General Cryptocoin Discussion

[lexluthermiester]

No, I won't do the math for you, as judging by your dismissal, you're not interested in actual dialogue.

You're right about that. I have no interest in attempting civilized dialogue with someone who seems to be missing much in the way of understanding. And I have no desire to teach you either.

So if I did, you wouldn't accept it anyway.

You're right. I do not ever accept opinions and notions that are without logic and merit.

 

[Outback Bronze]

EDIT: I've sold off and got my profits from this gig. I'm mostly frustrated at the lack of technical discussions these days and instead of all the (crap) economic principles people would rather talk about. I miss the days where people would talk about new protocols for escrow transfers and other technical achievements. When I realized that the cryptocoin world was more interested in making money (rather than improving the monetary system), I mostly sold off an became a side observer instead. This was around the BTC vs BCH fork if you remember that, where I "woke up" so to speak and realized that the cryptocoin world has become full of greedy assholes rather than technical achievers like from the early days.

Yes that is fair call. I see filth and greed everywhere these days. It makes me sick to the bone. Big corporate businesses (I personally work for) to small ones.

But I must say, I am trying to teach myself to work smarter and not harder. I do not call myself greedy by all means but If I can help my family out in these tough times (prob soon to get worse) then I will.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Well, I'm not sure what your doing wrong but I have made nothing but money since I've been involved.

Yes I had to do some initial investments but like I say, BTC is buying me more and more of the shopping trolley than $$$ Dollars.

When did I ever say it didn't make me loads of money? As I stated before: I bought into BTC originally around Mt. Gox. Take a guess how much % gain I got.

The difference is, I can see the shit community for what it is. There's more to life than just making money for yourself personally ya know. The amount of shit I've seen other people get dragged through because of the shear number of scammers.

I can make money but still see the shit, scammy community for what it is. Besides, you still haven't told me who your exchange is, pretending to be high-and-mighty when you know damn well that you shouldn't be trusting them with your BTC either. This is a tech forum, I presume the people around here know how to setup their own wallets and keep the BTC offline / off-exchange personally and avoid situations like Mt. Gox.

 

[Outback Bronze]

pretending to be high-and-mighty

OMG, where do you get off matey? Gees.

 

[dragontamer5788]

OMG, where do you get off matey? Gees.

My issue is the other people getting suckered into this community of griefing, greedy sociopaths who only want to make money for themselves, and cares nothing about the losses of other members of their own damn community. And your words and arguments only remind me how the typical crypto-bro acts in general. Case in point, your main argument last page is straight-forward victim blaming over my coworker for losing a bunch of money in Celsius. Which is a pretty shitty viewpoint to have IMO. A bit of righteous anger so that I can properly communicate my dissatisfaction with your words is only fair. You're welcome to keep your opinion but I don't have to like it.

Instead of blaming the suckers and marks, you need to start blaming the liars, the grifters, the assholes, the thieves. It is wrong to blame the innocent, it is wrong to defend the thief.

I'm not blaming you per se. I'm blaming the community in general. And I hope you can see that. The morals of the cryptocoin world are completely and utterly wrong. I recognize that you're more or less just posting the standard crypto-bro arguments and talking points and you're probably haven't really thought too deeply about the state of affairs.

 

[kapone32]

Well I don't know how Canada does it but for most of the west, every bank must maintain a certain amount of reserves. The US Fed lowered that in 2020 and has not raised it yet.

If they lend out so much that they don't have enough reserves, they can overnight borrow from other banks to meet reserve requirements. The overnight lending rate is what the banks pay to other banks for that loan. This is simplified but mostly correct.

The Fed sets that overnight lending rate. Because it costs more to loan overnight, if a bank is low on reserves it will need to charge higher interest for loans to consumers that it lent to when going under reserve requirements.

Of course, this is assuming they went under reserve requirements and need to do this at all. If they didn't, then they can lend their excess cash to other banks and get the Fed Fund rate as interest.

