Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 515 posts

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

#251

Post by StopHammoTime »

pwndByDeath wrote: post #221

I'm waiting for Putin to put a BTC price for oil. BTC isn't optimal for small transactions, but it is useful for exchange among peers who have no trust in a 3rd party to fairly regulate trade (e.g. Sanctions) If two nations bypassed banks with a system like BTC, then we would see what the point of BTC is.

A large economy would never do that because it devalues their own currency. He’s currently making people buy Rubles with Euros AND there’s no transaction fee. Europe might be working toward energy independence from Russia but that’s still a while away.

Plus, what point does BTC have to Russia? They can’t exchange it for Fiat and no one accepts it for anything of useful value. At best It’s just an extra step between them getting their Fiat currency. He could convince other nations to use BTC, but he would be better off convincing them to use the Ruble. Nation States don’t want un-sanctionable assets - they just don’t want to be victims of those sanctions.

Even if Putin did do any of that, it just proves the SECs point. The US Government does not want people transacting with sanctioned nations and individuals. They would rather make it illegal than lose the financial power they currently have. For better or worse, governments don’t want crime (or more specifically their definition of it) to be supported by their citizens. This is why the SEC (and soon, Congress too, I’m sure) won’t stop. The existence of Cryptocurrencies are antithetical to their own existences.

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

#252

Post by alphanullmeric »

mrguyorama wrote: post #235
alphanullmeric wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow what exactly? Consenting individuals to risk what they want to risk with each other?

Tainted economies have externalities. Did everyone just forget how the stock market crashed in the 1920s and fucked over LOTS of people who didn't touch it?

[flagged]

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

#253

Post by chromatin »

thworp wrote: post #115
cs702 wrote: 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…

No, this is an absolutely ass-backwards argument. To be a currency or a store of value or money (read: to be of any use) it has to be exchangeable for goods and services . Now we can see transactions on the blockchain but we have no idea what that transaction was for. *Nobody* can tell you what a bitcoins worth of wheat is without resorting to exchange rates of bitcoin to actual currencies. But because the entire exc…

Nobody can tell you what a gold oz. worth of wheat is without resorting to exchange rates of gold to actual currencies.

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

#254

Post by [deleted] »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #117

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…

[deleted]

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

#255

Post by chromatin »

cs702 wrote: post #93
misnome wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 - The “value” is higher, but can you actually do more with it now than you could five years ago? Hasn’t the entire community given up on buying things such that they know pretend that was never the goal? Without any real way to convert back and forth into real money, what reassurance is there that the price even means anything when every single holder is incentivised to lie and transact with themselves just to keep…

> ...can you actually do more with it [I assume you mean Bitcoin] now than you could five years ago? Not really. To date, Bitcoin has been used successfully only as an alternate store of value -- one which, like gold, doesn't depend on the financial credibility of a particular government or country. Bitcoin's continued existence depends only on the integrity of its distributed consensus algorithm, which so far has wi…

Partially disagree: the Lightning Network [1] facilitates almost instantaneous micro and small transactions which can later settle in aggregate to the Bitcoin base layer.

I've used this to purchase goods both online and in person seamlessly. Custodial solutions (trust another party to hold your funds, like a bank) are turnkey. Right now the truly non-custodial solutions (i.e., run your own lightning node) are definitely in the realm of hacker/tinkerer, but continue to improve in terms of accessibility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network

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

#256

Post by paddw »

nwiswell wrote: post #248
thworp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is an absolutely ass-backwards argument. To be a currency or a store of value or money (read: to be of any use) it has to be exchangeable for goods and services . Now we can see transactions on the blockchain but we have no idea what that transaction was for. *Nobody* can tell you what a bitcoins worth of wheat is without resorting to exchange rates of bitcoin to actual currencies. But because the entire exc…

Isn't this counter-argument equally applicable to silver or gold?

Well, the problem is you can easily trade gold for cash because it is socially acceptable to do so. If Bitcoin became outlawed, it would be very hard to exchange Bitcoin for cash, since it has no extrinsic value outside of being a financial asset (as compared to, for example, barrels of crude oil). That being said, I doubt Bitcoin will be outlawed in the West, and generally agree that it will be around for the long term.

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

#257

Post by throwme_123 »

otoburb wrote: post #97
cs702 wrote: 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…

>> 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…

Wow. Both parent and grand-parent seem wrong.

GP: Bitcoiner, dooming everything else.

Parent: Anti-crypto (the majority here), up to the point on comparing Bitcoin (which might be a bubble, that's not the point here) to a Ponzi (that it is not: Supply is fixed, there is no new deposits paying previous depositors).

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

#258

Post by oxley »

olalonde wrote: post #243

If all that is true and SEC registration is so great for investors, why isn't any exchange satisfying that market demand and registering with the SEC? Seems like a no-brainer.

There are two problems:

1. It's not clear whether exchanges like Coinbase could technically comply with the rules for running a securities exchange, because the fine print of "what to do" doesn't fit well at all with the technical reality of "what does it mean to hold a cryptoasset" [1]

2. The SEC want token "creators" to register them as securities. Which they could do, but they would then be subject to SEC oversight, which is precisely what they're trying to avoid. ICOs are really a way of raising money from retail investors like a public company, without following any of the regulation around public companies.

So even if we solved 1., there might not be many tokens left to legally trade on a registered securities exchange.

[1] From a nonpartisan research organization: https://capmktsreg.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/CCMR-Crypt...

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

#259

Post by staunton »

cs702 wrote: 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…

> The longer Bitcoin survives, the more it will get adopted and integrated into the world's financial fabric, e.g., as a store of value.

> We sure live in interesting times!

I'm not really sure it's that interesting, or new at least. Since ancient times people have valued things as a store of value that have have been valued by other people as a store of value for a long time. Some of the best material examples are gold, silver, natural gemstones and works of art. These things are overpriced by orders of magnitude compared to their material economic value.

Bitcoin just takes it to the extreme in having negative objective physical value, i.e., in being immaterial and physically completely worthless, while taking up resources to even exist as a concept or meme.

So sure, it very well might be here to stay as a store of value for a long time. If history is any guide on these matters, it will be a store of value (and a profitable area of speculation) for the rich and big powerful institutions while the enduring and persistent meme in the heads of the common people keeps its value alive.

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

#260

Post by xwdv »

uLogMicheal wrote: post #44
xwdv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, since the Venezuelan government doesn’t want people laundering money with crypto, most people there are likely committing crimes and tax evasion with it.

Or trying to escape inflation/corruption? Please look into how the government there has brutally mismanaged their currency. People are suffering there because of monetary policy, empathy is a good practice.

The law is the law.
Post reply on HN