151–160 of 517 posts
Have no idea why ycombinator is so salty towards anything crypto. Yes, tether was wrong when they said USDT was backed by “US Dollars”. But, the conclusion is USDT is backed by something, the likes of which is probably a fractional reserve. Case is resolved, with Tether admitting no fault.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if we assume only Bitcoin, it's not currently expected to stop printing money until (assuming Ray Kurzweil wasn't right all along) long after we're all dead. The Bitcoin inflation story is more political than simply economic. Right now, it's not really possible for it to be narrowly about whether printing money is OK. But one could easily mount an argument about whether humans should be able to twiddle with the…
You can inflate the money supply and still be "deflationary" if the convenience yield of holding the money (tokens, UTXOs, or whatnot) exceeds or neutralize that inflation rate. You make an excellent point, Bitcoin doesn't have to overtake gold or become a global-reserve to change the world. It just has to be a plausible alternative that enables people to opt-in or out of the system. It has largely already achieved t…
My big concern about monetary pluralism is what happens to US citizens, when their day-to-day currency stops being used as the reserve currency for the world? I have trouble imagining any way in which that turns out good for me, as someone living and working in the US. Anything you can do to assuage my fears, since you seem to be educated on the matter?
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This is only true if we accept your unstated premise that BTC itself isn't a big ole Ponzi scheme. I guess we could argue, "It's good news for our slightly more subtle fraud if the blatant, obvious fraud gets stamped out."
> This is only true if we accept your unstated premise that BTC itself isn't a big ole Ponzi scheme. Let's be clear, here: There's a substantial difference between Bitfinex engaging in outright financial fraud vs a bunch of people buying into the value of a virtual currency for reasons no one can understand. BTC is not a ponzi. It's just a long-running speculative bubble. A collective delusion. You can disagree with…
BTC didn't get to the price it is today on the backs of a few cypherpunks experimenting with decentralized digital currency technology.
"Contrary to online speculation, there was no finding that Tether ever issued tethers [USDT] without backing, or to manipulate crypto prices" I hope that ends the spreading of FUD - claiming that bitcoin and other cryptos are propped up by the printing of fake tethers - which seems to spread here every time there is a sharp rise in prices.
It shows that Tether had no desire to correct the situation with the unbacked Tethers. Why does it matter why the Tethers were unbacked? The fact is that they were unbacked and Tether continued operating as if they were.
Why would anyone trust an institution that has already demonstrated they don’t care about backing and, moreover, that they’d rather hide that fact as much as possible until forced to reveal it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if we assume only Bitcoin, it's not currently expected to stop printing money until (assuming Ray Kurzweil wasn't right all along) long after we're all dead. The Bitcoin inflation story is more political than simply economic. Right now, it's not really possible for it to be narrowly about whether printing money is OK. But one could easily mount an argument about whether humans should be able to twiddle with the…
You can inflate the money supply and still be "deflationary" if the convenience yield of holding the money (tokens, UTXOs, or whatnot) exceeds or neutralize that inflation rate. You make an excellent point, Bitcoin doesn't have to overtake gold or become a global-reserve to change the world. It just has to be a plausible alternative that enables people to opt-in or out of the system. It has largely already achieved t…
I suppose it is helping people think outside the box, but I fear that Bitcoin is sucking a lot of air out of the room. We should be pushing for instant and extremely low-fee ACHs, alternatives to banks like credit unions where customers—as owners—hold more power, etc. Hopefully things move in that direction.
That startup people see cryptocurrency as a way to lock up rents by becoming new gatekeepers for the blockchain (like banks are for the traditional system) or whatever is really a betrayal of the hacker ethos IMHO.
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> Investing in virtually any asset other than cash will, almost by definition, shield you from inflation. ... which is why virtually every nation on Earth adopted some kind of inflationary fiat currency. It pushes money to be invested, not held. Wealth is a verb, not a noun.
