[HN Gopher] Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse
___________________________________________________________________
Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse
Author : rurp
Score : 279 points
Date : 2022-11-17 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| BurnGpuBurn wrote:
| I just can't get my head around why SBF and his cronies aren't in
| jail yet. Guess it might never happen with friends like that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No criminal fraud prosecution happens that quickly, and the
| "friends" are only friends when there's millions of donations
| to throw around. None of the politicians SBF and his co-CEO
| were purchasing will be returning their calls today.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| Hopefully it is just a matter of them still trying to figure
| out the depth and nature of the crimes.
| dehrmann wrote:
| What specific crime are you accusing him of?
| hanniabu wrote:
| He stole user funds to use in his investment company. He even
| built a backdoor in the accounting system to move the money
| without setting off alerts with the security send audit team.
| recursive wrote:
| "I'm surprised you didn't hit any trees running through that
| forest with your eyes closed."
|
| "Which specific tree do you think I should have hit?"
| kayamon wrote:
| People in finance don't go to jail.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Going bankrupt is not a crime in itself (ask any former
| president, one has experience and the other is a lawyer)). Yes,
| there is a lot that looks kinda criminal, but it will take a
| bit more than a week to put together a criminal prosecution.
| Animats wrote:
| UC Berkeley had a stadium naming deal with FTX.[1]
|
| _Is there a connection between FTX and Cal?_
|
| _FTX Chief Operating Officer Sina Nader earned his bachelor 's
| degree in humanities from Cal and was a walk-on member of the
| Golden Bear football team as an undergraduate. He played
| defensive end from 1999-2001, when he was a teammate of such
| players as Andre Carter, Tully Banta-Cain and Scott Fujita, and
| graduated in 2002. Sina's last named at the time was
| Pyghambarzadeh (he changed it to Nader to make life a lot
| easier!)._
|
| _Who at Cal was involved in the decision?_
|
| _Members of the athletic department worked with Cal Bears Sports
| Properties (Cal 's multimedia rightsholder and local dedicated
| LEARFIELD team) to lead the discussions that led to the agreement
| with FTX. University leadership were informed throughout the
| process, including Chancellor Carol Christ. The approval for
| naming FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium came from the
| Space Assignments and Capital Improvements Committee, chaired by
| Vice Provost Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, which addresses use and
| assignment of campus space, capital-projects planning and the
| development of the capital-improvement program._
|
| [1] https://calbears.com/news/2021/8/23/athletics-news-cal-
| ftx-a... (Archived at https://archive.ph/wip/MhjHd)
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Hope they feel good about propping this whole scam up a bunch.
| Animats wrote:
| The FTX logo has already been removed from the field
| sidelines.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Too little, too late.
| Animats wrote:
| The good news is that the problems seem to be confined to the
| crypto sector. There are a few hedge funds and pension funds with
| losses, but so far, nobody in "traditional finance" seems to have
| huge exposure to crypto. So the real world economy keeps on
| running normally while the crypto sector gets flushed.
| mempko wrote:
| You are underestimating the creative products that the finance
| world can create from any asset, real or imaginary.
| ilamont wrote:
| I don't think we've heard the whole story about the exposure of
| legit orgs and businesses.
|
| If a pension fund loses 1%, that's manageable. If it's 10%,
| that's a crisis for anyone expecting benefit checks every
| month, and possibly a much wider pool of people/orgs if some
| kind of rescue or bailout is required.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Starting a few months ago, some major banks were issuing loans
| using Crypto as collateral:
| https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-loans/crypto-loans/
|
| Glad it's falling apart now before it sucks the entire economy
| down with it.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| It's noteworthy that this is not a coincidence (coin-
| incidence?) but the result of, first among others, the SEC
| holding steady in the face of a lot of pressure in limiting the
| financial system's exposure.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. If crypto ETFs had been approved, other parts of the
| financial system would be crashing. The SEC rejected the EFT
| applications. That was close.
| sgloutnikov wrote:
| It's just a blip in a way. The entire global crypto market cap
| has gone down around $800B, roughly the same market cap that
| Amazon has lost recently.
| NationalPark wrote:
| The difference, of course, is that Amazon's market cap has
| actual assets and cash flows behind it. The liquidation value
| of all of crypto on the other hand is approximately $0.
| rchaud wrote:
| Part of the reason crypto's history maps to tradFi's history so
| precisely is because there aren't that many unique ways to make
| more money out of an existing pile of money.
|
| The debate about whether these tokens meet economic definitions
| of currency is besides the point; the goal, like tradFi, is to
| accumulate as many of them as possible and do whatever it takes
| to protect their price (pump) until you're ready to shift the
| risk to someone else (dump).
| lottin wrote:
| TradFi is built around providing financial services. It's not
| built around issuing virtual assets and then pumping & dumping
| them, I don't know where you get this notion from.
| deebosong wrote:
| well said. very simple, clear, and observable in reality. i
| feel like i've said this in a more roundabout way to friends,
| fam, and myself (when trying to wrap my head around all of this
| to explore it or steer clear).
| spoonjim wrote:
| Hopefully this is the end of this entire dumbfuck historical
| moment. Absolute fleecing of normal people disguised as some kind
| of technosocial revolution.
| fullshark wrote:
| Nah, it'll happen again. This will spur on regulations for
| custodial wallets, and the next boom cycle will involve TradFi
| contagion risk.
|
| BTC price isn't moving, no one is liquidating, volatility is
| lowest its ever been, none of the hodlers have given up yet and
| probably won't, they are just waiting it out to try again in
| 2-5 years.
| kayamon wrote:
| Do you not want a technosocial revolution?
| majani wrote:
| Dominoes indeed are falling, but the coin prices are staying
| largely the same. Perhaps we're at a point where most people are
| already down so much from last year that it makes no sense to
| sell, no matter what the news says
| shakezula wrote:
| > Crypto hedge fund Galois Capital said roughly half its capital
| is stuck in FTX, according to the Financial Times.
|
| This is astounding to me. I would be curious how long they kept
| their money in an exchange and if that's common practice among
| other firms.
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| I would guess they traded crypto on FTX very frequently.
| isitpossible88 wrote:
| Does anyone know Coinbase's involvement or reach into FTX?
| machinekob wrote:
| 15 000 000 usd minimal exposure.
| k__ wrote:
| Aren't these "dominoes" just more or less TradFi companies?
| joosters wrote:
| If you want to talk in terms of coins, some of the direct
| fallout includes:
|
| FTT: $26 -> $1.60 Serum: $0.80 -> $0.26 Solana: $36 -> $14
|
| Or, more indirectly all crypto 'market cap' in general: $1050B
| -> $825B. Ok, so market cap is pretty ephemeral, but chances
| are, if you held any crypto prior to FTX collapsing, its
| theoretical value has dropped because of it. DeFi doesn't make
| you immune.
| vintermann wrote:
| Sure. TradFi companies that everyone in the RadFi ecosystem
| rely on.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| No, these are the unregulated bucket shops and wildcat banks
| favored by the bold adventurers of web3.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| They are the pioneers of Web3 and crypto adoption as long as
| they're paying unreasonable APY in a 0% interest rate regime,
| and a more or less tradfi company as soon as they are exposed
| to be a ponzi scheme. Because we all know crypto is perfect and
| can't fail.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Interest rates aren't 0% anymore. Of course, this only makes
| things even harder for crypto Ponzis, because they have to
| offer even more unsustainable rates to keep up.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| I agree with you, arguably interest rate raising above the
| minimum is what exposed a lot of these scams.
| jokoon wrote:
| Capitalism is at fault here.
|
| Unless there are right regulations in a capitalistic system,
| capitalism will create abuse and problems.
|
| We are in 2022 and it's really annoying how we cannot discuss
| deep changes in how capitalism functions unless an army of trolls
| brings up the gulag point: "the soviet union failed, thus there
| is no viable alternative to capitalism".
|
| It's already almost difficult to discuss it criticize growth, so
| socialism is really beyond taboo.
| rolobio wrote:
| Many of the things done at FTX are already a crime. The laws
| simply aren't being enforced for the mega rich.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Capitalism is not any more at fault here than GPUs or math.
|
| Yes, the right regulations are indeed vital for a capitalistic
| system. Saying "capitalism will create abuse and problems
| without regulations" is like saying "cars will cause death and
| destruction without a steering wheel". That's why we don't
| build them without steering wheels, and a car without a
| steering wheel is not really a car.
|
| A financial market is a market, the very word "market"
| necessarily implies regulation, like all markets had since the
| dawn of time (it's why you brought your stuff there, and why
| the customers came). If a new technology creates a new niche in
| the financial market, and regulation has not caught up yet,
| nothing is wrong with the concept of capitalism, the problem is
| that regulation has not caught up yet. And now it largely has,
| and these companies are blowing up, and the system works. Not
| sure what is supposed to make us "discuss deep changes in how
| capitalism functions" if how modern capitalism functions is
| fixing the problem.
| nyolfen wrote:
| > It's already almost difficult to discuss it criticize growth
|
| turning the social meta from positive sum to zero or negative
| sum is the most disastrous idea conceivable. everything you
| cherish, including your physical safety, is built on an
| assumption of shared future rewards. people will seek advantage
| no matter what; they must have a socially productive avenue or
| it will be taken from others.
|
| if you are so sure an alternative is possible, i encourage you
| to demonstrate it -- live your life with others in a way that
| defies market forces. the proof is in the pudding; for now,
| there is only one game in town.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > i encourage you to demonstrate it -- live your life with
| others in a way that defies market forces. the proof is in
| the pudding; for now, there is only one game in town.
|
| are you implying that you positively know that there is not a
| single group of people on the planet living an alternative
| that's better than what the majority is doing?
| nyolfen wrote:
| no, i am saying that it does not matter what i believe,
| because if there is a superior system it will require no
| belief at all. this conversation reminds me of this essay h
| ttp://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008891.htm
| ...
| warinukraine wrote:
| > Crypto hedge fund Galois Capital said roughly half its capital
| is stuck in FTX, according to the Financial Times.
|
| "stuck" - LOL. Hope dies last.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > paused withdrawals
|
| So... chapter 11 by Monday?
| chasd00 wrote:
| dead by dawn! dead by dawn! - Evil Dead 2
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > "State of play: The Gemini Earn program allowed users to
| deposit their coins in exchange for regular interest payments --
| typically at generous rates that could be as high as 8%."
|
| Bernie Madoff's exclusive private fund had investors lining up to
| get in, based on Madoff's history of returning a steady 10% to
| investors. Of course it was all a big Ponzi scheme...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I actually had accounts with Gemini Earn, Celsius Network, _and_
| BlockFi, and money in all of them (as a just in case one fails
| thing). However, after the crypto crash earlier this year, and
| reading "Not your keys - not your crypto" for the millionth
| time, I pulled them all out and put them in an Exodus wallet. I
| calculated the APY loss but decided better safe than sorry - even
| though, in my head, I thought the odds of any individual one of
| them failing was extremely low, let alone all of them.
|
| Holy !@#$ing cow. Dodged multiple bullets. At least I didn't
| share my financial plan at the time at the Thanksgiving table
| last year or it would be really awkward now (thank goodness my
| uncle took that role in a small capacity)...
