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The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

bloomberg.com

191–200 of 219 posts

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment is intended to speak to cryptocurrency as a whole (the OP topic) rather than Bitcoin specifically relative to other cryptocurrencies. I welcome links to charts that show, e.g., total crypto market cap on a log scale.

> My comment is intended to speak to cryptocurrency as a whole (the OP topic) rather than Bitcoin specifically You said bitcoin twice and linked to btc's price over time, I'm not sure why anyone would take that to mean crypto-currencies in general. This seems like a textbook example of moving goal posts.

This isn't a competition. I intended my comment to make one point, you interpreted it as another.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#192
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So illegal transactions and money laundering it is.

And... * Porn * Donations to wikileaks * Pot * Sending money to Venezuela * Leaving Venezuela with your wealth intact * Payments without giving all transaction info to the credit card companies * Digital payments for the unbanked All legal usage that makes sense.

The last one is complete bollocks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/9jv70b/butter_tri...

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#193
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No tether has ever been destroyed. While tether in its terms maintains that Tethers are redeemable "provided that you are a fully verified customer of Tether" [1], there is no known case of this ever happening, in fact it is a running joke that the tether signup page [2] is permanently suspended. Nor does anyone know who is buying them (and causing their creation). For example, when $250m of them were printed in june…

> No tether has ever been destroyed. Here's 30 million being destroyed earlier this year: https://omniexplorer.info/tx/24db40680654b8b505fda3e96be722c...

Yeah, and if I remember correctly a bunch more were returned to the issuer account, presumably in preparation for being destroyed, but ended up being reissued instead.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#194
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It's as if you took Herbalife as a valuable/honest/model player in the dietary supplement market..." Are they not? Shakes can be a decent way to lose weight. Seems to be that people are willing to pay a premium for the "community". But IMHO saying their stuff is overpriced is like saying beer in a bar is overpriced because you can buy a beer for one dollar in the supermarket. Yes, it is correct. In some way.

Not the parent, but I imagine what they are talking about is the Herbalife depends more on recruiting new members than they are from selling product. I would link but just googling "bill ackman herbalife" will lead you down infinite rabbit holes.

I know. A bet that did not turn out too well for Ackman, didn't it? As mentioned by someone here and in my RSS Feed:

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/06/herbalife-very-lon...

[I don't have any position in Herbalife and I enjoy my shakes Harbalife free]

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#195

Getting my popcorn ready... This is the silliest human endeavor that somehow seems to attract a few smart people too.

I wouldn't call it silly. The idea behind cryptocurrency (distributed agreement) remains a difficult problem to solve efficiently and securely. If nothing else, it is a worthwhile thought experiment. As for whether or not any cryptocurrency will ever be stable and widespread enough to be usable in the western world remains to be seen.

Trustless distributed agreement.

It's an interesting algorithm, but not actually useful. Society is literally built on trust. So "anti-government" (or "anti-social"?) currency is the only use for it.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So illegal transactions and money laundering it is.

Iunno, if i were a billionaire, the idea of having $50m under nobody’s control but my own that I can take anywhere, anytime, doesn’t exist anywhere else. I can’t do that with gold. Bank deposits are always available until they aren’t. But Coinbase can’t do this either.

you're missing the obvious methods, used by the wealthy. and it has the single hallmark, of being the preferred methods - as it is propped by other rich people, also evading taxes.

;)

cryptocurrency, is about the pump-and-dump.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure Paul Krugman is scared or politically motivated. One of the strongest argument Paul Krugman makes against bitcoin is about trust. Like, he says dollar has value because US government backs it and you can pay taxes with it. Basically, he is questioning can bitcoin gain that level of trust among its users to be successful. Not the current level of some transaction around dark markets. Personally, I don't…

>US government backs it Yes, by putting people in jail who put forward viable alternatives to USD, like Liberty Dollar. And making Bitcoin impossible to use legally as a currency by applying strict capital gains tax reporting requirements. >Can Bitcoin gain that level of trust amoung its users to be successful. The massive public and institutional buy-in over the past 5 years suggests that trust in its cryptographic…

> Paul Krugman is saying that it wont be successful because the banks and government will fight it

He's wrong.

It won't be successful because it's pretty much unusable by regular people, difficult to secure (surprise, "be your own bank" implies "be your own security guard" — and 99% of people want to be neither of those things), extremely wasteful, slow and full of scams.

Most people's first encounter with buttcoins is literally RANSOMWARE. Do you really think mass adoption is coming?

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right. I saw a document that I thought was the audit report but it's a simple memorandum. https://tether.to/announcement-transparency-update/

That's exactly what Tether wanted you to think. They also parted ways with that firm because they were unwilling to provide what the auditor requested. They've never completed an audit, despite their website claiming "subject to frequent professional audits".

You can see why they expected this to work, there are a bunch of Eastern European banks which had audits from the Big Four brand accounting firms saying everything was A-OK right up until either the bank failed entirely or was nationalised to save it from collapse.

Not be able to secure an auditor to do this suggests somebody was too cheap. It's important to spread the loot around, for example instead of paying for an audit and expecting them to lie, try paying for the same audit AND buying ten times as much "specialist professional services" from the audit company. Don't ask exactly why these services are so expensive, and in particular don't expect to see all the people you're supposedly paying for busily working on anything. Just hand over the cash and voila, your audit is spotless. What a wonderful business.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said they don't know anything about finance or speculation markets. But if you (and they) think that's all cryptocurrency is then you're missing 90% of what's up. Bloomberg keeps trying to predict crypto's behavior based entirely on the most traditional looking speculation markets. Speculation markets aren't really a part of cryptocurency at all (they aren't on the blockchain(s)) but they are the only part of…

I'm sure Bloomberg has a huge archive of speculative articles on stocks. Why are blockchain advocates so emotional? They should understand these articles because speculation is a core feature of the ICO boom and cryptocurrency in general.

Sounds like "no true Scottsman" fallacy.

No one really cares about bitcoin and etherium, after their wild value swings.

Let alone - it's way too complicated for any layperson to grasp. Money is easy... but think about the distrust that many elderly people have with simple debit cards! Cryptocurrency will definitely be our nerdy wet dream

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