The crypto thread

[Samson]

Wallets linked to Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research unexpectedly begin selling off $1.7 million in tokens

Wallets known to be controlled by Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm founded my Sam Bankman-Fried and currently in bankruptcy with the other FTX companies, suddenly began selling off large quantities of mostly small altcoins on December 28. Whoever controls the wallets swapped the tokens for Tether stablecoins or Ethereum, then tumbled the funds through cryptocurrency mixers — a strong sign that this was probably not just the FTX liquidators consolidating wallets.
Altogether, an estimated $1.7 million was moved through various services to obfuscate the flow of funds.​

Tax loss harvesting service emerges to help collectors unload their worthless NFTs

If you bought an NFT for $1,000 and it's now worthless, you still have to find someone willing to buy it before you can claim it as a loss on your taxes. A project called "Unsellable" has emerged to fill that need—buying worthless NFTs for $0.01 (for a small fee) so that people can claim the losses.
"This tool really helped me unload those embarrassing early NFT Hype investments. Should shave about $1000 off my tax bill", a supposed user writes in a testimonial blurb on the site (although the testimonials appear to be faked).
Perhaps someone has finally found a viable NFT business model after all.​

 

[stinkubus]

I'm sure quite a bit of dirty money was laundered when the NFTs were fetching "high prices".

 

[innonimatu]

I don't think you can reasonably claim advertising is a ponzi scheme. It's a gargantuan industry all others are willing to pour significant proportions of their budgets into. Humans are willful, that isn't going to suddenly change.

More a racked than a ponzi scheme, true. The idea is that "you must advertise (with us, we're the monopoly - or oligopoly, advertise broadly) because your competitors are advertising. With us.

Nice scheme, huh? People shouldn't play it. Some of the big corporations that are also oligopolies are learning about that - the P&G of the world have been cutting advertisements for staples. Small scale or niche, there's people going by word of mouth or running their own advertisement on public platforms. You know, what the net used to be before the Yahoos and Googles took it over and the Facebooks and Apples walled off pieces of it.

But luxuries do need advertisement. And the middle-sized businesses or the more competitive ones, that can reach broadly not just those interested in sometime local or specific. There is a function for advertisement. Competing against others paying to advertise on the same platform is a racket to enrich the owners of the platform though. More people may just start refusing to play that game...

 

[Kaitzilla]

SBF is now on Substack.

FTX Pre-Mortem Overview

Summary In mid November, FTX International became effectively insolvent. The FTX saga, at the end of the day, is somewhere between that of Voyager and Celsius. Three things combined together to cause the implosion: a) Over the course of 2021, Alameda’s balance sheet grew to roughly $100b of Net...

sambf.substack.com

 

[stinkubus]

LOL how in the world would his lawyers allow this?

 

[innonimatu]

He's still free isn't he? Must have friends in very high places, all the money stolen went somewhere.

 

[stinkubus]

Nothing's been reported but given what his parents do (Stanford profs) and the fact he was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair it's not a stretch to assume he has powerful friends in high finance.

 

[Farm Boy]

The parasite layer of society.

Wonder how to make our heartworm medicine taste like bacon...

 

[RobAnybody]

I haven't checked in with my Crypto stuff in a few months (since November - I have a spreadsheet ) but it turns out they are up a decent amount since then. I don't have Bitcoin, but I track it & it's gone from $16,516 to $23,828 since then. Etherium, which I do have, has gone from $1,256 to $1,619, which actually means I'm Back In Black, by a little.

Shiba is now back in the "4 zeroes after the decimal" territory rather than "5 zeroes", though barely, which means I'm up there (I don't remember what I bought it for b/c I did a few buys so can't pinpoint the exact amount, just that it had 5 zeroes each time). I should probably get rid of that one, but it's so little money relatively speaking I don't mind holding in hopes of a miracle. Most of the ancillary coins are up quite a bit as well. Still not looking to sell - I don't need that money right now & I've always viewed the whole thing as a long-term speculative asset (meaning not at all concerned with the "practical" uses).

I have no idea what any of this means or why it happened, but just figured I'd bump the thread to spark discussion & see if anyone else has any insight.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Everything got hammered, not just bitcoin. A lot has slowly floated up.

Tesla back up to $200 after a low of $113 start of Jan.

 

[Moriarte]

Crypto valuations are moving in concert with general technology sector in the US. It has been this way since crypto became mainstream. October last year marked the bottom of the bear market of both US stocks and their extension - crypto. The rebound that you’re seeing, Rob, is revitalisation of interest towards technology sector as a whole, towards US economy, stocks, not a specific crypto development.

