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Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

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

#361

Post by latchkey »

mvdtnz wrote: post #326
latchkey wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banks add value and protect your money. They are regulated, insured and backed. Which country are you referring to exactly? Or do you only have a US centric view on these things?

I'm not American and have never been to America or held an American bank account. So, no.

In Vietnam, the equivalent 'fdic' insurance is about $3k, if you are lucky. Banks also go out of business there, left and right. So when you generalize about the banking system, maybe in whatever your country is, things are rosy, but in so many countries in the rest of the world, things are a huge mess.

These are all things that based on your comments, don't impact you. That doesn't mean they aren't valid or that the usecase is moot. Try walking in others shoes for a bit before you jump to conclusions about things.

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

#362

Post by fragsworth »

bottlepalm wrote: post #206
mandevil wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC seems to be very interest rate dependent- it goes up when rates go down and down when rates go up. That is pretty much the opposite of an "inflation resistant store of value". It's financial behavior over the last ten years isn't that of a "inflation resistant store of value" its that of a "speculative, very risky investment." Ideologically, to a certain type of person, it should be inflation resistant. The math…

What are you talking about, over the last 10 years Bitcoin has gone up in value substantially, while the Dollar has lost substantial value. Interest rates affect all asset classes as obviously people are going to start moving money one way or another when the ROI for the dollar changes.

This site is full of people who are in a tech rat race, and the distribution has changed over time. It's now biased largely against crypto, and for reasons that I think are fairly clear:

Most of the users who would have agreed with you already got rich, because they understood the things you understand, and they don't use the site much anymore as a result (they are no longer in the rat race). They've mostly checked out.

So, because the people who remain on this site are those who never bought any, and people like to hear that they were right, the groupthink tends to be unrealistically negative about it.

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

#363

Post by angry_albatross »

bottlepalm wrote: post #359
angry_albatross wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I believe that the total energy needed to secure and defend all the gold in the world is still much lower than the total energy needed to run the entire bitcoin network. I don't feel motivated to do a back of the envelope calculation to justify that claim though, so maybe we disagree on that point. Still, there is the material usage argument for gold that helps it maintain its value that bitcoin does not hav…

Yep computing the energy comparison we’re not going to figure out here, but if you’re right then it would mean that it would require less energy to attack Fort Knox and take their gold. If not that means Bitcoin requires less energy. So which is it? I’m going to store my value in the thing that’s harder to crack (which must mean it will require more energy, will it not?)

I didn't say anything about the amount of energy required to steal gold from anyone. I was talking about the energy required to maintain the ownership of the gold. These are two completely different things. If I bury a box of gold in the woods, I can then spend zero energy to keep that box exactly where it is, but a thief might have to spend a lot of energy to dig many holes in the forest ground since they don't know where I buried it. Or, more likely, they don't know who I am or that I own any gold, and the energy required to steal the gold from me is kind of infinite since they have no idea where to start, and would be required to do some sort of brute force search of the entire planet.

The point I was making is that I believe that the bitcoin value storage system burns more energy in a "passive" state, just keeping all the coins safe than the gold storage system, where security by obscurity is doing a lot of the work. As far as whether it takes more energy to mount a 51% attack on the bitcoin network or to rob Fort Knox, I don't know. That is a different and irrelevant question. I'm sure that the energy spent on the guards and A/C and everything for the building containing gold at Fort Knox must be far less than the energy usage of bitcoin, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is easier to steal from Fort Knox and get away with it.

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

#364

Post by esperent »

Closi wrote: post #354
esperent wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my source, what's yours? https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-much-worlds-money-bitc... Although this is using data from when Bitcoin was worth 50k.

https://river.com/learn/how-much-worlds-money-in-bitcoin Also the article you posted very specifically says that the market cap of cryptos is equivalent to 7% of the narrow money supply (not the full money supply, and NOT that crypto currently makes up about 7% of the world's money supply). Doesn't make sense to compare non-narrow with narrow IMO - i.e. you need to include ALL assets with the same liquidity.

Ok, thanks for the feedback. Do you think my points are still valid under this less extreme scenario?

Let's assume a 25x - 50x increase of the value of all crypto in a 5-10 year time span.

What percentage of all relevant assets would that make up? And would it be enough to destabilize world economies enough for governments to take action?

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

#365

Post by harambae »

DANmode wrote: post #332
jnwatson wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a pretty good scam. The scammer had a company that sold fractional profit shares in oil wells. Without getting too deep in the weeds, he sold the equivalent of more than 100%. He invested the proceeds of new investment in paying out old investors and buying new oil wells. Eventually he ran out of new investor money and the scheme unraveled. I don’t know how I would have caught it. The regulatory oversight in o…

> He then escaped Is this...common?

Matt Cox talked his way out of imminent arrest, went on the run for 3 years, and was only discovered after his girlfriend slipped up and told something to the wrong person.

So yeah it happens

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cox

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

#366

Post by tornato7 »

esperent wrote: post #329
tornato7 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTX, 3AC, Celsius, etc. took the crypto pill and believed their investments were going to the moon with no way to stop it. That's why they took such risky bets (with customer money, too) - because in the certain case that Bitcoin hit $1M they would be trillionaires. Of course because of this attitude there was way too much leverage in the system, which drove up prices to ATHs temporarily, but when the money supply ra…

> in the certain case that Bitcoin hit $1M they would be trillionaires. I never could understand this. Crypto currently makes up about 7% of the world's money supply, according to a quick search. Bitcoin is currently ~30k USD. If you bumped that to 1 million USD, a 33x increase in value, and assume that other crypto would go up roughly the same amount... ... You get the impossible answer that crypto would be worth we…

A 33x in Bitcoin price would put it just above the value of all the world's gold. Obviously not really realistic but if you're a crypto-piller and believe Bitcoin will be the next Gold then it's a decent benchmark moon price.

