What? Most people aren't trying to make a quick buck by rent-seeking in a system based on massive electrical waste.
Myself? I cut my work hours recently so that I can live now instead of dreaming of someday. I spend my free time enjoying my life, not trying to figure out who to exploit.
That's also an option.
It’s not clear to me why building a derivatives trading bot leads to exploitation but whatever floats your ideological boat I suppose.
...rent-seeking in a system based on massive electrical waste.
With that as the core assumption, the exploitation would be anyone who relies on the environment (everyone, then), I'd think.
Is there a term for someone who stretches language in such a way for rhetorical purposes?
I can see why it's an effective rhetorical trick, since it forces people to debate whether the behavior is bad enough to fit the definition of exploitation, or whether it's not sufficiently bad. By having this debate we've already implicitly accepted their premise that something bad is going on.
Yes. Isn't it?
Isn't the electrical waste something bad?
I happen to think that flying overseas for a holiday wastes a lot of energy. I could label this a "massive energy waste". Then as a corollary I could label people taking those trips and people facilitating those trips as "exploitative" actors. But these are mere debating tricks even though it's all vaguely accurate given the words I've chosen and the framing I've picked.
The root problem to all of this is an untaxed externality.
A lot of crypto currencies use a lot of electricity that wouldn't have been used otherwise. A portion of that electricity that was used will be non-renewable energy.
> I happen to think that flying overseas for a holiday wastes a lot of energy. I could label this a "massive energy waste".
Yes, people taking over seas vacations instead of staying home also wastes energy.
Oh, you've taken on less work hours to enjoy your life? Maybe others are able to view that as a waste. Quit stretching things so much that you paint __everyone else__ as a threat or enemy.
I didn't say I didn't waste energy, I didn't say I was an angel, I was merely pointing out the fact that two wrongs don't make a right. "It's ok for bitcoin to waste electricity because people flying internationally waste electricity too" is a pretty weak argument.
Call it waste or whatever else you want to, the fact is, crypto currency uses a ton of electricity that wouldn't be used otherwise. Sure you can go on weird tangents if you want but it is a simple fact that seems silly to ignore.
The accusation here, right or wrong, is that this is what crypto and the bot are ultimately doing.
Note, this may have you reaching for questions that start with "How is this any different from..."
I get it, I could be doing something much more productive with my life.
The money this bot makes isn't for myself if that's any consolation. Not most of it anyways.
I have big plans to use the money generated to help the poor.
I live very frugally, exclusively shop at thrift stores, drive a 20 year old car that I fix myself, and am frustrated with all of the homelessness I see in my city.
In my eyes, this bot is the only way I can stand to make a real dent in that pressing issue. All I know how to do is code.
My cryptocurrency of choice is Stellar actually, it doesn't use any electricity hardly whatsoever to keep it's blockchain safe.
Not all cryptocurrencies are hell-bent on destroying the globe. Some of them actually try to solve real problems.
Everyone who wants to be rich says this exact line even though you don't need a lot of money to help the poor. Do you currently volunteer for shelters, charities or soup kitchens? If not, why do you think that will change when you get more money?
That's probably what billionaires tells themselves as they rocket to outer space.
Something that provides value (liquidity) can’t be rent-seeking.
Likewise the electricity isn’t waste since it enables something people value (bitcoin).
Which has the added benefit of the now not being an apocalyptic hellscape just yet.
Most people aren't trying to make a quick buck by rent-seeking in a system based on massive electrical waste.
On the reals though, casual moral condemnation of particular economic activity is usually indicative of insufficient self-reflection.
Similar scenario: I take up arms to aid the king and in turn ensure stability and peace for society. The land I'm given as compensation allow my lineage to live as nobility for centuries. Is that ethical?
