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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

#491

Post by ethanbond »

eric_cc wrote: post #98
ethanbond wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these are good opportunities to bolster the credibility of BTC et al., the community must just do a very poor job of capitalizing on those opportunities. It is strictly a bad look to have headline after headline affiliating this entire economic sector with fraud, and frankly the shills’ reactions just make the headlines even more unflattering.

> headline after headline This has more to do with media and social media thought bubbles. This is no different than any other topic in the news. There are highly intelligent takes out there. But click bait, trolling, and confirmation bias bs rises to the top in certain areas of media and social media.

Eh, not really. I know plenty of people first and secondhand who are happy to describe their own participation in or creation of, effectively, scams. Arguably one could call them casino games at best. The dynamics of a speculation-ridden and mostly non-regulated industry makes such moves compelling and easy to rationalize.

I too thought there were some interesting “real” things that must be going on somewhere, and surely there are. I figured if there’s one place to find it — or one place it must be found for the sake of the system — it’d be the stablecoins. Then you read into e.g. Tether and realize not only is that a scam, but it’s a transparently obvious one.

Again, very bad look for the entire sector.

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

#492

Post by rollcat »

hacker_newz wrote: post #370
rollcat wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From [1]: > GUSD is an Ethereum ERC-20 token Last time I checked (EVERY time I checked), Ethereum was still based on proof of waste. My thoughts are the same as they've been for many years straight, on everything crypto-"currency": it's a massive scam at best; more realistically, along with everything else in the proof of waste category, somewhere on the top 10 list of things most harmful to all life on Earth. I don'…

This really doesn't add to the discussion. Can you provide a more nuanced take other than 'crypto is a scam'?

I will quote someone far more informed and eloquent:

> So the stock market and the bond market are a positive-sum game. There are more winners than losers. Cryptocurrency starts with zero-sum. So it starts with a world where there can be no more winning than losing. We have systems like this. It’s called the horse track. It’s called the casino. Cryptocurrency investing is really provably gambling in an economic sense. And then there’s designs where those power bills have to get paid somewhere. So instead of zero-sum, it becomes deeply negative-sum.

> Effectively, then, the economic analogies are gambling and a Ponzi scheme. Because the profits that are given to the early investors are literally taken from the later investors. This is why I call the space overall, a “self-assembled” Ponzi scheme. There’s been no intent to make a Ponzi scheme. But due to its nature, that is the only thing it can be.

As I said, a massive scam would've been the best case scenario. The reality seems far worse. https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env...

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

#493

Post by estsauver »

slv77 wrote: post #137
foobiekr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what metric are things oversold? Valuations are still crazy by most perspectives, price/earnings, debt/revenue, etc. etc. etc. Expect more losses.

Even if nobody is bullish on the fundamentals there will still be short sellers looking to cover short positions which can drive markets up. One of the benefits of allowing shorting of stocks is that it provides liquidity even in the worst of times.

Why would short sellers be needing to sell positions during a crash? The market has been dropping so a significant number of these short sellers won't have to sell.

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

#494

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

Karunamon wrote: post #485
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? BTC that's in an offline wallet is like cash under the bed; and you're right that no-one is lending money that they have under the bed. However, a significant number of BTC owners don't keep their money in their own wallets - they keep it at an exchange, which almost certainly commin…

That still is not the same thing. Coins in an exchange can only be traded for other coins in the same exchange - it's effectively KrakenBTC or BinanceBTC or [...]. Unlike fiat money in a bank, these exchange balances exist only in their walled gardens and cannot be exchanged for goods or services, effectively decoupling them from the total supply. The total supply of bitcoin is the sum of all unspent transaction outp…

>Unlike fiat money in a bank, these exchange balances exist only in their walled gardens and cannot be exchanged for goods or services, effectively decoupling them from the total supply.

These are demand deposits with the exchanges/shadow-banks. You can (at least with some products; others look more like time deposits) withdraw your deposit at any time. This seems basically the same as a bank account where you can withdraw money at any time to buy goods or services.

