Very targeted ads with all the kyc information behind them. And this "Learn and Earn" nonsense provides them with even more data, as I pointed out to OP previously: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5400526.msg60247776#msg60247776. You start withdrawing these "free" coins and now you are linking more and more of your addresses and wallets to all the KYC data Coinbase holds about you, which will be monetized, sold, and shared endlessly with dozens of third parties. I've never considered withdrawing, nor buying more of the coins from Coinbase learn. I always immediately transferred the coin to Coinbase Pro and sold them for bitcoin. The videos are ads, but they are not good ads. My take on the Coinbase Learn and Earn is that it is a total scam... They pay the "earn" part out as taxable income last I checked, and they give you $3 in a (usually worthless) currency. So right off the bat you're on the hook for nearly $1 in taxes. Then, they charge you something like $2 in fees if you want to sell it.
If you don't have access to Coinbase Pro, there is really no reason to use CB earn. The fees on Pro are negligible, while the fees on CB proper are quite high on smaller transactions (they are high in general, but are very high on small txs). |
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"...many creditors have already sold their claims to crypto funds. Groups such as Fortress Investment Group LLC offered creditors an early payout of between $600 and $1,300 in cash.
This will mitigate some of the selling pressure, but not all of it. But, I think most others that have been waiting years are going to wait for the next bull run. At which point 200000 coins although a large number is not going to matter much as they are not all going to be dumped at once. And even a few hundred or a few thousand being put into the open market over a few days is not that big a deal IMO.
When Gox went out of business, bitcoin was trading at approximately $600, and the ATH was around $1200. The price is currently shy of being 30x the price when Gox filed bankruptcy. These people have not been HODL'ers by choice -- their coin was locked away. Common sense would indicate that when the mtgox coins are distributed we would see a very large selloff. This is just the reality. Is it? Common sense would suggest that if the trust offer you BTC or fiat, then you would accept fiat. Not accept Bitcoin in order to sell it for fiat yourself. Am I missing something here? Unless those receiving fiat would receive it after those who accept Bitcoin, then it seems like a much better deal to have the trust sell your Bitcoin for you, rather than sell it later via spot on a potentially depressed market. I might be mistaken, but I understand that people had to choose how they wanted to be paid a long time ago. I suspect that many people's financial situation has since changed, and I know the price has changed. It's also worth noting that BCH is going to be distributed as well. I assume most of that will be market dumped. This is actually a positive in my opinion as much of that BCH money will flow into BTC. I doubt it will be enough to counteract the amount of BTC sold, but it's something...
I thought the trustee sold the BCH a long time ago? Around the time of the chain split, or a few months after. |
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When you want to spend your bitcoin, you are spending a very specific output from a previous transaction. A dumbed-down way of looking at a UTXO is that you are spending a very specific dollar bill with a specific serial number. A UTXO is an output that has not yet been spent in a subsequent transaction.
A coinjoin transaction will combine inputs from many participants, and will send outputs to many different participants. The result of this is that it is more difficult to follow the flow of money from the inputs to the outputs. Often times, each participant will send more than one input and will receive more than one output, and the respective amounts are not equal.
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First time in my life I've seen a card without numbers, I didn't even know it existed (except for the yescard).
The apple card is the same way. All that is printed is my name and the name of the issuing bank. If I need the card number for some reason, I have to get it from the wallet app in my iPhone. The best thing is that it also has an EMV chip for data protection or antitheft and most what I like are these 3
- No annual fee
- No foreign transaction fees
- No exchange fees to acquire your rewards.
It seems that I like to have this card to avoid fees.
That is pretty standard for most credit cards nowadays.
It's not 2% it's 2% fiat value now. BTC goes back to $50k It's 4+% goes to $100K even more for what I spend now.
Even if BTC hits $75k and then goes to $100k it's still more then 2%.
If I use some other card that is a straight cash back (or points or whatever) it's that value and that's it.
If you were to get cash back from the Apple card, or any other credit card, you could use that fiat to purchase crypto. This isn't something that would be automatic, and you would probably have to pay some kind of exchange fee for doing so, but it would essentially be the same. |
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Can President Zelensky's accusations be true?
