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BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

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Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#371

Post by insanitybit »

Mistletoe wrote: post #296
hardwaregeek wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh what? Do you assume that code just works? Something's always breaking and there's always new features that people want. Editing tweets just barely became a thing. Which, btw, is the exact sort of feature that would be easy peg as trivial, but likely is not when you're running at Twitter scale. Before, a tweet had two states: created or deleted. Now it can have arbitrarily many states and possibly even interleaved…

I’m sorry I just don’t find the ability to edit tweets a groundbreaking new feature that is difficult to implement in 2022.

Having an immutable ordered log + a single bit flag for "deleted" is radically more efficient than an arbitrarily mutable ordered log.

ex: You could store every tweet compressed in S3 with a bitmap for which are deleted (a bit that can be cached forever). That assumes you aren't going to ever have to update the object in S3. Once you have to update it that entire design is horrible, you'll need something completely different.

Consider that there are thousands of tweets per second with significant fan out for reads. There's search, relationship data (did you @ someone? did your edit remove that @?), business analytics, and more.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#372

Post by lordnacho »

christiangenco wrote: post #360
lordnacho wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unfamiliar with how bankruptcy works. I'm not a specialist in the area, but here's my explanation as a financial professional. When a company goes bankrupt, it's assets and liabilities are summarized by an administrator who is hired. Typically a well known firm with lots of experience, and they will do things like find out where the assets are, possibly liquidating some of them. You may have seen that FTX has a…

This is helpful—thank you. It sounds like as long as there's enough money to pay the admin, the government, secured creditors, and unsecured creditors, anything left over would get split amongst individual investors like me. Is that right?

I think you're among the unsecured creditors. A proper bankruptcy expert would have an authoritative answer because I think it also depends on whether client funds are segregated.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#373

Post by The_Colonel »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #310
HashBasher wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-custody is simple - just download a wallet app and preserve your seed words. However, it's intimidating and requires a lot of personal responsibility.

> preserve your seed words You've already lost most users. My parents call me weekly because I'm their password manager. They're not the only ones.

I don't get the point of password managers. What's so hard to remember a password? Just use the first name of your eldest child, add your house number, and you're golden. If you're really that dumb, post-it notes exist for a reason.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#374

Post by lottin »

Eisenstein wrote: post #356
lottin wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people repeat what they hear without giving things any thought. I say it's gibberish because it doesn't mean anything. Try to explain what characteristics set a decentralised actor apart from a centralised actor. Remember that you can't use the word decentralised/centralised, because that's the words we're trying to define.

According to wikipedia, under 'Central Bank': "a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base. Most central banks also have supervisory and regulatory powers to ensure the stability of member institutions, to prevent bank runs, and to discourage reckless or fraudulent behavior by member banks." Since the major collapses were by organizations which had a monopoly on creating their own currencies (…

Sorry. We were talking about what it means for an "actor" to be "decentralised". Now you're saying that a central bank is someone who has a monopoly on issuing their own currency. So apparently I'm a central bank, you're a central bank, the Chinese restaurant around the corner is a central bank... First of all, none of these people or organisations are central banks. And second, we weren't talking about central banks. I say it again: we were talking about what it means for an "actor" to be "decentralised".

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#375

Post by AlexandrB »

lawn wrote: post #99
postalrat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the cryptocurrency endgame? Everyone has keys in cold storage waiting for the day we have the mathematics that destroys them?

The endgame is a payments system as originally described in the Bitcoin whitepaper. 99.9% of all "advances" and developments in the space hasn't moved us towards the endgame, if anything it's taking us further away.

> The endgame is a payments system as originally described in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

This seems to be contradicted by the deflationary design of Bitcoin. The fact that Bitcoin is deflationary probably also exacerbates the speculative interest from investors that makes Bitcoin more volatile and less useful as a currency. It's possible that Bitcoin was technological sound, but economically destined to fail at its stated goals.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#376

Post by eastbound »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #313
mring33621 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the model, as I currently understand it: 1) some people are rich and want to get richer 2) Ivy educated VCs invest money for group (1) in start-up companies, while paying themselves handsomely with that same pool of money 3) Ivy educated kids start companies using money from group (2), while paying themselves handsomely with that same pool of money 4) sometimes, through a combo of hard work, skill and luck, t…

This seems to be largely what is going on. I think also, there are a few startup ideas considered to be "the future", and VCs are basically just choosing which horse they will bet on for that idea. So they pick through different founders chasing that market, and invest. Then all the other VCs pile in on those chosen horses, regardless of the due diligence. As a naive and younger outsider I always thought these people…

> I think also, there are a few startup ideas considered to be "the future"

This. I’m getting annoyed with my jQuery/Spring app with ~million of revenue that I can’t get sexy for employees nor for funding; sometimes I want to throw away ethics and say we’re building “a blockchain of solar-powered AI european-central-bank ledgers”. It would be so much easier. Nah, we’re just storied field data in 7 tables, and customers love it.

