The Death Knell of Crypto!

[Gamecock-YT]

Don't have a dog in this fight but can't help but laugh that Tom Brady is now doing crypto commercials and the arena where the LA Lakers play at is now called Crypto.com arena. I wonder how many crypto commercials are going to air during the Super Bowl.

[Longnose]

23 hours ago, thepupil said:

Dumb question re the more reputable stable coins. 
 

if I am a Bangladeshi working in Saudi, can I send a stable coin home to my parents if 

 

1) I have a mobile and/or internet access with internet but parents don’t 

2) we both have mobile 

3) neither have mobile 

 

does one/both sides need a bank? 

if so, what is the t-cost?

 

 

You would need some medium of bank or exchange. 

 

1. in the example your getting paid in USD or Saudi currency (whatever it is).
2. You would need to exchange a % of your income to a stablecoin via an exchange. 
   • US example: exchange my USD via coinbase into BTC
3. Need to assume parents have a crypto wallet (either web based or mobile based) 
4. Need to assume parents have a a local crypto exchange (https://www.bitrawr.com/bangladesh) *Binance
5. Send BTC to parents crypto wallet. 
6. Parents exchange BTC to their local currency (likely requires local banking system)  

Very doable and if done on the right network very nominal fees. 

 

** if I were doing this regularly I would pick a network like AVAX or SOL to and maybe even use those tokens as the transaction fees are less than $0.15 USD per transaction. And if your passing currency through the system pretty quickly you shouldn't be subject to too much AVAX or SOL token volatility. 

[Gamecock-YT]

On 1/17/2022 at 10:15 AM, Gamecock-YT said:

I wonder how many crypto commercials are going to air during the Super Bowl.

 

four or five? Had a pets.com vibe to it.

[Blugolds]

6 hours ago, Gamecock-YT said:

 

four or five? Had a pets.com vibe to it.

 

I got a kick out of the Larry David one, he is a character through time who called everything wrong..invention of light bulb etc...and then someone pitched crypto to him and he says....naaww...

 

Not sure that will age well..but what do I know...I agree it had a pets.com vibe to it...anytime someone tries to sell you something hard a little alarm should go off, comes across as desperation almost. 

[mcliu]

Question about crypto. Blockchain tech seems very interesting, but how do we know it's not in the dot-com phase where even if it'll be valuable, the impact won't be felt for another 20 years? Also, for the experts, is there a Versign equivalent company/coin in the crypto space that's worth investing in? Thanks!

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

24 minutes ago, mcliu said:

Question about crypto. Blockchain tech seems very interesting, but how do we know it's not in the dot-com phase where even if it'll be valuable, the impact won't be felt for another 20 years? Also, for the experts, is there a Versign equivalent company/coin in the crypto space that's worth investing in? Thanks!

 

 

How do you know it's not? Most of it is. 

 

But take a look at Bitcoin. Its been around for 12 years with multiple booms/busts, always bottoming higher and topping higher, and growing at 100+% per year on average when it comes to user base. It's been more quickly adopted than any other network comparable (telephone, internet, social media, etc).

 

All of this is more indicative of a secular growth trend than a one off bubble. 

 

So the answer to your question about what's worth investing in? Bitcoin. 

[thowed]

1 hour ago, mcliu said:

Blockchain tech seems very interesting, but how do we know it's not in the dot-com phase where even if it'll be valuable, the impact won't be felt for another 20 years?

 

I think we don't!  This is certainly how I see it.  Of course, people will answer this depending on how they define 'impact'.  For me, this means when it will impact an ordinary person on the street.  I think there are a lot of smart people doing lots of interesting things in the space, but it doesn't feel like there's a 'killer app' yet, and I think it's hard to say who will endure.  If you're a certain age, you'll remember when Yahoo was THE browser, and Google didn't exist, so in the early days, it's much more difficult to predict the longer-term winners.

 

This is not to say that one shouldn't invest in Crypto, but one should probably size accordingly.

[ValueArb]

Proof that crypto is useless is the Lichtenstein and Morgan bitcoin theft from Bifinex. In over 5 years they were unable to launder more than 20% of their BTC. If Bitcoin doesn't work for criminals, who does it work for?

[Parsad]

8 hours ago, ValueArb said:

Proof that crypto is useless is the Lichtenstein and Morgan bitcoin theft from Bifinex. In over 5 years they were unable to launder more than 20% of their BTC. If Bitcoin doesn't work for criminals, who does it work for?

 

Obviously the small investor!  Every small investor should have some stocks, some bonds, some real estate, some gold and now a little crypto.  They don't know why they own it, but they should own a little.  And cash...who needs cash?  Cheers!

[ValueArb]

45 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

Obviously the small investor!  Every small investor should have some stocks, some bonds, some real estate, some gold and now a little crypto.  They don't know why they own it, but they should own a little.  And cash...who needs cash?  Cheers!

 

I think Lichtenstein and Morgan should have sent 100 BTC to 1,200 random accounts, including a couple of their own. They wouldn't have gotten away with billions but would have gotten something and probably not caught. And they would have fueled quite a few small investors!

[Longnose]

On 2/14/2022 at 10:18 AM, ValueArb said:

Proof that crypto is useless is the Lichtenstein and Morgan bitcoin theft from Bifinex. In over 5 years they were unable to launder more than 20% of their BTC. If Bitcoin doesn't work for criminals, who does it work for?

 

Wouldn't this also prove or at least argue the opposite that its more secure than gold or cash because it cant be laundered? why attempt to steal something you cant use or sell? I believe the stolen cell phone market is quite small these days as well because the carriers have made it so hard to sell or repurpose a stolen phone. 

