Bitcoin....who's gotten into it?

[skaredshtles]

$8000? $0? Why does it have a value to begin with?

Same reason the $ has a value!

Oh, wait.

[summit]

Same reason the $ has a value!

Oh, wait.

$ is backed by faith in the US economy, gov, military, and people. It's not tacked to gold, but there is something like 420B of gold backing 1.5T in bills and no idea how much non-physical money there is vs a 10% reserve.

Bitcoin is backed by faith in Bitcoin.

[splat]

HODL!

[Harry]

It is very obvious we are going into a recession very soon. It is going to be very interesting to see which way crypto goes. I can easily see it going either dramatically up or dramatically down. I have no idea, crypto will be in uncharted waters. Interesting times.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[Skidog]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyph.../#6d5311e61ed0

yeah noting shady about bitcoins.

[Dantheman]

yeah noting shady about bitcoins.

But they're quite useful though, apparently. A big "Fuck yeah!" to the IRS.

[iceman]

That IRS-CI squad needs to get busy on the ol' punkinhead-in-chief.

[summit]

2 of the kiddy diddlers suck started their shotguns... too bad more didn't save the tax payers some $.

[Kinnikinnick]

YAY for bringing down child molesters and pornographers and pedophiles!!

But one of the most important respects of this vis a vis Bitcoin is that the IRS was able to defeat the supposed anonymous nature of Bitcoin/blockchain. If it isn't anonymous, is it what its supposed to be?

By analyzing the blockchain and de-anonymizing bitcoin transactions, the agency was able to identify hundreds of predators around the world - even though those users thought that they could remain anonymous.

[Skidog]

YAY for bringing down child molesters and pornographers and pedophiles!!

But one of the most important respects of this vis a vis Bitcoin is that the IRS was able to defeat the supposed anonymous nature of Bitcoin/blockchain. If it isn't anonymous, is it what its supposed to be?

you sir, win the prize.....anonymous it aint apparently.

[splat]

How do you offshore bitcoin to keep the feds at bay? IRS will create a digital ledger of who owes what based on appreciation profits and bill accordingly. Question is - will they be able to seize your account? That's what they do, ya know.

[splat]

This has been widely understood & reported since the silk road was taken down in 2013.

They had to catch Ross with his laptop on, opened, and logged on because they couldn't crack it back then.
He had a kill switch and if he closed the computer, it required a hard password.
They did a distraction thing and yanked it right out from under him, got in, and learned everything.

[byates1]

one thing is for certain, it's interesting.

[Skidog]

ToR is the routing protocol Silk Road's network of users used to mask IPs. It was the tandem of ToR-based IP anonymity alongside the decentralized bitcoin payment network that allowed silk road to evade authorities for so long. But ultimately the transparency of the bitcoin ledger being public allowed the network of users & merchants to be mapped out and targeted by the law. In the end it was the govt exploiting bitcoin's transparency that enabled rolling up the network - which is very different from hacking the actual protocol (which would require cracking sha-256, I think & hasn't been done).

Sha 256 has not been broken. The huge datacenter just outside salt lake (dubbed bumblehive) is a storage facility for data collection. Lots of stuff sitting waiting for that Sha to be broken.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using TGR Forums mobile app

[stalefish3169]

How do you offshore bitcoin to keep the feds at bay?

Move to Puerto Rico.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using TGR Forums mobile app

[stalefish3169]

I can haz bottom?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using TGR Forums mobile app

[skaredshtles]

Well, I will say ONE positive thing about this whole thing: it brings the LULZ.

[stalefish3169]

Pump up the jam, pump it up, while your feet are stompin', and the jam is pumpin', look at the crowd is jumpin', pump it up a little more.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using TGR Forums mobile app

[stalefish3169]

Orange coin good. Number go up.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using TGR Forums mobile app

[skaredshtles]

hodling is not easy

Just think of the Lambos!

$2 mil/coin in 2020!!

[XXX-er]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...ints-1.5347104

[MultiVerse]

Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

- One entity on the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex appears capable of sending the price of Bitcoin higher when it falls below certain thresholds, according to University of Texas Professor John Griffin and Ohio State University’s Amin Shams. Griffin and Shams, who have updated a paper they first published in 2018, say the transactions rely on Tether, a widely used digital token that is meant to hold its value at $1.

