What happened to this Tether bomb from January?
(crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com)
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It's up to the individual to decide if Tether's bottlenecking is worth the risk or not.
Well, if they are under investigation by SDNY, especially in this time, I have a hard time believing they are on the wrong side.
If you want to know the future of crypto look at what (cardano) ada is looking to do... Its not just about currency but about integrity, privacy and decentralisation while still being able to participate in government without them needing to know everything about you like they do today and work with Facebook and such to accomplish etc
"On January 9th, 2021, I liquidated my crypto position for USD. In the process, I locked in a dollar-denominated gain that — in the interest of full disclosure — I can only describe as life-changing."
Brilliant stuff, he sold at 32k and is now losing (conservatively, marginally) 7-10%/year with his cash
So to be clear, trading something increasingly scarce for something increasingly infinite/worthless and thinking it was the right move means you're a dipshit.
Crypto is about the most overt, transparent and rational response to damn near every 'conspiracy theory' we've ever had
I will ask you how you feel about this in a little while, after the hammer drops. And I am specifically talking about unregulated cryptos like bitcoin.
What in the hell is going on around here? Like a bunch of luddite boomers who just dogpile the second one person with a cursory [mis]understanding of something voices the first slippery slope fallacy on a new topic.
Are you seriously advocating for more regulation?
Why are people shitting on what is very clearly part of the plan? Because Trump once expressed skepticism on Bitcoin?
Blockchain is clearly the greatest transparency tool yet conceived, imagine if you applied distributed ledgers to voting for instance.
The anti-crypto sentiment around here is mind-boggling and asinine. What else should we do? Buy gold despite the history of confiscation and extreme price manipulation?
I know its really refreshing to believe there is some financial tool that belongs to tbe people, that can never be controlled. Its also very tempting to believe Bitcoin to be that.
Ask yourself why you think this is the case? Because of block chain, you think it cannot be manipulated? That it cannot be tracked? Because it was created by a lone, cool sounding guy, who is so ultruistic and he disappeared and never came back to reap the rewards of his invention ?
The correct way to think about it, is like anything else. Critically analyze all the assumptions and decide whether they hold good.
Manipulation:
Bitcoin may run on blockchain, and it sounds like its un-manipulatable due to its distributed nature, but if you talk to any one who has worked on distributed systems, you will realise that there are lot of caveats. There needs a consensus in any distributed system to allow or disallow any transaction. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work - perform certain computation to prove you have the right to perform the transaction. This means those nodes that have the most computing power can decide which transactions to prioritise.
Consider all the bitcoin miners running in China connected to the electricity generators. There are thousands of server farms. Who do you think is controlling this computing power in the block chain? Is it plausible this has been happening with the blessing of CCP?
Anonymity:
There are many aspects for this, the first and foremost is cryptography. We all know that CIA has the technology to break lot of cryptographic standards including 1024 bit encryption. But do you think it is limited to that? Can you guarantee that CIA/DS does not have the technology to break the cryptographic algorithms used in Bitcoin?
Scarcity:
Now comes the big question. Do you think Bitcoin is a scarce commodity? Remember when Satoshi created this, he put aside a mega chunk of bitcoins as a "reserve" which only he could control? Now imagine if Satoshi is not even real but was a front for CIA/DS. This means DS has this reserve chunk of millions of bitcoin that they can open up and flood the market with, just like federal reserve does with fiat currency.
So whats the real value of Bitcoin? Nothing. Just the perception and the market sentiment. Ask yourself, why did media start hyping Bitcoin in the past few years? They pushed a truly decentralised unmanipulatable currency out of the goodness of their hearts? Not because they are a criminal cartel waiting to take control?
I have known all these aspects. My own wallet is more than 10 years old and no one would be happier than me for this to keep going up and up. But all these questions have been bugging me for more than a year now. But this article put solid number behind what myself and many others like me have been feeling in their gut.
As for regulation - dont mistake me. I know lot of regulations are essentially tools for DS control. We are talking about the basic regulation, to ensure each crypto currency is backed by real value. Bitcoin doesn't. There are other cryptos which do, but I think the perfect crypto has not yet been floated. It will come after the hammer drops, I think.
I’m a geologist by education, a computer engineer by trade and grew up in a family of “accredited investors” (which is kinda a cringey thing to say, admittedly). I grew up in establishment circles, really. Saying that probably makes me less trustworthy on this, but everyone in these circles seems to shit on crypto.
I’m heavy into Eth full disclosure.
51% attacks now are resource-prohibitive. Look at the power/resource requirements. Plus it would just be mitigated retroactively.
Anonymity - who cares? Probably less anonymous than cash still
Scarcity - lol what? If the market floods with “millions of bitcoins” just buy more because they’re still by definition scarce
I don’t like ad hominem but these are seriously too weak to really dignify and while I’m glad you have crypto, if these are your reasons for skepticism, respectfully, I’m not sure you understand the value of what you do have or how any of this works. I promise I’m not trying to be mean, that’s just what it seems like because these really aren’t compelling points.
So if anonymity and scarcity are not the reason to make bitcoin valuable, what in your opinion makes bitcoin valuable in anyway?
I view Bitcoin as a collectable, which helps, it just happens to be a somewhat liquid/transferrable collectable
The notion of value is rarely derived from the utility of a collectible (eg what is the utility of a baseball/pokemon card?), and is almost entirely perception. Why is an original painting worth more than a lithograph despite having the same utility? Because of how it makes you feel when someone tells you it's an original?
Bitcoin happens to be a collectible with the utility of somewhat easy value store and transfer of value, and, critically, the utility of blockchain validation of authenticity. Suppose original paintings all came with a way to cryptographically and verifysbly validate their authenticity constantly in real time.
I know this is arguably more applicable to NFTs, but it's how I've viewed it for a while and since I grew up in a world that basically ran on paper that s bunch of sociopaths make you literally give years of your life and pieces of your soul for (that costs them literally nothing to make/destroy), how could something like Bitcoin not be seen as a rational supplement or alternative to that absolute madness.
It's late and this is probably disjointed, but most value is derived from perception of value, which, to your point, is a liability, though less so than other collectibles/asset classes in my opinion. Crypto has utility and perception.
So if Bitcoin is a collectable, and its value is mainly in its perception, and you have minimised the value of anonymity and unmanipulatability - in what other ways do you believe it differentiates itself from any other traditional currency ?
What is to stop the same sociopaths from making you give your life and your soul for a few bitcoins? In fact its already happening. People are being paid in bitcoin for committing crimes. Bitcoin is the currency of human trafficking.
And what stops you from living a simple life without chasing the paper money? When I dropped off the rat race so to speak, it was exhilarating. That was almost 15 years ago, long before I opened my eyes, or got redpilled or even knew about the existance of an evil Cabal. The rat race was hurting my soul and it felt natural to drop out of it.
The things that made it difficult for me to drop out were nothing to do with the sociopaths. It had to do with my own perception or myself. I always believed it was important to make a mark on the world and to show everyone that I was successful and I was different than just an ordinary man. I was living my life for the approval of others, and that was what kept me tied to the evil sociopaths' madness. The moment I learnt to love myself for who I am and not for what I do (I am a human being not a human doing), I was free.
Tether is now supported by coinbase pro. Not sure if their legal issues were resolved. I think they still won't allow an audit but coinbase adding support has put my mind at ease a bit.