A reserve currency doesn't have to have government endorsement. USD is the current reserve currency -- and the U.S. has plenty of adversaries that forcefully hold the currency for the sake of participating in the global economy. China, Russia, etc. would love nothing more than to not rely on the United States currency system in order to trade which is why USD is being dumped out of currency reserves at record rates due to high inflation and overzealous sanctions. It's within the interest of countries to adopt a decentralized asset that isn't prone to the typical political manipulation that USD is subject to.

Gold solves the issue but for logistical reasons, it isn't feasible to conduct bilateral transactions through gold. Crypto fits the bill quite well.

If it's truly a capitalistic economy, then usually usury would be stomped out by the competition undercutting the high rates of which ever lender. If the market is free, competitive, and fair, then it shouldn't be a problem. Greed isn't a capitalism problem, it's a human morality problem. I wouldn't expect capitalism to be perfect, because predatory lending agencies exist -- though capitalism can make things more fair for the consumer because there's alternatives.

They're right that cross-border payments are troublesome and expensive, but CBDC's aren't the answer.

Banking institutions act as intermediaries between consumers and consumers are forced to adhere to the banks convoluted regulations which make it difficult to send funds internationally. Bitcoin is P2P and universal and obviously it doesn't have the same types of issues. Theoretically, CBDC could solve this problem if you're dealing with a single country but it isn't feasible to hold a dozen different types of digitalized tokens for the sake of doing business with different countries. You might as well stick to traditional banks at that point and deal with them to issue out payments for you.

Government shouldn't be in the position to control inflation, but they've taken that responsibility upon themselves to try and handle the balancing act of currency manipulation. Depending on the country, the government has the ability to resolve most economic woes by opening up free markets, lowering tax rates and regulation to encourage entrepreneurship, and staying out of the creation of central bank policies which hamper growth.

An individual government can't control global affairs like war. Understand, however, that most of the economic problems you see are a result of government ineptitude, not the Ukrainian war. The war just made matters worse.


I find the problem to be the sanctimony of the government which is they would like to go door to door and help everyone in the country. Instead of physically going door to door, they create a social welfare state at the expense of the working class.

This is precisely why so many people were upset with the government intervention in the first place, similar to that of the '08 crisis.

Normally, a larger bank could come in and purchase up the assets of SVB because they would have the liquidity to spare. It's not as if creditors would be completely out of luck if the government did not step in. FDIC allegedly stopped private banks from coming in and purchasing SVB for whatever reason. If the remedy to a bank collapse is for the federal government to come in, then people might as well bank with the federal government and have them manage assets. And in fact, some of the socialist politicians in America advocate for such a system where investments are managed by the federal government instead of private institutions. Social security is already a system that works like this, and it's set to become insolvent in the near future.

Keeping 120M on an exchange, good grief.

"Kroll" is the agency FTX is using the to liquidate and reimburse creditors and apparently they have some experience with these sort of matters. Perhaps this person might get their money back, or at least part of it, but my understanding is these matters can take ages to settle. And who knows how many assets that are on their books actually exist for the purposes of liquidation. How much were FTX execs able to get away with and is now unrecoverable?

FedNow is the federal reserve's miserable attempt at trying to develop a digitalized payment platform to compete with what the private market offer. I imagine they might use the platform to introduce CBDC's considering a payment system like FedNow hasn't been developed by the fed for over four decades since the development of ACH.

Bitcoin won't be banned. The government will just offer new ways to regulate the growth of the space until it drives people away. And they might even try to force people to use their trash FedNow system while they're at it too.

I follow international and U.S. politics closely -- and I do not bet on them hardly ever, no matter what the odds are.

Too many real world factors change the odds and it only takes the slightest distraction to completely flip an election. Campaigns have gone up in flames over the most insignificant blunders, and paid actors have the potential to influence outcomes depending on their power.

Try and factor these extraneous influences is nearly impossible.

The Biden White House released an earlier report on crypto and they've laid out their positions clearly. They're going to follow the lead of higher regulations and curtailment of the crypto industry, perhaps introduction of CBDC's and raising taxes on crypto users. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they start implementing wealth taxes for investors who sit on crypto in a desperate attempt to raise tax revenue and/or incentivize institutional investors to stay away from crypto.

Seeing as the ineptitude of the federal reserve has reached a boiling point, coincidentally the Biden administration seems more adamant than ever to regulate crypto.

And don't forget, when FTX crashed, they wasted no time to capitalize and used FTX to layout regulatory framework through executive orders: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/16/fact-sheet-white-house-releases-first-ever-comprehensive-framework-for-responsible-development-of-digital-assets/

These "fact sheets" are nothing but propaganda.

His reasoning is clear -- it increases surveillance capabilities by the U.S. government. I'd add that it also gives even more centralized authority for the U.S. government to control monetary policy. Even though most banking is digital, USD is still a physical system. The U.S. government still recognizes physical cash as legal tender.

Should they move away from such a system and implement digitalized tokens as an alternative -- you can say goodbye to any sense of financial independence as a USD holder. Every token you have will be controllable by the U.S. federal government. It's a lousy system.

