Is Crypto dying or just dropping for the moment?

[TSwizzle]

This can't be good;

Crypto exchange FTX and many of its affiliated companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company announced on Friday, with FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepping down as CEO. I'm really sorry, again, that we ended up here," Bankman-Fried, a former crypto billionaire, said in a Twitter post that went out soon after the filing announcement.

Yahoo

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

 

[TSwizzle]

This didn't age well;

 

[blastula]

At least Larry was right.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

I never bought into bit coins. My financial advisor recommended that I put 2% of portfolio into bit coin. I said no. He convinced my wife though. So we have some exposure. Not a lot though. But I'm sensitive to the fact that I have many other friends and family with much deeper exposure.

 

[Jarhyn]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

I never bought into bit coins. My financial advisor recommended that I put 2% of portfolio into bit coin. I said no. He convinced my wife though. So we have some exposure. Not a lot though. But I'm sensitive to the fact that I have many other friends and family with much deeper exposure.

If the portfolio holdings of Bitcoin is not in a wallet only you have the seed and password for, then you hold zero bitcoins.

Which is to say, bitcoins require no banking, and no sane user allows a bank to hold their bitcoins.

The whole point was remote payments WITHOUT banks, and third party trust on Bitcoin is really dumb since they can be effectively stolen and cannot be recovered once they ARE securely held in a user wallet.

 

[steve_bank]

It was a bubble from the start.

You buy bitcoins hoping in the future somebody will pay more than you did? Or am I missing something.

As a currency alternative how oes it avoid the same problems with currency and economics? Inflation? To balance inflation money has to be ivested in the ecinomy.

Who controls the supply of bitcoins?

 

[Jayjay]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

I never bought into bit coins. My financial advisor recommended that I put 2% of portfolio into bit coin. I said no. He convinced my wife though. So we have some exposure. Not a lot though. But I'm sensitive to the fact that I have many other friends and family with much deeper exposure.

If the portfolio holdings of Bitcoin is not in a wallet only you have the seed and password for, then you hold zero bitcoins.

Which is to say, bitcoins require no banking, and no sane user allows a bank to hold their bitcoins.

The whole point was remote payments WITHOUT banks, and third party trust on Bitcoin is really dumb since they can be effectively stolen and cannot be recovered once they ARE securely held in a user wallet.

That's the point of bitcoins to some people. It's not the only reason. If a person is just owning bitcoins as an investment or needs to transact with bitcoins for some reason, holding them in a bank isn't any less sane than holding your other money or assets in a bank.

I think banks are naturally poised to take over custodial services if bitcoins or other cryptos become more regulated. It's just numbers on a computer for them, just like normal currency.

 

[Jayjay]

It was a bubble from the start.

You buy bitcoins hoping in the future somebody will pay more than you did? Or am I missing something.

As a currency alternative how oes it avoid the same problems with currency and economics? Inflation? To balance inflation money has to be ivested in the ecinomy.

Who controls the supply of bitcoins?

Miners. The supply of new bitcoins consists entirely of mining rewards, and is determined by the algorithm used. By agreeing to use the same algorithm to cap the supply. But if less than 50% decide to have a different algorithm, the dissidents get nothing, so there is an economic incentive to stick with the majority, and majority has incentive to stick with the algorithm's limitations for new bitcoins because meddling it would very likely crash the price.

Another alternative is to "fork" the ledger. That's been done multiple times and that's why there are variants like "Bitcoin Gold" (current value ~$14) or "Bitcoin Cash" (~$100). Everyone who owns bitcoin at the time of the fork, will have equal number in the forked chain, but their dollar value depends entirely on who wants to buy them.

Bitcoin supply is limited (the rate at which miners get bitcoins is halved every 4 years, next time in 2024), and ultimately this will make it deflationary, because no new bitcoins will be created at some point, and some will be lost acicdentally due to people forgetting their passphrases or dying without revealing them to anyone.

 

[Jarhyn]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

I never bought into bit coins. My financial advisor recommended that I put 2% of portfolio into bit coin. I said no. He convinced my wife though. So we have some exposure. Not a lot though. But I'm sensitive to the fact that I have many other friends and family with much deeper exposure.

If the portfolio holdings of Bitcoin is not in a wallet only you have the seed and password for, then you hold zero bitcoins.

Which is to say, bitcoins require no banking, and no sane user allows a bank to hold their bitcoins.

The whole point was remote payments WITHOUT banks, and third party trust on Bitcoin is really dumb since they can be effectively stolen and cannot be recovered once they ARE securely held in a user wallet.

That's the point of bitcoins to some people. It's not the only reason. If a person is just owning bitcoins as an investment or needs to transact with bitcoins for some reason, holding them in a bank isn't any less sane than holding your other money or assets in a bank.

I think banks are naturally poised to take over custodial services if bitcoins or other cryptos become more regulated. It's just numbers on a computer for them, just like normal currency.

Holding them in a bank is far less sane because there is no value proposition for the risk of letting custodians touch the wallet.

The only difference in transacting with a bank is one more person between you and the actual wallet it's going to be held in, and the power of others to steal your money without recourse to recovery.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

I never bought into bit coins. My financial advisor recommended that I put 2% of portfolio into bit coin. I said no. He convinced my wife though. So we have some exposure. Not a lot though. But I'm sensitive to the fact that I have many other friends and family with much deeper exposure.

If the portfolio holdings of Bitcoin is not in a wallet only you have the seed and password for, then you hold zero bitcoins.

Which is to say, bitcoins require no banking, and no sane user allows a bank to hold their bitcoins.

The whole point was remote payments WITHOUT banks, and third party trust on Bitcoin is really dumb since they can be effectively stolen and cannot be recovered once they ARE securely held in a user wallet.