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| > Exodus wallet
|
| I've still got everything on just Coinbase, which I assume (?!)
| is reliable enough to not be at risk.
|
| What's the "upsell" for using a wallet? The "not your keys"
| argument logically makes sense to me but it doesn't seem worth
| it from a convenience stand-point.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My experience with my hardware wallet is that I put some
| stuff on it, left it for a year, and then when I went to go
| plug it in it wanted to update. The update will wipe it.
|
| I can use my recovery seed phrase after, but as far as I'm
| concerned that's an "oh crap" backup. For all I know I could
| have screwed up writing it down. Unlikely, but possible.
| Apparently it's also possible to other software wallets to
| get the crypto off of there.
|
| Frankly, if there aren't ways for the average non-tech person
| to safely and reliably hold crypto there's no point. Most of
| my stuff is on Coinbase and I've always figured that if that
| ship goes down the whole thing will come crashing down
| anyhow.
| guizzy wrote:
| > Coinbase, which I assume (?!) is reliable enough to not be
| at risk.
|
| This is what anyone could have said about FTX until suddenly
| it wasn't.
|
| The upsell is complete access to the DeFi ecosystem. Not just
| the part your exchange wants to support. The convenience
| issue is overblown, at least for tech inclined people like
| commenters here would be.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > the odds of any individual one of them failing was extremely
| low, let alone all of them.
|
| that reminds me of the tranches in mortgage backed securities
| during the 2008/9 financial crisis.
|
| See this scene from The Big Short
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WUGhteNlzM
| oblio wrote:
| I don't know what your savings plan look like, but I hope your
| idea of diversification is not to have all of your savings in a
| varied array of crytocurrencies :-)))
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Of course not - I only saw it as a way of diversifying the
| crypto portion of my diversified investments. But there was a
| bit of crypto - I'm just glad I didn't recommend others join
| me.
| ninepoints wrote:
| > "Galois Capital"
|
| What a stain on the name of a great mathematician
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| Galois should remove this stain by demanding that Galois
| Capital face him on the field of honor.
| blululu wrote:
| Ironic too since Galois was a devoted Republican while these
| folks are clearly in the Orleanist camp.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Had Galois been alive he probably would have challenged them to
| a duel.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| The incomparable Molly White has put together a contagion flow
| chart, which she is updating regularly:
|
| https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion
|
| See also her explanatory newsletter
|
| https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/
| jjfoooo5 wrote:
| How does Binance fit into this chart? I understand them to be
| the biggest remaining exchange
| colbyhub wrote:
| She also runs https://web3isgoinggreat.com which is helpful for
| staying just-enough up to date with all the crazy things going
| on in the crypto space if you don't want to sign up for her
| newsletter!
| shmatt wrote:
| I can't believe I missed the news the big corporate Gemini also
| halted withdrawals on their APY product
|
| If its not completely clear by now: no, these companies can't
| promise you 8% APY without essentially running a ponzi scheme.
| I'm sure even Madoff had some good years during bull runs. The
| only other semi-possible option is burning VC money with those
| APY's, which is maybe what Coinbase is doing
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > If its not completely clear by now: no, these companies
| can't promise you 8% APY without essentially running a ponzi
| scheme. I'm sure even Madoff had some good years during bull
| runs
|
| It's almost impossible to beat the market after fees. Anyone
| who promises to do so, consistently, is full of it. French
| (2008) and a whole body of literature before and after.
| xorcist wrote:
| Which market? I own some bonds that yields 8%.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Yield to maturity is far different that yearly yield.
|
| though it is possible to find some bonds that have an
| annual yield of 8%. Though no one would expect them all
| to make it maturity without any credit issues.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can find a very few. But they are limited in some
| way, and almost always government-funded.
|
| https://treasurydirect.gov/savings-bonds/i-bonds/i-bonds-
| int...
|
| iBonds hit above 8% return in a year if you bought at
| just the right time this year, IIRC.
|
| Of course, if you calculate _real return_ then you will
| have a sad.
| arcticfox wrote:
| There's also a very real counterparty risk in bonds that
| need to give 8%.
|
| Inflation bonds are kind of an exception there, since if
| inflation is 8% the market should be doing much better
| than that on average.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Are they Venezuela or Zimbabwe?
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| US federal funds rate hit 19.39 percent in April 1980. As
| a result long-term state bond did very well for their
| owners as inflation came down. My mom told stories about
| "Massachusetts Nines" with legendary 9% yields.
|
| Utilities and co-ops issued ~15% paper which also did
| extremely well for those who purchased it in the early
| 80s.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Know offhand what the 30-year yielded back in '80?
|
| For reference, the 30 is now at about 100bp less than
| shorter treasuries:
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data/rates
| mcguire wrote:
| ~11% (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ERP-2012/pdf/ER
| P-2012-ta...)
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Sure, back then. But I'm guessing these are not 50+ year
| maturities still paying out.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > It's almost impossible to beat the market after fees.
| Anyone who promises to do so, consistently, is full of it.
| French (2008) and a whole body of literature before and
| after.
|
| Not this dead horse again. Yes, academics have written a
| lot of papers claiming things that turned out to be false.
| See Renaissance Medallion Fund and Berkshire Hathaway for
| references.
| mcguire wrote:
| I'm not sure Berkshire Hathaway is comparable to anything
| in the crypto sphere.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Parent was referring to French (2008). Bitcoin was
| created in 2009, so the whole crypto sphere didn't exist
| in 2008. The reference was in relation to stock markets
| (and also to some extent derivative markets and bond
| markets etc.). Berkshire Hathaway is a good example of
| how stock markets are not efficient.
| lottin wrote:
| What exactly turned out to be false?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Efficient markets hypothesis in the context of stock and
| derivatives markets.
| ummonk wrote:
| Funny, just saw a comment a few days ago on HN advocating
| Gemini over Tether and I was wondering why he thought 5-8%
| yields weren't a scam.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568884
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 8%? Nexo's was promising 16% APR as recently as Nov 11
| according to Google's cache (https://webcache.googleuserconte
| nt.com/search?q=cache:eN2KEV...). The page redirects to the
| home page now.
|
| I've seen "bonus" APRs as high as 40% offered.
|
| https://crypto.com/us/earn is still offering 14.5% APR, and
| 8.5% on stablecoins, after accidentally sending $400M to a
| competitor.
| joosters wrote:
| https://nexo.io/earn-crypto is still up and promises 16%
| APR - I think they are the last ones standing now. I'm sure
| your money is safe with them, they proudly talk about their
| excellent Trustpilot rating /s
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That page redirects me to the home page, as well. Either
| it's because I'm in the US or they're taking things down.
| mattwad wrote:
| I'm in the US and it is sending me to a home page that
| offers 16%
| luckylion wrote:
| Probably geofenced, it works for me (Germany) and shows
| the offer
|
| > Earn 16% on Crypto
|
| > Make your idle digital assets work for you with Nexo.
| Start earning up to 16% APR, paid out daily.
| opendomain wrote:
| can you grab a screenshot?
| luckylion wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Dzojr this is what it currently shows
| to me
| xorcist wrote:
| "Up to". Aren't all of those high yielding services
| strictly in some crazy token that is bound to constantly
| deprecate?
| pakitan wrote:
| They are. The highest 16% is offered for the Polkadot
| shitcoin. Without even touching Nexo, you can get 12%
| just by regular Polkadot staking. To get the 16% that
| Nexo offers, you need to have 10% of your portfolio in
| Nexo's own shitcoin and thus you're moved to the
| "Platinum" level, which is eligible for higher yields. Of
| course, as you say, Nexo's shitcoin is bound to
| depreciate.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Isn't that what BitConnect was?
| lizknope wrote:
| Binance offered 45%
|
| https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/earn-up-
| to-4...
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Crypto.com advertises massively inflated APRs, to achieve
| those you need to hold a limited amount of the asset and a
| huge amount of CRO
|
| e.g. to hit the headline rate of 14.5% APR, you need to
| hold no more than $3,000 of DOT and at least $40,000 of CRO
| (their own token)
|
| the reason it's so high for DOT is that DOT is currently
| paying 15% APR to validators.
|
| It's extremely shady what crypto.com are doing but not
| necessarily unsustainable, because they're basically lying
| about what APR you can get
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| _cough_ FTT _cough_
|
| Holding 40k in CRO would be extremely unwise right now
| no?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| So what you're saying is that it's just a garden variety
| Ponzi scheme, and not anything original. If you put 12
| times the capital, they'll pay you "14.5%" yield on the
| principal. The moment they run out of fools to put this
| massive amounts of cash on the pyramid, it will go down
| as all Ponzis do. Crypto must die at this point, it's the
| only solution to this mess.
| roody15 wrote:
| Crypto like Bitcoin is fine. Exchanges that are stealing
| money are the problem. Confusing the two is a mistake IMO
| lottin wrote:
| Exchanges are a crucial part of the bitcoin economy.
| Miners need to sell the bitcoins that they earn in order
| to pay the bills.
| roody15 wrote:
| You can sell and transfer bitcoin directly without any
| need for an exchange.
| lottin wrote:
| Sure and you can buy groceries directly from the farmer.
| It's just not practical at any meaningful scale.
| x3sphere wrote:
| Coinbase doesn't have any lending products. Aside from one
| that will give you USD as a loan for holding your BTC as
| collateral which isn't the same thing.
|
| They do offer staking but that's the not the same either.
| Return is generated from the networks themselves - like with
| ETH they are offering 4% APY after a 25% cut. That seems
| completely fine.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > If its not completely clear by now: no, these companies
| can't promise you 8% APY without essentially running a ponzi
| scheme.
|
| If you look into protocols like Polkadot you will find that
| inflation is built-in and staking is a mechanism used to
| secure the protocol. In turn, you get a nice APY, but the
| coin dilutes over time.
| highwaylights wrote:
| This has all been done before (P2P lending) with exactly the
| same outcome, in the _very_ recent past (last ten years).
|
| It's hard to have empathy for these people when they've been
| so obnoxious up until now to anyone trying to help them with
| learned experience.
|
| Assuming you're not running an outright Ponzi scheme, then
| when you increase interest rates, you lower your borrower
| quality by the same amount, meaning your risk increases by
| _at least_ the same ratio (or more).
|
| By taking 8% interest or more, during a period of
| historically low interest rates, you were lending to the
| least reliable borrowers in existence - those borrowers that
| absolutely everyone lending money at lower rates said no to
| or, even worse, shady gamblers who can't legitimately draw
| finance from the traditional financial system without raising
| alarm bells.
|
| There's no surprise in this outcome to anyone with even a
| basic understanding of maths and/or economics. It's sad, but
| utterly predictable.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > This has all been done before (P2P lending) with exactly
| the same outcome, in the very recent past (last ten years).
|
| Amen. I burned a couple grand in Prosper in the mid 00s,
| primarily because I'm an idiot. I think a lesson there also
| applies here:
|
| 1. If you are a borrower, and had decent credit, you'd just
| go to a normal bank, because you could get much lower
| rates.
|
| 2. So the only people borrowing on Prosper were people with
| horrible credit (and for good reason), who basically got
| free money on Prosper and then promptly defaulted,
| sometimes after like a month or 2 of payments.
|
| Same thing goes with crypto. If you're earning 8-10%
| interest, it means someone else is _paying_ slightly more
| than that to borrow, which they would only do because they
| can 't get cheaper rates.
| adabyron wrote:
| Prosper! That's the name of the place that took my poor
| money.
|
| This reminds me, I think the exchanges also used that
| borrowed money to allow others to borrow against it to
| hedge or speculate on big moves. Those people were for
| sure paying much higher rates. They would of course pay
| those higher rates because they were assuming a big move
| in the price.
| adabyron wrote:
| I got crushed percentage wise but only stuck a few hundred
| dollars in to P2P lending in the early 2000's before my
| state & many others made it illegal. I could understand the
| risk in that situation though.
|
| With Crypto, I'm not sure if I do. To my understanding, you
| deposit money into a cryptocurrency, like ETH for example,
| in an exchange. The exchange then uses it as liquidity to
| allow other people to convert one cryptocurrency to
| another. Am I understanding this right? If so, it was my
| assumption that they were making 10% on transaction fees &
| rewarding you with 8% or something lower than 10%.
|
| In that case, my risk/reward assumption was that many of
| them would raise/lower their rates based on the amount of
| transactions being done & how valuable the liquidity was to
| them. I saw that some exchanges did this in terms of months
| & others were constantly changing their rates.
