611–620 of 684 posts
Currently, the US Treasury pays old bond holders by a combination of tax revenue and by issuing new bonds. However, each year, a bigger fraction of old bonds are paid by issuing new bonds. Over time, this will lead to almost 100% of old bonds being paid by issuing new bonds, and then they will be a true ponzi.
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I'd bet that cryptocurrencies are much more vigorously tracked than US dollars. The fraction of cryptocurrency transactions related to scams, fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crime must be at least a couple orders of magnitude higher than that for real money.
This gets to the heart of the issue with these discussions - people like yourself asserting non-factual statements based on the equally (if not more so) incorrect assertions they hear from others. Where are your sources? Why do you feel like you need to state things as fact when you just don't like something? You are exactly incorrect. Cash represents the overwhelming supermajority of laundered funds and ongoing cred…
Your reply is also confused. Is the majority of money laundering denominated in USD and other real currencies? I'd believe it, because that's where the money is. But I'm saying the proportion of Bitcoin transactions that are fincrime-related is surely much higher than that of total USD transactions.
This seems pretty obvious to me given that Bitcoin is much less useful for quotidian transactions, but much more useful to people engaged in assorted financial crime. That's unsurprising given how much cryptocurrency advocates tout privacy/anonymity as features. But if you think otherwise, feel free to show the data that has convinced you otherwise.
Also, it's bad form to read something, go on a rant, and then declare the conversation over. Especially when the rant is incorrect.
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It's not finite. The supply of cryptocurrencies is effectively infinite. There's almost no barrier to entry. In the closest historical equivalent, the wildcat banking era, at least you had to have state-chartered bank. [1] But what's it take to launch a cryptocurrency these days? Is it anything beyond a tech guy, a marketing guy, and a a credit card with a little room? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_bankin…
You don't really need a room to do it...
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The only way to make profit on bitcoin is to make someone else poorer by that amount. That's what makes it a ponzi - anything with this property that pretends to be an investment is one. Implementation details are irrelevant. >Goods and services provided by humans have no intrinsic value but become precious simply there being demand by other humans. Nonsense that's easy to disprove: try to stop eating food and start…
> The only way to make profit on bitcoin is to make someone else poorer by that amount. That's what makes it a ponzi - anything with this property that pretends to be an investment is one. Implementation details are irrelevant. I'm really far from an expert in economics so I could be wrong but ain't that how the stock market works for non-dividends stocks?
You don't need to distribute dividends to give money back to shareholders.
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People don't use cryptocurrency "in exchange for goods" to any significant extent. Major merchant adoption of Bitcoin peaked years ago. And at least in my area, the same goes for local merchants; Bitcoin here is extinct. Bitcoin is doing what, 100m transactions per year? Most of which are not for physical goods. Venmo, which started around the same time, does over 2 billion. M-Pesa, a "digital money" solution the sam…
Can confirm this. I offer some crypto options to pay for my service online. Not BTC because the transaction costs are too high, but Bitcoin Cash and the like. After about a year, only about 0.3% of checkouts were done with crypto. Even manual bank transfer is used magnitudes more often.
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Rarely is it one person doing all the lying in a Ponzi scheme. Commonly they're labeled as multi level marketing, which then encourages more people to lie. And I disagree that bitcoin proponents doesn't claim they make your money with for you: there's a lot of talk about the "deflationary nature" of bitcoin, aka the "magical scheme". Miners haven't burned all the money invested in bitcoin, but I'll admit this particu…
A lot of people compare the Tulip craze to Bitcoin but the differences in the properties of each should make it clear why Bitcoin has a higher chance of maintaining value over time. The qualities that Bitcoin has, have typically been sought after in other high valued commodities. Things like longevity and (protocol enforced) scarcity are previously things attributed to gold and remains one of the reasons why gold con…
You can't build electrical circuits from bitcoin, nor can you wear them as a necklace(I guess you could print your keys on a shirt or something, but then they wouldn't be yours for very long)
Scarcity alone isn't enough, you need a use for them too..
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This is dreadful advice that nobody should follow. (1) Shorting has a completely different risk profile than going long. If you're short, you can lose an infinite amount of money. If you're long, the most you can lose is what you put in. Unless you're familiar with what it means to take a short position in traditional markets, for the love of God don't do it in crypto. (2) The market can remain irrational longer than…
WOOOSH The point is that it's terrible advice. My point is people who espouse how smart they are about something should put up or shut up. 1.) there are a multitude of ways to you can do this on a decentralized exchange DYDX as well. Or a Mercantile exchange like BITMEX. 2.) Funny you should bring up Bill Akman he publicized his short position, and another investor took a counter bet to him. That investor so happened…
I get your point, and I'm telling you that the thing they should do is nothing, not take a short position.
