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Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

reuters.com

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Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#221

Post by Forgeties79 »

bottlepalm wrote: post #214
Forgeties79 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving large amounts of money 24/7 worldwide, outside of any bank, quickly But who needs this every day? Most people value security of their money over that kind of flexibility, especially when modern online banking gives you 95% of the same benefits. Besides, one can tout all the “real” advantages they want, but perception is everything. If people think crypto is a quick way to get stolen from they simply won’t us…

Yea I guess this is where you anecdotal experience runs out because there are a lot of busy people and companies out there working in all sorts of industries moving a lot more than 10k around constantly. Banks are an unnecessary middle man not only slowing things down, but taking a a cut out of transactions as well.

Anecdotal? Most people aren’t corporations. Most people have absolutely no need to move over 10k USD in a single day regularly. You can take it at face value, it’s very obvious.

You’re also forgetting that businesses already can. The 10k example was for me as an individual. It sounds like you're saying businesses are currently unable to transfer large sums of money regularly and Bitcoin is their solution. It's very perplexing.

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#222

Post by Forgeties79 »

codetrotter wrote: post #162
Vespasian wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that after more than 10 years Bitcoin can be most accurately described as "an investment vehicle hopefully not correlated with the stock market". I guess that's fine and nothing out of the ordinary since people constantly invent new financial instruments. But since more and more trades happen on regulated exchanges and (as was expected) regular financial regulations such as KYC and AML apply it seems n…

> No reasonable person would (or does) use Bitcoin as an actual currency if they expect the value to increase in the future so it can't become a means of exchange for real world goods. I take issue with this statement because it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding that people have about Bitcoin. The point is not to “HODL” the Bitcoins waiting for the USD or EUR value of the BTC to increase. The point is among oth…

> The point is not to “HODL” the Bitcoins waiting for the USD or EUR value of the BTC to increase.

This is some pretty typical “no true Scotsman” stuff if we’re being honest. If you go to a crypto sub or forum any given day, they will all say “no no no bitcion isn't for daily use, you want ______ coin.” one day. The next day it’s “HODL, DCA in on a few cryptos, and watch it rise.” Two days later when it crashes it’s “I never thought it was good for currency, I just like the tech.”

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#223

Post by empath-nirvana »

saurik wrote: post #146
empath-nirvana wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) An investment of money 2) In a common enterprise 3) With the expectation of profit 4) To be derived from the efforts of others It fails on points 2 and 4.

The common enterprise here is, similar to the argument against cryptocurrencies, the efforts to make money off of these cards; and the efforts of others here is the work being put in by the company which printed these cards to market them and design this game. If the company suddenly disappeared tomorrow--or began to mismanage their product line, potentially suddenly printing a bunch of cards they previously claimed…

"Through the efforts of others" is the activity of the block chain itself, which is engaging in economic activity in pursuit of profit. So, Axie infinity and FileCoin clearly fall under that.

There's no common enterprise for ordinary collectibles. A truly analogous situation would be if pokemon represented a share in the pokemon company where you could participate in the profits derived from pokemon merchandising or something like that.

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#224

Post by salawat »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #216
legitster wrote: post #69

Let's say I run a swap meet for people to buy and sell Pokémon cards. There are lots of scammers out there, but I promise people they are going to get good prices. And I even offer to buy cards off of people at good prices to drum up interest. Tomorrow, the SEC decides that Pokémon cards are securities (far-fetched, but work with me here) Suddenly, anyone buying and selling them becomes a criminal. I tell people via…

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the analogy, but I thought wire fraud only applied to abuse of the bank wire system? Is unsavory advice really categorized as wire fraud?

A legal "wire" is any communication or signaling system allowing for the propagation of information across State lines, at least as far as I can tell from how it is regularly enforced.

You could use TCP over carrier pidgeon to implement your criminal communication network, and it'd still be eligible for wire fraud. The deserialization from what I assume would be message packets strapped to the pidgeon nets you as still using "electronics".

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1343

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#226

Post by banannaise »

saurik wrote: post #173
banannaise wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is supposedly a game attached to Pokémon cards, but that excuse to establish "utility" is pretty flimsy Playing the game is a game. (There are dozens of major tournaments, including national and world championships, of people playing the game.) Collecting the cards is also, in a different way, a game. They have made a product that people do things with. You are essentially trying to define all products with r…

I am just drawing an analogy to the same BS arguments that the SEC--and the anti-crypto crowd on this forum--like to make against projects like Filecoin. Why do you then believe that cryptocurrencies are somehow different? How about Axie Infinity, which is specifically a game similar to Pokémon cards? Why is it somehow sufficient for Pokémon cards to say "a game is a game" but you say that for crypto and you are "shi…

> After all, if you are willing to say that just wanting to collect and trade cards for purposes of making money is itself a game

Making money is not the reason that people collect and trade Pokemon cards, and if you think it is then your brain has been pretty badly poisoned by activities where making money is the only objective.

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#227

Post by bottlepalm »

angry_albatross wrote: post #211
bottlepalm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your own argument gold is expensive - expensive to secure, expensive to transport, slow to transport (time is money), expensive to verify. So yes it does cost money to hold and transact gold. So your same 'leaky' argument applies. Maintaining any store of value or currency is never free, but the benefits far outweigh the costs as now we have an inflation resistant medium on which to trade goods and services with.

Well I'm not trying to argue for gold being a good store of value either, it might not be. But another reason why I would prefer to have gold is that people make use of gold to make jewelry and electronics, so that creates a demand that helps to prop up its value. The point I was making is that in a passive state, just sitting on a shelf, I believe that the cost of maintaining ownership of all the gold in the world i…

Your passive analogy doesn't work because Gold needs to be secured and defended, which requires energy or other people are going to steal it.

Just like Bitcoin needs to be secured and defended with compute for at least new transactions. A 51% attack will allow you block new transactions or double spend coins you have, not spend or steal other people's coins on the ledger because you don't have the private keys for those.

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#228

Post by popcalc »

misiti3780 wrote: post #168

He has quite the personal website: https://www.mashinsky.com/

>Groundlink vision was that happy drivers = happy customers while Uber was subsidizing rides for Millennials = IPO of a money loosing business.

When people miss basic typos it can sometimes expose a culture of grift going all the way down. The reason many dictators have horrendous interior design in their palaces. Their cousin gets the contract and then it gets outsourced in a chain a dozen times before someone buys the actual thing off AliExpress and pockets $5.

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#229

Post by gloryjulio »

nextworddev wrote: post #76
gloryjulio wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of small scale influencer scammers are not prosecuted, and some could even pull the scams again. Logan Paul, techlead..u get the idea

Didn’t techlead literally commit all the things Celsius CEO is charged for, with his Million Token?

And he gets away of it. It's not even on many ppl's rader

Re: Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

#230

Post by bottlepalm »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #221
bottlepalm wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I guess this is where you anecdotal experience runs out because there are a lot of busy people and companies out there working in all sorts of industries moving a lot more than 10k around constantly. Banks are an unnecessary middle man not only slowing things down, but taking a a cut out of transactions as well.

Anecdotal? Most people aren’t corporations. Most people have absolutely no need to move over 10k USD in a single day regularly. You can take it at face value, it’s very obvious. You’re also forgetting that businesses already can . The 10k example was for me as an individual. It sounds like you're saying businesses are currently unable to transfer large sums of money regularly and Bitcoin is their solution. It's very…

> people have absolutely no need to move over 10k USD in a single day regularly

I guess you don't know what you don't know.

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