It amazes me how many people are blissfully unaware of the rampant tether fraud
And yes, those who were busy explaining why Ethereum is garbage, **coin, etc, and why only they know better, would have been 10% richer in just 2 days.
If crypto is supposed to replace other currencies, then you don't get richer if it is worth more in dollars. The entire point is to not use dollars. But nothing is priced in crypto. If it was, there wouldn't be enough supply. Also nobody would ever buy anything with it, because why spend 100 on something today when 50 will buy it tomorrow.
So crypto has devolved into nothing more than a scheme to bid up whatever coin of the day becomes a MEME darling and FOMO kicks in. You don't want to lose out on getting rich, do you?
Don't give me the crap that DeFi everything is around the corner. It's the same thing as automated driving. It's been right around the corner for years.
Windows 95 hit and the entire world was online with email and www everything within three years. Crypto is going on more than a decade with no better use case than day one. Other than a few thousand whales who got super rich when they got the masses to bid up the coins.
It amazes me how many people are blissfully unaware of the rampant tether fraud and the effect it could have on the whole ecosystem. This is a view from a good friend of mine who is an expert on the subject and well in the know.
Nobody knows where the USD supposedly backing it goes. Most of it is in “commercial paper” they said, but the investors who work in that industry say they’ve never heard of them.
This seems impossible because at their scale, that would make them, like, the 5th largest commercial paper investor on Wall Street. How could commercial paper investors not heard of them?
Unlike Bitcoin, Eth, and other coins, Tether was always claimed to be backed by something which ensured its's stable value. Tether the company claims that their tether coins are each worth $1.
There are now >$60Bn worth of Tether coin issued. With that much money they'd be a very serious private financial institution, and yet they only have 13 employee's. They have never been audited by any independent third party. They have repetitively lied about who owns the company (the same people who own Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange own Tether, and yet did not disclose that until it was found out). They have receptively changed their story on what backs Tether coin (originally each coin had $1 in a bank account to back it, now it's majoritively unspecified "commercial paper"). There is nothing which proves that Tether actually is backed by anything and the billions in new Tether coin which are minted could very well be worthless. Institutionalized investors allegedly sending billions of dollars to Tether, despite tether lying about their reserves, committing fraud by claiming to be fully backed when they were not, and reported by Bloomberg to be under DOJ criminal investigation for bank fraud.
There was never anywhere near a trillion dollars put into the crypto system. The miners created multi-millions of imaginary tokens without putting any dollars into the system. Those miner imaginary tokens came out of thin air, not from people investing dollars into the system.
If only 10% of those tokens are cashed out instead of "hodl", the $50 billion in tethers and few other dollars would instantly be depleted. The miners have a lot more than 10% to sell.
It is a classic Ponzi. All is fine when more people are sucked into putting in dollars (to pay the miners who put in zero dollars). But when people want to cash out, there is not enough dollars in the entire Ponzi to pay 10% of the imaginary tokens. The small amount of cash in the Ponzi runs out and the Ponzi collapses. It is very simple and does not require any complex conspiracy theory.
134 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadLast year, Tether revealed that it held some cash but also bought a large amount of commercial paper, which is short-term corporate debt. This raised concerns given that Tether does not disclose exactly which companies it holds commercial paper from, and where those entities are based.
But the company has been reducing the amount of commercial paper in its reserves. In the fourth quarter of 2021, commercial paper made up just over 30% of Tether’s total reserves, down from more than 44% in the third quarter.
“Over time we will keep reducing the commercial paper, we aren’t finished yet with the reduction,” Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Tether and affiliated cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, told CNBC on Wednesday at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-07/crypto-my...
You say that many people are unaware but I would say that many are perfectly fine with the imaginary riches these schemes provide.
If Tether are committing massive fraud, and it may be true, it will eventually collapse. Truth is, I don't know how, but they've been incredibly resilient so far.
Anyone can fork bitcoin, swap out icons, and change the genesis block. By definition, that is not "verbatim".
Your comment is like someone being angry that their WordPress site isn't as popular as WordPress.org.
1. There is no founder directing the project (big plus). "Dear leader" doesnt direct development which is unique compared to almost 100% of the shitcoins in the space.