Your argument that "if you're so smart you should short it" is BS. If you're smart, you'd stay the heck away.
(1) Decentralized exchanges have all sorts of their own issues, from contract bugs to flashbots, to requiring crypto collateral that may also get nuked in the event of a systemic collapse due to Tether or Bitcoin.
(2) Herbalife is an MLM, but MLMs are not illegal. In fact it says so on their wikpedia page [1]
(3) Anything at any crypto exchange is subject to massive systemic risk.
> So you don't want to short BTC but you still think it's a ponzi scheme ... report it as such to the SEC. Accept that's a loss cause because bitcoin is deemed as property, furthermore a commodity and thus regulated by the CFTC.
The SEC is well aware of its structure, as is the CFTC. They'll act as they deem appropriate in due course, or they won't. But that's a non sequitur. It's actually the first item listed under common misconceptions.
>> That is not the legal definition of ponzi in country X. The legal definition is relevant to understanding the legal implications: can anyone in Crypto Space be prosecuted for running/promoting/aiding that scheme in country X? But if one wants to know whether bitcoin is a good investment, or just an old type of investment fraud with a new coat of paint, the legal definition is irrelevant. One must use a quacks-like-a-duck definition, that describes the mechanism through which fools and money are separated and the reasons why it is a fraud.
> FURTHERMORE if you think these exchanges are crooked and are doomed to fail. Take a short position on the exchange it self. Binance and FTX have their own coins (which are probably securities) that you can take short positions out on.
At the same casino, taking a short against the casino at the casino is the worst plan I've ever heard. If they go under they won't pay you out. The entire crypto ecosystem is one giant distributed casino. Why would you say crooked exchanges are doomed to fail - and on any particular time horizon?
> Final words, how long must a market remain irrational before your prospectus is wrong about the market being irrational? The paradox is if you answer infinity, you may be "right" but you're still wrong.
This is a total non sequitur.
Nothing you've said is representative of the way markets actually operate here in reality, and you've provided incorrect and dangerous advice.
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The vast majority of equities by value are not penny stocks or meme stocks.
The average P/E ratio of U.S. stocks is 38, meaning if the value of a stock really is primarily based on its ability to produce an external source of revenue, it would take 38 years for an investor to recoup the cost of a share of a company. When you adjust for 2% inflation, it would take 117 years for someone to recoup the cost. Since that exceeds the lifespan of well over 99% of the population, it must follow that…
It's not that simple.
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This gets to the heart of the issue with these discussions - people like yourself asserting non-factual statements based on the equally (if not more so) incorrect assertions they hear from others. Where are your sources? Why do you feel like you need to state things as fact when you just don't like something? You are exactly incorrect. Cash represents the overwhelming supermajority of laundered funds and ongoing cred…
I didn't state any facts. I started with "I bet" and included "must be". Those are pretty clear opinion markers. Your reply is also confused. Is the majority of money laundering denominated in USD and other real currencies? I'd believe it, because that's where the money is. But I'm saying the proportion of Bitcoin transactions that are fincrime-related is surely much higher than that of total USD transactions. This s…
> The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2 - 5% of global GDP, or $800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars. Due to the clandestine nature of money-laundering, it is however difficult to estimate the total amount of money that goes through the laundering cycle.
From Treasury via ABA Banking Journal (https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2015/06/treasury-u-s-money-la... and https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/2018NMLRA_12-18.p...):
> The United States continues to estimate that domestic financial crime, excluding tax evasion, generates approximately $300 billion of proceeds for potential laundering, based on the sources and analysis cited in the 2015 NMLRA. Criminal prosecutions and law enforcement investigations indicate that most of the money earned from crime in the United States stays in the United States, but also that the United States is an attractive destination for illicit funds generated abroad.
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I didn't state any facts. I started with "I bet" and included "must be". Those are pretty clear opinion markers. Your reply is also confused. Is the majority of money laundering denominated in USD and other real currencies? I'd believe it, because that's where the money is. But I'm saying the proportion of Bitcoin transactions that are fincrime-related is surely much higher than that of total USD transactions. This s…
From https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/overview.htm... > The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2 - 5% of global GDP, or $800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars. Due to the clandestine nature of money-laundering, it is however difficult to estimate the total amount of money that goes through the laundering cycle. From Treasury via ABA Banking Journal ( https://bankingjo…