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Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

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Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#121

Post by gilrain »

ajross wrote: post #114
beders wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money have you lost from your private bank account...?

Oh, come on. Have you never lost a check? Never seen a credit card bill you can't explain? Never had an argument with your spouse over what the $2k at Costco was for? Never gotten a bill and had trouble figuring out if you've paid it or not? Accounting failings happen to all of us. The only people with perfect bank accounts are either (1) accountants themselves or (2) never really bothered to look.

No to all of that, never. I lost my debit card once along with, stupidly, my PIN (both were in my wallet, which was left somewhere). The maximum daily withdrawal was taken from ATMs that night. The next day, my bank made me whole. If that had been a crypto wallet, I’d have been out $1000 I couldn’t afford to lose.

Man, was I grateful for the human considerations built into traditional banking!

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#122

Post by omgomgomgomg »

This was an incredibly bold operation from the begining. They planned to exit one way or another, using the incorporated in the US to gain trust and the plan was not to just disappear, but file for bankruptcy as in "it happens".

It is remarkable how they used the depositors or investors money to pay for their lawyers and yet the government considers this a chapter 11 instead of 7, as if there is any way to conduct business going forward. Reputation gone, money gone, the owners gone.

Every time something like this happens, on such a scale, makes you wonder, how can so many people fall for this?

I am not sure greed is the only factor, there must be more behind it, some shrinks will have a field day.

And all the victims are now asking for a government intervention.

There is no free lunch, even mashinkis money will come at a large cost. From what I read, many lost over 100k and some lost 7 digits, certainly some shady people amongst these.

In conclusion, this was planned from the very beginning. If they could run this profitable, fine, if not, they hiding money followed by chapter 11 was the backup plan.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#123

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

tlb wrote: post #103
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Gold, for example, is not backed by people with guns. However a financial and legal system can be built on top of it, in fact it was build on top of it until 50 years ago.

Sure it is. If someone steals your gold, you can call the people with guns to arrest them and get it back to you (often). It doesn't have to work 100% of the time to be an effective deterrent.

It's the same with coins.

However fiat money must be protected by people with guns against forgery. With one exception: people in power are allowed to counterfeit it, thus robbing the common people, under protection of people with guns.

Gold and Bitcoin are immune to both types of forgery.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#124

Post by giaour »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #113
jedberg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased. How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me. The other important aspect of a working financial system is the ability for a 3rd party (courts/law enforcement) to undo transactions. Crypto makes that impossible without the cooperation of the offender.

Many traditional types of payments, such as wire transfers, cash etc. are also non-undoable. Incarceration and a variety of other tools at law enforcement's disposal are used to recover funds.

Those payment instruments are generally subject to fairly low transaction limits due to the potential for abuse. Cash is the exception there, but it's extremely inconvenient to move or store large sums of cash and nearly impossible to do so anonymously.

Crypto is unique in that transactions are immutable and do not scale in difficulty with the amount being transferred. Ransomware gangs do not choose to accept cryptocurrency payments because it aligns with their politics; they do so because it is the only way to move millions of dollars across international borders in an undoable fashion.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#125

Post by heylook »

ipaddr wrote: post #109
eropple wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me. It's literally perfect for finance Because modern legal systems and modern economies work on the assumption that malfeasance is a reason to un-do what crypto systems want to make indelible. This is an obvious and obviously good thing to people who are not absorbed by this odd groupthink. That impedance mismatch is an excellent indicator of why…

The legal system can only be used to settle payment disputes when parties are known. Buying a tv from the back of a van going home to find out it doesn't work will leave you with little legal recourse. The legal system can only work with entities within it's power. Get ripped off from a foreign supplier can require a lawsuit if available to you in an unfriendly legal system. Cryto can solve these trustless entities p…

> Get ripped off from a foreign supplier can require a lawsuit if available to you in an unfriendly legal system. Cryto can solve these trustless entities problems.

Pardon the ignorance, but, how, exactly?

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#126

Post by pazimzadeh »

ajross wrote: post #112
pazimzadeh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"according to estimates we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars"

The quote was "According to SOME estimates ...", FWIW. But even your phrasing is a far cry from the attempt to infer that it was "stolen", which is the clear implication of the hyberbole above. And in fact that was spun too, because (as you read farther down the linked debunking) the original quote was "$2.3 trillion were unsupported by reliable explanatory information and audit trails or were made to invalid general…

The video talks about "tracking" funds, there is no mention of theft or fraud.

> But to claim that all of that $2.3T was fraudulent is just a plain lie.

I didn't. But I am replying to people who may think that all of crypto is fraud.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#127

Post by fullsend »

jedberg wrote: post #33

Oh hey look the consequences of a monetary system that isn't backed by a legal system (that is backed up by people with guns). The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right. And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn't listen to the legal system, there are people with guns/violence to back that up. That's why the whole system works -…

The libertarian leaning, free market lovers on HN won’t entertain your slander. The book Debt really opened my eyes to a flow of logic demonstrating that in fact markets cannot exist without states (laws) and vice versa. That this idea of pure markets corrupted by governments is a complete fantasy invented whole cloth and worshipped by sycophants for centuries. Markets require contracts, which require laws and enforcement. That’s it.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#128

Post by [deleted] »

bogomipz wrote: post #93
jedberg wrote: post #33

Oh hey look the consequences of a monetary system that isn't backed by a legal system (that is backed up by people with guns). The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right. And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn't listen to the legal system, there are people with guns/violence to back that up. That's why the whole system works -…

>"The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right. And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn't listen to the legal system, there are people with guns/violence to back that up. That's why the whole system works -- because of the threat of violence." How many people were prosecuted for the 2008 financial crisis though? Neither did the "…

[deleted]

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#129

Post by scarmig »

heylook wrote: post #125
ipaddr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal system can only be used to settle payment disputes when parties are known. Buying a tv from the back of a van going home to find out it doesn't work will leave you with little legal recourse. The legal system can only work with entities within it's power. Get ripped off from a foreign supplier can require a lawsuit if available to you in an unfriendly legal system. Cryto can solve these trustless entities p…

> Get ripped off from a foreign supplier can require a lawsuit if available to you in an unfriendly legal system. Cryto can solve these trustless entities problems. Pardon the ignorance, but, how, exactly?

AFAICT crypto's solution to getting screwed by a trustless entity is "screw you, you deserved it for not doing due diligence."

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#130

Post by noasaservice »

jedberg wrote: post #33

Oh hey look the consequences of a monetary system that isn't backed by a legal system (that is backed up by people with guns). The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right. And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn't listen to the legal system, there are people with guns/violence to back that up. That's why the whole system works -…

> That's why the whole system works -- because of the threat of violence.

And that's what bothers me with the fetishization of "violence is not the answer".

Violence is DEFINITELY an answer. It's what state entities do on a regular basis. Now, it's not wise to rely on violence regularly, when more peaceful methods exist and are more effective.

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