1b. You think adoption rate and the decentralized movement that pushes/promotes adoption is irrelevant? I'm sure all the centralized shitcoin (aka unregistered security) founders would find your view on this hilarious.
2. Non mining nodes ensure transactions/blocks followed certain rules. When attached to wallets and services, that means much more than "just relaying blocks".
3. Layer 1 scaling is poor design. Larger blockchain = less nodes due to more expensive hardware requirements = more centralization. BSV and BCH are mostly dead because of getting this wrong, no debate about it.
The original poster is more right than wrong in his view.
Decentralization of a currency doesn't mean or have to do with development, that is a separate issue. Still, whoever controls github commits is going to control the reference implementation and that isn't many people.
Decentralization refers to being able to use money electronically without any third party's permission. All the rest of this are obvious talking points to try to redefine bitcoin as more unique than it is. It was always completely possible to copy everything and modify any part of it. Part of the excitement is that there is actual competition in currencies.
Non mining nodes ensure transactions/blocks followed certain rules. When attached to wallets and services, that means much more than "just relaying blocks".
This part is just a straight lie and someone has grossly mislead you. Non mining blocks have nothing to do with making blocks or deciding anything. All they can do is relay blocks that the miner decide. This is like someone printing books, those books being sold on amazon and a hundred other stores, then someone arguing that a single library deciding not to carry a book has any bearing on that book being created.
3. Layer 1 scaling is poor design. Larger blockchain = less nodes due to more expensive hardware requirements = more centralization. BSV and BCH are mostly dead because of getting this wrong, no debate about it.
When people say things like this it's obvious that they only get information from /r/bitcoin and don't have understanding beyond the heavily curated narrative there. Do you ever stop to think about why other cryptocurrencies don't need a second layer? Do you think the optimal throughput is a few kilobytes per second worth of transactions for the whole world? It all has to be synced on the main chain anyway. A second layer is a solution in search of a problem.
Larger blockchain = less nodes due to more expensive hardware requirements
Have you ever done the math on this? I can never believe people keep repeating something so obviously wrong. Bitcoin runs at dialup speed. A $10 per month VPS literally runs at 50,000 times the speed that the bitcoin network does. There have been times when average transaction costs spiked so high one transaction fee could pay for the hard drive space and vps time to host a node for months. The craziest thing here is that nodes don't even really matter. The miners can broadcast blocks themselves and anyone can sync with the chain if they want.
Decentralization refers to many things, it depends on the discussion. I explained the scope of my statements in the parent.
> Non mining nodes...All they can do is relay blocks that the miner decide.
You are wrong here, they also do validation which is why its important for wallet owners and services to run their own nodes even if they dont mine.
>Do you ever stop to think about why other cryptocurrencies don't need a second layer?
Yes, it is because they are highly centralized chains that might as well run on sql and/or ghost chains with no users.
>Do you think the optimal throughput is a few kilobytes per second worth of transactions for the whole world?
Yes, offchain transaction batching is a good scaling strategy. Satoshi recommended it as a solution.
>Have you ever done the math on this?
Yes, bitcoin full nodes are much cheaper to host on a vps than ethereum full nodes for that reason. Larger blocks = more bandwidth and hd space = more time to download and fully validate. I assure you, running one costs a lot more than 10$/month. Perhaps you should check the math on your claim.
No it doesn't. Decentralization in cryptocurrency always meant being able to make transactions without a central controlling authority. Someone has mislead you to a strange backwards rationalization to say bitcoin is unique.
they also do validation which is why its important for wallet owners and services to run their own nodes even if they dont mine.
They might validate blocks before rebroadcasting them. This is not the same as miners dictating the ordering of transactions that goes in to a block. These are two different things. One is vital, one is a very minor convenience. Have you read the actual bitcoin pdf? Have you read about cryptocurrencies outside of /r/bitcoin ?
It actually isn't crucial for someone to run their own node, someone just needs a way to query the current state of the chain.
Yes, it is because they are highly centralized chains that might as well run on sql and/or ghost chains with no users.
Where are you getting nonsense like this? This is circular logic, your 'evidence ' is just saying the same thing over and over. Ethereum has had more transactions than bitcoin for the last four years. Here is actual evidence:
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth.ht...
Yes, offchain transaction batching is a good scaling strategy. Satoshi recommended it as a solution.
