Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by danans » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

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…

> Cryto can solve these trustless entities problems. > Bank of America can do very little for your Russian payment disputes.

Didn't know crypto had a contract enforcement apparatus in Russia. How does that work?

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

#202

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #196

tazard wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the whole point. Celsius, centralized exchanges, etc, you don't actually own the crypto. You have an account on a site. If you want to own your crypto and also trade between currencies, your better off using something like Uniswap

I think you've missed the point as well. Nobody owns anything with crypto. When you give your crypto to Coinbase, there is no $250,000 FDIC insurance that comes along with it. You don't even get to know what wallet it's in, and if Coinbase decides to go sideways, they can snatch up your money with no legal consequence . You're right that part of the problem is the US failing to regulate them, but there's nothing to r…

> Nobody owns anything with crypto. When you give your crypto to Coinbase

Don't do that if you want to actually own your coins.

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

#203

Post by danans » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

pazimzadeh wrote: post #99

toomuchtodo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important to understand that crypto is not an expression of finance (although financial transactions do take place on top of crypto), but an attempt to express law outside of the bounds of IRL legal frameworks, stating, "code is law", which is of course, not true. The legal system always takes precedence when they have a monopoly on force (financial and physical), which is why crypto is destined to be a niche s…

"Code is law" is a property of Ethereum Classic, not all cryptocurrency. I don't really see many crypto people arguing that code should supersede law. I'm no expert but I understand that undo-ing transactions is pretty trivial if you use multi-sig. The owner and the bank (or government) can each have a signature, and a chargeback can occur when both signatories agree to execute it. By the way, the law already has way…

> I don't really see many crypto people arguing that code should supersede law.

Evading tax laws or conducting illicit transactions is a core appeal of crypto, and obfuscating identifiers in crypto to achieve those ends is what crypto tumblers are all about.

> I'm no expert but I understand that undo-ing transactions is pretty trivial if you use multi-sig.

Per [1] multi-sig only lets you require multiple signatures to create a transaction, reducing the chance you do something stupid, so sort of like a physical check that requires multiple physical signatures. Multi sig doesn't let you (or the other signers) reverse the transaction once it is complete.

For that, you must contact the recipient and convince them to return the crypto, hopefully by asking them nicely.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/11/10/multisignature-wall...

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

#204

Post by andrewprock » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

redox99 wrote: post #179

cwkoss wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a no true scotsman fallacy. It is crypto. It is the shallow, lazy, dangerous way of using it it, but it is still cryptocurrency.

People have been saying "not your keys, not your coins" for over a decade. This isn't anything new.

And this aphorism conflates ownership with possession. Crypto is a bad actors fantasy turned reality.

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

#205

Post by strangattractor » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

pazimzadeh wrote: post #49

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 -…

Huh? If that was true then it would be services like AAVE or Uniswap which would be bankrupt, not the centralized finance Celsius. The idea that the traditional legal system prevents funny business with money is naive. 9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU The Pentagon’s $35 Trillion Accounting Black Hole https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trilli…

Laws never prevent crime they(no gender they) only provide a mechanism to punish people who violate them. Given that there isn't a lot of existing legal framework around crypto or crypto trading it may be difficult to punish Celsius Execs. I'm no lawyer I just play one on board games. In truth the list unscrupulous crypto firms seems to grow daily. By the time crypto becomes safe and energy efficient it will be just as cumbersome as real money.

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

#206

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #59

pazimzadeh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? If that was true then it would be services like AAVE or Uniswap which would be bankrupt, not the centralized finance Celsius. The idea that the traditional legal system prevents funny business with money is naive. 9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU The Pentagon’s $35 Trillion Accounting Black Hole https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trilli…

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

Citizens in my country lost it all in the 90s. Inflation was out of control, politicians were desperate and at some point somebody decided to simply freeze everybody's assets.

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

#207

Post by strangattractor » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

tossl568 wrote: post #96

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 -…

You can't steal my Bitcoin if I don't deposit them with a custodian. This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold.

Sure people can. They simply have to encrypt and hold your data for ransom or any of the many other schemes to blackmail you. The crypto enables the perp to get that ransom across the border and evade punishment. If it wasn't for crypto such schemes are much harder to pull off.

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

#208

Post by strangattractor » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #154

itake wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of crypto is that you can own it (ie you and only you have your keys). I've also heard stories where people were locked out of exchanges during crashes, preventing liquidation, because exchanges stopped or delayed deposits during high volume trading. Its super cool that you can keep your own crypto, but if you can't trade that crypto, whats the point?

You can trade crypto in person without an exchange

We have a solution for that - it is called money and it is anonymous. I can also use it to buy things like Halloween candy at the store even when the power is out. Truly amazing invention.

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

#209

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 11:04 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #39

syntaxing wrote: post #5

Crypto is pretty much speed running our existing financial institutions’ past history.

What's hilarious to me is that crypto boosters would often cheer about how crypto doesn't "suffer" from the same things as our existing financial system (e.g. potential run on the bank in a fractional reserve system) - but then they went and built up all the same things they originally said crypto was immune from, this time with no regulations or legal framework.

They're not even wrong. Cryptocurrencies really are immune to many of these problems. You can't bank run bitcoin: there is no bank, no fractional reserve, nothing.

The issue is people keep reinventing centralized banking on top of it. Exchanges for example are actually just banks in disguise. Of course reinventing centralized banks brings forth all the problems associated with centralized banking. Problems society has already identified and remedied. All the drawbacks and none of the benefits.

The solution is of course to stop reinventing banks and start using cryptocurrency like it was meant to be used: as a currency.

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

#210

Post by analog31 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 11:04 PM UTC

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 -…

As an aside, I always point out that countries with no functioning government still have violence and the threat of violence. The earliest writings I've found that use this terminology talk about a "monopoly" on violence, and I think the distinction is important. Also, I think that such a monopoly is not self sustaining but depends to a considerable effect on maintaining its own legitimacy by acting with restraint.