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Shorting Bitcoin

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Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#81

Post by arcticbull »

rorykoehler wrote: post #51
breck wrote: post #43

I love this sort of thing. He’s making a bet, explains his reasoning, and does it in the open! That’s great. I disagree that there’s no tech here. IMO public ledgers that never sleep are far superior(thanks to the hard work of many people over the past decade), and their advantage over retail banking will only increase. My online banks keep getting worse, crypto keeps getting better. Think about this: banks are CLOSE…

The amount of time it takes for me to move my own money between my own accounts pisses me off mightily. I can pay to have an "instant" transfer but that is just double dipping by the banks for a service that should be provided in the cost I'm already paying for my accounts. Crypto currently has far greater UX challenges but once these are fixed this is where crypto can win.

Free, instant transfers are already the status quo in a lot of the world, as of course they do not require blockchain. SEPA Instant Payment in the EU, for instance. In fact they're way faster than a Bitcoin transaction much of the time - and obviously way less expensive ($0 vs. $5-60).

The US is moving to 24/7 free, instant payments as RTP rolls out. [1]

The US has been quite far behind historically on this front however they are closing this gap, probably motivated in no small part by Bitcoin.

[1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#82

Post by anonymoushn »

arcticbull wrote: post #74
tempestn wrote: post #23

I've sold Tether for both USD and CAD without any issue or significant delay. What are the difficulties the author is referencing? (Asking genuinely, not arguing.)

The question is about redemptions with Tether Inc, not trading USDT for USD to other traders. Tether should be redeemable for dollars by redemption at Tether Inc, but of course it's not, since they only have 3% of the dollars required to fulfill those redemptions.

If you KYC with Tether and send them at least 100k USDT, it's redeemable for 99.9 cents. You can typically get like 15bps more on the open market.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#83

Post by arcticbull »

anonymoushn wrote: post #82
arcticbull wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is about redemptions with Tether Inc, not trading USDT for USD to other traders. Tether should be redeemable for dollars by redemption at Tether Inc, but of course it's not, since they only have 3% of the dollars required to fulfill those redemptions.

If you KYC with Tether and send them at least 100k USDT, it's redeemable for 99.9 cents. You can typically get like 15bps more on the open market.

Depends, if they see fit to deem you an "authorized participant" (at their sole discretion). Further, they have to decide to actually honor your redemption (they do not need to) and not to delay it an arbitrary amount of time (as is their right). [edit] Also, importantly, US persons are not permitted to redeem USDT. This is all in their terms of service.

And of course, you have to not exceed their liquidity buffer because they themselves admit to only being 3% backed.

Thus far, I don't believe anyone has actually shown any proof that they have actually carried out a redemption of USDT tokens via Tether. Most people who claim to simply traded it.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#84

Post by CryptoPunk »

colordrops wrote: post #76
xvector wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully most cryptos are moving to proof-of-stake.

Is proof-of-stake a proven technology yet though? Has it been shown to function without loopholes or exploits?

The first iteration of Ethereum's Proof of Stake protocol, the standalone Beacon Chain, has been working since December 1st 2020: https://beaconcha.in/

So while not there yet, it's on its way to becoming proven technology. A big test will be how it handles general transaction processing. The Beacon Chain is limited to finalizing Ethereum PoW chain blocks at the moment.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#85

Post by femto113 »

lordnacho wrote: post #59

Derivatives guy here. Perfectly fine opinion, but two issues. Why now? This is a general investing issue. Trading costs money, holding a put costs money, so why will the market do what you think in this time frame? Why are the puts cheap? This could be substantiated with some numbers, esp implied volatility. Are they cheap vs history? I don't know, but the reasoning should show why you think so. Note I'm not looking…

Except if you believe, as the author does, that the entire market is just scams and insider manipulation there is no meaning to be gleaned from any of the numbers. If it's all a sham it will blow up at some point, it's just a question of when, but that will almost certainly be precipitated by some unpredictable external event.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#86

Post by BB212 »

breck wrote: post #43

I love this sort of thing. He’s making a bet, explains his reasoning, and does it in the open! That’s great. I disagree that there’s no tech here. IMO public ledgers that never sleep are far superior(thanks to the hard work of many people over the past decade), and their advantage over retail banking will only increase. My online banks keep getting worse, crypto keeps getting better. Think about this: banks are CLOSE…

I still don't get how this solves any major issues. Neither major companies or the vast majority of people need to wire money at 2am. The main utility of banks (and the main profit center) is giving users the ability to spend money on credit.

