251–260 of 345 posts
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Yeah, it's a bit of a trope like "worked at NASA" (atm over 17.000 people work at NASA). "Worked at" means nothing; show us some achievements.
I cleaned those NASA-toilets super clean, good sir, so I find no reason why you shouldn't trust me on my knowledge about aerodynamics!
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I don't personally think it will be that cyclic. There is so much more invested this time around, so many more people standing to lose so much more money, such a brighter light on the cryptocurrency world now. A devastating loss (e.g. Bitfinex shuts down and freezes all transfers, Tether worthless, that type of thing) to the BTC economy would be critical to the entire future of cryptocurrency as we know it, IMO. I do…
I don't know. Most finance people now have access to bitcoin exposure through trusted institutions via futures. Many of these people felt a lot of FOMO at missing the boat on Bitcoin's last big jump. I think if it drops to $5k, there will be some big players taking a long position in hopes of another order of magnitude movement. Certainly could get much uglier, but I think Tethers vanishing would not be fatal. Also,…
Bitcoin is by no means established because these institutions aren't investing. If and when the day comes that this happens then Bitcoin will be established and increase one or two magnitudes. Many of the above institutions legally can't invest because they are restricted by their mandates. Bitcoin is a terrible use case for criminals because it's transparent. Monero would be better because it's anonymous.
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You could say that humanity has repeatedly and organically come to a solution broadly known as government and regulation.
I disagree vehemently to this proposition. I have never agreed or voted to get those regulations in place. They are not voluntary. But anyone falling for tether today is making an individual decision.
I haven't made a proposition. I just pointed out that historically, when societies have made decisions about this sort of thing, they've generally decided that such individuals require protection via regulations.
In general, most of the laws we are expected to follow are not ones we personally agreed to or voted on. I'm not sure that makes them less "organic." If you're arguing that you should not be expected to follow laws that you didn't personally agree to, I think that's a bigger conversation.
The somewhat ironic part is that one of the core concepts of Bitcoin is that you can't counterfeit it. You can mathematically prove how many coins you own, if somebody sends you 3 BTC then once it's been validated on the blockchain you know that the money is now yours, they can't have lied, it can't bounce like a cheque Except this Bitfinex thing shows that while an amount of bitcoin can't be manipulated or counterfe…
The amazing transparency of the crypto tech has been overshadowed by a total lack of transparency in every other way.
Does it not occur to people how an immutable, publicly inspectable ledger that records all your transactions might be abused by criminals and/or corrupt authoritarian governments?
Maybe HN is the wrong place to quote 90s rap songs, but these guys knew a thing or two about criminality and human nature.
"Rule Number Uno, never let no one know
How much dough you hold, cause you know
The cheddar breed jealousy, 'specially
If that man f---ed up, get yo' a-- stuck up" -Biggie Smalls (10 Crack Commandments)
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You could say that humanity has repeatedly and organically come to a solution broadly known as government and regulation.
I disagree vehemently to this proposition. I have never agreed or voted to get those regulations in place. They are not voluntary. But anyone falling for tether today is making an individual decision.
> I disagree vehemently to this proposition. I have never agreed or voted to get those regulations in place. They are not voluntary. But anyone falling for tether today is making an individual decision.
Nevertheless, you benefit from them. It's not like you have to sign up to the regulation that makes your murder illegal. Don't you think it would be foolish to expect every generation to have to rediscover, through trial and error, the benefits of society and government?
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To answer your direct question, Tether is sold as a fully-backed instrument, so there's major (potentially billions of dollars of) fraud if it's not fully backed. That's an issue because consumers aren't getting what they paid for, i.e. the underlying risk profile is different from what they thought the were buying. The big difference with Tether is that in traditional banking, fractional reserves are legal, and regu…
So if Tether was FDIC backed, then you’d technically be OK with this situation?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
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"Of course maybe they're not actually crooks and they do have the money." Well then, an audit by competent third parties, inspecting where they got their funds, how much they actually have on hand, and whether it covers all potential liabilities (including calls on the supposedly dollar-backed tethers) would go a long way to clearing up the matter. Bitfinex announced an audit with great fanfare early last year. They…
To me this is very strong evidence that Tether is a scam. So why is anyone willing to pay $1 for a Tether?
I'm wondering how many people are shorting USDT on Kraken? The potential downside is having to pay interest. The upside is 100% win. With enough short position, Tether will run out of funds and the price will have to crash. Disclosure: I'm short USDT.
Just tried to short sell USDT on Kraken. Response: Canceled - Insufficient Margin. This means "that the exchange's margin pool for that currency is currently used up" [1]. So this might give you an idea to start with... [1] https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/217696017-Insuf...
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
As Carl Sagan put it, "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
He happened to stumble into something unrelated in the course of his crazy plan (which is the only reason anyone on the expedition survived), which lots of people who weren't him recognized as something new and valuable independently of the goal Columbus had both insanely set out and, even more insanely, insisted after the fact and to his death that he had succeeded in.