2941

I just need Crypto.com to go out of business so they can stop getting constant sponsor spots in nba broadcasts.

2942

Imagine if crypto didn’t exist and all that money went to real companies for capital and investment and research development, like solar panel and wind companies. That would be amazing.

2943

Yep, those are properties of a noble metal.

2944

Yes, back in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, right up through 2008, investors who had no crypto to invest in sought out the most altruistic ventures in the advance of what was best for humanity.

C’mon dude.

Since the modern days of investment became a thing, people who have big sums of money to invest, invest it in things that they believe will pay off with the highest return. And throughout most of the late 1980s, 90’s and 2000s, people invested in the bond market, which was essentially investing in wealth to make more wealth.

2945

He’s just saying wouldn’t it be nice not that it would certianly have happened.

This thread has gotten weird. It seems there a lot of positions being argued against that people haven’t actually expressed. A stream of reactionary responses to the general notion of crypto being criticized and not to the actual criticism itself.

Almost nothing that has been said in defense of anything crypto even addresses the criticism. Yes, we know people willingly buy crypto just like they willingly bought tulip futures. That’s not a refutation of anything or even germane to any of the actual criticism.

2947

Well, what has been the point of the last day of the thread? It’s mostly a rehash. We established yet again that not all investments are good or sensible and that crypto is “a lot like the stock market” if you ignore all the ways it is not like the stock market.

Edit: You know, if we need a wouldn’t it be nice if that would in fact probably have happened, imagine video card prices right now if nobody had every thought of crypto. ;)

2948

This. I see the world crumbling around us, and half a trillion dollars in markets like crypto… man could you imagine what half a trillion dollars in a green energy company could do? Instead, it’s actually driving up our energy costs and making global warming worse on an epic scale.

2949

This is my favorite (recent) post of the thread. Especially the bolded bit.

2950

Glad I amuse you. If you ever need stocks tips let me know.

2951

You can’t really get ruch quick. But if you’re already rich, you can get richer with startling speed.

2952

If we could get people to cut back on meat we could help out with global warming. Something we could all do easily.

2953

Some recent news that highlights a pretty key difference between stock markets and crypto markets. Coinbase filed a 10-Q with this language under the section on risks. I included the whole section but bolded the most important bits.

Our failure to safeguard and manage our customers’ fiat currencies and crypto assets could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

As of March 31, 2022, we held $256 billion in custodial fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies on behalf of customers. Supported crypto assets are not insured or guaranteed by any government or government agency. We have also entered into partnerships with third parties, such as with the Centre Consortium, as a reseller of USDC, where we or our partners receive and hold funds for the benefit of our customers. Our and our partners’ abilities to manage and accurately safeguard these customer assets requires a high level of internal controls. As our business continues to grow and we expand our product and service offerings, we must continue to strengthen our associated internal controls and ensure that our partners do the same. Our success and the success of our offerings requires significant public confidence in our and our partners’ ability to properly manage customers’ balances and handle large and growing transaction volumes and amounts of customer funds. In addition, we are dependent on our partners’ operations, liquidity, and financial condition for the proper maintenance, use, and safekeeping of these customer assets. Any failure by us or our partners to maintain the necessary controls or to manage customer crypto assets and funds appropriately and in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements could result in reputational harm, litigation, regulatory enforcement actions, significant financial losses, lead customers to discontinue or reduce their use of our and our partners’ products, and result in significant penalties and fines and additional restrictions, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition. Moreover, because custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors. This may result in customers finding our custodial services more risky and less attractive and any failure to increase our customer base, discontinuation or reduction in use of our platform and products by existing customers as a result could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Note that this is of course in a section that is supposed to outline possible business risks so don’t be alarmed by the heading of the section. However, separate from the risks it discusses, that little side note there is kind of important. If Coinbase fails and they need to declare bankruptcy, the crypto assets in customer accounts can be raided to pay off their debts. There is no SIPC protection. It’d be like the Lehman collapse, but instead of customer accounts getting transferred to another entity, they are used to pay off Lehman’s giant underwater mortgage portfolio.

2954

Here is the thing, GME, AMC, Enron etc. are the exception in the stock market. The stock market can be also be complicated: options, futures, and even shorting a stock isn’t super straight forwad.

The reason that stocks go up or down, is also complicated it is a combo of fundamentals, emotions, with a bit of system rigging by the big boys. But fundamentally if stock goes up you make money if you sell, and if goes down you lose money if you sell. Yes, there are Bernie Maddows that trick you into thinking you have bought stock that have gone up, but again they are the exceptions to the rule.

With Crypto, the con is the rule not the exception. Coins are complex, derivatives like pay for play, and NFTs are even more complicated. You can still bet right that BTC, or Ethereum, Pokemancoin, goes up and still lose. Because in Cryto there are 50 way to lose your money. Your wallet could get hacked, the exchange could get hacked, the coin could fork and yours coins are worthless, you could simply forget your password.

I’m sure there are some legit uses for crypto also, but they are the exception not the rule.

Edit: @Thrag added a 51 way to lose your money
Moreover, because custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors.

ROTFLMAO

2955
2956

To be fair, this isn’t unique to crypto.

2957

A community vote had decreed that around 3 million Juno tokens, worth around $36 million, be seized from an investor deemed to have acquired the tokens via malicious means. (This in itself was a big crypto news story.) The funds were to be sent to a wallet controlled by Juno token holders, who could vote on how it would be spent.

But a developer inadvertently copy and pasted the wrong wallet address, as reported by CoinDesk, leading to $36 million in crypto being sent to an inaccessible address).

Andrea Di Michele, one of Juno’s founding developers, explained to the publication that he sent the correct wallet address to the developer responsible for the transfer, as well as a hash number. Hashes connect blocks to one another in the blockchain, and at a glance hash numbers can look very similar to wallet addresses. The programmer in charge for the transfer accidentally copied and pasted the hash number, rather than the wallet address.

Even more painful than the human error, Di Michele said to CNET, was the fact that none of the network validators caught the mistake. Blockchains require “validators” to verify each transaction, encoded in “blocks”, so that they can be added to the chain. This transaction had 125 validators, Di Michele explained, but not one checked. “This is a wake up call for validators,” he said.

Sounds legit.

2958

This is a feature, not a bug.

2959

No, it’s not unique to crypto but it is a huge reason crypto is not a lot like the stock market.

2960

I’m sure they can just call the bank and fix this, right?

2961

Well, according the dude in charge…

Blockchain developers have in the past found ways to reverse transactions, but the solutions aren’t simple. When a hacker exploited a smart contract in 2016 and stole $50 million in ether, Ethereum developers had to “hard fork” their blockchain to recover the funds – in essence they created a replica of the existing blockchain, keeping it identical in every way except that the stolen funds were transferred to a recovery address. It was a contentious episode. Some in the community thought it violated the principles of cryptocurrency and continued to operate the original blockchain at Ethereum Classic.

The problem may be easier for Juno’s developers to solve, owing to it being a Proof-of-Stake chain. Di Michele said that Juno runs on a governance model – where token holders can vote to alter blockchain transactions – and so changing course requires a majority vote and then a software update.

“Funds will go to the correct address in one week or something, it’s bad but can be solved easily,” Di Michele he said to CNET. “Funds will be recovered with another upgrade that will adjust chain state. PoS chans are not like Bitcoin, they are governance powered. If governance says something, even state changes can happen.”