|
| Am I wrong in thinking that this is something that should
| be feasible to do without be a ponzi scheme? Of course
| there is extra risk based on how long the interest rate is
| fixed for if the market were to go down fast. I would
| assume banks are similar in the sense that you might buy a
| Certificate of Deposit (CD) or type of a bond and you get a
| fixed rate for a period of time. Your country's currency
| could drastically change or inflation could change. For
| most countries this isn't near as volatile though.
| Robin_Message wrote:
| I'm not a crypto user, but charging 10% to swap one set
| of bits for another doesn't seem like a viable business
| model.
| adabyron wrote:
| The numbers are all over the place. Just an FYI, 10% in
| this context is APY or the return after letting it sit
| for a year. It's not 10% each transaction. I believe each
| cryptocurrency has their own fees & they're all very
| different. I think many are fixed fees, so the percentage
| varies depending on how large of a transaction you're
| doing.
| andruby wrote:
| Why would an exchange need to borrow money from you to
| allow transactions?
|
| Both parties of the transaction send their money to the
| exchange before the transaction takes place. That means
| the exchange actually has excess (working) capital.
| adabyron wrote:
| The reasoning I understood was to provide liquidity of
| currencies, not money in general.
|
| So if I want to sell my ABC token for XYZ token, they are
| borrowing your XYZ token that you have gaining interest
| to make the transaction work. They are then taking the
| ABC token I sold to credit an ABC token they had borrowed
| from someone else.
|
| I may be completely wrong on this but that was my
| understanding of why this worked. Of course it doesn't
| work when everyone wants to take their money out. I would
| assume a responsible entity would use the money earned
| from fees to help provide liquidity.
|
| I would also assume a responsible entity would want to
| stop transactions of ABC token if there was no longer
| enough liquidity to support the above borrowing &
| trading.
| scandox wrote:
| I didn't think Madoff actually invested in anything. I
| thought he just used new funds to pay withdrawals.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Saint madoff (in comparison) also was ready to turn himself
| in when the gig was up
| [deleted]
| rr888 wrote:
| > these companies can't promise you 8% APY without
| essentially running a ponzi scheme
|
| It doesn't mean its a ponzi, but certainly an 8% yield isn't
| a safe investment, there will be some liquidity/market/credit
| risk. Hopefully its just liquidity.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yup. Any company offering that _will_ rugpull you in the
| future, even if that may not have been their original
| intention. Therefore you should regard them as radioactive
| and pull all your money from them - and any "institution",
| contract etc that does invest in them.
| xorcist wrote:
| We should be clear about that Gemini and Coinbase aren't
| running those schemes.
|
| You buy some sort of tokens on their marketplace with which
| you can partake in (what very much looks like) ponzi schemes.
| It's far from clear what their role is in all of this, even
| if I would think we all would be better off if they distanced
| themselves from it.
|
| There is probably a lot of customer demand here too. We've
| seen even the staunchest opponents give in one after another,
| and offer marketplaces for these tokens.
| lob_it wrote:
| They are just pushing up the price of tulips. Thats all :p
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market...
|
| Did they even get a moment of silence?
|
| Vaporware has a way of eviscerating
| latchkey wrote:
| As noted in the article you linked and this one as well [0].
| There never was a real tulip fever.
|
| [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-
| real-...
| lob_it wrote:
| It was polite joke about pushing up tulips :p
|
| Notice how I didn't say disemboweled with entrails all over
| the place with all of the fud being distributed about crypto
| ponzis/vaporware.
|
| https://www.wordnik.com/words/eviscerate
|
| Literacy is fun the mental in your case :p
| 2sk21 wrote:
| Yes - as an outsider, it feels as if the entire crypto space
| consists of people selling tulip bulbs to each other.
| lob_it wrote:
| It was more of a scarcity pun with all the tulips needed for
| all of them getting buried :p
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/law-of-supply-
| demand.as...
|
| https://poemanalysis.com/idiom/pushing-up-daisies/
| kdragon wrote:
| As a Bitcoin maxi this is fun to watch. It's like the 08'
| financial collapse all over again, but there's no bailout coming
| this time around.
|
| I think it is glaringly obvious at this point that most of
| society does not understand how money works, and will fall victim
| to the same old scams no matter where they manifest.
|
| This entire crypto collapse has been a long time coming. You
| can't simply manufacture money out of nothing, nor can you
| inflate debt endlessly.
|
| Bitcoin as a community has distanced themselves from 'crypto' and
| these boiler-room pump and dump scams.
|
| Bitcoin maxis fight for the simplicity and real-word cost behind
| proof of work for a reason. Bitcoin may be arbitrary digits in a
| ledger but it isn't free to make. The supply is capped, yet the
| work anyone can put into securing the ledger is unbounded.
|
| Regardless of where you choose to invest, self custody is king.
| Get your tokens off exchanges. Not your keys, not your coins.
| ufo wrote:
| Bitcoin's supply is only capped if you don't count all the
| forks. 1 BTC = 1BTC + 1BCH + 1BTG + ...
| bvirb wrote:
| I thought Bitcoin was a really neat idea as an experiment of a
| completely market driven asset. It seems like it still could
| become/already is that (I think this is called the "digital
| gold" idea).
|
| Of course when the mania settles I have no idea if the value of
| digital-gold-sans-gambling would be $5 or $500,000 or $0. But I
| do think there is a neat idea that isn't just a pure scam
| buried in there.
| pocket_cheese wrote:
| There's companies like Paxos that are actually audited and
| have a token PAXG that is backed 1:1 with actual gold
| reserves. The tokens themselves actually have serial numbers
| that are linked to a physical gold bar.
| bvirb wrote:
| That is interesting.
|
| To me I think the neat thing about Bitcoin is that the
| decentralization and lack of intrinsic value are exactly
| what make it (mostly) purely market driven.
|
| Blockchain/decentralization as a technology I'm not very
| sold on yet.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Yeah, we know, you burn coal for funny internet monopoly money
| that's worthless in the real world.
| highwaylights wrote:
| "Don't buy Tony's magic beans. Tony's magic beans are a scam,
| they're not really magic at all. I buy my magic beans from
| Frank. Everyone knows that _only_ Frank grows _real_ magic
| beans. "
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| This is like pretending there's no difference between USD and
| Turkish Lira. There are substantial and material differences
| between Bitcoin and nearly all other cryptocurrencies.
| kayamon wrote:
| The beans with the weird pyramid and floating eye logo are
| definitely the best beans.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I know you're being sarcastic but what you said is true.
| USD is currently the best currency on stability, usage,
| acceptance, etc.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| I agree. They even have a whole army to defend that,
| unlike, uh, a whole room full of dusty old GPUs burning up
| a rainforest every time someone makes a transaction. /s
| lawn wrote:
| > Bitcoin maxis fight for the simplicity and real-word cost
| behind proof of work for a reason.
|
| No they don't. They promote Lightning Network as some sort of
| savior of all things, but it's the complete opposite of
| simplicity and soundness.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Also it's be revealed that the seemingly only LN app that
| works without issues is actually just using bitcoin L1 and
| not using LN at all.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Might you or someone else have a link that discusses this
| revelation and failure? I'm kind of surprised to hear this.
| origin_path wrote:
| Oh? Do tell! That sounds interesting. I lost interest in
| BTC after they decided to cap the block size and push LN
| because LN was so poorly thought out.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I wonder if a crypto contagion could actually help the broader
| economy by acting as an escape valve. For the past 14 years, the
| government keeps stepping in to bail out bad bets and keep all
| the scum floating. But with crypto, it was an an area of the
| economy that government largely kept its distance from and lacked
| a mandate. So there will be no will to rescue anything and a full
| on bank run can commence, destroying lots of wealth. When will
| then take some of the extra money out of the real economy without
| having to destroy any traditional business.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| Crypto is a tiny, tiny fraction of global ponzi markets like
| government bonds or real estate. There is not nearly enough
| liquidity in crypto to make a difference in those.
| anon291 wrote:
| Maybe. Unfortunately I think a lot of Americans do have crypto
| holdings and a lot of investment firms as well. Also, crypto
| tycoons are heavy contributors to political parties.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > So there will be no will to rescue anything and a full on
| bank run can commence, destroying lots of wealth
|
| How does this actually benefit anyone? It's not wealth
| _redistribution_.
|
| > When will then take some of the extra money out of the real
| economy
|
| But it wasn't real money in the real economy, it was fake money
| in a fake economy.
|
| Admittedly _some_ real money went in, and some came out again
| to buy stadium endorsements and superbowl adverts, but the main
| effect of this is to wreck the savings of (a) ordinary rubes
| and (b) over-optimistic VC firms. I can see why people want
| (b), but you can 't separate it from (a).
| Animats wrote:
| > How does this actually benefit anyone? It's not wealth
| redistribution.
|
| Sure it is. It redistributes money from the marks to the
| crooks.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| When you take money out of circulation, you reduce inflation.
|
| Here's a "real world example:"
|
| There's a house near me that's selling for $7,777,777 (get
| it? Lucky sevens?)
|
| The cost of the house is obviously arbitrary, and it's
| listing has a bunch of references to bitcoin. The owners of
| the home are obviously trying to "leverage" crypto mania to
| find a buyer.
|
| Now that a bunch of crypto "wealth" has been destroyed by
| falling prices, the owner of that house will need to re-
| assess whether $7,777,777 is a realistic price.
|
| More than likely, it's not. And by lowering the price of the
| home they're selling, they're contributing to a reduction in
| real world inflation rates.
|
| Also, yes, I know that inflation stats use a proxy for the
| cost of housing.
| archontes wrote:
| Except in both the real world scenario and your example, no
| money has been taken out of circulation.
|
| If the entire stock market went to zero tomorrow, exactly
| the same number of dollars would be circulating.
| coding123 wrote:
| Well it would still have a devastating effect. Most
| businesses would insta-close tomorrow. And remain closed
| for months while shit is sorted. Meanwhile panic ensues -
| world population drops 5b in 1 month.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| Not true. You would need to know the cost to build the
| house and/or the price paid for the house prior to this
| selling event. Once its been sold again, we can assess
| whether there has been a net reduction or addition to the
| supply of money/credit/debt.
| syrrim wrote:
| Money is not just dollars. I consider my bank account
| money, even though I know its backed by some fraction of
| its value in actual dollars. People take out loans that
| are backed by stocks, for example. If the stock market
| went to zero, they would default on the loan, and money
| would be destroyed.
| archontes wrote:
| Your bank account is the solidest non-money because FDIC
| insured up to $100,000. If it weren't, then it would be
| an IOU from a bank, worth whatever that trust is worth.
|
| In your loan example, either you haven't spent the money
| they loaned you, which would then be reclaimed, or you
| have spent it, in which case someone else has it.
|
| No money would be destroyed in either scenario, unless
| what you did with the loan was put it in a suitcase and
| burn it.
|
| The only things that remove money from circulation are:
| bank accounts that only accrete (usually temporary, and
| thus not actual removal), taxes, and physical
| destruction.
| [deleted]
| fragmede wrote:
| > FDIC insured up to $100,000.
|
| It's now $250,000.
|
| https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-
| insurance/brochures/i....
| clavalle wrote:
| Just like when you step out of the ocean in wet trunks you
| reduce ocean levels.
| coding123 wrote:
| Well, most people pee when in the ocean.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| I would _never_ , how dare you
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Some say if you can't afford to lose it all, you can't afford
| to invest in the first place.
| samsonradu wrote:
| > How does this actually benefit anyone?
|
| There's real benefit when we consider the amount of man-hours
| spent the past years on trying to reinvent finance, with
| little success so far.
|
| These (smart) people can use their time and skills towards
| more productive stuff.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| > How does this actually benefit anyone?
|
| Maybe it will alleviate the semiconductor shortage.
| dougmwne wrote:
| What is real money anyway? Money is an idea and the money
| supply contains far more than physical currency. If someone
| believes they have crypto wealth, they will spend accordingly
| and the velocity of what we measure as the economy increases.
| If that crypto wealth disappears, that person is going to cut
| back on their real spending. The economy is human.
| jmcgough wrote:
| It's easy to take a philosophical stance on this, but this
| represents many peoples' life savings. There are countless
| lives that have been irreparably harmed by crypto scams,
| which has a net negative effect on our society.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think the idea here is that pumping the economy full of
| helium will eventually be catastrophic. If this crypto
| crash is allowed to actually play out instead of getting
| bailed out it could prevent something far more damaging
| later on than even a million people losing their
| deposits.
| crazymoka wrote:
| They will use this to capture all crypto and regulate it.
| Problem, Reaction, Solution. I think FTX was only caught
| because Binance exposed them too early before SBF could bring
| regulation to the exchange and insulate himself. Him, his
| family and GF all have ties to people that could have made this
| happen.
|
| Now no matter what the end game is regulation, either by
| someone like SBF to make it happen or knowing full well it was
| going to blow up. With regulation they can protect the fox in
| the hen house like they do with the stock market and keep all
| the control.
|
| If you don't think so, read in depth what Bernie Madoff did and
| how connected he was. The best part is, stock market still
| allows PFOF which he invented to help with his Ponzi scheme.
|
| Just my take on it all...
