[2022-03-16] Bitcoin rallies as new South Korean president vows crypto push

[bbc.reporter]

It appears that South Korea might become the lighthouse tower for the cryptospace in Asia where it might attract the biggest crypto investments that everyone will witness. Another South Korean, Do Kwon the Terra cofounder has already planned his roadmap to buy $10 billion in bitcoin to use as a reserve asset for the Terra UST stablecoin.

It also appears that this might be a jackpot for Defiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong, who is presently living in South Korea hehe. I predict other cryptofunds will follow him.



Conservative South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is now set to move into the Blue House in Seoul in May.

Yoon has vowed to deregulate the cryptocurrency industry and introduce favourable tax laws for crypto investors.

According to Yonhap news, he said: “To realise the unlimited potential of the virtual asset market, we must overhaul regulations that are far from reality and unreasonable."

His view is that cryptocurrencies should be allowed to operate within South Korea without regulations.

He added: “We must shift to a negative regulation system to ensure at least the virtual asset market has no worries."

Read in full https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-price-news-latest-crypto-rallies-new-south-korean-president-yoon-102237087.html

[NeuroticFish]

Although the title tells it, I want to emphasize that the news is from 16 March; more than one week old.

So what this news talks about is not the pump from yesterday. The pump from yesterday evening is probably caused by the news about Russian gas and Bitcoin.

I think that the pump related to South Korea was not as big/relevant as expected. All in all, the fact South Korea goes on the path of Bitcoin is great, but the title is not

[bbc.reporter]

@NeuroticFish. The pump from what you mentioned yesterday was certainly not caused by this news from South Korea. This is only news of a president who is only planning to open their country for the cryptospace. It has not occured and it might not occur. However, it can be argued that the pump that began on March 14 that brought bitcoin from $37k to presently $44k is caused by another Korean, Do Kwon cofounder of Terra hehehe.

[dansus021]

Great news i always like crypto-politican push crypto more further inside the government and parlement the main reason when the gov starting regulate crpto or maybe accept crypto tech we the citizen can make lot of innovation

i mean crypto is at early step and this can become big

[amishmanish]

Crypto politician… Haha History has it technology has always defined the lives we live. No matter if you like it hate it, but you can’t ignore crypto and this is true for bitcoins. While governments are cautious with accepting crypto, but the economics of bitcoin is so big that they have to accept what citizens want... This is true democracy

[cr1776]

So it looks like May 10th will be when he takes office and then I presume nothing would happen instantly.  So this is a longer term item in the arsenal that will continue to take bitcoin's fiat price higher.  As has been true since 2009, nothing happens instantly with bitcoin, but it sure happens a lot faster than some other things have been accepted and used over time.

[Kakmakr]

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-crypto/the-team-that-predicted-terra-lunas-crash-four-months-ago/ - People still think it is a good thing that these people are controlling Alt coins that are questionable?

I honestly think some regulation is needed to eradicate "Pump n Dump" schemes and to manage and control it's impact on Bitcoin when it collapse. You cannot have people dumping Billion's of Dollars worth of bitcoins to protect "Pump n Dump schemes like this. 

[NeuroticFish]

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-crypto/the-team-that-predicted-terra-lunas-crash-four-months-ago/ - People still think it is a good thing that these people are controlling Alt coins that are questionable?

I honestly think some regulation is needed to eradicate "Pump n Dump" schemes and to manage and control it's impact on Bitcoin when it collapse. You cannot have people dumping Billion's of Dollars worth of bitcoins to protect "Pump n Dump schemes like this. 

It's complicated. Such regulations should stop people do that if the centralized exchanges and the people using them wall under those laws. But:
* centralized exchanges can easily move to more lax countries
* people can benefit of the pseudo-anonymous properties of Bitcoin, mix them or convert to Monero
* people can simply switch to decentralized exchanges where there's no KYC and no rules

All in all, as usual, such laws will obstruct the law abiding citizen who may not start a pump-and-dump scheme anyway. And the ones planning schemes, have plenty of ways to go around the law.

[bbc.reporter]

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-crypto/the-team-that-predicted-terra-lunas-crash-four-months-ago/ - People still think it is a good thing that these people are controlling Alt coins that are questionable?

I honestly think some regulation is needed to eradicate "Pump n Dump" schemes and to manage and control it's impact on Bitcoin when it collapse. You cannot have people dumping Billion's of Dollars worth of bitcoins to protect "Pump n Dump schemes like this.  

Agreed, however, you cannot control investors from holding bitcoin in their reserves as their back up also. Something similar can be said of Michael Saylor who has made loans against Microstrategy stock to buy and hold bitcoin in Microstrategy's treasury. He has also borrowed more cash against those bitcoins to buy more bitcoins. Head shaking move and those bitcoins bought this year are in negative pnl.