Satoshi recommended lifting the block size limit and having relatively few nodes that could handle huge amounts of on chain traffic. I don't remember anything about stopping at 1.166 KB/s as throughput.
I assure you, running one costs a lot more than 10$/month. Perhaps you should check the math on your claim.
Your evidence is "I assure you" ? I'll show you actual evidence and you can check my math.
Here you can see a 700KB average block size roughly every 10 minutes. That is 1.166.66 KB/s
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/size-btc.html#3m
A $10/month VPS will have a 1 gigabit connection. That is going to be 125 megabytes per second. That is 107,204 times faster than the bandwidth of the bitcoin network. The entire bitcoin blockchain is only 437 gigabytes. That VPS could download the entire chain from the last 13 years in about an hour. To give you some reference of how much faster that is than what is needed, an SR71 blackbird at a top speed of mach 3.3 is only 75,600 times faster than a slug.
As for drive space, the entire chain will fit on a 512 GB thumb drive. These can be bought for $40 USD. Here is where the average fee for a single transaction was over $62 USD. A average single transaction cost more than storing the entire chain on an SSD because of the terrible bitcoin throughput.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-512GB-Ultra-Flash-Drive/dp/B0...
I would check your math, but you didn't give any at all. You have been taken in by a complete lack of real information. Try asking about it on /r/bitcoin and watch your comment be deleted or shadow banned. There is a reason you aren't getting any real information.
Incorrect, that is a laymans view.
>It actually isn't crucial for someone to run their own node, someone just needs a way to query the current state of the chain.
"Dont trust, verify" means nothing to you, I can see.
>That VPS could download the entire chain from the last 13 years in about an hour.
Download and validate is the objective, not just download. Do that math for an avg dual core vps. It takes about 48 hours. Now calculate the same for full 10-100x sized blocks and realize how silly the idea of onchain scaling gets.
>As for drive space, the entire chain will fit on a 512 GB thumb drive. These can be bought for $40 USD.
Lol, I'm sure vps hosts will allow you to plug thumb drives in as storage or sell storage to you at the off-the-shelf price /s. Putting that absurdity aside for a second, 10-100x the chain size and do the same math.
I can tell youve never self-hosted or cloud-hosted a node by your approach to calculating the costs. Full nodes need to be easy to spin up, validate on limited hardware/bandwith in a reasonable period of time, and stay synced.
Also its good to remember that 99% of nodes sitting on big 3 cloud hosting providers is not real node decentralization.
Finally, I dont use reddit. You can stop referencing it.
This was the original definition by the creator of bitcoin and the people that took it over. Maybe you should think about who the 'layman' is here.
"Dont trust, verify" means nothing to you, I can see.
When you say stuff like this, it's obvious you don't understand how cryptocurrencies even work. You aren't going to be able to forge a different chain without mining blocks yourself. You aren't going to be able to out mine the miners. This is the whole point and you seem desperate to ignore it.
Download and validate is the objective, not just download. Do that math for an avg dual core vps. It takes about 48 hours. Now calculate the same for full 10-100x sized blocks and realize how silly the idea of onchain scaling gets.
I've been syncing with the chain on desktops, raspberry pis and old cell phones for 10 years. You are probably basing this on downloading a block then verifying in lockstep on a very inefficient implementation. Blocks take fractions of a second to verify even on the slow reference implementation with bizarre vector copying and memory allocation choices. All these are the same arguments people have made on /r/bitcoin for years, since they delete replies from anyone who proves them wrong.
Lol, I'm sure vps hosts will allow you to plug thumb drives in as storage or sell storage to you at the off-the-shelf price /s. Putting that absurdity aside for a second, 10-100x the chain size and do the same math.
I did all the math for you, you still have no evidence. All you're saying is "what about 100x the capacity??" It would obviously work fine, which I showed you with numbers and basic stats of the current blockchain. 10x would be literally $70 of hard drive space.
Where are you getting your information and why do you think these things won't work? Other cryptocurrencies are literally doing what you keep saying is impossible and you haven't given any actual numbers.
Its pretty clear by the sidestepping and bad calculations in your responses.
> Blocks take fractions of a second to verify.
We were talking about spinning new nodes, why move the goal posts to make yourself sound reasonable? 10-100x the time it takes to download and fully validate 700,000 blocks in the big block world you want.