As for crypto itself, it remains in a philosophical crisis. Failed to become anything substantial. (Because the head was filled with ideas of building pyramids and nothing more) No one, yet, seem to have found an answer to the question of why crypto is so much better than Visa card and a bunch of gold bars.

But they keep looking for the answer! I think crypto will remain in the shadow until some ultra billionaire adopts it for their own cause. Someone big enough to disregard pressure from established groups within international finance. Musk, Bezos, et al. That will, in turn, force other large oligarchs to compete. Any of those people would Love a personal currency on the leash. But, they don’t know how to make it happen yet. (or afraid to do it)

A bit of news: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...oser-to-being-their-own-bank/?sh=7a3f4d1921b5

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

How will they succeed where the Winklevoss failed?

 

[El_Machinae]

The fact that it kinda tracks with growth tech stocks is kinda neat. I also think it makes a reasonable inflation hedge. Just the problem with inflation hedges is that you need to get out before the inflation going to get tackled. Anybody who sold before the inflation signal was being noticed (but after all the new money came in) would have been more-than-fine.

 

[Samson]

I would argue that "it" is not all behaving the same way. The best cryptocurrency has this price graph. Sure it is not really stable, but it does not have the vast swings of other crypto. I think it shows that having an actual value add use case along with a CPU dominated mining process that incentivises users to leave their wallet mining in the background (rather than big farms of specialised equipment) provides a reasonable model for a functioning economy.

Monero price graph

 

[¯\_ (ツ)_/¯]

I thought Crypto was dying. I guess it is bouncing back? Interesting.

 

[Samson]

It seems you can fix blockchains by turning them off and on again, sometimes

It's just like mid-2022 again! As transactions slowed to a crawl, developers embarked on a "coordinated restart" — a euphemism for the rather centralized way this supposedly decentralized network has to routinely go about fixing itself.

One "coordinated restart" apparently wasn't enough, because a second one followed later that day. Developers reportedly didn't know why the blockchain suddenly began to slow, though it followed shortly after validators began adopting a new version of Solana code, pointing to a possible culprit in the new release. The new version had reportedly operated for six months on the testnet before it began to be deployed.

Other theories were also considered, as reported by CoinDesk: "One leading theory was that a 'fat block' gunked up the blockchain's mechanics."

The outage is reminiscent of the ones that plagued the network through 2022, leading some to question whether it could be suitable for replacing critical infrastructure.

• "Solana Network Stumbles, On-Chain Trading Slows After 'Forking' Incident", CoinDesk
• "Solana Validators to Make Second Restart Attempt as Transaction Freeze Drags On", CoinDesk

 

[Samson]

WSJ alleges Tether, Bitfinex, and related companies used falsified documents to obtain banking WSJ (paywalled)

A report from the Wall Street Journal made serious allegations against the stablecoin operator Tether, sister company Bitfinex, and the web of companies behind it. According to journalists, companies behind Tether "turned to shadowy intermediaries, falsified documents and shell companies to get back in" to the global banking system in late 2018, after a series of governmental actions cut them and their banking partners off from the financial system.

Among other allegations, the WSJ outlined how Tether was repeatedly denied accounts at New York's Signature Bank, and so ultimately got an executive at an aviation fuel broker called AML Global to open an account that appeared to be used to fraudulently process transactions on behalf of Tether and Bitfinex.

Tether is the largest stablecoin in circulation, though its entire existence has been marred by questions around its legitimacy and the status of its claimed reserves.

 

[Samson]

The phrase ponzi scheme is used a lot with crypto. I would not agree with all the use, but it really sounds like celcius was one, and there are not criminal charges coming from the report. It was supposed to be investing money and paying out 80% of the returns in interest. In reality it never made any profits and the new money coming in was used to pay the interest and the exec team, who took out tens of millions.

Spoiler Youtube on it :

 

[Joij21]

See the biggest problem I see with crypto is it was supposed to be a "currency". As in gain mainstream "normie" use as some medium which you would use to directly purchase things at the mall and not just the dark web.

Instead the mainstream has chosen to treat it as some kind of commodity or equity on the stock exchange with various "private unregulated brokerages".

The crypto advocates should instead try to convince boomers that it would be a great way to replace credit cards. Unfortunately neither boomers in their ignorance nor banksters trying to continue to profit off of boomers will allow it. Crypto's inability to be adopted by the mainstream as an actual currency is just that, banksters trying to protect the credit card industry.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Crypto has always been a "get rich quick scheme" by its backers, for its backers. New cryptos are like IPOs for stocks.