I've bought walmart and target gift cards via crypto. Printed the gift cards out on paper. Used them to buy frozen pizzas in stores. Then been spammed with frozen pizza advertisements identical to the brand/type of frozen pizza I bought, on social media. Is the email address you have used to sign up to the gift card selling site the same email you use across social media? I think this is a far more likely link than advertising companies linking your bitcoin address to an individual gift card. I have also bought many gift cards for various retailers, and have never once noticed an ad based on my purchases. But having said that, my bitcoin are always mixed/never linked to my real identity, I use different email addresses for everything, I don't use social media, and I use very aggressive ad blocking, so who knows.  Yes. I was thinking it was the email address that was tracked. I used the same email on social media and on the site I bought the gift card from. Bad opsec on my part. I should be embarrassed/ashamed. Which isn't to say bitcoin transactions couldn't be tracked if authority figures were determined. Maybe it helps someone to know not to use the same email address the way I did. I also applied for a bitpay debit card. Paid the $10 fee. Bitpay never send me a card. They claimed that they didn't receive the bitcoin I sent. Of course, they don't know my BTC would have been returned to me if they hadn't received it. That definitely never happened. Another story. I've bought items on amazon via crypto to gift card method. I picked up my amazon boxes from the post office with the original packaging tape broken and re-taped. Part of me wonders if the post office searches my packages to check if I'm purchasing drugs or contraband from a crypto dark web site like silkroad, alphabay or whatever exists now. Or if there is another motive for it. it's probably amazon. things have improved over the years but they're known for packing things really badly. before i ever got into crypto, i'd received packages from amazon prime that were busted wide open. It 100% wasn't amazon. Boxes completely untouched. No dents, smashes, etc. Only visible signs of damage were tape seals being broken. |
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impossible. Imagine if there were an open source altcoin built for corporate utilization. This coin could be implemented on a transparent platform recording all expenditures, taxes, wages and assorted data. Everything would recorded in a public ledger employees can access. All employees would be paid in this altcoin. CEO's and executives have their salaries capped at a set percentage of net revenue. Entry level employees are guaranteed a percentage of revenue as well as periodic salary increases. A system of crypto payscaling that caps CEO wages while guaranteeing wage hikes for entry level employees could provide a platform for addressing issues relating to wealth and wage inequality. In addition to this, having a public ledger which records transactions could make it more difficult for CEOs and execs to utilize their companies as slush funds to engage in a culture of excess and waste which has become common. In a digital era it could help to have a public ledger system that records assets versus liabilities. To keep track of exactly what happens on the finance side of things. We live in what is often referred to as an information age. Ironic considering how people have to dig to find data that is really relevent to them. I'm not really doing this justice. Algorithms are being incorporated everywhere. Why not introduce them in ways with the potential to exert a positive net effect rather than the opposite as has become trendy of late. |
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Some might find this interesting. I've bought walmart and target gift cards via crypto. Printed the gift cards out on paper. Used them to buy frozen pizzas in stores. Then been spammed with frozen pizza advertisements identical to the brand/type of frozen pizza I bought, on social media. Another story. I've bought items on amazon via crypto to gift card method. I picked up my amazon boxes from the post office with the original packaging tape broken and re-taped. Part of me wonders if the post office searches my packages to check if I'm purchasing drugs or contraband from a crypto dark web site like silkroad, alphabay or whatever exists now. Or if there is another motive for it. If you look back to 2009 when Satoshi launched bitcoin - it was when the bank bailouts were happening. And governments bailed out the banks primarily because they acted as payment processors. There was the nightmare scenario where banks collapsed and shut their doors and people's wages couldn't get to them and retailers couldn't pay their suppliers and so on. Because the payment system would have disappeared. I think one reason banks were bailed out was to prevent the american public from realizing banks $100k FDIC insurance wouldn't enable consumers to retrieve 100% of their account funds from banks that crashed. They had to bailout banks to prevent the public from waking up & becoming aware of how fractured and broken banking institutions had become under the wholly deregulated environment created from Bill Clinton's admin onwards. |
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One reason for bitcoin being considered a legitimate store of value is its algorithmically limited supply. Bitcoin's design safeguards against hyperinflation and devaluation which have plagued fiat currencies throughout history. Although miners could try to circumvent this design feature by significantly ramping up hash rates, as we have perhaps witnessed of late with the explosion of btc hash.