Crypto doesn't solve that. I feel like everything you said about the upside of crypto would have applied even more so to the invention of 24 hour ATMs. Was it a huge upside to users they could get money at 2am? Yes. Did it change banking - no. Will faster transfer be upside for consumers? Yes. Will it change banking - probably not the existing banks will just get faster at it and things will be marginally better. I can already use zelle to transfer instantly.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#87

Post by midjji »

breck wrote: post #43

I love this sort of thing. He’s making a bet, explains his reasoning, and does it in the open! That’s great. I disagree that there’s no tech here. IMO public ledgers that never sleep are far superior(thanks to the hard work of many people over the past decade), and their advantage over retail banking will only increase. My online banks keep getting worse, crypto keeps getting better. Think about this: banks are CLOSE…

Banks are bad because they charge to much, but they aren't that bad. What kind of unbelievably shitty bank doesn't provide 24-7 money transfers through a convenient phone app? Those transfers always take 0 time within the bank and have legally forced waiting periods between banks and between regions. The time may be legally required to be higher for certain scales of transactions, but they are generally as fast as they can be. Btw if your bank does not provide these services, just switch to one that does.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#88

Post by xvilka »

arcticbull wrote: post #81
rorykoehler wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of time it takes for me to move my own money between my own accounts pisses me off mightily. I can pay to have an "instant" transfer but that is just double dipping by the banks for a service that should be provided in the cost I'm already paying for my accounts. Crypto currently has far greater UX challenges but once these are fixed this is where crypto can win.

Free, instant transfers are already the status quo in a lot of the world, as of course they do not require blockchain. SEPA Instant Payment in the EU, for instance. In fact they're way faster than a Bitcoin transaction much of the time - and obviously way less expensive ($0 vs. $5-60). The US is moving to 24/7 free, instant payments as RTP rolls out. [1] The US has been quite far behind historically on this front how…

While it's true in some regions, most of the globe banking is still very slow. In any digital currency, like cryptocoins of CBDC it's the same globally, not per region.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#89

Post by cma »

peter422 wrote: post #40
vlovich123 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The multiples that Tesla trades at arguably are on the assumption that they’ll crack self-driving first combined with their dominance in absorbing a good chunk of the green credits that they resell to other companies. The former feels sufficiently far out that the multiple is irrational. The latter will start disappearing as competitors roll out their own EVs and government subsidies start disappearing.

Tesla is the absolute world leader in battery manufacturing. A lot of people are betting on that as well. Tesla has a lot of things going for it if you project what we are going to need in the future. I’m not saying it is a good/bad investment but their entire car business could fade away and they could still be doing mega-business in other “green” business lines.

That was Panasonic, and for the China market they switched to the same pouch cells as everyone else.

Re: Shorting Bitcoin

#90

Post by arcticbull »

xvilka wrote: post #88
arcticbull wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free, instant transfers are already the status quo in a lot of the world, as of course they do not require blockchain. SEPA Instant Payment in the EU, for instance. In fact they're way faster than a Bitcoin transaction much of the time - and obviously way less expensive ($0 vs. $5-60). The US is moving to 24/7 free, instant payments as RTP rolls out. [1] The US has been quite far behind historically on this front how…

While it's true in some regions, most of the globe banking is still very slow. In any digital currency, like cryptocoins of CBDC it's the same globally, not per region.

Global transfers are slow because they generally undergo some form of manual review for risk and AML/KYC. Crypto is fast because it pretends that this isn't a requirement. That only works as long as it's small enough people don't care. Once people care, things will look a lot different than they do now.

There's no reason whatsoever that a crypto payment would be faster than a traditional payment - in fact, there's a ton of reasons the lower bound is much slower.

This is an intentional process decision, combined with some (replaceable) outdated technology. However, the former strictly dominates the latter.

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