The magical days of classical bitcoin securities

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Remember a time when bitcoin was filled with curiosity, wonder, experimentation, and an ambition to change the status quo?

The days where pseudonyms were common, and reputation was measured by the age of your bitcointalk account.

The age of bitcoin securities exchanges coded in PHP, with contracts being dumb and in the form of text.

It began with pirate and his unbelievable 1% per day returns, with the forum filled with accusers and defenders.

Reinventions of financial systems from nerds were popularised on forums. From usagi's tranched collateralized debt obligations, to friedcat starting a successful ASIC manufacturing business before disappearing into the void. Exchanges came and went, but the mostly went, as letters from the SEC hit everyone. Most disappeared, with MPEx being the last standing.

Today, we have DeFi. We have networks like Synthetix offering derivatives on publicly listed securities like Apple and Facebook. We have the commissioner of the SEC -- who many say were selected for his knowledge of cruptocurrency -- calling for regulation on the space.

Are we witnessing the same events repeat themselves, except this time it's happening on TikToks, Telegrams, and Reddits instead of internet forums which are on life support?

Curious if any bitcointalk securities old timers still even check this forum.

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[OgNasty]

Curious if any bitcointalk securities old timers still even check this forum.

I do.  I'm also one of the few people left around here that has experience with each of the mentioned schemes.  

It is interesting to think we're witnessing the same events repeating over and over again at larger scale.  Also of note is that while a vast majority of the old "classical bitcoin securities" were indeed nothing more than scams, I can personally say that their harm spread to legitimate offerings as well.  NastyFans for example, I consider to have been a 'baby thrown out with the bathwater' as a result of the widespread scamming in this community.  When I think of what could have been built if people had trusted the right individuals, it really makes the current state of the trust network here beyond depressing.  Being one of the few that experienced all of this and lived to tell the tale, I can say that it is unlikely we'll ever witness that golden era of community supporting developers with new projects here again.  There are just too many people focused on negativity that are unable to create anything of value and instead focus their energy on teaming up to gain control for their own nefarious purposes (typically to have control over getting their alt accounts into signature campaigns).

Anyway, getting back on topic, I worry that maybe as these "same events" repeat themselves, there may be a danger of Bitcoin being the baby thrown out with the bathwater next.  Toxicity is difficult to contain...

[malevolent]

When I think of what could have been built if people had trusted the right individuals

Plenty of seemingly right people turned out to be untrustworthy in the long run. People change, especially as incentives change. The systems that try to take that into account (e.g. all sorts of collateralization) suffer from problems of their own with complexity, raising the barriers of entry, failing to account for all edge cases, etc.; an increasingly hostile legal climate doesn't help either.

[DaveF]

Just saw this thread pop up.
It's not just securities. You had the altcoin boom / bust.
The token boom / bust.
Now the DeFi boom / bust.
It's a cycle. People keep buying in never taking a look at the past or figuring out that nothing has changed but the name.

Kind of like the real estate markets. I can't count the number of crashes that have happened over the years but it's still the same people keep buying and getting burned.

-Dave

[Quickseller]

Ultimately, some people will be entrusted with enough money that they decide to pull an exit scam. It is very difficult to tell how much money someone will need to pull off this kind of scam, and the pseudo anonymous nature of crypto means that most people will face zero consequences from scamming.

I believe a moderate amount of regulation is necessary for crypto markets. It is still the Wild West out there, but things have improved since the last time the OP created a “business”.

[ixne]

It was a very weird time. Felt like a financial playground, really the wild west...no feds were about to come galloping in when the stagecoach got robbed, and the only justice was a public lynching by the forum mob.

If anyone is looking to buy some nostalgia, I think I still have some ASICMINER shares around here somewhere...

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

It was a very weird time. Felt like a financial playground, really the wild west...no feds were about to come galloping in when the stagecoach got robbed, and the only justice was a public lynching by the forum mob.

If anyone is looking to buy some nostalgia, I think I still have some ASICMINER shares around here somewhere...

I miss those days

[OgNasty]

It was a very weird time. Felt like a financial playground, really the wild west...no feds were about to come galloping in when the stagecoach got robbed, and the only justice was a public lynching by the forum mob.

If anyone is looking to buy some nostalgia, I think I still have some ASICMINER shares around here somewhere...

It is crazy that out of all of the thousands of operations back then, only 1 remains.  No need to have to go digging for imaginary ASICMINER shares for nostalgia (I owned a bunch too) when you can still participate in what NASTY MINING started on the GLBSE more than 10 years ago, and remains actively trading and paying out weekly distributions to this day...  So many things have been overcome in the last decade, it feels surreal to be the only one left standing.  Someday that will garner the respect it deserves as surviving the test of time in crypto is not an easily accomplished task (or there would be more than 1 operation left standing).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86854.0

[Stakefast]

It was a very weird time. Felt like a financial playground, really the wild west...no feds were about to come galloping in when the stagecoach got robbed, and the only justice was a public lynching by the forum mob.

If anyone is looking to buy some nostalgia, I think I still have some ASICMINER shares around here somewhere...

It really had a special time to it, I remember buying 1mil doge for 80$ and sold it for 400$ …