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

[stalefish3169]

Here's an interesting story...
https://www.coindesk.com/iron-financ...ron-price-drop

I bet Cuban would rather have Bitcoin than bananas now.

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[Bunion 2020]

I said that I have a 401k but I have more faith that BTC will provide me with a much better ROI over the long run.

Aren't you in your mid-30s? I am sure you are well aware of the power of compounding and all that mumbo jumbo and maybe you are right, you will know in about 30 years. It doesn't sound like you are cashing out your 401K and putting it all on black but going by historical averages you may be wrong.

ETA:

Bitcoin miners exit China, beat a path to the U.S. as crypto climate shifts

June 17, 2021 at 3:00 a.m. MDT

Jiang Zhuoer became a multimillionaire a few years ago by operating some of the most lucrative mines in China. His commodity? Bitcoin.

Jiang had about 300,000 computers humming around-the-clock in 20 specially ventilated warehouses across remote northern China, guzzling enough electricity to power a small city. The sophisticated machines cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The digital currency they minted was worth even more.

Today, Jiang, a fast-talking 36-year-old, is winding down in China. He and several Chinese investors — some who became billionaires off bitcoin mining — are considering shipping their equipment to Texas and Tennessee.

China’s bitcoin moguls are coming to America.

For years, Chinese miners like Jiang were enabled by the glut of cheap — and often dirty — electricity in China, where a massive fleet of coal-fired plants and hydroelectric dams fueled the country’s rise into an industrial behemoth. At their height in 2018, China’s bitcoin prospectors accounted for 74 percent of the world’s bitcoin production.

White House reviews ‘gaps’ in cryptocurrency rules as bitcoin swings wildly

But this year, Chinese authorities are cracking down on cryptocurrency to dial back energy consumption and meet their climate goals, sending miners scattering. And increasingly, miners are decamping for places like Texas, South Dakota or Canada, launching a mass migration with implications for the evolving industry and the new communities that will house it.

Jiang recently pulled tens of thousands of his machines out of Chinese regions including Inner Mongolia, which has not only banned mining but encouraged citizens to call a government office to report illicit mining.

“You know they’re getting serious,” Jiang said, “when they set up snitching hotlines.”

Elsewhere in China, the Xinjiang region and three major provinces — Qinghai, Yunnan and Sichuan — have also banned cryptocurrency production.

On May 21, top economic officials in Beijing pledged to “crack down on bitcoin mining and trading,” an announcement that sent the worldwide price of bitcoin plummeting. In recent weeks, Chinese social media users have complained that some crypto topics were being censored, while Chinese police have announced the arrests of more than 1,000 people in cryptocurrency-related financial crimes.

That sudden chill, Chinese bitcoin miners and executives predict, will only deepen. The Chinese government has appeared uneasy not only about the industry’s carbon footprint but also the intrinsically uncontrollable, decentralized nature of cryptocurrency.

Yemu Xu, the co-founder of Bella Protocol, a cryptocurrency banking service provider, said Chinese miners who see the writing on the wall have been trying for years to migrate to countries such as Iran and Kazakhstan to cut costs. In the past year, interest has grown in countries that have not only cheap power but also “stable political regimes, mature regulation and better policy support.”

“As a result, mining in countries like the U.S. and Canada have been picking up,” he said.

But the arrival of industrial-scale mining in U.S. communities could raise the same thorny questions about the technology’s environmental impact that have vexed officials in China.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences this year predicted China’s bitcoin mining industry by 2024 could consume more energy than Italy. University of Cambridge researchers estimated that bitcoin miners globally accounted for more energy use than Argentina.

Alex de Vries, a financial economist who has long criticized bitcoin’s energy consumption, predicted the migration of China’s bitcoin miners will have repercussions.

“You’re talking about energy demand potentially the size of a small Western country that needs to be relocated somewhere else,” he said. “It’s a massive problem to find a new home for all of these miners.”

Earlier this year, a dispute erupted in New York state’s Finger Lakes region between local activists and a Connecticut private equity firm that had converted an old natural gas-fueled power plant into a bitcoin mine. As a result, the New York state legislature is considering a bill that would block new bitcoin mining in carbon-producing power plants.