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I don't think that it'll be that long until Binance suffer
| the same fate. Probably about 6 months.
| majormajor wrote:
| > before SBF could bring regulation to the exchange and
| insulate himself.
|
| If that was his endgame he would've had better record keeping
| and books. Regulation and paperwork go hand in hand, he was
| not set up for existing in a regulatory environment.
| groestl wrote:
| Well, the money is not gone. It's just that somebody else has
| it. Interesting idea though.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Sam Bankman Fried marked his 1 billion Serum (a dex on
| Solana) tokens at $2.1B on his balance sheet.
|
| The last time Serum was worth $2.1+ per token, it was Jan
| 2022. At current market prices, that same stake is worth less
| than $250M (given liquidity conditions).
|
| Serum was also a dex that SBF's company, Alameda, pretty much
| made in-house, and then allocated themselves 1 billion
| tokens.
|
| So this "wealth" was created out of thin air. And disappeared
| into thin air.
|
| Ergo, it was not real. It wasn't lost. It never really
| existed in the first place.
| larryfromtexas wrote:
| Recommended reading on the topic of wealth destruction by
| fraud, John Kay "The Bezzle Years." An introductory quote to
| give you an idea:
|
| More than a half-century ago, John Kenneth Galbraith
| presented a definitive depiction of the Wall Street Crash of
| 1929 in a slim, elegantly written volume. Embezzlement,
| Galbraith observed, has the property that "weeks, months, or
| years elapse between the commission of the crime and its
| discovery. This is the period, incidentally, when the
| embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled
| feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth."
| Galbraith described that increase in wealth as "the bezzle."
|
| Link: https://www.johnkay.com/2021/09/08/the-bezzle-years/
| shrikant wrote:
| Very coincidentally, I also just came across a very nice
| write-up on the bezzle, written around a similar timeframe:
| https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/85179
| metadat wrote:
| If a digital coin goes from $1/per to $0.01/per, the value is
| destroyed. Where did it go? In this instance: Poof.
|
| Burn baby burn.
| verelo wrote:
| Nah, even then someone has the money, you just have less.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| What you say is only true in a liquid and transparent
| market.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's silly. If a real coin, in your hand, goes from
| being worth $1 to 1C/, who made money?
| alvarezbjm-hn wrote:
| How can a real physical coin lose 99% of its value?
| That's inflation
|
| How can a crypto coin lose 99% of its value? It was worth
| nothing to begin with. No wealth created, no wealth
| destroyed. Plain transference.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Better example with coins:
|
| If I convince one person to pay $10 for a quarter, are
| all quarters worth $10?
|
| If you answered "yes", you can run
| https://coinmarketcap.com/.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| You can only make that determination when that "someone"
| utilizes the asset in some manner or converts it back to
| the original currency.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not when the money never existed in the first place.
|
| These shitcoins with billion dollar market caps never
| actually took a billion dollars into any accounts. The
| volume is fake, the activity is fake, the price is fake.
| chadash wrote:
| Yeah, but the "money" is irrelevant. 99% of their _buying
| power_ (which in a simple sense is what people usually
| mean when they say wealth) went away.
| chadash wrote:
| No, the _wealth_ actually is gone.
|
| For example, bitcoin has a market cap of $320B. At its peak
| it was worth about four times that. Did $960B just disappear?
| Basically, yes.
|
| The coin has no intrinsic value (in the way that a can of
| corn does, for example). It's worth money because people say
| it is. And market cap is just a multiple of what it trades
| for at the margins times the number of shares (coins).
|
| To give an example, say that I bought a bitcoin 10 years ago
| and that it was my only possession. At its peak, I could have
| sold the bitcoin for ~$64k, so I had a net worth of 64k. If I
| didn't sell it at that point and still hold it, I'm now worth
| ~16k. No one _made_ $48K of of me... there were no
| transactions in that time period. The "wealth" has simply
| vanished.
| ericd wrote:
| Let's take a different example. Let's say I have 100 foobar
| coins. I sell one of them to an associated entity for $1,
| the market cap is now $100, I have $99 in "wealth". That
| entity sells one back to me for $2, now the market cap is
| $200. I sell it back for $3, now the market cap is $300.
|
| Do I now actually have $300 in wealth? No, because it's
| illiquid, and the bid for it more broadly is likely $0, I
| have to apply a large liquidity discount. It seems like
| many communities behind these coins have been doing
| something similar to the internal trading I've been
| describing here, and hyping them to find outside people
| willing to trade some of their real dollars for these
| worthless coins, and those few trades have been used to
| establish the broader market caps of these things.
|
| All illiquid and somewhat illiquid have this property to
| varying degrees, ranging from startup stock (no, selling
| 20% for $1M to a VC doesn't mean your company is actually
| worth $5M, unless you could find a buyer for all the stock
| for that much) all the way up to Amazon, Tesla, Apple, etc,
| because there's no buyer waiting to absorb all the
| outstanding stock at the current bid. There would be a
| buyer willing to absorb all of it at _some_ level, but it
| 's likely at a level far lower than the current market cap.
| chadash wrote:
| > There would be a buyer willing to absorb all of it at
| some level, but it's likely at a level far lower than the
| current market cap.
|
| For crypto, no one would want to buy the _entirety_ of
| bitcoin, because it basically has no value if it isn 't
| traded, so it's effectively worth $0 if someone owns all
| of it.
|
| For companies, this isn't necessarily true. When
| acquisitions happen, the current market cap is usually
| the _floor_ , not the ceiling. I agree with your overall
| point though.
| jboy55 wrote:
| Twitter is a counter example for your tech stock
| scenario. However, you could argue that its hyper-
| inflated Tesla stock trading for hyper-inflated Twitter
| stock, much like a BTC millionare, trading BTC for ETH.
| ericd wrote:
| Right, if a company finds a buyer, then its market cap is
| suddenly realized. The liquidity discount is meant to
| reflect the uncertainty of that given no current bidder
| for all the stock, and the discount is lower for public
| companies with demonstrated interest than for private
| companies. And you can see the downward pressure that
| Musk's selling Tesla shares has had on its price.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| This is precisely how I explained NFTs to my "How can
| NFTs possibly be bad?" friend.
|
| - You start the day with $200,000. You create an NFT and
| sell it to yourself for $200,000.
|
| - Now you have $200,000 and a $200,000 NFT, meaning
| you've doubled your wealth to $400,000.
|
| - If you can convince someone to buy that arbitrary NFT
| at 95% discount, you end up having $210,000 in cash by
| the EOD.
| root_axis wrote:
| Indeed. It's no different than if I kept a hand written
| ledger in a paper notebook and sold entries onto that
| ledger for USD. In this case, people would see its a
| piece of paper and scoff at the idea that having their
| name written onto this paper is worth any money, even if
| someone else paid money to put their name on the ledger,
| but doing the exact same thing with cryptocurrencies
| fools people because the fake spot price and fake market
| cap is broadcast across the internet as if it were real,
| obscuring the fact that each of these coins is just the
| digital version of someone's personal notebook.
| andruby wrote:
| The described foobar coin was illiquid and couldn't be
| sold. But that's not true for BTC, ETH, and even a lot of
| the shitcoins that had some decent volume om multiple
| exchanges.
|
| So in that sense, it _was_ wealth for the holders.
| majormajor wrote:
| There are a lot of people willing to lend you money on
| the back of less-liquid-than-cash assets, though.
|
| It may not be "real wealth" but it certainly is spending
| power and psychological cushion, which means different
| spending choices, which means inflationary pressure.
|
| I had a lot of coworkers who listed crypto holdings on
| their mortgage application in the past few years. They
| wouldn't have been bidding as high if the perceived value
| of those wasn't there.
| bluecalm wrote:
| The "market cap" for crypto is just an illusion. There
| never was enough liquidity. The money was lost the moment
| you exchanged it to crypto. Some of it is in hands of other
| people. Some of it was spent to keep the show going
| (mining, employees for all the crypto businesses etc.).
|
| You and every individual investor could have cashed out but
| that is as saying that Madoff customers could have cashed
| out. It's just an illusion. Most of the money disappeared
| once you deposited and Madoff, SBF, or some other scammer
| spent it on a new boat or house on an island.
| Aperocky wrote:
| He was talking about money and you wealth.
|
| I trust money more than wealth. Unsold stock should not be
| quantified until the moment it is sold.
|
| It's getting tiring to hear about "so and so billionaire
| lost X billion". No, they didn't lose anything that they
| didn't have to begin with. Having more stock than the trade
| volume of that stock means all of that "wealth" is mostly
| theoretical.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| I totally agree... crazy times in the past few years. I
| have heard that some people were able to borrow against
| their "wealth" (stock holdings, crypto holdings, vested
| ownership shares) for homes, cars, boats and more since
| Covid. If their "wealth" suddenly evaporates in the form
| of losses, they find themselves on the wrong side of the
| trade. Super duper risky and the appetite for these
| "products" was immense from what I understand.
| chadash wrote:
| He was talking about money, but I think meant wealth
| based on the context of his response to the OP. They are
| almost interchangeable, but not in this context.
|
| > Unsold stock should not be quantified until the moment
| it is sold.
|
| I don't know Elon Musk's finances, but I imagine that
| he's got a bunch of stock, (let's say) an amount of cash
| in the tens or even hundreds of millions and debts well
| above the amount of cash he has on hand. If you don't
| count unsold stock, then Elon Musk is poorer than most
| college students.
|
| I agree the numbers are misleading (e.g. Bill Gates money
| is very diversified and he has already paid many of the
| capital gains on microsoft stock sales, so comparing his
| wealth to Elon Musk's with a single number is quite
| misleading). But you have to count unsold stock for
| _something_.
| twblalock wrote:
| If you didn't count the "theoretical" wealth you wouldn't
| call them billionaires in the first place.
|
| That "theoretical" wealth clearly has a massive impact on
| the real world, so it's silly to pretend it does not
| exist. For example, Elon didn't buy Twitter with a giant
| bag of gold coins -- he borrowed against his wealth,
| which is mostly in stock.
| Aperocky wrote:
| And his "wealth" shrunk far more than what he had to
| liquidate and pay twitter for.
|
| Because no sane organization will lend out real cash over
| the same amount of collateral TSLA stock, and leveraged
| lending opens TSLA to extremely high risk as value
| dropping would means Musk will be forced to sell to
| cover/and or stake more TSLA. This is exactly how FTX
| failed - they counted their own token as their "asset".