I don't know about the specific people that Zelensky is accusing to have betrayed their country, but I think it is reasonable to say that Putin has spies in Ukraine and that some of those spies are government officials in the Ukraine government. I would not be surprised if Ukraine similarly has spies in Russia. It is Zelensky's job to try to find the spies and to prevent them from further betraying their country. |
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In other words one person out of thousands who are pump and dumping shitcoins is charged with insider trading. They should take a look at some social media to see the pump and dump groups that are scamming people on a daily basis.
I understand that the trades in question were made in advance of Coinbase announcing asset listings. So according to the DOJ, Wahi knew in advance that x token was about to get listed on Coinbase, and bought the token ahead of the announcement. it wasnt that pump and dumps happened. it was the timing of certain tokens right before coinbase told the public they were going to add it, meaning only a select few knew of the up coming adding of the token to the market listing. thus too coincidental that particular coins were pumped right when the secret talks happened internally about future market list additions, where the general public wouldnt know(yet)
Right, now I understand a bit more. Fair enough then, if Coinbase acted upon this themselves, i.e started the investigation themselves, it at least shows a bit of integrity, especially since they've released it to the press also. Could've easily brush it under the rug to save face (which is what I thought might have happened with the mass firings). It is not clear to me who initiated the investigation, however, I do understand that Coinbase was investigating the employee in question and that he was fired prior to being indicted. He apparently bought a one-way ticket to India the day he was supposed to have a meeting with Coinbase security team.
What do you think of this case? I'm not sure if this is the first time we have heard "insider trader" in cryptocurrency.
I believe this is the first insider trading criminal case in the US. I understand that the case depends on the coins that Wahi is alledged to have traded as being "securities", and I don't think crypto meets that definition. |
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What reason does Coinbase have to keep their customers' deposits as unsecured creditors? What reason do they have to change it? They know fine well that 99% of their users don't even know what that means, and of the few who do, the majority of them simply don't care because they think Coinbase are too big to fail. You've said yourself it won't be trivial to come up with a new framework to change this, and will be a lengthy and costly process. They have proven repeatedly that they don't give a damn about what happens to their users, so why would they waste their time, efforts, and money, when it will make absolutely zero difference to their profits? When enough exchanges go out belly up, and when enough lending platforms become insolvent, people will eventually wise up. Keeping customer money legally separate would prevent customers from panic withdrawing when other exchanges are insolvent, and processing withdrawals in mass is expensive and risky. Yet, it might still be beneficial to keep standard users as unsecured creditors, as they can use that as a safety net selling point to attract investment from corporations and institutions. "Hey, if it all goes to shit, we have $x billion of unsecured assets we will use to pay back this secured loan/investment you are going to offer us."
I think Coinbase trying to encumber coin to an extent that they no longer have unencumbered coin available to satisfy all customer withdrawals would be challenged in court. Also, if the financial statements reflect that the new loan is resulting in Coinbase being unable to satisfy all customer deposits, any new loan to Coinbase would be risky. |
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Is there not a way to make it completely impossible to create another vanity address that bears the same initials with one that's already created before?, like it is when you get an error like "this username has been taken" when trying to create a username that matches with another username in a forum .
That is not how creating addresses work. When you generate an address, you first generate a private key, and you then perform a number of calculations on the private key to eventually get the address. No part of this process involves updating any kind of database containing all addresses ever generated, nor does it involve checking if a similar address has been generated. Do you have any idea?, lets discuss and learn together.