Most of the CBDC ban talks are political grandstanding, anyways. But it's still nice to see where a politician stands on these sorts of issues. Should DeSantis become President, it gives us a hint of where he'd take the federal reserve.

Their friendship only exists as long as mutual benefit exists. If Russia begins to be bad for business, or perhaps if geopolitical interests misalign, then the friendship ceases.


It's become popular for U.S. politicians to demonize China as part of their campaign strategy because most Americans don't understand anything about international relations so it's good for polling. But the problem with Biden is his family loves to dabble in dodgy business in which his son is the beneficiary of lucrative Chinese business deals. The Chinse know this. Biden looks comically weak on the global stage.

These emergency lines of credit are given to the institutions, but not the individuals. Funny how that works.

The government shouldn't be in the business of saving enterprises from their bad investments because it occurs at the tax payers' expense. Contemperaneous to these bailouts, do the taxpayers really have any say on which institution should be bailed out and which ones should collapse? Of course election time, voters have a choice to make their voices heard. But it'll be a little too late by then.

My number one priority. Other features on your list aren't too important to me.

The common tactic for a lot of casinos is to hide KYC behind their TOS and issue a KYC check when a user wins something sizeable. I'm not going to submit documents to a business that could disappear the next day. Even some of the supposed reputable casinos in the past have had issues with KYC.

Reputation/KYC I'd consider one in the same. A casino that hides KYC behind their terms of service and sporadically KYC's in order to avoid paying out wins is immediately disqualifying.

50% seems about right considering these banks don't hold enough cash to insure depositors in the event the economy crashes and there's a need for liquidity.


There could be whatever regulation on SVB in retrospect and the bank would still fail unless the regulation were to be applied to the federal reserve themselves. It was them that created trillions of dollars of cash flowing into the economy in 2020-2021 and seemingly tech stocks is where a lot of that money was funneled to. The bubble popped and so did SVB. The treasury bonds they were holding onto only added to the complications. SVB can't control the inflation rate.

The issue I have with bailouts is that the money introduced into the economy never finds its way out of circulation so inflation is only going to worsen when USD is currently inflating at 40 year highs.

I didn't think there should have been a bailout in 2008 either to be clear. I would argue the '08 recovery was attenuated with the actions the government took in bailing out the institutions that were giving sub prime mortgages knowing their investment to be high risk. Then you have years of QE finally crashing down.

I don't even think they got greedy. U.S. treasury bonds aren't supposed to be high risk investments. People seem to be overlooking the fact that the current predicament by the federal reserved being forced to raise interest rates were entirely manufactured by them. They decided to inject trillions of dollars into the economy and it's banks like SVB that were sitting on a pile of cash without a place to put it. 2020-2022 were uncertain years for investors, U.S. treasury bonds were not a bad idea. At some point, they should have been aware that the interest rates hikes were going to impact those investments and not have had mass sell offs in panic in order to raise liquidity.

I don't blame people for panicking and ultimately the banks are responsible for their investments. Doesn't seem prudent to blame the bank for operating within a system that's inherently corrupted with state sponsored fiscal ineptitude by the federal reserve.

There isn't a reason for the fed to introduce even more dollars into the economy after their COVID spending spree. The inflation won't be reversed, the inflation rate will go down but the price increases will still be there. That becomes a problem when the wage increases are disproportional from the inflation rate.

And of course, when the fed introduces new money into circulation, it's difficult to take that money out. Interest rate hikes are the only remedy they have and that has ramifications for GDP growth.

I wouldn't say SVB carelessly managed funds at all. U.S. treasury bonds are not traditionally high risk. I'm aware the argument could be made that investing in U.S. treasury bonds in an inflationary economy is risky -- SVB should have been aware that their treasury bonds were not going to be as valuable as they once were. That's far from reckless behavior. Bankman-Fried knowingly mismanaged funds which caused liquidity issues. SVB tried to raise funds and there was an uncontrollable run on the banks.


There should not be an incentive for banks to risk client funds and be bailed out by the government in case their bets don't work out.

Do you, say as an individual investor, have such safety measures in place? The government would not help you in such an event, why should they help the banks?

When the banks are 'saved' by the government, they're injecting new dollars into the economy that shouldn't be there in the first place. Switzerland doesn't have a terribly high inflation rate but USD is inflating at a high rate so the federal reserve has reason not to bail out the banks. Also, do we want to be in a position where tax payers will cover the losses of the banking institutions should their investments go sour? Individual investors do not have such luxury, so why should the banks?

I'd expect for larger banks to purchase the assets of SVB and every other failed bank at a discount which would provide some liquidity for their creditors. But people are still losing money even if the government provides support. The economy is in for a blood bath. This is only the beginning.

It's not that simple to raise interest rates again when there's a liquidity crisis.

Understand the options the federal reserve have right now are either let the banks collapse and hope they get scooped up by the larger financial players (which is what would happen considering these banks are sitting on assets will eventually mature to somewhat of a return) OR they introduce liquidity into the system by pausing the interest rates hikes and bailouts which will prolong the inflation crisis.

The reason this crisis is occurring is because of interest rates hikes in the first place. Would the federal reserve rethink their course of action seeing the mess they've caused? I'm not in support of such matters but certainly the White House would support bailouts considering the world economy is in a fragile state. Elections are close.