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Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

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Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#571

Post by sweetheart »

kranke155 wrote: post #551
overgard wrote: post #547

Can someone actually explain what the intrinsic use of coins is supposed to be (aside from speculating). Their value is so volatile they suck as actual currency, not to mention if you were the guy that spent 10,000 bitcoins on a pizza back in the day you'd feel pretty stupid about your 300 million dollar pizza. They're not even particularly good for illegal purchases -- you have to know what you're doing to keep your…

When Ethereum/ another crypto VM becomes fast enough, decentralised applications will be the new iPhone - stuff we can’t imagine will be built there. As far as NFTs, 90-99% of the activity is nonsense, fraud and money laundering, but there are real artists in the space. Whether that’s satisfactory for you is really a matter of perspective.

> decentralised applications will be the new iPhone.

What makes you think that? Genuinely curious. I can think of lots of reasons that the opposite might be true, so I’m curious as to what my blind spots may be.

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#572

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

kranke155 wrote: post #551
overgard wrote: post #547

Can someone actually explain what the intrinsic use of coins is supposed to be (aside from speculating). Their value is so volatile they suck as actual currency, not to mention if you were the guy that spent 10,000 bitcoins on a pizza back in the day you'd feel pretty stupid about your 300 million dollar pizza. They're not even particularly good for illegal purchases -- you have to know what you're doing to keep your…

When Ethereum/ another crypto VM becomes fast enough, decentralised applications will be the new iPhone - stuff we can’t imagine will be built there. As far as NFTs, 90-99% of the activity is nonsense, fraud and money laundering, but there are real artists in the space. Whether that’s satisfactory for you is really a matter of perspective.

> When Ethereum/ another crypto VM becomes fast enough, decentralised applications will be the new iPhone - stuff we can’t imagine will be built there.

In other words, "we have no idea, trust us".

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#573

Post by capableweb »

overgard wrote: post #547

Can someone actually explain what the intrinsic use of coins is supposed to be (aside from speculating). Their value is so volatile they suck as actual currency, not to mention if you were the guy that spent 10,000 bitcoins on a pizza back in the day you'd feel pretty stupid about your 300 million dollar pizza. They're not even particularly good for illegal purchases -- you have to know what you're doing to keep your…

I don't use a ton of cryptocurrency, but I have a few uses for it.

My primary use case right now is using Filecoin to pay for off-site backups of various kinds, encrypted with (supposedly) quantum-proof cryptography that I encrypt my data with before finally replicating it to numerous instances across the world. This is together with also writing my backups to CDs, using online services like rsync.net and one big USB stick at one. One time I lost my backups so I'm trying to make sure this never happens again...

Secondly, I've used Algorand, Ethereum and Bitcoin for transferring funds to relatives and friends to/from South America and Africa, which ended up being the cheapest way of transferring funds to them, even accounting for me buying it, the transfer fee and them cashing it out. It also was way faster than anything we tried before, so pretty good experience overall.

But to your main point, most if not 99% of all cryptocurrency is definitely over-hyped beyond anything I've ever seen. I wouldn't touch most of the ecosystem with a ten-foot pole, doing a lot of research and actually understanding the protocols that you use. Most people don't, so they tend to get burned. Countless of times I've had to help family and friends to avoid scams that they come across, and it honestly makes me kind of glad that what is happening now is happening, it'll shake off all of these scammy projects that are just trying to scam people.

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#574

Post by gruez »

dragontamer wrote: post #546
shmatt wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BlockFI was offering 8.5% APY on deposits. FTX was offering 8% A true exchange, where you just buy and sell, will never pause withdrawals because they won't be acting with these ponzi-like methods A decentralized exchange won't give you free money, so less people will use it. Also the same with a centralized exchange offering you 0% APY and full liquidity at all times. You could build one, but will people sign up?

> A true exchange, where you just buy and sell, will never pause withdrawals because they won't be acting with these ponzi-like methods Coinbase is also offering APY on its deposits through Coinbase Rewards, as does Binance. This "true exchange" sounds like the no-true-Scotsman fallacy. Literally no one does what you claim. Everyone in the cryptocoin world is doing this "staking" == crappy loans / bonds business.

>Coinbase is also offering APY on its deposits through Coinbase Rewards, as does Binance.

>This "true exchange" sounds like the no-true-Scotsman fallacy. Literally no one does what you claim. Everyone in the cryptocoin world is doing this "staking" == crappy loans / bonds business.

If coinbase statements[1] and SEC filings[2] are to be believed, customer funds should be segregated and not used for loans.

