# Bitcoin #
udo thats a scam mate
bonza wrote:udo thats a scam mate
I think that’s the one twiggy sued Facebook , for letting it repeatedly be advertised.
Watched the new Netflix docco "Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King" last night. Good viewing.
Hammered - $41K AuD
I wonder if Mr Twitter Musk will Tweet a few Key words for a Price rise ?
Where have all the crypto advisors gone?
burleigh wrote:Where have all the crypto advisors gone?
Jumped off a cliff after holding LUNA. From $120 down to $0.02!!! I could never understand the hype around LUNA. Made no sense to me whatsoever. And UST got as as low as 30 cents. And it’s supposedly a stablecoin!!!
donweather wrote:burleigh wrote:Where have all the crypto advisors gone?
Jumped off a cliff after holding LUNA. From $120 down to $0.02!!! I could never understand the hype around LUNA. Made no sense to me whatsoever. And UST got as as low as 30 cents. And it’s supposedly a stablecoin!!!
Ouch. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Plenty of crypto gurus in Canggu will be heading home now
Here's something interesting I just saw:
"BlackRock and Citadel allegedly caused one of the largest #crypto crash of the last years. The two investors allegedly borrowed 100k #BTC from Gemini, swapped 25K of #BTC into #TerraUSD (#UST), called Terra Foundation suggesting they’d want to sell a large chunk of BTC for UST, and hinted to buy them at discount to avoid moving the market. https://lnkd.in/dAi_yJm2
Terra ($Luna) agreed to buy BTC for UST at a discount, lowering its own UST liquidity and reserves significantly. After which, BlackRock and Citadel dumped all UST and #BTC causing massive slippage and triggering a cascade of forced selling in both assets.
At the same time, this also triggered a cascade of withdrawals from another large crypto, $AnchorProtocol, holding large quantities of $Luna. The withdrawals were more than Anchor could repay, triggering a further sell-off in $Luna, thus further breaking the $1 peg of UST/USD.
#BTC currently trading below $27,000 (down 32.2% in 1 week) can now be bought by BlackRock and Citadel much cheaply, they can repay their loan, and pocket billions in difference. Meanwhile, over $300bn of long positions in stable and altcoins were wiped out, and $Luna tumbled from $86 to $0.16 in less than a week.
While BlackRock and Citadel denied the claims, only the actions of very large institutional investors could trigger such a tumble by two of the largest #cryptocurrencies. This was pure market manipulation. It is surprising that the largest investors in the world and loud advocate for ESG and Ethical investment is allegedly behind such actions. At which point trading and investing becomes market manipulation? Is #crypto investing supposed to align to #ESG standards, or is it still considered no man's land due to lack of regulations?"
media report picking up on the Machiavellian brilliance of this happening:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-13/bitcoin-crypto-terra-ust-luna-sta...
If your smart math guys can pick a hole in their algo, and you have the scale and intent, you can mess things up.
"Where did it go wrong?
Most stablecoins are backed by cash reserves, and they're supposed to have enough liquid assets on hand to match the value of each coin.
However, Terra (UST) is an “algorithmic” stablecoin — whose value is backed by a "sister" token called Luna, which is run on pre-programmed "smart contracts".
When Terra dips below $US1, it can be swapped for Luna tokens (at a small profit). In theory, that's meant to keep the value of both stable.
It's basically like printing money out of thin air, through a complex mix of "smart contracts" — to make sure the value of each UST token stays as close as possible to $US1.
But the problem was that these complex algorithms somehow failed spectacularly.
Luna somehow crashed at the same time as UST, in what has been described by analysts as a "death spiral". Essentially, investors rushed to liquidate their digital assets quicker than the "algorithmic" stabiliser could take effect.
The price of the "sister" token dropped from about $US86 at the start of this week, to just over 6 US cents on Thursday (which works out to be a 99 per cent fall, in a very short amount of time).
Investors suffered unprecedented losses as Luna's market value plummeted from $US40 billion to about $US500 million, which led to a sell-off and crisis of confidence across the wider cryptocurrency market.
How did the 'evil genius' plot unfold?
