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Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

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Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#521

Post by amanj41 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #447
yuvadam wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What aspects of bitcoin do you perceive as being "poorly designed"?

* Deflationary by design * Early adopters disproportionately end up in control of majority of coins (currently 0.03% of wallets own 59% of all bitcoins) * Proof-of-work is wasteful * Chain is very inefficient * Loss of coins with loss of wallet means, for one, that inheriting the coins is not possible unless special precautions are taken which undo a lot of the security * Other libertarian nonsense that shows very na…

I would not say it is correct to call BTC deflationary. It is simply not inflationary after the final halving. Since USD is highly inflationary then BTC is "deflationary" w.r.t $1, but the supply of BTC does not shrink.

You could argue about people losing their private keys being deflationary, but that's still different from blockchains like Ethereum whose currency is literally burned in small amounts during block creations (and therefore has the chance to be truly deflationary at times).

Aside from that your other points are valid.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#522

Post by omniglottal »

lordfrito wrote: post #494
EscapeFromNY wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of real world uses. - https://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/ - https://coincodecap.com/danish-reporters-in-ukraine-buy-used... - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644090 People from wealthy countries tend to reject the legitimacy of these uses because "my country is stable and could never have these problems", or "if buying food is illegal, you shouldn't buy food, you financia…

> As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it. What if it's hurting more people than it's helping? Just seems like a handwavy way to ignore the scams, fraud and collateral damage. We're talking billions. If we want to spend capital to help people in other countries, there are better ways of doing so. I do not believe for one second that the people from rich countries spending money in this space…

You're talking about billions of... dollars. Sounds to me like more scams exist because of fiat. Are you implying that scams don't exist with dollars, and it's the crypto alone which makes for fraud? Or is it that, if it's abused for corrupption and fraud, then it's hurting people so we should do away with it, like fiat?

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#523

Post by lordfrito »

EscapeFromNY wrote: post #504
lordfrito wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it. What if it's hurting more people than it's helping? Just seems like a handwavy way to ignore the scams, fraud and collateral damage. We're talking billions. If we want to spend capital to help people in other countries, there are better ways of doing so. I do not believe for one second that the people from rich countries spending money in this space…

If it's hurting more than it's helping, then we should probably get rid of it. But you'd need to bring some data proving as much. The attention grabbing headlines that linger in your memory are a biased sub-sample. For bitcoin specifically, a notable crypto skeptic Igor Makarov determined[1]: > illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume To me, 3% is an acceptable level. It's a lo…

> The attention grabbing headlines that linger in your memory are a biased sub-sample.

Agreed, repeated media narratives lead to bias (myself included) which stands in the way of reasoned argument. Data is good.

> illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume

I've read that over 70% of trade on the unregulated exchanges are wash trades / fake volume. [1] Huge huge red flag to me, may not be technically illegal, but evidence like this runs counter to the "helping the poor and unbanked" narrative. Market manipulation usually hurts more people than it helps.

> It's reductive to paint everyone with the same broad brush.

Fair enough.

I still say there's a lot of smoke here, and a few clear major wildfires.

Today's takeaway for me is that there are a lot more of people here that are heavily invested in crypto space than I guessed. People with money invested that need to see the space succeed. Makes it hard if not impossible to have a reasoned discussion here. It's probably fruitless to continue to talk about crypto here.

[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/wash-trading-centralised-cryp...

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#524

Post by prottog »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #506
prottog wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is not a security What makes you say that?

Security in the US is defined by the Howey test, and other jurisprudence. Bitcoin does not meet the definition any more than collectible trading cards do. Any crypto that imply some kind of stake or ownership of something that exists outside of that instrument are securities. This includes all stablecoins, all defi, and probably plenty of other things I don't even know about. But pure currencies that are backed by no…

Got it, that makes sense. I suppose the CFTC may come knocking on your ass instead ;-)

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#525

Post by yieldcrv »

lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

> After a decade of use the tech hasn't found

an oft said criticism that ignores a lot.....

standards within the crypto ecosystem follow a proposal and ratification process that takes years, this is a highly active area and highly collaborative

there are people that have the exact same information as you that said "I'll contribute" instead of "I'll find reasons to reinforce my disdain"

those standards get ratified and the crypto ecosystem begins catering to additional industries and additional people

this chronology is very easy to follow

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#526

Post by yieldcrv »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #476
lordfrito wrote: post #469

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very littl…

>I don't understand how... It's actually fairly simple. They're financially invested, one of the strongest biases of all.

no conflict = no interest

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#527

Post by imtringued »

nroets wrote: post #299
water554 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is dealing drugs bad? Bringing hard to obtain product to customers who want and will pay for it.

A friend of mine got hooked on something really bad. We could all see his health deteriorate month by month. He's probably dead right now. Even his parents don't know where he is. He's son will grow up without a father. I never met his dealer, but I'm sure the dealer saw the decay and did nothing.

I am pretty sure the dealer is financially incentivized to cut his drugs in a way that deteriorates the health of his customers.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#528

Post by imtringued »

tsimionescu wrote: post #361
0xedd wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banking industry makes 25 times more profit than all other industries around the world combined. It has no competition and abuses this fact. Isn't it interesting how little awareness this issue has?

An industry, by definition, can't have competition. The soft drinks industry also has no competition - if you want soft drinks, you have to buy from them. Competition happens inside an industry. And there is fierce competition between banks, much more so than in many other modern industries (e.g. there is much more competition than in tech).

As someone who is interested in banking innovations, there is hardly any real competition worth its name. Just more and more consolidation into bigger banks.

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#529

Post by imtringued »

cft wrote: post #184
raincole wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto's fate is bound be like those alternative Reddits and Twitters. What kind of users an alternative Reddit attracts? 1. People who don't like Reddit because of privacy concerns or other ideological reasons. 2. People who are banned by Reddit. It turns out group 2 is much larger than group 1 and the community rots. Now what kind of people who cryptos (a.k.a. alternative money) attract? 1. People who don't like ba…

Crypto has a viable micropayments for content story, see e.g. https://stacker.news . An upvote costs a minimum of 1 Satoshi (currently about 0.025¢)

>This is a special guide, for all those bitcoiners looking to escape from tyranny and go to El Salvador.

I guess my definition of tyranny is different...

Re: Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

#530

Post by EscapeFromNY »

greatwave1 wrote: post #517
EscapeFromNY wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's hurting more than it's helping, then we should probably get rid of it. But you'd need to bring some data proving as much. The attention grabbing headlines that linger in your memory are a biased sub-sample. For bitcoin specifically, a notable crypto skeptic Igor Makarov determined[1]: > illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume To me, 3% is an acceptable level. It's a lo…

> illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume > To me, 3% is an acceptable level. It's a lower percentage than the black market in many countries even. Yeah, but that's because the vast majority of volume comes from speculation and wash trading lmao. What do you think the ratio of speculation and illegal activity to legitimate use cases is? I'd be willing to be it's greater than 1…

You don't have to bet, the data is in the paper I linked. 75% of bitcoin volume is speculation. Meanwhile in the traditional economy, 95% of global financial activity is speculation (see below).

What level of speculation would you say is high enough to justify throwing away the remaining productive uses of an asset class?

---

In 2019, forex volume was $6.6T per day[1], or $1716T per year. In 2019, global GDP was $87.3T[2]. That's less than 5% economically meaningful activity.

[1]: https://www.financemagnates.com/institutional-forex/executio...

[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268750/global-gross-dome...

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