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Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

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Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#121

Woof, lots of emotional and nigh incoherent responses to a pretty thoughtful little statement. Doesn't inspire confidence when the average response seems to boil down to a form of religious fervor. Which is too bad, seems like it would have been the perfect place for a thorough rebuttal.

One side says "Bitcoin good!"

I assume they all still hold bitcoin or dream of doing so.

One side says "Bitcoin bad!"

I assume they don't hold bitcoin.

I think the idea is sexy, and it definitely harkens back to the earlier hacker/counterculture days of the interwebs.

But I guess I will just sit on the sidelines. I don't even lament selling bitcoin at $300 any more. :)

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#122
post #58

Three highly speculative predictions: 1. The courts are more likely than not to rule that many crypto-assets -- but not all -- should be regulated as investments. It won't be fun for a lot of crypto traders. 2. Over time, the usual giant financial institutions are bound to become the dominant market makers in crypto-assets. In all likelihood, one of them will end up buying Coinbase. Those giant financial institutions…

> > as a store of value

Bitcoin failed as a store of value, it's up some 20,000% since 2010 and basically infinty since the day of its first trade (back when the first bitcoin was traded for some trivial amount of electricity)

Store of value is a very specific term

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#124
post #118
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to Madoff is not apt. Madoff hid losses by committing accounting fraud, whereas every single transaction in the Bitcoin network is visible to everyone and, moreover, cryptographically verifiable by everyone. As long as the distributed consensus algorithm continues to function, Bitcoin will continue to exist. Period. (Government regulations cannot kill it; they can only drive it underground, as with gol…

> why its network would stop functioning If it fails, it's most likely because block subsidy will become negligible in a few decades and transaction fees alone won't always provide sufficient security against re-org attacks.

Maybe. Others have made that argument before. So far, it's been proven wrong. The rewards are already pretty small, and things are still working. Maybe it could happen after block rewards go to zero? I don't know. But we'll find out if you're right over the next six years!

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#125
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a crime if you or I do it. It's a blessing of quantitative easing when the rulers - our lords and saviors - do it.

Yea, turns out the rule of law works rather well, and when it doesn't work well nothing is going to stop the henchmen from beating you to death with a hammer anyway. What makes a government a government is their monopoly on violence, what makes a good government good is only having to minimally exercise their monopoly.

Yes, it works well for transferring enormous amounts of wealth into a few hands. As seen ever since the introduction of fiat money, for thousands of years of history.

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#126
post #58

Three highly speculative predictions: 1. The courts are more likely than not to rule that many crypto-assets -- but not all -- should be regulated as investments. It won't be fun for a lot of crypto traders. 2. Over time, the usual giant financial institutions are bound to become the dominant market makers in crypto-assets. In all likelihood, one of them will end up buying Coinbase. Those giant financial institutions…

Bitcoin is puzzling to me, in that a commodity usually has some value outside of a trading market per se. That is, it is usually consumable in some abstract sense. I'm not sure what you would "do" with Bitcoin other than as some form of currency. In this regard, ETH always seemed a bit more on track, in the sense that there have been attempts to use the ETH blockchain from the beginning for the purposes of computatio…

My inner conspiracy theorist would say that given the crypto market situation and state of ETH and Bitcoin as platforms SEC actions indicate that Bitcoin might have something in its design that US government wants vs ETH.

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#127

I'm not pro crypto exchanges, but does the SEC really live up to this guy's promises? > SEC registration establishes critical requirements that protect investors from individual risk and protect capital markets from global systemic risk. The requirements also make U.S. markets among the safest, most robust, most vibrant and most desirable marketplaces in the world. Does he mean the requirements that continue to allow…

> The requirements also make U.S. markets among the safest, most robust, most vibrant and most desirable marketplaces in the world.

...

> Does he mean the requirements that continue to allow dark pools[0]?

> or the ones that allow arbitrage (theft?) through low-latency order flow[1], prior to high-latency trade execution?

Which markets don't have those?

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#128

I'm not pro crypto exchanges, but does the SEC really live up to this guy's promises? > SEC registration establishes critical requirements that protect investors from individual risk and protect capital markets from global systemic risk. The requirements also make U.S. markets among the safest, most robust, most vibrant and most desirable marketplaces in the world. Does he mean the requirements that continue to allow…

To me this reads as an off topic whataboutism. Perhaps [0] and [1] deserve their own articles, but neither detract from the overall point of what the tweet is saying and provide any demonstration as to why crypto platforms should continue breaking the law.

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#129

I'm not pro crypto exchanges, but does the SEC really live up to this guy's promises? > SEC registration establishes critical requirements that protect investors from individual risk and protect capital markets from global systemic risk. The requirements also make U.S. markets among the safest, most robust, most vibrant and most desirable marketplaces in the world. Does he mean the requirements that continue to allow…

Don't forget about SPACs that are no better than a lot of shitcoins.

Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'

#130
post #105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If this sounds far-fetched, consider that many smart and smart-sounding people have predicted Bitcoin's demise, and so far all have been utterly wrong Bernie Madoff pulled off one of the largest (literal Ponzi) scams and evidently stated that he started in the 1990s for a run of just over 15 years until being arrested in 2008, although some investigators thought that his fraudulent activities started as far back a…

The issue I have with the argument is that you can apply it to anything. The fact that Bernie Madoff pulled off a ponzi scheme for years and the fact that "The Lindy effect works until it doesn't" isn't a specific critique of Bitcoin.

The Lindy Effect is meant to describe things like buildings and cities, that generally you don't have an outside risk to consider that the whole time they might've been a fraud or illegal.

We don't really need to worry that The Great Pyramids have been a hologram all this time. We don't need to worry that the US is going to make The Great Pyramids illegal (I mean, anything can happen, but it's a much smaller chance than w/ Crypto).

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