1. #1261
    Immortal hellhamster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NED funded View Post
    I sat through the entire thing and its so funny XD

    Like the way he generates yield is basically converting some of your normal actually somewhat valuable cryptocurrency into degenerate alt coins, wait for people to hop in and then hop out with the profits. Like he isnt generating anything, the "yield generated" is only made through alt coins which they then have to sell to other people for actual useful currency b4 the whole thing crashes
    The way Sam Bankman-Fried makes money is much more nefarious actually. He made over $30 billion last year by liquidating leveraged futures contracts on his exchange, FTX. Because crypto is still an extremely small market compared to traditional markets, a heavy hitter with several billion can swing price action into so-called "scamwicks". He can buy or sell several million worth of crypto at once, forcing the price to violently explode up or down because its market capitalization is very small. This price action absolutely rekts leveraged futures, forcing liquidations: paying back the exchange and then some. Sam is basically hunting for liquidity. If there are a lot of longs open, Sam just sells. If there are many shorts open, he buys. Every time this happens, everyone with a futures contract playing with high leverage gets liquidated and the exchange makes money. Because Sam IS the exchange, you can understand how he can make several billion per month doing that. Normally I'm completely against leveraged trading and these people are basically gambling way beyond the realms of gambling in simple crypto trading, but this fucker deserves to rot in jail.

    What you have just described follows the logic of supply and demand. How it usually works is very simple, it also happens in other markets such as Forex: you convert a stable asset into a volatile asset, sell the highs of the volatile asset, convert back to the stable asset. The reason you do this is to accumulate the stable asset, because there is no other way to accumulate it other than mining it. The people left holding the bag of the volatile asset are actually the majority in these situations, and it's the way every market operates, from commodities to currencies.

    - - - Updated - - -

    https://www.reuters.com/world/africa...cy-2022-04-27/

    After El Salvador, Central African Republic is the second nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. South Africa and Tanzania are very likely to follow suit.

    I think such extremely impoverished nations have nothing to lose.

    Half a decade ago, people had no idea what crypto was and how it worked, except for a select few who saw it as a niche to "stick it to the man".

    Once Bitcoin hit 5 digits a couple years ago, it became an interesting thing to own as a means of diversifying one's portfolio.

    We are now slowly approaching stage 3, experimenting with adoption.

    Financial institutions and nations are slowly taking notice. They become all the more interested in a universal financial network that can transfer tokens without a middleman, under a regulatory umbrella that is anti-fraud, throughout all asset classes. The technology is here, regulation unfortunately takes some time to process.

    Once it's there though, the benefits will utterly overwhelm the legacy network of fiat: deflationary staking protocols, meaning you can accumulate passive income through holding and staking. Lightning fast and free transfers, complete transparency for regulatory bodies because everything can be viewed through the blockchain ledger. Interconnectability through cross chain exchanges, meaning you can convert everything to anything at any moment free of charge. Implementation of smart contracts, automating every single financial process, from payrolls to trading, to money management.
    Last edited by hellhamster; 2022-04-28 at 08:07 AM.

  2. #1262
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    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    Once it's there though, the benefits will utterly overwhelm the legacy network of fiat: deflationary staking protocols, meaning you can accumulate passive income through holding and staking. Lightning fast and free transfers, complete transparency for regulatory bodies because everything can be viewed through the blockchain ledger. Interconnectability through cross chain exchanges, meaning you can convert everything to anything at any moment free of charge. Implementation of smart contracts, automating every single financial process, from payrolls to trading, to money management.
    I won't go into the deflation things as ... yeah
    As for the other stuff. Fast and free transactions? Smart contracts? (That are generally worse than normal contracts as half the shit is off-chain anyway)

    Yeah. All that is pike dreams. Where is the gain for the people running the ledgers and transaction hubs in that? (You know, the sort of people who caused the 2008 crisis and are some of the major money behind crypto)

    If you want to transfer money internationally just use wise dot com. It's faster than btc and comes with insurance. As well as probably cheaper
    Transferred 500 euro from SW to NL 3 years ago. It took less than a minute and cost like 1 euro or something of that low magnitude.
    - Lars

  3. #1263
    The Unstoppable Force Belize's Avatar
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    My favorite part of crypto is how the massive benefits to humanity is always just on the horizon.

