The rumors about insolvency may be FUD, but Bitfinex's problems are obviously a big factor here. I wouldn't call it nonsense at all. They've shut down fiat deposits, people have been complaining about missing bank wires going on 2 months, and they've publicly lost two banks in two weeks. Literally the only way out of Bitfinex or Tether is buying cryptocurrency. You can see it reflected in their declining cold storage reserves. The price disparities make pretty clear that Bitfinex's problems have a real effect on supply and demand. I read that Bitfinex is quit cooperation with Noble Bank (Puerto Rico) because this bank came to the bankruptcy, and that this is main reason for temporary stopping fiat deposits. But when you say "lost two banks" do you mean that second bank is ING? I know they stopped working with Wells Fargo, this happened in February this year. So it would mean that at this point they do not really have the bank they would work with, unless negotiations with HSBC are not already finished. Shortly after the news about Noble Bank, reports leaked that Bitfinex had acquired a bank account with HSBC. Within a few days however, that account was supposedly closed and Bitfinex shut down fiat deposits. Rumor has it that Bitfinex set up the account through a shell company and didn't properly declare what it was used for, and as soon as HSBC got wind of it, they shut it down. Wells Fargo cut them off in 2017. I know they were banking with ING earlier this year, but given their current woes, I'm guessing that's over as well. |
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If you look at the volumes just before the price shot up, we were about to hit another low in terms of global crypto volumes this year, and suddenly the good old Tether fud nonsense was pulled out of the magical hat, and it worked. The market has gone nuts and the volumes are back with some level of volatility as well.
The rumors about insolvency may be FUD, but Bitfinex's problems are obviously a big factor here. I wouldn't call it nonsense at all. They've shut down fiat deposits, people have been complaining about missing bank wires going on 2 months, and they've publicly lost two banks in two weeks. Literally the only way out of Bitfinex or Tether is buying cryptocurrency. You can see it reflected in their declining cold storage reserves. The price disparities make pretty clear that Bitfinex's problems have a real effect on supply and demand. |
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Why? Tokenization on decentralized platforms is useful. People can buy, sell and raise funds easily and outside of the legacy financial system. Investors can avoid KYC using secondary markets and fundraisers can avoid trusted financial intermediaries.
What is fundamentally bad about ICO tokens...?
the keyword is "people can raise funds" not companies. and that has been the only case, random people without a company pretend to be a company and raise funds to do nothing. they use ICO exactly because there is no regulation, there is no KYC,... they can do whatever they like and get away with it. Not really. Lots of people who ran ICOs that way are now under subpoena or have already been formally charged by the SEC. People generally can't issue securities free of regulation, same as companies. a legit company that is registered and established,... is also regulated and for raising funds can not avoid things like AML/KYC laws unless they are trying to do something illegal. Okay, but they're just the issuer. They have no control over what investors/brokers/traders do with tokens on decentralized blockchains. As a retail investor, I can easily trade security tokens on a DEX without KYC. This is a fundamentally good thing. and there are better ways of raising funds that are also perfectly legal. there is no need for creating a useless token that is only used for raising funds. That's like saying stocks are useless. The point of a security is investment. What better ways are there? How is an IPO "better" than an ICO? Security tokens can make the market more efficient and accessible, and there are very obvious benefits for investors and traders compared to legacy brokers. |
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https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/wallet/Bitfinex-coldwalletTheir cold wallet is down nearly 19% in a month. Looks like traders would rather be playing elsewhere. I've always found it a tad strange that they have a publicly known and viewable cold wallet considering how obtuse they are elsewhere. Maybe they have plenty more. Sounds about right. A moment ago, the price at Bitfinex spiked 9% higher than other exchanges. It's back down to 6-7% now. Some people are definitely exiting Bitfinex as fast as they can via BTC and other cryptocurrencies. It's a little unnerving how fast the price disparity is rising... |
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You now longer have to buy stocks to get a small piece of a company. You could just buy their coin.
