# Bitcoin #
A good summary from Ian Verrender:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-14/cryptocurrency-crash-sam-bankman-...
The thing that gets me the most on these is the pictures, funnily enough. It's hard to make physical a digital token, so they use images of coins, coloured gold, to infer value. Gold coins these digital currencies certainly are not! It sparks a pedantic nerve...
My dreams of owning a space station in virtual reality, and charging other players rent for game-space, lie in ruins; swept away in the entire chaos of this year's events.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
Good article. I like the line: “ The ultimate irony is that crypto heroes like Bankman-Fried, for all their professed love of the new digital future, measured their success in good old-fashioned fiat currencies; mostly US dollars. Why would that be?”
Then in the next sentence: “ Digital currencies, and the technology behind them, may have a future. ”
Maybe.
One of the things that spruikers often refer to when they’re trying to suck in new buyers is that crypto is based on blockchain and the technology is the future. It’s a bit like saying you should keep your money in a particular bank because they use a certain brand of database. Why should you care?
The fact is that blockchain is not as great as it’s made out to be. There is an old trilemma for someone wanting custom software to be developed:
Good
Cheap
Soon
You can pick any two but you have to sacrifice the third one. For example, if you want it good and cheap, you can’t have it soon, or if you want it good and soon it won’t be cheap etc,
Blockchain also has a trilemma:
Decentralisation
Security
Scale
It isn’t much of a choice because decentralisation is the reason why it was created. If you decide to go with a centralised model there are so many better options and you wouldn’t use blockchain. You can’t sacrifice security or it will fail fast. So you have to sacrifice scale: the more nodes in the network, the worse it performs.
The ASX hasn’t been able to solve the performance issues in its blockchain project and its project is in crisis with $245M already spent and about to be written off. The contractors on that project had a good run.
Blockchain was touted as the latest, greatest thing, but it isn’t all new. Data chaining in one form or another has been used in programming since the beginning. The underlying structure of blockchain is the Merkle Tree, which was created years before blockchain was developed. There’s nothing wrong with reusing existing functionality; all developers are encouraged not to “reinvent the wheel”,
The design of the consensus mechanism for blockchain was a clever piece of work - it also borrowed functionality from existing programs- but its performance had to be deliberately hobbled to maintain a semblance of synchronisation between nodes.
In the end, Bitcoin was a proof of concept to provide an example that a decentralised finance model can exist and to give the finger to the banks at the same time. It just all went out of control when it became a speculative asset with no real value.
Crypto investors are probably waiting and watching to see if any buyers come back and push the price up while hoping the other investors don’t blink and cut and run, sending the price into a spiral.
Maybe for investors it’s time to follow Homer Simpson’s lead and “look shocked and move slowly towards the cake.”
projection...
https://mobile.twitter.com/stillgray/status/1593649083339931648?fbclid=I...
next level
.
Thanks for that post Coaster, very interesting.
In related anecdata, have had two people I know get keelhauled by their regular banks when trying to do domestic and international transfers. I imagine the fraud sections of the banks would currently be running around like chooks without heads, as of the medicare leaks. Back in the day I did get to peek into this world and talk to staff a bit, and they struck me as thorough, hard working people. And the people I know trying to do the transfers are Model Citizens, too. I think it's quite hectic at present.
sypkan wrote:projection...
https://mobile.twitter.com/stillgray/status/1593649083339931648?fbclid=I...
next level
Hah, Caroline Ellison, who loves taking big risks…..with other people’s money.
Coaster wrote:sypkan wrote:projection...
https://mobile.twitter.com/stillgray/status/1593649083339931648?fbclid=I...
next level
Hah, Caroline Ellison, who loves taking big risks…..with other people’s money.
I was referring to forbes magazine labelling her the queen of the alt right
despite ftx being the democrat's party's second largest donor mind you...
that's some serious decoupling / transposing / projection
(I think facto must now be writing for forbes magazine)
Anyone in the cities (Sydney or Melbourne) seen the fake bitcoin paper wallets that are turning up on the ground?
The scam is simple, it’s a sealed bitcoin wallet with the key/password to a bitcoin account.
Has roughly 0.62 bitcoin, you can transfer it for a few to your wallet.
The fee must be paid though and does not come off the coin value.
Apparently they are turning up everywhere.
burleigh wrote:Anyone in the cities (Sydney or Melbourne) seen the fake bitcoin paper wallets that are turning up on the ground?
The scam is simple, it’s a sealed bitcoin wallet with the key/password to a bitcoin account.
Has roughly 0.62 bitcoin, you can transfer it for a few to your wallet.
The fee must be paid though and does not come off the coin value.
Apparently they are turning up everywhere.
This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for anyone who knows the first thing about crypto and how crypto wallets and transactions work.
donweather wrote:burleigh wrote:Anyone in the cities (Sydney or Melbourne) seen the fake bitcoin paper wallets that are turning up on the ground?
The scam is simple, it’s a sealed bitcoin wallet with the key/password to a bitcoin account.
Has roughly 0.62 bitcoin, you can transfer it for a few to your wallet.
The fee must be paid though and does not come off the coin value.
Apparently they are turning up everywhere.
This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for anyone who knows the first thing about crypto and how crypto wallets and transactions work.
I don't think that's the people the scam is targeting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoScamReport/comments/wemzws/paper_wallet_f...
Effective altruism...
"...It is no surprise that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair fell for such a phoney. Yet they weren’t the only ones suckered by this high priest of cryptocurrency, who preached of earning billions through his unique financial acumen, promised to pour the money into philanthropy, and then crashed to earth with his fortune evaporating. “SBF” championed a modish millennial approach to philanthropy, that claims to harness data, in tandem with supreme brainpower, moral leadership and relentless logic to improve the cost-efficiency of charity and tackle state failures. But his downfall has exposed the hollowness at the heart of this cult that has become as much part of Silicon Valley’s uniformity as their T-shirts and turtlenecks..."
