Regarding this:
"they were fascinated to see that a little-known token that’s supposed to be backed one-for-one to the dollar was getting printed in large quantities. "

The token was tether.  Has anyone actually believed that these stable coins are truly backed one-for-one?  When tether came out, it seemed awfully scammy to me.  It is easy to claim it was backed by the dollar, but not have the reserves without any way to prove it at the time. To me, I'd rather have bitcoin for crypto and not mess with stable coins.

I'd ask, do you think the spike in the last 18 hours was because it was "propped up"?  I am sure there are attempts to manipulate it, but the question is how much is it truly manipulated?  How long could one keep up the manipulation?  What was the reason for the manipulation in the last 18 hours?  I don't know the answers, but the paper seems to say only some of the time.  As the market gets large, it gets more difficult to manipulate.  ETFs and the like would make the market even large and consequently more difficult to manipulate. 

Not to mention that it is difficult to carry substantial amounts of fiat, silver, gold etc over a border if you have to flee someplace like Venezuela, Germany in the 1930s, Russia at the time of the Russian revolution (under Stalin, Lenin, or even today), China under Mao, etc.  There are statists and authoritarians the world over who want to force you to pay for their choices, protect yourself.



Part of the reason it hasn't happened is that fiat is no longer backed by silver or gold.  It is backed by nothing except the whims of a government.  Look at Cyprus 10-11 years ago, since few people had gold or silver and the euro (like the dollar) is backed by nothing, they just gave everyone's bank accounts a haircut.  They didn't have to expropriate gold or silver.  If the euro had had silver or gold coins or even been backed by a PM things would've been different.  Like when the democrat president (FDR) expropriated gold in the 1930s and devalued the dollar.  Once the full tie of the dollar to silver and gold was lost in the 1960s and 1970s, it is only a matter of time before the value of the currency is completely lost.

With no anchor to fiat, they can inflate value away, expropriating it by a slightly stealthier method than outright seizure. 

I saw this article and I love how they try to divide people by immutable, irrelevant, characteristics.  Yes, bitcoin is good for wealth preservation, yet that applies to everyone regardless of sex, skin color, hair color or eye color.  I can see why they are trying to carve a niche, but CNBC should recognize that and point out that bitcoin can help everyone protect themselves and note it for what it is: marketing based on the racist notion of skin color being relevant.

I worked at a large (20k+ people) computer company out of grad school (this was several decades ago) with lots of buildings, some older, some newer spread out over a larger geographical area for the part I worked with, maybe 2000 people in that section of the state, with plenty of areas that were empty except for maybe 1 person.  I wouldn't have done it if bitcoin had even been around then, but it would've been easy to have a few miners in one section of the office and no one would even see it.  With that many people in so many different buildings, multiple floors, secure areas etc also, I doubt they would've noticed the change in power usage.

It may not happen on the scale shown, but one or two in a closet off the office or under your desk, I bet that happens pretty frequently.

Pretty much the answer is: if you hold the keys, they are your coins.  So if you both have the keys, you better move the coins immediately to a wallet that you control.  And if a criminal has the keys, they probably will have already done that.

This - just ask the people of Cyprus, Venezuela, Germany in the 1930s, North Korea, China, Russia etc.  Other countries in the future.  Perhaps even the US if the statists get their way and destroy liberty there.

Plus the fact that the value of the asset keeps the blockchain secure.  If you have a cartel that controls the blockchain and don't care about the security, then you really don't need crypto, just a distributed, shared database.  If you want something secure in a trustless environment there has to be some value there to secure or else who is going to care?

You are right.  The only people helped by these regulations are the people in power.  You can have as much regulation as you want and there will still be scammers.  People like Warren are no friend of freedom, she wants power and control.  Global regulation is particularly bad because it will end competition between jurisdictions.  In all likelihood you'll end up with a terrible, global regime which will only entrench those in power and enrich them while stopping everyone else from getting out from under their thumb of the century+ long fiat disaster.   With global regulation you might as well completely shut down bitcoin and crypto and general and embrace a digital fiat where every move that every single person in the world makes will be tracked, analyzed and controlled.

They like to muddy the water:  "cryptoisation" - transitioning from fiat currencies to digital fiat is digitalization.  If by crypto, they mean bitcoin, then it means much more: decentralized, censorship resistant among many other things.  Digital fiat is the dream of statists, fascists, communists, socialists and all other authoritarians around the world.  They can stifle dissent and control everyone and they will do so.  Look at Stripe, PayPal and various credit card processors and banks.  They are already trying it even when it involved a billionaire (or extremely wealthy), sitting President of the US.  What will they do to regular people if they can?

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Yeah, the BIS doesn't like crypto either.  CBDCs are worthless to regular people, even worse that paper fiat.  At least with paper fiat you can make a donation without someone people able to track it.  And stable coins?  When have they ever worked out well? lol

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

The only people helped by these regulations are the people in power.  Look at the US (and the world) which has a large regulatory system in place - you had Madoff, Enron, WorldCom, Lehman, Tyco, Theranos, Shkreli, Allen Stanford, Tom Petters, Rothstein, Nicholas Cosmo, Wells Fargo.  Don't forget Wirecard, Volkswagen,  ZZZZ Best etc.

You can have as much regulation as you want and there will still be scammers.  The best choice is to keep your bitcoin in cold storage.

Global regulation is particularly bad because it will end competition between jurisdictions.  In all likelihood you'll end up with a terrible, global regime which will only entrench those in power and enrich them while stopping everyone else from getting out from under their thumb of the century+ long fiat disaster.   With global regulation you might as well completely shut down bitcoin and crypto and general and embrace a digital fiat where every move that every single person in the world makes will be tracked, analyzed and controlled.

