume and potentially and upward trend (two bots trading with one another, increasing the price each time) - Generate hype around a coin - Let FOMO take over If things start to go south, disable withdrawals, deposits, or freeze the market until…
>> I doubt any of this manipulation is even illegal? That was my first thought also... in stock/futures trading world, this is 100% normal business as usual. The idea of buying all the available XYZ to run up prices is a valid move for a hedge fund with sufficient capital to do so.
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The USD backing Tethers could be used to buy Tethers! Instant capitalisation!
That’s comfortingly close to fractional reserve banking (which unfashionably I’m a big fan of).
If I’m supreme ruler of the world and I replace all currency with Hinkley Bucks, 100 of them in total, and I put them in the bank, they loan 90 to a guy who builds a house. The builder and all their suppliers and employees put that 90 in the bank, and the bank loans 81 to a guy starting a grocery store chain. Then those guys and the farmers bank that money and the bank loans out 72 bucks. On and on until the balance in everyone’s savings accounts adds up to 1000 bucks. And yet somehow the bank has all one hundred bucks in its vault. Because the rest is loans.
If you increase the reserve to 11% then 100 bucks “disappear” from this economy. Going from 10 to 11% is a 10% increase in the reserve, and it [tanks] GDP.
If you go the other way you dangerously increase the money supply very quickly. I can’t even conceive of how much more volatile 1/1800 is compared to 1/10.
All crypto markets have always been shallow and rife with manipulation. It's still almost a total free-for-all.
It is a bit nerve racking seeing the distribution of coins to such few addresses: https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.... I wonder if there is any collusion among the top 2000 addresses. Mind you one person can even have multiple addresses.
And yet, the wealth inequality in cryptos, especially bitcoin, makes our current economic situation seem like child's play. If bitcoin ever does go "to the moon", we will have a small, few mega-wealthy elite who did hardly anything to build that wealth, while the rest of the world missed the boat.
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Except in a real fractional reserve system, the central bank usually sets reserve and/or capital requirements.
Yep, but that’s a legal requirement tacked on by governments, not an actual theoretical requirement.
Even in the absence of regulation, centralised clearing and interbank loan markets and a central bank as lender of last resort, fractional reserve depends on bank notes circulating and retaining value because enough people actually need them to meet debt repayment obligations, not on sufficient numbers of people believing that it's fully backed by the financial asset they actually want in their portfolio.
(Also, the history of bank runs suggests the legal requirement might have been a rather good idea)