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Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

bloomberg.com

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Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#41

Post by rayiner »

marnett wrote: post #31
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that’s the opposite of the scenario we’re talking about here, right? And I don’t think what you’re talking about is “inherently bad” either. Most deregulatory types also genuinely believe that deregulation will benefit consumers and the industry alike. If you participated in airline deregulation decades ago, and then went to go work for FedEx, whose business model was made possible by that deregulation, would th…

Yes, the standard strategy was not applicable to an industry lacking regulation. This revolving door strategy seems to have been hinged on enacting a regulation that Ripple desired (in order to protect their lead in their market) for a job on the other side. Is all regulation good? No. Is all deregulation good? No. It is not a black and white issue. As a citizen and not a corporation, I personally lean on the side of…

> Is all regulation good? No. Is all deregulation good? No. It is not a black and white issue.

Right. Likewise, not all regulation is bad, and not all deregulation is bad. Because you offer no actual analysis of whether these regulations are good or bad, your aspersions about the "revolving door" are premised on simply assuming that crypto-currency regulations are bad, while the regulations being targeted by the Trump administration are good.

> (forced arbitration, preventing salaried overtime, preventing class action) is inherently bad

None of those things are "regulation." There is no regulation requiring people to enter into arbitration agreements, or to agree to forego overtime, or waive class-action privileges. The government is simply choosing not to prevent people from entering into those agreements. That's deregulation.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#42

Post by rifung »

tw1010 wrote: post #26

Could anyone explain to me a scenario where bitcoin and/or blockchain does not make a huge impact on the world within 5-10 years? There seems to be so much excitement and real action moving in its direction that I have a hard time imagining how exactly this would all just go nowhere.

This is merely a made up scenario and not a prediction but..

The bitcoin bubble could burst as all the people who only bought it thinking it would just keep going up panic and sell. Nobody wants cryptocurrencies anymore after this event and the negative connotation of anything related to cryptocurrencies/blockchain is so strong that nobody cares to do anything with it anymore and it just dies.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#43

Post by JustAnotherPat »

tw1010 wrote: post #26

Could anyone explain to me a scenario where bitcoin and/or blockchain does not make a huge impact on the world within 5-10 years? There seems to be so much excitement and real action moving in its direction that I have a hard time imagining how exactly this would all just go nowhere.

What impact exactly? It's not up to people to disprove that bitcoin won't take over the world, when proponents fail to come up with viable use cases.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#44

Post by psyc »

user5994461 wrote: post #36
DINKDINK wrote: post #12

>The drumbeat of hires crescendoed in November when Ripple, [...] added Ben Lawsky to its board. He earned a tough reputation as New York’s top financial watchdog by pushing banks to scrutinize client transactions for illicit dealings. >[...]Lawsky’s jump to Ripple was particularly notable because he helped pioneer regulation of cryptocurrencies. He introduced the BitLicense, a requirement for digital currency compan…

Well, content providers are responsible for the content they distribute so that's not a good comparison.

They have certain limited responsibilities, but are on the whole not liable. In layman's terms, they're mostly not responsible, otherwise the RIAA could have bankrupted the whole internet years ago.

http://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law-practice/understand...

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#45

Post by andbberger »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
chollida1 wrote: post #4

Makes sense. I've stated this a few times, but one of Microsoft's biggest misteps in the 90's, and there weren't that many, was its absolute lack of any political lobbying. There are alot of very politically connected people who pointed out that if Microsoft had of "played the game" that the chances of their anti trust trial actually happening would have been alot less. Google and Facebook learned this lesson well an…

> I'd argue that Silicon Valley now dominates even wall street in terms of buying political influence in the US nowadays Six months ago, yes. Since then a combination of conservatives feeling discriminated against on social media, Peter Thiel being Peter Thiel and Facebook and Twitter bombing their Congressional hearings regarding Russia have changed the mood. Money only buys so much political goodwill.

> Money only buys so much political goodwill.

Yeah, no. I don't buy that at all.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#46

Post by bmelton »

DINKDINK wrote: post #12

>The drumbeat of hires crescendoed in November when Ripple, [...] added Ben Lawsky to its board. He earned a tough reputation as New York’s top financial watchdog by pushing banks to scrutinize client transactions for illicit dealings. >[...]Lawsky’s jump to Ripple was particularly notable because he helped pioneer regulation of cryptocurrencies. He introduced the BitLicense, a requirement for digital currency compan…

Agreed. There's a movie called "Banking on Bitcoin" currently on Netflix that I recently watched, and while it's got plenty of libertarian rhetoric, it showcases well the transition of "Bitcoin's going to fund terrorism" to "Hey, y'know those regulations I wrote to prevent Bitcoin terrorism? I'm the only one that knows them, so hire me for cryptocurrency regulatory guidance".