>We will never repurpose your funds: We do not lend or take any action with your assets, unless you specifically instruct us to. Many banks and financial institutions use customer funds for commercial purposes including lending and trading, meaning that they often hold only a fraction of their customer assets at any given time. Coinbase always holds customer assets 1:1. This means that funds are available to our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.

Presumably the coinbase rewards product is treated separately. ie. if you put your money there and whatever difi lending platform it's being invested in blows up, you'll lose your money that's in coinbase rewards, but everything else should be fine.

[1] https://www.coinbase.com/blog/setting-the-record-straight-yo...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1679788/0001...

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#576

Post by shuntress »

overgard wrote: post #547

Can someone actually explain what the intrinsic use of coins is supposed to be (aside from speculating). Their value is so volatile they suck as actual currency, not to mention if you were the guy that spent 10,000 bitcoins on a pizza back in the day you'd feel pretty stupid about your 300 million dollar pizza. They're not even particularly good for illegal purchases -- you have to know what you're doing to keep your…

>Can someone actually explain what the intrinsic use of coins is supposed to be

It's supposed to be a digital equivalent to physical cash. Specifically the ability to be transferred directly from one individual to another without either having any special permissions, access, or power. The ultimate goal is for all transactions to be completely stateless. Meaning, you should be able to "drop" a bitcoin into a digital "bucket" without needing any kind of pre-existing authorization/account/identification/association/etc with the holder of the bucket (or any third-party acting on their behalf).

You are correct in your assessment that in their current (and foreseeable future) states, cryptocurrencies are completely useless as actual currency.

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#577

Post by nikanj »

overgard wrote: post #547

Can someone actually explain what the intrinsic use of coins is supposed to be (aside from speculating). Their value is so volatile they suck as actual currency, not to mention if you were the guy that spent 10,000 bitcoins on a pizza back in the day you'd feel pretty stupid about your 300 million dollar pizza. They're not even particularly good for illegal purchases -- you have to know what you're doing to keep your…

Drugs. Other contraband too. Blackmail, ransomware, circumventing anti-money laundering / taxation / capital controls / etc

Not many legal use cases,k but there are massive dark industries that would suffer greatly if cryptos disappered.

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#578

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

dragontamer wrote: post #542
yewenjie wrote: post #497

How likely is this cascade to reach Binance?

How much of Binance's $500-million worth of FTT did they manage to salvage before FTT / FTX went bankrupt? We already know that Binance had at least one giant pile of FTT, as they tweeted about this before FTX / FTT troubles started to go down. In some sense, it has already reached Binance. The real question is whether or not Binance has enough funds to weather that kind of storm.

The FTT is one thing. Another question is whether Binance is levered in a way that can cause insolvency when the value of its assets drops (many cryptos have been dropping in value). CZ says no, but SBF said the same.

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#579

Post by asoneth »

ryandrake wrote: post #327
tylersmith wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people are managing our own coins, you just don't hear from us because we don't get burned every year.

Somehow, humanity has gotten good at taking systems that were designed to be decentralized and distributed (like crypto, E-mail, personal websites, and so on) and instead, surrender them to a few big companies who become single points of failure. We keep failing to learn from this every time.

I suspect the problem is due to the fact that designers of decentralized systems often underestimate the importance of the user experience.

Managing your own mail server, website, social media instance, music streaming, cryptocurrency wallet, power grid, vegetable garden, etc requires more time and skill than just paying someone else to do it for you. The result is that most people end up using a handful of centralized offerings except for a small niche of enthusiasts who derive enjoyment from the work and/or can justify spending the additional time.

Ultimately it's up to the designers of distributed systems to make them trivially easy to use if they want them to be popular and remain distributed. (Napster and maybe BitTorrent are the examples that come to mind.) Otherwise it remains a niche for enthusiasts and/or ends up with centralized intermediaries.

Re: Crypto exchange AAX suspends withdrawals

#580

Post by logicalmonster »

dmitrygr wrote: post #553
logicalmonster wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes it is deflationary, which is worse for a currency. Cui bono? Who told you that deflationary currencies are inherently bad? Perhaps you're repeating this lesson from central bankers and politicians who would have no ability to manipulate for power if they didn't have the printing press. > Why buy anything with a currency whose value will always rise? Better to just hold it. Thus it fails as a currency IMO, this…

> Perhaps you're repeating this lesson from central bankers Yup. That’s what they taught me at the secret anti-buttcoin training camp. (Or it could be that I studied economics, who knows?)

I'm going to ignore the other comment, but I'd be curious about which school of economic thought you learned from. Care to share?

It's not hard to see why a Keynesian for instance might be against a deflationary environment.

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