That's still a thing? I haven't heard much about it for a long, long time. I wonder how many people actually own any.
It is nice to have some bitcoin in a tax deferred account. If you think the bitcoin value or GBTC premium to NAV has gotten too high, you can trade out without any tax hit. |
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Completely irrelevent for Bitcoin though, since the entire purpose of a currency is to become a monopoly, a consensus mechanism for exchange. The less of a monopoly it has, the less useful it is. Your link argues popularity weakens the idea, so the article is inverse to how Bitcoin actually works. Don't try and conflate grunge music and economics. People like money to be as boring and predictable as possible, not "cool". Just like when you open your refrigerator, you don't want to have to guess what's edible or not. That's definitely not cool. I don't think the link argues popularity weakens the idea, it is more subtle about the dynamics. And I think its more about the impact on the creators / fanatics (ie developers) than just the overall network. For example, in the mop phase, there are these comments: Also, the mops also seem increasingly entitled, treating the fanatics as service workers.
Fanatics may be generous, but they signed up to support geeks, not mops. At this point, they may all quit, and the subculture collapses. It then notes that to avoid this outcome, you need the sociopaths to take it to the next level, monetize the mops, and ultimately take control. I definitely see parallels to the debate over the blocksize limit. There are clearly developers who are frustrated with what they see as demands from "reddit" that the changes should be made quicker than they are comfortable with. And I think both extreme sides of the blockchain size debate have their own theories on who the "sociopaths" are that are trying to take control (big blockers and their conspiracy theories about blockstream, and maybe small blockers to a lesser extent when they get frustrated at people like Brian Armstrong demanding bigger blocks while his firm doesn't do much if any core development, or optimize its transaction to limit bloat.) |
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Could also be done to trap shorters. That is, first loan out a substantial amount at a relatively low rate for a short timeframe (e.g. 2 days). These rates will look attractable to shorters and thus many traders will seek the opportunity to short, certainly because we are only slightly below a resistance level. Subsequently, you can offer a similiar size loan at a way higher rate (e.g. 0.2%). The shorter has to either take on this loan to keep his position open or close his position.
No they dont. Once the loan time ends (lets say it was a loan at .02%), it automatically tries to find them new loans at .02% or less and takes those. If it cannot, it put up a loan demand order at .02%, that anyone can fill. Until someone fills that, they pay no interest at all to hold the short open. Once its filed they pay .02% again. It sounds dumb, but I believe that is how it works from my experience. Anyone offering low rates in an attempt to trap shorts by later increasing their rates is doing it wrong. All they are doing is giving away low rates. The correct play is to only offer coins at high rates, and to increase the time limit from 2 days to a higher number to trap them at high rates longer. With all due respect, I can't imagine that is what happens. If it is, then it is one more compelling reason to get your crypto off of Poloniex. Plus, it would be completely game-able. Find someone to lend you an amount for just a day at an absurdly low rate, without auto-renew. According to your logic, you then have a perpetual loan at that artificially low rate as no-one will match it. |
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Although according to a comment in reply to the same point made on the first reddit link: Being registered as a MSB does not mean they have the money transmission licenses.