In order to generate a vanity address, you essentially need to generate a private key, and check if the corresponding address meets your criteria, and repeat this process until you have a private key associated with an address that meets your specific criteria. There are a number of programs out there that help you with this. As others have written, you should not allow any website or business to generate private keys for you, as they will have access to any coin to send to these addresses. You can write a program that generates private key/address combinations and uses regex to check if the address meets what you are looking for. |
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-coinbase-employee-charged-in-alleged-insider-trading-scheme-11658420556The DOJ recently filed charges against Ishan Wahi, a former Coinbase employee, his friend, and his brother, alleging insider trading. It is alleged that Wahi tipped his friend and brother off about upcoming coin listings on the Coinbase platform, which allowed them to trade in advance of this news. As part of their case, it is alleged that certain tokens listed on Coinbase are unregistered securities. I understand that the DOJ is largely relying on certain tokens listed on Coinbase as being a "security", and I think they are stretching the definition. What Wahi is alledged to have done is certainly unethical, but I don't think it reaches the point of being illegal.
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That complicates things. The FAQ says to refer to the ToS. They get out of it by using deliberately vague and misleading language. Emphasis mine: To ensure coin loans are always returned to Celsius, we require borrowers to post collateral of up to 150% (which means that the borrower gives Celsius an alternative asset as collateral for the asset they are borrowing) or we conduct thorough due diligence reviews of borrower’s financials and repayment ability. Collateral of up to 150% includes anything from 1% to 150%. Or they take no collateral but just assurances that the borrower will repay. Their Terms of Use are obviously far more explicit, as they are legally required to be: and to pledge, re-pledge, hypothecate, rehypothecate, sell, lend, or otherwise transfer or use any amount of such Digital Assets, separately or together with other property, with all attendant rights of ownership, and for any period of time, and without retaining in Celsius’ possession and/or control a like amount of Digital Assets or any other monies or assets, and to use or invest such Digital Assets in Celsius’ full discretion. So that means the FAQ and the documents the WSJ claimed to see are not in conflict. I had originally read the FAQ differently, and I presume others similarly did. Do I trust that Coinbase is trying to find a mechanism to change customers' status of "unsecured creditors"? I doubt it very much. They'll say they will on Twitter to placate their users, then once this episode of insolvencies and bankruptcies blows over it will all be forgotten about, and all their users will continue to be at risk as they always have been. What reason does Coinbase have to keep their customers' deposits as unsecured creditors? |
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A ponzi is a scam in which previous investors are repaid by future investors investing more money. That is not what is alleged to have happened in the case of Celsius. What appears to have likely happened is that they made risky loans that turned bad. Sure, but they didn't end up with a $1.2 billion hole in the balance sheet overnight and then shut down withdrawals the next day. They have obviously had major liquidity issues for weeks or months, all the while continuing to advertise and attract new users as well as encouraging more deposits from existing users with their obviously unsustainable interest rates of up to 20% a year. They must have known full well for some time that they would be unable to pay out interest to any new deposits coming to their platform, in which case these new deposits were likely only being used to pay interest on older deposits and keep them afloat while they struggled to secure additional sources of funding. So no, while their business model is not a Ponzi and giving out unsecured loans is not a Ponzi, I think it is highly likely that they were operating like a Ponzi in the weeks leading up to them suspending all accounts. I don't think we know how long Celsius was having liquidity problems for. I don't remember seeing anything about withdrawals being delayed longer than normal until they were outright halted. There was chaos in the altcoin market immediately prior to Celsius halting withdrawals. TerraUSD and Luna were both crashing, other stablecoins were trading under $1 (temporarily), and many altcoins were declining heavily. It is possible that Celsius was forced to liquidate collateral at prices below the loan repayment amount during this chaos when there was sufficient collateral prior to the chaos. If this is true, they may have taken a 100% loss on loans backed by Luna and/or TerraUSD. |
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What are your thoughts about mandatory enlistment?
Countries need a military in order to be able to defend themselves (and be prepared to defend themselves). If a country cannot consistently get enough people to enlist voluntarily, they will implement mandatory enlistment, or some form thereof (like a draft). If a country is not in a position to defend itself, there is the risk of attack from your nation's enemies. National security in Europe is heavily subsidized by the United States. If anything, countries in Europe need a bigger/stronger military, and if mandatory enlistment is what they need, so be it. |
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So, what I would really like is if next to "ignore" there was a less drastic option that only added them to my ignore list temporarily (say for 10 days), Someone might be willing to make a userscript that keeps track of when users are added to your ignore list, and will automatically remove them after x time. If users started to regularly "hush" each other for low-quality posts then a useful per-user statistic "H" might be the following:
H = (T / P) ** (1 - S)
Where:
T = The number of times this user was hushed in the previous activity window.
