this is exactly the same thing binance did in 2017. back then, the established altcoin exchanges (bittrex, poloniex) were pressured by regulators to implement mandatory KYC. binance on the other hand, as a newcomer to the market, retained their unverified KYC levels, went on a listing spree, and paid out lucrative referrals. it paid off big time, obviously. they continued skirting the law for 2 years before even showing USA traders the door.

i see the same thing happening now. binance futures was only just launched a year ago. CZ probably figures they can get away with at least another 1+ years of the status quo. they'll grab a huge piece of the post-bitmex market share, and then they'll just implement KYC down the road when they feel regulators closing in.

fivethirtyeight dropped trump's odds to 11%---wow. betfair still has him at 34%.


most democrats say they are voting early, while most republicans say they will vote on election day. how true both of those claims are will make a big difference.

there are some early signs that the democrat advantage associated with early voter turnout is being overstated. and if republicans really do show up on election day in those numbers, then the race becomes much more competitive. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/522939-early-voting-trends-show-democrats-falling-short-in-3-of-4

this is in poor taste. i told you i don't care about the money. i'm baffled why you took that as an invitation to start some petty public drama.

all i asked for was for you to acknowledge that maybe you made an oversight, because you told me you saw my posts about wanting the fees back and ignored them anyway. you could have just been like "sorry dude" (even if you didn't think you had any fault) and ended it there. it's not like i expected any money back at that point.

instead, you did this.


i have no idea wtf you are on about, why you ignored my PMs saying i don't care about or expect the money, and why you're now claiming i want to claw money back from the winners. that's insane, and it's sorta fucked up to suggest that's what i asked for.

what a ridiculous tantrum......

congrats on taking it down, @iv4n. solid play as always!


rigggggged

@yahoo pulled off quite the upset there. lucky dog!


lol @ getting in the hall of fame without even cashing. i thought about playing the small final this morning but when i saw just 4 players regged i thought, "you guys have at it" and went out for breakfast.

who says poker is simple? hold 'em involves many billions of possible hand combinations.

anyway, it was just an analogy for fivethirtyeight's position that trump had a 13% chance of winning. unlikely, but certainly not impossible or even that much of a long shot.


fivethirtyeight accounts for all of that. their odds are based on simulating the election 40k times, with the forecast updating every time a new poll comes in.

not exactly the exchange's solution, but a third party's. remember bitcoin builder, when mt gox was collapsing? it's like that.


given the rumors of arrest/government involvement (as opposed to a hack) it does kinda remind me of early 2017, when the major chinese exchanges like okcoin froze withdrawals for a few months. they closed up shop in the end but did make good on customer withdrawals.....eventually.

i don't think we need to limit things to the current model or bother with liquidity pools. the example above could easily apply to a p2p transaction between two people---ie borrower and title holder. in other words, replacing banks as traditional mortgage lender. as long as the mortgage is in good standing, the title could remain "locked" by the smart contract. if default occurs, it would be released to the lender's possession.


i'm pretty sure it's trivial to do this without custody. the only problem IMO is that we need some sort of trusted third party for attestation purposes, so that both parties can reliably expect the tokenized title to hold up in court.

it's kinda huge.

i dunno exactly how to categorize the revolut/robinhood/square chunk of the exchange space, but in one fell swoop, paypal is probably about to overtake them all.

and they are coming for bitpay too. with their army of merchants, they make bitpay look like peanuts. and there is talk of them acquiring bitgo, which would immediately make them a major player in terms of institutions, custody, etc. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-22/paypal-said-to-be-in-talks-to-buy-crypto-firms-including-bitgo

paypal is going really large with this.....

there will always be some sites that continue to operate with impunity until the bitter end---like BTCE did. and also some (like binance) who wait until the last second and seem to get away with it. binance futures is still allowing unverified accounts of course.

it took the CFTC and DOJ at least 1.5 years, probably longer, to bring the hammer down on bitmex. with any luck, bybit and bitmax etc aren't even on their radar yet. with the market starting to look bubbly, i still need some non KYC exchanges where i can get a 5x or 10x long in.

"surprise guest" eh? oh, the anticipation!

i'm not sure whether i'll be playing the small final or not, but i'll have your stream on, and will be waiting intently for 1 of my 11 tickets to be picked in the lottery!

you planning to play any other tourneys that day, @Globb0?

tiny would be an exaggeration. fivethirtyeight puts it at 13%. basically the same odds as holding overcards on the turn and drawing to a pair on the river.



i can't tell you how many thousands of times my opponent rivered an ace or queen there! it definitely happens.

i also think fivethirtyeight is slightly undervaluing trump. the betting markets have him ~ 33%. i'd put him somewhere in the middle of the two. 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 maybe.

that's obviously not how the american government sees things. as the bitmex case shows, they don't consider geolocation banning or prohibiting USA customers in the TOS adequate. absence of AML/KYC procedures is now seen as a basis for a charge of illegally operating in the USA. in other words, the feds say american laws have been forcing exchanges to implement KYC all along.

