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

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

#401

Post by matheusmoreira »

Karunamon wrote: post #199
matheusmoreira wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone loans you BTC, the supply of BTC has not increased. True when someone does it, false when a fractional reserve bank does it. When someone loans money to someone else, money physically changes hands and there is no concept of a reserve. Banks are able to maintain the illusion of full reserves even though they operate in a state of perpetual insolvency.

Please explain the mechanism by which a "bank" is able to transfer to you an amount of BTC that they do not have wallet control over? This is a critical difference. A bank can loan you fiat money that they do not physically have, with the almost always correct assumption that most people won't want to convert that database entry into cash at the same time. This is not possible with bitcoin. Either the bank has the co…

> Please explain the mechanism by which a "bank" is able to transfer to you an amount of BTC that they do not have wallet control over?

They change a number in their database. All they have to do is edit the entry that records how many BTC you have in your account.

Whether you can actually withdraw those funds is a completely different matter. They're totally available for trading though.

> the almost always correct assumption that most people won't want to convert that database entry into cash at the same time

> This is not possible with bitcoin

It is. Most people do not withdraw bitcoin either.

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

#402

Post by ipython »

mrb wrote: post #344
mgfist wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's actually a pretty bad transactional currency because it costs so much to transfer btc. So it's kinda the opposite, where people mostly hold it instead of transacting. The argument for a store of value is that of gold but easier to store and transfer, better security etc.. Whether it's a good one is for you to judge.

"costs so much to transfer btc" That's not true. The typical credit card processing fee ranges from about 1.3% to 3.5%. Average international remittance fees are about 7%. For comparison the average Bitcoin fee is about $1 right now, so 1% on a $100 transaction. So Bitcoin compares favorably to its competitors.

So for that bitcoin fee, I get fraud protection too? So as a consumer I can challenge a fraudulent charge? And the money, it doesn’t leave my account until I say so? Oh wait no? I get none of those guarantees? Just a “good luck! Buyer beware!”

No thank you. I’ll stick with my credit card. If I want to pay for something semi anonymously I’ll use cash.

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

#404

Post by matheusmoreira »

MadcapJake wrote: post #356
matheusmoreira wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said what happened to Luna can't happen to BTC because the BTC supply is capped. It's not. The inability to mine new BTC doesn't actually matter. The pseudobanks we call exchanges are still able to introduce numberless BTC into circulation through loans. The result is inflation and possibly market crashes in case of defaults. Really no different from what Tether and every other bank is doing. I've written more de…

Laymen here: How can they introduce numberless BTC? I thought that was the crux of what makes this different from fiat: you can only transact from one address to another, no institution in between.

I've written more detailed posts here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31375366

Accounting tricks, basically. They say you have BTC in your account when in fact your deposit is tied up in investments, loans.

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

#405

Post by Sebb767 »

eric_cc wrote: post #130
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no possible way that trillions of new bitcoins could suddenly be created. That's a slightly strong perspective; it is not impossible; it is merely extremely hard.

> it is merely extremely hard. Care to elaborate how it could be done? Even if it were to happen, which it could not, the chain would fork from the moment before the hack and continue on without the hack.

> Care to elaborate how it could be done?

Either someone puts up an enormous amount of computational power to flood the chain or someone finds a fatal flaw in sha256 and uses that to flood the chain. The former is basically impossible, the latter is just very unlikely. Either way, if someone manages that feat, we can consider Bitcoin practically broken.

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

#406

Post by vmception »

jtbayly wrote: post #374
vmception wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are transaction IDs to the exchanges There wont be transaction IDs after that because its not onchain You and the community could ask for an audit by an accounting firm like Deloitte, like the rest of the business world uses, itll come out a quarter or two from now leaving us all in exactly the same spot for now. The transparency expectations make almost no sense or lack inspiration.

Please explain why I should believe that the money was used for this purpose in a field where every other example I can find is a scam. It seems incredibly unreasonable to assume that these particular people are goodies, when everybody they are with are baddies.

1) Not everything bad is the same bad thing

2) Try stepping outside of your filter bubble. There are some websites that let you browse the internet within a different filter bubble to see how different it is

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

#407

Post by bcrosby95 »

newguynewphone wrote: post #240
dayvid wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Looked deeper into it. It's a really weird story, where it looks like they got hacked ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/russian-c... ), he tried to fake financial data to make it look like they had money, and he got caught. In the end, he's making more money off of lying and the original investors are screwed. That's really lame. It's also unfortunate, because a lot of the vibe I get from cry…

Every crypto nut I have interacted with, will call you all sort of derogatory terms if you don't agree that web3 is the future and if a scam happens on any exchange, its because the user were stupid to trust them. Zero accountability for the scammers and fraudsters, it's always the "stupid" users fault.

Well I guess it depends upon how you define "nut". I know several people that are big into crypto (we call them "true believers"), and look at scams failing as good things for the long term health of the system, while not blaming the victims, and they don't get particularly offended if you don't believe in web3 or crypto.

If your definition of crypto nut is that they yell at you if you disagree with them, then yeah, by definition there will be no reasonable crypto nuts.

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

#408

Post by wallacoloo »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #102
eric_cc wrote: 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?

> Too many people falsely equate "Bitcoin === Crypto".. or "a fan of bitcoin is a fan of all crypto". It pretty much is. I can open the price graph for any coin and assume the bitcoin movements are similar. Small dip in bitcoin price? Alts get destroyed. Even ethereum gets destroyed.

Eth fell by about 10% relative to BTC pretty much immediately as the Terra/Luna stuff went south. yeah, there's absolutely connections between all the different currencies out there, but they're not equal strength. it's hard to draw good conclusions from price data just because there's so little of it. the last year's been stable with Eth:BTC confined to within 0.06 - 0.08. but zoom out just one more year and the range triples. over more meaningful durations, the different currencies show a lot less correlation.

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

#409

Post by [deleted] »

Strom wrote: post #383
nradov wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

El Salvador is a failed state about to default on its national debt. It's not a real "government" in the way that most of us would define the term.

What criteria of the definition doesn't El Salvador fulfill?

[deleted]

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

#410

Post by jpmattia »

vkou wrote: post #388
jpmattia wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banking left unregulated turns into this mess time and time again. And yet, regulated banking also turns into a mess time and time again.

Into a mess for who? Depositors? Could you summarize how much money depositors across the entire United States lost to bank busts over the past, say 40 years? And how does it stand up, compared to the crypto-of-the-month scams, losses, and exchange busts?

> Could you summarize how much money depositors across the entire United States lost to bank busts over the past, say 40 years?

Nominal or actual? Just the Federal Savings and Loan crisis + the TARP bailouts were billions from the dilution of dollars.

And that's just the US.

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