The Bitcoin / Crypto Currency Thread

Finance
526

By exchanges, do you mean casinos? The word exchange has no direct implication of safety, honesty, insurance, or security.

Harking back to one of my favorite tv series, if you mean Barksdale’s exchanges corners, they were safer than crypto, much safer if you wore armor. :]

No, IHMO, unless your “Eg” includes people with common sense.

If you can’t afford to risk money, don’t invest it, regardless of what some moron tells you. If you can’t afford to tip, don’t go out to eat.
If you can’t afford a ticket + fees, don’t speed.
If you can’t afford a baby, don’t have unprotected sex.
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Mr. Crypto-hyphen, I’m talking about you.

Back to my humble opinion, what made this country great was people willing to risk something in order to get something greater. I don’t mean Aunt Mrytle at the slot machine, but people who understood math. This country was founded by people willing to risk everything they had - Everything - from money and land to their liberty and their very lives.

It seems that people now want to take their swing, but have a feather bed to fall on if they whiff. I suspect this goes back to the “participation” trophies of the 80’s, but don’t have data to back it up. No one today seems willing to take a risk without having someone to blame or some kind of a bailout (no offense intended, but possibly apropos).

If you buy snake oil that I say is going to make you feel better, who is at fault? You felt better, so I was correct. You don’t feel bad until you find out it’s 40% distilled alcohol and 3x the cost of bourbon. Don’t blame me because you didn’t read the label which clearly stated the contents.

Sorry if I’m misunderstanding, but I can’t really think of anything funnier than crypto in self storage.
If I misunderstood … There’s always @shinobi 's basement with his monthly paper CD certs. Just bring a magnifying glass. :slight_smile:

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527

Yep! Free abortions for all. :frowning:

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528

Ha! You’re kidding, right? For the same reason the feds are trying to fund “travel abortions” for people who got pregnant on purpose. For the same reason the feds paid people who took mortgages they couldn’t pay. For the same reason the feds are trying to pay people who took idiotic loans they can’t, or worse, don’t want to pay.

I suspect the above are enough examples, but I can post others.

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529

I saw a video discussing this situation. According to the video, there was a legal filling made with Bahamian authorities hours before his arrest. If the contents of said filling were to arrive to SBF’s ears, he’d have known he was going to be arrested in the near future, increasing the likelihood of a sudden flight somewhere else. Hence the need to nab him right away.

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530

This is fair when the label clearly states the contents. Not exactly the same when the label is lying about what’s inside. I’m not saying that absolves investors/buyers of doing their own due diligence, but it does add another layer.

Just to be devil’s advocate here, think about it from this sort of perspective. Have you ever tried to trade options? They aren’t available by default in a basic brokerage account. More and more places are offering options trading, but it is still behind a bunch of doors that in order to get through you seriously have to check boxes (after reading disclosures) saying you are fully aware how EXTRA risky it is. Then, beyond options, there are things that are only available to accredited investors. The short version of why these restrictions exist is because regulators know that thousandaires really shouldn’t be touching that sort of stuff. Yet those are the exact sort of people that these crypto “firms” were targeting when they bought super bowl ads this past year. I’m not saying that Larry David is responsible for the Jiffy Lube mechanic losing his life savings. But because of what is already in place for certain investments, I can see how some of this could have been prevented with stricter regulation.

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531

Apple didn’t fall far away from the tree…

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532

SBF’s mother is a major Democrat party campaign funds bundler and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from the Silicon Valley left.

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533

The question is who did the filing and who requested it? I bet it is Biden admin but would be interested if you have further details.

The timing of the arrest is suspect regardless of how it was orchestrated.

534

I understand you’re obsessed with liberal wrongdoing. However, corruption and hypocrisy occur across the political spectrum.

As I had mentioned before, SBF made donations to Democrats and Republicans; it’s just that donations to Republicans were dark money. If I were one of the Republicans that got donations from FTX associates, I’d want everything to stay very quiet, if for no other reason to continue pretending it was all SBF and the Dems. We’ll know soon enough what Republican politicians benefited from the scam. No doubt Caroline Ellison and other polyamory friends are cooperating; they know where the bones are buried.

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535

You have stated that several times on this thread. Please provide some evidence for this claim.

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536

There is this article, as well as the press conference from SDNY yesterday:

Or these ones:

https://www.axios.com/2022/12/14/sbf-campaign-finance-political-donations-charges

537

Tnx. Will be interesting to see how this develops.

“All my Republican donations were dark,” Bankman-Fried went on to say, the complaint noted. “The reason was not the regulatory reason.”

“It’s because reporters freak the f— out if you donate to a Republican because they’re all super liberal. And I didn’t want to have that fight,” he said. “So, I made all the Republican ones dark. But, whatever, [indiscernible] the second or third biggest Republican donor this year as well.”

Edit.
Turley’s point still stands: the timing of the indictment is suspect. Several Democrats have come forward to say they received contributions and will donate them to charity. AFAIK no Republican has said anything about a contribution.

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538

By “cash” do you literally mean paper, like under the mattress, or are you talking about bank account balances? Is there an issue with depositing cash into a bank account?

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539

Audits - who needs them? Well, good luck, because we’re bailing on providing them.

540

You are absolutely right. However, government regulation is always behind the times with regard to con-men. If you want to stop innovation, just make everyone with a new idea wait until a few congressional studies have been conducted, or the EPA weighs in on something, or the State department, etc.

I am all for the lazy, foolish, other-derogatory-adjective-here people who “invested” their money into crypto, electric vehicles, underwater toothbrushes for piranha, etc. to sue the tattered underwear off the people who fleeced them, including Larry David. I am not for the government restricting innovation in order to protect people from their own greed.

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541

“Democrats to keep over $69M of FTX customer money” would be my headline

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542

No sign Oregon’s Dems are returning their $500,000 donation (yet). Maybe public outrage will force them to do the right thing…

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543

600×800 439 KB

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544

To his defense Larry David did say it wouldn’t work :wink: Regulators are the answer here for long term. Buyer beware doesn’t work when there is so much information asymmetry. Eg We have medical boards to protect patients. One of the problems here was regulators themselves had a turf war b/t SEC and CFTC

545

Playing devil’s advocate…
Even with medical boards, you still find folks that visit quacks for aesthetic procedures (a.k.a. adding more volume to certain body sections), with the consequent catastrophic results.

Can’t imagine people believing in this day and age that a crypto investment is going to render 12% yearly profit with little or no risk. Or that you can trade options on made-up tokens.

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