161–170 of 598 posts
Well, there goes crypto. With this precedent, Coinbase is next. Bitcoin will probably survive, but the landscape will change radically.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-currency...
Another case of Alstom or even BlackBerry..
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> The financial transaction / storage side is relatively uninteresting to people because the existing financial system generally works really well for them in terms of risks, fees, uptime etc. In sane countries that is, yes. And that's where most of the global wealth is, too. However, there are places where you need to worry a lot more about the government arbitrarily seizing your funds, or the banks just 'misplacing…
As a compromise, let’s ban cryptocurrency exchanges in all “sane” jurisdictions, because the downsides outweighs the upsides. That seems to be where things are heading already. These companies will be free to operate everywhere else.
I'm not really in favour of bans here, because just as no one forces you to enter a casino, no one forces you to trade on a cryptocurrency exchange (or hold any cryptocurrencies at all). Matt Levine's Money Stuff reported a lot on people losing money in crypto over the last two years, and was always amazed that the media couldn't really find those sob stories where orphans and widows lost their life savings. It was always some guys who admitted that they gambled and lost.
However, if eg American elected officials, or their appointed proxies at the SEC, want to ban certain things, who am I to judge?
Here in Singapore the authorities are a lot more crypto friendly, which works for me.
(I don't hold any cryptocurrencies. My investments are all in the most boring index fund available.
My position on weird financial assets is the same as for drugs: I don't think cryptocurrencies are a good investment for most people (on the grounds of insufficient diversification, if nothing else), but I don't see any reason to ban consenting adults from them. By default, let people make their own choices.)
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For the casual bystander with crypto parked in Coinbase vaults, and maybe some eth staked - what's the consensus among those more knowledgeable? Move assets now or just stay the course? It doesn't look like anyone is going to outright lose assets - but perhaps not the able to withdraw for some period of time?
Self-custody is the way to go. Send your assets to a private key you control. Not your keys, not your coin. I sleep like a baby no matter what sketchy exchange is in the news any given week.
You either need to be day trading off the wild fluctuations in different coins prices, which requires working through an exchange, or you need to be "investing" in various scams and hoping to get your money back out before the rugpull.
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The USP of cryptocurrency is the ability to self-custody. If you sent your money to a company like Voyager, instead of controlling your keys yourself, you missed the point.
And then you are still losing your money, because your supposedly secure hardware wallet had a backdoor all along. Or you are downloading a wallet app that is compromised. Or you are making any one of a million possible mistakes that can lose your everything you have in crypto. At the end of the day, you need to keep your keys on an a dedicated air-gapped system where you have epoxied the USB ports and have ideally w…
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And then you are still losing your money, because your supposedly secure hardware wallet had a backdoor all along. Or you are downloading a wallet app that is compromised. Or you are making any one of a million possible mistakes that can lose your everything you have in crypto. At the end of the day, you need to keep your keys on an a dedicated air-gapped system where you have epoxied the USB ports and have ideally w…
Is a gigantic safe and armed guards considered paranoid security measures?
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Most customers are not willing to go to these lengths unless they’re doing something illegal.
You are right in practice. But it sounds an awful lot bit like the old "I have nothing to hide" argument against encryption, too? Many payment processors do restrict the business they want to deal with beyond what the letter of the law requires. (And that is their prerogative as a private business!)
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Self-custody is the way to go. Send your assets to a private key you control. Not your keys, not your coin. I sleep like a baby no matter what sketchy exchange is in the news any given week.
Yes, but for regular people, like myself, being responsible for those keys is a pretty sizable burden. I didn't speculate on crypto because I hated centralized banking...
If you really don't want to self-custody, probably the next safest option is to skip all the new crypto companies and instead use one of the traditional finance companies that's starting to branch into crypto (like Fidelity)
I'm pretty anti-crypto, but tested the water with Voyager USDC because of the absurd APY. Took my money and ran when Celsius hinted at having issues, luckily. Funnily enough there was some amount, less than a dollar IIRC, left in Voyager when they folded. I received an email telling me it was being taken over by...Binance. Never bothered to login and even check it. Guess it really is scams all the way down.
Binance has basically been the JP Morgan of crypto firms. When these crypto companies die, often due (at least in part) to some attack from Binance, Binance will swoop in and buy them up cheap.
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For the casual bystander with crypto parked in Coinbase vaults, and maybe some eth staked - what's the consensus among those more knowledgeable? Move assets now or just stay the course? It doesn't look like anyone is going to outright lose assets - but perhaps not the able to withdraw for some period of time?
Self-custody is the way to go. Send your assets to a private key you control. Not your keys, not your coin. I sleep like a baby no matter what sketchy exchange is in the news any given week.
Bitcoin solves this. Sorry I just had to. I think crypto as an investable asset class is finished. SEC is sending a very clear signal here. It’s entirely the community’s fault for failing to properly manage this space. They actually earned public’s trust (sometime during the pandemic). And then they threw it all away for a few bucks.
It's more the failure of the crypto community over the past 14 years to develop a use for crypto beyond speculation and crime.