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Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

bitprime.co.nz

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Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#61

Post by atleta »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

The economy of France is a device that generates the GDP. Erasing that device is not the same as taking away the (one year's worth of) product of that device. If you erase the economy of France then you erase a lot of companies doing business with a substantial fraction of the world. So you shake the whole world economy not simply through erasing some money owned by someone but business connections. You'll have a lot of companies in trouble for losing either customers or important suppliers.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#63

Post by xur17 »

Nursie wrote: post #7
toxicFork wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explain it pretty well in the article.

For some reason I missed that! This FAQ- "We don’t hold customer funds – at the time of the trade, we send the cryptocurrency directly to your wallet" I guess shows this isn't another Quadriga event. So that's good!

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they directly swap without holding customer funds (for any longer than the actual trade takes).

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#64

Post by woah »

soared wrote: post #16

Would someone mind calming me by explaining why this is not a huge red flag, this isn’t the beginning of the end, and a theoretical crypto crash won’t throw the market into turmoil (or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad)? I don’t have any kids to feed, just young dumb and tired of market crashes.

This is some random startup nobody has heard of. HN likes to work themselves into a froth over every scrap of bad crypto news, but this is utterly insignificant. Crypto will continue to fluctuate wildly as it always has.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#65

Post by atleta »

soared wrote: post #16

Would someone mind calming me by explaining why this is not a huge red flag, this isn’t the beginning of the end, and a theoretical crypto crash won’t throw the market into turmoil (or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad)? I don’t have any kids to feed, just young dumb and tired of market crashes.

I'm not positive on crypto in general, but they seem to have run of of their own money (capital) and not their customers' money. I.e. they didn't lose their customers' coins. Actually, it seems that they have never held them anyway. So it's not like a bank crash.

The service seems to have been making it possible for people to sell their coins directly to one another. (Crypto exchanges hold your crypto and don't do an actual transaction through the block chain until you withdraw what you have. Though they could still guarantee not losing your coins if they go bankrupt...)

This is what they said about it:

> Are my funds safe?

> We don’t hold customer funds – at the time of the trade, we send the cryptocurrency directly to your wallet. If you need to execute a trade at this time, other platforms can facilitate this.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#66

Post by atdrummond »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

GDP is a flow. It would be better to compare the total assets of France to Bitcoin’s market cap. France’s public stocks have a market capitalization of over $2T alone. Then there are private firms, real estate, personal and government assets, IP, etc. In short, France’s actual worth far dwarfs that of the BTC market.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#67

Post by Barrera »

soared wrote: post #16

Would someone mind calming me by explaining why this is not a huge red flag, this isn’t the beginning of the end, and a theoretical crypto crash won’t throw the market into turmoil (or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad)? I don’t have any kids to feed, just young dumb and tired of market crashes.

Exchanges are auxiliary to Bitcoin. The protocol works quite well without any need for an exchange. The exchange in question is a small-time player. Back when the biggest of the big time players, Mt Gox, went under in 2014, Bitcoin came back stronger than ever.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#68

Post by ascendantlogic »

soared wrote: post #16

Would someone mind calming me by explaining why this is not a huge red flag, this isn’t the beginning of the end, and a theoretical crypto crash won’t throw the market into turmoil (or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad)? I don’t have any kids to feed, just young dumb and tired of market crashes.

It sounds like it's a business that has run out of its own money at exactly the wrong time. There's no customer deposits on this exchange in terms of crypto accoording to their FAQ so this is a case of "startup runs out of money", not "crypto is going to zero"

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#69

Post by pavlov »

majormajor wrote: post #59
pavlov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for a practical example of how the crypto operators weave “market cap” out of nothing, read this revealing interview with Sam Bankman-Fried: https://www.ft.com/content/eac0e56c-f30b-4591-b603-f971e60dc... He’s the CEO of one of the largest and most established crypto exchanges. The interview is stunning.

How you can be in business selling this shit as non-shit when admitting the truth without having some crazy legal liability exposure problems is amazing to me. Like, FTX literally advertises "you don't need to know anything about crypto." But he says you should here!

For a lot of people, the game seems to be simply to grab the cash now and if regulators eventually come knocking, lawyer up, settle and keep most of your profits.

I remember a guy on HN a year or two ago who was very proud of the ICO he ran in 2017. The token was useless, investors lost their money, and he was fined something around a million dollars by the SEC. But to him that was a mark of pride, like he fought The Man and won. His excuse for scamming investors was basically “startups fail too, I’m a founder.”

The toxic startup hustle exemplified by Uber and some other companies ten years ago directly led to the utter moral collapse in crypto.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#70

Post by rabuse »

woah wrote: post #64
soared wrote: post #16

Would someone mind calming me by explaining why this is not a huge red flag, this isn’t the beginning of the end, and a theoretical crypto crash won’t throw the market into turmoil (or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad)? I don’t have any kids to feed, just young dumb and tired of market crashes.

This is some random startup nobody has heard of. HN likes to work themselves into a froth over every scrap of bad crypto news, but this is utterly insignificant. Crypto will continue to fluctuate wildly as it always has.

Yeah, never heard of this exchange before.
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