- “Our results suggest instead of thousands of investors moving the price of Bitcoin, it’s just one large one,” Griffin said in an interview. “Years from now, people will be surprised to learn investors handed over billions to people they didn’t know and who faced little oversight.”

- “This pattern is only present in periods following printing of Tether, driven by a single large account holder, and not observed by other exchanges,” they wrote in their new peer-reviewed paper, set to be published in a forthcoming Journal of Finance.

- “Simulations show that these patterns are highly unlikely to be due to chance. This one large player or entity either exhibited clairvoyant market timing or exerted an extremely large price impact on Bitcoin that is not observed in aggregate flows from other smaller traders.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rge-study-says



If these accusations are found by a jury to be true, or even approximately true, then it will immediately go straight to the Hall of Fame level of Largest Frauds of All Time:

- Allegation #1: The 2017 Bitcoin Bubble was market manipulation, and Tether was how they did it

-- Allegation #2: Tether became a systemically important, money laundering conduit for the crypto ecosystem

--- Allegation #3: They might’ve gotten away with it, too, if they hadn’t gotten robbed while busy scamming

https://danco.substack.com/p/the-tri...r-lawsuit-part

[MultiVerse]

It'll be interesting watching this play out. It's honey badger don't care, limited future demand for stablecoin, or rinse and repeat:


Participants: We want to keep the feds at bay, we don’t want to answer irksome questions

Tether (circa 2017): Tether is backed 100% by USD

Participants: Cool, so we can evade the feds while pretending to trade USD

Banks: If you want to park USD here then you must comply with regulations

Tether: Ok, we’ll use “banks” instead

Big Player: I’ll issue Tethers to buy Bitcoins and then sell the USD backed Bitcoins at a higher price

Participants: Cool, we’ll buy or arbitrage Bitcoins with USD at the higher price because they’re backed 1:1 USD

“Banks”: We’re actually money launderers and we’re going to skim

Tether (post 2017): Tether is not backed 100% by USD, more like 60-ish-%, oh and some of the funds could be loans from affiliates

Participants: We want to withdraw USD, not crypto-to-crypto

Tether (2019): We are asking our customers not to send any additional incoming wires until we can provide a reliable method of receiving funds.

[JimmyCarter]

It's a little weak in terms of substance.

The capital hole at bitfinex was from regulatory seizures where a bad actor in its chain of custody (Crypto Capital) had funds seized to the tune of ~$880 million. Tether loaned bitfinex something like $650 million to help cover the capital deficit & prevent operational disruption. Tether at last report had $4 billion total issuance/market cap against reserves of $3.35 billion and a loan to bitfinex of $650 million. So it's recently/currently ~84% backed with a promisory note from a profitable company that has a giant sum of cash locked up due to indirect involvement in nefarious b.s.

In order for Tether's reserves to return to 100% it needs to either wait 2-3 years for operating income from bitfinex to satisfy the note or some combination of release of funds + profit from operations makes them whole. Bitfinex may die as a result of the action against CC, but even in that case Tether may have recourse against the seized funds. And if bitfinex dies and recourse to seized funds is a bust then other tether exchanges could step up & make reserves whole. Incentive alignment is there & business is good, stranger things have happened.

Keep in mind there is a ton of money going into crypto from retail & high net worth individuals. It's predominantly a non-institutional market. The top crypto exchanges rank top 10 globally in terms of revenue (only beaten out by giants like the CME, NYSE). The vast majority of that money (>95%) goes towards speculation, just as 95%+ of USD trasnactional volume goes to speculation on various dollar-denominated assets.

If you want real money laundering, or if you actually care at all about money laundering - as opposed to using it to prop up a flagging commitment to confirmation bias - look into the asymmetry of cash bill issuance & the constituents those various bills serve. Regular people use the small bills & international criminal orgs use the $100 / e500 notes. The reason central banks print the big notes despite the exceptionally high use in crime is the seignorage revenue from large bills. They feel the revenue opportunity more than offsets the role in facilitating the drug trade, human trafficking, & various other black & grey markets. The exact people that tell you to be angry at crypto are doing business with criminals on a scale that bitcoin will never approach. You are being exploited for your lethargy to protect another man's economic moat.

Here's a price chart of tether on binance to give you an idea how concerned the market is:

Attachment 301004

The treatment of their auditors is interesting/concerning. It's not a simple business, and they fired one of their auditors for basically asking too many questions.

[stalefish3169]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/m.../2009/01/gold/

Buy Bitcoin

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using TGR Forums mobile app