Every buck has to stop somewhere, and that somewhere is Cobra in this case.

I think he's a multi-personalitied weirdo but the site's integrity has been impressive and that's primarily down to his stewardship. That's all he has to point to when people make shrill claims. As ever, actions speak louder than words.

If I ran it I'd have a holding page saying 'Bitcoin is nice' and a blockchain download link and that would be that forever.

And around the same time this was announced Bcash reached an all time low on the Bitcoin ratio. That must've had him squealing into his pillow. This is a bad time for crypto attention whoring. There's not much attention to go round.

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/requirements-imposed-wirecard-authorisation

Hey, the party's back on.

"We continue to monitor Wirecard’s activities closely and certain requirements continue to remain in force."

I got emails from other long forgotten card accounts like FairFX who turned out to use Wirecard too which was a surprise to me. That's a loadable foreign currency card and the type of thing you put your entire holiday budget on so this situation would've been an utter pain.

Good that it's been brought back from the dead but I'd be going back to cards issued by real banks rather than flaky fintechs if the smooth operation of my life depended on it.

I doubt any bank holding the funds knows that it's related to Tether. The only way they will is if someone who works for them is forced to point out which account has it.

Tether have played it masterfully.

They have removed the need for them to redeem for dollars, that's your problem and you'll have to find another private individual willing to do it, and they've also offloaded the risk onto other exchanges. The exchanges can't afford to let it fail either and several have publicly stated they'll back the peg no matter what.

I don't believe they're a scam. I don't believe it's money out of thin air. I do believe this would be a healthier space without it. 

One who told them what they wanted to hear for the amount of money he wanted to hear.

Maybe he's retiring in a few weeks. That's the only possible explanation for the sheer outlandishness.

Nah. They would never 'stoop so low', not that there are very many of them anyway. The BCH thread on here could do with some love. It'll have been stuck on the same page for two months soon which is an amazing achievement.

They'll go and hang on r/btc even though that place is starting to get a little ragged too.

My local shop would be rather surprised if I'd changed my name to Vitaly Kevchenko or something, but I can't remember the last time anyone checked a card I was using.

I'm not sure how fragile their relationships with card issuers would be, but it's certainly not going to be as robust as any Western operation. Like anything in cryptoland I would load and empty ASAP and not be all that surprised if it evaporated.

The biggest development standing in Bitcoin's way to progress is stock markets becoming like shitcoins. Most people enter BTC to make more dollars, they don't give a toss about its qualities but hopefully down the line its true virtues dawn on them.

With new apps like Robinhood and governments signalling willingness to do anything to keep things buoyant people will go straight there.

It does seem pretty buoyant but I expect most new arrivals will be going to places with a more instant message style. Reddit is a truly unbearable format and I'm amazed it's as popular as it still is. The IM style stuff like Telegram is of little use if you want to find actual past info though, as is Reddit a lot of the time.

The future of this forum is intriguing. There's so much whining from new members that maybe it's now seen as an elitist dead end. And then a lot of old schoolers have left in disgust at how much noise there is. Hey, maybe it needs its own shitcoin too, other than Grin.

If I were a legacy fan I'd say it wasn't for me and I'd wait to see what would happen, but these people have profiles they want to embellish and this is something that's obviously spawned more chatter than most things in recent years. They must get asked about it constantly.

Most of those who come out with this stuff will be in nappies soon enough so they get a nice wee attention boost in the short term and it's probably what their own followers want to hear.

Try using Revolut to buy or sell real crypto and see what happens. You stand a good chance of getting shut down.

All they offer to their customers is a number on a screen with 'Bitcoin' written next to it.

I presume you need a long flirtation before a card provider takes you on. They have a lot to lose making by the wrong choice. Crypto.com may well be a decent operation but Contis may not know a single thing about them.

Crypto.com took a good couple of years to deliver these cards to Europe.

Despite a denial a short while back Crypto.com's debit card has been suspended for Europeans as it got caught up in all the Wirecard problems.

They're talking about finding a replacement but that's probably easier said than done.

Wirecard supplies to others as well but I can't recall who they are.

That didn't last long.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/06/25/legendary-investor-jim-rogers-warns-governments-will-have-to-eliminate-bitcoin/#31e92da5584a

Classic old school doom mixed with profound misunderstanding for your morning wank on the toilet.

I enjoy this line particularly - "Controllable electronic money will survive, and virtual currencies beyond the influence of the government will be erased."

So they will erase something beyond their influence. Coolio.

But they did materialise. The trader made profit and that profit was available to realise. It's not the tax man's problem if he immediately threw it back in somewhere else. It's his responsibility to secure their share.

It's not crypto 'persecution', the same thing applies everywhere else too. If he were moving between currencies forex trading it may never be dollars but there still might be profits that are taxable in dollars.

Matthecat was an object lesson in someone with the ability to not get ahead baked into their DNA.

He got in at $10 and spent it all on drugs. Then he came back in the hundreds and published several miles of TA and trades accompanied by many more miles of abuse and got it wrong every single time.

I seem to remember him insisting it would reach $1500 some day and then that would be that. He would regularly pity us while failing over and over again.

There've been alarm bells about them for years but the Germans were so enamoured at the idea of having a non industrial unicorn that I think they were indulged no matter what was staring them in the face.

When people decry shitcoins and the translucent shittiness and collective delusion of them it's easy to forget there's no shortage of the same thing in conventional areas of finance too.

The one and only thing the American establishment worships is money.

If I were looking to upend a society that did not value me I would not be out on the streets pulling down statues or on Twitter cancelling people. I would be labouring to a build an economy outside of the existing one. There is no move you could make more powerful or lasting than that.

That's where Bitcoin comes in.

By this point Bob's anus feels like a member of the family. I might set it a place at the table for Xmas dinner.

10% of one stock market in one country vs something that is open to anyone anywhere 24/7 with internet access. That's over 3 billion people.

Your comparison has failed to give me a boner.

People really need to reframe their thinking here. The comprehension of sizeable numbers  really isn't our strong point. Zoom out and add it up properly.

It's the same as these people shrieking about the market needing to buy $8 million of mined coins a day to 'maintain the price', not that it actually needs to. If people could be arsed to figure it out that adds up to $40,000 per country per day. Holleeee shit.