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#47

Post by dsacco »

andbberger wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that Silicon Valley now dominates even wall street in terms of buying political influence in the US nowadays Six months ago, yes. Since then a combination of conservatives feeling discriminated against on social media, Peter Thiel being Peter Thiel and Facebook and Twitter bombing their Congressional hearings regarding Russia have changed the mood. Money only buys so much political goodwill.

> Money only buys so much political goodwill. Yeah, no. I don't buy that at all.

Why don't you buy it?

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#48

Post by bduerst »

yellowstuff wrote: post #40
bduerst wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the lack of any major financial reform has left commercial banks open to continue making risky investments. As well as a lack of regulation on subprime lending, leading us to a now-growing subprime auto loan bubble. The bailouts treated the symptom, not the cause.

I don't have a ton of first hand knowledge on the risk appetite of banks or the effect of banking regulation. But I assert that Matt Levine is very knowledgeable about these things and he disagrees with you. His points are that multiple 10 figure fines, higher capital requirements, and a general culture shift have actually made banks less profitable and less risky, as was intended. EG: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/…

Rather than link dump his blog (which I read) can you quote the specific sections? His weekly opinion posts cover a large variety of non-related topics and nobody knows which one you're referencing.

There also isn't anything there about the subprime auto loans, which even the esteemed Matt Levine acknowledges are an issue:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-19/fraud-sat...

> Here's a story about subprime car loans that actually doesn't lean on the this-is-2008-all-over-again analogy; that was just me being cranky. That said though, it sounds like 2008 all over again!

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#49

Post by saas_co_de »

danharaj wrote: post #7
chollida1 wrote: post #4

Makes sense. I've stated this a few times, but one of Microsoft's biggest misteps in the 90's, and there weren't that many, was its absolute lack of any political lobbying. There are alot of very politically connected people who pointed out that if Microsoft had of "played the game" that the chances of their anti trust trial actually happening would have been alot less. Google and Facebook learned this lesson well an…

Silicon Valley's political influence might be a large splash but finance is the pond itself.

Right. They can pay and maybe get something in return but they don't have their employees running the treasury like Goldman Sachs or picking the president's cabinet like Citigroup. Whole different level.

The scary thing is that the most valuable political asset SV has to trade is its ability to spy on, censor, and manipulate the informational flow of its customers.

Re: Veteran Wall Street enforcers are landing new roles in virtual currencies

#50

Post by 0800 »

atomical wrote: post #30
tw1010 wrote: post #26

Could anyone explain to me a scenario where bitcoin and/or blockchain does not make a huge impact on the world within 5-10 years? There seems to be so much excitement and real action moving in its direction that I have a hard time imagining how exactly this would all just go nowhere.

I can think of a few reasons why most blockchain technology won't take off. 1) Centralized solutions are cheaper. Consider Amazon vs. Filecoin. Amazon can buy hard drives in bulk and receive large discounts. They can pass those savings onto their customers. The Filecoin users providing storage to customers will have to 1) convince customers that their technology is safe 2) offer cheaper service. There isn't a trust i…

Why blockchain technology may take off:

1) Centralized solutions are costly to freedom of choice and privacy. Consider a solution where Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook photos, S3, and YouTube is run through Filecoin. No more "You haven't used DropBox in a year, so we are closing your account". No more "This video has been demonetized for all advertisers in our network.". No more "we ran these nets over all your photos and use the information gathered to make a better advertisement profile for you". This is what happens when users make and own software: Limewire, Bittorent, Popcorn Time, DC++, Napster, Kazaa. Though most of these are now depricated/forced shut down, it was not for having a better alternative available.

2) Centralized solutions are currently much faster, but they may not be in the future. Also, other coins (that offer spare computing power) or commercial enterprises could act as a power nodes (sub-centralized solutions) in a decentralized network, to speed it up for a fee when needed. Decentralized peer2peer content delivery is currently owned by centralized players, like Akamai. I see no reason why it could not work when it is owned by its users.

3) Because the software has to operate in a trustless environment, a lot of attention has to be spend in making these systems more secure. Security through obfuscation is not a fall-back anymore. If we had known that LastFM stored password hashes as unsalted MD5, would we have trusted it with our accounts? We will have fuzzing tools and static program analysis to help automate checking the security of a contract.

4) Forks can be dealt with in a decentralized manner: voting power being assigned by a provable amount of tokens you own. You can run an entire election in this manner, cryptographically voiding any "vote rigging" argument.

5) You may have so much freedom as to shoot yourself in the foot. Therefore, Cryptocurrency banks may provide support for payment solutions, insurance, lending, for people who don't want to store all their money under their flammable mattress.

6) Smart contracts will fully replace the paper notarial system. Criminals will be booked into networked systems where their identity is biometrically verifiable for the duration of their "stay". Trading and lending circle contracts will be heavily vetted and proven standard smart contracts one can select from a library.

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