Other jurisdictions have taken the opposite tack. In March, coal-rich Kentucky passed a law offering tax breaks to miners that invest $1 million in installing new machines in the state.
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Either way, the growth in the U.S. cryptocurrency mining industry is expected to continue as larger investment funds are drawn in, especially if bitcoin can return to its near-all-time-highs above $60,000, industry insiders say.

“In China, miners might not have somewhere to go anymore and they’re thinking, how can I move some of my portfolio someplace else?” said Mike Colyer, chief executive of Foundry, a Rochester, N.Y.-based company that helps miners purchase tens of thousands of computers at once and assemble them in industrial locations. “But it’s not just the Chinese. Right now, everyone is scrambling to get machines plugged in.”

Colyer said he has also helped identify and convert real estate, such as abandoned aluminum factories that have the electrical infrastructure capable of handling enormous wattages, into bitcoin farms.

As cryptocurrency goes wild, fear grows about who might get hurt

One Chinese miner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared political repercussions in China, said he predicted 60 to 70 percent of his peers would migrate their operations to the United States or Europe. He said he is building about 50 shipping containers to house his computers to plop onto an oil field in West Texas, and is breaking ground on a 33-megawatt site in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
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“Right now in China, everybody’s scared. The question is not whether you pull out, but immediately or gradually,” the miner said. But he added that there were regulatory uncertainties in the West, too.

“U.S. local communities don’t necessarily like bitcoin farms,” he said. “We need to be aware of that, and the environmental policy risks because the Biden administration might take a harsher stance on bitcoin.”

Other Chinese miners have fewer compunctions about seeking new frontiers.

Jiang ticked off a number of disadvantages to expanding in the United States: too many “environmentalists who worry about wildlife and the birds,” he said, and too much “White liberal idiocy” preoccupied with climate change — the science of which he has doubted. U.S. electricity was six times more expensive than in China, he estimated, and he would have to pay relatively high wages to I.T. staff to keep his computers purring.
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Even so, Jiang said he was considering two sites in Texas and Tennessee. It seemed less risky than other places, including the Middle East, where he had operations shut down by authorities, or Russia, where his colleagues’ expensive computers have been seized by corrupt police.

And right now, everywhere seemed a safer bet than China, where regulators can be mercurial and unforgiving.

“A change in government policy that suddenly forces out all miners — that would never happen in America,” Jiang said. “It’s a capitalist system.”

[pureantigravity]

Okay, I'm now finding you even more comical than the true crypto believers...

Tell us about these 'true crypto believers'

“You don’t understand international postal reply coupons!”
- investor in Mr Charles Ponzi’s trust.

I'd agree with Tahoe if he said the shoe isn't a perfect fit. It might be akin to a soccer cleat at a golf game. Or bowling shoes at a Salsa dance. If the shoe doesn't fit, you must acquit! But the shoe fits. Please - no shoe-in jokes

[Benny Profane]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/comin...-peter-atwater

[Brock Landers]

Technically it is. Ponzi relied on Postal Reply Coupons to create a perceived arbitrage opportunity. He paid people's withdrawals using new investors funds. Both the use of coupons (Tether & USDC) and constant crypto rug-pulls and pump-n-dumps are ways that new investors funds provide liquidity for some people's realized gains. If it acts like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is a duck. People also defended Ponzi (and Madoff) both before and after it collapsed. De ja vu? Coinbase went public the day Madoff died in prison. Coincidence?

"A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud whereby crooks steal money from investors and mask the theft by funneling returns to clients from funds contributed by newer investors. "

A Ponzi can't function without HODL, FOMO or BTFD.

Is GME a Ponzi scheme? When did it become a Ponzi scheme. AMC? At what $ value did AMC become a Ponzi. Are Treasury bonds a giant Ponzi scheme. If gme and amc are Ponzi’s, what’s different about wal mart or Amazon stock.

[MakersTeleMark]

There are some serious idiots in crypto, and in this thread.

