ever since Mt Gox, there has always been a question about the security of ownership of tokens, and the ability to keep them safe from the platform/exchange operator. And the MtGox heist has never been solved many years later. This security issue has always been my issue with the whole crypto currency usage as not a serious investment option.

Mt. Gox - Wikipedia

The cast of characters in the FTX corruption is unbelievable

see the FDIC letter

Who's Dan Friedberg? From Excapsa. You know, the company that made poker software that allowed employees to cheat at poker to make money, and then said people were just butthurt they lost at poker.

There is the letter original link: https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-rele...son-letter.pdf

Which doesn’t really mean Bitcoin or crypto in general are sketchy. Of course other things make them sketchy depending on how you look at them. But slimy guys in finance? Kinda the norm, right?

Joe

“(Why do you rob banks, Willie?) Because that's where the money is.”
― Willie Sutton, Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber

The probability for slimy higher here than anywhere else, for the Willie Sutton rule.
Which is why after working in the industry, I am skeptical about most all financial sales pitches.

Willie is literally saying something as obvious as “the sky is blue” but I could not agree with you more and since you are from the industry it carries much more weight.

Do you own any crypto?

Joe

Ah, never, thieve's currency. read some of my prior recent posts. every since the MtGox debacle, there has never been any guarantee of account segregation at the exchanges such that i could trust guarantee an account. However, since there is no intrinsic value, no reason to even think about it.

finance guy

That is not what I want to hear!!!!


But I appreciate the comment :)

Joe

Reminds one of the stock market…

Ask Larry, he knows


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH5-rSxilxo

Can’t wait to read the book, Michael Lewis is an awesome writer and has a way of being thoroughly researched and spot on. Two of my favorite books are written by him, Liar’s Poker and The Big Short. I lived within the inner circle of those books stories during my career and he is incredibly accurate in his descriptions of the goings on in the investment world in both books. He was accurate right down to the tendencies, mannerisms, and personalities of many of the main characters in the books, who I had extensive working relationships with, both good and bad.

You may like this article, which was slightly before my time in the industry, but I remember all the names.

Market Rap - Bernard Madoff, the Mafia, and the Friends of Michael Milken

And that's why I don't trust anyone with their sales pitches, you never know who is on the other side and what their edge is. . .

So it’s down to 16,700 today, just because two of its major backers are pulling out doesn’t mean it won’t die a fast and terrible death. Buy at 60,000 sell at 800 bucks, what a deal? FTX filed for bankruptcy this weekend; if gold backed cryptocurrency is floundering, it’s all a wash. The “house of cards” will fall on its lynch pin this week.

Financial slime balls aside, the promise of crypto is secure, anonymous ways of sending money to anyone anywhere. It cuts the banks out of the equation...which lowers cost. It is decentralized, meaning everyone has a copy of the ledger, not just the insiders at the bank. It has the potential to completely change the financial world. And, with contracts (and other stuff I don't understand), it can go much farther.

But

If I want to hold bitcoin, I need to make damn sure I don't lose my pass phrase. If you lose that you can never recover the bitcoin. If you have somebody else hold your coins...well we all saw how that can go just last week. Finally, if I have my coin and I want to sent it directly to you, I need to be absolutely 100% certain I'm sending it to the right address. If you put in one wrong character it goes to somebody else or is lost in the ether but you can be sure you won't get it back.

So most people kinda need banks. A lot like we have right now.

Having said all of that, I own some bitcoin. Ethereum too. But I'm not exactly betting the farm on it.

Joe

Yes, but, who could have ever predicted that this scheme could/would fail so spectacularly? I mean, besides Buffett... and so many others.

I'm currently looking for someone who handles tulip bulb futures. lol

The higher the price the less suckers to dump it on. El Salvador underwater hoping to pump and dump it . So many better forms of gambling. Options, commodities etc

anonymous but not anonymous, right?
I can do with my bank exactly what crypto can do, transfer to someone else with the address, i know the person and the address, so why is it different than a bank?

so then if I have to sent it to an address which I don't know who it is, like with ransomware, then its really just a thieve's currency, evading the banking regulations, evading prosecution because one wants to do something which isn't legal. . . . such as theft and taxes. . .

so then supporting anti tax movement just says, I want to use the US land and US services, but I don't want to share the burden for it, which makes me a selfish freeloader.

hence, there is no use case for bitcoin other than illegal, selfish, self enrichment activities.

prove me wrong

Watch and at least try to understand....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI4xEHI7tGg

Bitcoin is not a Security.

The big question...Will Sam Bankman-Fried be "Epsteined"?

SBF released on $250 million bond. Must be nice that his family could cover the fees.

Yeah but they probably only needed to cough up $25 mil

^^please read with heavy sarcasm^^

Joe