what "dollar crisis"?

month over month, nearly every asset in existence is significantly down against the dollar. cryptocurrencies, stocks, real estate, commodities, foreign currencies---you name it. even the DXY index is up 5% over the last 30 days.

leave it to bitcoin bulls to invent an imaginary "fiat crisis" to hype up their bitcoin holdings.

of course it can theoretically happen. if all miners stopped mining, difficulty would not adjust. it doesn't just magically adjust when hash rate drops. the blockchain needs to reach the 2016 block difficulty adjustment threshold.

there are lots of dead blockchains out there where transactions can no longer be processed. let's hope bitcoin never joins them, but the possibility certainly exists.

+1. in fact, BTC fell much harder than the stock market, and is still down much more. looks pretty damn fragile to me!

the whole concept of antifragility is rather questionable and is hardly documented outside of nassim taleb's invention. its application to bitcoin is even more questionable, although i will concede the possibility could exist if bitcoin had an exponentially larger network effect than it currently does. as it stands, the idea is laughable.

people like nassim taleb because he's ridiculously opinionated and talks never ending shit, but he's crazy.

moore's law can't continue indefinitely. even gordon moore (for whom the theory is named) said so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Forecasts_and_roadmaps

there's no need to focus on bitcoin asics. the entire chip industry is invalidating moore's law. the writing has been on the wall for a few years now. transistors can't be shrunk much more: https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/05/13/245938/moores-law-is-dead-now-what/

the same applied to mt gox.

the difference here is that mt gox held funds in an omnibus account, with no segregation of user accounts. in this case, the court found that since customer funds were segregated properly, they were held "in trust" and therefore are not company funds. therefore those funds cannot be used to pay cryptopia's creditors.

for those who have been fuming at rob dawson and adam clark for their incompetence (or maybe an inside job): at least they properly segregated user funds. now you're gonna get a lot more money back!

i won't rule out the possibility, but it's still pure conjecture. if the SEC and/or FINCEN wanted to take them down on much bigger criminal charges, i could see it. then the DOS and DOJ would get involved and pressure foreign governments.

absent that, i don't see why the USA government would give a shit at all about these alleged victims or these cases. i don't believe for a second that they just intervene in any and every civil ambulance chasing lawsuit in foreign jurisdictions, especially during these times.

i think it's exactly what @gentlemand said: this is the equivalent of patent trolling. they just want an easy payday, settled out of court. scumbag litigation lawyers, doing what they do best.

economic despair leads to xenophobia and right wing nationalism. people are struggling economically, so they desperately seek out leaders (nationalistic demagogues) who tell them what they want to hear: they incessantly blame foreign devils like china for causing all of their economic misery. these demagogues channel this economic despair into patriotism and racism. this prevents any sort of national revolution to mitigate the economic suffering and ensures the state maintains firm control over the population.

it's the same exact path taken by post-WWI germany.

the recovery from the 2008 recession was incredibly unequal in its distribution. silicon valley and the coasts boomed while the rust belt eroded. this is what ultimately led to the election of donald trump on an utterly right wing nationalist platform, which greatly contrasted to the neo-conservatism of george w bush and his father. the trump election (and brexit) were obvious indications that we were already on the same path as post-WWI germany.

we are simply continuing that path now. it'll be interesting to see where we are in 10 years. lots of people seem to be predicting that china will emerge as the global hegemon. i dunno, maybe. it really depends how protectionist and nationalistic other countries become, because that will act as a ceiling on china's export-based growth model.

china's cheap labor and manufacturing costs? those can become very expensive under heavy tariffs and trade restrictions.

the stock market and BTC both made yearly highs in february. measured from there, the S&P index is down 18% and BTC is down 30%. bitcoin did not outperform stocks in this crisis---not even close.

i dunno why people around here keep trying to claim otherwise, probably because they are holding BTC and are feeding into their biases.

it depends: do you want stability or revolution?

the lockdowns are hardest on the poorest populations, who have no savings, live in overcrowded slum conditions, and are worst equipped for a complete economic stoppage. if this continues for months and nothing is done to mitigate their suffering, they will begin rioting and revolting and taking by force what they need to survive. with a population like india's, no police or armies could ever stop them.

