Also, I think that if BTC falls below, say, 10K, a lot of loans are going to get called in suddenly, and we're going to see that a lot of people were swimming without trunks [0], i.e. mismanaging customer funds and assuming that the crypto market would go up indefinitely. In other words, I think the story we're learning now about Alameda is going to turn out to be a lot of people's story.
But we shall see!
[0] https://money.com/swimming-naked-when-the-tide-goes-out/
https://ia801508.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.5...
Aww do you? :'(
A record amount of BTC not moved on chain for the long term has reached all time highs, "wash trading" or not, that can't be faked, it's being held as it's primary value proposition, a store of value.
I can't believe the Tether FUD is still widespread after all these years, all completely unproven and wrong time and time again.
If the USG stopped to think for just a second maybe they'd ask themselves why they'd sell absolute digital scarcity for something they can just print out of thin air for themselves.
> I can't believe the Tether FUD is still widespread after all these years, all completely unproven and wrong time and time again.
is false.
Tether knowingly falsified documents when applying for bank accounts [0], lied about its backing [1], and is the currency of choice for pig butchering scams [2] and Hamas [3].
Overall, a really bad, obviously criminal org, and someone who responds to that with "FUD!" is generally either on the payroll [4] or soon to be in for a very rude awakening [5].
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-companies-behind-tether-...)
[1] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8450-21
[2] https://www.trmlabs.com/post/pig-butchering-scams-what-the-d...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/militants-behind-israe...
[4] https://protos.com/astroturfing-and-fake-support-for-tether-...
[5] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/10/31/us-tether-bank-fr...
I thought it was supposed to be a currency?
1. Unit of Account (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_account)
2. Store of Value (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_of_value)
3. Medium of Exchange (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_of_exchange)
So think about a couple examples of these:
Goats would be terrible money. A unit of account that is "goats" would be subject to birth- and death-rates.
Sports game tickets would be terrible money - they're significantly more valuable before the game, and after the game, they're far less valuable.
Mountains would be terrible money. How could you exchange them, unless you were able to keep track of who owned the mountain?
Dollars are actually pretty good at all three. They don't die. They're pretty stable in terms of value. It's pretty easy to give someone Dollars.
Bitcoin are... ok... at some of these. It's pretty good as a unit of account - if you can secure your wallet. It's... ok... at being a store of value - there have been some very high-profile sudden value fluctuations that left people holding a bag. It's pretty easy to give someone Bitcoin, but not trivial. It looks like it costs about $1 to make a bitcoin transaction happen, where I can transfer a few dollars for free.
I'm not a Bitcoin supporter, but I don't think it's fair to malign the tech for things it actually can do.
2. Yeah, I was trying to come up with a simple "can't be exchanged easily" things and I (pretty obviously) failed. Got any ideas of "can't be exchanged easily" stuff?
The Rai stones are just a curious example of how creative people can get with their ledgers. And by extension - what happens when people who can manufacture your unit of account out of thin air come along.
I hope you have a great day.
How much of this is due to people losing access to their wallets and the BTC being lost forever?
The number of BTC lost forever was already pretty high from what I remember. My suspicion is post-FTX there was a surge in self custody and many of these people likely lost access to their wallets from any number of the issues self-custody can bring. Or they just can’t figure out how to get it out.
Self-custody is completely impractical for 99.999% of the people walking around. The UX is horrible and the entire process overall has the most foot guns anyone will ever see.
It’s also worth pointing out that the “primary purpose” as a store of value now claimed today is only a result of bitcoin failing at the other claimed “purposes” over the years.
This one is especially entertaining to hear from crypto/BTC advocates as the title of the BTC paper is “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
As usual on this site, the assumption that 99% of people are complete drooling idiots for anything remotely tech-related runs firm. Believe it or not, a surprisingly large percentage of the population can rather quickly learn to manage relatively non-complex things like holding their own crypto and so forth without having to be specialized devops or top-tier tech workers.
Not everyone outside a certain bubble is blindly stupid just because they do other things with their lives.
What I am saying is that everyone forgets things and makes mistakes. Have you ever had to do a password reset? I know I have. Have you ever messed up a backup or deleted something accidentally? I know I have. HNers are in many cases lifelong technology professionals and all of this and more still applies to us. Just like how even the best and most brilliant physicians in the world still carry malpractice insurance. People mess things up all of the time. This is basic and fundamental being human stuff.
Extrapolate this to large numbers and the general population with varying levels of technical proficiency. Bank of America has over 60 million customers. How many times a day do you think they click a password reset link? How many times a day do you think someone calls customer service because they can't get in their banking app or account online? How many times do you think someone ends up walking in a branch to get it figured out? How many times a day do you think someone does an "oops" transferring funds, etc?
The answer is almost certainly a staggering number of people, every single day. Even 100k is just 0.16% of those 60 million customers so I would put that on the low side. Banks like Bank of America don't operate call centers, branches, etc because they're running a jobs program and like to waste money on unnecessary payroll. They have these resources because they're necessary. In the real world people forget things, lose stuff, mess things up, and occasionally need help.
The crypto self-custody mantra combined with irreversible transactions essentially depends on never make a mistake, never forget, and never lose anything. Combine that with the poor UI and UX I mentioned and it's a recipe for disaster.
It fundamentally goes against everything we universally know about human beings.
Until crypto FINALLY realizes it needs to bend to the real world and not the other way around it will continue to have some of the poorest adoption numbers of any technology from the past 100 years.
The bitcoin trading market is much thinner than it looks -- wash trading is ubiquitous [0] and BTC's price is systematically propped up by a likely fraudulent stablecoin [1]. High prices benefit the organized crime orgs that transact with it [2], but none of the putatively legitimate web3 projects rely on high valuations to work, in theory. If blockchain solves a real problem, it should do it at BTC = $100 or whatever.
IMO, if the US government floods the market, it could do a lot of damage to organized crime groups, potentially lead to unbacked stablecoin's death spiral (as people attempt to redeem more cash than they actually have on hand), and perhaps lead to a healthier, less mania-prone crypto market.
[0] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/wash-trading-centralised-cryp...
[1] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2018/06/13/tether-manipulat...
[2] https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/china-sells-fentanyl-f...