| Spoiler: it didn't work.
|
| Does this wealth have a high impact on the world? Of
| course it does. But does it has the same impact as same
| volume of cash? Absolutely not.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Also Zuck lost $100,000,000,000 in wealth when Facebook
| tanked. Counting beans in hand is not how wealth is
| calculated.
| hedora wrote:
| Many people have a net worth greater than the number of
| circulating dollars. Also, dollars are not risk-free.
| They target a few percent annual loss, after all!
| ddbb33 wrote:
| > I had a net worth of 64k No you didn't. You had a
| potential net worth of 64k, but you didn't take advantage.
| You can't just compare to peak, your wealth loss/gain comes
| from comparing to the price you bought it.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| How else would you understand wealth? Are people who have
| loans against massive stock portfolios but relatively
| little cash (spent on houses, cars, trips, etc)... poor?
| Obviously not.
|
| OP was worth at least 64k at some point and now is worth
| at least 16k. The value and total amount of wealth (in US
| Dollars) has gone down.
| wongarsu wrote:
| What's a potential net worth? "Net worth" is already "how
| much money would you have if you sold all your assets and
| settled all your debts". Since for most people most of
| their wealth is in assets, it's totally normal for net
| worth to swing up and down as the market value of
| household goods/land/buildings/companies/bitcoins
| changes.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The catch is that even if your net worth is a certain
| amount on paper, you can't necessarily realize that as
| cash.
|
| Take Elon Musk, for example. A lot of his wealth is in
| Tesla stock. But he can't sell that stock without _also_
| affecting its price. If he decided to sell all of it
| tomorrow, the price would plummet and he would only
| receive a fraction of what it 's worth today.
|
| This is what a lot of these companies are doing. I can
| create 100 tokens and sell you one for $1. In theory, my
| "net worth" is now $99, since I have 99 tokens that are
| worth $1 each. In reality, if I tried to sell all 99 of
| them, I'd quickly find that people are actually not
| willing to buy all of them for that amount.
| zapdrive wrote:
| > The coin has no intrinsic value
|
| This is pretty debatable. Bitcoin does have some intrinsic
| value as a medium of exchange and store of value.
| blowski wrote:
| What can you do with the bits that make up your Bitcoin,
| other than trade them for something else?
| vntok wrote:
| You can prove you actually own how much you want to prove
| you actually own, without leaking any other information
| on your identity or current wealth. You can sign
| documents. You can mount complex escrow processes with
| it. You can send it worldwide to anybody without even
| knowing where they live (phone numbers fail), or what
| their bank is (IBANs fail) or what their email is (gift
| cards fail) or whether they are allowed by someone else
| to receive money (paypal fails). You can pool it with
| friends and set up conditions for safe withdrawal reliant
| on multiple people agreeing at the same time. And you can
| receive money from anyone, anywhere around the world,
| without anyone else's permission.
| blowski wrote:
| So if you send it to someone, what can they do with it?
| jboy55 wrote:
| Yes, but how many coins fulfill those basic requirements?
| Why is btc special? Why would any of these coins be worth
| anything besides some fee to convert-to from fiat and
| convert-from to fiat?
| none_to_remain wrote:
| You can pay Bitcoin (and only Bitcoin) to embed messages,
| typically transaction messages, in the global Bitcoin
| blockchain.
|
| I was hoping years back that all of this would have taken
| off for payments rather than silliness. I was wondering
| if we'd see a (low) Bitcoin value determined by the need
| to pay BTC transaction fees and those fees being
| effectively locked up until the next block comes
| clavalle wrote:
| With all of the options these days, I'd wonder about the
| characterization of 'intrensic'.
| chadash wrote:
| I would say that bitcoin has extrinsic value. The value
| it has is because people agree it has value. Imagine I
| started a blockchain using the exact same code as bitcoin
| and called it Bitcoin9890812894. It would have the same
| functionality as bitcoin but a value of $0 since
| virtually no one else would agree that it has any value.
|
| On the opposite end, a can of Cambell's soup has
| intrinsic value, because it's worth something to someone
| regardless of what anyone else thinks. The can of soup
| that Andy Warhol as the basic for his famous paintings
| has a mixture of both types of value (surely someone will
| pay significantly more for _that_ can over any other
| identical can).
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The value it has is because people agree it has value.
| Imagine I started a blockchain using the exact same code
| as bitcoin and called it Bitcoin9890812894. It would have
| the same functionality as bitcoin but a value of $0 since
| virtually no one else would agree that it has any value.
|
| That doesn't seem like a contradiction at all, right? If
| your fork somehow became well known and replaced the
| original, then yeah, your fork would have some intrinsic
| value as a medium of exchange and a store of value.
| jboy55 wrote:
| > If your fork somehow became well known and replaced the
| original, then yeah, your fork would have some intrinsic
| value as a medium of exchange and a store of value.
|
| Intrinsic value is a value outside of perceived value. A
| can of soup is calories, which we need to survive, as
| long as it is edible, it will always be worth something
| to a human. Farm land has intrinsic value because it can
| produce food. Diesel has intrinsic value because farmers
| need this to produce food. Bitcoin9890812895, my fork of
| Bitcoin9890812894 has no intrinsic value to anyone.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Intrinsic value is a value outside of perceived value.
|
| Yes, and we're not talking about perceived value. We're
| talking about intrinsic value from a peer-to-peer network
| that's used by many people.
| pirate787 wrote:
| I'll debate that- the intrinsic value from exchange is
| less than the cost to pay the miners to run the network,
| therefore a negative net present value -- bitcoin is not
| a store of value, but fundamentally destroys value and
| relies on greater fools to buy for any price increase.
| bmacho wrote:
| About the amount of work to make a toy banking system. I
| never tried, but there are some download and next next
| finish coin generators, right? So the bitcoin system is
| worth about a buck or so. (.. if I want to be _very_
| generous, we can add the value of the bitcoin brand, and
| that el salvador accepts it, some apps already can handle
| it, but really that 's it. It's still negligible.)
| johnvanommen wrote:
| Agree 100%
|
| What's happening is not great for crypto investors, but
| it's beneficial for people who want inflation to go down
| (nearly all of us.)
| IanDrake wrote:
| [deleted]
| NortySpock wrote:
| Crypto tokens are in one pocket and US Dollars are in someone
| else's pocket.
|
| Which one retains value in a market crash? My money is on US
| Dollars, but you are free to disagree with me.
| verelo wrote:
| Isn't that generally the case?
| bmacho wrote:
| Actually the wealth is gone. Not because bitcoin was a ponzi
| scheme (that doesn't destroy wealth or money, that indeed
| just redistributes it) but because a common way to get
| bitcoin or other cryptocoins is to destroy equivalent amount
| of wealth, burn gas, energy, make ASIC silicone to mine, etc.
| What a madness, really.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| This is not wrong, physical wealth was indeed destroyed to
| make tokens of negligible* value to humans, but the meaning
| of OP's "wealth" is claims on real goods or services -- as
| in the houses bought by insiders a few weeks ago.
| Destroying the remainder of such claims is a real benefit
| to the world economy, reducing inflation of all legit
| currencies.
|
| *negligible not zero, because some tiny slice of crypto
| transactions actually are done by useful workers in order
| to shield wages from kleptocratic regimes.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's incorrect. When asset prices fall, wealth is indeed
| gone. It's not transferred to someone else, it just vanishes.
|
| It's true no matter if you're talking about falling stocks or
| falling crypto.
| alenrozac wrote:
| While technically correct, I will point out that during
| "the crash" many with access to capital are able to secure
| a net long position either by way of savings or via real
| options -- LLC is an example of a real option where the
| capitalist only loses the investment value making the
| financial leverage an attractive and useful tool.
|
| People losing jobs and thinking about their next steps are
| usually too late with not enough skin in the game to jump
| on the decade-long bandwagon. That's the "wealth" some of
| the commenters here seem to be pointing to. Essentially,
| inequality.
| loceng wrote:
| E.g. The last people to buy who haven't sold are left
| holding the bag.
| shafyy wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. If I buy some cryptocurrency coin
| for $10 somebody received $10 from me. If now the value of
| the crypto goes $0, I have lost $10 but the who I gave $10
| to still has that money. It has not magically disappeared.
| Or do you mean something else?
| johnvanommen wrote:
| > If I buy some cryptocurrency coin for $10 somebody
| received $10 from me. If now the value of the crypto goes
| $0, I have lost $10 but the who I gave $10 to still has
| that money
|
| Here's an example of how this works:
|
| FTX "minted" their own cryptocurrency. They minted
| billions of dollars of it.
|
| When people purchased _a tiny fraction of it_ , that
| established a price for one coin.
|
| Once that happened, FTX could say _" we're worth billions
| of dollars."_
|
| But keep in mind:
|
| * the cryptocurrency was created out of thin air
|
| * the value of the crypto crashed by over 90% in the past
| month
|
| On top of all that, there was a "multiplier effect" when
| the "assets" were used as collateral on loans to
| counterparties.
|
| The net effect is that the "assets" were worth billions
| at some point, but that value has evaporated. And loans
| were made on those "assets" which may have multiplied the
| actual impact several fold.
|
| It's a banal comparison, but this is a lot like Beanie
| Babies in the 1990s. At one point the market was worth
| millions of dollars, and then it evaporated overnight.
|
| That's deflationary, and if there's one thing the world
| needs right now, it's deflation.
| damagednoob wrote:
| Hasn't total wealth gone down by $10 in your scenario?
| archontes wrote:
| It's more like we have discovered that our estimation
| that $20 of wealth existed was incorrect, and only $10
| existed. Someone speculated incorrectly.
|
| It's like a gold mine being revealed as barren. Whether
| you say wealth was destroyed or wasn't there to begin
| with is... distinction without a difference.
| chadash wrote:
| Yes, $10 has "magically" disappeared. Consider this case.
| I buy a used car from you for $10000. You now have
| $10,000 and I have a car worth $10,000 (let's assume that
| i got a fair price and would be able to resell it for
| that amount too).
|
| A day later the Russian army hits my car with a mortar.
| You have $10,000. I have some scrap metal. Rather than
| $20,000 worth of stuff, there's now $10,000 (plus some
| scrap metal) total.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You're changing value stores in this scenario, which
| mitigates the loss but doesn't eliminate it. WHat makes
| you think that $10 accurately represents some set of
| physical goods for which it can be exchanged? What about
| when you start exchanging like-for-like at different
| agreed rates? If we equate wealth to money, and money is
| largely based on shared faith and acceptance, then when
| that agreement shifts wealth most certainly is created
| and disappears out of and into thin air.
| wppick wrote:
| When you buy $10 of crypto you are passing that $10 to
| another person, so the amount of money is unchanged. You
| receive a promise for $10 for some point in the future
| essentially. If that goes up, you now have a promise for
| $12, for example. If there is $1 trillion in crypto that
| suddenly goes up to $2 trillion then an extra trillion in
| promises were created that would put extra pressure on
| the existing amount of dollars in existence if they were
| all redeemed at once (inflation). If the money supply
| remains unchanged and crypto prices change, then it can
| increase/decrease the demand for dollars.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If you buy _one_ coin for $10 crypto considers that the
| value of _all_ of the millions of coins.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wash_trade
|
| Yes, the $10 exists, but that $10 trade may have inflated
| the value ("market cap") of the coin by billions.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| Exactly. That's the fundamental reason that FTX is just
| the tip of the iceberg.
| archontes wrote:
| This is just a demonstration that this is a naive way of
| estimating value.
| dougmwne wrote:
| But this is exactly how all assets are priced and that
| price signal is good enough to take loans out against the
| asset collateral and create even more money supply.