Nobody knows who caused the price of Terra and Luna to crash.
But many on social media are pointing the blame at the big US hedge funds, given the massive trades involved. Two firms, Citadel Securities and BlackRock, have already issued statements denying any involvement in Terra's crash.
"We don't know if the momentum was created by collusion [between hedge funds]," said Lisa Wade, the CEO of blockchain company DigitalX.
"Conspiracy theorists would say 'yes', because it's a massive trade. I mean, in all of my career, it's one of the biggest trades that I've seen," she told ABC's The Business.
"It's almost like an evil genius plot, because there are a lot of steps to it."
Ms Wade said, as part of this complex plot, the buyers appear to have purchased around $1 billion worth of UST stablecoins, while "shorting" bitcoin (which is a risky way to make money, by betting on the price of an asset falling — instead of rising).
"What they did next was they timed the market.
"So obviously we're in a really volatile risk-off stage of the market — because of everything that's been happening with the [US] Fed and the macro environment.
"They waited until a Saturday night when [trading] volumes were very low, and there were no bids.
"And then they went into a trading pool and started selling UST in massive volumes, which then triggered all of the subsequent selling in a low-volume market that broke the [US dollar] peg.
"Inside the algorithm was what our team had identified as a 'death spiral' ... the selling starts to feed on itself from the mechanics of the algorithm.
"So when the death spiral kicked in ... the algorithm started selling Bitcoin and Avalanche [another cryptocurrency], which triggers more selling.
"Luna was impacted because it's the underlying [backer] of the UST. So every time a UST [token] is bought, a Luna [token] is burnt, which means there's less tokens in supply, so the Luna price goes up.
"The reverse applies when people start selling. So every time someone sells a UST, they mint a Luna, which means there's more volume.
"And if there's no buyers and the price goes down, then it starts to feed on itself, because people start panicking and selling Luna.
"This was an exploitative trade that took advantage of the fact that markets are weaker. The perfect storm was nobody stepping up to buy the bitcoin and the UST". "
quite well written by ABC
Its not regulated so nothing illegal has been done.
I feel for those individuals who have lost a large chunk/all of their savings. I hear there are some horror/suicidal stories over on Reddit.
flollo wrote:Here's something interesting I just saw:
"BlackRock and Citadel allegedly caused one of the largest #crypto crash of the last years. The two investors allegedly borrowed 100k #BTC from Gemini, swapped 25K of #BTC into #TerraUSD (#UST), called Terra Foundation suggesting they’d want to sell a large chunk of BTC for UST, and hinted to buy them at discount to avoid moving the market. https://lnkd.in/dAi_yJm2
Terra ($Luna) agreed to buy BTC for UST at a discount, lowering its own UST liquidity and reserves significantly. After which, BlackRock and Citadel dumped all UST and #BTC causing massive slippage and triggering a cascade of forced selling in both assets.
At the same time, this also triggered a cascade of withdrawals from another large crypto, $AnchorProtocol, holding large quantities of $Luna. The withdrawals were more than Anchor could repay, triggering a further sell-off in $Luna, thus further breaking the $1 peg of UST/USD.
#BTC currently trading below $27,000 (down 32.2% in 1 week) can now be bought by BlackRock and Citadel much cheaply, they can repay their loan, and pocket billions in difference. Meanwhile, over $300bn of long positions in stable and altcoins were wiped out, and $Luna tumbled from $86 to $0.16 in less than a week.
While BlackRock and Citadel denied the claims, only the actions of very large institutional investors could trigger such a tumble by two of the largest #cryptocurrencies. This was pure market manipulation. It is surprising that the largest investors in the world and loud advocate for ESG and Ethical investment is allegedly behind such actions. At which point trading and investing becomes market manipulation? Is #crypto investing supposed to align to #ESG standards, or is it still considered no man's land due to lack of regulations?"
is it market manipulation or just someone exposing the gaping hole in the Luna system? This Luna death spiral had been spoken about from the day Luna arrived and yet everyone blindly bought into it.
Pretty radical turn of events, indeed.