[yeahman]

Interesting story about using excess natural gas in the Bakken oil play to power crypto-mining computers. Otherwise the gas just gets flared for the most part.

https://www.ktvq.com/news/montana-ne...kken-oil-field

[MultiVerse]

There are several issues with burning methane to mine bitcoin:

• Burning methane to mine bitcoin produces CO2—a less powerful but still a greenhouse gas
• It discourages investment in other arguably more useful natural gas infrastructure
• It incentivizes waste as otherwise marginal wells are restarted to mine bitcoin
• Regardless of its power source, each bitcoin transaction generates an amount of electronic hardware waste roughly equivalent to an iPhone
• More is still more. Bitcoin miners are still burning a fossil fuel to produce electricity
• The result is even more externalities than there otherwise would have been

[pureantigravity]

Is GME a Ponzi scheme? When did it become a Ponzi scheme. AMC? At what $ value did AMC become a Ponzi. Are Treasury bonds a giant Ponzi scheme. If gme and amc are Ponzi’s, what’s different about wal mart or Amazon stock.

What makes a scheme a Ponzi scheme? First you need to to answer that. It has 5 verifiable features:

1. The scheme doesn't actually have a business model or customers or any other source of new money inputs apart from #new #investors. Such that,
2. People that cash out can only do so when other people are entering into the scheme. While simultaneously,
3. A large portion of incoming money is skimmed off to reward the operators of the scheme (#miners #exchanges #unbackedStablecoins etc.).
4. People participate because they believe they will receive a very good reward for their investment (#much #wow). Furthermore,
5. Their belief in that is due to what they hear from others that previously invested in the Ponzi and withdrew large profits successfully (#lambos #hookers #blow #rainbowLogCharts #zoomOut).

The entire recipe creates a Ponzi. If only #'s 1 to 3, then it just describes an unsupported investment also referred to as a negative sum game. If only #4 and #5, then it is simply a scam or a fraud.

[byates1]

i've got a scam fraud ponzi scheme for anyone who wants it. my silver gold guy created a fixed supply of CLOWNELON tokens and gave me a million of them. it's all a joke he wants me to give away 50,000 to 10 ppl, to create more addresses.

get a metamask wallet, change the etherum main net to smart chain in settings, enter some mumbo jumbo to get set up and i send you 50,000.

maybe someday they are worth a buck. who knows. took me 5 min on my phone.

will pm instructions to whoever contacts me.

lets get the ball rolling on ripping people the fuck off!!

[stalefish3169]

Is GME a Ponzi scheme? When did it become a Ponzi scheme. AMC? At what $ value did AMC become a Ponzi. Are Treasury bonds a giant Ponzi scheme. If gme and amc are Ponzi’s, what’s different about wal mart or Amazon stock.

PG is just in denial and uses the Ponzi term as a coping mechanism. Let's examine some common Ponzi characteristics via Investopedia and how they do or do not apply to BTC.


1) A guaranteed promise of high returns with little risk

It is well known that BTC is a risky investment over the short-term. Any potential investors can find this out with less than an hour of research.

[X] Not a Ponzi [ ] Ponzi

2) A consistent flow of returns regardless of market conditions

BTC has traditionally moved in 4 year cycles since its inception. This is largely a function of its issuance which halves every 4 years. Between market tops within this pattern there have been bear markets with large price drawdowns. This seems at odds with consistent returns regardless of market conditions.

[X] Not a Ponzi [ ] Ponzi

3) Investments that have not been registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Bitcoin is mostly decentralized so there is nobody to register it with the SEC. With that being said, the SEC has been largely supportive of BTC trading.

[X] Not a Ponzi [ ] Ponzi

4) Investment strategies that are secret or described as too complex to explain

BTC is open source. Literally anyone can examine the complete codebase at any time and even submit improvement proposals. Some of these proposals (Taproot, Schnorr Signatures) are in the process of being implemented after miner signaling over the past few months.