P = The number of times this user could potentially have been hushed in the previous activity window.
S = A severity/harshness control between 0 and 1.
In the past, the forum had implemented a feature in which the "ignore" button was more prominent if a certain threshold of people added the person to their ignore list. The problem with this type of feature is that it is trivial to spam the system via fake/bot accounts. Even if a merit or rank threshold were to be required for the score to be impacted, it is very difficult to enforce the reason that someone "hushes" a person. |
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This could have been because they made a number of loans not fully secured by collateral
As I was saying, you give away money, you have no collateral and you pay interest hoping you will get your money back with interest on top of that. Ponzi's macaroni factory! That is not what a ponzi is. Banks make unsecured loans all the time and are generally successful in doing so. A ponzi is a scam in which previous investors are repaid by future investors investing more money. That is not what is alleged to have happened in the case of Celsius. What appears to have likely happened is that they made risky loans that turned bad. |
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That statement conflicts with the 'investor documents' that the WSJ has claimed to see. It also conflicts with their own ToS, which say that they are under no obligation to hold on to any collateral whatsoever. That complicates things. The FAQ says to refer to the ToS. Coinbase has said in the past that they are working on legal mechanisms to change customers' status as 'unsecured creditors'. And you trust them? As I pointed out in my previous post, Coinbase lie constantly. And as we agreed on just there, other platforms such as Celsius have told blatant lies. These platforms will say anything to try to placate their users or attract new ones. Until I see legal documents from Coinbase (i.e. never) saying that users are not unsecured creditors, then anything else they say can and should be ignored. Do I trust that Coinbase is trying to find a mechanism to change customers' status of "unsecured creditors"? Yes, I think they have good reason to want to change this status. I think it is not trivial to change this status, and Coinbase's lawyers will need to find a solution that is generally new. With that being said, until the "unsecured creditors" status is actually changed, their customers should act as if they are unsecured creditors accordingly. I'm really shocked by the number of companies in this industry making under-collateralized loans, loans with risky collateral, or simply not reacting quickly enough. I hope lenders and depositors have learned something from this catastrophe. One good rule of thumb is to avoid depositing money in any company that has its own token -- it is basically a pyramid scheme and it is destined to fail. I would not describe it as a pyramid scheme, I would describe it as greedy, and companies doing what is essentially gambling with their customers' money. |
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Musk said Tesla will remain open to increasing its bitcoin holdings in the future, and the reason for the sale was to shore up their cash on hand due to issues with lockdowns in China related to Covid.
I think those Musk Declaration were an important part of the story: CEO Elon Musk said during Tesla's earnings call that the company sold the majority of its bitcoin to maximize its cash position, "given the uncertainty of the COVID lockdowns in China." He added, however, that Tesla is open to boosting its bitcoin exposure in the future, and "this should not be taken as some verdict on Bitcoin." Musk also said Tesla had not sold any of its dogecoin.
An important fact to me: according to their slide, I attached to the previous post: positive free cash flow of $621M
According to their statement: it sold 75% of that amount for $936 million,
Tesla would have been negative cash in the quarter if they hadn't sold the Bitcoin Stash. if you look at slide 3 of the slideshow previously posted, the $621 million figure is operating cash flow, and I don't think the sale of bitcoin is included in this figure. Slide 5 says that total cash (including cash equivalents) increased by $904 million and that they repaid $402 million in debt. You could say that their total cash on hand would have declined if not for the sale of their bitcoin. However, I don't think they sold their coin for this reason, as they sold their coin fairly early in the quarter. They also could have made other decisions based on the fact that they had the extra cash from the sale. |
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Of course, this is not a trial about establishing Celsius is a Ponzi scheme, but the results and evidence presented will matter if there are any follow-up lawsuits.