there is no need for a company to create a "coin" just because they want to sell shares on stock market! that doesn't make sense because they don't need to maintain a "coin" and its network just to have shares on stock market! if by "coin" he means a token then it is even worse because then it will rely on another platform to run its token on. Why? Tokenization on decentralized platforms is useful. People can buy, sell and raise funds easily and outside of the legacy financial system. Investors can avoid KYC using secondary markets and fundraisers can avoid trusted financial intermediaries. What is fundamentally bad about ICO tokens...? |
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I have just read an article explaining decentralized exchanges and find them to be very interesting. What's your view on them? Do you use them? If yes, which decentralized exchange would you recommend? Progress on decentralized exchanges has been very disappointing after all the hype they generated last year. The real-time order matching and liquidity of centralized exchanges is far superior. I have no idea when that'll change for the better. When I need to quickly enter or exit a trade, a DEX is never that attractive. Another thing: Most or all of the current DEXs are only quasi-decentralized. You may be the sole holder of your private keys, but trading requires the use of trusted third parties -- servers, domains, etc. For example, Etherdelta was hacked by attackers who replaced its DNS registry. The attackers were able to phish any private keys imported by traders while the site was hijacked. |
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Surprise, surprise. The guy is a gold bug who's still operating off the fallacious premise that money requires "intrinsic value" to be sustainable. It's good to entertain skeptical perspectives towards Bitcoin, but Schiff's views on money aren't compelling. And every time I see him talk about Bitcoin, all I can see is immense butthurt in his face. The guy has a real chip on his shoulder about BTC.  |
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I remember Phil Potter, the ex CTO of Bitfinex, saying that they bank like gangsters basically - lying and throwing off the scent wherever possible. It seems like a very stupid and unsustainable way of operating to me. It ain't 2012 any more. There really aren't that many banks in the world to give your surprise custom to. But that's also the reason people love them. They've managed to remain at the top of the industry in spite of all their shadiness over the years, and getting hacked for 120K bitcoins. You have to wonder why. It's offshore in the BVI -- see US v. Coinbase for why that matters. You can trade massive volumes without KYC, and jurisdictional bans are easily bypassed with VPN. They know there's a huge market for this -- bitcoiners love to trade "anonymously" and outside of regulation. Why not spin up a couple dozen more shell corporations and keep it going a while longer? It'll all end in tears eventually, and I think they know that. By the time the jig is really up, I bet the Bitfinex execs will be sitting on billion dollar bank accounts in places like Panama and Belize and the US government will never find them. I've always thought they were shady, but I also appreciate the way they played the game.  |
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1. a smart contract is created for both parties, one end needs to deposit bitcoin into the contract and the other end is required to deposit stablecoin into it. An interest should be negotiated beforehand.
2. only when required assets have been put into the contract by both parties does the contract become active.
3. the borrower of stablecoin then can exchange stablecoin to fiat currency and use it.
4. A deadline is set in the contract that if borrower cannot send back stablecoin into the contract before deadline, the other party obtains the bitcoin.
5. If stablecoin with interest is given back before deadline, both parties get their money back and this process is finished completely.
This model is pretty similar to a smart contract-based platform called SALT ("Secure Automated Lending Technology"). It's the same idea except I think there's a centralized money transmitter rather than using stablecoins. It's definitely possible. It's probably really easy to do with the platform the stablecoin is built on, i.e. USDT for BTC and GUSD for ETH. |
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It's over-regulation in my opinion. I have no idea why they would choose to go this far when they can simply regulate how it's used, just like every other country who chose to embrace it. I can tell you what won't make it on the list of "approved" cryptocurrencies -- privacy coins. I've been anticipating that one government or another would prohibit them, and this is certainly one route to do that. |
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In my opinion respect for privacy is something that is slowly dying in today's society and people will have to adapt. There is no doubt that this includes cryptocurrency wallets on all devices, if someone wants to remain anonymous in this regard, then the simplest solution is to not have crypto wallets or anything related to crypto on devices in international travel.
That's the simplest solution in this instance, but it's indicative of a larger problem. I remember hearing of information security folks that don't even carry personal PCs, tablets and phones through US airports anymore -- only brand new devices. Or they buy new devices after they land. At least with cryptocurrency, we can use deterministic wallets and be unaffected by this. |
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I'm very surprised they've managed to stay ahead of banking shutdowns for as long as they have. For any bank they are an extremely unappetising customer. No regulation, murky ownership in murky jurisdictions and not the most inspiring track record.
It's not as if this is going to improve for them either. They should either go fully legit once and for all or abandon fiat. I'm sure they'd continue to thrive as an alt only exchange with far less customer misery too.
