71–80 of 137 posts
Well researched findings there. Imagine a world, where the same logs would be public of what and by whom happens on the stock exchanges where all the high frequency trading is happening these days...
The reason I'm inclined to believe this report's implications about Karpeles is because I spent a long time in Mt. Gox's IRC support channel talking with support reps, and they were paid to lie. They didn't know they were being paid to lie, but they were instructed by management to say "don't worry, all user coins are safe" right up until the day the Mt. Gox crisis report was leaked. They could have said "we are inve…
I don't know about "escaping all consequences," unless his idea of "escaping all consequences" is having to watch his back for the rest of his life. Seems like a pretty dumb way to make a few million bucks, IMHO.
I don't know about "escaping all consequences,"
unless his idea of "escaping all consequences"
is having to watch his back for the rest of his
life.
I doubt more than 5% of mtgox investors have the losses, the stomach and the connections to get me murdered. So I'd still have 50% of the money left over at the end.
Further proof that the absurd run-up in November when bitcoin reached $1,200 was illegitimate.
So why did it crash? Why didn't the fraudster just prop up the price?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which sentences from the article do you disagree with?
The following is presented as indisputable facts in the article: Bitcoin is a scam Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme There is zero chance that bitcoin will ever be mainstream Bitcoin does not have a single advantage over fiat currency Bitcoin will never be useful for online shopping None of the problems with bitcoin can be fixed All bitcoin users and developers are incompetent, does not know anything about economics, does no…
Also, on HN, a line in italics usually means "this is a direct quote," so it's generally taboo to put things in italics which you didn't copy-paste from some source. For example, the word "mainstream" never appears in the article, so it shouldn't be in an italicized line.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Segregated wallets doesn't work, that would mean every single trade would be a transaction on the block chain. It would absolutely flood the network and result in massive fees. It literally can't be done that way.
And that inherent inefficiency is just one of the reasons Bitcoin is not the future of finance.
The fraud continues today in China. Those exchanges were caught several times faking volume and placing phantom orders. I think the game now is: fake price hike in China, sell coins for real money on Bitstamp, buy cheaper, repeat. Just look at the recent hike - no news, no reason for 30% jump from $440 to $580 in a week.
My theory is that Bitcoin is used by the elite in China as just another way of transferring money out of the country. Buying Bitcoin from a Chinese exchange, and selling it on an American exchange, allows you to transfer money between countries, avoiding foreign exchange regulations.
I'm a fan of RationalWiki's Bitcoin article: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin > This is the sort of thing that gets bitcoins called "Dunning-Krugerrands."
Many of the articles on that wiki is written by people with only rudimentary knowledge of the topic that they're writing about, yet the authors claim to be experts, and "debunk" and criticize things without even doing any research.
Take http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scrying as an example.
There have actually been quite a few real scientific studies on scrying, and while there may be little evidence of psychic powers, there is good evidence that staring at a point, for example on a crystal ball or the surface of water, leads some people to see dream-like hallucinations at the point where they are staring. See for example http://books.google.com/books?id=am9NAAAAYAAJ&q=crystal+ball...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with pretty much everything you said but is it true that regulations would have prevented someone like Karpeles from doing the same with say, gold? What regulations prevent this? I'm asking genuinely because I have no idea what regulations exist in that world and I keep hearing that argument from smart people so I guess it's probably true.
My day job involves regulatory reporting of OTC and ETD products, although I deal with the technical aspects not the business side so my comments contain some speculation (but the other responses to your question here seem better at that addressing those aspects). A number of new regulations have come into place in the past few years to help prevent recurrences of recent financial scandals and meltdowns, and to ultim…
They were caught once in 2012, but its pretty clear the fact it took two years to catch them at it means they probably got away with it for as long as Mt Gox did, given the environment that enabled it lasted 9 years.
That doesn't count LIBOR, etc. When the incentives to break the system exist, it will get broken from time to time even with regulation. Regulation just reduces the frequency and generally requires multiple bad actors to truly manipulate the entire system.
And when 'breaking the system', basically gets you fined [not put in jail for 5+ years], you can generally calculate the degree of risk you are taking and effectively have a chance of just breaking even if you get caught...:/
Mt. Gox wouldn't happen, but the type of people that ran it would have found a different way to 'cheat'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The following is presented as indisputable facts in the article: Bitcoin is a scam Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme There is zero chance that bitcoin will ever be mainstream Bitcoin does not have a single advantage over fiat currency Bitcoin will never be useful for online shopping None of the problems with bitcoin can be fixed All bitcoin users and developers are incompetent, does not know anything about economics, does no…
The reason I asked "Which sentences from the article do you disagree with?" was to have you quote a sentence and then write a rebuttal. We strive to do better on HN than write strawman arguments, and we try to make our critique substantive and thorough. (A handy test: if I can't find a specific sentence to disagree with, I might be arguing a strawman position, so I try doubly hard to be thoughtful in that circumstanc…
Thanks for letting me know about italics, it was meant as a list and not a quote. I'll make sure to remember for next time :)