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Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

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Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#561

Post by mrguyorama »

derefr wrote: post #206
jrmg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other kinds of ‘crypto gaming company’ _could_ there be?

Steam but where you actually own, and so can resell, your game licenses. And where other supply-side companies can take over providing the game-download-delivery logistics if the original company providing that service goes belly-up. Or: Pokemon, but you can trade the pokemon outside the game itself; and the game can prove that your competitive mon were authentically caught and raised, rather than hacked in, because…

None of these things have been impossible in a fiat economy. Nothing about the crypto economy makes these easier, more profitable, or desirable for private companies to implement.

Nintendo at no point WANTS their players to be able to use their pokemon in something that you didn't have to buy from Nintendo. This isn't complicated to understand.

There is no desire from IP holders, from investors, from developers, from anyone involved, to allow you to export your Keanu Reeves skin from Fortnite into whatever else. Why do that when they can just make you buy it again? Why would anyone forgo that literal free money when the vast majority of video game players seem perfectly willing to spend 10s of real dollars on a simple, half assed texture made by an intern in a few days. It's been a literal gold mine.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#562

Post by mrguyorama »

cft wrote: post #193
TheDudeMan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works well for sending money across the world. Seems like a nice thing to be able to do.

When i was in Ukraine before the war an ATM ate my debit card. Being stranded in a foreign country without an ATM card is pretty difficult. I thought that as soon as I walk into that Russian-owned Alpha Bank I would get my ATM card back. It actually took 4 days of daily visits and arguing with them in English and sometimes even in Spanish, where they asked me to write a letter to Kiev in Ukrainian, and wait a month f…

That's cool. One day my debit card refused to work. I walked out of the supermarket into the bank that literally shared the parking lot, they told me it had been possibly compromised so they killed it so I wouldn't lose any money. They then printed me a brand new debit card right then and there, and I walked back into the store and bought my stuff.

What I'm saying is that what you experienced is not a technology problem, and nothing about cryptocurrency inherently fixes that problem. I could absolutely create a cryptocurrency that puts you through mountains of bullshit and bureaucracy anytime you want to make an account or wallet.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#563

Post by mrguyorama »

_8j50 wrote: post #435
Eisenstein wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that blackjack shouldn't be part of our financial system to the point that it needs regulation.

But if people are playing blackjack with their life savings and it has widespread use, why not? Crypto is speculative trading.

I seem to remember a "why not" for exactly that scenario sometime around a hundred years ago...

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#564

Post by swift532 »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #86
lvl102 wrote: post #36

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.

I know for a fact that normal people use crypto in Venezuela, albeit through apps and Binance. Their currency is crap and USD was outlawed for a while. I got the info first hand recently when a Venezuelan dev colleague visited my country.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#565

Post by naet »

treestander wrote: post #490
lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

SVB just collapsed. Do you blame the fiat dollar for that?

All SVB depositors are being made whole by the FDIC. When something like Celcius collapses depositors are out of luck.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#566

Post by tim333 »

bawolff wrote: post #110
rr808 wrote: post #48

[flagged]

Kind of ironic with all the posturing crypto does about being immune from state/centralized pressure.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are globally decentralized. Individual countries may make laws against them as they like but if say the US bans bitcoin trading you can always trade them somewhere else. Binance.com still goes on, it's Binance US where they are freezing the assets.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#567

Post by TheDudeMan »

petesergeant wrote: post #445
TheDudeMan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works well for sending money across the world. Seems like a nice thing to be able to do.

> It works well for sending money across the world What is “well” here? Using Wise or similar almost always ends up cheaper and faster when you factor in the need to go to/from fiat, and the chances that you’ll fat-finger the transfer and lose your money, get difficult questions from your bank, or that Wise will collapse with your balance are much reduced as compared to using crypto for this. If you’re trying to evad…

How many times has the Bitcoin network collapsed?

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#568

Post by TheDudeMan »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #452
TheDudeMan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works well for sending money across the world. Seems like a nice thing to be able to do.

Does it? If it works well for that, why hasn't it replaced Western Union after all this time?

You'd have to ask the people who prefer Western Union.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#569

Post by thaumasiotes »

emodendroket wrote: post #518
thaumasiotes wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know? Most prostitutes still have to advertise.

Because the umbrella is big enough to cover people selling nudes, I suppose.

That is often illegal. It's not illegal in the US. Even there, it is often a leader service for illegal prostitution. https://twitter.com/KristineParkerH/status/16625082178076426...

It does not appear to be justified to make claims about what's true of "the majority of sex workers online". This is not an area where reliable numbers exist.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#570

Post by EscapeFromNY »

greatwave1 wrote: post #553
EscapeFromNY wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to bet, the data is in the paper I linked. 75% of bitcoin volume is speculation. Meanwhile in the traditional economy, 95% of global financial activity is speculation (see below). What level of speculation would you say is high enough to justify throwing away the remaining productive uses of an asset class? --- In 2019, forex volume was $6.6T per day[1], or $1716T per year. In 2019, global GDP was $87.…

The paper that you linked doesn't say that 75% of crypto activity is speculation, at least as far as I can tell. Are you referring to the line that says >Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders. Because there is certainly plenty of speculation outside of those entities. And for the tra…

> Because there is certainly plenty of speculation outside of those entities.

Sure. And there's plenty of non-speculative activity outside of those entities as well. The paper explicitly looks at on-chain activity only.

> Because those metrics are terrible proxies for "global financial activity" or "speculation"

Maybe so. I put forward my sources, but there could be a better way of calculating it. My broader point was that speculation is the majority of activity, and I doubt that's any different whether you're talking about fiat, gold, oil, crypto, or any other widely used asset/asset class.

If you had to calculate that same statistic, what methodology would you use?

> You should also understand that all forex activity is not speculation. I would think that global trade would fall under the bucket of "economically meaningful activity", no?

In one sense it is meaningful, in another sense it's just a middleman market maker taking their cut, due to the inefficiency of humans having multiple currencies. Either way I don't see how the meaningfulness of trade changes once you introduce crypto.

Say I'm subscribed to a Australian musician's patreon. I send her USD, then a middleman sells that USD and gives her AUD. I also support a French musician. I send him BTC. He (or a middleman) sells that BTC for EUR. How can you say either of those situations is more or less economically meaningful?

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