You have no idea what huge money in crypto means. People have not million, billion but trillions of dollars in crypto and they are sleeping very well. Look at this token. If you go just by the numbers, its developer has 23 Trillion dollars on etherscan. Thanks to etherscan, everyone can be a millionaire, billionaire or a trillionaire. Who would have thought that the crypto revolution and the results of an equitable society would look like this? Everyone is a millionaire.

Bitcoin getting to around 50-100,000 is a small possibility. A million per BTC is just a pipe dream. Something that people just repeat meaninglessly. This would mean a complete re-writing of world's power structure. That would take another 4-5 decades of respectable, robust and growing existence. More importantly, a far greater distribution is needed than <3% of addresses holding 95% of BTC.

In the hinterlands of developing countries of Asia and Africa, if you were a successful business-owner, contractor, well-paid lawyer/ doctor, there was a possibility that goons will always be looking to abduct your kin, especially children for ransom. Such people used to hire private bodyguards and fleets of vehicles to safeguard their family and avoid paying millions in ransom.

Yet, if someone was ransomed, you paid if you could pay and didn't go to the authorities. Its no surprise that the company negotiated and paid the hackers what they could. A company build from scratch is your proverbial child. Hope they learn their lesson and hire some "muscle" to safeguard them from the bandits of Information era.

In the 2008 crisis, there were a host of these Investment banks, Insurance players and rating institutions who were all in cahoots. The executives at the top were making millions in bonuses (which many of them would have used to buy bitcoin). Despite all this, they were all bailed out with a "too big to fail" tag and zero prosecutions.

Compare them with Richard Branson who started his first company as a teenager by selling magazines and records. He is a true blood entrepreneur and has added a lot of value over the years to the economy as well as culture in general, not to forget the jobs and good times he gave the people. He had a role to play in the Concorde too, if i am not mistaken.

For his history of risk-taking, hard work and entrepreneurship alone, i think he must be bailed out no matter what people think about it. We need these risk-takers and value creators who build up enterprises through sheer power of will and hard work. The number of people in staff and associated industries who would be saved is itself worth it.

You have two ideas till now:

1.) "Privilege" in the sense of Credit card clubs that give additional benefits.
2.) A more equitable approach to privilege in the "Privilege of owning hard money" for the common man.

The second one is the kind of idea that has had so many words put into it that it sounds too hollow in the crypto-sphere these days. I find the first idea much more promising. There is a lot you can do with it. Now the idea i have will need web-development experience and a lot of networking. For this, I suppose we need two more partners. Coz, you have the domain, I have the details of the idea. All we need now is for someone to put the money and work on it.

I have a hunch that this isn't really how these things work. Honestly speaking, that domain name can be put to a lot of use. You better get down to putting the idea on paper and give the website some shape. How difficult could web development be to self-learn anyway?

I saw this on a forwarded 36 second video made from one of the building tops. Initially, it looked like some kind of substation facility with some large transformer on fire with bellowing smoke. In the video, sparks really started to fly towards the end and it was a massive, powerful explosion that looked inexplicable.

It was later on Google that i found out that the "authorities" had been using the depot to store seized ammonium nitrate under less than ideal conditions. Such laxity by Govt officials has become a trademark of developing countries throughout the world. Industrial accidents are commonplace. In the US or Developed west, such incidents spark outrage resulting in series of hearings, reports, corrective measures and changes to SOPs. In developing countries, the know-how and standards are imported Govt staff trained through expensive foreign trips. These people rarely pass on the knowledge down the line and SOPs are never put into place, or followed. Hence, Industrial gas leaks, Boiler explosions, Crane crashes, flyover collapses and criminally careless storage keep leading to loss of lives.

May those souls NOT rest in peace and forever haunt those responsible for such accidents. Till such time that they accept culpability, beg forgiveness and force changes so that such things never occur. As far as economic crisis is concerned, well, i don't think a country's economy would falter because of an accident. People will mourn, rebuild and go on. It is up to the Lebanese people and international community to keep focus on this and ask for criminal prosecution of the whole chain of command involved.

Both of these are dependent on adoption and viability of a fee market. Fee market will be kept alive only if there are sufficient On-chain transaction to justify putting commensurate mining power behind BTC.

This is a controversial issue but such a result would be desirable. Earlier attempts at putting collective weight behind bitcoin have always devolved into scams and shams with people refusing to come to any sort of consensus. While the "hacker culture" is very conducive to the lone-wolves doing wonderful things by collaborating anonymously, they all turn into uncompromising kids when it has to be an actual debate. The better alternative has been interested stakeholders forming their own groups and fighting for a cause.