"...Yet his arguments lie at the root of this movement so beloved by Silicon Valley billionaires since it justifies their accumulation of great wealth on grounds that it can end up doing great good. Now, though, leading devotee Dustin Moskovitz, another of the Facebook founders, has acknowledged that effective altruism either encouraged or excused SBF’s unethical — and almost certainly criminal — behaviour. Even MacAskill, whose organisations received big donations from his shamed protege’s operations, admits he was wrong to dismiss fears that his philosophy might be “misused” to cause harm. Their church of benevolence became cover for a giant crypto-scam.
This cult of ultra-rationalism implies that it is morally better to get rich than to slave away in a badly-paid job that might be socially useful. Essentially, it tells people to work in the City rather than a care home, demeaning those who believe in public service or actually helping other human beings rather than piling up mountains of cash in tax-efficient havens to give away to their pet causes. Critics such as Timothy Noah have noted how it ignores issues such as economic inequality since its “most distinctive characteristic” was the “deftness with which it tiptoes past targets likely to offend billionaires”.
Some key adherents — including MacAskill — have since moved on to “long-termism”, an ideology aiming to save us from future threats such as artificial intelligence, rather than more prosaic ideas such as funding mosquito nets to save lives of existing human beings from malaria. Their argument is that if all lives have equal value wherever they are, that should extend to whenever they are around. “The things that matter most are the things that have long-term impact on what the world will look like,” said Bankman-Fried last year. “There are trillions of people who have not yet been born.”
It is, of course, impossible to apply data and accountability to the future. In reality, it seems that SBF used this pretence of doing good to provide cover for a giant pyramid scheme, pretending ends justified means while he hung out with his clique overseeing a crypto con at a $40m mansion in the tax haven of the Bahamas..."
"Imagine this. A shady offshore finance business has pledged $1 billion to get a Republican president elected in 2024. The founder donates to a vast network of conservative activists and publicly promotes causes that they hold dear. He has long-standing Republican Party family connections. He is lionised in Congress. Officials promise regulatory changes that will help his business. The co-founder of the operation is a curiosity, a Chinese-American with no public profile. Then the business goes bankrupt, losing ordinary Americans billions of dollars of their savings. Much of the money simply goes missing and is unaccounted for.
Now imagine how the American media might have reported this affair over the past week or so. You can be sure the word ‘corruption’ would have featured prominently, along with the words ‘deep’ and ‘systemic’. We could be reading excoriating think-pieces on how greed persuaded people to look the other way. No doubt, some Substacks would have speculated on whether an absence of morality was a Republican trait. Yet with the dramatic collapse of FTX earlier this month, this kind of critique has been largely missing. So why might this be?
The answer, of course, is that Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was not a Republican, nor did he donate to conservative causes. He was the second-largest Democratic donor in the 2022 election cycle. He shrewdly talked up the two big secular, liberal religions of climate change and artificial intelligence. He also proclaimed himself to be a vegan.
SBF is well-connected, too. His father helped Elizabeth Warren draft legislation to revise the US tax code in 2016. His mother co-founded the secretive Democratic group Mind the Gap in 2018, which has funneled millions in donations to the Democrats. Mind The Gap ‘operates in a cone of secrecy’ but ‘speaks the language of Silicon Valley’, according to a Vox profile of the organisation. SBF’s brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, used to work for Civis Analytics, the political data firm backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, which is behind much of the Democratic Party’s data operation.
Cleverly, Bankman-Fried subscribes to the self-indulgent online cult of ‘effective altruism’, in which devotees outdo each other with claims of how moral they are – or would be, if only they were wealthier. Effective altruists say they are in favour of making money, which can then be donated to good causes. Professor Kathleen Stock describes the ‘movement’ as the ‘new woke’, beloved of ‘robotic tech bros’. These modern-day Pharisees don’t hide their good intentions under a bushel. Instead, they berate everyone else for not having the right priorities.
Yet as SBF admitted in an exchange of messages with a fellow devotee and journalist last week, it was all a sham. Effective altruism was a cosplay outfit that Bankman-Fried could slip into with ease. It was ‘this dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us’, he admitted.
On the surface, the fall of SBF is a familiar tale. A flood of funny money persuaded the political and administrative class to look the other way to FTX’s obvious shortcomings. But there is rather more to it than greed.
It has been over a decade since Joel Kotkin identified just how much the Democratic Party had changed during the Obama era. By 2012, the Democrats had become an alliance of tech elites and finance, he wrote. The party came to represent both Google and Goldman Sachs.
Although Bankman-Fried was neither a tech genius nor a financial wizard, he had the appeal of both, so long as one didn’t look too closely. He had the appearance of a dishevelled tech nerd and he carried Silicon Valley’s imprimatur. He was backed by leading financial investors from Softbank to Sequoia Capital. FTX was ‘Goldilocks perfect’, in the words of..."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/23/how-big-tech-took-over-the-demo...
About bloody time!! And nice to see Australia being the first cab off the rank.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/mastercard-to-settle-transactions-for-sta...
VJ were you a dogecoin holder ;-)
With Elon on its side and being a “legitimate
crypto currency”, things are looking rosy.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/03/twitters-new-dog-icon-is-sending-dogec...
I so wanted to be a dogecoin holder, like when it was below 2 or 3c!
I worked out how to join, and almost got some on the doge faucet for a doge wallet
Maybe I still will. Doge seems to have the nicest community and I love the idea that a joke will become the global currency of the future!
Best quote from article, reacting to news:
"Look I don’t want to live on this planet any longer either."
The Bitcoin graph looks Interesting ! ?