As for this current ball ache it'll work itself out in the wash until the next time.
It looks bad, but remember how things turned out last year with Wells Fargo? After a couple months, virtually everyone except for Bitfinex'd forgot about it, and eventually they found new banks to serve them. I heard they secured a bank account with HSBC, but that it was undeclared and the bank shut it down. Back to the drawing board. As for the alt-only idea, that's sort of what they did last year during their banking troubles. They kept adding coin after coin without addressing the fiat problems. Unfortunately for them, it's not bubble season this time. |
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Bitcoin primarily faces a threat from the evil “51 percent attack,” which if executed, could result in the creation of fraudulent side-chains containing transactions that never took place. Huh? I also stumbled upon that sentence. I think the author is referring to the "attack chains" (containing double spends) an attacker mines aiming to replace the current consensus chain with it. I agree that the problem of "pools" located in China, alone, isn't really a big threat, as hashrate could change to an alternative, non-Chinese pool. But the centralization of the mining hardware by Bitmain could be a problem - remember Antbleed? In a "destructive" attack scenario, the Chinese government could take over the Bitmain servers and block hashrate not coming from miners participating in the attack. However, there's a relatively easy fix that already was discussed in 2017: the "nuclear option" - a hardfork changing the algorithm to one not dominated by Bitmain ASICs. So the attack could lead to some turbulences (and cheap coins) but would be very far from really "disrupting" the network. Yup, I've always been more concerned about Bitmain's position than about mining pools. When I see people celebrating the efficiency of competitors' miners hitting the market, I assume they don't realize that no competitors compare to Bitmain's scale. Not even close. And Bitmain continues to sacrifice short-term profitability to squeeze other producers' margins in an effort to consolidate market share. I think a lot of people are underestimating their dominance in the market. I'd forgotten all about Antbleed, thanks for the reminder. An emergency hard fork like that certainly sounds disruptive, though, as miners are the whole basis of the economy. The fork would probably be quite insecure compared to the old chain. I also wonder what kind of damage this kind of attack would do to the market's long term faith in Bitcoin, since it goes to the heart of the viability of honest mining when external political/geopolitical matters are at play. |
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Bitcoin primarily faces a threat from the evil “51 percent attack,” which if executed, could result in the creation of fraudulent side-chains containing transactions that never took place. Huh? The research pointed out the five mining pools in China comprise 74 percent of Bitcoin hash power, an evidently “unsettling” situation. Given the country’s harsh policies, control over the network could mean censorship and other damaging attacks. Censorship, unreliable confirmations -- not the end of the world. They couldn't steal funds without a successful hard fork and that won't happen. And it costs a lot of money to keep attacking the network. Electricity, new hardware, etc. For what gains? I'm not sure... It's also not known how much of these pools' hashpower is from miners overseas or miners otherwise unaffected by the Chinese authorities in this theoretical attack. Miners can freely point their hashpower elsewhere if their pools are attacking the network. |
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Innovation or the beginning of quasi centralised hell?
I was never very interested in federated sidechains. How far can you trust a dozen or two entities not to collude and steal funds? I'm actually pretty skeptical of all sidechains as currently conceived, from a security perspective. But from an arbitrage perspective, it makes sense. If you're holding BTC on Exchange A and send via the blockchain to Exchange B, you're already trusting both exchanges. From that perspective, using Liquid is probably worth it for instantly credited transfers between trusted third parties. |
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If binance can migrate completely to DEX with all the fame it has already acquired it should stay ahead of the game!!
That would be a mistake. It would be smarter to do what Ethfinex is doing -- a "hybrid" decentralized exchange where they also offer centralized custody and trading engine, which is much faster and easily enables bot trading. I think it'll be many years (if ever) before decentralized exchanges can compete with centralized ones -- at least for day traders, market makers, arbitragers, etc. These types of market participants need highly liquid markets that operate in real-time. |
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3d secure is a function to improve the security for credit cards for online usage (additional password). U have to contact your credit card issuer / your bank to unlock it and register properly.
but my card can buy anything online , only the services which buy crypto currencies is requires this Most cryptocurrency exchanges that offer credit card purchases will employ 3-D Secure as an additional security measure against fraud. They have to be super careful about fraudulent purchases because Bitcoin payments are irreversible. Most other online merchants don't need to be quite so careful. any other ideas to buy crypto currencies and skip this problem
Can you use bank wire or SEPA transfer to fund an exchange account? Or do you only have credit cards? Do any of your credit cards use the "MasterCard SecureCode" or "Verified by Visa" brands? Those use the 3-D Secure protocol. |
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Okay so say i use the sim card and a number to receive text with the code to verify my account.
