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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

#271

Post by Out_of_Characte »

cycomanic wrote: post #266
redox99 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. It's funny…

You can't sell things on a website if paypal blocks you. Money does not work here, crypto does. also, how do you convert your blocked paypal account into cash? cash and online banking are two different things.

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

#272

Post by cuteboy19 »

cowtools wrote: post #83
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use cryptocurrency, however I don't remember ever working on, particiapting in, or endorsing Celcius. Celcius is not decentralized, it is not a community led-project, it is not free/open source software. So who is "they"? It's obvious to me that the type of person who endorses something like celcius just sees cryptocurrency as a free money machine, and does not actually have real princples regarding decentralizatio…

Celcius Binance etc are part and parcel of the crypto world, where you like it or not

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

#273

Post by cuteboy19 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #263
a2tech wrote: post #2

gasp I'm shocked, absolutely SHOCKED, that people involved in crypto would be scam artists.

I'm not sure that quite follows. Yes, cryptocurrencies are currently a wild west, and there are a lot of scams, but I don't think it's fair to paint the whole space with the brush of a single particularly-blatant scam. It's like... when the whole Theranos thing came crashing down, it wouldn't be fair to say "well of course, most claimed medical advances are scams"; Theranos was a scam, and had some fairly major signs…

P(scam/crypto)=99.99%

P(scam/medical)=0.3%

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

#274

Post by sgammon »

tekknik wrote: post #257
sgammon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? Candidly I don't know what you mean, so I will share this anecdote about gold in trucks: there is a building in downtown Chicago, built at the height of the mob days, with an elevator which can lift an entire (full) armored car. It can lift it several stories up, into the building, where the bank can unload it safely without risk of robbery. Also, of course, you can't actually steal bitcoin, you can merely steal th…

I can insure gold, bitcoin is much more difficult to insure. In fact, I can have my gold stored in a secure facility that I don’t own yet still retain full ownership rights.

yes, you sure can, but that's just a matter of delegated custody; the facility that stores it for you is acting as your agent.

bitcoin is harder to insure because guaranteeing the safety of keys remains a challenge.

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

#275

Post by aydyn »

RC_ITR wrote: post #249
aydyn wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). This statement supports exactly the opposite of the point you're trying to make. Think about it: * Bankers have economic incentive to work at a bank (the salary) * Validators have economic incentive…

Uhh, do bankers get paid for not doing their job? My point is that by the same logic then banks are also trustless.

> Uhh, do bankers get paid for not doing their job?

> My point is that by the same logic then banks are also trustless.

There's no logical connect with what you're saying at all. Ethereum is "trustless" because nobody can steal ETH from a properly secured wallet, not even the validators.

You should probably understand the basics of how validators work before making a comment on them....

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

#276

Post by maccard »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #228
maccard wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not a crypto fanatic but credit and debit cards are very susceptible to fraud

Absolutely, as much as any other payment method. Meanwhile there are consumer protections available for them. One phonecall and a form will pretty much instantly reverse a debit card, credit card, or direct debit transaction with any bank in Europe. On more than one occasion this has happened to me and it's taken less than 15 minutes to resolve.

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

#277

Post by maccard »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #260
tekknik wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in those cases the user gets their money back. This isn’t the case with crypto.

People with time get their money back. People without it get nothing back. And that’s not even mentioning the legal scams like overdraft charges… I’m just saying, the existing system sucks too.

It's not that much time, and frankly you need the time with any method. The last time it happened to me, my card provider noticed the transactions, blocked the card and phoned me to ask if I made them.

The time before, I phoned my bank and told them I had a charge I didn't recognize, they asked me to fill in a form and refunded me within 48 hours.

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

#278

Post by cycomanic »

Out_of_Characte wrote: post #271
cycomanic wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's funny…

You can't sell things on a website if paypal blocks you. Money does not work here, crypto does. also, how do you convert your blocked paypal account into cash? cash and online banking are two different things.

Where did we talk about selling online? Also you can sell online using cash, i.e. one person sends cash the other sends the goods (Mullvad for example sells the VPN services with cash). True most online places don't accept cash, but most also don't accept crypto either, and lets not even talk about physical places.

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

#279

Post by dale_glass »

dougk16 wrote: post #224
dale_glass wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is bad at money transfers. It's low capacity. That's why nobody is using BTC to pay for pizza anymore. It's also bad at privacy, since the architecture for most crypto systems relies on storing a permanent, non-modifiable public ledger. Your usage case doesn't really work because almost nobody cares about that. You'll find a few idealists interested in that, and a very few people that need to transact with som…

Monero and other less well-known currencies solve all of that. You can say it's bad or useless for other reasons. But my direct experience with dozens of P2P transfers, outside exchanges, both paying people for products and services and being paid myself, is enough for me to know that the future involves private cryptocurrencies one way or another. It may be akin to the taboo nature of torrenting movies at some point…

Yeah, and pretty much nobody cares:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm...

20K transactions per day currently? A single city would have more transactions than that just from people having breakfast in the morning. And these are world-wide stats.

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

#280

Post by tcgv »

tekknik wrote: post #258
tcgv wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good argument, but notice what I'm saying is that stealing the bitcoin wallet keys is the only known way to steal bitcoins (I'm not saying bitcoins cannot be stolen, nor that it would be wrong to phrase that bitcoin was stolen as the result of compromised keys). If you're hiding gold under a bed one could steal your door keys, break the door through brute force, set your door on fire, get in through the wind…

You’re getting into a semantic argument. The idea of someone stealing bitcoins, vs the keys, is an attempt to deviate from the issue/discussion at hand.

Fair point. It has gotten a bit semantic.
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