>I did all the math for you, you still have no evidence.
Cloud hosting 10-100x (5-50TB) is not a one time $70 cost, not even close. Youre doing bad math.
It's silly and we havent even touched the hardware update frequency required to store the volume of onchain spam this would introduce.
You may be out of your depth in this discussion. High degree of node centralization would be the outcome of the parameters you are proposing. I'm not surprised your posts get deleted from subreddits. Based on your description, the admins seem to expect users to think about 2nd order effects before posting.
There has been no sidestepping, I showed you real numbers and evidence, you showed me nothing.
We were talking about spinning new nodes, why move the goal posts to make yourself sound reasonable? 10-100x the time it takes to download and fully validate 700,000 blocks in the big block world you want.
No, you keep harping on that even though it has no impact on decentralization. This one of the many weird talking points you keep lumping together without understanding what matters. If you have ever synced with the chain yourself you would know that CPU usage is practically nothing overall.
Again, other currencies already deal with and have tested this stuff out. It's trivial.
Cloud hosting 10-100x (5-50TB) is not a one time $70 cost, not even close. Youre doing bad math.
It's silly and we havent even touched the hardware update frequency required to store the volume of onchain spam this would introduce.
This are predictions of a future that is already here for everyone else. You originally said it was all about bandwidth before being proved wrong with how absurd that idea is. Now it's "cloud hosting" even though people are running nodes off of raspberry pis and cable modems.
Also you still haven't acknowledged all the other points, like how satoshi envisioned miners mostly running large nodes themselves.
It's silly and we havent even touched the hardware update frequency required to store the volume of onchain spam this would introduce.
This doesn't mean anything, and is just gish galloping.
You may be out of your depth in this discussion. High degree of node centralization would be the outcome of the parameters you are proposing. I'm not surprised your posts get deleted from subreddits. Based on your description, the admins seem to expect users to think about 2nd order effects before posting.
This has been the line for almost 10 years now. Every other cryptocurrency has proved this wrong over and over. Why do you believe this in the face of overwhelming evidence and why do you even think non mining nodes matter? It's clear from your other messages that you don't understand the difference between non mining nodes and mining nodes.
Here is the most important question though - where are you getting your information? I know you didn't come to these conclusions yourself, because you say the exact same ridiculous things as anyone who only reads /r/bitcoin. If it isn't from there where is it and why won't you link it?
>A $10/month VPS will have a 1 gigabit connection.
>Larger blocks = more bandwidth and hd space = more time to download and fully validate.
>You originally said it was all about bandwidth before being proved wrong with how absurd that idea is. Now it's "cloud hosting" even though people are running nodes off of raspberry pis and cable modems.
If you continuously misrepresent what was said a few posts ago then I can tell this conversation is going nowhere and is a waste of time. You were the one that brought up vps pricing and hosting.
I will move on now since it is clear you are out of your depth but good luck trying to change bitcoin. Just know there is good reason nobody will adopt your shortsighted ideas regardless of where you post them, reddit or elsewhere.
And you're response was "what about 100x the traffic" and the answer is, it would still work.
If you continuously misrepresent what was said a few posts ago
This didn't happen. All these conversations are the same because you're getting your information from the same place as other people saying the same thing. If a whole bunch of people say 1 + 1 = 3, it's pretty obvious they didn't all arrive at that conclusion independently.
Why do you think non-mining nodes are so important?
Why won't you link to where you got this idea in the first place?
Why aren't you acknowledging all the parts of the bitcoin white paper that contradicts what you're saying?
Also think about how much your arguments shifted. First it was 'bandwidth' and 'diskspace'. When I show you that's absurd you move to sync times. When I point out that you are talking about 1% CPU usage, your own numbers (two days over 13 years) back up what I'm saying and that lots of other currencies have already done what you're saying is impossible you move on to more inane arguments and finally say that you've already proved everything.
I will move on now since it is clear you are out of your depth
Right, the person who gave you a mountain of evidence, has read the server source code, has actually read the white paper (it's only a few pages) and understands the current state of other cryptocurrencies is out of their depth and you (who has given no actual evidence or a single external link to anything) is somehow an authority.
This is delusion and we both know it. Link evidence for anything, link to where you 'learned' what you know. Back up what you're saying in any way at all.