I'm making hyperboles not to discount your logic but to show an extreme and try to pinpoint where the limit is. For what its worth, I'm saving quite aggressively and live very modestly for the sole purpose of increasing my leisure, perhaps to retire early. So I am obviously not making this argument as a way to bash FIRE practitioners. I am genuinely curious about the ethical implications of compounding rewards for legitimate sacrifice. Of course someone who works hard in their youth without consuming should be able to retire earlier without guilt. Though I think Warren Buffett is on to something in his disdain for dynastic wealth.
It's easy to argue it's unethical by invoking utilitarianism. Unfortunately that also means basically anyone with a white collar job in the first world are unethical, which I'm not sure most people would agree. Other than that I can't think of any convincing for why that's unethical.
Imho society should be liberal in letting people acquire and enjoy their wealth, and strictly limit the passing down of wealth to prevent dynasties and having someone's opportunities decided by their parents' means. This would solve a lot of compounding problems. However, people are generally pretty terrified of not being able to let one's own kids inherit the entire fortune and sharing it with other random kids too. We'll likely continue along those lines for a long time coming, whatever your stance on ethics doesn't stand a chance against family bonds and their voting power.
If you contribute enough productive value (as determined by the free market, paid in some asset), why does it matter when you retire? I'm sure there is some endgame where we stop funding our consumption economy to the same degree we are now, but is that a reason to work until you can't anymore?
You can only kick up your feet if you've done enough "economic output" in the previous years, it's not a free lunch. This is coupled with the fact that most retired persons do invest and contribute capital. It's not at the same level as Mark Cuban, but does it really matter if you only invest a million vs 700 million+?
And who pays for the benefits the elderly (or as a matter of fact, the whole society) enjoys? Amenities, welfare, health insurance, etc. - taxpayers, exactly the demographic (before 65 - healthy & able-bodied) FIRE is encouraging to stop working, thus avoid paying income taxes.
Are you also against people being frugal because that causes them to pay less sales taxes?
“Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.” - Calvin Coolidge
That will never happen, as I explained in a sibling post:
>there would be an imbalance of labor demand compared to supply. This will cause prices to go up, which will make it less attractive to stay "retired" and more attractive to start working again.
I'm not sure what you're alluding to with this, but if it's "well if everybody goes FIRE society will collapse", then you're wrong because it will never occur (due to the economic mechanisms discussed earlier).
>but the ones that just want to perma-vacation on society's economic margin are what annoy me
Sounds like you're annoyed if people aren't being productive when they can be. After all, what's the difference between being 100% productive for only 50% of your working years (ie. FIRE), and being 50% productive for 100% of your working years? What's your opinion on people engaging in non-productive activities (eg. watching TV, playing sports, reading books), taking time off, or taking a "easy" profession? Are you against them as well? Or are they fine because they put in a token amount of work?
Bonus: I suggest reading this guy's blog for unexpected outcomes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26543527
Contrary to popular belief, taxes are supposed to benefit society (at least that is the intent & purpose). I agree this is not the case for corrupt countries, but if everyone just retired early or sat at home mining coins, where will society end up?
https://beunsettled.co/blog/is-the-fire-movement-really-the-...
...that haven't been realized yet. As you draw on your reserves, you'll be forced to realize those gains and pay taxes on them, making this a non-issue.
>willingly "unemployed" in your productive years to "enjoy life" and "freedom"
Ah yes, because the goal of life isn't to enjoy it, it's to be as productive as possible! Freedom is overrated anyways!
>as the crypto miners trying to avoid taxes.
Are miners known to be tax dodgers or something?
>but if everyone just retired early or sat at home mining coins, where will society end up?
"retired early": there would be an imbalance of labor demand compared to supply. This will cause prices to go up, which will make it less attractive to stay "retired" and more attractive to start working again.
"sat at home mining": same thing that would happen if everyone decided to gold mine. eventually there would be a saturation of miners and it won't be profitable anymore, causing people to exit.
You might be able to take out small amounts strategically to avoid the 40k threshold.
I may be mistaken, but isn't FIRE telling people to live off 4% of their investments forever? If the goal is 1 million, that is exactly 40k.
