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SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

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Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the only tokens with any actual utility have stable prices - stablecoins.

Aside from BTC, which has so much utility that governments are securing some, and in some cases, are settling international trade with it to avoid sanctions from nations they aren't allies with.

Is that the reason why BTC transaction volume was trending slowly downwards for years?

It took the stupidity of those Ordinals to push the volume up, and all of that was inorganic speculative BS.

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from BTC, which has so much utility that governments are securing some, and in some cases, are settling international trade with it to avoid sanctions from nations they aren't allies with.

Is that the reason why BTC transaction volume was trending slowly downwards for years? It took the stupidity of those Ordinals to push the volume up, and all of that was inorganic speculative BS.

What does this have to do with what I said?

Transaction volume doesn't mean a fiddly-fuck, unless you're measuring network effects, and even then, context can become pretty important.

No, if one thing should be clear to someone reading this thread, it should be that there's only one thing that matters: liquidity.

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reductionist view, there can be many reasons why somebody would want to temporarily park a portion of their assets on a centralized exchange. It's a a trade off between convenience, security, higher liquidity, trading opportunities et cetera, these are just some that come to mind. One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage. The world is not white and black.

From the Bitcoin whitepaper: "A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority ... The problem with this solution is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company" The vision of course did not include centralized authorities, it's counter to the entire purpose. We already have had digital banks, crypto is not about having digital convenience. It's not the "exchange" part that wasn't env…

"One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage."

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy was famous for posting these photos flaunting how much money he was wearing. It blows my mind to think someone could be this open about doing this

I knew this guy from before he was a major league crypto scammer. I assure you although part of this is actual lack of taste, he is quite conscious of how he looks and intentionally turns the tackiness and gaudiness up to 11 even beyond his own sensibilities. It is a filter, designed to screen out people who might have enough common sense the question the legitimacy of his claims.

> It is a filter, designed to screen out people who might have enough common sense the question the legitimacy of his claims.

Well, except for the SEC, I guess.

Out of curiosity, can you say how you knew him?

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#115

It's a shame it took this long to go after such a blatant Ponzi. There is even an ad for this scheme painted on a wall near my home (in Mexico), so one would hope that the US will not be the only country where he will face charges.

I liked local "Italian restaurant ad" Ponzi. I mean it still looked like scam to me, but I can understand why people fell for it. Scheme can only last for few months, a year at most, so the organizer must be ready to GTFO as soon as it reaches the peak. Participants are offered $1k/months for placing the restaurant ad on their car (banner behind rear windshield) but asked for $3k or $4k "security deposit". Of course the "restaurant ad" actually only said "I make $1k/month with this ad, call xxx to learn how".

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#116
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions at least 2 million Ethereum, which is certainly liquid enough to be a couple orders of magnitude above $10 million.

There’s a fair amount of liquidity, but trying to withdraw 1 billion in Eth is going to impact it’s valuation.

How many things are there on earth that you can suddenly sell $1 billion worth of, and not lower its price? I never hear this criticism of any other assets even though it applies to virtually all of them.

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the reason why BTC transaction volume was trending slowly downwards for years? It took the stupidity of those Ordinals to push the volume up, and all of that was inorganic speculative BS.

What does this have to do with what I said? Transaction volume doesn't mean a fiddly-fuck, unless you're measuring network effects, and even then, context can become pretty important. No, if one thing should be clear to someone reading this thread, it should be that there's only one thing that matters: liquidity.

Huh? If transaction volume is immaterial, what utility are you talking about?

Because we were talking about utility, and that "governments were buying it" - not liquidity.

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#118
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of stuff has value, until it doesn't. Tulips, beanie-babies, or pet rocks come to mind. Doesn't mean it's a scam necessarily, could just be a fad -- irrational, but with no fraudulent intent behind it.

oh bitcoin, ethereum and any such crypto"currency" (even the name is chosen to evoke certain emotions) is pretty solidly established to be scams. Read https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon... or if that's too long then consider how any of these crypto"currencies" with transaction fees are negative sum games and such they are scams…

Gold is absolutely a negative sum game. From a technical financial perspective it has negative carry[1] because of the cost of storage, insurance etc. Quite a few other assets are similar (eg art). Negative carry doesn’t intrinsically denote a scam but its fair to say that its much easier to establish a “fundamental” theory for the value of something like a dividend-paying stock that has positive carry.

[1] Negative carry means it costs money to hold an asset on an ongoing basis. Given most assets have transaction costs when you buy or sell, anything with negative carry will be a negative sum game in your terminology. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/costofcarry.asp

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Bitcoin whitepaper: "A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority ... The problem with this solution is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company" The vision of course did not include centralized authorities, it's counter to the entire purpose. We already have had digital banks, crypto is not about having digital convenience. It's not the "exchange" part that wasn't env…

"One can do all of that and still have the majority of their assets in cold storage."

Nice try with the quotes hahah. But no, that is not mentioned in the whitepaper, and you are way off now: Cold storage is a cloud term for long-term storage, it has nothing to do with "cold wallets" - the term centralized exchanges use for "off-chain" assets.

Also this (from bitcoin whitepaper):

"A block header with no transactions would be about 80 bytes. If we suppose blocks are generated every 10 minutes, 80 bytes * 6 * 24 * 365 = 4.2MB per year. With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in memory."

I'm convinced 90% of people talking about crypto don't get it.

Re: SEC Charges Hex Founder Richard Heart with Misappropriating Millions of Dollars

#120

fun fact, Richard used to sell email spam software. Is shitcoin pumping a step up or a step down? Richard is a very charming fellow, very likable, but in a way that cautions you not to let any of your money within a mile of him.

Charming??! I've known enough of his kind that his "charm" immediately sets off all of my Malignant Narcissist Klaxons. He's charming in the same sense that the creepy guy driving the windowless "FREE CANDY" van is generous. And you only mentioned the tip of the Spamberg -- it goes MUCH deeper: His real name is actually Richard J Schueler, under which he is famously known as the "Spam King", for being one of the firs…

yes, that sort of charming
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