Do you have a source for this? Because Binance has its own stablecoin (BUSD)…I think the correct exchange is Bitfinex, not Binance
>Related quote from the link:
>"Paxos issues two US dollar-backed stablecoins – Pax Dollar (USDP) and Binance USD (BUSD) – that are overseen by the NYDFS. These two tokens are very similar in design and reserve operations because they are regulated. Paxos and NYDFS agreed to the terms of the token in advance of issuing – this includes the stipulation that USDP and BUSD only be issued by Paxos on the ethereum blockchain at this time.
>Our marketing partner for BUSD – Binance – issues a token on its BNB smart chain called Binance-Peg BUSD ... Note that Binance-Peg BUSD is strictly a Binance product; it is not issued by Paxos nor regulated by the NYDFS."
> https://paxos.com/2022/04/07/busd-issued-by-paxos-on-ethereu...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33540628
As I reckon it, people haven't, on net, been getting richer from crypto since around March of 2021. That isn't the all time high of Bitcoin but so far it has set the high water mark. People in it for easy money have probably been flushed out of the market by now, the high-hype gains are long gone.
> It amazes me how many people are blissfully unaware of the rampant tether fraud and the effect it could have on the whole ecosystem.
Which people? These aren't people on HN. I haven't seen anyone here who is unaware of what is going on.
Need no fear, the users of r/cryptocurrency are still somehow filling that niche.
The whole community changed about the time Bitcoin hit $1k. Prior to that there were a lot of idealists around and a handful of “investors”. There were Ponzi schemes, but they were literally labeled “Ponzi schemes”, so no real harm was done. Since then, the proportions have flipped: the vast majority of people are “investors”, there’s a seemingly equal small number of idealists and scammers, and with few exceptions there’s not really anything exciting in the works that I know of.
I miss the old days :(.
FWIW, I still think cryptocurrencies will outlast all existing government-backed fiat currencies. The difference is that I don’t think it’s going to happen on any predictable timeframe.
Nothing about this prediction gives Bitcoin any value. If you/early buyers hoard it all, that means starting a new chain is less effort than buying it from you. There isn’t scarcity here, let alone use value.
(Read “blockchain” as “Google Docs spreadsheet” and “Bitcoin wallet” as “spreadsheet cell”.)
However, the smug "write-only database meme" is getting a bit old. Cryptocurrencies, and even other crypto-payment systems (e.g. chaumian cash) obviously have different characteristics than centralized money. Come to think of it, you could just mockingly describe any computer program that has structured data as a database.
Cryptocurrency has almost nothing to do with databases or storing data. At its core, cryptocurrency is a system of distributing signed transactions that uses hashcash as a sybil-resistance and (order) synchronisation mechanism.
Google spreadsheets need not apply. The whole point is that you don't require a single party to sign transactions. The problem that cryptocurrency deals with concerns co-operation between adversarial parties. Centralization leaves you hopping from platform to platform forever.
A Google Docs spreadsheet also has a transaction log (a CRDT) while you have it open to do the updates. (Well, I assume it does, anyway.) Of course the security models are different, but you could say the log is a dual of the database.
Ad hoc local networking may still exist sporadically in a world in which the USD or fiat in general completely collapses, but that's woefully inadequate for supporting cryptocurrency usage.
It also completely defeats the point of decentralization and trust less transactions. If an isolated community is ad hoc networking, they are, by definition, centralized, and extremely likely to be a high trust community. It's much more likely they have a far better means of transacting with one another.
There were no "old days".
0.0000001 femtoseconds after the bitcoin white paper dropped describing it, in the first sentence, as a peer-to-peer digital cash replacement the cryptobros descended-- hyping up the "smash the banksters" and "reject the fed" narrative in order to bilk gullible people out of their actual cash.
While muttering "arrrrrbitraaaaaaaaaaaaaage" in their sleep, they dreamed of setting up exchanges hoping to out-bankster the banksters at their own game.
With a dictionary in their left hand and and a YouTube playlist of investing videos in their right they quickly learned to frame crypto not as a "digital cash" but as a security, an investment, a lifestyle, a social statement, a religion. A crusade.
But it has always been, and will always be, a tool for allowing first-movers to scam the information-poor.
