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BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

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Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#391
post #224
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much how a lot of "unicorns" felt in the past 2-3 years

I once heard that a well-known gig economy company would open up new cities by giving employees essentially-unlimited credit cards and telling them to buy whatever they thought was needed, with no controls or multi-person approvals. It'll be interesting to see how VC changes in the modern environment - will they still be all-in on founders willing to unsustainably burn money just to incrementally boost the probabilit…

This happens because of the boom-bust cycle we see in capitalism. I was a child in the 1990s when the Netherlands went through a boom that looked like the Japanese bubble and lasted 20 years.

I don't expect anything to change because it never does.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preserve your seed words You've already lost most users. My parents call me weekly because I'm their password manager. They're not the only ones.

I don't get the point of password managers. What's so hard to remember a password? Just use the first name of your eldest child, add your house number, and you're golden. If you're really that dumb, post-it notes exist for a reason.

I've made their passwords incredibly easy to remember. They're just not able to for whatever reason. They're both practicing doctors who I generally believe to be competent but for whatever reason passwords elude them. Maybe crypto just won't work until all the people who grew up pre-internet die.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#393
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to wikipedia, under 'Central Bank': "a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base. Most central banks also have supervisory and regulatory powers to ensure the stability of member institutions, to prevent bank runs, and to discourage reckless or fraudulent behavior by member banks." Since the major collapses were by organizations which had a monopoly on creating their own currencies (…

Sorry. We were talking about what it means for an "actor" to be "decentralised". Now you're saying that a central bank is someone who has a monopoly on issuing their own currency. So apparently I'm a central bank, you're a central bank, the Chinese restaurant around the corner is a central bank... First of all, none of these people or organisations are central banks. And second, we weren't talking about central banks…

This is one of those 'can't win' situations because no matter how I respond you will find something to pick apart and keep decrying your victory. Good day.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#394
post #253

My wife and I had about 10% of our life savings in BlockFi. This is a pretty big blow for us, especially while gearing up to start a family. It's easily in the top 5 worst things to happen to me in my life. Is there any hope of individual creditors getting any of their money back? I'm unfamiliar with how bankruptcy works.

Can I ask why? If you wanted to put money into crypto, why didn't you use a blockchain where you could verify your holdings and nobody could take them from you? BlockFi was just an incredibly shitty bank.

Because they paid high interest rates! That's how all these scams work, one after the other. Pay high interest rates to attract customers (impossible to achieve rates), create tokens of your own, trade them to other places paying high interest rates. Take your bitcoin deposits, use them to make other bets, hope that it will go up somehow.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your original response was an insinuation that banking systems in general are based on fraud, and that gold should be the basis of monetary value. In fact, the case has been proven that gold is a poor basis of monetary value and that banking systems, when properly regulated, are not fraudulent, or are very rarely fraudulent. The reply to that was to explain that regulation was the key to maintaining a stable banking…

Please understand I am not trying to be dishonest or make arguments in bad faith. Maybe I need to be further educated. I understand that the level of fraud committed specifically by FTX goes far beyond simply misleading lenders and regulators about their collateral which consisted mostly of their own crypto. In general, however, this seems to be the root of the issue and the systemic problem across all centralized cr…

these nakedly fraudulent scams are nothing like real finance, its night and day. you need to get educated and then come back with better-informed opinions

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#396
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us find it hard to believe there are any reasonable people in the crypto space. The whole thing seems like a dumb sham. The FTX collapse and contagion is sad but unsurprising.

There is no reasonable people in the traditional finance space either if you look at the 2008 crash. https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list

Correct. That's why finance needs to be regulated up the ass. Repealing Glass–Steagall was a terrible idea and probably eventually led to 2008. Cryptocurrency generally seems to want to go in the opposite direction and have a speculative free-for-all.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#397
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroying money doesn't destroy capital. It doesn't matter who created it. Money is not capital. You're mistaking a claim on a good for the good itself. These are completely different things.

Again, you're using a totally non-standard definition of capital. Google "capital definition" > wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing. So yes, if you redefine the word capital to fit whatever you like, then sure, I agree with you.

I'm not redefining anything. I'm an economist, and I know the terminology of economics well. Capital can refer to two things, either 'capital' (or 'real capital') or 'financial capital'. The definition that you've posted matches (more less) the definition of financial capital. But, either way, this is not complicated. The fact remains that destroying money doesn't destroy wealth. Mistaking money for real wealth is a common mistake.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#398
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your math assumes he lost 0% on the rest of his savings, while "those storing equity in ultra boring indexes" where storing 100% of their savings there. Is that really a fair accounting, in your opinion?

If you assume I assumed the things you assumed then I assume we can assume that would be a fair question.

Generally people don't lose all their investments in a stock or index fund. They might go down in price 10% on fund xyz but won't lose all their value. Do you not get that difference with this, this would not happen if he bought stocks with 10% of his money.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#399
post #9

For what it's worth, all reasonable people in the crypto space want regulation to make sure these types of poor lending practices don't continue. Regulators have been slow and ineffective when it comes to crypto, which has lent itself to the crypto v SEC narrative, but all the adults in the room known there is a need for some regulation.

The market is punishing bad actors with insolvency. Yet somehow the conclusion is that markets are not effective in self-regulation.

The consequences doled out by the market are not distributed equitably. A bunch of late-comers and depositors lost everything, while the people most responsible for the disaster live in multi-million dollar homes in the Bahamas. This seems like a recipe for the same thing happening again and again.

If SBF sees the inside of a prison cell that won't be the free market at work but rather the government.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#400
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here! #1 was my motivation, though at the moment I'm definitely feeling like #4 played a role. My rationale was that crypto just sitting in cold storage could only gain value if the underlying asset appreciated which is effectively currency speculation. By storing it in a crypto "bank" my money could be working to generate actual value via. liquidity and loans akin to a real bank. If the money was earning a modest…

> “generate actual value via liquidity and loans akin to a real bank” What’s missing from this picture is actual productive economic activity. Banks make loans to real-world businesses who use it to produce goods and services, and assuming those are desirable in the market, part of the margin on those products ends up paying the interest to the bank. Crypto lenders make loans to crypto traders who ultimately produce…

Yes, you summarize the entire cycle very well. There's nothing creating wealth other than the next group of people buying some crypto thing, then that is 'invested' by buying other things that are paying interest, but eventually the cycle of new money coming in goes away.
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