| kshacker wrote:
| Gosh. Is this one of those tiktok quizzes?
|
| At start you had 10 bucks and he had 10 bucks worth of
| crypto for total assets of 20
|
| Now you have crypto with value of 0 and he has 10 bucks
| for total assets of 10
|
| Overall 10 bucks is gone and yes there are winners and
| losers
|
| Edit: TikTok quiz abbreviated: you buy for 50, sell for
| 60, buy again for 80, sell for 90. How much did you win /
| lose? ... the confusion for some people being created
| since they sold at 60 to buy back at 80
| ttoinou wrote:
| Both are true, it depends on the value those services
| provided and crypto provide now
| y04nn wrote:
| I think you highlight the problem with crypto speculation,
| it does not produce any revenue, so the price appreciation
| is only governed by new speculators bet that a greater fool
| will buy it. When you trade there must be a seller and
| buyer, the value of the untraded part is only a potential
| value and not real value, as soon as you put it for sale,
| there will be more supply than demand and the price
| plummet, as it happened with FTT. The total supply may have
| been valued at billions of dollars even thought only few
| millions have been bought, so the collapse just transfered
| the wealth to the ones who sold above the real money that
| was put into it. I think it is a zero sum game as there is
| no revenue, only speculation.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The market value of Super Mario 3 cartridges and similar
| collector items surely takes a hit from the ponzis coming down?
| notUrsMine wrote:
| vishnugupta wrote:
| This is when I get to say "I told you so". Excerpt from my 9
| month old comment [1]
|
| A whole bunch of these startups have sprung up; which take up
| real money (USDT or even USD, INR etc.,) promising very
| attractive guaranteed returns without locking up customers' fund.
| Look at these[1] for examples. Anyone who knows anything about
| banking in the traditional world knows how ridiculous it is. And
| indeed some of these are beginning to unravel[2]. In Anchor's
| case there are way more lenders than borrowers so Anchor is
| resorting to pay those high yields from their reserves. It's
| cutting close to being a Ponzi scheme at the moment. In a
| traditional banking world businesses take a loan either to cover
| for a short-term cashflow crunch (example an invoice that's
| delayed by their client) or for longer term investment. That
| money usually goes into economic activities which are expected
| (hoped?) to bear fruit to repay the loan. In the crypto world
| however such loans are taken only to be put back into the crypto
| world; to be swapped into some hot new coin to be staked and what
| not. The music has got to stop at some point.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30335625
| tromp wrote:
| > real money (USDT
|
| Not really...
| hanniabu wrote:
| You're still wrong. The issue here isn't crypto, it's
| centralized entities which act similar to banks.
|
| It also failed because user money was stolen and mismanaged by
| hugely incompetent 20 year olds, not because it was invested in
| crypto.
|
| It's like someone saying the whole stock market is a scam
| because of Bernie Madoff.
| twblalock wrote:
| > It also failed because user money was stolen and mismanaged
| by hugely incompetent 20 year olds, not because it was
| invested in crypto.
|
| Ah, but you repeat yourself! Almost every actor in crypto is
| an incompetent 20-something, or an intentionally criminal
| 20-something.
|
| Exchanges like Coinbase might be the "good guys" but when the
| assets they let you exchange are inherently worthless magic
| beans and many of them are intentional scams, it's hard to
| justify the stock market analogy.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I'd say the difference with the stock market is that that the
| bottom of it is composed of companies that produce and sell
| actual, tangible products: cars, planes, oil, computer
| software, construction materials, etc. All financial
| instruments (legitimate or not) are built on top of this. You
| buy into some index fund under the assumption that, on some
| level, you're putting money into the production of goods and
| services.
|
| Meanwhile, the "crypto market" deals only in hype all the way
| down. There are no goods and services produced (unless you
| count "hype"), only dollars going in one end and coming out
| the other. If I put my dollars in some "crypto investment",
| it's only so that some early adopter with 50000 btc can get
| some dollars out. The rest is misdirection.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I can't understand the mentality of anyone who buys
| crypto...and stores it in a centralized exchange.
|
| What's the point of holding USDT or USDC if you're going to
| keep it in a quasi-bank? Isn't the whole point of crypto NOT to
| trust governments and centralized authorities?
| [deleted]
| chinabot wrote:
| Totally agree
|
| How do you even know the exchange spent the money on crypto
| if you dont see the keys, you may have just handed over $$
| for a positive transaction on a virtual spreadsheet
| timmytokyo wrote:
| I would never do it but I understand why people do. They're
| speculators and daytraders. And it's extremely inconvenient
| (and expensive) to move money out of wallets and into
| exchanges and back in order to make a trade. So people take
| short-cuts and just leave their money in the exchange
| accounts.
|
| The problem with crypto evangelists is that they keep
| forgetting it's humans who use it.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The funny part is that the highest risk, most speculative
| trading strategies and instruments are available only on-
| chain (meme coins, high APR token farms, even decentralized
| margin trading platforms).
|
| These people took on risk, but not enough to warrant being
| on-chain, and in the process, lost it all. Weird place to
| be in - risky enough to lose it all, not risky enough to be
| completely speculative. Really in no man's land.
| notJim wrote:
| The point of crypto for the vast majority of people is to not
| be the one left holding the bag. It's just a ponzi scheme
| that's open for anyone to participate in.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Isn't the whole point of crypto NOT to trust governments
| and centralized authorities?
|
| Perhaps originally, but now it is simply a bunch of get-rich-
| quick schemes, or maybe more accurately wallstreetbets-style
| gambling. I.e. even if people know it's going to all go to
| shit, try to play the game long enough and get out before
| someone pulls out the Jenga piece below you.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Really sad how crypto devolved into a bunch of "wagmi"
| nonsense. It was originally meant to be a more serious
| counterweight to the excess of central bank monetary
| policies. Now it's just grifters and scammers.
|
| Oh well.
| oblio wrote:
| Idealistic solutions are vulnerable to this.
|
| Decentralized solutions are vulnerable to this.
|
| Idealistic decentralized solutions...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| What's ironic is that the meltdown of crypto and crypto
| culture came right when central bank excesses are at the
| peak - at least for the vast majority of people alive.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > What's ironic is that the meltdown of crypto and crypto
| culture came right when central bank excesses are at the
| peak - at least for the vast majority of people alive.
|
| I don't understand. Central banks are _finally_ raising
| rates after 2 decades of ultra-low rates. If anything,
| central bank excesses are well below their peak now.
| chitowneats wrote:
| > What we're watching: Any sign that the carnage in crypto land
| makes the jump to the real world of Wall Street and actual
| economic activity.
|
| > actual economic activity
|
| Nice subtle burn at the end of the article.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| There are some legitimate use cases for decentralized ledgers
| and other "crypto-like" tech.
|
| As far as I'm aware, none of those involve anything that looks
| remotely like financial speculation.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Name them please. This technology has had very smart and very
| financially motivated people trying to apply it for more than
| a decade.
| psychlops wrote:
| Money not controlled by a central entity. I don't think
| it's more complex than that. The closer the idea gets to
| centralization, the more scams erupt.
| [deleted]
| drkstr wrote:
| I setup a double entry bookkeeping solution for my LLC that
| uses Amazon QLDB as a block chain ledger. Not sure if this
| really counts, but it seemed like a good use case for the
| tech. I used amazon-qldb-double-entry-sample-java as a
| starting point if anyone is curious.
| unintendedcons wrote:
| Distributed domain name services.
|
| ENS is the only good example, standing naturally next to
| many imitators and scams.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| You mean the service that had to beg people online far
| and wide to change their domain names from .link to .limo
| because the founder was in jail for aiding North Korea in
| money laundering? Quite the shining beacon of
| decentralization in a centralized land, yeah.
|
| (If you ever wonder why people treat crypto as a joke,
| think back to this moment.)
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| I know everyone will laugh at me for saying this but... we
| are still in the early stages of cryptocurrency from a
| technology development perspective.
|
| I'm not aware of anyway to securely scale a decentralized
| cryptocurrency without recursive proofs of correctness that
| are fast to prove and fast to verify. Every year since 2016
| I've seen major progress being made in this area but we
| have far to go. We just barely got there in 2020. We could
| probably build a scalable decentralized cryptocurrency in
| 2020, maybe. Give it another 5-10 years of advancement like
| we saw over the last 5 and you will have the ability to
| build scalable decentralized cryptocurrencies. That doesn't
| mean people will build them or that even if they do the
| built systems won't suffer from serious drawbacks. It is a
| long road ahead.
|
| Now there are other problems to solve as well, but
| everything i being gated right now by proofs of
| correctness. We have a steam engine, we can put it on rails
| and it can pull a small load. Unfortunately the expectation
| has been set that we have train that can move millions of
| people. The fact that we can't meet this expectation
| doesn't mean that steam engines or engines in general are
| bad.
| psychlops wrote:
| It's fascinating the amount of repetitive comments that
| believe there should be some sort of time limit for a
| technology to succeed. It's not clear to me where this
| line of thinking comes from, the implication being that
| if something doesn't work after x years, people should
| just give up and go back to the old ways.
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| It's the confusion between:
|
| It is unlikely that Charles Babbage is going to be able
| to build his difference engine and even if he does it is
| so complex and so prone to failure that it probably will
| never be commercially viable.
|
| vs.
|
| It is unlikely that Charles Babbage is going to be able
| to build his difference engine, thus proving computers
| can't work and have no utility.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| GNU Thaler for central-bank regulated digital currencies.
| chitowneats wrote:
| GNU Taler is an interesting toy. I was hoping you had an
| example that has actually been used in practice.
| selectodude wrote:
| A quick glance at the website makes it seem like PayPal
| but using "tokens" instead of just leaving everything in
| normal currency values.
| chasd00 wrote:
| if there was risk to the overall system then I think the
| PowersThatBe(tm) would have much more interest in these setups
| and not let them run so wild and free... off a cliff.
| Dig1t wrote:
| What I don't understand is why the New York Times is saying that
| the guy who created and ran this scheme is a great guy. They
| wrote an extremely flattering article about him and are even
| hosting an event where he's a prestigious speaker.
|
| He seems like a grifter and responsible for presiding over the
| loss of a boatload of money for investors.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/ftx-sam-bankma...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/events/dealbook-summit#speakers
| brindlejim wrote:
| This seems like an ideologically driven comment, since the NYT
| is reporting on the FTX bankruptcy in a v clear way:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.h...
| Dig1t wrote:
| I don't have any ideology driving my opinion, or at least I
| don't think so, I read these pages by the NYT and was
| surprised that he is being treated so nicely given what
| happened and compared to similar situations historically.
|
| I mean, in the speakers panel he is listed along side Mark
| Zuckerberg, Volodymyr Zelensky, Janet Yellen, etc. Comparing
| what he did with what he others in the speakers panel have
| done I get some cognitive dissonance.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| At this point the story is ongoing, entertaining and the
| victims are mainly cryptobros. SBF is talking and helping sell
| newspapers. While I am more empathetic to the victims, I
| understand the NYTimes strategy here, especially considering he
| is still talking and saying strange things that he is unaware
| make him look like a sociopath.
|
| Edit: His own psychiatrist is giving interviews with the times.
| This story is so juicy.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/ftx-sam-bankma...
| themihai wrote:
| What exactly did the investors invest in?
| aksss wrote:
| Wasn't he like the second largest democrat donor in the US this
| year? $39.7 million to federal races. The soft-glove treatment
| from the NYT is the _least_ he could expect. Maybe he knew what
| was coming.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/sam-...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Both co-CEOs of FTX were large donors, one to each party.
| Neat trick.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/ftx-
| crypt...
|
| > Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, threw more money at Democrats
| this cycle than anyone but George Soros, according to
| OpenSecrets data. One of his top lieutenants, Ryan Salame,
| has been bankrolling Republicans at almost the same pace as
| Steve Schwarzman and Peter Thiel.