But.. isn't the risk - when chasing significant returns on highly volatile/speculative stocks - that it could also turn to shit?
Point being, as a non-crypto investor, I can't say I'm surprised.
Interesting speculation re: market manipulation too. But again, I'm not surprised.
Why CRAHES are GOOD: Rich dad taught his son and me “Your profit is made when you buy…not when you sell.” Bitcoin is the future of money. That is why I will back up the truck when the bottom is in. It may be $17k or even lower $11k. Time to get richer is coming. Take care.
2:15 AM · May 14, 2022
thermalben wrote:Pretty radical turn of events, indeed.
But.. isn't the risk - when chasing significant returns on highly volatile/speculative stocks - that it could also turn to shit?
Point being, as a non-crypto investor, I can't say I'm surprised.
Interesting speculation re: market manipulation too. But again, I'm not surprised.
In a real world every every project and investment (regardless of what it is - crypto, shares, businesses…) would have a risk premium associated to it. Higher the risk, higher the premium expected by investors.
Here’s a wiki link on risk premium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_premium
Things turn really ugly when high risk premium requirements turn into unregulated, Wild West dodgy pump and dump schemes. Unfortunately, often they come with collateral damage in human suffering.
Oh wow, a genuine hyperinflation (caused by the inexorability of the algo?). What a time to be alive.
Agree Flollo. Staking for 20% return with peg to USD, if I understand right, is really generous reward for seemingly little risk.
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/146279/as-luna-holders-watch-the-tok...
& a 3 week turnaround to unstake... surely alarm bells were ringing? Or are people incredibly trusting now?
"When coins are staked, they are locked up indefinitely and the holder receives tokens as rewards. When the holder chooses to unstake them, they are able to get their tokens back after a period of time and then no longer receive rewards. Staking periods can range between different cryptocurrencies, but for Luna, it’s 21 days that you have to wait to get your tokens back.
Normally this isn’t a big problem. While crypto prices are volatile, stakers typically accept this and are used to day-to-day fluctuations. If the market starts declining, worried holders can unstake their tokens and cash out within a few weeks."
Within a few weeks. Far out.
oops. Why would you bet your country on Bitcoin ?
https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-11/el-salvador-reveals-...
monkeyboy wrote:oops. Why would you bet your country on Bitcoin ?
https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-11/el-salvador-reveals-...
Because they have no other in country currency that was worth anything.
Great financial whodunnit write-up of the gating of Celsius, complete with possible machinations for contagion into ether:
https://thenyledger.com/markets/celsius-melts-as-ether-smoked/
As reported in an embedded tweet in the story, the moving of the 320M just before the gating was enacted was a brutal touch.
US$205m bitcoin margin call is on the cards. Who said it wouldn’t happen? That’s right, the guy who took out the loan (he took the loan in March). Almost like he dared it to happen:
https://decrypt.co/102897/microstrategy-saylor-margin-call-bitcoin-21000
What will all the "crypto experts" living in Canggu do now?
This is an interesting article:
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2022/06/bitcoin-wasnt-as-decentralized-or-ano...
"“Bitcoin seems to have, in sharp contrast to its common reputation, become something of a perfect tool of state surveillance,” Lanier wrote."
If every transaction is recorded on the blockchain... colour me shocked.
Now, a silver coin in the hand, is both anonymous and possesses a value by weight.
That article also quoted Jaron Lanier. I've found anything he either writes or contributes to is worth your reading time. A first wave computer nerd who straddles the nexus between philosophy and pragmatism - part Alan Turing, part Bill Gates.
stunet wrote:That article also quoted Jaron Lanier. I've found anything he either writes or contributes to is worth your reading time. A first wave computer nerd who straddles the nexus between philosophy and pragmatism - part Alan Turing, part Bill Gates.
Gizmodo wrote:"Bitcoin seems to have, in sharp contrast to its common reputation, become something of a perfect tool of state surveillance," Lanier wrote.
Lanier said bitcoin had, in fact, been "revealing activities that many users believed to be protected by pseudonymity to sophisticated state security agencies while hiding transactions from communities of peers such as other developers, friends or community credit unions that would have been better placed to monitor them in context," Lanier writes.