One of the best examples can be that of exchanges and a few lawyers coming together in India to persuade the highest court to lift the ban imposed by central bank. Similar decentralized pressure groups in respective countries must be recognized and encouraged. The question is, By whom? This opens a whole other pandora's box.

You are right that India has been trying to imitate the so-called free market capitalism of US after over 65 years of planned economy. The problem is that there is no institutional maturity to actually go on such a trajectory. The kind of intellectual capital needed for this has been exported from India since the beginning of information era. There are Indian fingerprints on everything from the Fiber Optic communication to the first usable memories and processors. The government and industry have failed to provide the same kind of environment to retain this talent within the country.

All sensible Indians understand the difference between India and China. All this recent jingoism driven drama on Social media is perpetuated by the IT cell of our ruling party with people spreading fake news and chest thumping about minor victories. The recent drama over 5 fucking fighter jets in the Indian media was truly embarrassing.

I don't know what you mean by "national resilience". India has no desire to become a regional power as of now but it is our bad luck that we have neighbors who are ideological opposites of us. The impoverished nation of Pakistan has a population and a military bred and fed on the concept that the very existence of a nation of idol-worshiping nation of Hindus (and the constant defeats of the Islamic republic at their hands) is an affront to them. On the other side, we have a strong and belligerent China that is out with its propaganda of a communist utopia. The success of biggest democracy next door cannot sit well with its plans. Not to mention that India keeps putting a spanner into their grand plans with non-cooperation on BRI etc.
India's Geo-strategic reality forces it to maintain an Army that can fight a two-front war if such a time comes. So, honestly, you cannot blame India for TRYING to project that it is an equal to China. It is for its very survival.

Cheers to that.

This assumption and narrative of Bitcoin being a long-term store of value has never felt cool to me. I understand that the security, cost of ownership and ease of transaction make it a very good candidate similar to Gold. Yet, bitcoin is also supposed to be the mainstay of a decentralized economy. The major hurdles in that path are regulatory as well as the apprehension about exploitation of its pseudonymous nature by maleficent entities. That is the hurdle that the community needs to cross to build confidence about this transaction medium which is decentralized, borderless and allows people to earn a new form of money not being eaten away by inflation.

To get there, scaling,  in terms of transaction speed and capacity is wholly important.

Not just Americans but people everywhere have a natural tendency to be less trusting of Big tech. It is mostly because of the closed source nature as well as the amount of influence that targeted news and targeted advertising is making. Google and Facebook have become aggregators of political and social information. They are so pretty off from their initial goals of and romantic tag lines like "Don't be evil". Both need to do so much more in terms of targeting individuals with information resulting in the formation of water-tight compartments of opinions which characterize our social and political atmosphere at present.

Clubbing these two with Amazon and Apple obviously doesn't make sense except that these hearings have nothing to do with public's trust of them. They are just anti-monopoly checks from the regulators i suppose. I would like Facebook to vanish off the face of earth ideally. Rest of the three are just fine as long as Google doesn't restart its stupid attempts at a social network. Does anybody remember ever caring about Google+ ?

I earn a few bitcoin on the forum but don't have many good options of spending them. The bitcoin economy is not so mature in my country. Additionally, i would have liked to hobby mine since the time of the S9 but the miners are just not available as they do not ship here due to ambiguous stand of our custom authorities. And after 2017, the prices for miners have only kept rising.

I don't trade bitcoin for fiat profit as such. I did try doing the buy low, sell high thing but its not for me. I found it better to hold and sell on target prices.

While the suggestion to buy immovable assets like land and invest in education is solid under any circumstances, the paranoia about "they are preparing for a pump and dump" is overblown. Yes the economy is contracting AND there are geo-political uncertainties. At these times, it is always prudent to hold onto some form of savings and not be over-exposed to any speculative asset. Like the stock market.

If you are into crypto, it would be okay to take some profits if you hit a personal target price. Risk vs Reward still remains true. Yet, even after an economic disaster, the better companies, better stocks and bitcoin WILL rebound. Those that get wiped are generally the speculative low cap stocks or Alt-coins in such situations.

Brew I did not say that they "manipulate" the market. You are right that the blockchain analyzers may even be creating confusion. The point of my post was that the whales, if they exist, aren't doing enough for the crypto ecosystem except benefiting from being the rich land-owning class.
I started a topic on this but everyone assumes that i am salty that "whales" are rich. What i am saying is that if they are there, and if they are accumulating like this report purports, then they should also be doing more for the bitcoin ecosystem than just letting their BTC do the grind on exchanges and loan services. Though now i understand that much of this thought is also conjecture as we have no way of knowing that what exactly are they doing, or not doing.

