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$3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

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271–280 of 540 posts

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real banks practice fractional-reserve banking, where they are required to hold a percentage of assets as cash or central bank deposits. It's well-regulated and diversified. It's audited. Individual account holders' deposits are insured (FDIC in the US). This is all well-known and understood and reliable. Runs can still happen, shady accounting practices can still happen, and sometimes banks fail. Sometimes they fail…

> They claim that 100% of the assets are backed by US dollar cash deposits. Still? (ie link?) All I see is: “All Tether tokens are pegged at 1-to-1 with a matching fiat currency and are backed 100% by Tether's reserves.” (link here: https://tether.to/en/transparency/ )

Yeah, they continuously try to rewrite history. The original whitepaper directly stated "Each tether issued into circulation will be backed in a one to one ratio with the equivalent amount of corresponding fiat currency held in reserves by Hong Kong based Tether Limited."

For further reading, see the CFTC settlement

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#272
post #163
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'this is good for bitcoin' A total ponzi scam coin crashed. This IS good for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not Luna nor is it one of the thousands of other garbage scam coins. The faster those coins are proven scams the better. Too many people falsely equate "Bitcoin === Crypto".. or "a fan of bitcoin is a fan of all crypto". So I'd bounce this back to you: How is Luna's Ponzi crash NOT good for bitcoin?

Next you will be suggesting that Tether crashing will be good for bitcoin...

It will be, on a long enough time scale.

I have USD sitting in an account waiting for that to happen, in fact.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#273
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the argument why crypto was a good store of value. Sure, it’s an ingenious new transactional system, making global payments mostly frictionless, etc, but that’s true whether the value of 1 Bitcoin is $1 or $50,000. If everyone’s just converting back to fiat anyway, only keeping enough BTC transiently to settle transactions, why hold it long term?

If the transient use of a cryptocurrency is increasing, the demand for it will be, and the price will follow. If the price is increasing fast enough, it could be worth holding. The same is true of any money or asset used for payments/settling debts (like gold or silver).

Only if people hold it for the transaction for a significant length of time. If people want to get out ASAP, then the faster that transactions happen, the less demand for bitcoin there will be.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Institutional actors are transacting via backchannels. As in, they are keeping funds on centralized exchanges? Users can do the exact same thing if they want, not sure I get your point.

See the original comment: the point is that there's no actual way to verify the central claim ("$3B in Bitcoin was sold [...]"). We're expected to take everyone's word for it. This is in marked contrast to how two arbitrary users are expected to transact via a blockchain.

How would you verify that something was sold outside of a blockchain? The receiver of the item would need to prove it's in their possession, which is pretty easy on BTC.

I guess I'm not sure how you get from that to privacy only being achievable by institutions?

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “In a sense, the market is going to take that as kind of bullish.” I mean everything is a bit oversold right now on negative emotions, both in the crypto space and in the stock markets. There's probably going to be a positive bounce just because markets don't move in straight lines. There is always the chance that something else explodes due to stress tomorrow and hits the headlines and crypto and/or stocks start m…

"everything is a bit oversold right now on negative emotions" No!!! The Fed is raising rates. That is reality. That is not an emotion. That is absolute economic fact. Inflation is high and will remain high for at least a year (maybe longer). The period from 2008 to 2022 is going to be remembered as an abnormal period when we experienced abnormally low rates. The low rates fueled speculation, and bid up certain stocks…

The emotion is the entirely predictable market overreaction to rate changes we all knew would eventually be coming. Market swings are drastically out of proportion to the actual impact these rate changes will have on the underlying businesses. In both directions. It's ALL emotion.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luna crashed because people lost trust in it. The only reason people have trust in BTC is because other people have trust in it. If that ever changed, there is no actual use for a BTC, and they are thus intrinsically worthless. Fiat currency has the backing of a government. The government demands certain payments of this currency in order to own land, and also for some extra rights like mineral extraction, fishing li…

> Luna crashed because people lost trust in it. No. It crashed because trillions of tokens were created rendering each token worthless.

You have it backwards. The trillions of tokens were created because people lost trust in it. Specifically, the loss of trust instigated the price drop from $1 to ~98¢. That's what started the collapse. Only afterwards did the "death spiral" of minting of more tokens, which degraded trust, which decreased the price, which drove more minting, etc. happen

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “In a sense, the market is going to take that as kind of bullish.” I mean everything is a bit oversold right now on negative emotions, both in the crypto space and in the stock markets. There's probably going to be a positive bounce just because markets don't move in straight lines. There is always the chance that something else explodes due to stress tomorrow and hits the headlines and crypto and/or stocks start m…

"everything is a bit oversold right now on negative emotions" No!!! The Fed is raising rates. That is reality. That is not an emotion. That is absolute economic fact. Inflation is high and will remain high for at least a year (maybe longer). The period from 2008 to 2022 is going to be remembered as an abnormal period when we experienced abnormally low rates. The low rates fueled speculation, and bid up certain stocks…

> The era of low rates is over. It is possible that you might live another 100 years and never again see a 14 year stretch where rates average as low as they did from 2008 to 2022.

Goodness, I hope not. The amount of progress we've seen in these years has been astounding. Deep learning, SpaceX, smart phones. I felt like things had gotten stagnant, then we truly started hitting our stride.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#278
post #4

"Sold" It's hard to show that they really sold these coins. Certainly, the LFG transferred the coins to some different exchanges. But did they truly sell them? If I was running a dodgy ponzi scheme and saw it collapsing catastrophically, I don't think I'd be throwing good money after bad trying to futilely patch it up. Much better to stash the remaining assets away somewhere and personally cash out later on. Also, “I…

>In a sense, the market is going to take that as kind of bullish. The Levenshtein distance from bullish to bullshit is only 3.

And the distance between love and glove is only 1.. who cares ?

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “In a sense, the market is going to take that as kind of bullish.” I mean everything is a bit oversold right now on negative emotions, both in the crypto space and in the stock markets. There's probably going to be a positive bounce just because markets don't move in straight lines. There is always the chance that something else explodes due to stress tomorrow and hits the headlines and crypto and/or stocks start m…

"everything is a bit oversold right now on negative emotions" No!!! The Fed is raising rates. That is reality. That is not an emotion. That is absolute economic fact. Inflation is high and will remain high for at least a year (maybe longer). The period from 2008 to 2022 is going to be remembered as an abnormal period when we experienced abnormally low rates. The low rates fueled speculation, and bid up certain stocks…

I think there are going to be two periods remembered in 2008-2022. The 2008-2012-15 where interest rates were made low to prevent a depression and it worked. The the 2012-15-2022 period where interest rates were kept abnormally low because politicians didn't want to be blamed for hurting the stock market causing a bubble that pops when interest rates are forced to rise.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real banks practice fractional-reserve banking, where they are required to hold a percentage of assets as cash or central bank deposits. It's well-regulated and diversified. It's audited. Individual account holders' deposits are insured (FDIC in the US). This is all well-known and understood and reliable. Runs can still happen, shady accounting practices can still happen, and sometimes banks fail. Sometimes they fail…

In the US, the required reserve ratio has been 0% since March 2020. I personally wouldn't view the traditional financial system as about as trustworthy as things get.

When was the last time anyone lost the money in their checking account due to a bank failing in the US?
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