That's the point of bitcoins to some people. It's not the only reason. If a person is just owning bitcoins as an investment or needs to transact with bitcoins for some reason, holding them in a bank isn't any less sane than holding your other money or assets in a bank.

I think banks are naturally poised to take over custodial services if bitcoins or other cryptos become more regulated. It's just numbers on a computer for them, just like normal currency.

Holding them in a bank is far less sane because there is no value proposition for the risk of letting custodians touch the wallet.

The only difference in transacting with a bank is one more person between you and the actual wallet it's going to be held in, and the power of others to steal your money without recourse to recovery.

No FDIC on funny money.

 

[Jayjay]

Jebus... makes the S&L scandal look quaint.

Who'd think an unregulated system for funny money would be so volatile.

I never bought into bit coins. My financial advisor recommended that I put 2% of portfolio into bit coin. I said no. He convinced my wife though. So we have some exposure. Not a lot though. But I'm sensitive to the fact that I have many other friends and family with much deeper exposure.

If the portfolio holdings of Bitcoin is not in a wallet only you have the seed and password for, then you hold zero bitcoins.

Which is to say, bitcoins require no banking, and no sane user allows a bank to hold their bitcoins.

The whole point was remote payments WITHOUT banks, and third party trust on Bitcoin is really dumb since they can be effectively stolen and cannot be recovered once they ARE securely held in a user wallet.

That's the point of bitcoins to some people. It's not the only reason. If a person is just owning bitcoins as an investment or needs to transact with bitcoins for some reason, holding them in a bank isn't any less sane than holding your other money or assets in a bank.

I think banks are naturally poised to take over custodial services if bitcoins or other cryptos become more regulated. It's just numbers on a computer for them, just like normal currency.

Holding them in a bank is far less sane because there is no value proposition for the risk of letting custodians touch the wallet.

The only difference in transacting with a bank is one more person between you and the actual wallet it's going to be held in, and the power of others to steal your money without recourse to recovery.

My point is that the same is true of cash. Putting it in a bank protects you from someone physically robbing you, but also puts you at risk that the bank may go bankrupt or otherwise cheat you. Banking regulation protects you from those risks a bit, but not entirely.

With bitcoin, the risk isn't so much getting physically robbed as it is forgetting your passphrase or otherwise losing the keys. With bitcoins in a bank, you don't have to worry about it more than you have with dollar accounts.

 

[Jayjay]

No FDIC on funny money.

There is no reason there couldn't be. It's just a matter of regulation.

 

[Swammerdami]

The whole point was remote payments WITHOUT banks, and third party trust on Bitcoin is really dumb since they can be effectively stolen and cannot be recovered once they ARE securely held in a user wallet.

The "whole point" of the Mississippi Company was gold and silver riches in Arkansas, but this was long forgotten in the bidding frenzy which culminated in 1720. The "whole point" of Tulipomania was that tulips are pretty. I think most purchasers of Bitcoin were either having fun or speculating on price improvement.

If people bought Bitcoin because they didn't trust banks, does it seem odd they instead trusted entrepreneurs barely out of their teens, some operating billion-dollar exchanges literally out of their garage?

A real goal of Bitcoin was tax evasion but with the Blockchain on permanent public display, am I not correct that governments — and anyone else — is often in a position to deduce identities?

 

[steve_bank]

Miners. The supply of new bitcoins consists entirely of mining rewards, and is determined by the algorithm used. By agreeing to use the same algorithm to cap the supply. But if less than 50% decide to have a different algorithm, the dissidents get nothing, so there is an economic incentive to stick with the majority, and majority has incentive to stick with the algorithm's limitations for new bitcoins because meddling it would very likely crash the price.

Un fucking believable that popele bought into this. It was a bubble from the start.

Only risk is loosing passwords? Billions have dissapeared overnight. Pension funds were invested in crypto. It is a debaucle.

It is not impossible but difficult for a bank to go bankrupt today. The FDIC backs individual depositors for lossees.

Anything not connected to physical economic valuation is a con game.

The 90s .com crash and the looming failure of Twitter. The .coms bibbled based on wild speculation. Companies had exaggerated stock value with little infrstrure and assets.

Using an old saying Musk bought a 'pig in a poke'.

 

[Harry Bosch]

No FDIC on funny money.

There is no reason there couldn't be. It's just a matter of regulation.

But bit coin users don't want regulation. Thats the purpose of bitcoins.

 

[Swammerdami]

No FDIC on funny money.

There is no reason there couldn't be. It's just a matter of regulation.

No reason? How would it even work? Would the insurer own real Bitcoins to make good on exchange losses? Would the insurer promise to redeem Bitcoins at some dollar price? (I suppose there are Bitcoin Put options already.)

 

[steve_bank]

It is sounding like a video game.

I'm not an expert in economics.

As I see at the end of day the only value of currency is in what you can buy with it.

I I go to a storeand potatoes are in dollars/pound or euros/kilogram.

Comparing dollars to euros we can assess relative value in terms of local buyng power.

I'd think bitcoins are useless unless it is valued relative to a state currency.

I have 100 bitcouns, how do I buy something withit?

How much is $1 US in bitcoin?


0.000059633 BTC

1 USD = 0.000059633 BTC Nov 12, 2022 04:39 UTC

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It was a bubble from the start.

You buy bitcoins hoping in the future somebody will pay more than you did? Or am I missing something.

As a currency alternative how oes it avoid the same problems with currency and economics? Inflation? To balance inflation money has to be ivested in the ecinomy.

Who controls the supply of bitcoins?

It has never remotely been a meaningful investment. It could have had use as a medium of exchange for transactions your government or financial institution doesn't approve of but the transaction costs are too high for this to be of much use.

 

[bilby]

Anything not connected to physical economic valuation is a con game.

WTF is "physical economic valuation"?