Is Crypto dying or just dropping for the moment?

[Jimmy Higgins]

Another bites the dust, declares bankruptcy. Celsius appears to be close to getting there officially as well. They had assets between $1 billion and $10 billion, but of course, when the funny money drops 75%, and you don't actually hold any real assets, that can disappear quick!

 

[Harry Bosch]

Another bites the dust, declares bankruptcy. Celsius appears to be close to getting there officially as well. They had assets between $1 billion and $10 billion, but of course, when the funny money drops 75%, and you don't actually hold any real assets, that can disappear quick!

Yea, it's really going to be brutal. Feel bad for people that bought in around the peak. All that bad debt from the real estate crash in 2009 and 10 was at least backed up with homes that were overvalued by 20 or 30%. Some even by 50%. But they were still homes that eventually someone would want to buy in the future. Nothing is holding up the crypto currencies.

 

[Jarhyn]

Another bites the dust, declares bankruptcy. Celsius appears to be close to getting there officially as well. They had assets between $1 billion and $10 billion, but of course, when the funny money drops 75%, and you don't actually hold any real assets, that can disappear quick!

Yea, it's really going to be brutal. Feel bad for people that bought in around the peak. All that bad debt from the real estate crash in 2009 and 10 was at least backed up with homes that were overvalued by 20 or 30%. Some even by 50%. But they were still homes that eventually someone would want to buy in the future. Nothing is holding up the crypto currencies.

Which is why it's going to be so funny when a large number of really wealthy people lose all their money because they bought into the secondary "front" scam of a money laundering operation.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Another bites the dust, declares bankruptcy. Celsius appears to be close to getting there officially as well. They had assets between $1 billion and $10 billion, but of course, when the funny money drops 75%, and you don't actually hold any real assets, that can disappear quick!

Yea, it's really going to be brutal. Feel bad for people that bought in around the peak. All that bad debt from the real estate crash in 2009 and 10 was at least backed up with homes that were overvalued by 20 or 30%. Some even by 50%. But they were still homes that eventually someone would want to buy in the future. Nothing is holding up the crypto currencies.

Which is why it's going to be so funny when a large number of really wealthy people lose all their money because they bought into the secondary "front" scam of a money laundering operation.

Average Joe responsible for the wellbeing of a family will do this too. I seen it back in '99. They'll go all in and jack up their credit cards to boot all in the hopes of the big score. Foolish? Irresponsible? Yes. But we tend not to find the humor in it.
What's needed is the government to hold clampdown on this crap before it gets started because I'd bet it's not Average Joe who got in and out early. Average Joe's always bringing up the rear. Average Joe gets left standing when the music stops.

 

[Artemus]

Another bites the dust, declares bankruptcy. Celsius appears to be close to getting there officially as well. They had assets between $1 billion and $10 billion, but of course, when the funny money drops 75%, and you don't actually hold any real assets, that can disappear quick!

Shortly after this implosion started someone in a comment section on ArsTechnica said to check out the CelsiusNetwork subreddit for "Free SchaudenCoins." That was so brilliant I had to check it out and have been trapped watching the train wreck ever since. They had no idea that, per the terms of service, they were giving their "deposits" away and think that it is great that Celsius is using their crypto to pay off its own debt. And worse yet, those that have finally realized that they'll never get their deposits back are saying how they will build back by buying more crypto but will put keep their wallet themselves this time. The assumptions (outright stated in most cases) are that a) it will of course cycle up again, b) they'll know exactly when to cash out this time because they are so much smarter now, and c) they would never lose their wallet somehow.

Seriously, it is difficult to feel sorry for any of them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jebus! Those people still hoping. Read one thread where they wanted to figure out how they could prove what they had in assets. They don't seem to get it. Celsius was a scam that'd only work if the crypto kept increasing.

They don't understand that you can't get blood from a stone, even if you prove you had lots of blood in the "bank". Their terms of services should have been illegal and they shouldn't have been allowed to exist, but this is America, we only prevent something from happening again.

 

[Jarhyn]

Jebus! Those people still hoping. Read one thread where they wanted to figure out how they could prove what they had in assets. They don't seem to get it. Celsius was a scam that'd only work if the crypto kept increasing.

They don't understand that you can't get blood from a stone, even if you prove you had lots of blood in the "bank". Their terms of services should have been illegal and they shouldn't have been allowed to exist, but this is America, we only prevent something from happening again.

Do we even do that much, though?

 

[bilby]

Jebus! Those people still hoping. Read one thread where they wanted to figure out how they could prove what they had in assets. They don't seem to get it. Celsius was a scam that'd only work if the crypto kept increasing.