[X] Not a Ponzi [ ] Ponzi

5) Clients not allowed to view official paperwork for their investment

BTC is an open decentralized ledger. Anyone can view every single on chain transaction via free and widely available blockchain explorers

[X] Not a Ponzi [ ] Ponzi

6) Clients facing difficulties removing their money

People can sell their BTC for another currency of their choice 24/7 365 from a multitude of centralized or decentralized exchanges.

[X] Not a Ponzi [ ] Ponzi

So there you have it folks. By a score of 6 to nothing, BTC is clearly not a Ponzi.



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[Benny Profane]

Oh, great, Texas. Now there's a reliable power source.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/15/chin...r-exodus-.html

[jono]

I know there are only about 4 of us that don't have either PG or stalefish (or both) on ignore, but WTH. If you're going to argue about Ponzi schemes get your definition straight and stick to it.

Ponzi had a business model. What made it an unsustainable fraud was overselling it by using new investors' money to pay off old investors in order to attract more new investors. Is BTC (or tether, all of crypto, or any "new" currency) doing that? None of those other characteristics are defining.

[pureantigravity]

I know there are only about 4 of us that don't have either PG or stalefish (or both) on ignore, but WTH. If you're going to argue about Ponzi schemes get your definition straight and stick to it.

Ponzi had a business model. What made it an unsustainable fraud was overselling it by using new investors' money to pay off old investors in order to attract more new investors. Is BTC (or tether, all of crypto, or any "new" currency) doing that? None of those other characteristics are defining.

Who is buying your Bitcoin when you are selling? New money. There isn't a float.

Ponzi actually wasn't doing the arbitrage he promised. He was literally selling promises. He had no way to accomplish the arbitrage because the overhead was too big and the actual logistics of even moving around the coupons from Europe to the US would require "Titanic-sized ships"

In fact, like Tether, the numbers didn't add up. There needed to be 160,000,000 postal reply coupons in circulation to back his investors but there were actually only 27,000 in circulation. Amazing similarities to Tether for sure.

edit: too long. removed a few chapters incl. unnecessary Satoshi parallelisms.

[Benny Profane]

It's not a Ponzi, dude.

[stalefish3169]

I know there are only about 4 of us that don't have either PG or stalefish (or both) on ignore, but WTH. If you're going to argue about Ponzi schemes get your definition straight and stick to it.

Ponzi had a business model. What made it an unsustainable fraud was overselling it by using new investors' money to pay off old investors in order to attract more new investors. Is BTC (or tether, all of crypto, or any "new" currency) doing that? None of those other characteristics are defining.

Go back to October posts when I called for 50k BTC. Meanwhile, PG's price target was zero. We are not the same.

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[stalefish3169]

Who is buying your Bitcoin when you are selling? New money. There isn't a float. New investment is always providing the real money for people that cash out. Always and always. You only get to sell when someone buys. If all the order books dried up today, no one would be able to sell. It would be worthless. Nada. Nilch. Zippo. It is utterly dependent on new money - at all times.

Ponzi actually wasn't doing the arbitrage he promised. He was literally selling promises. His business model was a fraud. Ponzi didn't have a business model because it was a logistical impossibility. The model was a fraud. Maybe this helps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charle...i's_scheme


"Though Ponzi was still paying back investors, mostly from money from subsequent investors, he had not yet figured out a way to actually change the IRCs to cash. He also subsequently realized that changing the coupons to money was a logistical impossibility. For example: for the initial 18 investors of January 1920, for their $1800 investment, it would have taken 53,000 postal coupons to actually realize the arbitrage profits. For the subsequent 15,000 investors that Ponzi had, he would have had to fill Titanic-sized ships with postal coupons just to ship them to the U.S. from Europe. However, Ponzi found that all the interest payments returned to him, as investors kept re-investing."

"Barron then noted that to cover the investments made with the Securities Exchange Company, 160 million postal reply coupons would have to be in circulation. However, only about 27,000 actually were in circulation. ... The gross profit margin in percent on buying and selling each IRC was colossal, but the overhead required to handle the purchase and redemption of these items, which were of extremely low cost and were sold individually, would have exceeded the gross profit."