Also, it might not presently be true but Saylor might cause Microstrategy to be in an unpredictable situation if Microstrategy stock and bitcoin dumps tremendously.

[Lucius]

@bbc.reporter, I don't think it's fair to compare Saylor to Kwon or any other scammer in the context of their relationship to Bitcoin. The former without any doubt wants to accumulate as much BTC as possible, but unlike some others he does not invent some scam crypto projects that gain credibility because they are backed with BTC.

In my opinion, it is unbelievable that such things happen in a country like South Korea, but for those who scratch a little below the surface, they will see that it is a country of incredible extremes. The things that young people do to get a job go as far as doing face correction surgery to meet a company standard.

Something is very rotten in that country, and if something doesn't change, this last scandal will certainly not be the last.

[bbc.reporter]

@Lucius. I am not comparing Michael Saylor to Do Kwon. Also, it would be unfair to call Do Kwon a real scammer. He never had the intention to steal Luna investors' money, I reckon. He was only very naive.

However, I was looking at their investment schemes and there might be an argument that what Michael Saylor is doing might also put Microstrategy in an unpredictable situation, similar to Luna, if both equities and the cryptospace markets continue to dump.

[Lucius]

@Lucius. I am not comparing Michael Saylor to Do Kwon. Also, it would be unfair to call Do Kwon a real scammer. He never had the intention to steal Luna investors' money, I reckon. He was only very naive.

You must be joking or not realizing what actually happened - that hypocritical narcissistic bastard should end up behind bars for a long time and be banned for life from doing anything related to finance and cryptocurrencies. The idea of his stable coin being backed up with something volatile like Bitcoin was doomed from the start - is this some kind of nuclear physics or people are really too stupid to understand what happened? The damage caused by the one you say is not a real scammer is about $80 billion, and to say that none of it ended up in his pockets is completely naive.

However, I was looking at their investment schemes and there might be an argument that what Michael Saylor is doing might also put Microstrategy in an unpredictable situation, similar to Luna, if both equities and the cryptospace markets continue to dump.

Saylor isn't even close to Kwon's category, because unlike him he has far more experience, knows what he's doing and doesn't sell fake stories to naive investors. Of course, anyone who invests in Bitcoin takes a certain risk, but Saylor with his business strategy is not even close to doing such damage to the crypto market.

[DooMAD]

@Lucius. I am not comparing Michael Saylor to Do Kwon. Also, it would be unfair to call Do Kwon a real scammer. He never had the intention to steal Luna investors' money, I reckon. He was only very naive.

You must be joking or not realizing what actually happened - that hypocritical narcissistic bastard should end up behind bars for a long time and be banned for life from doing anything related to finance and cryptocurrencies. The idea of his stable coin being backed up with something volatile like Bitcoin was doomed from the start

It only goes one of two ways.  Do Kwon is either a somewhat intelligent person with bad intentions, or an incredibly dumb person with good intentions. 

I'm leaning towards "bad intentions", as he has prior involvement with suspect projects.  Looks to be a pattern.

[Lucius]

@DooMAD, I believe that he is a very intelligent person with very bad intentions, because he attended Stanford University, and later worked for Apple and Microsoft (although very briefly). There are indications that he was involved in another project that failed - which only shows that he is not a person to be trusted.

If he goes unpunished for this last scandal, in a few years when the dust settles I wouldn’t be surprised if he reappears with some new project.

Kwon completed high school at Daewon Foreign Language High School and studied computer science at Stanford University, graduating in June 2015.[10][11] He worked as an engineer at Apple and Microsoft for three months each.[12][10] Afterwards, returned to South Korea to start a company in September 2015.[13]

Former Terra employees have claimed that Kwon was also the founder of another failed stablecoin project called Basis Cash, which got its inspiration from a different stablecoin project called Basis (formerly Basecoin), an Ethereum based token.[14] Basis had raised a large sum of money from venture capitalists, and was created by Nader Al-Naji. Al-Naji eventually shut Basis down over U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concerns, and returned his investors' money.[15][16] However, Basis Cash was born, as an attempt to skirt around SEC regulators

[bbc.reporter]

@Lucius. I am not comparing Michael Saylor to Do Kwon. Also, it would be unfair to call Do Kwon a real scammer. He never had the intention to steal Luna investors' money, I reckon. He was only very naive.

You must be joking or not realizing what actually happened - that hypocritical narcissistic bastard should end up behind bars for a long time and be banned for life from doing anything related to finance and cryptocurrencies. The idea of his stable coin being backed up with something volatile like Bitcoin was doomed from the start - is this some kind of nuclear physics or people are really too stupid to understand what happened? The damage caused by the one you say is not a real scammer is about $80 billion, and to say that none of it ended up in his pockets is completely naive.