They don't understand that you can't get blood from a stone, even if you prove you had lots of blood in the "bank". Their terms of services should have been illegal and they shouldn't have been allowed to exist, but this is America, we only prevent something from happening again.

Do we even do that much, though?

Nope. You only prevent something from happening again in precisely the same way. Variations on the theme are left to the imaginations of the scammers.

It’s not as though the core scam this time is substantially different from the scheme developed by Mr Ponzi. He just didn’t have computers, and had to issue worthless paper rather than worthless blockchains.

 

[Swammerdami]

Which is why it's going to be so funny when a large number of really wealthy people lose all their money because they bought into the secondary "front" scam of a money laundering operation.

Really wealthy people may not be really smart, but they aren't really stupid either. Their crypto investments are just one niche in their diversified wealth: stocks, bonds, hedge funds, thoroughbred horses, farmland, paintings and yachts.

The big losers will be nouveaux, many barely out of their teens.

 

[Artemus]

The train wreck on the CelsiusNetwork subreddit has worsened. From a lawsuit filed against Celsius by a former fund manager (quoted in a comment in this thread :

86. Celsius had massive liabilities to depositors denominated in ether but had not
maintained ETH holdings equal to those liabilities. Instead, Celsius had authorized DeFi strategies that resulted in the shifting of assets from ether to other cryptocurrencies and (inexplicably) had failed to hedge against this well-known risk.
87. As customers sought to withdraw their ether deposits, Celsius was forced to buy
ether in the open market at historically high prices, suffering heavy losses. Faced with a liquidity
crisis, Celsius began to offer double-digit interest rates in order to lure new depositors, whose
funds were used to repay earlier depositors and creditors. Thus, while Celsius continued to market
itself as a transparent and well capitalized business, in reality, it had become a Ponzi scheme.

ETA: Full lawsuit filed is available here.

 

[Artemus]

Another one goes down: Embattled crypto lender Celsius informs state regulators that it’s filing for bankruptcy ‘imminently,’ source says

ETA: They've filed in New York.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The Celsius folk were actually becoming more hopeful.

 

[Artemus]

The Celsius folk were actually becoming more hopeful.

Some of them still are: "Lot's of companies come out of Chapter 11." Uh, those companies have something called "income".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The "A-word" is mentioned a lot, assets. And I'm thinking they don't really have assets, they have funny money... which has depreciated a lot. It is one thing to have $1,000,000,000 in digital currency. It is another if you spent $3,000,000,000 acquiring it. Others keep saying to print out their asset statements to prove what they had. It sounds like these were merely screen shots to be used to try and get some money back in the bankruptcy. The denial right now is shielding the bitter reality of what they loss.

There are some threads there about the loss of all their money, postings for suicide prevention hotlines. One guy said he was just using it temporarily for the interest rate. It clearly wasn't sustainable, too good to be true. One of the posts was talking about them paying back their cronies for the loans. Personally, I was pondering something like le Chiffre and paying back as much dark money possible, because of potentially ugly endings involving wicker furniture.

Back to digitial funny money, Bitcoin tried to bump up to $22k and failed again, back down to just below $20k.

 

[Jarhyn]

The "A-word" is mentioned a lot, assets. And I'm thinking they don't really have assets, they have funny money... which has depreciated a lot. It is one thing to have $1,000,000,000 in digital currency. It is another if you spent $3,000,000,000 acquiring it. Others keep saying to print out their asset statements to prove what they had. It sounds like these were merely screen shots to be used to try and get some money back in the bankruptcy. The denial right now is shielding the bitter reality of what they loss.

There are some threads there about the loss of all their money, postings for suicide prevention hotlines. One guy said he was just using it temporarily for the interest rate. It clearly wasn't sustainable, too good to be true. One of the posts was talking about them paying back their cronies for the loans. Personally, I was pondering something like le Chiffre and paying back as much dark money possible, because of potentially ugly endings involving wicker furniture.

Back to digitial funny money, Bitcoin tried to bump up to $22k and failed again, back down to just below $20k.

It's automated investment systems set up by the least idiotic of the suckers causing boundary points at what should be predictable numbers: 20k and 10% of 20k.

 

[ramoss]

It's value is based on absolutely nothing at all, so confidence that other people will continue joining in at the bottom of the pyramid scheme is the only thing which keeps it making money. This means that the more people who have issues with it, the less suckers there are to bleed dry. The people who understand what bitcoin is (or rather, what it isn't) have been raking in the cash, but there comes a point where they need to decide whether or not it's time to cut their losses because too many have caught onto their scam. Once more of those start saying that it's time, the descending spiral begins.