the question for policymakers is, do you want millions and millions of hungry poor rioting in the streets (which will also make the pandemic grow exponentially as society stops heeding social distancing and quarantines)? or do you want stability at the cost of future inflation?

if i were a policymaker trying to maintain the rule of law, the answer seems obvious.

holy shit, that second AK he was dealt after sitting out! lol, so brutal.....


don't worry bttBt---there are plenty of total donks who have lots of krill on SwC, @efialtis included.

i'm lazy to tap my offline wallet right now but i'm planning to ship my chips and register by friday.

this isn't a "simple cold" dude. i've been sick with it for 2.5 weeks and i would never wish this shit on my worst enemy. i've never felt anything like this in my lungs before. i can only imagine what it's like for someone twice my age and not physically fit. i also came down with it ~2 weeks after isolating which tells me it's insanely infectious due to incubation/shedding time.

my friend's aunt also died last week from coronavirus related cardiac arrest. i didn't know her but that shit is real enough to me. not hysteria. i'm just praying my mom doesn't get it. the people who aren't taking it seriously are either ignorant, or they are sort of sociopathic because they don't have parents/relatives who may die from it and they just don't care about the rest of society.

until there is effective treatment (and no, hydroxychloroquine is obviously not good enough), known herd immunity, or extremely tough restrictions to protect vulnerable populations, i see no way out of the current situation.

there's actually an open class action lawsuit against ripple, filed in california. ripple's attorneys tried to have it thrown out in february but their arguments were rejected and the case will move forward: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5229385.0


who's gonna pressure them, the american government? why would they do that?

oh yeah, i mean coinbase pro: https://pro.coinbase.com/trade/BTC-USD

the spread is usually less than $1 (often $0.01) unless there is a lot of volatility happening.

on coinbase's regular site, they definitely act as market makers. they are fleecing the shit out of noobs and adding huge commissions on top.

is there a full accounting of the crypto funds posted somewhere? all the numbers i've seen are old and converted to USD. i'm wondering because the hack occurred in january 2019 when BTC was only worth half its current value.


it sounds definitive, but who knows?

supposedly account holders were slated to get back 1/2 their holdings in a bankruptcy like mt gox. now they will get considerably more: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/120913953/cryptopia-account-holders-win-battle-over-assets-worth-140m

it seems to be. i'm pleasantly surprised! i would have thought they'd have gone the way of standard bankruptcy proceedings (like mt gox) where account holders are ranked behind other creditors.

under that scheme, account holders would only recover ~1/2 of their funds. they will probably recover closer to 80% or more this way.

a huge spread like that indicates a very illiquid market. market makers set very wide spreads in that situation because they need strong returns to hedge against market moves. if the market moves against them, they will bleed money because there is no liquidity to dump into.

this is why we see more robust market making on big markets like coinbase, with extremely small spreads, because it represents much lower risk.

what is the protocol for this in civil cases? mutual legal assistance treaties/agreements are negotiated between the department of state and target countries in regards to criminal matters. even so, i don't think the seychelles (where bitmex and binance are registered) has any such agreement with the USA.

part of me wonders if this is almost purely a bluff on the part of the plaintiffs. if the cost of settling is low enough, the companies may be happy to settle just to avoid bad PR.

thanks for the link.

i guess this is the big worry with decentralized exchanges---that there is a vulnerability in the underlying software or smart contracts that thieves can exploit. bisq is still a big step up from etherdelta-style exchanges that rely on the DNS and centralized servers, but this is certainly an important threat to keep in mind.

tbh, i don't feel bad for these "victims". we have a strong ethic of "buyer beware" in crypto. ICOs are a voluntary exchange between company and investor. i don't appreciate do-gooders trying to destroy companies and extract whatever money they can from them. and i certainly don't appreciate these idiots who made shitty investments and are trying to get bailed out now through the courts.

it's disgraceful behavior by ambulance chasing law firms and idiots who flushed their money down the toilet.

i have a hard enough time fathoming the USA government being able to collect from bitmex or binance. hiding in africa, the carribean, east asia etc and all their money is cryptocurrency held in encrypted wallets.

so even if they win (i'm not sure it's a slam dunk either) how does this law firm plan to collect civil judgments from crypto-only companies hiding offshore? the whole thing almost seems laughable, but maybe i'm missing something.