This is hilarious. So crypto exchanges selling “securities” will be driven out of the US. Ok. US users will have to first buy “approved” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, transfer them to a non-US exchange or p2p exchange like Bisq and use a VPN to buy whatever they want.
The real winners here are these lawyers and apparatchiks who have never created anything of value in their entire life.
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'
#292yes its all that, but people invest in crypto as they don't want to be regulated any more.
government control people using money, all these people are more worried about loosing this control , rather than securing financial security of people.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do need to separate medium of exchange from store of value. Real estate is useless as a currency while being the primary store of value for most people. Most of your objections also apply to real estate: can't know how much wheat a house is worth, houses are notoriously illiquid, price discovery is difficult and quite opaque, the sector is rife with misrepresentations. I wouldn't go so far as to say fraud, but wh…
You can live in a real estate investment or grow food on it or run a business in it. Bitcoin is a bunch of 1s and 0s that is same as a blank canvas hung in museum and is priced at $20M. It is essentially useless, but people believe it’s worth something, so it keeps holding value. Until one day, it doesn’t.
I'm not a bitcoin maximalist, but you have to acknowledge that in this day and age that your definition pretty much applies to USD as well. People believe it's worth something. And so it is.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#294Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#295Earlier 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…
I don’t think any of this is accurate. My house is a store of value but not easily traded for goods and services, but can be sold for local currency to facilitate that exchange. There are many crypto exchanges with conversion to many currencies, including fiat currencies, but also between other crypto currencies. This is how price discovery is accomplished. If it were illiquid as you claim then there would be a ton of arbitrage opportunity in the inefficiencies and mispricings of crypto currencies. However in recent times prices are fairly rational across exchanges and conversion to fiat. The fraud claims you have seen overblown, FTX not withstanding. But I’d note that all financial markets are rife with fraud, hence the regulation.
I don’t think regulation is a bad thing in crypto exchanges specifically. I think any rational crypto exchange would welcome it. Despite claims to the contrary compliant exchanges in many markets not aligned to big players start up all the time. That’s great, and I think a lot of crypto exchange operators have been hoping for a clear regulatory regime from regulators in the US. The current “you better comply with unwritten regulations or we sue you” regime is absurd.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#296It doesn’t really matter to actual blockchains what the sec does or doesn’t do. It does matter to the centralized bandits like coinbase who tell people they are “buying crypto” when in fact they are buying a liability that may or may not be worth anything in bankruptcy court.
I’ve never held any crypto in a exchange since mt gox, and a new cohort has learned the same lesson from ftx and the fake “defi” platforms.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its network could stop functioning simply because it would no longer be profitable to mine it. Sure - a few hardcore believers would continue mining at a loss, but I doubt that they'd have enough computing power to secure the network properly.
Isn't difficulty set based on the previous block time?
No, the difficulty is updated every 2016 blocks. This should be once every two weeks, but if the worldwide hash power halves it'll of course take four weeks until it can update. The difficulty adjustment is capped to +300% / -75%.
The issue here is that the Bitcoin reward has to pay for the mining cost, but there is nothing preventing the Bitcoin price from dropping lower. So miners will either have to mine at a loss for (on average) a week until a difficulty adjustment, or turn off their equipment. Turning it off will make the wait even longer and the mining price per block will increase even more for the remaining miners - leading to more of them operating at a loss or shutting down which makes the problem even worse.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
> That being said, I doubt Bitcoin will be outlawed in the West, and generally agree that it will be around for the long term.
Well, not entirely without precedent, since private ownership of gold was outlawed nationwide in the US during the Great Depression. It wasn't fully legalized until 1974.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#299Earlier 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…
Nobody can tell you what a gold oz. worth of wheat is without resorting to exchange rates of gold to actual currencies.
I'll give you 1kg of wheat for an ounce of gold right now.
Re: Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
#300It doesn’t really matter to actual blockchains what the sec does or doesn’t do. It does matter to the centralized bandits like coinbase who tell people they are “buying crypto” when in fact they are buying a liability that may or may not be worth anything in bankruptcy court. I’ve never held any crypto in a exchange since mt gox, and a new cohort has learned the same lesson from ftx and the fake “defi” platforms.
Sure, but it's still a tough scenario if the vast majority of people don't have a reliable way to convert fiat currency to or from cryptocurrencies (or to or from cryptocurrencies that regulators don't approve of). That would likely mean less liquidity, less broad appeal and application of applications using cryptocurrency, and potentially more stigma.