Could i then use google authenticator or authy afterwards? Yes. Linking your cell phone number with SMS is just their first KYC step. After that, you can use Authy's mobile app to get seed-based one-time passwords. The other thing is either of those require it to be connected to phone number right? I believe so. If thats the case, then i could use my google voice number? Because i believe gemini said it has to be the same number used to verify account. So they are incorrect?
Your default 2FA when you set up your account uses the same number. You should be able to change the 2FA method in your account settings. As mentioned, you can use the Authy app, which works offline -- no internet/phone number/SMS required. Here's a blog Gemini published about it: Gemini uses the Authy service for 2FA. Authy is an independent cloud service called on to perform secondary verification once we have checked that a customer has provided correct login credentials (i.e., email and password).
Authy offers multiple options for second-factor verification:
-SMS: One-time passcodes (OTPs) are delivered via text message.
-Voice: Similar to SMS, with the codes read aloud by an automated text-to-speech system.
-Mobile application: Users install an app (or Chrome extension), which generates an OTP based on a secret “seed” and current time according to the TOTP standard. TOTP is an open standard implemented by multiple apps including Google Authenticator and the Authy app.
-OneTouch: Pioneered by Duo Push, this model dispenses with codes altogether. Instead users confirm a login by responding to a simple yes/no prompt. |
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You say you do not understand the arguments that evidence these rumors. The simple fact is that people like me are just being ignored by you while you boast of a small team and low operating costs. Low operating costs mean Jack shit when you do not provide a service. As much as we all hate the Banks the fact is a Bank would not keep me sitting here for 5 weeks wondering where the hell is my money.
For Gods sake please address my support ticket above.
You're better off blowing them up on Reddit or Twitter than here. Years ago, there were a couple Bitfinex higher-ups on the forum, but not anymore. There's a good possibility that this is about lost banking relationships. Complaints like yours have been popping up a lot over the past few weeks. The banking delays lasted for several months last year when Wells Fargo cut them off. They've apparently just severed ties with one of their banks: Searching for a bailout of sorts, the Puerto Rican Noble Bank is “no longer profitable,” according to a source close to the matter who tipped the news to Bloomberg. With Noble Bank’s cryptocurrency partners reportedly jumping ship, Bitfinex has also severed its relationship with the financial firm, affirming in its blog post that “[stories] and allegations currently circulating mentioning an entity called Noble Bank have no impact on [its] operations, survivability, or solvency.”
Popular stablecoin Tether also terminated its relationship with the bank. Then again, there were rumors that bank accounts worth €400M tied to Bitfinex were seized by Polish authorities a while back. So you never know.  |
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It might be under current laws. Obviously it's never been tested for cryptocurrency, but for example, gold coins are explicitly declarable. Here's one opinion: Travelers entering the United States at the border are already obligated to declare any currency holdings of $10,000 or more, regardless of whether or not custom officials might have the means to detect those holdings. While digital currencies occupy a somewhat unusual place in many portions of finance law, a report by Smaulgld suggests that the situation is relatively clear in this case. Because digital currencies technically accompany a holder anywhere that he or she goes, including across a border, that traveler would need to declare his or her entire cryptocurrency portfolio every time he or she enters the United States. This is different from the requirements of travelers who hold bank accounts and/or precious metals valued at more than $10,000 which are stored outside of the country. Indeed, some US senators have been trying for the last couple legislative sessions to explicitly have digital currencies included (among other things): The proposed bill, designated U.S. Bill S.1241, was introduced on May 25 of this year and co-sponsored by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The bipartisan group of Senators who have put the bill forward hope that it will deter individuals entering the United States from bringing in undetected and undeclared assets in the form of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. In either the US or NZ, it seems most of us agree. The easiest course is to delete any cryptocurrency wallets and restore from seed later. |
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