Can you explain more what you meant here? What can miners do to inflate Bitcoins supply? Beside to change that in the protocol. Have you ever downloaded a file from the internet where the ETA says 2 hours. Then it says 20 minutes. Then it says 5 minutes. A few seconds later it says 2 hours again. Then during the last 30-60 seconds of download the ETA estimate will be inaccurate by a significant margin. I don't know what algorithm Satoshi utilized to determine mining difficulty. It is possible it could have small vulnerabilities to explosions in hash power for reasons similar to file downloads being prone towards algorithmic inaccuracy. When bitcoin crashed from $10,000 down to $8,000 and below. There was a conspiracy theory floating around that the explosion in BTC hash power was having an effect similar to hyperinflation. Where the supply of BTC was expanding at an accelerated rate which was in turn devaluing it. This is difficult to validate or debunk. I don't know that anyone keeps track of exactly how many total bitcoins are mined within a 24 hour period. Anyways its just a conspiracy theory that has circulated without much fact checking and so I thought I would bring it up in case someone had a solid answer to it. |
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It's actually pretty common for banks to lend out up to 90% of deposits, and keep only 10% in reserve. Hence the term "fractional reserve". However, let's not use the scam that is fiat banking as a bench mark for judging a good coin. Most coins look good when judged against these low standards. This wasn't common in the united states until 1999 when President Bill Clinton repealed regulation separating commercial banking from investment banking known as glass steagall, which was created in the aftermath of the Great Depression to prevent bankers from gambling on risky investments with the money of depositors. I would be interested to know why comparisons between crypto and existing financial industries are not valid comparisons in your eyes. At least some of the negative content people read about tether, is published at the direction of banks. Most of the negative things you read or hear about tether likely comes from banks utilizing their influence on the media to push agendas. What should the standard of comparison be if not tether vs our traditional financial industry? So cash equivalents, which includes the bitcoin they stole bought with USDT they printed out of thin air, as well as interest on the $850 million loan they paid to themselves. They printed $850 million out of thin air, loaned it to themselves, charge themselves interest on that loan, and then says your assets are backed up by the interest they are paying themselves. That is in no way liquid or stable.
Also worth noting that whatever percentage of their assets are backed up by actual USD, that USD is obviously being held in a bank and so is therefore subject to all the same issues with USD which you outlined above. Tether is compounding problem upon problem.
Tether doesn't hold stablecoins in trust to back their product. What they hold are US dollars and assorted assets. The argument that tether prints money out of thin air to back their platform doesn't make much sense to me, in that regard. When consumers purchase stablecoins like tether, essentially what they're buying isn't a digital token. Its a solution to a problem they face. For some stablecoins like tether are their optimal solution for purchasing crypto. Necessity being the mother of invention is what gives stablecoins like tether value. The only real question I see is whether private enterprise should have the freedom and right to create their own solutions to problems utilizing digital assets like tether. Whether markets and consumers should be the one's to decide the value of stablecoins. Or whether some centralized authority which currently consolidates power should have the power to decide whether stablecoins like tether create intrinsic value enough for consumers to utilize them. |
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I’ve been making bank betting sports for several years, but I have been told that my time in this world is almost up I've gambled on US sports since 2011. There were a few times when I successfully took a bankroll of $20 and turned a 16x profit into $320 for fun. Those days could be gone. Levels of corruption in the officiating, judging and regulation of sporting events have skyrocketed making it difficult to be profitable. Athletes themselves appear to be trending towards becoming more corrupt and compromised. In the past, I would watch sporting events and often be inspired by the level of professionalism and pride athletes took in competing. Sports these days are becoming harder to watch. Standards are on the decline, at least in the united states. Are similar trends being manifest elsewhere in the world? The US does exhibit oppressive regulation as far as sports gambling goes, while the rest of the world adopts far more liberal policies. |
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Is Bitcoin still an easy to manipulate these days after the many years of exposure to market realities, FUDS, hypes, severe criticisms and the likes? Technical analysts would usually say, "that crash was coming anyway" and "the bad news was just a catalyst." The existing bear market condition (strong supply, weak demand) was the true underlying factor driving the decline. Another way of looking at this: if markets crash on bad news, it's confirmation you are in a bear market.