Thing is, most banks have a ton of reserves due to the printing press and those M1/M2 numbers. But we don't have to guess that, we can look - keep in mind minimum reserve requirements were lowered in 2020, so not only have reserves gone way, way, way up - they also aren't required to keep as much.

So, banks are awash in money basically.

If you take the 3 charts, M1, M2, and bank reserves, the problem is clear. The entire system is awash in money. Not just a little bit, 40% added to M2, 500% on M1, and banks have 200% more reserves than they had in 2019.

This is why we have so much inflation.



View attachment 257015

I hear this argument but again we must put this into context. That injection you are pointing out is from the previous Govt. in America and if nothing else there are plenty of irregularities with that administration. The chart below is the Fed's historical rate. The unfortunate thing is that has not helped most people so instead of going into the Greater economy it ended up in the wrong places and widened the wealth gap. Instead of inflation what your chart shows me is gentrification. Taking into account that the current Govt. is trying to fix the inequity, infrastructure, fund a conflict (especially this) and officially fight Anarchy, all of that costs money. Let's also keep in mind that the playbook on fighting "Inflation"comes from the Govt that gave us Free Trade and The War on Drugs but also the Iran Contra affair and crack cocaine. If you have lived long enough to remember. We live in a new Age now where digital currency is real because in part of these events.

 

[the54thvoid]

Hi folks, can we rein in the commentary on political points please? This is also a general crypto discussion thread, I don't think diversions to solely discuss fiat currency are particularly on topic.

 

[Outback Bronze]

losses of other members

I felt much pity when Terra LUNA went down. His Algo's didn't work and all investors got hit. Who is to blame here? Creators or Investors for playing lotto?

I was one of the only people who felt sorry for these poor souls when just about everybody else (seen it on this forum) said good riddance to them and crypto as a whole.

Its a tough gig and all investors have been well warned about crypto, with or without doing their homework. Surely the majority of people are well informed of the risks associated in crypto, as clearly shown.

What upsets me the most about all of this bs is these so called investors will probably never be back in the market which I'm unsure about could potentially hurt the market going forward.

Hell, even musk sold.

 

[Bomby569]

I felt much pity when Terra LUNA went down. His Algo's didn't work and all investors got hit. Who is to blame here? Creators or Investors for playing lotto?

I was one of the only people who felt sorry for these poor souls when just about everybody else (seen it on this forum) said good riddance to them and crypto as a whole.

Its a tough gig and all investors have been well warned about crypto, with or without doing their homework. Surely the majority of people are well informed of the risks associated in crypto, as clearly shown.

What upsets me the most about all of this bs is these so called investors will probably never be back in the market which I'm unsure about could potentially hurt the market going forward.

Hell, even musk sold.

When you read about LUNA that thing made no sense at all. It had the problem of assuming people would always be buying it, could never overcome a bad period because of the USD parity. So many countries tried that with spectacularly bad results, just ask Argentina for example.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I felt much pity when Terra LUNA went down. His Algo's didn't work and all investors got hit. Who is to blame here? Creators or Investors for playing lotto?

The whole thing was a literal repeat of Iron / Titan. So you tell me. Except instead of Titan being supported by 25% of Iron, Terra was 100% supported by Luna. Aka, it was even more shit than its predecessor.

Oh right, and the creator of Terra/LUNA made a ton of money from the whole venture. So follow the money. He took a well known, unstable scheme. Hyped it on social media, took their money, and pretended that it wouldn't collapse just like Iron/Titan.

Scammers, grifters, conmen all around. Bonus points, do it in another country so you remain outside the reach of US law enforcement.

At least Celsius / Voyager is US based, we might be able to jail those assholes.

---------

If you're feeling pity with Terra/LUNA but not Celsius, then you're ignorant. Terra/LUNA was a more obvious shitcoin situation than Celsius in my evaluation. Furthermore, the Celsius issue was because Celsius gave their money to 3AC, and 3AC directly invested into Terra/LUNA.

So the Celsius collapse and the Terra/LUNA collapse is one and the same. It doesn't make sense for you to separate them out. When one company loses $300,000,000 to Terra/LUNA, what do you think happens to that company?