|
| There's a good chart of how the company distributed things at
| https://www.ft.com/content/428c7800-c72d-4c59-9940-4376fea6e.
| ..
|
| None of those politicians are gonna stay bought; no more
| money is coming. There's no reason to think FTX can exert
| further lobbying pressure; they're cooked.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Not sure why this was downvoted. Yes, he donated 2/3 to Dems
| and 1/3 to Republicans. Assumption is for protection, and
| regulatory direction.
|
| He was only behind Soros in terms of total dollars to Dems.
|
| His mother started a couple of Dem PACs just 13 days before
| her son became CEO of FTX (imagine the coincidence!). Her
| money, as far as it is traceable is also very significant.
|
| ... This was I suppose part of his "effective altruism" (if
| you can say that with a straight face). Instead of downvotes,
| imagine the comments and rage if he had donated to Trump
| instead.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Instead of downvotes, imagine the comments and rage if he
| had donated to Trump instead.
|
| That's what his co-CEO was for; he played the same role
| with Republicans. $15M to a PAC he controlled (https://www.
| fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00809020&tw...) that
| donated exclusively to Republican campaigns.
| [deleted]
| brindlejim wrote:
| They arranged those speakers long before the collapse. I doubt
| he'll voluntarily set foot in the US until he figures out
| whether or not he'll be immediately sent to jail.
| graeme wrote:
| The NYT often has an editorial bent which makes them write
| flatly false articles. It's been rather odd, and a clear point
| of divergence from other US newspapers.
|
| For example, the NYT was very pro the Iraq USD argument
|
| More recently, they kept going on about Clinton's emails, while
| ignoring much larger security breaches from Trump's side
|
| More recently than that, they kept saying coronavirus
| reinfections would be impossible
|
| They also have been producing an endless string of anti-tech
| articles, but pro-crypto articles
|
| In each case they had some clear editorial directive: "Bush
| good", "Clinton emails bad", "Coronavirus immunity persists
| (whether natural or vax)" "tech bad" "SBF good, crypto
| exciting"
|
| You might agree or disagree with these positions and so that
| effects your reading of what I'm writing. But the point is they
| _had_ an inflexible position on these issues. By contrast, a
| paper like the FT or the WSJ or the Washington Post generally
| tends _not_ to have a monolithic party line on the points
| above, and would reports points on the issues above with
| nuance, mentioning evidence in favour or against the positions
| as it came out.
|
| NYT does have some great articles but they're utterly
| unreliable if you don't have enough background knowledge of an
| issue to parse their party line.
| m348e912 wrote:
| I'm not going ask you to back up your assertions but that
| really hasn't been my impression of NYT's editorial
| positions.
| pphysch wrote:
| Edward Bernays, pioneer of PR, wrote about how half of
| NYT's frontpage articles were literal propaganda. In 1928.
|
| I think we would be naive to assume anything has improved
| in the past century.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > I think we would be naive to assume anything has
| improved in the past century.
|
| What a naive assumption.
| pphysch wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite. What has materially improved with
| regards to corruption and transparency in journalism in
| the past century?
| graeme wrote:
| Can you find any contemporary articles from the periods
| discussed which show facts contradictory to those positions
| in the NYT?
|
| For example, an article in 2003 pre-invasion skeptical of
| the WMD claim
|
| An article in 2016 putting the email server in context or
| comparing it to Trump's own level of scandal
|
| An article this year critical of Sam Bankman Fried
|
| A single article positive on tech in past few years since
| their editorial position change?
|
| An article from 2020 suggesting immunity might not be
| permanent for most?
|
| Matt Yglesias deleted his tweet, but he basically said the
| NYT had a well known inside journalism policy of "never say
| anything positive about big tech co's":
| https://twitter.com/kelseytuoc/status/1588231892792328192
|
| Edit: here's some background on the Iraq war stuff:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War
|
| And here's some context on the NYT and Clinton's emails.
| It's a letter to the editor which cites a comprehensive
| Columbia Journalism review critique of the NYT on that
| point: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/opinion/letters/c
| linton-e...
| hotpotamus wrote:
| What if it wasn't a scam? What if he had actually innovated
| some way to monetize crypto? Wouldn't that be impressive; the
| next Gates or Jobs or the like? He certainly seemed aware of
| how to press those buttons. Perhaps the NYTimes was as caught
| up in crypto nonsense as anyone else; they saw it as
| technological magic that they didn't understand, but identified
| Bankman-Fried as a wizard who did understand that magic and had
| harnessed it.
| Dig1t wrote:
| >Perhaps the NYTimes was as caught up in crypto nonsense as
| anyone else
|
| The article about his was written AFTER he lost all his
| investors' money (a few days ago). The prestigious conference
| where he is speaking is happening in 13 days from now.
|
| Everyone knows this guy was a grifter, he created and ran an
| exchange from the Bahamas, he didn't invent the iPhone of
| crypto or something. I see 0 evidence of any Steve Jobs level
| innovation.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| If everyone knows he was a grifter, then why did people
| give him money?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| People put money in PonziCoin.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225383
|
| Everyone knows he's a grifter _now_. Some probably
| suspected earlier. Some of those probably invested
| anyways on the idea that they could get out before the
| collapse.
| hnaccy wrote:
| they're talking about now not before FTX collapsed
|
| nobody is giving him money these days
| themihai wrote:
| The "investors" didn't invest in technological magic. They
| just wanted to double their coins. Just ask any crypto
| investor what was supposed to be the end product out of his
| investment. Lotteries are a tax on stupidity and the whole
| crypto mania is just a big lottery run by various
| individuals!
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| It was my understanding that Mr. Zelenskyy is busy defending
| his country in a war. But somehow he has the time to fly to NYC
| and brush shoulders with SBF, Larry Fink, and the treasury
| secretary. It's almost like this event is a handy excuse for
| these elites to brush shoulders, broker secret deals, and/or
| exchange U.S. taxpayer money for institutional clout. Makes you
| wonder why anyone these days remotely critical of the motives
| of billionaries and global "changemakers" is branded a
| conspiracy theorist.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >But somehow he has the time to fly to NYC and brush
| shoulders with SBF, Larry Fink, and the treasury secretary.
|
| Zoom.
|
| >Makes you wonder why anyone these days remotely critical of
| the motives of billionaries and global "changemakers" is
| branded a conspiracy theorist.
|
| That's only true in their own minds.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It was my understanding that Mr. Zelenskyy is busy
| defending his country in a war. But somehow he has the time
| to fly to NYC and brush shoulders with SBF, Larry Fink, and
| the treasury secretary.
|
| Are you under the impression he's expected to be out there
| literally driving a tank?
|
| Flying around the world meeting with government officials and
| political influencers is precisely what you'd expect someone
| to do in this scenario. He'll have some staff and a phone on
| him.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Arguably, that's Zelensky's main strength: he's a comedian
| and did tours; he's a showman, a diplomat, a talker.
|
| His primary role viz-a-viz the war is going around talking,
| doing meetings, and drumming up support. Get him on a 12
| city tour, except instead of cross-dressing and telling
| jokes he's cutting deals for aid.
|
| He's no general, and it's likely he doesn't know jack about
| actually fighting a war. Nor does he need to: he's got
| actual generals for that, ones who have been fighting w/
| the Russians on and off since 2014, on top of real-time
| intelligence and assistance from the 30 -- say it again,
| THIRTY -- countries of NATO.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Where do they say he's a great guy? The article is quite
| factual, citing his words and actions and providing context
| without injecting much in terms of emotion.
|
| He also hasn't been charged with any crimes yet.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Yea, I don't find it flattering at all. In fact, it lays out
| a bunch of pretty ugly details about the arrangement with
| Alameda.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I don't see a real issue with the article, but it is worth
| pointing out the article completely ignores the many victims
| of SBF. If I were a victim of SBF, the article would be a bit
| insulting.
| [deleted]
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| I know for example SEC has, in the past, used a crypto summit
| in New York to serve a subpoena to another crypto grifter. [0]
| I would not be surprised if there is government pressure on NYT
| to pretend everything is fine to lure Sam Bankman-Fried out of
| his safe haven in the Bahamas.
|
| [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/crypto-conference-
| jo...
| [deleted]
| SevenNation wrote:
| > On Wednesday, the crisis touched a high-profile crypto lender
| run by the billionaire twins Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler
| Winklevoss, forcing them to halt withdrawals from their Gemini
| Earn crypto lending program. ... The Gemini Earn program allowed
| users to deposit their coins in exchange for regular interest
| payments -- typically at generous rates that could be as high as
| 8%.
|
| The Gemini Earn page appears to redirect to this announcement:
|
| > We are aware that Genesis Global Capital, LLC (Genesis) -- the
| lending partner of the Earn program -- has paused withdrawals and
| will not be able to meet customer redemptions within the service-
| level agreement (SLA) of 5 business days. We are working with the
| Genesis team to help customers redeem their funds from the Earn
| program as quickly as possible. We will provide more information
| in the coming days.
|
| https://www.gemini.com/blog/an-important-message-regarding-g...
|
| The language of this announcement is bizarre. Withdrawals are
| "paused," not "halted" as reported. In other words, there's a
| chance that Genesis will cough up the funds.
|
| But the biggest red flag is that nothing is said about _new_
| deposits. Apparently, Team Gemini is still taking them. This is,
| unfortunately, par for the course with these schemes going all
| the way back to Mt Got. "Pause" withdrawals, but continue to
| allow deposits. The language of the announcement makes this look
| like a temporary blip that will soon be resolved. It's a tactic
| with a long history and an almost boringly predictable outcome.
| codehalo wrote:
| Gemini hasn't pause withdrawals, Genesis has.
|
| Did you read the article you linked to?
| thrillgore wrote:
| It continues to baffle me why anyone would want to deal with
| Crypto if a failure like FTX causes the entire "decentralized"
| ecosystem to collapse.
| jpeterson wrote:
| Exchanges and trading firms are not "Crypto". They're _human
| institutions_ which happen to sit atop cryptocurrency
| instruments. What we 're seeing play out in realtime is what
| happens when unregulated human institutions come to possess
| fantastical amounts of wealth -- in short, they go
| pathological.
| chitowneats wrote:
| "Happen to sit atop" is so far from an accurate accounting of
| the multi-headed hydra that is the crypto/defi space. Good
| thing I'm not expecting much in the way of accurate
| accounting.
| ninepoints wrote:
| It's almost as if the unregulated anti-establishment ethos of
| crypto allowed this to happen, and allows it to keep
| happening.
| jpeterson wrote:
| If crypto has an "ethos", it's decentralization and
| departure from human institutions. The FTX fiasco is the
| opposite of that.
| arise wrote:
| It's a two-faced ethos, praising decentralization and
| thumbing its nose at banks while simultaneously
| entrusting the bulk of its assets to entities that are
| strictly worse than banks.
| rurp wrote:
| What percent of crypto activity happens on centralized
| platforms. 90%? 95%? Whatever the precise number, it's
| really high.
|
| It's hard to argue that 95% of people in Scotland aren't
| true Scots.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Around 15%
| zhdc1 wrote:
| > They're human institutions
|
| Anything that involves a person one both ends of a
| transaction chain inherently has one or more 'human
| institution' dependencies.
