Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

"Several major crypto firms have collapsed over the past year, but Bankman-Fried and his team were supposed to be the adults in the room, trying to legitimize crypto by rehabilitating its reputation as a stubbornly immature sector. But it turns out that there are no adults, and no room. "

Love it.

FTX collapse will be used to crack down on US citizens ability to move USD into exchange, for your "protection". I suspect we'll see it within 2 months. Contagion is going to get worse, $$$ lost is bigger than Enron. If you follow the money, I don't think this was an accident. SBF had an "trading" firm that next traded (Alameida) it donated to political organizations.

A -ton- of details coming out, decent thread here if you want to dig in.

FTX/SBF/Alamada owns 10% of SOL

Mist said:

Anyone who hands over custody of their tokens to an exchange is missing the point of crypto.

You're not getting it. The whole point of crypto is get rid of banks, get rid of fractional reserve banking and get rid of inflation. FTX and other similar companies are just banks, except minus the regulation that stops them from taking your money and using it to effectively print more money though speculative lending and investment.

The government cracking down on "exchanges" that are actually just unregulated investment banks with no deposit protection is a good thing.

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I'm aware of the risks with exchanges, I've been harping in this thread for years to hold your own keys. I'm not trying to defend crypto casinos.

Crypto is an attack on Bitcoin. That is all it has ever been or will ever be. This blow up will be used to cement regulations to fully surveil BTC transaction I suspect. KYC regulations are already in place with few exceptions. Further regulation will likely require full reporting on all transactions (KYC to KYC, see FATF proposed regulations) and be considered taxable events, obviously. IRS didn't increase in size so much for no reason.

When you understand what Bitcoin actually is you see that the endgame for governments is going to be holding it all. A 6102 event won't work for Bitcoin the way it did for gold, so they'll use different strategies. Step 1 is knowing who holds what and making them criminals for using it without permission.

Bitcoin has -always- been a revolution. Most people don't understand that. January 3rd 2009 was a declaration of war against Central Banks and the ability to create and manipulate capital. Regulation is inevitable, I just wish more people understood what they are losing to it.

wormie said:

A revolution that most people don't understand is not a revolution. It's just a couple of dudes circle jerking.

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Hard to argue against that. Understanding why our money is broken is quite difficult for most Americans. However, in poorer countries that have seen hyperinflation or bail-ins in their lifetimes they get it much faster. US may see an event like this yet in our lives, so I wouldn't assume they can't figure it out. Regardless US citizens will largely be among the last to understand the problem since we're beneficiaries of the current system... to the degree that anyone benefits from it at least.

Flobee said:

Bitcoin has -always- been a revolution. Most people don't understand that. January 3rd 2009 was a declaration of war against Central Banks and the ability to create and manipulate capital. Regulation is inevitable, I just wish more people understood what they are losing to it.

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For every successful revolution, there are many revolts that fail. The power that breaks the back of the Western central banks won't be bitcoin, since they can illegalize that and snuff it out easy enough in Western countries, it will be non-Western countries abandoing the dollar and going to an energy or gold-backed Yuan or Ruble or some combination there.

Abigailicious said:

For every successful revolution, there are many revolts that fail. The power that breaks the back of the Western central banks won't be bitcoin, since they can illegalize that and snuff it out easy enough in Western countries, it will be non-Western countries abandoing the dollar and going to an energy or gold-backed Yuan or Ruble or some combination there.

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My crystal ball is effective as yours, but I disagree. I think history will see Bitcoin as the defining invention of our generation. I think people really discount the value that Proof of Work, combined with the difficulty adjustment + consensus algorithm provide. You can't redo the creation of digital scarcity in a decentralized way, it can only happen once and it already happened. The Byzantine Generals Problem was solved for the first time allowing for trustless consensus. Value can be sent across the world instantly and nearly for free with 0 trust relationships.

Bitcoin literally created unique digital value. It ported real work in the physical world (hashing via electricity use) into digital scarcity. People generally don't understand how big of a deal that is.

Flobee said:

My crystal ball is effective as yours, but I disagree. I think history will see Bitcoin as the defining invention of our generation. I think people really discount the value that Proof of Work, combined with the difficulty adjustment + consensus algorithm provide. You can't redo the creation of digital scarcity in a decentralized way, it can only happen once and it already happened. The Byzantine Generals Problem was solved for the first time allowing for trustless consensus. Value can be sent across the world instantly and nearly for free with 0 trust relationships.

Bitcoin literally created unique digital value. It ported real work in the physical world (hashing via electricity use) into digital scarcity. People generally don't understand how big of a deal that is.

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I get what you're saying, I do. And in an ideal world where the net is neutral and governments are beholden to their citizens, maybe that could happen. But not now. Not in the Panopticon.

That's not the messy reality we live in. Remember, the US government once confiscated gold from all its citizens. And it's hardly the worst offender when you go through the massive history of governments seizing assets from its citizens to fight some war for survival. So Theory doesn't really hit Reality here. You can't expect evil people to just hand over their power without a fight. Totalitarians can do whatever they want and a bitcoin wallet can't stop the secret police.

The only way bitcoin takes hold is if there's a popular revolution across the globe, along the lines of the American revolution but on a planetary scale, and that enshrines anonymous distributed digital currency as a Constitutional human power in some sort of planet-wide Bill of Rights.

I don't see us anywhere near that day.

Abigailicious said:

The only way bitcoin takes hold is if there's a popular revolution across the globe

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I agree with you, that's the idea. Bitcoin is a peaceful revolution. The idea behind Bitcoin taking over is that it is so far superior to everything else that adoption will be mandatory for everyone. If you don't adopt you end up like China when the world moved to the gold standard and they stuck with silver.

US will likely be the last to get onboard, and we're probably going to be the most financially repressed in the system that is coming because we're the most blind to it. Alternatively we could be early movers simply due to the alignment between the Bitcoin ethos and the American spirit, but I don't know how much of that till exists. We'll see I guess. It's obviously not a foregone conclusion, but I prefer to bet on the white pill rather than wallow in misery because we're all screwed anyway. Doomerism is pointless

Flobee said:

It's obviously not a foregone conclusion, but I prefer to bet on the white pill rather than wallow in misery because we're all screwed anyway. Doomerism is pointless

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I don't know all these terms, but realism is not "Doomerism", it's just what is. Ideals are one thing, but when you are thinking about a family, a future, a community you are in. Your investments, whether in real estate, stocks, bitcoin, education, all this is affected by what these nuts do. Look, many many MANY generations before us had it far worse than we did. Acknowledging that is hardly Doomerism. We're not living through the Justininan Plague or the Black Death or the Hun Invasion or the Fall of the Roman Empire. This is not the French Revolution or the Boxer Rebellion in China, which killed more people than anyone can think about. So we should stop with this idea that any criticism of a pollyanna future is terrible. Human history says misery is the norm.