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Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

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111–120 of 191 posts

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's the future of finance because you own your coins. Nothing else aside from crypto allows me to do so in digital form. You are free to disagree, even if you think it's digital beanie babies or whatever. Luckily in this case you can vote with your wallet, as I did.

Real question - why do you believe that "owning" your own coins matters? Further - why do you believe that ownership is related at all to the fact that you can keep ledger entry with your wallet on it? Ownership !== ledger entries. Ownership is a shared concept enforced by social constructs. It is not a fucking technical matter solved by a ledger. EX: You sign a contract to send me 1 bitcoin in exchange for my car. I…

You're still bound by meat-space and the rules of the universe. If someone gets in your house and beats you with a $5 wrench until you give him your seed phrase, you're still relying on the police to catch the thief, ledger or not.

However, you're also not bound by arbitrary rules by arbitrary people that may or may not hold their end of the deal. YOU own your Bitcoin, and until YOU send it to someone it's YOURS. On the other hand, money in the bank is "yours", but they can freeze your money anytime for whatever reason, or change the terms because whatever.

"It doesn't happen", sure. Until it does. And fyi "then it means you deserved it" is an excuse that reeks of first-world privilege.

Even if Bitcoin won't become the world currency, the concept of "ownership" can be useful elsewhere, especially games. Lots of games have "gems" or whatever currency the game uses. But you don't "own" these "gems", they're just a number on a database that you paid the company for. Not unlike Bitcoin, yes, but you have the added bonus of being able to exchange them freely. It's a net upgrade. The same applies to skins: you pay Epic Games for a Fortnite skin but... it's stuck there. You cannot trade it because you don't "own" it. With NFTs you do. I'd spend $10 on a skin if they gave me an NFT that I could eventually sell instead of a database entry. Out of the two options, the Postgres database is more of a scam if you think about it.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably something stopping you from getting actual 7 figures from that.

Not really. It's been done time and time again. Never underestimate the number of stupid people out there, desperate to break even with inflation somehow while their banks pay them negative interest rates. https://youtu.be/C6nAxiym9oc?t=260

Has it been done by you?

If it's so easy with such high rewards, why don't you try an MVP the next weekend and see how it goes?

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#113
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t cryptocurrency, these are sketchy unlicensed banks with a cryptocurrency theme. People holding coins in their own wallets are entirely unaffected. I hope that crypto exchanges are outlawed soon.

People holding coins in their own wallets are entirely unaffected. I'm not a crypto guy, so this may be a very basic question: If people can hold coins in their own wallets, why did they give them to these companies acting like banks? Were they promised interest or something? I hope that crypto exchanges are outlawed soon. Isn't the primary use case for crypto that it's beyond the reach of laws?

The technical aspects of running your own wallet are too much for most users.

And yes, most of these exchanges have programs where you earn interest or otherwise get various perks for staking your coins on the exchange. FTX was offering 8% APR at one point, which should have triggered people's too good to be true whiskers, but the greed around getting rich quick with crypto coins has people breezing right past that.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#114
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get what are these “digital dollars” supposed to do. There already is a digital dollar. It’s called “dollar”.

It's a scheme to give the government more control over your money than they already have.

Arguably it would only make the implicit control governments already have more explicit and transparent.

Personally, rather than having obscure scores and lists in the background preventing people from getting banked with next to no recourse in case of mixups, I'd appreciate a public alternative, if only as an experiment and to encourage the banking industry to innovate a bit.

There are very interesting technologies being developed in this space as well, e.g. Taler offering one-sided anonymity for payments.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#115

In other news: the several international banks are moving forward with their "Digital Dollar" experiment. It's news like this that keeps me holding on to my Bitcoin. Once digital cryptocurrencies become in vogue again BTC will once again become valuable.

I don’t really get the point. My dollars are already digital. It’s not like my employer sends a stack of 100s to my banks vault every two weeks

You don't have digital dollars, you have demand deposits denominated in dollars.

Ideally, in a world where everybody has access to a checking account covered by adequate deposit insurance and interbank transfers are instantaneous, the difference is purely academic – but depending on where you live, reality falls short of that ideal.

There are two possible solutions: Regulate the desired status quo into being (or trust the market do do it, or any combination thereof), or create a public alternative. These aren't in any way mutually exclusive.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#116
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real question - why do you believe that "owning" your own coins matters? Further - why do you believe that ownership is related at all to the fact that you can keep ledger entry with your wallet on it? Ownership !== ledger entries. Ownership is a shared concept enforced by social constructs. It is not a fucking technical matter solved by a ledger. EX: You sign a contract to send me 1 bitcoin in exchange for my car. I…

This is why the car of the future will only start when presented with a key NFT. /s

Not your keys, not your car.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#117
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't functional digital currencies simply remove any remaning non-speculative use for Bitcoin and further tank it? I fail to see how it provides any confidence that bitcoin will regain value.

Because there's no added value in having a digital dollar variant which is ultimately controlled by the government and Big Money. But its existence will give independent digital cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin more legitimacy, which translates into higher demand, which translates into a higher price. I foresee countries like Russia, China and other rogue nations betting big on digital cryptocurrencies to evade sanction…

> But its existence will give independent digital cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin more legitimacy

How exactly? The legitimate uses will move to the legitimate digital currencies which will leave only illicit and speculative users, further tanking Bitcoin's reputation.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#118
post #65
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't seen any indication that a wave of bank failures is coming. We haven't seen any failed banks in a couple of years. Now, that could change and we could see a recurrence of the wave of bank failures that started in 2008 and slowly tapered off, but your argument for that can't just be a hand wave at "trying times" and "fractional reserve" because the numbers currently show the opposite: https://www.fdic.gov/b…

Did any depositors loose money in 2008 from bank failures? If not when was the last time regular depositors lost money?

I don't think that information is public to protect privacy...but any balances over the limit in a failed bank would result in non-insured losses.

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#119
post #65
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't seen any indication that a wave of bank failures is coming. We haven't seen any failed banks in a couple of years. Now, that could change and we could see a recurrence of the wave of bank failures that started in 2008 and slowly tapered off, but your argument for that can't just be a hand wave at "trying times" and "fractional reserve" because the numbers currently show the opposite: https://www.fdic.gov/b…

Did any depositors loose money in 2008 from bank failures? If not when was the last time regular depositors lost money?

In 2008, no. "No depositor in an American bank lost a penny to a bank failure." [1]

But they were bailed-out by larger banks, and eventually the taxpayer. Next time, there might be bail-ins instead. [2]

[1] - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/financial...

[2] - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets-economy/090716...

Re: Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. It's been done time and time again. Never underestimate the number of stupid people out there, desperate to break even with inflation somehow while their banks pay them negative interest rates. https://youtu.be/C6nAxiym9oc?t=260

Has it been done by you? If it's so easy with such high rewards, why don't you try an MVP the next weekend and see how it goes?

Obviously if I haven't personally done it, it isn't possible.

I could also get rich knocking people in the head with bats and taking their wallets. For a little while.

It's telling some people who let their true colors show, espousing ideas like "hey if I can make good money hurting others I'll do it, and why haven't you!"

Crime is not hard, most houses are easily broken into, many people can be tricked, the human body is fragile, and society runs on a shockingly large amount of trust. Do not conflate the fact that most don't engage in the worst of crimes with the actual difficulty in doing it.

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