First of all, it is Gensler, so much should be discounted immediately.   Second, if the SEC would approve a "physical bitcoin" ETF vs the futures based ones, many people who want to hold bitcoin would do it that way and "investment advisors" would be able to use the ETF.  Third, perhaps some of the large players who are already custodians would just hold crypto,  e.g. Fidelity, Vanguard, ML, Schwab etc.   

People shouldn't be hold bitcoin on most of these new exchanges anyway and scammers may say they are segregating investor's bitcoins, but they'll find out later that they weren't.

Wow!  That is huge.  I am surprised this hasn't received more attention.  I suspect though that all the extra costs imposed by regulators worldwide and the cash ban, along with the insanity caused by the scammers at FTX and the like they couldn't make it work.  Between all those, the trading volume seems to have cratered. 

Sad day for the people involved and for people who would want to use it in the future.

Have you seen the sloth scene in Zootopia?  You hit the nail on the head above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0woPde7OE1k

As far as the bill, yeah, it was introduced, but will it be passed by the legislature and then signed by the governor?  Given many people in NY have an aversion to independent, free people, who can operate outside of their control, I wouldn't count on it.

As far as fees go, some places will charge a 3% fee on credit cards, so anything under that is a plus.

It sounds like a reasonable plan.  Do not keep the coins on any exchange though, preferably use some type of cold storage since computers can be compromised also.  It certainly sounds like you have the right time frame, not days, weeks, or months, but years.   Depending on what country you are located and the potential amount of value involved later, remember to consider that some places will impose gift taxes to larger amounts so gifting now vs gifting later (post-appreciation) could be smart.

I'd have to disagree.  Crypto can easily be a "a store of value".  Over any reasonable timeframe so far, crypto has demonstrated that it is a good store of value.  Of course fiat is definitely not a "a store of value".

As far as a medium of exchange, for proof it is a medium of exchange, just ask silk road and all the other places that have used bitcoin for transactions over the last 14 years.  There are plenty.

Perhaps it is not a unit of measurement yet, but 2 out of three equals or beats most fiat.

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Precisely.  Many of the people at the investment banks are paid to do "something" even if that something is just writing articles to share with clients and those employees are never judged on the records that their calls have.  

Perhaps when you have electricity download a bunch of information about bitcoin to your laptop computer.  Or order some hard copy books.  

There are inexpensive solar charges if you only have to charge a laptop.  Or make sure that your laptop is charged fully when power is on?

See ones like this:
https://voltaicsystems.com/solar-chargers/


https://www.treehugger.com/best-portable-solar-laptop-chargers-4858511

If you really think that government regulation will result in more transparency, think about Bernie Madoff, Jordan Belfort, people buying houses in 2006-2008 with no way to pay for them etc.  There are 1000s of examples in highly regulated markets where crooks operated with impunity for a long time.  They will talk a good game but it is more about their power and control.

As far as the rest:  storing coins in a centralized exchange has always been bad for all the obvious reasons: seizure, fraud, bankruptcy etc.   It seems every year or two it becomes crystal clear that people think that this time it is different, they think "this time I can earn a riskless reward".  It is a hard lesson, but last year Celsius and FTX show that.  Genesis dragged it into 2023.   Sure, use whatever exchange you want to buy or sell, but do not leave coins or fiat on there.  And don't do it all at once so that if you are unlucky enough to deposit 10 minutes before another FTX shuts down, you don't have a total loss.

Crypto isn't difficult:  buy or mine coins, put them in cold storage and then just wait OR buy or mine coins and spend and use them using a non centralized wallet.

Perhaps they should look in the mirror and have tighter regulation of fiat so that it doesn't lose 99% of its value over a century.  Perhaps they should regulate the corruption of government officials first.

Of course, SBF is a scammer who just happened to use crypto.  Just like there are plenty of scammers using the euro and dollar. 

Authoritarians and totalitarians the world over want power and control and CBDCs give it to them.  They are nothing special from the tech side, just a database, but for the power-hungry politicians, they are a dream: a centralized, censorable, controlled database of every transaction.

Owning bitcoin is one way to protect yourself.  Getting others to do so will help them eventually.

Ah, so the "tourists" are people looking to make a quick buck who haven't paid enough attention to know that BTC goes up and down.  In other words short term speculators who think "long term" is a few days  and "short term" is a few minutes.  lol.   Market timing is a gamble.  As you say, one sure way to have done well was to just buy a dip and then leave it for a few years. 

People who panic end up missing the gains.  Pretty much anyone who mined or bought during the 2009 and 2020 period (even some of 2021) is doing well.  The people who were looking to make a quick buck and then overreacted probably didn't know that bitcoin has been very volatile, but over its existence has outperformed every other asset class and certainly inflation by orders of magnitude.

The advice that has paid off over time: buy (or mine) some coins.  Put them in cold storage.  Wait.  Come back and look in a few years.  Hold longer.

And you are right, anyone keeping coins on exchanges is asking to lose them.

They can try, but eventually people who don't want to be under the thumb of the control-freak authoritarians around the world (socialist, fascist, communist, whatever the stripe) will just remain in bitcoin and not have to deal with them. 

I would also add that it seems unlikely that "all" governments will agree to ban bitcoin.  Some will see the benefit to not doing so and competition will force others to follow.

Think about the systems or political parties in the countries/states/regions trying to (in some cases repeatedly) ban bitcoin:  China.  New York.  India.  All want to control people and don't trust people to make decisions for themselves. 

Which side of history do people want to be on?  The one advocating for freedom and liberty, or the one advocating for statism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and control?