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The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#91

Post by ceejayoz »

decentralised wrote: post #83
raesene9 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except of course that in the case of tether there has (AFAIK) never actually been a completed audit of their USD holdings. the closest there has ever been is a letter from a law firm that was related to the owners and which clearly stated that it was not an audit.

I think you're right. I saw a document that I thought was the audit report but it's a simple memorandum. https://tether.to/announcement-transparency-update/

That's exactly what Tether wanted you to think.

They also parted ways with that firm because they were unwilling to provide what the auditor requested. They've never completed an audit, despite their website claiming "subject to frequent professional audits".

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#92

Post by moduspol »

xoa wrote: post #87
moduspol wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us know how you get it through airport security.

> Let us know how you get it through airport security. How you get it through what now? Private aircraft don't deal with that. GP did specify "billionaire", and at that level at least fractional ownership in private long distance transportation is not a reach either.

The point is that transporting large amounts of money that can be physically confiscated is a problem, even if it somehow fit into a suitcase.

Debating the logistics of potentially being able to evade some of those difficulties by having even larger sums of money (to afford private airliners or private security, even in times of unrest) and accepting larger risks misses the point.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#93

Post by root_axis »

stanleydrew wrote: post #89
root_axis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will this horrible argument stop being thrown around? Tetris and minesweeper use a minuscule amount of power and typically provide many hours of entertainment. As technology has advanced, the power efficiency of these games increased exponentially. On the other hand, blockchain mining responds to more efficient hardware by increasing difficulty in order to compensate for the impact of improved hardware on the ha…

Yes but you're ignoring the many hours of entertainment derived from obsessively refreshing your Coinbase account balance.

Sounds like an idea for an idle game.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#94

Post by School-Cotton »

wheels wrote: post #84
School-Cotton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I calculated this wrong, please ignore this comment

You're off by more than an order of magnitude. $50 million is 3,382 lbs (1534 kg, 1.6 US tons) of gold at current prices.

You're right; I was calculating based on the per-troy-ounce price, thinking it was the per-gram price. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#95

Post by ttul »

root_axis wrote: post #48

I doubt it. There is nothing to implode. Most of the activity in the "industry" is shuffling around tokens between the various blockchains as their respective cheerleaders hype their chosen coin and spread FUD about competing ones. All of the "real" economic activity surrounding cryptocurrencies (e.g. darknet commerce) will continue regardless of the price since darknet prices are pegged against the value of governme…

... and that economic value is tiny when compared with the speculative value. The untethering of tether portends a crash, IMHO.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#96

Post by SunSparc »

decentralised wrote: post #16

In general, if you pick the all time high as a starting point for your "research" it's all the way down from there. Bitcoin's daily transaction volume is moving to second layer so the metric used is not very useful. More importantly, and I can't stress this enough, the FX value of a cryptocurrency is not directly related to the project's status (developer activity or security track record, etc) but it is correlated t…

Agreed. This technology is really still in the infancy stage. As crypto takes first steps there will certainly be many falls before it is truly able to walk. In 2017 I think we saw an initial foray into general consumer visibility. As we know, general consumers are picky and have very short attention spans. The fact that crypto garnered so much attention for so long is a good indication that there is certainly something to this whole idea of a currency that defies the traditional financial systems. Now is not the time to give up. Crypto is just getting started.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#97

Post by A2017U1 »

Mithorium wrote: post #66
celticninja wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if any tethers have ever been destroyed? I have not seen it confirmed that this has occurred and if people were withdrawing to the dollar via USDT I would expect there to have been destructions.

No tether has ever been destroyed. While tether in its terms maintains that Tethers are redeemable "provided that you are a fully verified customer of Tether" [1], there is no known case of this ever happening, in fact it is a running joke that the tether signup page [2] is permanently suspended. Nor does anyone know who is buying them (and causing their creation). For example, when $250m of them were printed in june…

> No tether has ever been destroyed.

Here's 30 million being destroyed earlier this year:

https://omniexplorer.info/tx/24db40680654b8b505fda3e96be722c...

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#98

Post by arcticfox »

pkulak wrote: post #22
decentralised wrote: post #16

In general, if you pick the all time high as a starting point for your "research" it's all the way down from there. Bitcoin's daily transaction volume is moving to second layer so the metric used is not very useful. More importantly, and I can't stress this enough, the FX value of a cryptocurrency is not directly related to the project's status (developer activity or security track record, etc) but it is correlated t…

By "second layer" do you mean lightning? Is that project off the ground yet? It's been a while since I paid attention.

lightning is a nightmare, there are a lot of sad-humorous fails associated with trying to use it: https://twitter.com/Don_wonton/status/1050260801175597058

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#99

Post by dragontamer »

kjullien wrote: post #59
pavlov wrote: post #10

An important harbinger of trouble to come is that the Tether (USDT) coin, which is supposed to be pegged 1:1 to USD, is now trading substantially below $1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-15/dollar-pe... Billions of Tethers were printed seemingly out of thin air and used to purchase Bitcoin. It's part of the foundation of the house of cards that keeps Bitcoin at its current price: "Despite their modes…

Tether isn't what cryptocurrencies was/is supposed to be. It's as if you took Herbalife as a valuable/honest/model player in the dietary supplement market...

That's true, but its toxicity has spread to Bitcoin at very least.

Billions of Tether were printed, and then used to buy Bitcoin. That means Bitcoin's current price is supported (to some degree) by Tether.

Whether its catastrophic or not... well... time will tell. But its certainly a worry of some people.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#100

Post by arcticfox »

decentralised wrote: post #51
pkulak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "second layer" do you mean lightning? Is that project off the ground yet? It's been a while since I paid attention.

I meant a number of second layer solutions, but lightning is one of the best examples right now. Check this visualisation for a current view of the size of the network: https://www.easyzoom.com/image/126770

not a great sign when "NO NOOBS" is one of your more central nodes
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