Follow-up lawsuits? Celsius has negative equity. There is no money to be given to plaintiffs if they lose any lawsuits. The people that will win in any lawsuit against Celsius are the lawyers, and this is true regardless of the outcome. That's the stated business model, and it's clear they didn't do that otherwise they wouldn't be bankrupt as there is no fucking way you lose money when you give back 50 cents to a dollar.
They appear to have loan losses that exceeded their estimates. This could have been because they made a number of loans not fully secured by collateral they do not expect to be repaid, or it could have been because they made a number of loans whose collateral value fell below the repayment amount before it could be liquidated, and do not expect these loans to be repaid, or it could be a combination the two. |
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sMerits allocation isn't equal per merit source. Anecdotally I know some merit sources have 1,000 sMerits per month, while others have a wide range of numbers down to 40 sMerits.
Isn't the base sMerit allocation 300 sMerits/month? (at least that's how much I get). I understand that each merit source receives an amount set by Theymos. Some may get to send 300 sMerit per month, some get less, and some get more. |
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All good things come to an end: TSLA revealed they sold a substantial part of their Bitcoin Stash. Electric car maker Tesla (TSLA) sold $936 million worth of bitcoin, or 75% of its holdings, in the second quarter, the company reported Wednesday in its earnings report. - The company ended the second quarter with just $218 million in bitcoin, down from $1.26 billion in the previous three quarters.
- The company held about 42,000 bitcoin heading into the quarter, so if it sold 75% of that amount for $936 million, that would equate to an average selling price of about $29,000 per bitcoin. Bitcoin ended the second quarter at a price of about $18,700, meaning Tesla avoided a substantial impairment charge on its holdings by selling earlier in the quarter.
- <>
It looks like Tesla took a decent hit on the sale. The sale itself is not especially surprising considering that Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin as payment over a year ago, so their current holdings were essentially a speculative investment. Musk said Tesla will remain open to increasing its bitcoin holdings in the future, and the reason for the sale was to shore up their cash on hand due to issues with lockdowns in China related to Covid. |
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@PrimeNumber7. How much coins in Ethereum and Bitcoin is Celsius holding in their wallets? If the whole cryptospace pumps with both of those coins going 3x from where they presently are, I reckon Celsius might have enough to pay back their depositors and have some extra profit in dollars hehehehehe.
I am not sure how many ETH and BTC Celsius have in their various wallets. It appears they have approximately $1.75 billion worth, according to a financial statement posted above. You are basically mirroring what happened with MtGox in their multi-year bankruptcy proceeding in Japan. In the Gox case, customer deposits were converted into fiat liabilities, and over the course of several years, the value of the coin being held by Gox increased. I am not sure how liabilities denominated in various crypto will be handled in US bankruptcy court. Various loans, and losses are being described in terms of dollars, however, I would believe that the loans, and collateral are denominated in terms of various coins. While it does appear likely that the underlying root cause of Celsius' collapse was that of a bad loan to a hedge fund that failed, we do not know with certainty why Celsius has such a large hole in their balance sheet. If Celsius has already liquidated collateral at prices less than the loan repayment amounts, they will likely not benefit from any increase in crypto prices. I am not aware of any evidence that Celsius was a ponzi. I think it is more accurate to say that Celsius made risky investments (loans) that turned bad.
What do you call offering high-profit rates They were essentially a bank. They took deposits and paid interest on those deposits at rates less than the rates they were lending the deposits out at, and were pocketing the difference, less any loan losses. Right now with the lawsuit it's Celsius who will have to prove they are not a Ponzi,
It is up to the Plaintiff to prove their case, not the defendant. Weekly payroll to Celsius employees. Considering those are weekly values, it must stay around 16,724,008$ a month.
That is not the expected behavior from a company claiming to be trying to recover itself from bankruptcy and acting at the best interest of the community.
It appears that employee payroll is expected to be ~$3.4 million to employees for the 30-day period following Celsius filing for bankruptcy. My assumption is that those employees are performing work for Celsius, and without that work, Celsius would incur losses greater than the salary being paid. |
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