Lanier notes that it is "plausible that organisations like the National Security Agency, China’s Ministry of State Security and Israel’s Unit 8200 have long had access to this information and chosen not to reveal this capability to preserve the mystique of pseudonymity and the assumed-private financial records it gives them access to."
In other words, a system that was designed to provide anonymity and privacy may have actually been used for government surveillance of the highest order.
One hell of a statement from a person of his stature.
The crypto ANOM?
Alan Kohler: Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme, it’s an outcome of capitalism’s failure.
Bitcoin may be many bad things – speculative bubble, consumer of energy, vehicle for scams – but it is not a Ponzi scheme.
Charles Ponzi’s particular scam involved financing the returns for his investment fund with new money rather than actual investments; all Ponzi schemes come unstuck when asset values fall and new money dries up.
Bitcoin offers no returns, so it’s not a Ponzi scheme. But what it is, exactly, is more difficult to name. It’s both nothing and everything.
What I mean is that Bitcoin has no substance and is not inherently useful, unlike the objects of previous bubbles, such as Dutch tulips in 1636, the South Sea Company in 1711, Japanese real estate in 1989, or internet stocks in 2000.
Those other bubbles involved the frenzied over-pricing of an existing item that had some inherent utility, and continued to exist after the price crashed and the late speculators went bust.
The Bitcoin bubble
Bitcoin was created from thin air in 2008 and although it was supposed to be a new form of money, it’s clear that will never happen. It won’t be allowed to.
So why are people still paying $30,000 each for them, an amount that could get them decent car or a very nice family holiday?
It’s because, I submit, Bitcoin is a magnet for the victims of modern capitalism, like lottery tickets, and is therefore both a symptom and a symbol of its failures.
It’s now pretty well understood that the neoliberal version of corporate, free-market capitalism introduced in the 1980s by, among others, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has massively benefitted the wealthy and massively increased inequality.
Profits have expanded at the expense of wages while money printing by central banks – to rescue the economy from the banking excesses that brought it undone in 2008 and then from the pandemic – has inflated asset values, further benefitting the wealthy owners of the assets.
But while everybody knows all this, nothing is changing because the dice are still loaded and the winners are still in charge.
In October 2008, the height of the GFC, and a month before the Federal Reserve started printing money, Satoshi Nakamoto posted a paper on a cryptography mailing list headed ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System‘, essentially describing an ingenious alternative to the existing financial system for those left behind by it.
He or she did not design an investment asset, but a new way of recording transactions by using a widespread chain of messages that can’t be changed, supported by a token called Bitcoin.
But because there is an inbuilt limit of 21 million on the number of tokens that could ever be created (unlike ever-expanding fiat money), and because the existing financial system had so egregiously failed so many, it gradually built a keen following – at first a smallish cult, then a movement, and then a speculative bubble.
(As an aside, a month after the birth of Bitcoin, Barack Obama was supposed to provide a political rebalancing for those left behind by capitalism, but he didn’t, and things stayed as Leonard Cohen described in 1988:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Eight years later Donald Trump presented as a more extreme outsider but he was really just one of the rich winners, and in his one term he permanently changed America by stacking the Supreme Court. But that’s another terrifying calamity altogether).
The Bitcoin/cryptocurrency bubble has been driven by three types of people: First, scam artists, with which the world is always infested, and always will be; second, those against whom the dice are loaded, who are sick of losing and think they have found something that will help them win; and third, those who genuinely want an alternative to the existing financial system, which they believe to be rigged.
I suppose the second two are basically the same, it’s just that the true believers have a longer time horizon than the gamblers.
Is this the end?
In early 2010, 18 months after its birth, Bitcoin was quietly changing hands for a fraction of a cent. In the middle of that year came its first big run, when it charged up to 10c.
And then in 2011 came its first proper bubble and crash: It went from 30c to $30 and back to $3 – a rise of 100-fold and a fall of 90 per cent.