The math works out perfectly to leech on society - and (this is just a hypothesis) possibly causing S&P 500 ETFs to inflate as these FIRE "retirees" promote their methods online, creating a feedback loop and illusion of ever-increasing stock market boom for the last 10 years
well you're not the subject of the regulation either, it's the platforms which offer financial products to customers. And even if you might not incur any significant financial risk, derivatives trading, just like any other complex financial instrument is regulated because we have more than enough experience with (systemic) distortions on financial markets and huge losses being incurred by consumers of such services.
Who is “we”? Do you know who writes the legislation regulating financial markets? And you trust those people?
Made that mistake…
Ok, Huobi and FTX are competitive and you can negotiate with them.
And all of the above are obscenely expensive relative to legacy exchanges.
You can buy daily BTC/ETH which is delivered at 4pm, and the fee is a flat $5 per coin (so ~0.01% at the current BTC price). BTC is traded in 0.01 increments and ETH in 0.1 increments.
Caveat is that only wire deposits are accepted, so the wire fees plus network fees (if you withdraw your coins) can raise this cost substantially if you only trade small amounts.
You're an in an extremely risky market, from both a regulation perspective (they might shut you down/you might lose a lot), and from a perspective of all the scams and lack of transparency exists in crypto.
You can either try to become political, or move on to less risky markets. If you're just here to make money, move on and try something that doesn't carry this insane regulatory risk.
EDIT: I guess you meant transparency of exchanges? In which case yeah, I would agree.
Why not find something else to do besides automating crypto derivatives trading?
You still need a way to exchange from and to traditional fiat but that should not be too hard to do. For the most part you can use IOU fiat so they can stay on the ledger ("blockchain").
Big career changes get more difficult with every year you get older. Plus: if it involves moving into any adjacent subject area, doing it now and not in three to thirty months when it all blows up, you won't be competing with thousands of guys wearing the same exact Jack Wolfskin jacket and trying to move from fantasy finance to the real thing.
And if you don't share my pessimism: if I'm wrong and cryptocurrencies go mainstream, you also be out of luck because it'll become interesting to those teams of hundreds of Harvard & MIT quants.
And, of course, you might get to do something useful. At least in comparison to ending up being blamed for bonfires of both money and forests.
I read somewhere the comment that people like that are already there, and they have been reveling in the fact that simple arbitrage strategies that are otherwise obsolete in the rest of the financial world, are still quite lucrative with crypto.
Venezuela has a very basic paper-only id card.
I'm truly bothered by the fact that all of them are seemingly happy to comply with the laws of governments in regard to it citizens. So as soon as my country bans crypto (which is close to inevitable) - Binance will happily strip me of my income. For no reason, really.
Pushing me, a non-criminal and mostly() law-abiding citizen to turn to money laundering schemes.
technically every working citizen here is a criminal
Vote with your feet.
I've got a large family and a massive network of friends here in Ontario, however.
I grew up here, I can't move.
I've considered getting dual citizenship in another country, but that isn't exactly cheap or problem free either.
And I don't think the estonia e-residency is enough to satisfy regulators/crypto-exchanges that are serious about KYC.
Unfortunately you need trust in this situation. A trusted friend with a company you don't own paying taxes in another country, taking a cut and sending you the profits very frequently would be my choice. I did just that for friends a few times (for tax reasons though), sometimes holding out the money for a long period of time while they moved to more favourable tax jurisdictions.
You can setup a contract between his foreign company and your canadian company and send invoices - albeit that won't afford you that much protection if he decides to run away with the money (hence why you want to transfer the money frequently).
I wouldn't trust a stranger with this, to avoid getting scammed but there is an entire industry around frontmens and some players should be reputable enough to be trusted.
You don't want to.
Not the same thing.
It's all about priorities.
[edit: not sure why you are being downvoted, your answer is transparent and reasonable ...]
Someone else’s id and rental agreement is though, for this purpose. These are either directly purchasable on a DNM (darknet market), or something you can ask for
Woooorst case you need to deep fake live on webcam, this is consumer grade tech even open source now
Acquiring and using the ID This might violate laws
Anyway.