But the tide is turning. I have a friend who mentioned the blockchain on his funding papers and he can’t even get an office in my city (France). I’m happy the tide finally turns for the blockchain, to value it for what it’s worth: A good idea for 1% of the present usecases, and bad idea for everything else. Even though not being able to sign an office lease for insurance reasons is quite comical.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#377

Post by jrm4 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #302
andirk wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a highly technical and intelligent group that is HN, being blanket negative on crypto is the battle cry, but pointing out how fiat is largely based on fiction as well ("faith" written next to a stone mason eye in a pyramid) is not tolerated.

> but pointing out how fiat is largely based on fiction as well ("faith" written next to a stone mason eye in a pyramid) is not tolerated. Or maybe it is just not useful, and acts as a distraction. Getting into another 'why fiat backed by the USA works while monopoly money from the boardgame (or cryptocurrencies) does not' is pointless because no one who makes that argument really cares about the difference, they jus…

That's a trash ad-hominem argument.

"Everything is made up" is probably one of the more important arguments to be made, and we'd all be better off if it was taken more seriously. It's difficult to reckon with and it's noisy, but that doesn't make it any less true or valuable.

I think it's especially important when trying to figure out regulation, taxes, and broadly how we deal with rich people in the world.

The belief that money is concrete and real helps cement unworthy powerful people. It's good to chip away at it.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#378

Post by The_Colonel »

clintonb wrote: post #100
Auracle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s easy to say, but that’s going to make those companies uncompetitive. Look at how fast FTX overtook Coinbase, a long established player that - as far as anyone can tell - isn’t doing anything shady.

Your example undercuts your thesis. Given that FTX no longer exists while Coinbase does, FTX was not competitive in the long term. Being “competitive” for a couple years is typically not the goal of founders or investors.

> Being “competitive” for a couple years is typically not the goal of founders or investors.

Crypto actually seems like a perfect field to pursue this strategy. Make outrageous promises, find customers willing to believe that ("crypto is different"), cash out.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#379

Post by jrm4 »

lottin wrote: post #162
jrm4 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm a nerd interested in this stuff and I have specific ideas -- but I just want to say that I appreciate simply seeing this idea in words in a forum. Lately it's just been positively weird how infrequently I see this very very obvious point of the whole thing.

What idea? The idea of "centralised actor" isn't even an idea, it's gibberish.

It's shorthand for "a possibly unnecessary/overpowered/arbitrary middleman that handles money on behalf of other people and organizations."

This is pretty well established, almost to the point that it doesn't need to be said.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#380

Post by ceejayoz »

Karunamon wrote: post #355
ceejayoz wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You ignore the other big benefit which is impossibility of censorship. That's a silly claim. Ethereum forked because of a hack and enough people wanting to undo it. Tether regularly freezes funds ( https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/10/tether-freezes-... ). Ownership of a cryptocurrency can be made a crime. Developers can be sanctioned and arrested.

A fork implies 2 diverging lines. Nobody's hand was forced in the ether versus ether classic fork. Tether is centralized and a scam (and arguably a scam because it is centralized) and irrelevant to the discussion. Anyone can make any token they want and run it according to whoever's rules; this logic would indict the entire internet based on the existence of badly moderated websites. And cryptography can be made a cr…

> A fork implies 2 diverging lines. Nobody's hand was forced in the ether versus ether classic fork.

The two diverging lines were very much unequal.

> Tether is centralized and a scam (and arguably a scam because it is centralized) and irrelevant to the discussion.

Arguing Tether is irrelevant to the crypto space is absurd. (I agree it's a scam. That's a major problem for the whole ecosystem.)

> And cryptography can be made a crime as well.

Correct. You can censor cryptography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

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