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Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

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Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#81

Post by toomuchtodo »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #72
jedberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't prevent it, but it gives you recourse to make yourself whole again, and in a sense prevents a lot of funny business because people are afraid of getting caught and being put in jail.

Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased. How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me. It's literally perfect for finance (especially once multi-sig wallets become common). If Celsius had been more all-in on crypto tech, they would have had FEWER problems. Also, I don't know any law that exempts crypto companies from being taken to court.

It is important to understand that crypto is not an expression of finance (although financial transactions do take place on top of crypto), but an attempt to express law outside of the bounds of IRL legal frameworks, stating, "code is law", which is of course, not true. The legal system always takes precedence when they have a monopoly on force (financial and physical), which is why crypto is destined to be a niche system so long as it does not have mechanisms for the legal system to exert its will on it. What is business logic of traditional systems if not expressions of business rules operating within the constraints of legal frameworks?

It is not about immutability or what level of transparency the ledger has, it is about control and who can influence both business as usual contract execution and exception handling. It is a power struggle. Don't miss the forest for the trees.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#83

Post by cowtools »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #39
syntaxing wrote: post #5

Crypto is pretty much speed running our existing financial institutions’ past history.

What's hilarious to me is that crypto boosters would often cheer about how crypto doesn't "suffer" from the same things as our existing financial system (e.g. potential run on the bank in a fractional reserve system) - but then they went and built up all the same things they originally said crypto was immune from, this time with no regulations or legal framework.

I use cryptocurrency, however I don't remember ever working on, particiapting in, or endorsing Celcius.

Celcius is not decentralized, it is not a community led-project, it is not free/open source software.

So who is "they"? It's obvious to me that the type of person who endorses something like celcius just sees cryptocurrency as a free money machine, and does not actually have real princples regarding decentralization and whatnot.

Cryptocurrency can be strong against censorship etc. But it is clearly not sufficient in itself for censorship resistance etc (e.g. what value is being secured? from who? how?) It is analagous to saying that encryption is good for security but the presence of encryption is not sufficient for security (e.g. what data is being secured? from who? how?).

The fact that celcius can steal your deposit despite the fact that cryptocurrency is involved is analagous to the fact that GMail can read your emails despite the fact that HTTPS is involved.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#84

Post by jedberg »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #72
jedberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't prevent it, but it gives you recourse to make yourself whole again, and in a sense prevents a lot of funny business because people are afraid of getting caught and being put in jail.

Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased. How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me. It's literally perfect for finance (especially once multi-sig wallets become common). If Celsius had been more all-in on crypto tech, they would have had FEWER problems. Also, I don't know any law that exempts crypto companies from being taken to court.

> Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased. How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me.

The other important aspect of a working financial system is the ability for a 3rd party (courts/law enforcement) to undo transactions. Crypto makes that impossible without the cooperation of the offender.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#85

Post by [deleted] »

jcpham2 wrote: post #79
toomuchtodo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOJ is going after folks for front running [edit: better wording: insider trading, thx jcpham2 for pointing out my lazy language] NFTs on Coinbase. This is not a defense (“not real money”). Can’t have it both ways, that they’re digital assets when you want to scam, but it’s play money when you get caught. These people will be charged with a crime, and the government is going to find something that sticks. Securit…

Imho we should be careful of using this term front running. If I buy a thing (simply becqause I can) and then turn around and sell it at artificially high limit sell orders, does this mean I'm front running or market making? Spoofing?

[deleted]

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#86

Post by lottin »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #72
jedberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't prevent it, but it gives you recourse to make yourself whole again, and in a sense prevents a lot of funny business because people are afraid of getting caught and being put in jail.

Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased. How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me. It's literally perfect for finance (especially once multi-sig wallets become common). If Celsius had been more all-in on crypto tech, they would have had FEWER problems. Also, I don't know any law that exempts crypto companies from being taken to court.

Financing requires seizable assets, which means it's unimplementable using blackchain-based digital assets and smart contracts.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#87

Post by smoldesu »

woah wrote: post #62
geraldcombs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have enough shady people involved in a particular activity, then that activity is effectively shady. Similar to the fact that if you add enough raw sewage to the water supply, you don't have a water supply any more, you just have more sewage.

Lots of shady people were involved in web startups in 1999 (and still are tbh).

And the only thing keeping these creeps in check is our legal system. Once you remove that, the bottom falls out on quality.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#88

Post by TomSwirly »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #72
jedberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't prevent it, but it gives you recourse to make yourself whole again, and in a sense prevents a lot of funny business because people are afraid of getting caught and being put in jail.

Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased. How that technology would weaken trust and accountability is beyond me. It's literally perfect for finance (especially once multi-sig wallets become common). If Celsius had been more all-in on crypto tech, they would have had FEWER problems. Also, I don't know any law that exempts crypto companies from being taken to court.

> Crypto is like the invention of ink that cannot be erased.

No, that was invented in the late 70s, with the Merkle tree.

The whole wildly expensive consensus phase in cryptocurrencies is absolutely not needed for immutable ledgers.

> It's literally perfect for finance

People have been using digital certificates in finance since the 80s. When there is a single source of truth, which is the case for almost all finance except cryptocurrencies, there is no need for the horrific expense of the blockchain.

> Also, I don't know any law that exempts crypto companies from being taken to court.

Who said that? No one. No one at all.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#89

Post by moralestapia »

jedberg wrote: post #33

Oh hey look the consequences of a monetary system that isn't backed by a legal system (that is backed up by people with guns). The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right. And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn't listen to the legal system, there are people with guns/violence to back that up. That's why the whole system works -…

Why can't both exist though?

Each with their own advantage/disadvantages, and you get to choose which one to use after considering the tradeoffs.

Things I would use crypto for:

* Money transfers, particularly cross border payments. Low fees, quick confirmation from all parties.

* Any transaction that I would like to keep my privacy on (and this does not mean illegal things, btw).

Things I would never use crypto for:

* Storing wealth. For me personally it's too much of a bet, we're always one right (or wrong) math proof away from all of this becoming dust.

* Smart contracts. Anything that requires a contract between me and someone else, I'll keep using the tried and tested way of common law. I'd rather have my business backed by the Delaware Chancery Court (which has proven to be quite effective these past weeks) than by the code wrote by some random upwork contractor.

Re: Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers

#90

Post by papreclip »

beders wrote: post #59
pazimzadeh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? If that was true then it would be services like AAVE or Uniswap which would be bankrupt, not the centralized finance Celsius. The idea that the traditional legal system prevents funny business with money is naive. 9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU The Pentagon’s $35 Trillion Accounting Black Hole https://www.yahoo.com/video/pentagon-35-trilli…

How much money have you lost from your private bank account...?

Does loss of value via quantitative easing count?
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