Bump to the Necrobumps.
Its been 5 years. Appreciate the generous idea sharing even after almost half a decade.

You should have seen the OP. That guy asked for ideas in 2015. If he is still writing that essay, i am pretty sure he never made it through grad school. Find the original necrobumper. Lets take his case. LOL.

I don't hate them. I just wish they did more or atleast normies like me knew that they were doing more.


You are right. We don't have to hate on them. Everybody should love whales. I want to find the reasons to love them apart from just knowing that they bought cheap and are mega-rich and are still holding and not retiring to some island with all their wealth. Thats why I had this caveat in the original post.


Also, what up with people getting so defensive for the whales. They are the smart people who have been made rich by adoption post-2016. By people willing to buy and sell at higher and higher prices because they see value in adopting bitcoin as a part of their lives or as a part of their investments. What is the issue if someone expects them to be a bit more pro-active in backing crypto? Okay, I used a few swear words in the post. I am nobody to question their role. Maybe they are pulling the levers from the background. Would it be so bad to know that they are doing that?? Or asking about it??

This was posted while I was writing the reply above. And its a different viewpoint that they don't make a difference. Do you think that speculating about their role, and i suppose, by extension, expecting them to show any form of pro-active zeal, is a waste of time? Should I just accept that their only but extremely important role is not to dump those stashes on the market?

Right, even if those dips happen, i cannot accumulate as much as I want from an event like the Black Thursday. So its just a slow process of buying the dips, placing orders and cost-averaging. Whales on the other hand don't need confidence in the technology or keep up with the uncertainties. They have made their dough

Do you think people like Peter Todd, Andreas, Saifedean etc. are whales themselves? Who else would you count as the people using their position for creating a crypto market. Just want to know. I made this post with the intention of getting some re-assurance, and venting, of course.

Thanks. Not trying to be part of the problem.

Technology growth also depends on marketing and perception. For example, the people that hope that price of bitcoin will reach multi-million could have invested in crazy ideas like the Seastead. A post on the forum regarding it received little attention.

Most of those other bastards are doing exactly what the wealthy elites have always been doing. Milking the rest of the people for fiat money while bitcoin is kept propped up by the belief of the >90% that hold less than 1 BTC. That is the sad truth. Right now, this is just another "Rich getting richer" scheme. Maybe I am just ignorant of these technology enthusiasts and am wrong to point out that the whales are little more than the wealthy factory owners in this very communist ecosystem.

Lets hope that trend continues. I just feel, it won't see the 150 to 10,000 growth without some active backing from the people that already have it. Maybe in the form of financing bitcoin adoption, backing it up when media calls a hack "Bitcoin Scam".

To those saying that i am blaming whales for being rich. Totally my fault if i sound that way. I am blaming them because I believe they should be more visible and do more to back bitcoin adoption rather than leave it orphaned as a "take it or leave it" deal.

I sent you 3 PM's a few months back. We had a debate on the Climate change thing. I would have preferred to get along. If your problem with me doesn't stem from a 4chan style deeper bias, let me know. Otherwise, lets steer clear of each other, Shall we?

Someone posted a topic about an article claiming that the "Bitcoin Whales" have been accumulating and increasing their BTC stash post the "Black Thrusday" event. I replied that kind of metric is simply a false comparison. It is comparing a bunch of greedy motherfuckers against the over 90% of people who actually believe that BTC is worth something and hold less than 1 BTC. There is no reliable way of knowing who exactly these whales are but I am pretty sure they are not "wise investors", as one reply in that topic puts it. These are people who chanced upon bitcoin as developers, cryptography enthusiasts, silk road traders or even plain-ass scammers. These people have actually made their wealth from the 1000s of BTC they held while bitcoin went through ATH and present levels.

Some people think that some of these whales must be newcomers interested in technology. There is plenty of evidence that this is not the case. A newcomer whale interested in technology and buying 1000+ BTC post 2016-17 would have been a seminal event and we would have heard about the individual or institution all over the news. Any such recent whale investing on basis of "technology" would put their weight behind the technology and would have put all their effort to make it grow.