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| Because it doesn't?
|
| In fact, many crypto proponents are happy that these
| centralized pseudo-banks get all flushed the out.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| _Claim_ to be happy. There 's a reason "this is good for
| Bitcoin" is a meme.
| k__ wrote:
| And rightfully so.
|
| Competing with centralized entities is hard.
| throwup wrote:
| If a person wants an industry to succeed, they will want
| companies in the industry to behave honestly. And if a
| company behaves dishonestly, they will want the dishonest
| company to leave that industry. Why is that so hard to
| believe?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Because shills exist, who claim something is good when
| they know it's bad. Typically due to a vested interest,
| like wanting the industry to succeed. "This is good for
| Bitcoin" is a meme precisely because these people exist,
| publicly trying to spin any negative into a positive.
|
| Pretending collapses like FTX don't impact the
| cryptocurrency space in negative ways is dishonest.
| throwup wrote:
| Companies like FTX collapsing do negatively affect the
| space. But what's even worse is companies like FTX that
| are irresponsible and haven't collapsed yet. What's a guy
| to do?
|
| I warned people last year not to use FTX. Now FTX is
| gone. Please tell me what feelings I'm allowed to feel
| now that they're finally gone.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Feel however you like. I will continue to feel that most
| "this bad news is actually good for crypto" claims
| involve quite a bit of at least motivated thinking and
| pure shillery at worst.
| warinukraine wrote:
| Because it's easy to convince people of anything if you promise
| that it'll get them rich quick.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >the entire "decentralized" ecosystem to collapse.
|
| Because it doesn't? While all _centralized_ exchanges are
| suffering from FTX 's collapse, decentralized ones like Uniswap
| aren't facing any existential risks from it.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Banks fail, too. See Bear Sterns and Lehman brothers.
| woeirua wrote:
| Tick, tick, tick. The doomsday clock for Tether just moved closer
| to midnight. When Tether finally depegs, all the exchanges will
| go under (except maybe Coinbase and a few others that are tightly
| regulated). Coinbase will probably still go bankrupt because the
| crypto trading market is going to evaporate. The value of most
| coins will go to zero. There will be a liquidity crisis the likes
| of which we haven't seen since the 19th century.
| prox wrote:
| Who knew if you made an unregulated market full of sharks that
| you would get this outcome? /s [0]
|
| 0 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929
| lanewinfield wrote:
| Thankfully we'll always have USDTea. https://usdtea.io
| eternalban wrote:
| Wasn't sure about the peg to a soft drink but the whitepaper
| sold me.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think we all need a bit of stabilitea in the modern world.
| Good thing it's _iced_ tea though; as we all know, proper tea
| is theft.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| You have my hopes up. Let's hope your prediction is the lower
| bound.
| lizknope wrote:
| People need to actually redeem the tethers for actual US
| dollars in order to collapse the tether scam. I think all the
| crypto exchange collapses and bankruptcy declarations will
| actually help tether. All the money will be locked up for years
| as the lawyers and accountants go through everything.
|
| The Mt Gox "hack" was in 2014 and people have still not gotten
| money back yet. That is 8 years and counting.
| skybrian wrote:
| Why do you think that bankruptcy courts wouldn't order the
| Tether to be sold long before they figure out how to
| reimburse the creditors?
| Bootvis wrote:
| What makes you think they would do so quickly?
|
| Also, selling to quickly would at least temporarily depeg
| Tether and cost the creditors money.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| The redemption of tether (and other) can happen a long time
| before any payments to creditors happen.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| But the only thing that matters so far is Tether's market
| cap... which has barely moved through the latest shitshow.
|
| Whoever buys tether (and who is it? really? I don't think
| it's retail investors...) doesn't seem to be in a hurry to
| convert it to cash. I'm assuming it's mostly or all related
| to criminal activity, so they can't actually cash out?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > The value of most coins will go to zero.
|
| By absolute number, sure, but if you count "most" by weighting
| them with trading volume, then no. Bitcoin and Ether will not
| go to zero.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Your comment reminded me of this joke:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hqxgs/e.
| ..
| IncRnd wrote:
| > By absolute number, sure, but if you count "most" by
| weighting them with trading volume, then no.
|
| That's crypto-speak for how to deny reality.
|
| If the value of a USD dollar plummeted to $0.01, you don't
| pull out your wallet and say, "I have 100 of them, so no the
| value hasn't gone to almost nothing."
| stickfigure wrote:
| To use your analogy: Parent's point is that even if all the
| quetzals and colones and cordobas and lempiras go to zero,
| the USD will still have value.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Exactly!
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| That's not what I mean at all, but I can see how you might
| arrive at that misunderstanding.
|
| No, what I mean is that anyone can make new coins in 5
| minutes to commemorate their favorite meme. There's a very
| large number of these coins and almost all of them are
| already valued at zero. So now you can go around saying
| "most tokens value will drop to zero", which is factually
| true because they already are at zero, and never were worth
| much of anything, and nobody traded them. So what?
|
| If you take a typical crypto hodler, most of the value in
| their portfolio is in tokens like Bitcoin or Ether, and
| very little value is in meowcatcoin or shibadibacoin.
| Bitcoin and Ether will not go to zero.
| llamataboot wrote:
| I don't think they will go to zero
| either...necessarily...but much much lower...I think you
| underestimate the amount that ponzi liquidity inflated
| everything...
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I never claimed that they couldn't go much lower. I was
| arguing against this statement:
|
| > The value of most coins will go to zero.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| There is definitely an energy, art, nutritional,
| collectable value to a steaming pile of shit.
|
| I think the obvious issue is no one is going trade their
| actual-money for it.
| sroussey wrote:
| I wonder: what will be the last straw that breaks confidence in
| Tether?
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Tether will keep pretending to be fine until every last real
| dollar behind it has been drained. This is what is happening
| right now, with Binance (and previously FTX) propping up the
| crypto market with their purported bailouts and pretending
| nothing is out of place. Then one morning, all of a sudden,
| it will all come down with some really spectacular fireworks
| to watch.
| Animats wrote:
| > Tether will keep pretending to be fine until every last
| real dollar behind it has been drained.
|
| That's how stablecoins work. There are two stable points: 1
| and 0. When they break, they go all the way. As soon as the
| price breaks, there's a rush to exit. We've seen this
| happen a few times now.
|
| Watch the Tether market cap decline here.[1] A billion
| here, a billion there, and sooner or later you're talking
| about real money.
|
| [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/
| Animats wrote:
| Something is happening in stablecoins.[1] Binance and OKX
| exchanges "temporarily suspended" support for USDC and USDT
| on the Solana blockchain. Unclear why.
|
| [1] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/17/crypto-
| exchanges...
| gruez wrote:
| But that's in the wrong direction? They're suspending
| deposits, not withdraws.
| Animats wrote:
| Maybe they don't want to be holding those "stablecoins".
| If you withdraw USDT or USDC, it's off their books and
| they have no further risk. If you deposit it, and it's
| credited as US dollars...
| kerblang wrote:
| Dunno if it made it thru HN yet but a Vox reporter aggregated up
| her recent Twitter conversations with SBF, and it's kinda
| damning: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-
| frie...
| metadat wrote:
| Discussed yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33630150
|
| (336 points, 344 comments)
| IanDrake wrote:
| tacker2000 wrote:
| For now i think only BTC and ETH will remain, and maybe some coin
| that is REALLY backed by actual USDs.
|
| This is the first big clearout of the shitcoins and fraudcoins.
|
| Crypto will never really die in my opinion, its just going
| through its infancy phase.
|
| Real regulation is probably the thing that is the next on the
| horizon, in order to build up trust that was lost (or never there
| anyway).
|
| Users must be sure that their coins can not all of a sudden be
| frozen by some shady exchange operating out of the Bahamas or
| wherever.
|
| Crypto has to mature now.
| NateEag wrote:
| > Crypto has to mature now.
|
| "Mature" ~= "lose the decentralized anti-regulation design that
| was its entire reason for existing in the first place"
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Well, i get your point, but as we can see this hasnt panned
| out in a good way. Maybe some hybrid model would work?
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/1593102572151222273
|
| Alameda received more Tether ($36.7B) than anyone else in
| history. Where are they? Did they ever even exist?
| thedangler wrote:
| Not your wallet, Not your coins. Or Synthetic coins for most of
| these exchanges.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Not your wallet, not your coins" is true, but kinda irrelevant
| here.
|
| The coins themselves are sometimes _worthless_ (like FTX 's
| token), or can be frozen (Tether does this:
| https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/10/tether-
| freezes-...). It doesn't matter if you hold a collapsed coin in
| your wallet or an exchange's; it's still not gonna do you any
| good.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| It matters a bit, as it seemed that FTX had $1+ billion in
| Bitcoin customer liabilities which have evaporated.
| thedangler wrote:
| Because they never bought the coins to begin with. It's
| marked down in a ledger that this person has this many
| coins. It only matters when someone wants to transfer coins
| to another exchange or their own wallet. Then they have to
| purchase the coins and send them.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Because they never bought the coins to begin with.
|
| Users bought it but the exchange didn't have it, which is
| what the OP was saying. If you don't have the keys, you
| don't really have the coins.
| thedangler wrote:
| Also interesting. Is this the same thing.
| https://i.redd.it/qofb7x8zmj0a1.jpg
|
| Citadel Securities has in their books securities sold,
| not yet purchaed. $65 billion. How is this not the same
| thing ? lol
| pram wrote:
| It's not the same because there are actual equities
| involved in a short sale, Citadel is just borrowing them.
|
| They could obviously get completely wrecked, but the
| shares are real things.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| I would argue it's not necessarily a problem to have
| liabilities for which you do not have assets on hand,
| whether it's Bitcoin or some security. The difference
| between these two situations is:
|
| 1) FTX didn't even bother listing their customer
| liabilities on their balance sheet, unlike Citadel.
|
| 2) I would assume (hope) that Citadel isn't a completely
| fraudulent company without the capital to make good on
| those assets if delivery is demanded!
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Somewhat off topic but I can't stand axios' format. It's framed
| as "meat and potatoes" but what it actually is is someone telling
| you want to think instead of reporting information while avoiding
| actually including information. The goal seems to be to convince
| while revealing as little detail as possible. It's awful.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I keep reading this but I haven't seen any signs of more major
| drops that would be indicative of forced liquidations since the
| initial FTX news. That's not to say it's necessarily false, but I
| just haven't seen any evidence yet of a larger market contagion.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| This is perhaps a sign? "Gemini, BlockFi, Genesis announcing
| new restrictions as FTX contagion spreads"
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/genesis-lending-unit-halts-w...
| lukeqsee wrote:
| For two: BlockFi and Gemini Earn both have stopped withdrawing.
| This means a lot of people have a lot of crypto that they may
| or may not ever get back.
|
| I suspect it will take some time, but at the _ecosystem_ level,
| contagion is already here. Time will tell if it spreads beyond
| to the markets (but it feels inevitable at some level).
| [deleted]
| vgatherps wrote:
| This article mostly focuses on smaller dominos. The serious
| domino is Genesis which is only mentioned in passing.
|
| Depending on the size of the hole Genesis might outside the
| other non-ftx ones combined, and is structurally much more
| important than them.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| There is a major panic ongoing, but most of it is happening
| behind closed doors.
|
| Despite the appearance, this is not the story of a bunch of
| degenerate kids playing with made-up money.
|
| Real serious money is at stake, billions of it, people are
| losing their shirts, or something else.
| discreteevent wrote:
| Is it really billions or is that some people bought some
| worthless tokens at a low price then later a crowd valued
| those tokens at a high price. Then when the tokens are
| devalued the original people claim that they lost 'billions'.
| Of course some people who bought at a middle price lost real
| money but did that add up to billions?
| rippercushions wrote:
| Actual billions were invested, but the crypto market cap
| reached $3 _trillion_ during the heady days of exactly one
| year ago. That 's already shrunk to $800B and will keep
| doing so for quite a while.
| fallingknife wrote:
| How does a financial panic happen behind closed doors when I
| can see the prices of every token? How are people losing
| their shirts if the asset prices aren't dropping? This isn't
| a scenario with illiquid assets and murky pricing.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is a Mexican standoff situation.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You ever played Jenga? Each of these companies represents a
| block.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-17 23:02 UTC)