Xerxes Posted December 25, 2024 Posted December 25, 2024 Steve didn’t die suddenly. He knew it was coming …
Dave86ch Posted December 25, 2024 Posted December 25, 2024 (edited) In 2002, six years before the genesis block, computer scientist Nick Szabo, one of the figures behind Bitcoin, wrote an insightful piece on money. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/ Edited December 25, 2024 by Dave86ch
Fly Posted December 30, 2024 Posted December 30, 2024 Stone Ridge 2024 letter, always a great one https://www.nydig.com/research/stone-ridge-2024-investor-letter
fareastwarriors Posted December 30, 2024 Posted December 30, 2024 BlackRock’s bitcoin fund became ‘greatest launch in ETF history’
Fly Posted January 1 Posted January 1 Let’s talk Bitfinex for a moment. In 2016 they were hacked for ~120,000 BTC. Bitfinex made customers whole over the next year or so but the BTC was still missing. Bitfinex issued a new utility token called LEO. One interesting part of the tokenomics discusses purchasing LEO tokens with any BTC Bitfinex can recover from the hack: Pg 15 https://www.bitfinex.com/wp-2019-05.pdf Fast forward to 2022, the hackers were arrested and ~108,000 BTC was recovered: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/bitfinex-hack-plea-july-2023/ November 2024 the hackers were sentenced: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/when-stolen-crypto-is-recovered-who-is-entitled-restitution-2024-12-09/ Now the court case for restitution begins. Who gets these recovered BTC? I know investing based on a legal outcome is a coin flip, but anyone watching this and see potential for a portion of these BTC to make it back to Bitfinex and used for purchase of LEO?
TwoCitiesCapital Posted January 1 Posted January 1 2 hours ago, Fly said: Let’s talk Bitfinex for a moment. In 2016 they were hacked for ~120,000 BTC. Bitfinex made customers whole over the next year or so but the BTC was still missing. Bitfinex issued a new utility token called LEO. One interesting part of the tokenomics discusses purchasing LEO tokens with any BTC Bitfinex can recover from the hack: Pg 15 https://www.bitfinex.com/wp-2019-05.pdf Fast forward to 2022, the hackers were arrested and ~108,000 BTC was recovered: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/bitfinex-hack-plea-july-2023/ November 2024 the hackers were sentenced: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/when-stolen-crypto-is-recovered-who-is-entitled-restitution-2024-12-09/ Now the court case for restitution begins. Who gets these recovered BTC? I know investing based on a legal outcome is a coin flip, but anyone watching this and see potential for a portion of these BTC to make it back to Bitfinex and used for purchase of LEO? First that I'm hearing of this token; however, it looks like it's already bounced this year and now has a market cap of ~$9B vs the $10B value of the potential recovered BTC? Seems unless if you expect Bitfinex to be a price insensitive buyer, or you expect to get additional value from the discounts on Bitfinex's platform, that perhaps the value play has already happened
Fly Posted January 1 Posted January 1 (edited) 5 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said: First that I'm hearing of this token; however, it looks like it's already bounced this year and now has a market cap of ~$9B vs the $10B value of the potential recovered BTC? Seems unless if you expect Bitfinex to be a price insensitive buyer, or you expect to get additional value from the discounts on Bitfinex's platform, that perhaps the value play has already happened The part that interests me is Bitfinex seems required to utilize a majority portion of any recovered BTC from the 2016 hack to purchase and burn LEO tokens (per the LEO white paper). The run up in price is irrelevant because a potential $x billion would additionally be spent purchasing and burning LEO in the event Bitfinex recovers some BTC. BFX would be a price insensitive buyer, mandated to spend $x within 18 months of receipt. The coin has been on my radar for a long time, but the hackers remained at large until 2022. Then it became an uncertainty if/when any BTC would ever make it back to BFX. Now we are at least seeing a court case begin regarding the issue. I agree this is a huge long shot, but even if 10% of recovered BTC makes it back to BFX that would be a huge amount of buying pressure on a relatively illiquid coin. It is very difficult to get LEO without a Bitfinex account (closed to US persons). So I’m likely just going to be watching from the sidelines. Edited January 1 by Fly
Vish_ram Posted January 2 Posted January 2 Unlike all assets, what the no-coiners don't get it is this: BTC is a self-fulfilling prophecy and success begets success. It requires a different way of thinking to understand this phenomenon. You've to branch off from the start. You can't go down the traditional route and then rationalize your way to this path.
Dave86ch Posted January 3 Posted January 3 We reached a milestone in terms of hashpower; the Bitcoin network has never been so secure.
jfan Posted January 7 Posted January 7 This website has a map (live and non-live) of reachable bitcoin nodes globally. Reachable Bitcoin Nodes - Bitnodes In 2018, there were 10,000 reachable bitcoin nodes to give some context. In terms of global reachable and unreachable nodes, today it is ~ 66,000. Over the past 90 days, there was a total of ~500K global reachable and unreachable nodes. Below is the number of reachable nodes over the past 8 years.
TwoCitiesCapital Posted January 7 Posted January 7 4 minutes ago, jfan said: This website has a map (live and non-live) of reachable bitcoin nodes globally. Reachable Bitcoin Nodes - Bitnodes In 2018, there were 10,000 reachable bitcoin nodes to give some context. In terms of global reachable and unreachable nodes, today it is ~ 66,000. Over the past 90 days, there was a total of ~500K global reachable and unreachable nodes. Below is the number of reachable nodes over the past 8 years. The nodes are an oft overlooked form of security for the network and its users. +1
Fly Posted January 8 Posted January 8 5 hours ago, Dave86ch said: https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-2024-annual-review/?s=09 Anyone have thoughts on this part? Could a drastic rise in nodes signal a future bad actor? Quote The number of unreachable nodes (behind routers without port forwarding) shot up in Q4. However, this rise doesn't look particularly organic...