 

 

[ValueArb]

4 hours ago, Longnose said:

 

Wouldn't this also prove or at least argue the opposite that its more secure than gold or cash because it cant be laundered? why attempt to steal something you cant use or sell? I believe the stolen cell phone market is quite small these days as well because the carriers have made it so hard to sell or repurpose a stolen phone. 

 

 

 

It's certainly proof I forgot my sarcasm tag;)

[james22]

How many who saw Canadians having their bank accounts frozen will now consider moving to crypto?

[E. Nashton]

Very little.  I surmise the vast majority of Canadians did not change their banking habits before, during or after. As for those calling on people to make a run on the banks.....what are the 2nd and 3rd effects of this (as a thought exercise)? You can hate the politicians all you want but how is wishing for or adding additional financial calamity to the country's financial institutions a good thing? 

 

*I'm Canadian - I don't like how any of it was handled* 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

6 hours ago, james22 said:

How many who saw Canadians having their bank accounts frozen will now consider moving to crypto?

 

I can't say, but what a perfect advertisement for a censorship resistant form of money. 

 

We often take a too Western view and ask why we would ever need crypto when we have stable governments and "low" inflation. 

 

JPMorgan refusing to process OnlyFans payments is one example. Canada changing laws, granting emergency powers, and freezing assets of individuals not yet convicted of crimes is another. 

 

You might be on the right side of the law, but laws can change over night OR you're just on the wrong side of someone else's morals. Bitcoin fixes this. 

[james22]

No one is calling for a run on the banks. It is the natural consequence of discovering they are no longer as safe as previously thought.

 

Hopefully any financial calamity will discourage future government overreach. That would be a good thing.

[E. Nashton]

1 hour ago, james22 said:

No one is calling for a run on the banks. It is the natural consequence of discovering they are no longer as safe as previously thought.

 

Hopefully any financial calamity will discourage future government overreach. That would be a good thing.

Unfortunately I am on fintwit and there were some folks indeed calling for it. Easily searchable. Don't think it was significant but it was there. 

 

As for discouraging government overreach, a bank run, calamity or mass movement to Bitcoin would in all likely hood encourage more of it. 

[james22]

Fortunately, government overreach has consequences.

 

 

[E. Nashton]

Are you ok? Hope you have a good day. 

[rkbabang]

I suspect that many look at what is happening in Canada and because they don't like the people it is happening to they say "Good, screw them truckers and those who support them" and they feel comfortable that such things could never happen to them.   Most people always think government overreach can't effect them personally... until it does.  However I'm sure there are a few people who have been woken up by this to the realization that having at least some of their wealth stored out of the reach of governments couldn't hurt.

 

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

1 hour ago, rkbabang said:

I suspect that many look at what is happening in Canada and because they don't like the people it is happening to they say "Good, screw them truckers and those who support them" and they feel comfortable that such things could never happen to them.   Most people always think government overreach can't effect them personally... until it does.  However I'm sure there are a few people who have been woken up by this to the realization that having at least some of their wealth stored out of the reach of governments couldn't hurt.

 

 

+1

 

This is my view as well. A handful of people might recognize this for what it is. The rest will view it through the lense of their political bias. 

[StubbleJumper]

1 hour ago, rkbabang said:

I suspect that many look at what is happening in Canada and because they don't like the people it is happening to they say "Good, screw them truckers and those who support them" and they feel comfortable that such things could never happen to them.   Most people always think government overreach can't effect them personally... until it does.  However I'm sure there are a few people who have been woken up by this to the realization that having at least some of their wealth stored out of the reach of governments couldn't hurt.

 

 

 

I would say that having some international diversification of your assets would be a historically wise move.  It is a very rare country that has gone more than a few centuries without a failure of constitutional government or a debauching of its currency.  Canada, the UK and Australia are a few of the countries that has not been subject to those conditions for the past two or three centuries, but pretty much every other developed country in the world has experienced a failure of constitutional government through civil war or through foreign occupation, or they have experienced a debauching of the currency through hyperinflation (most European countries have had multiple episodes of these sorts of problems over the past two hundred years).  That historical context should be motivation enough to keep a portion of one's assets in foreign denominated securities and in foreign domiciled accounts.

 

Turning to Canada, my take is that Canadians generally support the freezing of assets not so much as a means to stick it to people on the other end of the political spectrum, but rather because about half of those funds are thought to have originated from donors in a foreign country.  IMO, people are quite right to be ill at ease with foreign donations being used to fund political protests in Canada.  Another word for that is political subversion.  If the Russians scraped together several million dollars and used it to fund a multi-day demonstration in Washington DC, I suspect that Congress would also have some misgivings about that.  This is an on-going problem for Canadians, as these foreign-funds have been increasingly used to interfere in our domestic politics over the past decade (cf. https://www.alberta.ca/public-inquiry-into-anti-alberta-energy-campaigns.aspx ).

 

In the end, there will be some sort of inquiry held about the protests in Ottawa.  A key element will likely be a study of the significance and magnitude of foreign money being used to influence domestic policy decisions.  It is quite likely that new mechanisms will be established to staunch those money flows rather than needing to turn to the extreme of freezing assets.

 

 

SJ

[james22]

He [Trudeau] permanently destroyed twenty  percent of the population's faith in the entire Canadian banking system. Jordan Peterson

 

https://instapundit.com/505787/

 

[rkbabang]

On 2/26/2022 at 10:45 AM, james22 said:

He [Trudeau] permanently destroyed twenty  percent of the population's faith in the entire Canadian banking system. Jordan Peterson

 

https://instapundit.com/505787/

 

 

Fractional reserve banking is all about confidence.  If you destroy that confidence, you destroy (or at least damage) the system.

 

[Spekulatius]

If you live in Russia right now, owning crypto is not the worst thing in the world. Pretty much everything else would have gone to hell. I bet a lot of Russian money went into crypto.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Spekulatius