My gawd. There weren't even enough postal coupons to back the investment (not even in the whole world!). Wait. Sounds like Tether. Amazing similarities for sure. IN other news Ponzi and Satoshi have something in common: they didn't think it through. Proof of Work defined in Satoshi's white paper is a great idea that ends with an exponentially increasing consumption and a certain eventual failure (and only protects against a very limited threat model consisting of only other Bitcoin miners). Doomed from the start. Both of them were smart and yet so very stupid all at the same time. Satoshi had to have known that this was the end of it all.

My previous post with the 5 features of a Ponzi is fully applicable to Bitcoin. 100%. You need all 5 features. If any of the 5 is missing, then it is not a Ponzi.

What do you think an investment is, genius? Why do people buy gold? Are they hoarding it in case they need to fill some cavities or make a shiny necklace? No, they are buying it so they can one day sell it at a profit, like pretty much every other investment.

Clown.

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[Meathelmet]

This is going to help reaching 50k.

"The clampdown means that 90% of the country’s Bitcoin mining capacity will be shut down, at least for the short term, the paper said"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-crypto-mining

[bennymac]

Go back to October posts when I called for 50k BTC. Meanwhile, PG's price target was zero. We are not the same.

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The comparison people are making has nothing at all to do with your price prediction.

[pureantigravity]

[pureantigravity]

Then there is Dogecoin. The ultimate crypto nihilism incarnate. That's is what makes Doge so beautiful. Oh Doge, how many ways do I love thee!

[jono]

Go back to October posts when I called for 50k BTC. Meanwhile, PG's price target was zero. We are not the same.

I didn't say you were the same, I said you both created conditions that aren't actually needed for a Ponzi scheme. For example, if Madoff had traded five or six times it would still have been a Ponzi scheme. But that's a quibble to what PG posted (at first, anyway, I haven't read his latest book). Your conditions were just irrelevant and made up for the purpose of rhetoric.

I'm not trying to argue with you about this stuff, everybody gets an opinion and defending the bull case is fine by me. I'm just saying the discussion would be more interesting with better logic and less desperation. It's not at zero. Be happy. Buy yourself some skis. This much zeal makes it seem like maybe PG is right and you're really in deep and need the new money bad.

[pureantigravity]

For example, if Madoff had traded five or six times it would still have been a Ponzi scheme. But that's a quibble to what PG posted (at first, anyway, I haven't read his latest book).

Wife read that part in brackets and expelled her omelet all over my monitor You're probably right about the "had traded five or six times it would still have been a Ponzi scheme."

And full disclosure, I'm open to being wrong about the whole Ponzi thing. It could be a little less than one or a lot more than one. I'm invoking the best country song ever by Collin Raye, "Well, I ain't got a witness, and I can't prove it, But that's my story and I'm stickin' to it."

[Bunion 2020]

This is going to help reaching 50k.

"The clampdown means that 90% of the country’s Bitcoin mining capacity will be shut down, at least for the short term, the paper said"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-crypto-mining

Can somebody explain why the Chinese Gov. has a such a hard on for BTC mining? Are they short on power so all this use is creating problems? Raising energy prices? Or are they wary of losing some control of finance in China?

[stalefish3169]

I didn't say you were the same, I said you both created conditions that aren't actually needed for a Ponzi scheme. For example, if Madoff had traded five or six times it would still have been a Ponzi scheme. But that's a quibble to what PG posted (at first, anyway, I haven't read his latest book). Your conditions were just irrelevant and made up for the purpose of rhetoric.

I'm not trying to argue with you about this stuff, everybody gets an opinion and defending the bull case is fine by me. I'm just saying the discussion would be more interesting with better logic and less desperation. It's not at zero. Be happy. Buy yourself some skis. This much zeal makes it seem like maybe PG is right and you're really in deep and need the new money bad.

I was commenting wrt you saying that most people have me and PG on ignore. I try to give free alpha to Mags trying to understand a complex topic. Anyone that wanted to listen when I called for 50k about 8 months ago could've made a lot of money.

PG posts garbage and lies. If people followed his advice and sold their BTC when it was in the triple digits, they lost out on life-changing money.

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