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

#367

Post by Forgeties79 »

latchkey wrote: post #360
Forgeties79 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe you are doing even half your daily transactions without converting to fiat. I also don’t know how you can wait a few minutes for a transaction to clear potentially dozens of times in a single day. So my guess is you largely deal with dong regardless of how you store your wealth. This just sounds like a quick sound bite where the day to day realities would tell a more nuanced story. If it wer…

You're stuck on bitcoin, there are other cryptos far more suited to these things, like USDC/USDT. I only mentioned bitcoin because, even with the complexities of it, it is still easier than dealing with VN banks. That's how hard it is to deal with. This is not a sound bite at all. More people ARE doing it, you just don't have any personal visibility into it. TONS of viets living abroad send money back and forth all t…

I have to ask: Do you think it's reasonable to expect even 10% of people to set up multiple wallets for all their coins and have a system in place for constant conversion to the fiat currency of where they are for daily transactions? Because you keep glossing over/ignoring this serious sticking point. Setting up a crypto wallet and having your systems in place is not an easy task for most people - especially when most of us go weeks (or longer) without seeing a single vendor who takes crypto. Being your bank is a lot of work and if you forget your password (who does that right?) you lose your money.

>This is not a sound bite at all. More people ARE doing it, you just don't have any personal visibility into it. TONS of viets living abroad send money back and forth all the time.

Do you have any numbers? "More" and "TONS" are, to be blunt, meaningless. And we all know the value of anecdotes.

>Expats, like me, have an even harder time. Language and cultural issues often get the in way. If you're a nomad who works online and doesn't have a 'regular' job... you're out of the system and hard for the banking system to deal with. Try walking into a bank where literally nobody speaks english and open an account.

If you move to a country like Vietnam and don't have a functional grasp of the language, you have way more problems than simply banking. Your expecting to be serviced at a Vietnamese bank while speaking english is the problem, not modern banking. Cryptocurrency does not solve language barriers any better or worse than other currencies do.

>In Vietnam, there is also something that the US doesn't have much of. A black market for funds. I can send USDC to Vietnam and a local there will convert it to VND for a very small fee and zero hassle.

Is this legal? Because this is just saying "crypto is great for violating the law." I'm not saying it's a good or fair system, that legality = moral, but this does not build your case like you think it does.

>Try walking in others shoes for a bit before you jump to conclusions about things.

I don't have a lack of imagination/empathy and find the insinuation a bit insulting. I can see why it's good for you. But to try and fit your very specific shoes on even 10% of the 7bill people on this earth, to graft your needs and solutions on to them and say "this is more convenient and better in most ways," does not make sense to me.

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

#368

Post by latchkey »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #367
latchkey wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're stuck on bitcoin, there are other cryptos far more suited to these things, like USDC/USDT. I only mentioned bitcoin because, even with the complexities of it, it is still easier than dealing with VN banks. That's how hard it is to deal with. This is not a sound bite at all. More people ARE doing it, you just don't have any personal visibility into it. TONS of viets living abroad send money back and forth all t…

I have to ask: Do you think it's reasonable to expect even 10% of people to set up multiple wallets for all their coins and have a system in place for constant conversion to the fiat currency of where they are for daily transactions? Because you keep glossing over/ignoring this serious sticking point. Setting up a crypto wallet and having your systems in place is not an easy task for most people - especially when mos…

So your argument is that crypto is bad because installing an app on your phone is hard?

Here is another anecdote for you:

https://twitter.com/BowTiedMara/status/1680184021735682049

Global remittance is ~$850B according to google.

> If you move to a country like Vietnam and don't have a functional grasp of the language, you have way more problems than simply banking.

I did it, don't know the language at all. Spent years driving around on a motorbike in some of the most remote areas of the country, where nobody speaks English and heck, some speak totally different dialects of Vietnamese (there are dozens of the dialects).

Banking really was the toughest thing I had to deal with there. No money, no honey.

> Is this legal?

There are all sorts of money exchange businesses there. It is super common.

> But to try and fit your very specific shoes on even 10% of the 7bill people on this earth,

No, what you're saying is that crypto HAS to be valuable for 10% of the earth in order for it to be useful or valid.

My argument is that it is just for the people who need it.

The rest can whine about it all they want.

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

#369

Post by [deleted] »

latchkey wrote: post #368
Forgeties79 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask: Do you think it's reasonable to expect even 10% of people to set up multiple wallets for all their coins and have a system in place for constant conversion to the fiat currency of where they are for daily transactions? Because you keep glossing over/ignoring this serious sticking point. Setting up a crypto wallet and having your systems in place is not an easy task for most people - especially when mos…

So your argument is that crypto is bad because installing an app on your phone is hard? Here is another anecdote for you: https://twitter.com/BowTiedMara/status/1680184021735682049 Global remittance is ~$850B according to google. > If you move to a country like Vietnam and don't have a functional grasp of the language, you have way more problems than simply banking. I did it, don't know the language at all . Spent ye…

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