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Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

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Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#171

Post by bduerst »

babyshake wrote: post #161
almost wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boy are we going to look stupid when a non-scam crypto use comes out! Total egg on our collective faces! One of these days! I mean obviously not today, but soon, right?

Setting aside other ways crypto can and is being used, the most interesting thing about DeFi IMO is its compositional (and decompositional) nature. This mostly results in reinventing things that already existed in Wall St and other areas of the finance world, but are now available for anyone to use.

Can you give specific examples of these 'things' though?

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#172

Post by danbruc »

ryanSrich wrote: post #162
xmonkee wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me what you're buying.

My most recent PC build was created entirely from parts bought on Newegg.com. Newegg accepts bitcoin as payment. We're not in 2009 anymore where people only buy drugs with Bitcoin.

Does Newegg do anything with the Bitcoins or are they immediately converting them into Dollars?

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#173

Post by bduerst »

sumeno wrote: post #166
ryanSrich wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is me taking some bitcoin and purchasing something online instantly with near zero fees a scam? Please explain with precise language how that is a scam. That's a use case. Now tell me how it's a scam.

If you’re using bitcoin you aren’t purchasing anything instantly. Transaction confirmation is currently taking ~7 minutes.

Rule of thumb is you have to wait ~20 minutes (two blocks) for the verification.

That's a long time to hold up the line at the grocery check out.

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#174

Post by bduerst »

danbruc wrote: post #172
ryanSrich wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My most recent PC build was created entirely from parts bought on Newegg.com. Newegg accepts bitcoin as payment. We're not in 2009 anymore where people only buy drugs with Bitcoin.

Does Newegg do anything with the Bitcoins or are they immediately converting them into Dollars?

IIRC Newegg is using Bitpay, which costs ~1% and settles to USD daily. It also means no refunds allowed (even in USD) to the customer using it, only store credit.

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#175

Post by BLKNSLVR »

floodyberry- wrote: post #144
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much smoke billows off Wall Street though? Didn't that particular garbage fire get re-lit surprisingly soon after the GFC? I'm somewhat pro-crypto for it's anti-establishment roots (which are barely visible these days) and so I find it interesting that the standard it's held to is much higher than that for existing 'finance' - for which the bar is incredibly low, seemingly for the only reason that society has dev…

"finance is corrupt" doesn't work in favor of crypto because insofar as crypto addresses the issue, it only allows finance to be even _more_ corrupt

I genuinely think cryptocurrency makes transparent what 'finance' (and the powers attached to it) would prefer remain opaque.

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#176

Post by notahacker »

yellow_postit wrote: post #139
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #69

Where is the $100 million going to come from? Do they have that much money to spare? Or are their customers about to take a haircut? On that topic, where does BlockFi's profit come from? They're offering 9% (previously 12%) interest on deposits. Are they really re-loaning that money to other people at the 20-30% interest rate required to produce those returns (high interest rates come with high default rates, so you…

Loans have max 50% LTV and their loan rates are at least 4.5%. They must be reinvesting elsewhere similar to other bank models just a lot riskier, more opaque, and less regulation (for now). They’ve meaningfully cut interest rates over time as well often in response to market volatility.

Not sure borrow at 9% to lend at 4.5% is that similar to bank business models...

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#177

Post by freemint »

discodave wrote: post #136
celticninja wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company spins news to make itself look good. Nothing new here, definitely nothing unique to cryptocurrency companies.

Do you have any examples of non-crypto companies trying to spin a $100MM fine as "pioneering efforts in securing regulatory clarity"? I know companies spin, but this is next level.

It spins so hard, if you attached an electric generator you could power all the bitcoin miners. /Joke

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#178

Post by jiggawatts »

ryanSrich wrote: post #109
Animats wrote: post #74

Basically, the Investment Act of 1934 says: 1. You have to file a prospectus (an S-1) before collecting money. 2. You have to disclose a lot of stuff, like who's really behind this, where the money goes, what the risks are, what's happened so far, and what the business plan is. 3. Lying in an S-1 is a crime. Crypto schemes tend to violate 1), because 2) would show that their scheme is a scam, and if they tried to cov…

Conflating anything related to crypto as a scam is just lazy and anti-intellectual. This is one of HN's weakest traits IMO. I find great value in following topics and threads on HN, but it's unrelenting hate for crypto and crypto adjacent topics is unfounded.

https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g

A rant over two hours long about the endless grift and unfettered scamming that is crypto.

Two hours, and it doesn’t even cover all of it.

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#179

Post by shemnon42 »

bduerst wrote: post #171
babyshake wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside other ways crypto can and is being used, the most interesting thing about DeFi IMO is its compositional (and decompositional) nature. This mostly results in reinventing things that already existed in Wall St and other areas of the finance world, but are now available for anyone to use.

Can you give specific examples of these 'things' though?

Becoming a market maker, liquidity pools, yield farming, flash loans (short term borrowing of lots of money)

Re: Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration

#180

Post by sumeno »

ryanSrich wrote: post #162
xmonkee wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me what you're buying.

My most recent PC build was created entirely from parts bought on Newegg.com. Newegg accepts bitcoin as payment. We're not in 2009 anymore where people only buy drugs with Bitcoin.

I love having to file taxes documents for every transaction I make. Great currency
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