    Like, Bitcoin has been around for over a decade, and 'free and fast" transactions have been prophesied to be Soon (tm) every year. We swear guys. It's coming. Soon!

  4. #1264
    Quote Originally Posted by Belize View Post
    My favorite part of crypto is how the massive benefits to humanity is always just on the horizon.

    Like, Bitcoin has been around for over a decade, and 'free and fast" transactions have been prophesied to be Soon (tm) every year. We swear guys. It's coming. Soon!
    This entire thing runs on promised future supertech that'll magically fix problems because the people who have a vague understanding of it (as opposed to most people having none) say so. Just know that their idea of "decentralization" is to put everything on the same ledger and hope for the best, and from there laugh, shrug and move on.

    Smart contracts tho, have got to be the most LOL-tastic bullet point on this guy's list. Topically, LegalEagles recently released a video detailing why they, and NFTs, majorly suck. It's an idiocy, a "new" thing that is strictly worse, more unwieldy, less secure and less useful than the non-"smart" thing it supposedly replaces... unless you fix it with off-chain practices and rules, in which case what's the point of the smart contract to begin with? If there's one thing that perfectly encapsulates how stupid this whole cryptoasset (IMO currency is a misnomer at this point) craze is, the very concept of the supposedly smart contract is.
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  5. #1265
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jastall View Post
    This entire thing runs on promised future supertech that'll magically fix problems because the people who have a vague understanding of it (as opposed to most people having none) say so. Just know that their idea of "decentralization" is to put everything on the same ledger and hope for the best, and from there laugh, shrug and move on.

    Smart contracts tho, have got to be the most LOL-tastic bullet point on this guy's list. Topically, LegalEagles recently released a video detailing why they, and NFTs, majorly suck. It's an idiocy, a "new" thing that is strictly worse, more unwieldy, less secure and less useful than the non-"smart" thing it supposedly replaces... unless you fix it with off-chain practices and rules, in which case what's the point of the smart contract to begin with? If there's one thing that perfectly encapsulates how stupid this whole cryptoasset (IMO currency is a misnomer at this point) craze is, the very concept of the supposedly smart contract is.
    The tech is already here for over half a decade. Regulation and adoption still haven't happened yet, which is not crypto's fault. Times are changing though, especially in this inflationary environment we are currently living in. People are getting tired of the same shit happening over and over again. Maybe this is a change we need.

    I have explained it numerous times in this thread, but people still have no idea how the blockchain ledger works. The ledger isn't one thing on a blockchain, like you seem to understand, it's an index file that keeps increasing in size with each transaction data being acknowledged by the network as legit. It can't be changed, it can't be hacked, and it's not centralised, because it exists within a network of computers. It's like saying that the entire internet will go down because microsoft was hacked. The only real danger is quantum computers, and storing your keys in an unsafe exchange that is basically an SQL database.

    Smart contracts are a given part of our future. Whether it happens with the legacy banking system or with crypto, it is inevitable.

    I don't know you, but you don't seem to me like the type to change his mind once it's set. I know that my reply is probably an excercise in futility, but I always hope to be proven wrong. Maybe I helped out.

  6. #1266
    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    The tech is already here for over half a decade. Regulation and adoption still haven't happened yet, which is not crypto's fault. Times are changing though, especially in this inflationary environment we are currently living in. People are getting tired of the same shit happening over and over again. Maybe this is a change we need.

    I have explained it numerous times in this thread, but people still have no idea how the blockchain ledger works. The ledger isn't one thing on a blockchain, like you seem to understand, it's an index file that keeps increasing in size with each transaction data being acknowledged by the network as legit. It can't be changed, it can't be hacked, and it's not centralised, because it exists within a network of computers. It's like saying that the entire internet will go down because microsoft was hacked. The only real danger is quantum computers, and storing your keys in an unsafe exchange that is basically an SQL database.

    Smart contracts are a given part of our future. Whether it happens with the legacy banking system or with crypto, it is inevitable.

