Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually a decent joke, buried under a dismissal.
A dark joke, with perhaps a hint of OJ Simpson, but a solid nerd joke nonetheless.
I thought maybe a message about using protection.
$3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
351–360 of 540 posts
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Only banks should have that privilege? Yes, in exchange for the privilege of money creation you need tight regulations and public disclosures. Banking left unregulated turns into this mess time and time again. You'd think people would be more disciplined about betting private money creators. But they aren't. They never are. Particularly not when their neighbor is showing orders of magnitudes of paper gains. This wa…
> Banking left unregulated turns into this mess time and time again. And yet, regulated banking also turns into a mess time and time again.
Depends on your country. In Australia, our banks are among the most regulated and survived through the GFC with barely a scratch.
Regulation is proven to work in the financial system. You just need to make sure you have enough of it which often the US hasn't. But in recent years that has been fixed up.
Also it's a false comparison. There is one Tether and tens of thousands of banks.
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
From [1]: > GUSD is an Ethereum ERC-20 token Last time I checked (EVERY time I checked), Ethereum was still based on proof of waste. My thoughts are the same as they've been for many years straight, on everything crypto-"currency": it's a massive scam at best; more realistically, along with everything else in the proof of waste category, somewhere on the top 10 list of things most harmful to all life on Earth. I don'…
I agree on your points about Ethereum and all alt-coins. Bitcoin is another matter though, because it has the majority hash rate. Please note that bitcoin mining is a fraction of a fraction of all energy use in the world, and as an industry, well ahead of its peers in terms of green energy usage. Using electricity is not a problem; carbon emission are, and there a a very substantial number of other industries that ar…
> Please note that bitcoin mining is a fraction of a fraction of all energy use in the world
A fraction of a fraction is still a fraction. If you're going to make an argument about actual energy usage, please quote actual numbers.
> [...] as an industry, well ahead of its peers in terms of green energy usage.
Bitcoin is not an industry. An industry has a product or service. Bitcoin's "service" is subsidising greed and speculation using natural resources - at the expense of everyone else. Blockchain, as a data structure, is a solution in search of a problem. So far the only "value" I'm seeing is runaway speculation.
It does not matter which source of energy Bitcoin is using, it's fundamentally still based on the premise of proof of waste. It doesn't matter that it's "green", the same green energy could have been used to burn less coal elsewhere; or we could've avoided building the power plants to begin with. Ethereum is at least trying to move to proof of stake, although they're consistently under-delivering.
> [...] there a a very substantial number of other industries that are in orders of magnitude worse to our environment [...]
This is very true. But what is also true, is that another actor being worse doesn't justify your endeavor's own crimes. Just because your neighbor is beating their partner, doesn't mean you can kick a stray cat.
> Using electricity to separate money and state is well worth the cost to me.
And that's exactly what is wrong with proof of waste: it's worth the cost to *you*. You've never asked *me*, if it's OK for you to destroy the planet that *I* am also living on, let alone if I share your views on how noble the goal is.
Separating money and state sounds like a bold wish. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29322172#29323906
Please don't take this comment as an attempt at a personal attack - I have no way of knowing your actual stake, what I'm trying to protest is the game itself.
> edit: bring forth thy downvotes, HN.
Don't worry, they're coming to both sides. I would always prefer to see arguments rather than downvotes, so thank you for taking a stance.
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with paper fiat currency.
Actually paper fiat currency is accepted by a government to pay property tax. In this way you need it to keep possession of land, so the entire land value of the linked country, and all the infrastructure built on it, is the backing for 'fiat' currency.
Accepting some form of unbacked currency does not give the currency intrinsic value and therefore make it backed. El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender, which means that USD or Bitcoin could be used to pay property taxes there, that doesn't mean that suddenly Bitcoin is backed by El Salvador property.
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 'this is good for bitcoin' A total ponzi scam coin crashed. This IS good for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not Luna nor is it one of the thousands of other garbage scam coins. The faster those coins are proven scams the better. Too many people falsely equate "Bitcoin === Crypto".. or "a fan of bitcoin is a fan of all crypto". So I'd bounce this back to you: How is Luna's Ponzi crash NOT good for bitcoin?
Tell me, what assets exactly are backing BTC which stop it from crashing just like Luna?
Nothing is stopping BTC from crashing to zero, so why is it not crashing to zero?
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. There is still 1 BTC in this scenerio. When you choose to deposit your 1 BTC you've lost custody of it and somebody else has gained possession of it. All you have is a promise that you'll get it back - which is not === BTC.
You said what happened to Luna can't happen to BTC because the BTC supply is capped. It's not. The inability to mine new BTC doesn't actually matter. The pseudobanks we call exchanges are still able to introduce numberless BTC into circulation through loans. The result is inflation and possibly market crashes in case of defaults. Really no different from what Tether and every other bank is doing. I've written more de…
Laymen here: How can they introduce numberless BTC? I thought that was the crux of what makes this different from fiat: you can only transact from one address to another, no institution in between.
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell me, what assets exactly are backing BTC which stop it from crashing just like Luna?
Nothing is stopping BTC from crashing to zero, so why is it not crashing to zero?
"Nothing is stopping BTC from crashing to zero" isn't true. Although it can still crash to zero.
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell me, what assets exactly are backing BTC which stop it from crashing just like Luna?
Nothing is stopping BTC from crashing to zero, so why is it not crashing to zero?
Because they continue to print Tether to prop the price up? Am I doing this right?
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luna crashed because people lost trust in it. The only reason people have trust in BTC is because other people have trust in it. If that ever changed, there is no actual use for a BTC, and they are thus intrinsically worthless. Fiat currency has the backing of a government. The government demands certain payments of this currency in order to own land, and also for some extra rights like mineral extraction, fishing li…
Bitcoin also has the backing of a government - El Salvador. I would rather argue though that even government backed currencies are fully dependant on trust, not government usage of it. Just check out any government currency hyperinflation event.
Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only 3.87% of Tether was backed by dollars: https://siliconangle.com/2021/05/13/tether-releases-reserve-... So it could drop pretty far.
That's a bit old - https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports Closer to 50% tbills and cash. All caveated with if you trust MHA Cayman auditors. The other 50% could be anything, and likely sketchy as they are chasing yield and extremely cagey about revealing anything about their holdings.
A 50% drop would trigger 99% of holders attempting to cash in.