In other words, would-be sellers were looking for any reason to sell. It didn't have to be a story about quantum computers that did it; it could simply have been price falling below key stop loss levels. Once the selloff was triggered, a typical price feedback loop developed: lower prices squeezed holders into cutting losses, which begot lower prices. Rinse/repeat.
This is also why bad news can never keep a lid on strong bull markets. Any losses are quickly regained because investors are too bullish to care. If this "quantum supremacy" news came out in fall 2017, the market wouldn't have given a shit.
In today's world, its probably common for traders, banks and elites to have relationships with media. I think it was CNBC's Mad Money host Jim Cramer who admitted he worked in conjunction with journalists to trade profitably. Cramer would buy stocks. Then he would have his journalist contacts publish positive content on the stock he purchased, which would drive the price of his holdings upwards to a sell position. That's the basic format for insider trading determining the degree to which markets are manipulated in this day and age. This precedent goes back literally decades, which means by this point its likely been greatly expanded upon. News stories are by far the largest influence on market and stock prices. If anyone recalls all of the stock prices that increased dramatically after releasing news of them announcing dubious blockchain or cryptocurrency proposals. This is one reason why AI trading is likely to never amount to anything. Developers of AI trading software could trade using their product. Instead they choose to sell it to the public, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of trading software on the basis of greater market saturation. While AI software can analyze market mechanics within a technical analysis paradigm, they can't necessarily predict future news stories which constitute the most significant variable influencing market valuation. This negative trend has a tendency to make AI trading bots ineffective. |
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One reason for bitcoin being considered a legitimate store of value is its algorithmically limited supply. Bitcoin's design safeguards against hyperinflation and devaluation which have plagued fiat currencies throughout history. Although miners could try to circumvent this design feature by significantly ramping up hash rates, as we have perhaps witnessed of late with the explosion of btc hash.
Bitcoin's relative success has generated a considerable amount of excitement and venture capital similar to the dot com boom. Everyone is looking for the next crypto silver bullet that will propel technology to new heights. Creating innovation, value and wealth. We've seen attempts at incrementally improving bitcoin whether by utilizing different algorithms or variations on proof of work.
What we have not seen are many attempts to get back to the roots of what made bitcoin attractive to many, initially. Which is creating a store of value/currency which is designed to address problems society has faced throughout history like hyperinflation.
Imagine for a second if it were possible to design a cryptocurrency that was resistant to poverty or wealth and wage inequality. What if it were possible to design a cryptocurrency that was resistant to corruption, predatory business practices, unfair taxation or other negatives which have negatively impacted the world forever.
These goals may not be attainable utilizing paper money, gold or hand carved rocks as currencies of exchange. The internet era however opens doors which were previously closed. And so perhaps it is possible to combine facets of game theory with crypto to create a hybridized form of currency which is designed via default to address issues like wage and wealth inequality which represent a foundation for negative societal precedents.
Offhand, I can think of ways this could be achieved. I would like to hear other ideas people have and if people feel like it, start a discussion on this topic. It seems like it could be a cool and futuristic thing to talk about.