    I don't know you, but you don't seem to me like the type to change his mind once it's set. I know that my reply is probably an excercise in futility, but I always hope to be proven wrong. Maybe I helped out.
    As has been explained here and elsewhere, the security risk with crypto isn't hacking in the Hollywood sense. Of course you can't have some guy chugging Mountains Dews as he bypasses the URL and overclocks the unix DDOS until he backdoors his way into the database. But most "hacking" doesn't happen that way already, it happens with a middleman, with people inserting bad data rather than extracting good one, or by simple out of chain phishing. The difference between legit and not-legit transactions is blurry enough as it is anyway, in an environment that scoffs at the very idea of regulations, let alone punishment for frauds, liars and cheats. And that's not even getting into the fact that the best way to interface with this shit for many is to centralize everything via Metamask or similar apps and programs. If that ever gets compromised for any reason, good luck saving any aspect of your privacy that you linked there.

    Exactly how are they "a given part of our future". Because you say so? Have you even watched the video referenced above? Smart contracts aren't contracts at all. They're a glorified hyperlink (more often than not not even on the chain!) that, one hopes, everyone agrees represents your ownership of what it contains. It's unenforceable claptrap widely open to abuses of all kinds. You might as well have a sheet of paper somewhere that says you own the Andromeda galaxy. That's just as relevant as a URL that says you own an ugly ass picture of a monkey or 10 seconds of a sports game.

    And you're wrong, I did change my mind. I thought the tech was intriguing, and had potential at first. The more I know about it the shittier crypto is as a currency, and NFTs are just a joke. The blockchain technology itself does have potential if used by people interested in more than treating it as a speculative asset, but crypto? Na, not in this generation, for reasons I've laid out before and I have no wish to repeat myself.
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  7. #1267
    The Unstoppable Force Belize's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    The tech is already here for over half a decade.
    So Bitcoin and Ethereum are fast and free, and gas is a thing of the past?

    Oh?

  8. #1268
    Quote Originally Posted by Belize View Post
    My favorite part of crypto is how the massive benefits to humanity is always just on the horizon.

    Like, Bitcoin has been around for over a decade, and 'free and fast" transactions have been prophesied to be Soon (tm) every year. We swear guys. It's coming. Soon!
    Bitcoin and ether are prob the worst ones to stake your faith in crypto which makes the whole thing weird

    Proof of work is one of those things that should have been fazed out already

  9. #1269
    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    The way Sam Bankman-Fried makes money is much more nefarious actually. He made over $30 billion last year by liquidating leveraged futures contracts on his exchange, FTX. Because crypto is still an extremely small market compared to traditional markets, a heavy hitter with several billion can swing price action into so-called "scamwicks". He can buy or sell several million worth of crypto at once, forcing the price to violently explode up or down because its market capitalization is very small. This price action absolutely rekts leveraged futures, forcing liquidations: paying back the exchange and then some. Sam is basically hunting for liquidity. If there are a lot of longs open, Sam just sells. If there are many shorts open, he buys. Every time this happens, everyone with a futures contract playing with high leverage gets liquidated and the exchange makes money. Because Sam IS the exchange, you can understand how he can make several billion per month doing that. Normally I'm completely against leveraged trading and these people are basically gambling way beyond the realms of gambling in simple crypto trading, but this fucker deserves to rot in jail.
    its amazing that you understand that crypto is a massive scam on the one hand and then say its the future with the other.

    Its literally 20 or so whales and the other 20 people who run the exchanges desperately trying to get retail money in so they can cash out. Thats it.

  10. #1270
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    Quote Originally Posted by jonnysensible View Post
    its amazing that you understand that crypto is a massive scam on the one hand and then say its the future with the other.

    Its literally 20 or so whales and the other 20 people who run the exchanges desperately trying to get retail money in so they can cash out. Thats it.
    If what you are saying is true, then surely crypto would have been destroyed in these last 10 years. But it didn't.

    Sam from FTX is not the first one fucking over the users of his exchange through scamwicks, nor will he be the last. And if you think the same tactics aren't being used in the stock market, I have several bridges of notorious lengths to sell you. Scamwicks are older than Father Time.

