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Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

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21–30 of 102 posts

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#21
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So cryptocurrency is dead, right? After some brief interest around the middle 2010s, where some vendors actually did accept it, they seem to have all revoked their support for it. All that it seems to be used for now is scams, ransomware, and pump-and-dump schemes.

Don't forget anonymous payments. Lots of vendors selling legally questionable (or illegal) things only take cryptocurrencies. I see that as a huge boon for these industries, who would otherwise have to figure out credit card processing, bank transfers, or being repeatedly shut down by Paypal/Venmo/etc.

Not anonymous (mainstream creeptocurrencies are traceable by design!) but censorship resistant. Yes, this is the ONLY use case for the buttcoins.

The problem is that for every successful weed and nudes sale there's a million ransomware attacks, scam calls, and absolutely fraudulent "investments".

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, that sounds like fraud. The CEO of a company had the company he runs buy into a limited asset he also owns... Gg society, the fact that we're talking this up like it's a good thing means most of us deserve to be poor af

Sounds a little dramatic (especially since 50 million isnt moving the price single handedly). Also stock buybacks are essentially the same thing (if you were to call it a conflict of interest) and almost every company in existence does that.

You just talked about Twitter buying BTC as important news showing it's viability though... It's mostly a popularity/buzz game.

Also yeah, stock buybacks were illegal up until 1982 and since there legalization we've seen large trades in companies from R&D spending towards buyback spending...

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#23
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but like, what's it valuable for ? It seems like commodity trading, except the commodity that is being traded is who gets stuck holding the bag when it all collapses. There's no real value there.

It's money not controlled by any single government or entity. It can be exchanged almost as easily as cash. If you don't see the use in that, then good for you, your needs must be met by the existing financial services. Personally, I used it to buy electronics in Japan, worked well. Also used it to sell my VR headset in person, because Paypal and our banks didn't allow the transfer. I use it to tip and donate to vari…

Every single one of those things is easier with the existing money system.

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#24
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC is currently $11.5k USD, market cap $200 billion+. This is a valuable asset.

At 72.61 terawatt-hours/year and an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour, that's an asset that loses 9.6 billion per year. And if you ever stop wasting electricity, your bitcoin become less valuable. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

> an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour

Source? The link supplied uses 5 cents/kWh, which is also an assumption on their part that they do not explain either.

There are lots of reports of 'seasonal mining' occurring in China, where mining operations are occurring in areas with very cheap or completely free electric, generally because the costs of producing the electricity are fixed, rather than scaling up or down with demand (geothermal / hydro / other renewables).

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a little dramatic (especially since 50 million isnt moving the price single handedly). Also stock buybacks are essentially the same thing (if you were to call it a conflict of interest) and almost every company in existence does that.

You just talked about Twitter buying BTC as important news showing it's viability though... It's mostly a popularity/buzz game. Also yeah, stock buybacks were illegal up until 1982 and since there legalization we've seen large trades in companies from R&D spending towards buyback spending...

I mentioned several noteworthy people and institutions making an investment to demonstrate a trend. "its mostly a popularity/buzz game" yeah thats how value networks work. From gold to cash to facebook.

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres people who use it for certain things, like PornHub just started accepting BTC payments. But there has never been more institutional and high net worth interest in BTC than now as a value store and adoption for a global reserve currency (we can see this from the institutional gateway inflows). Some recent examples: Microstrategy invested $425 million in BTC over treasuries. Twitter bought $50 million the other…

Wait, that sounds like fraud. The CEO of a company had the company he runs buy into a limited asset he also owns... Gg society, the fact that we're talking this up like it's a good thing means most of us deserve to be poor af

It's only (potential) fraud if he doesn't disclose his stake as a potential conflict of interest.

I'm not suggesting that Twitter investing in BTC is or isn't a good thing, but the CEO having a personal stake should not prevent the company from investing if there's suitable expectation of positive returns for the business.

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cryptocurrency space is quite alive, and is thriving. As much as people like to hate on it, the whole space rife with engineering, social, and economic challenges that attract geeks. Unfortunately, it attracts a lot of scammers too.

Sounds like magic the gathering card econ. Which is super fun! But personally, I definitely don't consider specing into Embercleave a meaningful societal mover

Funny detail: Magic the gathering hits very close to home by accident.

One of the (back then) dominating bitcoin exchanges used the domain mtgox.com which was an acronym for "magic the gathering online exchange".

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#28
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget anonymous payments. Lots of vendors selling legally questionable (or illegal) things only take cryptocurrencies. I see that as a huge boon for these industries, who would otherwise have to figure out credit card processing, bank transfers, or being repeatedly shut down by Paypal/Venmo/etc.

Not anonymous (mainstream creeptocurrencies are traceable by design!) but censorship resistant . Yes, this is the ONLY use case for the buttcoins. The problem is that for every successful weed and nudes sale there's a million ransomware attacks, scam calls, and absolutely fraudulent "investments".

completely false, privacy coins command billions of dollars in market cap, Monero alone is currently worth 2.2 billion and will likely continue to grow.

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 72.61 terawatt-hours/year and an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour, that's an asset that loses 9.6 billion per year. And if you ever stop wasting electricity, your bitcoin become less valuable. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

> an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour Source? The link supplied uses 5 cents/kWh, which is also an assumption on their part that they do not explain either. There are lots of reports of 'seasonal mining' occurring in China, where mining operations are occurring in areas with very cheap or completely free electric, generally because the costs of producing the electricity are fixed, rather than sca…

I got that figure from Google, but it's the average residential rate and I guess you'd get the industrial rate for a large operation(my power company charges 5.95 cents for that).

Re: Crypto scammers piggybacking Trump’s Twitter, cloning Medium, stealing crypto

#30
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC is currently $11.5k USD, market cap $200 billion+. This is a valuable asset.

At 72.61 terawatt-hours/year and an average electricity cost of 13.19 cents/kilowatt-hour, that's an asset that loses 9.6 billion per year. And if you ever stop wasting electricity, your bitcoin become less valuable. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

Vast majority of crypto currency mining is done with excess green energy that would otherwise be rejected by the grid and wasted, as high as 78% by some estimates. https://medium.com/value-of-bitcoin/bitcoins-energy-consumpt...
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