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Exstasie's post appears to be the one people like the most, it echoed everything others said & so I'll try to respond to this one. #1 I'm not confident in that assessment. Centralized stablecoins are functionally no different than balances held on centralized exchanges. They are exchange-issued fiat IOUs. When you hold USDT on an exchange like Binance, the counterparty risk is actually two-fold: Tether could become insolvent because tokens are unbacked or Binance could become insolvent if their USDT wallet gets compromised. #2 In fact, we already know Tether is insolvent. Given the numerous exchange hacks, scams, and government shutdowns that have separated exchange customers from their money, I'd say holding USDT is pretty risky. #1 I disagree with tether existing as a variation of a gold standard or IOU. There is no IOU obligation once USDT tokens are redeemed for fiat. The only existing condition is that the exchange rate maintain a 1:1 ratio with the US dollar, which it is tied to. This falls under a category of currency manipulation which every nation on earth engages in. #2 Imagine that a consumer deposits $100,000 in a bank. Its very common for banks to take $50,000 or more of that deposit and invest in it high risk schemes, which will fail. Leaving banks unable to pay those who deposited money in it. If tether is 74% backed, its far more liquid, stable and safe than the banking industry on average. The US dollar is far less than 74% backed in gold and I never see anyone complain about it. In comparison to standards of global financial industries, tether is probably more liquid, safe, stable and better managed. All of which raises a question of why tether is criticized and questioned to a far higher standard in comparison to how banks or governments of the worlds do things. Neither Tether nor Bitfinex serve Americans anyway. There's no peer-to-peer liquidity either. Valid point. Tether discontinued support for the US market in 2017 after likely being pressured by certain special interest demographics to withdraw support. Is correlation between tether volume and bitcoin demand, surprising? Of course not. People wiring money to Tether is the same thing as people wiring money to any Bitcoin exchange. It's being used to buy cryptocurrency. I know this. You know this. Experts and professionals appear not to know this, however, as they continue to claim there is something shady, suspicious or criminal about it: |
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There appears to be a question of what purpose stablecoins like tether can be utilized for. What role they fulfill.  IMO stablecoins are one of the best options to purchase crypto via fiat. Stablecoins retain value well. Its feasible to hold them long term until a good buy in opportunity arises. A trader purchasing $1 million dollars in tether today can rest assured it will be worth $1 million dollars 5 or 10 years from now. This makes stablecoins like tether a better intermediary option than altcoins which normally appreciate or depreciate in value over time. Stablecoins do not suffer from disadvantages of bitcoin ATMs or services like localbitcoins. ATMs can carry 20% price markups. Localbitcoins can carry similar precedents and introduce possibility of scams. The lack of percentage price mark up make stablecoins a more attractive option. US markets tend to be limited. The few options americans have for purchasing crypto are restricted to a handful of services like coinbase which do not have the best reputation. There was a month in 2018 where tether reported $800 million dollars in tokens redeemed. This could indicate the tether and stablecoin markets are an avenue of crypto purchase for whales and large institutional investors. If all of the above is true. Is correlation between tether volume and bitcoin demand, surprising? If indeed tether and stablecoins are one of the best options for purchasing crypto in current existence? People might wonder what stablecoins or tether is used for. What if its primary role is an intermediary between fiat and crypto for large institutional investors looking to buy in? |
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All banks are inherently weak during a recession
During the 2008 crisis, some banks were doing well financially and had no need to be bailed out. The main determining factor for whether banks needed bailouts in 2008 hinges upon a commercial banking versus investment banking paradigm. Commercial banks are more prone towards limiting themselves to smaller profit margins from traditional bank revenue sources. This implies interest earned from loans or generally reliable and stable streams of income. Investment banks have a more untraditional model for generating revenue. They normally have higher potential profit margins on average, but accumulate greater risk as a result. Investment banks also collect a higher proportion of depositor's funds and invest them in whatever ventures they choose, which leaves them in a more leveraged position if investments go bad. In recent times, within the past 2 decades, most banks shifted away from commercial banking towards investment banking paradigms. And yes there is a high correlation between this trend and the higher proportion of bank failures we've witnessed. investment banks have taken on greater risk, utilizing a higher percentage of their depositor's funds, with more spectacular negative outcomes. This is the reason so many banks are failing globally, while being unable to pay their customers. Banks are gambling on greater risk / greater reward investments, with the funds of their depositors--those who traditionally believe banks are stable and safe places to store money. |