reading between the lines, this move has everything to do with bitmex. you may have noticed that bitmex just sped up the timeline on mandatory KYC too. the whole point of bringing the hammer down on the biggest derivatives exchange was to scare everyone into compliance.

it's already live in the USA, at least for some folks. check out @philipma1957's thread, he's already bought some BTC with his account: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5283723.0

this is what i see when i log in, so i guess it's being rolled out state by state or something:



apparently it's not coming to other countries until sometime in 2021.

we've gotta be in the early adopters phase. these are just marketing terms so we should take them with a grain of salt anyway, but between 2.5-16% market penetration = early adopters. after that comes the "early majority".



various surveys of bitcoin ownership (at least in places like the USA) have it at 5-10% of the population. in fact, that was a year or two ago.

collateral-based lending is extremely limiting right now, but it's worth pointing out that in the future, asset tokenization could make defi significantly more useful.

let's assume that titles to real property, automobiles, boats, etc could be tokenized/digitized and precedent could be established where courts recognize these titles as legally binding. conceivably, this would enable defi platforms to extend services to the traditional mortgage and auto lending industries. this could be extended to anything where traditional certificate of titles are used today.

anyway, that's just one way that defi platforms could be actually useful rather than solely being used for speculative purposes.

the major problem for me is trusting these newfangled smart contracts. remember what happened to DAI earlier this year? https://www.longhash.com/en/news/3339/MakerDAO%E2%80%99s-in-Trouble-%E2%80%94-And-It-Could-Shake-Up-DeFi

that's the tip of the iceberg. i dunno how much value i really want locked up in contracts like that.

for sure, that's always something you need to be prepared for. that's one of the reasons i could never grind tourneys every day. more of a sunday thing mainly, with some random sessions thrown in between. my old routine would be to allocate my entire sunday to poker, 4-8 tabling and firing off new entries in the early part of the day. by the end of the day, you're probably only gonna be running deep in a couple of them. if things go well, you'll be putting in 12+ hours total, depending on site/field size.


man, back like ~10 years ago when i was playing semi-pro i would have months-long stretches like that. this is nothing!

.......but the good runs eventually come too. y'all have never seen me run good in the bitcointalk series.

defi is bullish for bitcoin, not a doubt in my mind. just look at the amount of WBTC or other wrapped bitcoin tokens in circulation---those are literally bitcoins that have been taken out of market circulation. in re to supply and demand, that's less supply that people can buy on the bitcoin markets. supply + demand = price. you do the math.


gambling on the latest hype token is first level thinking IMO. noobs to the market reliably do that, and that's essentially why you can make money without dumb luck.

as long as you understand that each defi token is just empty hype/bubble---launching, pumping, and dumping---and you treat them as such, then you can make money. get in, get out, take your 2x and run. that's all shit tokens are good for: profiting in bitcoins that you can roll into cold storage. never get caught holding the bag......

in the old days, before ICOs and IEOs and defi, people used to send their coins to bitcoin doublers. face it, crypto investors are prone to being total speculators! in that sense, i don't see defi (or any of the other crazes like ICOs) as good or bad for bitcoin. they just are. speculators are gonna speculate. mainly what these crazes do is they inflate bitcoin rallies/bubbles harder, and then they also intensify the crash that comes when the bubble pops. that's because the bitcoin market is used as a gateway/onramp to the altcoin/token markets.

it's a good thing. paypal is not the end goal---it's a means to an ends.

sure, when the paypals and fidelitys and jpmorgans of the world get involved, it leaves a sour taste in our mouths. that's understandable. but the silver lining is that they are legitimizing bitcoin in ways the community could never do on our own. people look to institutions like this as authorities on money. if they expose their hundreds of millions of customers to bitcoin, a chunk of those customers are not only going to invest in bitcoin through their platforms, but they will eventually become real bitcoin users. that's the road to mass adoption right there.

i suppose it's still a step up from platforms like revolut and robinhood crypto, where you can't even transfer value at all. those sites feel like old school bucket shops!


according to reuters:


...then they are expanding to other countries, venmo, etc in the first half of 2021. i'm not sure when payment processing services will be rolled out.

given that they have 20-30 million merchants and ~350 million users, i'd say this is a rather huge endeavor, even if paxos can manage to source all the liquidity for them. paypal is a huge company, and venmo is nothing to sneeze at either.

i'm not surprised, given the charges filed against bitmex this month. we are entering a whole new era re exchange regulation. now the cat is out of the bag---geolocation banning is not sufficient for AML/KYC purposes. under the current interpretation from the USA government, deribit and others who have been allowing unverified trading without withdrawal limits (admittedly deribit implemented daily withdrawal limits this past february) have been violating the law for years. we should expect exchanges to cover their asses by implementing KYC, kicking out USA customers (and also perhaps UK customers etc) or both.

if this trend becomes more widespread, we could see more and more coins leaving exchanges as customers are forced to choose between trading and KYC. this would at least be bullish for crypto prices.