361–370 of 890 posts
The FTX App has allegedly been hacked as well. This reeks of an inside job/coordinated attack. Edit: It is rumored that SBF is en-route to Argentina Second Edit: This is a Twitter rumor, with no verification, could be fake news. I was going to paste the Tweet, but the Tweet has been removed because it was seen as unlikely.
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In a ponzi scheme, there is a fictitious business model that's purported to be turning a profit, and its lack of profit is hidden by secretly using new inflows to pay off old investors. In crypto, none of that is hidden. It's widely known that dollars cashed out by earlier investors come from the coffers of later investors. Since e.g. Bitcoin doesn't deceive people about being a profitable company, it's by definition…
"It can't be a Ponzi because they're honest about it being a scam right up front"
By the way, who is the "they" that your sentence refers to?
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I am not a fan of "destroying the planet" arguments mainly because anything goes, super ambiguious and not very precise. Buy our razors because cartridge razors are destroying the planet! https://bandisposablerazors.org/ Destroying the planet = Can't question it, can't argue about it, it is the end all of all arguments. How could you ever oppose something that destroys the planet? They all sound the same: https://en.…
On top of being hard to argue against, it just isn't true. It's a net positive for the environment, at least it will be in a couple of years: https://batcoinz.com/50-landfills-mining-bitcoin-a-zero-emis...
Riddled with subjectivism. You cannot do less since there are no objective limits to what is "acceptable levels of destruction of the planet" means. It has a different subjective weight to different entities arguing the position. In the limit, this would mean we erase humanity all together and leave the planet alone.
You can bully a lot of things your way before any one can speak up against it. There is a level of insidious moral superiority built into it which makes it prime for exploitation. Corporations are doing exactly that.
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They don't have the power to pause non-FTT blockchain systems. What you're suggesting isn't really possible. Someone has to hold the keys -- and I doubt they used sufficient multi-sig -- and anyone who has the keys can always move the funds.
But aren't they themselves (FTX) custodians of these funds? In that case, why not turn their services off to protect the keys from being hacked? What you say makes sense once a hack takes place, but how did the hackers get the keys? Or do they use external custodians?
It's most likely an inside job, either by disgruntled employees or SBF himself:
"In a subsequent examination, FTX legal and finance teams also learned that Bankman-Fried implemented what the two people described as a "backdoor" in FTX's book-keeping system, which was built using bespoke software.
They said the "backdoor" allowed Bankman-Fried to execute commands that could alter the company's financial records without alerting other people, including external auditors. This set-up meant that the movement of the $10 billion in funds to Alameda did not trigger internal compliance or accounting red flags at FTX, they said." [1]
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Can confirm. Lost 100% of my mtgox holdings in 2013. Theoretically my account balance is 7.73 BTC. I can still log in and see it. Maybe by the time I retire I’ll have recovered like 0.7 BTC. Which amusingly would be the sum of my original $11k investment. A lot of this is just gambling. People need to go into it with the mindset that the money will be gone tomorrow, and then be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t. See…
> I can still log in and see it. Who operates the site?
The process has been slow (we’re almost at the one-decade mark) but it does seem to be progressing.
Whereas it’s hard to imagine FTX creditors having any hope whatsoever after this.
This whole saga has done irreparable damage to crypto. It will take a lot of time for it to come out of this hole. When there is money involved, and that too this much, there will be conspiracy theories flying around and the regular retail investor will be tough to win back. It will be very interesting to see what happens from here on out. Crypto doesn’t have any uses to begin with, if it’s purely used as pump and du…
I don't think this will affect its reputation noticeably.
Which demographic is going to be turned off by this?
The regular public won't hear about this. the FIRE investor people basically seem to use a percentage as a lottery ticket. Wall Street I would hope already saw the consistent story.
Is it hard core blockchain people, who knew of all the other crashed parties, but thought surely that's all behind us for the big players, having grown up now? But then nothing seems to faze them.
Maybe the whales who don't actually care about blockchain, but were sold angel investor status? Yeah, possibly.
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The evidence is circumstantial, which is why I said "appears to be designed for" not "we know crypto owners were held there". The more well attested point is that crypto owners in Russia don't advertise the fact, for fear of something like this.
What makes it appear designed specifically for crypto owners and not other people?
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So bank regulation worked in 2008, is was just a human failure? Communism works, it's just human failures? The measure of whether something works is whether it prevents human failure.
Socialism to some extent has been successful in some countries. Sweden is a good example.
However, socialism is not communism, which is what the GP comment mentioned.
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FDIC. Everyone else pays for your shitty banking choices via inflation instead. To me the crypto version is better TBH, which would force either private insurance or none at all. Believe it or not you can buy private insurance for crypto, which would achieve something like FDIC.
FDIC covers only up to 200k USD. Many people have lost life savings when banks collapse. Also, not everybody lives in the US or in countries with a semi decent banking system.
Do you have some data for this statement? (in the US, post FDIC deposit era)
Because even when a bank fails, there is usually more than enough to cover depositors, and what the FDIC does is arrange for the bank to be taken over by a healthy bank, with the deposits migrated (but equity and bondholders can take a bath). E.g. no depositor lost a penny in the financial crisis of 2008 -- which was the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression -- even if they had money in excess of the limits. However it's quite unusual to have money in excess of the limit -- if you have that much, you wont keep it as a deposit, you'll hold some government guaranteed bonds like agencies or treasuries. It is extremely poor cash management for an individual to have more than 200K in a demand deposit account when they can be earning more with government guaranteed bonds that are just as liquid as cash. You can even open an account with Treasury Direct.
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I am not a fan of "destroying the planet" arguments mainly because anything goes, super ambiguious and not very precise. Buy our razors because cartridge razors are destroying the planet! https://bandisposablerazors.org/ Destroying the planet = Can't question it, can't argue about it, it is the end all of all arguments. How could you ever oppose something that destroys the planet? They all sound the same: https://en.…
On top of being hard to argue against, it just isn't true. It's a net positive for the environment, at least it will be in a couple of years: https://batcoinz.com/50-landfills-mining-bitcoin-a-zero-emis...