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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

#211

Post by RC_ITR »

redox99 wrote: post #143
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 -…

This isn't crypto. You didn't own any crypto. Some company owned your crypto. The whole point of crypto is that you can own it (ie you and only you have your keys). We hear stories here every now and then about how their bank/paypal/etc froze their money and they are fucked. Crypto allows you to actually own your stuff. With fiat unless you hold cash, you can't do that. Crypto is about being trustless. If you give aw…

>Crypto is about being trustless.

People always say this, but you definitely have to trust that a group of unknown validators/miners/stakers will choose to keep working on your chosen chain, just as much as you have to trust that the bank will keep doing it's job as they promised you they would.

And before you say "I don't need trust, validators have economic incentive to keep doing it, and if they don't someone else will", I have something to tell you about why people choose to work at banks (it's the salary).

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

#212

Post by maccard »

redox99 wrote: post #183
browningstreet wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you safely use crypto?

With a hardware wallet where you store your seed phrase. You would never type this seed anywhere. You would store backups of this seed in something like a metal sheet that you can buy. You would be extremely careful of the numerous phishing attempts that you will encounter. Also with malicious smart contracts. And you would have a hot and cold wallet, to minimize risk.

Remember that this is an alternative to a small card that is widely accepted internationally that I can reclaim a transaction with a quick phone call.

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

#214

Post by prepend »

sgammon wrote: post #171
karamanolev wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't steal my Bitcoin if I don't deposit them with a custodian. Many people have lost their BTC and other coins to hacks, phishes, hardware failures, software failures and so on. So in the sense of the people from the general public, yes, I can steal your Bitcoin. > This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold. You can keep it under the mattress and expose yourself to one…

But you can blame gold itself for that. Gold is inherently valuable; and one flaw of inherent physical value is that it can physically change hands forcibly and, well, the bearer of that value now controls it in complete and total form. Cryptographically verified exchange is a different kind of exchange, and it has its own benefits and drawbacks. one of the benefits of this kind of exchange is that mere custody of th…

You can blame gold if it is very easy to steal. Or if owners are more likely to have it stolen, etc etc.

Crypto has certain vulnerabilities that gold doesn’t. But it also has lots of benefits.

But I don’t know of any situations where gold banks let them drive trucks of $40M in gold before they stopped customers. It’s just harder to move.

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

#215

Post by matheusmoreira »

geophile wrote: post #9

I don't follow crypto, so these are actual questions, not trolling: - If Celsius is a trading platform, how can Celsius itself owe anybody anything? - My naive understanding is that cryptocurrency, being based on blockchain, is a log of universally agreed upon, legitimate transactions. So how can there be a liquidity crisis at all, let alone one in the billions? How is the platform allowing transactions not backed by…

There is no liquidity crisis in the blockchain itself. These crises always happen to custodians which is some kind of newspeak for banks.

The fact is all of these exchanges and most of these crypto corporations are actually unregulated centralized banks in disguise. They're sitting on massive amounts of money in the form of customer deposits and you better believe they're gonna be leveraging as much of it as possible. Meanwhile everybody's accounts are showing the deposits as if all their money wasn't tied up in the bank's own investments. Someone screws up, risks a little too much and gets liquidated or called or something? Money's gone, the bank owes customers more money than it has, people notice and try to withdraw all the money all at once, the bank runs start and the liquidity crises set in.

Fractional reserve banking is at the root of this problem. You literally cannot have these issues without banks.

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

#216

Post by cdiddy2 »

redox99 wrote: post #177
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?

That's why I think Bitcoin is outdated (yes, get your pitchforks), and you really need something that can do smart contracts. Bitcoin you can hold it, transfer it, and not much more. Having smart contracts (like Ethereum) allows you to have something like Uniswap, which is decentralized and allows you to trade your coins. Yes, it's not a fiat on/offramp, but if stablecoins are actually good and backed, in the scenari…

With tBTC (v2 coming very soon), you can move you bitcoin to the ethereum chain and trade it/use all defi there and then move it back all trustlessly. So in a way it makes ethereum a layer2 for bitcoin to work off of without having to change the bitcoin base chain

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

#217

Post by cwkoss »

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.

Non custodial ownership is still an option, even if not advisable.

If my non-tech savvy grandma wanted to own some bitcoin, I'd probably suggest she just keeps it on the exchange. Counterparty risk is probably less than risk of user error.

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

#218

Post by smachiz »

notch656a wrote: post #194
smachiz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is not, and has never been, immune to forgery. Science has made it harder, but still happens all the time. See: gold plating, gold alloys, etc.

I'm not aware of any way to actually increase the total amount of real gold in/on the earth in any meaningful way in an ECONOMICAL matter (i.e. you have a net positive income from producing it). The government can make more REAL MONEY for far less than the value of the money.

That’s not forgery. That’s inflation.

You only get a net positive income for producing gold if the price is higher than the cost of production.

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

#219

Post by rkho »

geraldcombs wrote: post #37
woah wrote: post #27

This isn't crypto, it's just a shady investment fund that happened to invest in crypto

If you have enough shady people involved in a particular activity, then that activity is effectively shady. Similar to the fact that if you add enough raw sewage to the water supply, you don't have a water supply any more, you just have more sewage.

Should we segue into a discussion about the Nigerian Princes who flood our email inboxes on a daily basis?

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

#220

Post by saurik »

strangattractor wrote: post #208
__s wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it isn't programmable, and I can't easily carry large quantities of it. Is it really so crazy that some people want to use crypto? The person wasn't saying "crypto uniquely solved this problem" they were defending against someone who said "crypto is useless if you can't do this".
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