it's kinda ironic that crypto started as a rebellion against the banks that are stealing our money and all that
Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
151–160 of 379 posts
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! I never understand why journalists don't link to court documents.
newspapers can't sell ads on a remote court document site which leads to a great business idea, run a mirror that republishes legal / government documents in a syndicated fashion with [your ad here]
I like that idea. A homepage that lists the top 20 stories of the day that are about a document that probably isn't actually linked to. Go to our site (www.readtheactualdocument.com) to see it -- and get served ads.
Additive would be some highlighting and annotating of the document (as nytimes sometimes does) to point people to salient points.
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#153People should look into his wife's actions as well, selling merch making fun of victims of her husband etc. Great news to hear though.
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a good question for philosophers and spectators, but personally I don't care at all Please don't be so narrow sighted. Have you ever been charged with a crime you didn't know was a crime? You don't think overzealous sheriffs or prosecutors love pulling out old statutes on people? Holding people accountable for laws they had no reasonable way of knowing is a miscarriage of justice. Our criminal system absolutel…
Mashinsky definitely has a "reasonable way of knowing" about these laws. More than that, anybody starting a company has a positive duty to clients and investors to make sure that it's legal before things get too far.
Maybe a better example would be the pot industry. Pot is blatantly illegal at the federal level. So everyone currently running a dispensary is theoretically operating fraudulently with their business partners.
Does that mean they have a duty to their own business partners or customers or investors to shut down their own business?
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FTC determined that the exchange is guilty of defrauding investors because Celsius defrauded customers . And the remediation is that investors get their money back. Kind of weird when you think about it. But it's a good reminder that the goal of the FTC is to protect investors.
I think you mean the SEC. That’s the agency here and yes, investor protection is part of the SEC’s mandate.
No, I meant the FTC which already settled with Celcius today:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/07/...
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Broader question: Given that SEC enforcement is speculative (eg: we think this might be a security) do they have to pay damages when they're wrong? If not, why? If so, how much?
They're pretty careful to never be wrong.
The parent of the comment you’re replying to literally cites a case where they were deemed to be wrong.
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost every word of that is untrue in practice. But let's focus on the core part, "successful". Let's compare with M-PESA, a money transfer solution that started around the same time. M-PESA has steadily grown, doing 26 billion transactions last year. [1] Bitcoin was somewhere around 100m transactions for the same period. [2] That's about 0.5% of the volume. And its worse than the raw numbers suggest, in that the M-…
Read my post, I said successful as a 'store of value' not 'electronic cash'. Bitcoin is more akin to gold - an inflation resistant store of value. There is a premium for transacting it which means you should convert it into a more inflation prone transactional currency if you want to spend it.
Well look at those goalposts move. Bitcoin's original purpose was precisely electronic cash: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
But if you'd like to shift focus to why "store of value" is also wrong, I'm glad to. A store of value needs to be more stable than the thing you're moving out of. It also needs to be relatively liquid, and should have low transaction costs. But Bitcoin is very volatile compared with major fiat currencies, and also when compared with gold. Transaction costs are relatively high. The market is thinly traded, and is widely believed to be manipulated. Gold, in contrast, is more liquid, cheaper to trade in, and much better regulated.
So no, Bitcoin doesn't make for a good store of value. People wanting to store value would generally be much better off buying index funds, which are also pretty inflation resistant, and also have a positive return. But if they want to avoid equity exposure, then the gold standard for this is, well, gold. Bitcoin is terrible by comparison.
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cash. That's why you have to declare it when you move it around in large amounts.
I would posit that the fee for tje airline ticket or the fuel and upkeep for your car is a transaction fee levied on cash transactions. Sure, the bill itself is untouched, but the fee is still extracted.
I would posit that you didn't explain why these things are related at all.
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
newspapers can't sell ads on a remote court document site which leads to a great business idea, run a mirror that republishes legal / government documents in a syndicated fashion with [your ad here]
I like that idea. A homepage that lists the top 20 stories of the day that are about a document that probably isn't actually linked to. Go to our site (www.readtheactualdocument.com) to see it -- and get served ads. Additive would be some highlighting and annotating of the document (as nytimes sometimes does) to point people to salient points.
Scribd already does that, but with subscription/one-time payments instead of ads.
I guess it's only works with leaked or hard to find documents.
But why would a media website upload docs to your site, when they can serve it from their own?
Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be aware already, but if you replace Pokemon with Magic the Gathering cards this actually becomes almost unbelievably close to a true story (minus the SEC story arc). The first "huge" bitcoin exchange[0] was originally a Magic card exchange which got extended to support cryptocurrencies. "Mt. Gox" = "Magic the Gathering online exchange". If it hadn't been hacked it would likely be in Coinbase's shoes right no…
Mtgox was not run very professionally, so I doubt they would have lasted this long. I had to deal with them on IRC to get my money out. I was told that the person with the keys to get my withdrawal was “in the bathtub”. This was on the last day or so before everything was shut down and during the actual crisis, mind you.
When your house of cards comes tumbling down might as well take a bath to relieve the stress