This is exactly why I'm telling you to get off your high horse. I'm not even sure if you've been following the news, or tracking why/what is going on in the cryptocoin world right now. Your statements are self-contradictory given the facts on the ground. Again, I ask you, are you sure your exchange where you're keeping your cryptocoins is safe? The toxic assets problem from 2007 is repeating itself in the cryptocoin world, and the second order effects of the Terra/Luna crash are only now being discovered.

 

[Outback Bronze]

but not Celsius

Your putting words into my mouth mate. I did say before I'm sorry for your co workers loss. You need to take a chill pill. Your showing much anger. You need to tame your own dragon.

We all have our own battles to fight. Some lose some win. This is the nature of life.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I did say before I'm sorry for your co workers loss.

Sure sure. But you're avoiding my point.

Are your coins safe? I told you the story in hopes that you've learned the lesson from my friend/coworker's venture into Celsius... as well as my lesson from Mt. Gox. Not your wallet, not your coins. Are you moving your coins to your own hardware wallet now? Or are your coins still dangerously in the hands of some random exchange out there?

You're getting distracted perhaps by some of my rhetoric. So I'll simplify things down for you.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Sure sure. But you're avoiding my point.

Are your coins safe? I told you the story in hopes that you've learned the lesson from my friend/coworker's venture into Celsius... as well as my lesson from Mt. Gox. Not your wallet, not your coins. Are you moving your coins to your own hardware wallet now? Or are your coins still dangerously in the hands of some random exchange out there?

You're getting distracted perhaps by some of my rhetoric. So I'll simplify things down for you.

I'll just say, I looked at bitcoin \ crypto and ran some mining to play around with at one point. Decided it was a waste of time because they almost all deposit the coins into some kind of fake 'bank' which I had zero trust in.

Now sure you can pull it into your personal wallet, but I'd guess that 99% of people participating in crypto don't understand what that means, what's more the exchanges mining groups do all they can to discourage taking control of your crypto through a combination of penalties and obfuscating the process. It all feels very sketchy and under the table.

 

[Outback Bronze]

Are your coins safe?

I'm well aware of the saying "not your keys, not your coins" so lets leave it at that yeah.

 

[95Viper]

I was going to lock this thread, however, there may be some members who would like to discuss the topic and follow the guidelines.
So, I am leaving it open for the moment.
Follow the guidelines.
Stay on topic.
Be polite (no insults).
Act civil.
Or, the thread may get locked and/or members may be issued warnings/points.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I'll just say, I looked at bitcoin \ crypto and ran some mining to play around with at one point. Decided it was a waste of time because they almost all deposit the coins into some kind of fake 'bank' which I had zero trust in.

Now sure you can pull it into your personal wallet, but I'd guess that 99% of people participating in crypto don't understand what that means, what's more the exchanges mining groups do all they can to discourage taking control of your crypto through a combination of penalties and obfuscating the process. It all feels very sketchy and under the table.

Its not just the "fake banks" that bother me. I'm a Computer Engineer and have actually studied a tiny bit of cryptography back in college. I know all sorts of ways that public/private keys can be compromised in a PKI setup. (Seriously: any well-studied Web Developer needs to learn this crap because we do this all the time when setting up that "https" feature on our webservers)

Lets take for example, a hardware wallet. How many people have done security-analysis on the random-number generator? All you gotta do, to steal money from a hardware generator, is have the private-key random-number generator be predictable in a way the creator can predict, but no one else can.

So sure, the hardware wallet can create 10, 20, 1000, or a million "offline" wallets. But all million of those wallets have predictable keys that the backdoor / Trojan company can then steal your wallet any time they please. Has anyone actually tried to solve this trust problem innate to the offline wallet market? Can anyone prove to me that (first hit on Google: https://shop.ledger.com/products/ledger-nano-x/) is not backdoored / Trojan Horsed?