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If you wanted to know who popped the 2017 bitcoin bubble. The search for the answer would lead to: who influenced the media into spamming the public with news stories on the topic: "bitcoin is a bubble" and "bitcoin is only used by terrorists and criminals" long before Trump assumed office. The search would continue with a question of: who influenced the SEC into rejecting all of the Winklevoss brothers ETF proposals. Then a question of the origins story of regulation prohibiting americans from utilizing bitmex as well as many crypto services would arise. All of these events, and many others occurred long before Trump attained the Presidency in 2016. One thing is for certain. Donald J. Trump is not behind fake news stories about tether being a market manipulation conspiracy theory. But if you know who is behind it, and who is behind all of the other anti crypto regulation and news stories we've witnessed long before Trump took office. Then you know the answer.  Banks are definitely part of it. But the complete answer would be far more interesting and terrifying to consider. |
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Brave Browser has a crypto rewards program which pays $5 to $10 a month in BAT (basic attention token). https://brave.com/ Their browser is open source with an emphasis on out-of-the-box adblock, greater speed, privacy and security. Its rewards program is a small advertisement that opens on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Its a purely text based ad similar to google ads. Example:  I switched to using brave after reports emerged about google chrome not being reliable in terms of security. There have been many bugs and vulnerabilities which chrome devs strangely never got around to fixing. Don't know much about BAT token. I would +merit for any useless tips or tricks anyone could share with BAT. This type of innovative support for crypto in brave's rewards program could be a solid platform that could help to further mass adoption. It doesn't deviate from what people normally do online with a browser and some of the ads are interesting and worth clicking. |
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More than half of the world’s banks are already in a weak position before any downturn that may be coming, according to a report from consultancy McKinsey & Co. A majority of banks globally may not be economically viable because their returns on equity aren’t keeping pace with costs, McKinsey said in its annual review of the industry released Monday. It urged firms to take steps such as developing technology, farming out operations and bulking up through mergers ahead of a potential economic slowdown. “We believe we’re in the late economic cycle and banks need to make bold moves now because they are not in great shape,” Kausik Rajgopal, a senior partner at McKinsey, said in an interview. “In the late cycle, nobody can afford to rest on their laurels.” The decade since the global financial crisis has seen a wave of innovation in financial services, bringing new competitors from fintech startups to giants like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Banks have pondered whether to compete with, partner with or acquire some of these newcomers. Some established firms have sought to rebrand as technology companies, in part to attract hard-to-get talent. McKinsey, whose clients are some of the biggest corporations in the world, consults on topics ranging from strategy and technology to mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing and stock offerings. In its report, the firm said banks risk “becoming footnotes to history” as new entrants change consumer behavior. Most recent attempts by banks to boost efficiency have been “business-as-usual,” it said. Banks allocate just 35% of their information-technology budgets to innovation, while fintechs spend more than 70%, McKinsey said. Combined with regulatory factors lowering the barrier to entry -- like open banking and looser requirements for startups -- the environment is increasingly conducive for newer firms to take share from banks. The report points to Amazon.com Inc. in the U.S. and Ping An in China as examples of technology firms that are capturing financial-services customers. To make matters worse for the old guard, the new players tend to go after the business areas that create the highest returns at banks -- credit cards, for example. Investors have taken notice. Globally, banks’ valuations have fallen 15% to 20% since the start of last year, McKinsey said, adding that “the drop in valuation suggests that investors anticipate a sharp deceleration in earnings growth.” Lenders can cut costs and find funds for technology by outsourcing what McKinsey calls “non-differentiating activities,” including some trading and compliance functions. Banks “need to get much more comfortable with external partnerships and being able to leverage talent externally,” Rajgopal said. Read more: BofA’s cloud expansion could ‘save a ton of money’ Another way to free up money: get bigger. BB&T Corp. and SunTrust Banks Inc. said as much when they announced their decision to combine earlier this year -- the biggest U.S. bank merger since the financial crisis. Rajgopal said he expects M&A to continue in the late cycle. “Going forward, scale will likely matter even more as banks head into an arms race on technology,” the report says. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-21/banks-must-act-now-or-risk-becoming-a-footnote-mckinsey-says.... This may not be a good time to have money stored in banks, if indeed more than 50% of them are weakened and may not survive an economic downturn. It should be mentioned that even china's largest and most prosperous banks are facing great difficulties atm. These negative trends relating to banks are not isolated events. Rather they are becoming normalized and widespread throughout the industry. Excitement and risk have a tendency to be correlated. Whether in gambling or investment markets, where one is found it is common to find the other. With many banks engaged in leveraged investments tied to global economies, upticks may produce profits, while a turn in the opposite direction can carry devastating effects. Hopefully we won't ever have another 2008 bank crisis.  Even though everyone seems to be shouting exactly such a thing will happen inevitably from the mountain tops. |
