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Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

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Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#221

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #163
arcticfox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious who these Merlin and Oz fellows are, does anyone know more about them?

This may be 100% unrelated/wrong: Check out "OZ49 Corporation". It has some shared directors with some other Panama crypto companies, and a director name Oz: https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/155664811

Here's a video that seems to be the same guy mentioned in the link you shared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXBwQMls0o

If this is the guy, there's quite a goddamn rabbit hole. He owns some companies registered in Panama with MEYR ABIZIZ (Authorized Movers https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/571706). A quick search turned up these reports of Authorized Movers being a scam: https://www.movingscam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21169

I'm no expert, and it's not clear if this is the right Oz Yosef, but it would be amazing if someone who knew what they were doing could untangle all of this.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#222

Post by lalaland1125 »

abakker wrote: post #110
empath75 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that bitfinex/tether is liquidating reserves to hold the peg. They can keep it pegged until they run out of money and then not only is tether worthless but so are all your coins on their exchange (and probably most other exchanges that use tether). That’s how bank runs work.

Lessons learned from sovereign debt crises: don't defend the peg. Let it float now, it will hurt more if you defend it all the way to insolvency. Devaluation is better than forced debt restructuring or full bankruptcy. Oh well, we'll see it all again.

That reasoning doesn't matter for Bitfinex because when the money runs out they can just exit scam.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#223

Post by asynchrony »

remcob wrote: post #124
abakker wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone could have the whole wallet... As I said, it is impossible to verify that that isn't the case. He could have taken a loan with the whole wallet as collateral. That isn't the same as claiming that Satoshi did that, but it's not like the audibility of the blockchain spreads all the way to the real world. There's really no saying what Satoshi has done, and the anonymity means there's no way to find out.

It.. doesn't work like that. Suppose someone sells you a private key, or even a hardware wallet, claiming that it "contains much Bitcoin". There's no way for you to be sure that the seller doesn't have a backup. Or is selling ten other copies to other people. It's like trying to sell an account by selling the password to it. The first thing you do is change it so the previous owner can not get in anymore. Before you…

It works that way if he transferred the private key and then they murdered him. Blockchains and meatspace have different rules.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#224

Post by village-idiot »

themagician wrote: post #71
peterlk wrote: post #8

It's almost like unregulated financial institutions have a tendency to screw over their customers... No one could have predicted this in the consistently solvent, regulated, and trustworthy cryptocurrency market. It's too bad bitfinex got ripped off by a surely unrelated entity. /s Have we learned our lesson yet?

The lesson will never be learned. The Ponzi scheme is as old as money itself. It’s never gone away. The one thing that crypto currency truly has revolutionized is the Ponzi scheme. You can do it any number of ways, add any number of twists, and do it over and over again. With crypto you don’t even have to be subtle. When the pot gets big enough you just outright steal it. It’s possible that Satoshi himself will try t…

It’s highly unlikely that there’s enough demand for Satoshi to cash out fully. Regardless of the panic that their coins moving would cause, the actual liquidity on the exchanges is probably far far less than what the exchanges state, meaning that anyone trying to move that many coins would tank the price.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#225

Post by asynchrony »

conanbatt wrote: post #218
rsynnott wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may remember the implosion of mtgox, and people buying mtgox ‘dollars’ at a discount. There’s always a greater fool, apparently.

If you bought btc at a discount at mtgox you are mega rich now.

If and only if you got your btc out of mtgox.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#226

Post by lalaland1125 »

asenna wrote: post #208
hendzen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who was deeply interested in bitcoin in ~2013, cryptocurrency today is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. When someone tells me today that they are working on something related to crypto I make a mental note to never work with them or take anything they do seriously.

This quite an ignorant comment. I've been working with Blockchain tech (Crypto by extension) for a while now and there's a lot of experimenting, genuine projects being built right now. A lot of smart people are in this space building solutions. Major companies like Samsung / Facebook have teams working on PoCs. Unfair to imply that everyone in Crypto is selling snake oil.

> Unfair to imply that everyone in Crypto is selling snake oil.

So, who isn't? Look throughout the blockchain ecosystem and all you will see are scams, illegal activity and get rich quick fools. I have personally yet to see a use of blockchain tech for useful legal purposes. Yes, you will see some companies "announce" that they are "investigating" blockchain or whatnot to get some free PR, but you don't ever see them actually release anything useful.

(I fully accept that blockchain has revitalized criminal enterprises such as child pornography, extortion, and Ponzi schemes, but I don't see any reason to celebrate that).

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#227

Post by asynchrony »

chimpburger wrote: post #204
6nf wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you hold significant amounts of Tether? There's no upside and all of the downside. Why do you do it?

It's used for margin trading at exchanges that do not accept fiat

I suppose leveraged betting is done best when backed by worthless collateral.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#228

Post by vkou »

Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #202
vkou wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multiple fiat-currency crypto exchanges are not sustainable due to this dynamic. And yet, multiple-fiat-currency exchanges are, for some reason, sustainable.

Very few examples... Coinbase / Bitstamp / Kraken? People don't realize just how much of a tightrope they are walking on [1]. Serving crypto requires a deliberate business pivot [2], and not many are keen. This IMO is the largest hurdle crypto is facing for adoption. [1] https://diar.co/volume-2-issue-23/#2 [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312109/000119312518...

I'm talking about fiat exchanges that convert one fiat currency into another, and never touch crypto. They seem to figure out how to operate in multiple jurisdictions... But that's possibly due to the part where they comply with KYC and AML.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#230

Post by matt-attack »

abakker wrote: post #104
therein wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s possible that Satoshi himself will try to liquidate his stake at some point, crashing BTC itself and make off with a cool billion. Who knows. That might have been the plan all along. Not quite possible with the auditing capabilities Bitcoin provides. The moment any amount from those accounts is moved, Bitcoin would probably tank.

There is no auditing whether he sold all his keys in the physical world. They may never have "transacted" on the blockchain, but that does not mean he never just gave away the ability to transact them physically. He may also have taken out a loan from a traditional financial institution and used them as collateral. There is a very real possibility that they are in fact owned by someone else now, who has made the same…

But would someone ever buy bitcoins from someone without actually permitting a transfer? How would you ever have an assurance that seller has relinquished control of the coins?

Example: I own one coin. I sell my private key to you for $5k fiat. You take my private key and sit on it thinking it’s yours. After a use a copy of the private key to transfer the coin to a new wallet I own. I’ve now stollen the coin I supposedly “sold” to you.

What am I missing?

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