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BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

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71–80 of 544 posts

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#71

Bitcoiners have been saying this whole time not to keep your crypto with a 3rd party and this is exactly why. Satoshis original message about Bitcoin mentions explicitly you don't need any trusted third party. A whole lot of people think they can make money outsmarting the original concepts of Bitcoin and they get scammed in new ways each cycle. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/

Do you think self-custody is simple enough for mass adoption by non-technical users?

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#72
post #23
post #2

> At the start of the year, there were three big North American retail crypto lenders. Now all three are bankrupt. https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1597250428378705921

To confirm, what makes Coinbase different is that it's not a lender?

It's not domiciled in North America. In fact, they refuse to tell anyone where their HQ is.

EDIT: sorry, got confused. Ignore me.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#73
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When designing the iPhone, one of Apple's findings was that majority of people struggle with understanding the concept of the file system (and hence, there's no visible file system in iOS). In such world, only a small minority of people will be interested in decentralized cryptocurrencies, as the bar of technical skills required is too high for most people. This is what led to the success of centralized cryptobanks.

I hate how accurate this comment is. Without going too far with examples, PGP exists, but using it is simply harder so most people default to an easier email sending. Now.. the question remains as to whether it would be the same, if it tech was not made so accessible ( some people would be forced to learn since the bar was high ). I mostly think that battle is already lost.

PGP has horrible user experience for experts. Its CLI is incredibly un-intuitive and needlessly complex and integration with mail clients is poor to non-existent.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#74
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds. So they decided to just start hiring everyone they could from paypal, to move into "blockchain payments". They paid huge sums. The directors there had no experience ever managing huge teams of people. It was a giant mess of unqualified people funded by cheap capital…

VC wealth redistribution

Yeah until today. Now it's customer deposit and VC redistribution.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#75
this is bad thing for all depositors who are losing money. but good for overall progress of crypto. centralized custodians should be regulated, and users should be educated about the benefits of choosing self custody and decentralized exchanges over unregulated and opaque services.

contagion will spread more after this, so expect more centralized services to fall.

disclaimer: i am former BlockFi depositor.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong to assume that this is because the industry is mostly built upon a house of cards or because of bad actors? Objectively asking.

That's the thing, you only depend on centralized actors if you want to. The entire point of cryptocurrencies are to not depend on centralized institutions that can screw you over.

If you stored your Luna/FTT/whatever on a personal wallet and never touched an exchange, you still lost all your money. The centralized actors run the show whether you interact with them or not.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#78

Somehow these guys peaked at about 900 employees, according to linkedin ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockfi ) They've raised about a billion dollars of VC - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blockfi-inc/investor... (note, CB lists $1.4b, of which 400M is debt from FTX, which I imagine they never got) Unbelievable the amount of destruction of value here... it's just total carnage.

I talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds. So they decided to just start hiring everyone they could from paypal, to move into "blockchain payments". They paid huge sums. The directors there had no experience ever managing huge teams of people. It was a giant mess of unqualified people funded by cheap capital…

That's pretty much how a lot of "unicorns" felt in the past 2-3 years

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#79

Somehow these guys peaked at about 900 employees, according to linkedin ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockfi ) They've raised about a billion dollars of VC - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blockfi-inc/investor... (note, CB lists $1.4b, of which 400M is debt from FTX, which I imagine they never got) Unbelievable the amount of destruction of value here... it's just total carnage.

> Unbelievable the amount of destruction of value here... it's just total carnage.

Impressive to see that both VC money AND customer money is burnt at immense ammounts. How can these founders sleep at night?

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#80
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds. So they decided to just start hiring everyone they could from paypal, to move into "blockchain payments". They paid huge sums. The directors there had no experience ever managing huge teams of people. It was a giant mess of unqualified people funded by cheap capital…

VC wealth redistribution

There are LPs behind a lot of these incompetent VCs dumping money into in crypto, including public workers' pension funds.
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