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

391–400 of 515 posts

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

#391

Post by nostrademons »

lamontcg wrote: post #162
cs702 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see what you mean now. I agree with you on the Lindy effect. What I meant is that the arguments used by many past predictions of Bitcoin's demise have been proven wrong. Anyone making new predictions of Bitcoin's demise must explain precisely how and why its distributed network would fail. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my comment above!

> Anyone making new predictions of Bitcoin's demise must explain precisely how and why its distributed network would fail. A systemic banking panic. Everyone becomes worried about being able to extract money/value from the crypto ecosystem as a whole due to the failure of some exceptionally large entity (Coinbase or Binance or Tether failing). They all run for the exits at the same time trying to cash whatever crypto…

That would just re-price Bitcoin. The price could crash, a lot, but that won't necessarily reduce adoption. I know I've got a lot of $0.01 limit orders that'll have me hoovering up Bitcoin if it ever reaches that price.

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

#392

Post by stiltzkin »

lmm wrote: post #288
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…

> 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…

We need source it is being removed.

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

#393

Post by robobro »

anon-3988 wrote: post #335
paulddraper wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I don't see people using gold for finances within 50km of me, but it's going to be around forever.

And? I am not advocating for gold either. Gold hinges on the fact that its yellow and nice to look at or whatever. It is entirely feasible for the world to be possessed by zeitgeist such that gold or anything yellow doesn't mean particularly much. This could happen, for example, if gold and diamonds can be manufactured artificially. What then?

The value of gold is related to the amount of labor necessary to produce it as a commodity. Contrast with aluminum and iron -- because they are relatively plentiful, they take significantly less labor to produce as commodities.

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

#394

Post by photonerd »

bell-cot wrote: post #342
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…

Second Life is still around, and appears fairly stable with a modest-sized user base: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/10/who-needs... Roughly speaking, the folks "living" in Second Life are part of a strong online community, and don't much care about the "investment". The sociology and economics of Bitcoin are very, very different from Second Life.

I think you missed their point. Ironically you kind of illustrated it quite well though.

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

#395

Post by wolverine876 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #172
wolverine876 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essential point is that they are not ruler or lords or saviors. We hired them to work for us, and democracies turn out to work better than any other form of government in history (and it's not close). We are the rulers, lords, and the only hope for our own salvation. You'd better get to work.

I didn't hire or vote for any central banker, and neither did you. We were born into the fiat system, the rules already written and specifically made to exploit us. And I completely agree with your second paragraph.

I did vote for my president, who hired the central bankers, and senators, who confirmed them. They also built the entire structure of the current fiat system over time.

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

#396

Post by wolverine876 »

evandale wrote: post #168
wolverine876 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> crime is a universal aspect of money, so of course any form of money would be a facilitator of it. That's irrelevant. The question is whether crypto in particular facilitates crime, and it does. All airplanes facilitate passenger death, but some are far more dangerous than others. If I'm considering boarding a plane, don't tell me 'well, any plane might crash' - I don't care, I care about this plane, this pilot, et…

Cash has been used for facilitating crime since currency was invented and it will always be far easier to commit crimes with cash than with anything else and that will never change until humans find a better way to fund crime. Bitcoin may be an attempt to make funding crime easier but it hasn't been very successful. USD is still king for funding any criminal endeavors.

> Cash has been used for facilitating crime since currency was invented

How is that relevant? Silver and papyrus were once popular too.

> it will always be far easier to commit crimes with cash than with anything else

It's not easy if I want to pay someone who isn't local to me, or whom I don't want to meet in person, or if I don't want to possess physical criminal assets.

> it will always be far easier to commit crimes with cash than with anything else and that will never change until humans find a better way to fund crime.

A bit circular?

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

#397

Post by coffeebeqn »

jadbox wrote: post #145
ttpphd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"2. I haven't seen a single use case of blockchain in the world yet. This is a valid critic and I do understand." Hmmm, it doesn't exactly sound like you are "absolutely baffled". You acknowledge that there are astoundingly few good use cases for blockchain.

Filecoin is probably one of the best examples of a decentralized storage rewarded via crypto. There's also several Defi lending platforms that have helped students paying off debt, although I don't know enough about which networks are the best there.

Isn’t it just a worse implementation of BitTorrent?

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

#398

Post by chasil »

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…

Very easy.

Only a small number of people can participate in new block chain entries, assuming demand is high.

These happen every ten minutes, and well under a hundred thousand transactions are allowed.

Get in line to spend your money; it may be years.

This would never work!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem

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

#399

Post by XorNot »

chromatin wrote: post #253
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…

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

I'm not sure what point you think you're making here, because this is in fact entirely correct for gold and why gold isn't some magic "better money" alternative.

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

#400

Post by knocte »

roarcher wrote: post #18
paxys wrote: post #6

If you don't hold your own keys privately and offline then you don't really own any crypto. At best you own a share in a dicey exchange that may go under at any time (due to regulation, fraud or whatever else).

An exchange is basically a bank without the regulations and consumer protections of real banks. It also defeats the purpose of crypto. It's the worst of both worlds.

Completely agree with the general idea of your comment. Although there are non-custodial (decentralized/P2P) exchanges that, because they don't hold user's funds, would not fall into the category that you have described. E.g.:

* P2P exchanges: LNP2Pbot, hodlhodl, etc.

* Decentralized exchanges: FixedFloat, Uniswap, etc.

Post reply on HN