Taproot would expand on Bitcoin’s smart contract flexibility, while offering more privacy in doing so. Even the most complex smart contracts would, on the blockchain, typically be indistinguishable from regular transactions.

I can pull that off with my flap apron belly. I can hold a sketch pad under there too.

Fidelity to trade crypto for institutional clients “within a few weeks”
May 6, 2019, 5:41AM EDT

Fidelity, the massive Wall Street brokerage firm, is gearing up to trade crypto on behalf of its large institutional clients "within a few weeks," according to a report by Bloomberg.

Readers might recall that Fidelity's custody business for bitcoin has been up-and-running for the past couple of months. Now the firm will help those same clients trade in the nascent digital currency market — a service the firm has planned to offer since it announced its Fidelity Digital Assets business in October 2018.

Fidelity Digital Assets head Tom Jessop painted a picture of the firm's trading business, which will not be open to retail clientele, in an interview with The Block.

"We are not prop trading, we don’t have a desk," he said, noting that the firm would act as an agent for clients. "We are purely acting as effectively an agent, and that’s what our clients want. Our clients want to avoid the issues associated with funding on multiple exchanges, both administrative risk, or otherwise, they want something resembling the best price experience, and so we’ll try to do that by bringing liquidity providers, and other sources of liquidity onto our platform. I think effectively a smart order router, or logic, that would interrogate the market, find the best better offer, and allow the client to execute at that price."

Quick Take

    Bitfinex and Tether moved to vacate the ex parte order “because it was issued based on incomplete or incorrect facts and the wrong legal standard”
    Bitfinex and Tether argue that issuing the “there was no ongoing fraud, and no “victims” in need of the drastic remedy of an injunction to protect them”
    They argue that NYAG first needs to establish the basis for its authority “to even regulate in this sphere” and require Tether and Bitfinex to “address blunderbuss document demands”

What's really interesting to me here: 1. They conveniently leave out that they changed their website quietly to include that its reserves could consist of loans to affiliates 2. Tether doesn't mention that they lied about being 100% backed by USD for several months

Question for anyone who wants to take a crack at it.

At what point should we assume that most everyone who wants out of Bitfinex has gotten out?

I should maybe do this in PM, but at the moment I don't care.

Hueristic, thank you for working through this with me.  It is pretty obvious right now that I have been suppressing how much the end of that scene hurt.  I used to hang out on IRC with those guys on the regular...

I have said before, and I still believe, one of the things that really gives me hope is that quite a few of the early Bitcoin folks are OG folders, fundamentally altruistic individuals.

This world could do with an elite class with something other than their own quarterly gains in view.

^
LOL, in 2019, I'm talking about the highest price of the year, so far and I hope to see it higher in December.

Yes, it did happen, I remember it was mentioned in the forums at that time.

Although I never did it myself, I do remember it. When I first heard about it, I was a bit surprised about how a thin layer of pencil material could do the trick...

May 8 is coming.....