The world would certainly be a strange and sad place if the best thing for everyone to do with their wealth was hoard it in currency. Not holding wealth in cash has been investing 101 material long before cryptocurrency. It is fascinating how crypto proponents took over that narrative to imply that crypto was the only investment that could escape inflation. They’ve also spread an idea that money printing is the singu…
Wealth is never held in currency, ever. It's a physically impossible thing.
When a person holds savings, it doesn't prevent humans from working, or raw resources from being used, or land from being purchased -- it just means that person is not redeeming a claim on those resources at the time. Their failure to redeem at a point in time does not preclude others from doing so: otherwise said, for every debit there's a credit.
But historically, you don't have to take my word for it. The United States had deflation and 0% interest rates on government bonds for 100+ years during the period between the National Banks and the Fed. You held money in cash at 0%, because when you purchased goods later, your dollars were worth more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if we assume only Bitcoin, it's not currently expected to stop printing money until (assuming Ray Kurzweil wasn't right all along) long after we're all dead. The Bitcoin inflation story is more political than simply economic. Right now, it's not really possible for it to be narrowly about whether printing money is OK. But one could easily mount an argument about whether humans should be able to twiddle with the…
>18.5M of bitcoin has already been mined of the maximum 21M. So the amount of remaining future inflation from increased supply negligible. That the remaining 2M will be mined asymptotically over many years is not important except for purposes of incentivizing miners to run transactions.
You're right, though, it will become negligible at some point in the not-too-distant future. I think, though, that that may not be all that relevant. The arguments about BTC and money printing seem to be more moral than pragmatic, so I'm not sure you can really draw a line and say, "Below this mark, printing money is A-OK. Above this mark, printing money is the end of the world," because trying to move to that style of argument would be moving the goalpost right out of the stadium. It was never about the actual pragmatics of inflationary currency policy.
By analogy, I'm not sure a lot of dyed-in-the-wool gold bugs would respond to the hypothetical opening of a massive new gold mine by saying, "An increase in the production rate? That, I just cannot do," and walking away from gold. If, on the other hand, the mine were opening in their own country, and being operated by the government, which planned to carefully release gold onto the market at a slow rate, then you might see a lot of protesting. That would actually be better for price stability, but price stability was never actually the point.
I'm waiting patiently for the whole Tether printing scheme to fall and crush to finally purchase Bitcoin / Ether. However I'm not viewing them as inflation hedges so long as Bitfinex / etc. are allowed to continue with their obvious money printing scheme. When most crypto trading volume is traded at trustworthy exchanges which actually hold dollars as much as they say they do, I'll trust $/BTC to be a fair market. It…
Cryptocurrency isn’t the only way to escape USD inflation. Investors have been investing to avoid inflation long before Bitcoin was invented. Investing in virtually any asset other than cash will, almost by definition, shield you from inflation. Inflation is an increase in asset prices, resulted in reduced buying power. You only need to invest in assets (stocks for example) and minimize holdings in cash if your goal…
If I decide to hedge inflation with some obscure or even mainstream "coin" that should be my choice why should gov be able to deny that right?
Looks like Tether is taking the settlement as an agreement of no wrong doing and that no tether coins were issued without backing. https://tether.to/tether-and-bitfinex-reach-settlement-with-...
The issue was that they didn’t have the money at some point, but they continued operating as if they did. I’d be even more concerned if they think this is okay now. Tether isn’t useful if they’re only backed at time of issue.
They also printed the majority of Tethers after this 2019 lawsuit.
Is this the first official ruling on tether that shows it isn’t backed 1:1 by the US dollar? That has long been speculated, but if this is the first official verification how does that affect the Market. Especially the self dealing of Bitfinex.
Tether themselves essentially admitted that it wasn’t fully backed in 2019: https://www.coindesk.com/tether-lawyer-confirms-stablecoin-7... The strangest part of the Tether story is how much of it was obvious or even out in the open. Cryptocurrency proponents were happy to look the other way as long as prices were only going up. I suspect cryptocurrency proponents and Bitfinex are working hard to spin this as a win f…