And I'm saying this as someone who received actual, entire, bitcoins from faucets and mined actual, entire bitcoins on my Radeon HD 6970.
Um, what?
That kind of talk flips bozo bits.
-
I'm pretty sure it was this episode. (Totally not worth listening to.)
A Crypto Optimist and a Crypto Skeptic Walk Into a Podcast Studio The Ezra Klein Show
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-ezra-klein-show-2/episode/...
IMHO, the rebuttal episode w/ Dan Olson, 6 months later, was spot on:
The Most Thorough Case Against Crypto I've Heard https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-ezra-klein-show-2/episode/...
[0]: https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January...
But more importantly, talk is cheap. If you really believe in what you are saying, there are plenty of USDT futures available in crypto markets. Go ahead and short - if you are right, you'll win big, and the downside is fairly limited.
[1] https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports
0: Buy 10000 USDC with $10000
1: Deposit 10000 USDC on AAVE
2: Borrow 5000 USDT
3: Sell 5000 USDT for 5000 USDC
4: Wait for USDT to drop to $0.5
5: Buy 5000 USDT with 2500 USDC
6: Repay 5000 USDT and get back 10000 USDC
7: Profit: $2500
Note you do get interest on your deposit so that helps offset it a bit.
If USDC drops (or if USDT rises, for that matter), you might get liquidated.
Since it's not going to $1.95 per Tether, the downside is just the cost of time. The poster can short it and blog about their journey while providing their pubkey to prove it.
They've been resisting being audited. I wonder why.
https://blockworks.co/tether-pushes-back-timeline-on-audit-r...
Mind blown ?
Thank God, I guess, that they're neighbours in Nassau.
its 40% of Tether issued on Tron
and you have to understand that Alameda was one of the licensced brokers of USDT. Institutions could mint USDT from Tether via Alameda by using dollars. This is not a loan. Its a 1:1 conversion.
This system is as pure and honest as the virgin mary and there's no way USDT could have been given against shaky IOUs.
I guess I can’t criticize. I’ve gotten all gung ho about XR since meta crashed and I scooped a few shares. But at least that company is a productive enterprise, low P/E, real prospects for the future, etc.
Crypto democratized penny stock gambling.
I am genuinely curious why you have such faith in this system.
What exactly has this saved us from?
What part of this was worth it to you?
One CPI report below expectations, at 7.7% mind you nothing to snivel at, is not a trend that this is letting up.
There are literally no exceptions to this rule and no core kernel of something important and enduring that will remain when this all blows over.
Maybe some visible remnants will be visible here and there, in the sense that there’s still people that enjoy planting tulips now and then.
But really there’s nothing under it all, there’s no productive enterprise that has ever been created by the entire sector.
This isn’t just a rant it’s a direct answer to your question. The reason nobody cares about Tether, specifically, is because it’s not really notably distinguishable from any other part of the crypto “industry” in any meaningful way.
Nobody wants to believe it but it’s happening at a pretty predictable pace and by now the inflection point has clearly passed. It’s all going to zero and many key players are going to jail.
Some people who were savvy like the Coinbase guys will walk away permanently rich. Every dollar involved in making people rich from crypto, of course, will have come from those who lost money to this ultimately fraudulent craze, as at no time has anything of enduring value been created.
Every single one.
The question is are you willing to short it? I've been expecting Tether to collapse for 3-4 years now. Had I shorted it back then (it costs about 12% to borrow last I checked), I'd be out a lot of money.
If the broker have the money you sold the loan for as collateral for the loan, in their controll, they will keep your money if they collapses or in general scam you. They probably did not even sell the cryptocoins in the first place and just makes up the balance you have.
Shorting is very risky even if you time it perfectly.
Where I live it is not even legal for me to do it.
But even with all the crap that's been happening, it doesn't go sub $1000... I'll keep waiting.
Fraud is a crime, defined by a statute, with case law, and police and a prison system to enforce it.
Crypto folks don't really believe in governance, the state, regulation, accountancy, and all that stuff.
For many folks, the whole point of crypto is to opt out of the whole government, state, regulation system, with its strange rules like "fraud" and all the rest.
However there are things that could constitute fraud for all of us.
However, the whole govt. system is a fraud IMHO in Spain at least. I just want them the further, the better.