There isn't a currency in the world that isn't based on anything but confidence. Right now, the problem is a lot of the cryptocurrancies are being treated as a commodity in the marketplace, rather than a currency. Crypto's should be used as an alternative to credit cards, not as an alternative for investing.

Well, that is pretty interesting. What would be the advantage of using crypto rather than credit cards?

Interest charges. Credit cards charge credit card fees to business, while the crypto fees are much less.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's value is based on absolutely nothing at all, so confidence that other people will continue joining in at the bottom of the pyramid scheme is the only thing which keeps it making money. This means that the more people who have issues with it, the less suckers there are to bleed dry. The people who understand what bitcoin is (or rather, what it isn't) have been raking in the cash, but there comes a point where they need to decide whether or not it's time to cut their losses because too many have caught onto their scam. Once more of those start saying that it's time, the descending spiral begins.

There isn't a currency in the world that isn't based on anything but confidence. Right now, the problem is a lot of the cryptocurrancies are being treated as a commodity in the marketplace, rather than a currency. Crypto's should be used as an alternative to credit cards, not as an alternative for investing.

Well, that is pretty interesting. What would be the advantage of using crypto rather than credit cards?

Interest charges. Credit cards charge credit card fees to business, while the crypto fees are much less.

Not to mention you don't have to apply for or have credit to have and spend crypto.

No bank can decline your account.

All you need is to know how to generate a wallet.

 

[ramoss]

It's value is based on absolutely nothing at all, so confidence that other people will continue joining in at the bottom of the pyramid scheme is the only thing which keeps it making money. This means that the more people who have issues with it, the less suckers there are to bleed dry. The people who understand what bitcoin is (or rather, what it isn't) have been raking in the cash, but there comes a point where they need to decide whether or not it's time to cut their losses because too many have caught onto their scam. Once more of those start saying that it's time, the descending spiral begins.

There isn't a currency in the world that isn't based on anything but confidence. Right now, the problem is a lot of the cryptocurrancies are being treated as a commodity in the marketplace, rather than a currency. Crypto's should be used as an alternative to credit cards, not as an alternative for investing.

Well, that is pretty interesting. What would be the advantage of using crypto rather than credit cards?

Interest charges. Credit cards charge credit card fees to business, while the crypto fees are much less.

Not to mention you don't have to apply for or have credit to have and spend crypto.

No bank can decline your account.

All you need is to know how to generate a wallet.

There are disadvantages right now. Highly volitile. if you lose the pw to the wallet, your assets are gone, if you lose the wallet, your assets are gone.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's value is based on absolutely nothing at all, so confidence that other people will continue joining in at the bottom of the pyramid scheme is the only thing which keeps it making money. This means that the more people who have issues with it, the less suckers there are to bleed dry. The people who understand what bitcoin is (or rather, what it isn't) have been raking in the cash, but there comes a point where they need to decide whether or not it's time to cut their losses because too many have caught onto their scam. Once more of those start saying that it's time, the descending spiral begins.

There isn't a currency in the world that isn't based on anything but confidence. Right now, the problem is a lot of the cryptocurrancies are being treated as a commodity in the marketplace, rather than a currency. Crypto's should be used as an alternative to credit cards, not as an alternative for investing.

Well, that is pretty interesting. What would be the advantage of using crypto rather than credit cards?

Interest charges. Credit cards charge credit card fees to business, while the crypto fees are much less.

Not to mention you don't have to apply for or have credit to have and spend crypto.

No bank can decline your account.

All you need is to know how to generate a wallet.

There are disadvantages right now. Highly volitile. if you lose the pw to the wallet, your assets are gone, if you lose the wallet, your assets are gone.

And so the secure storage of information like wallet seed is important..

In some respects the wallet is like cash. If you really want a third party to transactions though you can always run multi-sig.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Meanwhile, there is still optimism in the Celsius Reddit. And there was a thread about "telling your wife" about the losses. One guy said she took it like a pro... and I'm thinking... 'but you are still alive'. I mean, the crazier aspect of this is having had invested in crypto wasn't reckless enough. Then they needed to deposit (as in give) a fake bank the coins at interest rates that were insanely suspicious.

Bitcoin is busting above $23k, which means... well, nothing. Other than the 'fortune favors the people that sold to the "bold"' folks are just $20k to $30k shy of breaking even, if they don't "hold" their "deposits" at a bank that went belly up.