No? No one cares to discuss? Its been 10+ years, I'm sure someone else has thought of this problem already. How can the hardware company prove to me, that the hardware / private key generator is not compromised? How do you decentralize trust in these circumstances? Now obviously, I can solve this myself by downloading open source wallet generators, inspecting the code, valuating the generator (they're not a lot of code). Compiling the code myself, creating an offline Linux box and copying the wallet generating code there and setting it up myself. The random number generator can be diceware (I play D&D, I can just roll my own dice to create my own offline wallet, and manually enter that information to generate an offline wallet).

But I don't think the typical BTC / cryptocoin user takes the kinds of precautions I do. They're just not trained in cryptography like a Computer Engineer is. Now lets say I do this work, how do I, as a trustworthy (tm) Computer Engineer, prove to others that my security audit over a specific set of code was in fact worthwhile and trustworthy? Etc. etc.

These are the hard problems the cryptocoin community needs to discuss and solve. I don't necessarily expect solutions right away, but I want to see progress over time, people solving these fundamental issues and making the world a better place. I myself don't have a solution either. I'm just angry at the lack of fundamental progress of the community as a whole.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

I'll just say, I looked at bitcoin \ crypto and ran some mining to play around with at one point. Decided it was a waste of time because they almost all deposit the coins into some kind of fake 'bank' which I had zero trust in.

Now sure you can pull it into your personal wallet, but I'd guess that 99% of people participating in crypto don't understand what that means, what's more the exchanges mining groups do all they can to discourage taking control of your crypto through a combination of penalties and obfuscating the process. It all feels very sketchy and under the table.

heh, consider it a "redistribution of wealth". A million or so people with little understanding with a few hundred people who understand how it works walk into a few games of crypto-currency... The few hundred walk out many times richer.
I think most of the people that made a killing off of crypto were the lone wolf types that did the research and did their own mining separate from mining pools. I'm not sure if my thinking is right, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say that individual(s) running some of those mining pools also made a substantial amount of money.

 

[RandallFlagg]

heh, consider it a "redistribution of wealth". A million or so people with little understanding with a few hundred people who understand how it works walk into a few games of crypto-currency... The few hundred walk out many times richer.
I think most of the people that made a killing off of crypto were the lone wolf types that did the research and did their own mining separate from mining pools. I'm not sure if my thinking is right, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say that individual(s) running some of those mining pools also made a substantial amount of money.

That has been my impression too. Most people's idea of research has something to do with twitter or a forum somewhere, which is ludicrous. I also found that most don't even know what blockchain is.

Pretty much every person ever that said crypto was anonymous is going to fall into these categories. Bitcoin is a blockchain technology, and blockchain is a database that records everything and every wallet the coin ever touched. I have a $5 bill in my wallet that is far, far, far more anonymous than any crypto will ever be.

 

[R-T-B]

Pretty much every person ever that said crypto was anonymous is going to fall into these categories. Bitcoin is a blockchain technology, and blockchain is a database that records everything and every wallet the coin ever touched. I have a $5 bill in my wallet that is far, far, far more anonymous than any crypto will ever be.

Anonymous != untracable.

Crypto is in fact anonymous. It is however very very tracable. Thus if your anonyminity is ever compromised you are basically "all out there."

 

[dragontamer5788]

Anonymous != untracable.

Crypto is in fact anonymous. It is however very very tracable. Thus if your anonyminity is ever compromised you are basically "all out there."

I liked the invented term pseudononymous. Its a bit of a play on words. Thereby, "Pseudononymous" has two interpretations:

* "Pseudo-Anonymous", ie: fake anonymous, but kinda acts like it in some select ways. (Pseudo being the ancient greek word for "false" or "fake").

* "Pseudonym-amous". IE: Entirely based upon pseudonyms that are fully public. But these pseudonyms can be randomly generated.

Both interpretations are correct. So its a nifty pun and good name for the effect of the BTC network. Its not quite anonymous, but its not quite public either. Its pseudononymous.

 

[R-T-B]

I liked the invented term pseudononymous. Its a bit of a play on words. Thereby, "Pseudononymous" has two interpretations:

* "Pseudo-Anonymous", ie: fake anonymous, but kinda acts like it in some select ways. (Pseudo being the ancient greek word for "false" or "fake").