Those licenses are extremely expensive. Registering as an MSB is trivial. The second reddit link makes this more clear. The issue is not about the federal Fincen MSB registration, which appears to be fairly easy, but with all the state money transmitter licenses. Unlike coinbase, kraken or gemini, it does not appear that poloniex has made any effort to comply with state laws. Perhaps they are relying on the fact there has been no state enforcement against crypto only companies, but that does not mean they don't face the risk that states crack down. Note too that Poloniex did withdrawal from servicing customers in NY due to the bitlicense, which obviously made it impossible for them to argue they didn't need to be registered in NY. I do think companies like poloniex are at risk of this sort of crackdown. It is what prompted me to move all my XMR out of them last year when the rumors of a crackdown started. |
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If y'all don't mind me pulling a quasi-hijack from the current subject, allow me to present an item well worth discussing. I actually was torn between posting it here and posting it in a new "General Discussion" thread, because the emerging use case might well be too big for Monero to handle atm. Even though Monero's tech fits this use case hand-in-glove, only Bitcoin has the ready-to-go whale-sized ecosystem and financial infrastructure to exploit this (as of now potential) use case. First, the news item that got me thinking along the above lines: Trump proposes funding wall by cutting off remittancesWASHINGTON (AP) -- Donald Trump would force Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent by immigrants living in the U.S., according to a memo released by his campaign Tuesday. The memo outlines how Trump would try to compel Mexico to pay for a 1,000-mile wall if he becomes president. In his proposal, Trump threatened to change a rule under the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law, to cut off funds sent to Mexico through money transfers known as remittances. Trump said he would withdraw the threat if Mexico makes "a one-time payment of $5-10 billion" to finance the wall." The U.S. is home to about 12 million Mexicans, some living here illegally, according to various research organizations that monitor trends in immigration. They and other migrants use money transfer agents or banks to send money home, often with the objective of supporting their families. The Mexican central bank reported that money sent home by Mexicans overseas hit nearly $24.8 billion last year, overtaking oil revenues for the first time as a source of foreign income. Cutting off those transfers would therefore represent a significant blow to the Mexican economy. Trump's campaign says that money "provides substantial leverage for the United States to obtain from Mexico the funds necessary to pay for a border wall." "We have the moral high ground here, and all the leverage," the memo reads. "It is time we use it in order to Make America Great Again." Now, it could be argued that the above item is 100% nothingburger because Trump won't win the Presidency. That's a point, but consider these two counterpoints: 1) The fear engendered by the fact that someone like Donald Trump has come close to the Presidency; 2) The related, and more rational, fear that the Establishment politicians will act to cut off or heavily tax those to-Mexico remittances anyway. If Donald Trump winds up losing, all they have to do is wait a long-enough interval to credibly claim that they're not knuckling under to The Donald and then claim that they've "answered the just demands of the [Trump supporters]". What's intriguing about this use-case is that it has the potential to be framed as moral to a much wider group of people than hardcore libertarians. Imagine the typical Dem who hears about a Monero-powered para-remittance channel for those immigrants, justified as a way to "fight xenophobia!" He or she would actually be torn. On the one hand, it would clearly be a dark-market operation whose reason for being is to evade a new tax. But on the other hand, it would be explicitly set up to evade a highly regressive tax placed on the backs of mostly poor immigrants. The fact that it'd be a dark money pathway explicitly set up to help a group of disadvantaged and recently-maligned group of people would elicit a lot of squirmy sympathy or even hand-wringy support amongst Dems who can't stand the Trump movement. As a "moral" dark market, it's far more bankable than is Agora or the now-defunct Silk Road. And, to shift to admittedly callous dollar-sand-cents figuring, a Big Fat Tax on fiat remittances to Mexico would open up a much larger "liquidity cushion" than Western Union's fees do. Even if the net proceeds from a Monero remittance were to knock off 50% in fiat terms, that 50% would match a 10% fee with a 40% tax piled on top of it. But I think the best way to sell it, to undocumented-immigrant communities who already have lots of good reasons to be stuck-in-the-familiar-rut cautious, is emotional. Present a Monero para-remittance path as a way to whack the Donald Trump piņata with your money. To be frank, I know next to nothing about those communities and I have no connections to any of them; I know no Spanish. So in this sense, I'm talking through my hat. But feel free to comment on this idea. That's quite a use case! I just wonder if the average remitter and remittee in this situation would be comfortable with: USD to BTC BTC to XMR XMR wallet to XMR wallet XMR to BTC BTC to MXN Sounds more like a service one could sell, then use the technology inside the wrapper, so to speak, as the special sauce. So I set up a lemonade stand, or possibly even a website, where people send USD. I offer to deliver MXN (or USD) to their remittee in Mexico. Then I do all the proper crypto converting and charge way less than the competition. Thanks a lot for the nice words, but it looks like the suggestion dribbled off. To be frank, it would be a large undertaking to set up the infrastructure to make it go. It is a complicated business. You have to generate trust with your clientele in the US and abroad. They typically have an agent network owned / managed by the same ethnicity of people sending the money in the US, but then need to have a variety of service centers in the destination area. You need to manage currency exchange risk (you are giving a spot exchange rate at time of transmission, but then need to manage moving the US dollars in the US to pesos in Mexico.) You have all the AML / KYC issues. Many providers also provide additional services, such as the ability to have the transferred money go directly to a debit card usable at chain stores. I think that is why the bitcoin remittance market has not been that successful. The ones who try and go mainstream figure out their cost advantage is not as great as they hoped. The ones who try to fly under the radar probably face the challenge that the offering is too complex for the customers to understand, and are not trusted as much as the more expensive solutions. Now, if something like Trump's proposal were passed, it would most likely force a larger black market, where cryptos could find a nice role. |
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When you go on a trip and haven't used your travel computer for a while...  |
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That guy who got hacked for 30k XMR on mymonero.com must be particularly annoyed.