Then in 2017 it rose to $US17,000, at which point it was being compared to the tulip mania of 1636 and every other bubble in history (it was the biggest of them all, even then). It collapsed back to $US3500 – a fall of 80 per cent.
And then after the pandemic unleashed a new wave of money printing, further eroding the foundations of the existing financial system in the eyes of many, the price surged to a peak of $US69,000. It has now crashed for the fourth time, to $US21,000 – a fall of 70 per cent.
The corrections are getting smaller – 90, 80 and now 70 per cent.
Is this the end of the world’s flirtation with cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer cash?
Probably not.
Bitcoin is one of a number of blockchains that are gradually infiltrating the financial system and commerce more generally as part of what’s being called Web 3.0, although there’s an interesting debate about whether this new version of the internet is real or over-hyped bulldust.
It might end up being the latter simply because the Empire Strikes Back – that is, the industrial/banking/political oligarchies combine to ensure that peer-to-peer commerce doesn’t happen – that is, that we must keep paying corporate intermediaries to conduct business rather than use blockchains to deal with each other directly.
So it might all end up being a utopian anarchist experiment crushed by plutocrats – like the ill-fated anarcho-syndicalist movement of the early 20th century.
But 14 years after Satoshi Nakamoto published his/her ground-breaking paper, there are about 20,000 cryptocurrencies worth just under $US1 trillion, including Bitcoin’s $US405 billion, down from a peak of $US2.8 trillion.
So there is some substance, but for comparison, the total global sharemarket value is $US120 trillion, so the crypto world is still tiny.
A lot of those 20,000 cryptos will disappear, possibly even most of them, but not all of them.
Alan Kohler writes twice a week for The New Daily. He is also editor in chief of Eureka Report and finance presenter on ABC news
alan kohler on the money!
yeh pun and all that... bitcoin had a place, probably still does...
but it ain't at $60k a coin, big money needs some control of such ridiculous amounts of accumulated wealth -for essentiolly nothing, as kohler points out
pretty funny some fully bought into 'the technology' side of the argument... its rough and rudimentary at best...
and an energy / environmental disaster, too much energy required - in more ways than one - for essentially nothing... again...
(but i guess one could make similar arguments for paper money... re. nothing, no intrinsic value etc. ...however, all the dodgyness aside... a better alternative / techonolgy was / is inevitable for knocking bitcoin from its perch)
Bitcoin has a place and a time. It’s technology will be superseded in the coming years once quantum computing comes to reality. BTC will likely have one last bull run over the coming year before a big collapse IMO.
The Betoota boys are all over it...
https://www.betootaadvocate.com/advocate-in-focus/exciting-crypto-ad-mus...
udo wrote:https://www.news.com.au/finance/markets/world-markets/expert-savages-bit...
I'm quietly confident we'll see BTC drop even further. I have bids set just above the US$10k mark.
"Crypto's white knight lost 94% of his wealth in a single day"
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/business/sam-bankman-fried-wealth-ftx-ctr...
thermalben wrote:"Crypto's white knight lost 94% of his wealth in a single day"
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/business/sam-bankman-fried-wealth-ftx-ctr...
This guy is a fraudster and a fool and should be locked up.
His stupidity far out ways his intelligence.
I hadn't heard of him before Don, it's a fascinating story (as are most in this neck of the woods).
The poor fool has only 1 billion left
The crypto bros around the world will be sweating bullets
Elon's Crypto Moves / Tweets are worth keeping an eye on over next week or Two..
donweather wrote:thermalben wrote:"Crypto's white knight lost 94% of his wealth in a single day"
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/business/sam-bankman-fried-wealth-ftx-ctr...
This guy is a fraudster and a fool and should be locked up.
His stupidity far out ways his intelligence.
A fraudster and a fool, in crypto! Who knew?
I think you meant ‘outweighs’ Don.
batfink wrote:I think you meant ‘outweighs’ Don.
Indeed I did. been a long week!!!
Supafreak wrote:The poor fool has only 1 billion left
Don't believe that. He's filed for bankruptcy and shutdown his exchange so no one can withdraw THEIR crypto!!!
The Bitcoin graph looks Interesting ! ?