Malmqky Posted January 8 Posted January 8 22 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said: The nodes are an oft overlooked form of security for the network and its users. +1 Can you elaborate? Are you saying most people just don't understand how it works? I feel like p2p network stuff is literally due diligence 101 for understanding blockchain/crypto. Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything/overlooking anything myself.
TwoCitiesCapital Posted January 8 Posted January 8 (edited) 1 hour ago, Malmqky said: Can you elaborate? Are you saying most people just don't understand how it works? I feel like p2p network stuff is literally due diligence 101 for understanding blockchain/crypto. Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything/overlooking anything myself. The miners are the ones who contribute blocks to the network. The nodes are what communicate and all agree that the blocks are legit via consensus. Having distributed nodes makes it easy for anyone to verify transactions that have occurred, communicate their own to the blockchain. So even if a govt bans Bitcoin, you can still communicate your own transactions via node without having to rely on an intermediary protecting the chain from adversarial govt action. Additionally, my basic understanding is that nodes can reject transactions and not communicate/come-to-a-consensus which is why it node operators that shut down the attempt to make BTC blocks larger in size resulting in the hard fork of Bitcoin cash that is largely worthless in comparison Edited January 8 by TwoCitiesCapital
jfan Posted January 8 Posted January 8 (edited) What was the Blocksize War? The Blocksize Wars Revisited: How Bitcoin’s Civil War Still Resonates Today Some reflections on the Bitcoin block size war 3 Links that review and summarize the blocksize war events, clues on bitcoin's governance and attitudes towards adopting new technological capabilities, and Vitalik's take on Bier and Ver's books on the blocksize wars. A Closer Look at Bitcoin’s Volatility The last link is a recent Fidelity write-up on bitcoin's volatility and its progression over time. Edited January 8 by jfan
Fly Posted January 9 Posted January 9 15 hours ago, jfan said: 4:30 Gensler has it right, Bitcoin and then there's everything else. The "everything else" is predominantly shit and scams. He was hard on that segment and centralized entities like exchanges/VCs hated it since that was their livelihood. I am concerned that now we will see Trump embrace that "everything else" and we see even more crap like we have in the past.
jfan Posted January 9 Posted January 9 (edited) Contrast Gensler's interview with Coinbase's head of legal. It is extremely odd that a publicly traded for-profit business that relies on legitimacy from the government would be so audacious in such a public forum. I've been watching Gensler's MIT blockchain course and listening to John Brook's book the Go-Go Years (of the 1960s). Brook's description of the unscrupulous activities of brokers, stock exchange members, the stock exchange itself, the conglomerates undisciplined deal-making, leverage, mutual fund democratization for the uneducated investing public reminds me very much of this crypto space. This in contrast to the potential value that blockchain fundamentals could provide. This was recently posted. Haven't listened to the whole thing but seems useful. Edited January 9 by jfan
SharperDingaan Posted January 9 Posted January 9 (edited) Interesting write-up on BTC volatility. It's honeymoon time, promises have to be repaid ... most would expect a flood of utter dog sh1te alongside consolidation of BTC, and the market being allowed to prevail; not a bad thing. One would also expect that the more bunnies burnt on dog sh1te, the stronger the market case for both BTC and BTC-ETF's becomes; also desirable. Most would also expect that as adoption accelerates (BTC strategic reserves, BTC-ETF's, BTC investment policy status, deepening of the CME option/future markets, etc), BTC volatility steadily declines towards the market 'average'; simply because of greater directional certainty, and deeper derivative markets buffering more of the inherent volatility. SD Edited January 9 by SharperDingaan
james22 Posted January 9 Posted January 9 3 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said: Most would also expect that as adoption accelerates (BTC strategic reserves, BTC-ETF's, BTC investment policy status, deepening of the CME option/future markets, etc), BTC volatility steadily declines towards the market 'average'; simply because of greater directional certainty, and deeper derivative markets buffering more of the inherent volatility. Even once "mature," until the market trades 24/7, bitcoin will always be significantly more volatile.
SharperDingaan Posted January 9 Posted January 9 3 hours ago, james22 said: Even once "mature," until the market trades 24/7, bitcoin will always be significantly more volatile. Agreed, but one has to wonder has long it is until BTC and ETH futures and options on the CME, get pushed to evolve to 24/7. It's great that the derivatives exist; but frankly pretty ridiculous to just be trading on EST, 5 days a week, excluding statutory holidays SD
james22 Posted January 9 Posted January 9 1 hour ago, SharperDingaan said: Agreed, but one has to wonder has long it is until BTC and ETH futures and options on the CME, get pushed to evolve to 24/7. It's great that the derivatives exist; but frankly pretty ridiculous to just be trading on EST, 5 days a week, excluding statutory holidays SD I expect the market will trade 24/7 within 5 years. And once real estate and other assets are tokenized and can be easily traded, probably around 5 years as well, their volatility will increase to match everything else.
Dave86ch Posted January 10 Posted January 10 Softwar is playing out, and I feel bullish seeing non-Western companies getting involved. Counterintuitively, I’m also optimistic when governments sell their Bitcoin because, if Bitcoin can help redistribute wealth, even partially, it becomes a more powerful tool to empower individuals and inspire a new wave of religious apostle. https://atlas21.com/bit-mining-expands-to-ethiopia-with-a-14-million-investment/?s=09
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