I don't think most crypto projects are fraud. I don't think most ponzi schemes are fraud. They're just terribly poor investments and people who are too stupid to understand or people who want to gamble their money hoping the greater fool will pay, fall into it.
I know people who got rich with crypto shitcoins, I know people who got rich with MLM schemes. I never joined any.
Crypto is a technical solution to a political problem: governments own you, can do virtually whatever they want and they can print money at will. You won't solve a political problem with tech, even if the tech is really ingenious.
Well, that just flipped the bozo bit on you. Ponzi schemes are fraud _by definition_.
Enforced by death threat. People forget in our comfortable 1st world that if you resist the demands of your government long or loud enough eventually the will dispatch SWAT police or military to take care of you. Both which are authorized to kill you if you resist.
1. Coming late to the party
2. Getting caught
Where nobody win in the long term except the casino.
And everybody is kinda okay with that.
How dare they!
Moreover the Fed does not claim that the U.S. Dollar is still backed by gold.
Tether is not a stablecoin if it is not backed by USD and if this is the case, then it has no value as a bridge between fiat currencies and crypto.
People paid with real money to buy crypto which was heavily inflated by this USDT out of nothing scheme. Because it was real money it also was real fraud in my opinion.
This effectively pins the dollar to the value of a barrel of oil - without having any formal accountability of having to pay up.
Meanwhile they made corporations in charge of the money supply, which they use to erode the generational wealth of the middle classes.
If you're mad at what tether is doing, you ought to be mad at what the federal reserve is doing as well. That was my only point.
Edit: Upon rereading my original comment - I can see how someone could take it as just snark. But we gotta keep these snakes out of controlling the money supply.
This might also be why people like them and me just ignore most discussion about cryptocurrencies. It is not my job to convince idiots that what they are doing is stupid and they lie to themselves because they already invested a lot of time and money into this.
But that also means in any cryptocurrency-discussion you will always hear those invested people and rarely people like you and me. This distorts the picture of course.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M93Auk4AAAAJ&hl=en
https://people.csail.mit.edu/silvio/
https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Steven-Goldfeder/2642...
3 different founders of startups working in crypto.
As far as the latter goes, I have yet to hear a vision of a crypto-currency-future that not the wet dream of a neo-liberal born-into-riches person or the wet dream of someone doing scams and selling illegal stuff habitually.
I mean they are trying to replace currency systems that have been around since thousands of years, so you better have more going on than "it is on computers" and "I know/am the person who is in control of the system" or "I know/am the person who invested a ton into this so it must work".
- it cannot be confiscated by govts. - afaik we arehaving inflation. so yes it changes the value but so do dollars and can be confiscated.
I do not see as crazy buying some bitcoins in the future. It is guaranteed to not be at the expense of irresponsible govts. doing policies.
Say what? The US government alone has confiscated _billions_ in Bitcoin. Use search term “confiscated bitcoin” and you’ll find thousands of examples trivially.
Maybe it is not impossible but more difficult than alternatives?
I think this is not actually what has been happening to bitcoin. Things like FTX books show that there's so much opportunity that surrounding ponzi schemes must emerge that don't actually buy in to bitcoin 1-1 despite the purchaser's belief, so bitcoin value is probably actually a lot lower than the demand at this stage, the resulting plunge has greatly accelerated its demise as a pyramid scheme.
In theory, I think bitcoin could have been as valid as any fiat currency but of a country that moves a lot of money in banking and has no other industry of its own. That seems to be the manifesto's thesis and its not really wrong.
Yet, as other mechanisms for transactions come online, designed to be more efficient to compete, they should take away a percentage of the finite number of transactions that are useful to the corresponding real economy, so any worldwide transaction networks value, like Visa and MasterCards value are nearer their highest possible value than their most likely future value.
Tether has nearly $50b of cash or cash equivalents.
Tether charges 0.1% on redemptions, and min size is 100k.
It would take $50b + $50M in redemptions before we find out if this "hole" exists or not.
-Commercial Paper backing Tether-
https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports Currently Tether states their commercial paper exposure to be 0.07% That doesnt seem to be any significant amount.
Now you can complain that there has not been an audit. That's fair. There could be a hole. But most of the stuff you are saying makes no sense, and if there is a hole we will probably never know.
About crypto, ask people, why appeared travel checks, and where they gone.