    Opportunities always introduce exploitation. He's hurting leverage traders, which are the bane of crypto, so I couldn't give a shit honestly.

  11. #1271
    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    If what you are saying is true, then surely crypto would have been destroyed in these last 10 years. But it didn't.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal

    Scams can run for decades, yo.

  12. #1272
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    Meanwhile in legacy finance and banking:

    All markets are pulling the rug, dollar strength is readying itself for a ginormous climb implying utter destruction of speculative assets, bond yields are reversing, and inflation is soaring. Oh and this is with a 25 point rate hike, when usually a rate hike has to be above inflation rate to be deemed effective. Imagine what would happen if the Fed or the ECB actually increased rates. We are essentially becoming a lot poorer very fast, and people are still clueless.

    Putin is being blamed (L M A O). You can search this forum for a thread I made a year ago predicting exactly how this house of cards would tumble down, which of course happened to the letter. Noooo, it could not have been propping up the markets artificially with unfathomable trillions of dollars made out of thin air. The EU is faring much worse than the US, because the euro does not have its own milkshake to slurp from like the dollar does (look up milkshake theory and how the dollar is king). Producer yoy price index in the EU is like 30%. Certain EU countries are in serious danger.

    It's as if the markets are on life support and we keep pumping adrenaline straight into the heart. But nooooo, boomer stocks have to be protected, maximum overpriced housing markets have to be protected, pensions have to be protected. Now we're here feeling that cost. But yeah, it's Putin waging a war in a country that the majority of Americans had never even heard of until last month that makes Amazon drop by 15% in one day.

    When silver is down 10% in a hyperinflationary market, and ultra risky crypto is basically moving sideways for half a year or even a year you could say, you know the global markets are a clown fiesta.

    The only thing saving the markets is dollar strength flatlining and reverting to sub 100 territory. That would mean even more inflation, which would mean bigger fear of introducing higher interest rates, which would cause bigger sell-offs and a lengthened recession and stagflation that could last more than a decade.

    But yeah, fiat is doing great.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    Totally irrelevant. We are talking about exchanges liquidating their users who are leveraging futures.

    Talking about Ponzis, I can sell you my house for a couple mill. Bought it for 150k half a decade ago. That's the real Ponzi my dude.
    Last edited by hellhamster; 2022-04-30 at 12:12 AM.

  13. #1273
    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    Totally irrelevant. We are talking about exchanges liquidating their users who are leveraging futures.
    Very relevant. If the scam works and you can keep repeating it...why stop? Who gives a shit if it's leveraging "totally safe investments" or "this investment will totally blow up, my dudes!"? Same shit at the end of the day, and given that most coins and NFT's and new projects largely seem to be transparent pump-n-dumps it's all the funnier.

    I particularly liked that one guy who just took out a "loan" against some chain and then took everything because trying to make crypto convenient/usable is hilariously insecure. That wasn't a scam by any means, just hilarious incompetence of the galaxy-brain crypto crowd that somehow hasn't realized that the crypto-crowd is absolutely packed to the gills with bad-faith actors.

    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    Talking about Ponzis, I can sell you my house for a couple mill. Bought it for 150k half a decade ago. That's the real Ponzi my dude.
    Connect these dots for me, homie.

  14. #1274
    going to spend my useless fiat on some food

  15. #1275
    Quote Originally Posted by jonnysensible View Post
    going to spend my useless fiat on some food
    I don't think that food is going to retain much value, seems like an L

  16. #1276
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    Very relevant. If the scam works and you can keep repeating it...why stop? Who gives a shit if it's leveraging "totally safe investments" or "this investment will totally blow up, my dudes!"? Same shit at the end of the day, and given that most coins and NFT's and new projects largely seem to be transparent pump-n-dumps it's all the funnier.

    I particularly liked that one guy who just took out a "loan" against some chain and then took everything because trying to make crypto convenient/usable is hilariously insecure. That wasn't a scam by any means, just hilarious incompetence of the galaxy-brain crypto crowd that somehow hasn't realized that the crypto-crowd is absolutely packed to the gills with bad-faith actors.



    Connect these dots for me, homie.
    Things increasing in value disproportionately over a short amount of time is bad.

