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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'

#321

Post by gcoakes »

burnished wrote: post #75

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.

I find it funny that the guy wrote a long, seemingly thoughtful post. Then, he responds to all the top replies with memes and maybe a phrase. The pro-crypto people there also seem to be talking past his statement, trying to convince him of the utility of crypto rather than the SEC's justification for regulation.

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

#322

Post by __loam »

kgilpin wrote: post #316

What was interesting about cryptocurrency was the idea of holding your own private keys and conducting transactions directly on the blockchain. In that scenario, everyone is their own “exchange” (kinda) and the SEC might let it roll. Cryptocurrency exchanges really have almost nothing to do with actual cryptocurrency. They just use the terminology (and the hype) as levers to try and build an unregulated exchange. Cen…

Crypto can't pump without the exchanges because it's too inconvenient and risky to use for most people. It has value because of the exchanges bringing in retail pumping them.

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

#323

Post by cycrutchfield »

chromatin wrote: post #255
cs702 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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 definit…

Ah yes, the lightning network will save bitcoin. How many years will we hear the same song and dance before we can finally conclude this is a pipe dream?

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

#324

Post by joebob42 »

cs702 wrote: post #150
youreincorrect wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people talk about Bitcoin's potential demise, they are referring to its price and perceived value, not whether it will cease to exist necessarily. Madoff also was not ultimately caught and his scheme ended because of the accounting fraud being revealed (i.e. the fraud was not that important). That happened later. He was caught because a market downturn resulted in him being unable to acquire new victims for the…

The longer Bitcoin's network continues to function, more and more people will become aware of its resiliency . Governments may topple; banks may fail; exchanges may go bust; Bitcoin keeps on ticking. As long as the network continues to function, Bitcoin will have a price.

I mean, maybe, but if you pick an arbitrary currency, weighted by "market cap", btc has an extremely long way to go before being an unusually long lived one.

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

#325

Post by fwungy »

jayd16 wrote: post #309
fwungy wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to be dominant. It's such a small sliver right now that it could go 10x and still not be anywhere near dominant. There are a lot of places where the government is not strong enough to maintain a reliable currency on its own. The USA was the global currency up till now because it was universally trusted, but that's changing. The people who have profited from the international dollar are maneuvering to…

So you're saying 10x the usage would stabilize the currency and also increase the value by 10x or was the 5-10x in the previous comment only about usage?

A 10x on price would mean a significant shift would be much more expensive, as whales would have to be much bigger to cause a substance movement.

Btc isn't just crypto, its the block chain too. So not only can you pay/collect, but it's publicly available and things like smart contracts are easily possible in an open environment.

So we can do things like say: send x btc to y address if weather.com reports it's 50 degrees in Des Moines on May 8th at 9am, or whatever, all sorts of settlement problems are solved with no middleman who can stop it.

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

#326

Post by landoftheice »

snapcaster wrote: post #318
lmm wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who predicts Bitcoin's demise must explain precisely how and why its network would stop functioning. I've been saying for years that Bitcoin will go down like Second Life. Remember when there were news stories about Sony or whoever buys an island for X million dollars? And now... I mean it's still there (presumably), I don't think they've turned off the servers or anything, but no-one cares and it's obviousl…

Presumably you have been saying this for a while and been wrong so far. At what point would you change your mind?

[dead]

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

#328

Post by anon-3988 »

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…

> 3. Bitcoin, which the SEC considers a commodity (it's explicitly excluded from the lawsuits), is bound to become even more dominant in terms of market capitalization. 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. If this sounds far-fetched, consider that many smart and smart-sounding people have predicted Bitcoin's demise, and so far their arguments have been proven wrong: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ .

I have not seen a single of use Bitcoin within 50km of me _and_ online outside of uses in degenerate countries and trading them for the sole purpose of trading them.

This feels like flat-earth theory, which will never go away, but their "science" if you call it that, is so flawed that they can't be used for anything outside of small terrestrial physics.

Similarly, Bitcoin itself will never go away. But there is no way the average folk will be able to wield them given how many times they have been scammed out of their fortune.

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

#329

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

snapcaster wrote: post #318
lmm wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who predicts Bitcoin's demise must explain precisely how and why its network would stop functioning. I've been saying for years that Bitcoin will go down like Second Life. Remember when there were news stories about Sony or whoever buys an island for X million dollars? And now... I mean it's still there (presumably), I don't think they've turned off the servers or anything, but no-one cares and it's obviousl…

Presumably you have been saying this for a while and been wrong so far. At what point would you change your mind?

Are you saying the islands in SecondLife are still retaining their 7-figure US dollar value today?

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

#330

Post by codingrightnow »

cs702 wrote: post #102
otoburb wrote: 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 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…

The fraud is likely in stable coins such as USDT, when it goes Ponzi up, everything comes down with it.
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