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

An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 359 posts

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#101

Post by wpietri »

jpereira wrote: post #17

Stable coin systems are going to be massively important and there's a ton of different projects trying to make it happen. This [1] is a really solid explanation on how one of them, Dai from MakerDAO, works. [1] https://medium.com/cryptolinks/maker-for-dummies-a-plain-eng...

One of the other parallels that interests me is that there's very little incentive to be publicly skeptical of the nonsense.

People were immensely critical of Warren Buffett during the dot-com bubble. He was frank that their valuations didn't make sense to him, and he took a pasting for it. He turned out to be right, but only after taking a lot of heat: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1217716.stm

There's little glory or money in being critical of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But there is a great deal of money and attention for hyping them. That means anybody new to the topic receives an unbalanced information diet, deepening the problem.

Even if I were a Bitcoin fan I'd be concerned about this; bubbles misallocate resources and cause a lot of damage when they pop. The taint can last a long time. E.g., it took Florida decades to recover from their 1920s land boom.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#102

Post by goialoq »

alexasmyths wrote: post #57
searine wrote: post #3

Rising complexity of financial instruments? Check. Uncertainty about the capital backing of a booming market? Check. FOMO fever? Check. Where have I seen this before?

The sheer scale of these potential frauds - including the total ambiguity of massive $ raised for ICOs is not only consistent with the shenanigans of the .com - it's much worse. In .com - companies were creating value, and we all assumed people would pay for 'email' - turns out consumers would not - so many businesses failed, and there was a stampede out of equities. All of this coin and ICO fraud, including 'regular…

Parent was talking about the 2008-2009 GFC, not the 2000 .com stock bubble. The .com stock bubble was just speculation about a new technology, not massive worldwide fraud.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#103

Post by python-guy-vt »

mancerayder wrote: post #84

Can anyone with a more studied background in economics help hypothesize the after-effects on Bitcoin and other altcoins if this 814M 'digital counterfeiting' for lack of a better term, is true? For example, 800M has been artificially pumped into the Bitcoin and general crypto ecosystem, like air in a bicycle tire. And this is a game theory sort of question, too: If this is true: now, what?

> For example, 800M has been artificially pumped into the Bitcoin.

This is impossible with Bitcoin. Bitcoins can only be created via mining, Bitcoin mining is a proof-of-work crypto currency. Crypto's typically use proof-of-work or proof-of-stake in order to have value.

Tether, on the other hand, seems to have no proof-of-work or proof-of-stake at all and just claims to have a 1:1 ratio of their currency to dollars. Seems there is some skepticism around this claim of a 1:1 ratio.

If Tether, was found out to be a fraud I think it would have minimal impact on real Crypto currencies that use proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. The only negative impact would be the people that exchanged a real Crytpo for Tether might be burned and decided not to use/accept Crypto at all, which could impact the larger Crypto market a bit, but IMO I don't think it would shake it too badly, unless of course the main stream media took the story and click baited it with crappy headlines and poorly written articles that would falsely come to the conclusion that such a artificial pump is possible with real Crypto.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#104

Post by vocatus_gate »

paulcole wrote: post #95
trqx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"do not link sites with autoplay videos" should be added to the guidelines imo. When I encounter interesting articles on such anti-user sites, I don't bother browsing the site, I use a script to extract the article and rehost it on a public pastebin. I'd rather avoid them at all, and that wouldn't even be necessary if everyone used atom/rss feeds. see example for this one: https://0x1a4.1337.cx/o_27/ You can blacklis…

Watch the ad. If you want to read the article it’s the cost of doing so. Otherwise don’t read it.

Nope. Their revenue model isn't my problem. uBlock Origin enabled for 99.9% of sites I visit.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#106

Post by trqx »

paulcole wrote: post #95
trqx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"do not link sites with autoplay videos" should be added to the guidelines imo. When I encounter interesting articles on such anti-user sites, I don't bother browsing the site, I use a script to extract the article and rehost it on a public pastebin. I'd rather avoid them at all, and that wouldn't even be necessary if everyone used atom/rss feeds. see example for this one: https://0x1a4.1337.cx/o_27/ You can blacklis…

Watch the ad. If you want to read the article it’s the cost of doing so. Otherwise don’t read it.

By doing so I'm basically using a browser unable to render their ads or be in tracked by their advertisers, I don't see anything wrong with that.

I'd understand if they ask not to rehost their content tho.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#107

Post by goialoq »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #54
vasilipupkin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bitcoin fees are crazy high but fixed per block, right? in other words, if I were to send 2 mln usd, the fee would actually be low in % terms?

Fees aren't fixed per block, and they're also not a percentage. Exchanges and Bitcoin software suggest a fee that ensures a quick confirmation, but you can choose whatever fee you want. Transactions with a higher fee are prioritized by miners, because then they make more money. Coinbase always uses a really high fee (around $3.50), so your transactions are always confirmed as fast as possible. I made a few transactio…

Parent was saying that you can lower your percentage by raising your transaction size.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#108

Post by simias »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #28
jatsign wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a normal person/business to ever use a cryptocurrency, there needs to be one that is price stable. Meaning it's going to be worth the same $ tomorrow that it's worth today. Imagine if you could send money anywhere, with almost no fees. That was the dream of bitcoin, but currently bitcoin fees are crazy high, and the community isn't close to solving it yet. Ethereum seems to be more scalable and has a benevolent d…

bitcoin fees are crazy high but fixed per block, right? in other words, if I were to send 2 mln usd, the fee would actually be low in % terms?

The fee is not fixed but what matters is the size of the transaction (in bytes) and not the amount. So normally it's cheaper to move 1 thousand BTC from a single address to an other than 0.1BTC from 10 addresses to 20 others.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#109

Post by pbhjpbhj »

chatmasta wrote: post #14
jatsign wrote: post #2

My latest side-project is an alternative to Tether (the "mystery" in the title). It's similar in that the currency is pegged to the dollar, but it's implemented as a smart contract on the Ethereum block chain, so the reserve (held by the smart contract and not touchable by me) is instantly auditable. https://unum.one The code is open source and can be found here: https://github.com/unumone/unum If anyone wants to hel…

From where does the contract pull the current price of USD? Wouldn’t it be vulnerable to receiving incorrect pricing data?

Any average will be subject to arbitrage opportunities surely as it necessarily differs from prices being averaged. Or was that not the point? If transaction cost is low enough then one can continuously buy and sell and the only limit to profit would be the transaction rate (and holdings of those buying/selling the coin).
Post reply on HN