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It cannot be that people are this stupid to sell off just because of this. Market analysis is determined by the least common denominator. Traders don't base future market projections on what they expect the most intelligent and most knowledgeable trader will do. Its always the opposite of that. Market reactions are always based on worst case scenarios to protect investments and mitigate risk. When whales look at markets whether its bitcoin, equities, futures, penny stocks or whatever. They always ask: "how will the least intelligent, educated and knowledgeable trader react to this". And that is typically the basis they use for determining what the proper market reaction should be. Feel free to disagree, I 100% don't mind. But please remember events which do not directly affects markets or stocks like the 9/11 World Trade Center bombings crashed the US stock market to an extreme degree. Its not necessarily the direct impact that matters but rather the psychology and worst case scenario. |
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there is no connection between quantum computers and the decline in bitcoin. The latest drop in BTC below $7,500 coincides with media sources re-publishing this old story about google "achieving" quantum supremacy from september 20th 2019. The drop in BTC to $8,000 in september coincides with the original publishing of the story. You can say its all coincidence. But I think we could see future drops in BTC price when "further developments" on quantum computers are published. When the price of bitcoin spikes, they publish fake news about tether being a conspiracy to keep bitcoin's price contained. They've done this for the past 2-3 years. Bitcoin price movements aren't motivated by natural market mechanics as much as political agendas. |
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Bumping this. Could be relevent to the latest fake news market manipulation pushing btc down. Note the date of the 1st post in this thread, (september 24th, 2019) which also accompanied that last dip down below $8,000. |
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It's a huge environmental issue, fossil fuels are slowly killing our planet and a lot of the problem comes down to companies using only fossil fuels to power their companies. Fossil fuels aren't the main cause of climate change. Trees function as natural carbon sinks. An acre of rainforest will absorb and sequester (store) many metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during its lifetime. Between 50% and 80% of the world's natural rainforests have been cut down and replaced by homes, malls, factories and otherwise urban development that does nothing to absorb or store the emissions of the rainforests they replace. A good analogy for climate change would be a spaceship with plant life acting as CO2 scrubbers and O2 generators. If half of the plants died due to illness, the ship would lose 50% of its capacity to scrub CO2 from the air. That is the precedent we're currently witnessing in climate change. Planting more trees to absorb greenhouse gases via afforestation and making a better effort to address issues relating to desertification are the policies to pursue if addressing climate change is our goal. Raising carbon taxes to reduce emissions is a lost cause. Emissions were never the issue to begin with. It's going to be pretty hard for mining operations to power themselves of solely renewable energy sources, but it's good to see them at least try to do something about it - better then nothing I guess. It should be mentioned: there are no new power plants being constructed to power bitcoin mining ops(with the exception of Peter Thiel's mining venture in texas anyways). Miners don't really add emissions to the planet's carbon footprint. There are no new power plants being built to support them. They tap existing infrastructure housing surplus sources of electricity. The most affordable of which is normally hydroelectric or renewable. This is one reason many mining ops are located in remote and sparsely populated areas where existing surpluses of energy not currently utilized can be found. Not that miners are particularly green or environmentally conscious. Its simply the most natural, expedient and cost effective solution. Bitcoin miners spend incredible amounts of capital on electricity. This outflow often goes to green power companies & contributes towards funding an expansion of renewable sources of power. Mining is one of the largest sectors throwing massive amounts of money at furthering investment in environmenally friendly power. |
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Embarking on a quest to gamble and turn $20 into $200 can be more fun, safe and exciting than gambling with large sums of money. There are bitcoin gambling sites and sportsbooks that accept 0.0001 BTC minimum bets, which could allow people to enjoy gambling recreationally without breaking their bank. Gambling as an addiction could be similar to substance addiction where quitting cold turkey isn't necessarily the best policy. A person suffering from depression on anti-depressants could damage their health if they stop taking medication, all at once. The best option could be to gradually decrease the dosage.
Personally, I am an active sports gambler. The best I can put this into perspective is, the better a person is able to eliminate money from the equation, the more successful a gambler they can be. A person who thinks about money and how much they can profit from making a bet, often loses. The lure of money and wealth exerts a powerful negative effect on cognitive function.
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