https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1251772447176536064

https://twitter.com/WhalePanda/status/1251786346282262528

A $25 million hack of summat named Dforce's defi funds.

I think it's well and truly time to stick a fork in this idea for all eternity myself. The safety simply isn't there.

I take the view that 'use cases' will be the last thing to be refined. We have to get through the speculative phase, then the store of value bit and then just maybe it'll be a currency once that's achieved. Finally the merchant stuff starts to kick in properly.

I certainly appreciate the ability to pay with it but I won't be at all surprised if many more options die off and don't come back until a long time later.

It's still being decided what it is. A small number are using it as a currency. Tales like this tell us not very many others feel the same way.

It sounds totally ludicrous and a guaranteed scam. What tax are they claiming needs paying?

The average withdrawal fee even with the crappiest and scammiest service is usually never above a few dollars and the real cost is a few cents at worse.

Name and shame the service.

Then maybe everyone should post a video of themselves wanking to completion on their Linkedin profiles to nullify this for good. As with most things in life the expectation is worse than the reality. I'm an old git so the idea of touching myself live for anyone to record seems a little bit off kilter. If something like this were to happen I would do a Jeff Bezos and preempt it.

That reminds me of a get rich quick book I ordered pre internet. It went into great detail about the wonders of mail order, how to market, how to seal the deal and how to administer.

The final chapter consisted of - now you know how to run a mail order business all you need to do now is find a product that no one else has, is in incredible demand, that you can get for next to nothing and have total exclusivity over. Best of luck in the future.

You might go the other way and descend into a world of rainbows, Sylvanian families and care bears and live happily ever after in a bubble of self induced joy.

I've never understood the people who cave or worse when threatened with the real deal, let alone pathetic crap like this.

We all have willies, minges and ring pieces. Many of us fiddle with them on a regular basis. If I got sent an attachment of someone I knew shoving a blender up their arse it would certainly be a surprise but the only thing it would change in my feelings towards them would be to keep my blender packed away when they came round.

I could understand someone properly freaking if they were filmed murdering someone or fiddling with orphans. Beyond that I assume most people have their private deprivations. No biggie if it slips out.

Am pretty sure drinking piss with cucumbers in it is a sign of a distressed mind. Best get yourself checked over.

I have no particular feelings other than Cobra's proclamations seem to come from several different people depending on the time of day, or lunar cycles. I'd rather someone that erratic, or easily rented out, is nowhere near controlling an important resource.

I'm pretty shocked at the way the physical market has degraded. Much of the time intact sold coins fetch about the same as peeling and claiming all the shitforks and selling the redeemed coin afterwards. When you throw in hassle and worries about shipping it's almost an act of philanthropy to sell an unpeeled one these days.

There was talk of sorting out the self employed in Britain. I'm not sure how advanced it is. The really weird thing is that initially it seems it didn't occur to them to do anything about the self employed at all other than advise people to go on the dole. I don't see why being salaried makes you a superior being worth saving.

I wonder how much of the world would be sad if the USD lost its dominance. Probably not all that much of it. It's hard for many a country to point to the benefits of US supremacy. Whether anyone or anything else would be any better is a question waiting to be answered but the US feels like a regime mired in decay.

The BTC price is wobbly and the future is looking wobbly too. I wouldn't be going to town treating myself to Lego Death Stars either even if I was bored out of my mind. If things are looking dicey you'll probably be more conscious of selling it than spending it.

The comments section reminds me of a poorly made gangbang video. No matter what the story is there's a seemingly infinite supply of dimly lit seedy men working their saggy old junk in the exact same way as all the other ones. As soon as one deposits his dribble of slime he stands aside and another one wobbles into view to squeeze out an identical one.

If you really were a politically exposed person you would already have many problems with your normal banking, and probably none at all.

Localbitcoins themselves declaring you such a person doesn't mean very much. And as mentioned above even if it is true it may only apply in countries that are totally irrelevant to you.

It's possible they're hiding behind it as an excuse or maybe they have their own definition that doesn't apply anywhere else. I would worry about dealing with them only.

I have some sympathy with this view. At this point we have zero idea how long this is going to drag on for and even if it recovers in a few months the hangover is a vast unknown. That said $1200 won't go all that far in the US.

I'd chuck it in BTC if I was absolutely confident about my financial health and had plenty of savings elsewhere. All the same the future is a looming question mark.

If you do wind up with the politically exposed label you are in dire straits and you'll have the exact same problems and much worse with conventional finance. I've read of people totally frozen out of everything. No bank account, no credit, no mortgage, nothing.

If a reputable service told me I'd been tarred with that brush I'd shit myself and go and double check with my normal options. That's something I would want to clear up ASAP. In this case they're not all that reputable and are probably using it as an excuse to be pricks to you so it's likely an isolated incident. If it isn't you might find out soon enough.

Nothing this indiscriminate where I'm at in the UK. They're bailing out salaries and maybe increasing unemployment stuff but there's no monetary blunderbuss quite like this. If you're a dosser under the radar like me you get nothing. How cruel.

What services?

The only place where markets like this are dominant is places like darknet markets and that's because they can't function any other way.

If there's a centralised alternative people will take it. It's more convenient, less capacity for ballsing up and there's always someone to moan to. The higher the price the more wary people will be. Some convoluted escrow system isn't going to be attractive.

And if a decentralised alternative is somehow cheaper then it's likely you'll be charged the same by the person you're decentralising with.

Presumably Coinbase are noting who's doing it so Uncle Sam can drone strike your ass at some point down the line for taking the piss.

I hope the people who are doing it are not financially pressed in any way. I'd love to know the proportion of first time buyers and where that BTC ends up. Maybe the US government will be directly paying for some top grade darknet 'shit' to pass the time.