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FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

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Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#281
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All crypto currencies are a ponzi scheme. Change my mind.

Ponzi schemes by definition use opaque ledgers. Ponzi schemes are custodial. Ponzi schemes guarantee returns. There exist Ponzi schemes which have disguised themselves as cryptocurrencies, but the idea that all cryptocurrencies are Ponzi schemes demonstrates a complete ignorance of what a Ponzi scheme is.

> Ponzi schemes by definition use opaque ledgers.

Why? To me a ponzi scheme is where the earlier "investors" get paid out with the money of later "investors". That's it. By that definition it's quite the "decentralized", somewhat stochastic ponzi.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#282
Absolutely bullshit. Fried's parents are helping him build a defense against jail time for breach of fiduciary duty and embezzlement while his team coincidentally gets "hacked". Hacks are quickly becoming strategic fail-safes against corporate incompetence and useful as backroom data sales.

The promise of cryptographic currency was that we have the power. These exchanges by design sap that power for a promise that now seems illusionary at best and a massive liability at worst.

FINRA and the SEC need to charge Fried and his executive team immediately and begin the process of tearing apart that exchange.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#283

For comparison - a regulated traditional finance entity: On October 31, 2011, MF Global executives admitted that transfer of $700 million from customer accounts to the broker-dealer and a loan of $175 million in customer funds to MF Global's U.K. subsidiary to cover (or mask) liquidity shortfalls at the company occurred on October 28, 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Global

One key difference is the following:

> In January 2013, a judge approved a settlement that would return 93 percent of customers' investments, with the prospect of additional payouts from the company's general estate.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#284
post #270

Regardless of whether you are pro- or anti- crypto, the collapse of FTX, SBF's bubble bursting in a rather extreme fashion, and now this hack are more nails in the coffin for mainstream support. I am no fan of crypto myself, but it's interesting to think what would have to happen for crypto to burnish its image. Would key people have to voluntarily form some sort of coordinating council and self-regulate? Would they…

This is a Wall Street corruption story. https://twitter.com/wallstreetpro/status/1591167190996504576 Sam, Caroline, and everyone at the top of FTX and Alameda have very close family ties to key power brokers on Wall Street, which is how they were able to run this scam. FTX has also lobbied extensively for harsh regulations on DeFi, which is a key reason that he was hated by people in the cryptocurrency space, and ado…

Very interesting take.

How would another investment fund transfer customer funds to Alameda while being able to sweep it under the rug?

I think the transfer wasn’t the problem. It was illegal, yes. But the empire fell because Alameda lost the money.

Alameda’s CEO: “I use very little math. Being comfortable with risk is important. We tend not to have things like stop losses.” https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRxWbctK/

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#285

Regardless of whether you are pro- or anti- crypto, the collapse of FTX, SBF's bubble bursting in a rather extreme fashion, and now this hack are more nails in the coffin for mainstream support. I am no fan of crypto myself, but it's interesting to think what would have to happen for crypto to burnish its image. Would key people have to voluntarily form some sort of coordinating council and self-regulate? Would they…

A less-discussed effect here is that crypto sketchiness crowds out legitimate applications. If someone has a problem that crypto is actually a good fit for -- an application that would legitimately deliver value for customers, insuring medical tourism perhaps -- a lot of people will dismiss it just because they assume crypto=scam. As crypto gets scammier by the year, this crowding-out effect means that the dream of e…

> If someone has a problem that crypto is actually a good fit for -- an application that would legitimately deliver value for customers, insuring medical tourism perhaps -- a lot of people will dismiss it just because they assume crypto=scam.

If there's a great application that solves an important problem using crypto then I imagine most people would focus on the problem and not the fact that crypto is used to solve it; they'd probably even gloss over how the application works.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#286

Regardless of whether you are pro- or anti- crypto, the collapse of FTX, SBF's bubble bursting in a rather extreme fashion, and now this hack are more nails in the coffin for mainstream support. I am no fan of crypto myself, but it's interesting to think what would have to happen for crypto to burnish its image. Would key people have to voluntarily form some sort of coordinating council and self-regulate? Would they…

A less-discussed effect here is that crypto sketchiness crowds out legitimate applications. If someone has a problem that crypto is actually a good fit for -- an application that would legitimately deliver value for customers, insuring medical tourism perhaps -- a lot of people will dismiss it just because they assume crypto=scam. As crypto gets scammier by the year, this crowding-out effect means that the dream of e…

Past crypto bubbles reinflated primarily because everyone had too much cash and interest rates were falling for decades. Even smart money had nowhere to go.

We may not see an environment like that for the rest of our lives.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#287

Regardless of whether you are pro- or anti- crypto, the collapse of FTX, SBF's bubble bursting in a rather extreme fashion, and now this hack are more nails in the coffin for mainstream support. I am no fan of crypto myself, but it's interesting to think what would have to happen for crypto to burnish its image. Would key people have to voluntarily form some sort of coordinating council and self-regulate? Would they…

1. Crypto and web3 is so tarnished in consumer minds, it cannot recover. The next big thing in this space needs stay away from those terms like the plague.

2. Energy has become so valuable these days and Crypto tech has become so WASTEFULLY, UNNECESSARILY energy intensive, that the next iteration needs to be as cost efficient and effective as software. Transaction costs need to begin and remain extremely low to none. Only a process that is always cheap to run will be able to take over micro transactions worldwide and unlock true financial freedom for the world.

3. Last but not least, any transaction tech that cannot cash you out cheaply and immediately and easily should be considered a ponzi scheme. Marketing your coin and not allowing people to liquidate it due to natural or artificial constraints, makes you immediately not a store of value but a scam and dangerous to the entire ecosystem of trust.

The current financial system took a LOT of guardrails to keep people from tanking the trust in it for their own self gain. When you lose trust in the system, people pool their money out of it and go buy oil, or bricks, or stocks, or whatever else is actually worth something. If you want to dominate with a tech-based system. Trust should be completely unbreakable - as in identity needs to be absolute and bad actors banished from the system forever or some severe term that works as deterrence.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#288
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying this, but I don't follow. FTT was a token manufactured out of thin air. Crypto works as a concept, I suppose, but people saying crypto works is like the people that say Agile works. How long do we have to wait to see crypto working? Where are the success stories of crypto? There's a long laundry list of hacks, scams, company failures, "tokenomics", NFTs, on blockchain, etc. Saying crypto works as a…

Lumping diagonally opposed things (centralized coins like FTT or decentralized coins like BTC) under the same category (crypto) is quite misleading. > How long do we have to wait to see crypto working? BTC (on chain) is still working as intended, after all these years.

> BTC (on chain) is still working as intended, after all these years.

It's certainly working on destroying the planet with its obscene energy requirements.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientology, herbalife, and other obvious scams have persisted. I think crypto people love getting defrauded, and as long as they enjoy it there won't be much pressure to prosecute.

I Dunn if it is fair to include Scientology in that. Other than the amounts of money involved, it clearly is a religion.

And in general religions are in business of extracting money from people and using it for their own means. Scientology is not any different from any other. Including the mainstream Christian cults...
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