* "Pseudonym-amous". IE: Entirely based upon pseudonyms that are fully public. But these pseudonyms can be randomly generated.

Both interpretations are correct. So its a nifty pun and good name for the effect of the BTC network. Its not quite anonymous, but its not quite public either. Its pseudononymous.

Well I mean you can be fully tracable and still be fully anonymous. That's basically bitcoin if you use an address with no other data. No one is really going to connect it to you.

Anything less is on you, not the protocol.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Well I mean you can be fully tracable and still be fully anonymous. That's basically bitcoin if you use an address with no other data. No one is really going to connect it to you.

Anything less is on you, not the protocol.

Distinctions without differences. I'll send you a picture of my $5 bill, both sides, and a picture of my wallet. You tell me where that bill has been, who all ever touched it. You can't.

Why anyone would want a currency that tracks every single thing that you do with it, and then would buy into the concept of anonymity, is beyond me. This characteristic of blockchain and crypto that uses blockchain is precisely, exactly, why China is so interested in the technology. The idea that you can't be tracked down is ludicrous, arrogant in fact, but I think we've had this conversation.

"

Blockchain and Anonymity​

Bitcoin works on a blockchain, which for our purposes is a list of when Bitcoin came into being, where it was used, and by whom. (It’s actually a little more complicated than that. Read our article on how blockchain works for all the details.)


RELATEDWhat Is a "Blockchain"?

This list, also called a ledger, is public. Anybody can see which wallet spent which Bitcoin where. Although the person who spent the money is hidden behind a bunch of scrambled numbers and letters (One example is “vBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaN,” although that one’s fake.), their activity isn’t.

For example, with the knowledge that your buddy John spent money on a specific service—a VPN, let’s say—on a certain day, you could go to the ledger and see which Bitcoin address spent money on that VPN then. Even if that search spits out more than one or two addresses, you can check where else money was spent. If one of the addresses that you found made a Wikipedia donation like John regularly does, you have a second data point.

Like with browser fingerprinting, it isn’t one specific data point that gives you away. It’s the whole picture. With today’s technology, it’s easy to piece all of these little bits together, too, making pseudonymous accounts next to useless when it comes to protecting your identity."

 

[R-T-B]

Distinctions without differences.

Except you know, the differences that exist. Details matter.

Although the person who spent the money is hidden behind a bunch of scrambled numbers and letters (One example is “vBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaN,” although that one’s fake.), their activity isn’t.

Yeah, that's called anonymity. By definition. Traceability is unrelated but probably equally important to a privacy end goal. (Also that address is decidedly real, but good luck finding it's matching private key).

I'm not claiming bitcoin is a good tool for data privacy or keeping your identity secret. Used improperly it can be quite horrible. But details matter.

This list, also called a ledger, is public.

You say this like it's some kind of big revelation. Anyone who has been with crypto for a few years knows this. There are private ledger cryptos but I don't really care for them at all frankly.

The idea that you can't be tracked down

Is diffilcult, but not impossible. Certainly better coins for that though.

 

[Outback Bronze]

Why anyone would want a currency that tracks every single thing that you do with it

Wouldn't this be perfect for government's to avoid tax scams? I suppose even drug dealers would have a hard time.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

That has been my impression too. Most people's idea of research has something to do with twitter or a forum somewhere, which is ludicrous. I also found that most don't even know what blockchain is.

Pretty much every person ever that said crypto was anonymous is going to fall into these categories. Bitcoin is a blockchain technology, and blockchain is a database that records everything and every wallet the coin ever touched. I have a $5 bill in my wallet that is far, far, far more anonymous than any crypto will ever be.

That is true until they implement something like cash scanners that record the serial numbers on the bills. Stores that have self-checkout already have machines that take bills & scan for their authenticity. Its just a matter of swapping the machines out or upgrading them to read the serials. I wonder how many duplicate bills will show up across the country, heh.