I visit my "bank". I deposit my "currency" in a demand deposit account. I receive regular interest payments. My "bank" lends my "currency" to other people, in exchange for interest; presumably making a profit on the net interest margin. I can return to my "bank" at any time to withdraw my "currency".

How is this not credit creation? How is, e.g., Binance not operating as an unregulated shadow-bank without any kind of deposit insurance?

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

#495

Post by jtbayly »

vmception wrote: post #443
jtbayly wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you haven't given a single reason to think this actually happened. I suppose there must not be one.

Alright. Fine, I'll concede its fine to be skeptical of their actions, I just don't care enough because of the other bigger ways that it doesn't make a difference for the burned user. Okay, people are out for blood from someone they trusted that did a bunch of dumb things extremely transparently while undiscerning users chose to ignore that. So they want to find a bad opaque thing now to justify their anger and legal…

Oh, I couldn’t care less, personally. It means nothing to me. I lost nothing because I assume essentially all crypto is a scam. I was honestly curious if there is any reason to assume this wasn’t just another scam.

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

#496

Post by jtbayly »

codebolt wrote: post #472
vmception wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. Fine, I'll concede its fine to be skeptical of their actions, I just don't care enough because of the other bigger ways that it doesn't make a difference for the burned user. Okay, people are out for blood from someone they trusted that did a bunch of dumb things extremely transparently while undiscerning users chose to ignore that. So they want to find a bad opaque thing now to justify their anger and legal…

> difference for the burned user They could've used the money to reimburse UST holders at the time the peg was broken.

That’s an interesting point. It might indeed have made a difference what they did with it… at least for a little while.

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

#497

Post by low_tech_love »

vmception wrote: post #443
jtbayly wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you haven't given a single reason to think this actually happened. I suppose there must not be one.

Alright. Fine, I'll concede its fine to be skeptical of their actions, I just don't care enough because of the other bigger ways that it doesn't make a difference for the burned user. Okay, people are out for blood from someone they trusted that did a bunch of dumb things extremely transparently while undiscerning users chose to ignore that. So they want to find a bad opaque thing now to justify their anger and legal…

It’s just the irony of it that is interesting to me. I personally don’t think UST was a scam; but I find there is a real possibility they saved themselves in the end. Like you said it doesn’t really matter much, but it’s interesting that all these revolutionary ideas who attract so many people end up back at square one all the time. It’s like a communist who gets some money/power and becomes basically the same or worse than a normal capitalist kingpin. I think people need to be a bit more humble and understand that Rome wasn’t built in a day and certainly not by a single person.

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

#498

Post by twox2 »

vkou wrote: post #396
FabHK wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Venezuelan could also own dollar/euro denominated assets or commodities. If they're allowed to. Which underscores that the true innovation of Bitcoin is to circumvent rules and regulations.

Why would they be allowed to own BTC but not USD? How are they going to buy groceries with their BTC? Pay rent? Taxes? Go to the local black market and exchange it for local currency? You can do that just fine with USD, too. Does doing black-market deals in BTC somehow make you immune to arrest, prosecution, and execution?

With BTC they can get their money out of Venezuela by memorizing several words. With USD, they can't.

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

#499

Post by jpmattia »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #458
jpmattia wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FSL crisis was caused by wild-west deregulation, accounting practices which have since been banned, and resulted in a thousand convictions. I'm guessing you did not live through it: Like 2008, there were many causes. See eg the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Causes But you also missed the heart of the matter: Money that was lost in the US, despite it having a regulated banking syste…

> was lost in the US, despite it having a regulated banking system This is a straw man. Nobody claimed nobody in a regulated system ever loses money.

> Nobody claimed nobody in a regulated system ever loses money.

Only if you read the above questions literally and miss his meaning:

> 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?

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

#500

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jpmattia wrote: post #499
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was lost in the US, despite it having a regulated banking system This is a straw man. Nobody claimed nobody in a regulated system ever loses money.

> Nobody claimed nobody in a regulated system ever loses money. Only if you read the above questions literally and miss his meaning: > 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?

The S&L crisis was a “crisis” because non-bank S&Ls lost money in a way depositors haven’t. You have still not pointed to a single American depositor losing money since 1982, though I’d extend that to the post-War era.
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