    Except when a pretend coin on the Internet goes from less than 1K$ to 60K$ in, what, two years. That's good and means crypto really took off, adoption is on the horizon and the legacy financial system is going down, baby.
    It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built -Kreia

    The internet: where to every action is opposed an unequal overreaction.

  17. #1277
    Quote Originally Posted by Jastall View Post
    Things increasing in value disproportionately over a short amount of time is bad.

    Except when a pretend coin on the Internet goes from less than 1K$ to 60K$ in, what, two years. That's good and means crypto really took off, adoption is on the horizon and the legacy financial system is going down, baby.
    I still don't have the heart to tell the nice lady at the gas station near me with a "Bitcoin ATM" (lol, it's not, it's a Bitcoin vending machine that just gives you a receipt) that Canada still uses the Canadian Dollar and hasn't moved over to crypto as their primary currency.

    She's getting lied to by some shady grifters.

  18. #1278
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    I still don't have the heart to tell the nice lady at the gas station near me with a "Bitcoin ATM" (lol, it's not, it's a Bitcoin vending machine that just gives you a receipt) that Canada still uses the Canadian Dollar and hasn't moved over to crypto as their primary currency.

    She's getting lied to by some shady grifters.
    Those things have been all over Montreal as well. Curiosity at first, now a lot of them are full of graffiti from what I saw.
    It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built -Kreia

    The internet: where to every action is opposed an unequal overreaction.

  19. #1279
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    Quote Originally Posted by hellhamster View Post
    Meanwhile in legacy finance and banking:

    All markets are pulling the rug, dollar strength is readying itself for a ginormous climb implying utter destruction of speculative assets, bond yields are reversing, and inflation is soaring. Oh and this is with a 25 point rate hike, when usually a rate hike has to be above inflation rate to be deemed effective. Imagine what would happen if the Fed or the ECB actually increased rates. We are essentially becoming a lot poorer very fast, and people are still clueless.

    Putin is being blamed (L M A O). You can search this forum for a thread I made a year ago predicting exactly how this house of cards would tumble down, which of course happened to the letter. Noooo, it could not have been propping up the markets artificially with unfathomable trillions of dollars made out of thin air. The EU is faring much worse than the US, because the euro does not have its own milkshake to slurp from like the dollar does (look up milkshake theory and how the dollar is king). Producer yoy price index in the EU is like 30%. Certain EU countries are in serious danger.

    It's as if the markets are on life support and we keep pumping adrenaline straight into the heart. But nooooo, boomer stocks have to be protected, maximum overpriced housing markets have to be protected, pensions have to be protected. Now we're here feeling that cost. But yeah, it's Putin waging a war in a country that the majority of Americans had never even heard of until last month that makes Amazon drop by 15% in one day.

    When silver is down 10% in a hyperinflationary market, and ultra risky crypto is basically moving sideways for half a year or even a year you could say, you know the global markets are a clown fiesta.

    The only thing saving the markets is dollar strength flatlining and reverting to sub 100 territory. That would mean even more inflation, which would mean bigger fear of introducing higher interest rates, which would cause bigger sell-offs and a lengthened recession and stagflation that could last more than a decade.

    But yeah, fiat is doing great.

    - - - Updated - - -



    Totally irrelevant. We are talking about exchanges liquidating their users who are leveraging futures.

    Talking about Ponzis, I can sell you my house for a couple mill. Bought it for 150k half a decade ago. That's the real Ponzi my dude.
    The fact that you can see all these problems with speculative markets, and securities, etc. And come to the conclusion of "These are bad and our society is worse of because we protect them!" And turn around and go "But these speculative markets and securities are tots fine mah dudes! perplexes me.
    (Instead of going "We should make all that shit far more regulated and make quarterly reporting of stocks illegal" etc)
    - Lars

  20. #1280
    El salvadors cryto stuff is going well : volcano bond didnt sell, real gov bonds are collapsing, civil liberties are suspended, the gangs which the gov made a deal with are on the killing sprees, and they owe 800mil to the IMF in Jan 2023.

    Saw the CAR adoption as well, with 11% of the population having access to the internet and it being the 2nd most corrupt country in the world im sure it will go well.

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