VPN from the expected country all the time, or Tor+RDP (remote desktop) from a compromised computer close to the postal code of the ID which can also be found on an RDP DNM
Hacker. News.
Or buy a Caribbean citizenship and circumstance that generates a utility bill.
(El Salvador has plans for easy crypto entreprenuer citizenship but they might lose international support over authoritarian moves.)
Unfortunately I don't know anybody well enough who lives outside of any of the banned jurisdictions to trust them with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crypto currency.
If I get caught lying, Bitmex can literally liquidate all of my positions and essentially steal my money. Not sure about the others but I imagine it's the same. They're all trying to save their own skin, they don't care about me at all.
Not saying it's a bad idea, I just don't see how it would be any different than the UK corporation I already setup.
The key here is the definition of "legal ownership of an entity", which - while most people tend to believe they're identical - is not the same as "actual control of an entity".
I'm saying that being the legal owner of a company and having actual control of said company are really not the same thing.
There are a number of ways to achieve this, all of which are very dependent on your personal context.
But to be practical, I'll give you an example: a member of my extended family runs a construction company.
For all intents and purposes, he completely controls the company: what it does, what the money generated is used for, etc...
However, he does not own it: as seen from the govmt's perspective, his ex-spouse does.
For reasons I am not going to get into, he could not own both this construction company and other businesses he controls without running into some issues.
What he did: he divorced his wife and through the divorce, he gave her full ownership of the company.
The facts that:
- they still live as a couple
- they love each other
- they trust each other with their lives
- the wife has zero interest in sticking her nose in the company's business
There is a reason why so many business names in the Anglo-Saxon world have the word "trust" in them.
This is just an example, there are many other avenues.
Another thing you might want to consider doing:
- raise capital thru the UK company
- use said capital to fund the bot to operate on a larger scale
- remain one among many shareholders (preferably a minority one), most of which aren't based in the jurisdiction that's giving you a headache.
- just be the salaried COO and single employee of said company, where all other shareholders know fully well that the day they try to wrestle actual control from you, the tech to run the bot only lives in your head ...
- when BitMex asks for company owners, just provide them with the truth.
You need to work on your alpha then, that should be your priority
Seriously those exchanges and trading platforms are set up to take advantage of n00bs like you. Don't be a sucker.
Thanks.
I am personally situated in Ontario, Canada, and getting more and more anxious by the day as seemingly every major legitimate derivatives trading platform with any volume is banning Ontarians from trading.
Kraken, Bitmex, Okex, and Huobi all won't even look at me simply because I have a personal address inside Ontario.
I can trade on their spot markets with them, sure... but the fees are MUCH higher than that of derivatives markets and my bot isn't THAT good to swallow a 0.3% trade cost when it's essentially performing high frequency trading. A fee of 0.075% however is manageable.
Binance still allows me to trade derivatives, and I can't figure out how or why. They don't have any legal authority to allow Ontarians to trade afaik, and they're the absolute largest derivatives trading platform on the planet right now.
I tried setting up a corporation in the UK back when Bitmex originally banned Ontarians, but when I went to register that corporation as a trader with Bitmex, they demanded to know the identity of all of the owners of the corporation, and if any of them resided inside Ontario then they wouldn't work with that corporation as well.
(the bot was originally setup to trade on Bitmex as they had the most liquidity at the time, but that has dwindled significantly ever since they banned Ontarians and all of the USA from trading in October 2020)
I don't have millions of dollars in my pocket, so I don't have the money to jump through legal loopholes by registering shell corporations and paying representatives to act as proxy owners in non-banned jurisdictions.
I'm not doing anything wrong imho. I'm not risking my life savings or going to crash the cryptocurrency market with my derivatives trading ways or whatever the Ontario government is trying to protect me from?
I am just another guy trying to make a buck like everyone else on this planet. Why is my government trying to prevent me from doing so at every turn? I just don't get it?
What are my options if/when Binance decides to ban Ontarians as well?