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BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

cnbc.com

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Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#431

Post by stickfigure »

christiangenco wrote: post #426
stickfigure wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but... in the abstract, 10% in a high-risk investment seems pretty reasonable? Sounds like they're young. For someone with a multidecade investing horizion, 10% is a minor fluctuation; the S&P500 is down 17% YTD. To the OP: Why is losing 10% of your investments a pretty big blow? Almost everyone's 401K plunged by more than that this year. If you're young this won't be the last time.

OP here! Thanks for the affirmation. My wife and I are 31 so a 10% drop is definitely something we can recover from. We've already lived through this high-risk crypto part of our portfolio falling to half it's value over the last 19 months but the other half completely vanishing overnight has hit me psychologically harder. Instead of the narrative of "sure the crypto dropped in value but it's done that before and gon…

I get it, it sucks, and it feels like you could have made better decisions. Hindsight is awesome that way. Don't beat yourself up over it; at least you were smart enough to make it a small percentage!

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#432

Post by graeme »

shagie wrote: post #270
graeme wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^Haga, if you can see this, your comment below mine is dead. Went through your history, doesn't look like you've said anything astonishingly objectionable recently. Your comments are all dead

If you think they're good comments, click directly onto them and [vouch] for them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11589410 (edit) going back... a there appears to be a period of fairly consistent one liner hot takes that may have been received poorly.

Yeah, noticed that. Figured that warranted downvotes more than being dead, though it is a tough call as the site could become reddit with too much of that

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#434

Post by [deleted] »

alasdair_ wrote: post #333
hsavit1 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 1 of the BlockFi founders (Flori) has an ivy league degree (from Cornell). Zac is a moron who made his wealth playing poker and through a scam loans startup (Zibby).

>Only 1 of the BlockFi founders (Flori) has an ivy league degree (from Cornell). Zac is a moron who made his wealth playing poker and through a scam loans startup (Zibby). It's much, much harder to make millions at the poker table than it is to get a degree from an Ivy. There have been 141 people that have made over a million in 2022 from poker ( https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/ranking/7339/2 ) and that doesn't coun…

[deleted]

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#435

Post by xorcist »

jrm4 wrote: post #377
Eisenstein wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 belie…

Especially so in an era of inflation and increasing interest rates.

We, somehow, collectively decided to have it this way. It is not a law of nature!

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#436

Post by misiti3780 »

capableweb wrote: post #89
jb12 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not domiciled in North America. In fact, they refuse to tell anyone where their HQ is. EDIT: sorry, got confused. Ignore me.

Coinbase is probably the most American of all the "American" cryptocurrency exchanges. It's also a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. Not sure where you get the picture that they refuse to tell anyone where the HQ is, it's famously a remote-first company but used to have their HQ in SF.

blockfi was based in jersey city also, it just wasnt public.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#438

Post by throwaheyy »

skrebbel wrote: post #27
propter_hoc wrote: post #16

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’m not convinced there’s any destruction of value when the entire value proposition is a lie. When I tell you my lemonade stand is worth a billion, and you believe it for a while, and then you realize it isn’t really, no value was destroyed.

Sure it is. If, during that time, I give you $100M for a 10% stake in your lemonade stand, that value is destroyed.

If I gave you dollars in return for magic beans that turned out to be imaginary, that value is destroyed.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#439

Post by Nursie »

MrPatan wrote: post #179
Nursie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is part of what they were doing, part of their investment strategy to grow the funds that were invested with them was to nfts such as "cryptodickbutt #1462". Look it up if you don't believe me. Yes, I'm sure that Terra/Luna was a big part of it, and you're right that it's worth calling out, it may even have been the single biggest factor. But it wasn't the only way 3AC squandered invested funds. Perhaps Terra/Luna…

That cryptodickbutt is probably one of their best investments. I can't see how much they paid for it, it was a transfer. Maybe someone sent it to them as a joke, who knows. In any case, it was around the time they were created, so easily it 20x to today's price. I guess they should have invested more in cryptodickbutts. Look it up if you don't believe me.

I will, but that just makes the whole thing more utterly ridiculous.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#440

Post by danuker »

throw101010 wrote: post #413
danuker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Bitcoin has chosen some trade-offs against mass adoption, like limiting block size. I think this is a bad move, since security is more than enough. Lightning is not viable, because it requires "watchtowers" to check for early state commit attacks. Not everyone will be able to run such a server. But, for instance, Bitcoin Cash has larger blocks (the reason for the first fork of Bitcoin). However, in spite…

> I think this is a bad move, since security is more than enough. Security isn't/wasn't the concern, the trade-offs exist to ensure verifiability in the most trustless way possible (low hardware and bandwidth requirements). This enables a decentralized system which is open to any participant and keeps miners accountable. If running a node is limited to miners and exchanges and requires a renting server racks there is…

> This is one channel mechanism (Poon-Dryja), another mechanism (Eltoo)

I can not thank you enough. I was under a wrong impression, and you have provided me with easy-to-search-for terms where I can get more info.

I see now there is a larger-than-I-thought grace period (which I thought was ~3 days) as well as penalty for fraud attempts.

2 weeks is a reasonable time to be away, like going on vacation.

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