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Monero developer drops truth bombs: "No altcoins currently useful, majority are scams" http://ow.ly/ZRBop Thoughts? He has written these exact things other times too. He doesnt go for the hype and he is sincere. Cryptocurrencies are a very high risk investment and most of them are simple scams. So please dont mortgage your home to buy more of them. Agreed that his message is consistent. And I thought it was great that Ricardo / Monero is one of the few altcoins to get featured on the frontpage of /r/bitcoin without any pumping, let alone the opposite. PS, I am invested in some very high risk penny stocks. They really are too risky for you to invest in... No, I'm really not comfortable telling you the tickers, I don't want you to potentially lose any money. Please don't press me... Oh, and Tom Sawyer was really enjoying whitewashing that fence, he doesn't want your help whatsoever. |
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Good job devs, thank you for your hard work. I went and bought more Monero after the successful fork.
Thank you Primer as well for supporting the network. You are earning your pay and we appreciate it. Monero is real money and we believe in free markets, so you are free to do anything you want with your Moneros that you get for this service you provide us. Your selling them actually helps the community to grow by distributing coins and keeping prices reasonable for others to buy in.
Most of those who were borrowing my coins to short have covered now sadly. Still a few open, and the .5 to .9% interest is amazing. I have decided I will not lend at .1% anymore, my minimum now is .5%, and I will only lend some there, the rest will be at 1% or higher. I had some coins lent at .1% when it spiked up ,and as a result I wasnt able to get them out on loan at much higher rates. Its better to loan at 1% for a couple days than it is to loan at .1% for a couple weeks. We should all do this as it increases our Monero income and creates buying pressure, as shorts must buy to pay interest.
This community is top notch and very skilled. Not having a GUI for almost 2 years was a great choice, it attracted the technical gurus to the community while keeping Monero away from the get rich quick people, while the devs worked to continuously improve Monero.
Curious, is this a taxed thing? Since it is in Crypto and paid in Crypto, it needn't be claimed on taxes? They are free monero. When I eventually sell them I'll pay taxes. In the US, at least, that is most likely incorrect. Crypto doesn't have to convert to USD to be taxable. For example, the rules are very clear that mining bitcoin counts as income when the coins are received. And if you purchase something for crypto, that is also a taxable event. And interest on lending, whether margin or otherwise, is income. So interest from margin lending crypto is most likely is income, you pay taxes on the value received as received, and your basis on the monero received is equal to that value. |
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Next milestone: To leave Dogecoin behind.
All it would take is a 15% rise in XMR and 15% decline in DOGE. |
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Wow, XMR just jumped to #7 on coinmarketcap, helped by bitshares and factom both dropping 25%.
If XMR rises another 21%, and DOGE falls the same amount, it will be at 6.
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Given the topic of the article what I find interesting is the scammy business model of getting someone interested in an article and then attempting to "force" them to register midstream in order extract personal information for commercial advantage. This is accomplished by manipulating the html code and like most forms of DRM can be defeated. In this case a fast Edit > Select All does the trick after changing the page number in the url. The attack on privacy and freedom by the business model of the publisher seems more relevant to me than the content of the article. Edit: It is not the regulators who have to worry about Monero, it is businesses who use deceit to collect people's personal information and then traffic in it for commercial advantage that have a lot to worry about Monero, starting of course with the publisher of the said article. Seekingalpha is a pretty iffy source of information. Its just a proprietary financial blog aggregator. There are some credible people who post there, but otherwise anyone can create an account and start posting. This guy, for example, only has 45 followers. |
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Not planning to sell, was just sarcastically noting that a dump would keep me from getting back to break-even for the first time in ages. |
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Sorry guys, but XMR is just about getting back to break-even for me in bitcoin. So a dump is clearly imminent.  |
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What, did Bruce Fenton just solve consensus?
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"Sounds like the most patronizing bitcoin conference ever." Yep, that sums up my view of Bruce.
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Couldn't this game be expedited by also voting that Black will then advance whichever pawn it can until it queens. And then white can decide if it captures the pawn or not, where it moves its queen, and then we can resume the game once both sides have queened?
Meant where it moves its King. |
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