How many times have you heard news about VCs, Startup Incubators or other such funding parties come out in the open and declare that "This is the technology of the future and I am investing a Million dollars in it"??Have you?? Give me one example and maybe we would have your "technology" whale. If we had even a few of such individuals, you would be seeing a far more concerted effort towards mainstreaming the technology. You wouldn't have so much misinformation on media because a group of such people would be working towards ensuring that the regulators don't get to take a one-sided view. Nothing of this sort happens. People like you and me talk it out on this forum, one of the last bastions i guess.

Most of those other bastards are doing exactly what the wealthy elites have always been doing. Milking the rest of the people for fiat money while bitcoin is kept propped up by the belief of the >90% that hold less than 1 BTC. That is the sad truth. Right now, this is just another "Rich getting richer" scheme. Maybe I am just ignorant of these technology enthusiasts and am wrong to point out that the whales are little more than the wealthy factory owners in this very communist ecosystem.

What are your thoughts on this?

Do you think there are people out there with the dough and the willingness to make a difference?

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This is basically my rage post against those elusive "Whales". My earlier thoughts weren't like this. I used to think there was a case for Bitcoin champions.

I dont think you can generalize anything of this sorts from this study. It talks about people who have 1000+ BTC. By all estimates, these are people who have already acquired wealth by being HODLers from an older era. Majority of these people are those who chanced upon BTC not as investors but as technical experts, developers or even traders. These people were not "investing" into BTC as a commodity like the "smaller investors" that the article contrasts them with.

Those with 1000+ BTC would have made enough Fiat profits during the ATH as well as selling at target values. They pretty much understand that their future fortunes are inextricably linked with bitcoin. They have the liberty to keep accumulating because they acquired at single/ double digit USD prices,or even for free. If Nick had 10,000 BTC to spare for Pizza, how much must all the intial GPU miners/ ASIC miners have.

So this is a false comparison that basically makes fun of the recent users. A host of whom have been involved with bitcoin not just for the money but also for the promise of it. They are now simply being taken for a ride as the whales hardly care about anything else than using their stash to manipulate the markets and churn the last bit of fiat profits. For them, it is money at work. I wouldn't even consider these people believers anymore in bitcoin. They are pretty much entrenched in the elite class while their BTC stashes help them maintain a constant stream of fiat profits. Comapring those greedy motherfuckers with the 0.1,1,10 BTC poor working class people is foolish

The so called Unlock 3.0, (Thanks to Modi's fetish for acronyms and catchy slogans), is mulling opening up halls from August 1. The same for Gyms. We have already had quite a bit of re-opening with normal traffic, full markets, factories and workplaces etc. People are no longer willing to stay indoors of course. Plus most of them need to go out to work, open shops and just earn something. People wear masks and try to keep their distance, and pray that if they get symptoms then they turn out to be mild.

The way things are going, BCCI may not even have to move IPL. They can play without the audience even in India. Probably, the numbers will be manageable in UAE. Coz if it happens and is allowed in India, Corona or No corona, people will be flocking with masks and plastic suits from Amazon, but they WILL go and watch. Also, WTF is Jay Shah doing with the official website still reading "IPL 20 suspended till further notice"

Okay, Sorry i am a little uneducated in this as i have never tried to take or offer any such loans. Yet, if popular services are using even bitcoin as such a collateral then frankly, what is the point of crypto. I mean its understandable if they want to liquidate some alt-coins as collateral because their value is only related to latest pump and dumps.
 That is most definitely not the case with bitcoin. If someone offers fiat loans against bitcoin, they should simply keep them as collateral (Like banks do with immovable property) and liquidate only if the customer is unable to repay the interest or repay the principal amount. If you liquidate based on drop in fiat value, then that is just wrong. The service providers BTC stash isn't decreasing. Why would the loan takers agree to this. Also, does this even comply to any kind of lending/ banking standards??

I like watching Colbert. He used to sound way more funny with all the additional sound effects and crowd cheering noise etc before the pandemic. Post pandemic, it had been a bit dull and I had stopped watching. Amonst Seth Meyers, Trevor and him, i feel Trevor took to the unedited version the best. His joke delivery still seems to be natural. I think he intentionally used that pause and controversial statement, "A Bitcoin Scam is anything involving Bitcoin". He would have hoped for this to explode with all those crypto shills flooding his youtube comments explaining bitcoin or just bad-mouthing him.

Unfortunately, its a little late to do that. If he wanted shills, he should have named something like Tron, EOS or any of the 100,000 TPS, "insert a letter"oS shitcoins out there. The link would have spread to the telegram and shitty grammar comments would have poured in. Bitcoiners don't care anymore Stephen. If you really want their attention, Please educate yourself and cover it properly.