However, I was looking at their investment schemes and there might be an argument that what Michael Saylor is doing might also put Microstrategy in an unpredictable situation, similar to Luna, if both equities and the cryptospace markets continue to dump.

Saylor isn't even close to Kwon's category, because unlike him he has far more experience, knows what he's doing and doesn't sell fake stories to naive investors. Of course, anyone who invests in Bitcoin takes a certain risk, but Saylor with his business strategy is not even close to doing such damage to the crypto market.

You might be correct, however, before everything and in my own opinion he did not have any plans on scamming Terra Luna's investors when he began the project. There was a sincere effort to create a decentralized, algorithmic stablecoin by Do Kwon and his team. I am not certain, maybe I am giving him too much benefit because I was closely following UST's development, the partnerships and their attempt to join the Curve wars and create the most liquid stablecoin pool in Curve.

[cr1776]

@Lucius. I am not comparing Michael Saylor to Do Kwon. Also, it would be unfair to call Do Kwon a real scammer. He never had the intention to steal Luna investors' money, I reckon. He was only very naive.

You must be joking or not realizing what actually happened - that hypocritical narcissistic bastard should end up behind bars for a long time and be banned for life from doing anything related to finance and cryptocurrencies. The idea of his stable coin being backed up with something volatile like Bitcoin was doomed from the start - is this some kind of nuclear physics or people are really too stupid to understand what happened? The damage caused by the one you say is not a real scammer is about $80 billion, and to say that none of it ended up in his pockets is completely naive.

However, I was looking at their investment schemes and there might be an argument that what Michael Saylor is doing might also put Microstrategy in an unpredictable situation, similar to Luna, if both equities and the cryptospace markets continue to dump.

Saylor isn't even close to Kwon's category, because unlike him he has far more experience, knows what he's doing and doesn't sell fake stories to naive investors. Of course, anyone who invests in Bitcoin takes a certain risk, but Saylor with his business strategy is not even close to doing such damage to the crypto market.

You might be correct, however, before everything and in my own opinion he did not have any plans on scamming Terra Luna's investors when he began the project. There was a sincere effort to create a decentralized, algorithmic stablecoin by Do Kwon and his team. I am not certain, maybe I am giving him too much benefit because I was closely following UST's development, the partnerships and their attempt to join the Curve wars and create the most liquid stablecoin pool in Curve.

I don't know if it was intentional, but unless there is a peg and something behind it to support the peg, it makes an algorithmic stable coin extremely difficult to achieve long term.  Eventually someone will attack the peg.  Look at what happened with, for example, Argentina and the US dollar peg.  Eventually it collapsed because they didn't have the reserve.

It is as if the people creating stable coins think there is some magic that will allow them to remain stable without anything backing them up.  The lessons have been learned before, it isn't surprising that the were ignored by Kwon, but it is surprising (perhaps it shouldn't be!) that so many people bought into the algorithmic mumbo jumbo.

There has to be some way to ensure the peg between fiat and stable coin remains.  It can hold for a while, perhaps a long while, but eventually if there are stresses it can easily fail.  Even with Argentina which had the backing of an entire country's economy it isn't enough without solid free-market economic policy behind it.

[bbc.reporter]

@cr1776. Agreed and something similar has occured in another project. I am not sure if you have heard of Iron Finance's stablecoin? Mark Cuban has invested in that project and promoted it in social media hehe. However, I very much disagree if algorithmic stablecoins should be called mumbo jumbo. I support the intention that the cryptospace should have a decentralized stablecoin that is independent from traditional finance.

There are also other projects with smart developers who are trying to create decentralized stablecoins. One of these is Frax Finance.

https://docs.frax.finance/

I reckon bitcoiners should begin to do more research about different Defi projects and stop calling them scams.

[Lucius]

I reckon bitcoiners should begin to do more research about different Defi projects and stop calling them scams.

I think bitcoiners should be more concerned with Bitcoin, not the whole industry that just uses Bitcoin for their (mostly) scam projects. The fact that someone who has been on the forum for years still thinks Kwon and his project aren’t completely scam doesn’t give me much hope when it comes to the future.

When you mention DeFi, what exactly are the benefits of something that generates a bunch of scams and results in financial losses measured in billions of $? This whole system is like a sieve through which someone pours water and expects that sieve to retain water, and we know that is impossible.

https://cryptosec.info/defi-hacks/

[DooMAD]

Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with DeFi.  The problem is the implementation.  The vast majority of so-called DeFi projects fail to meet the basic definition of the term.  They're just hollow, empty ploys to exploit current trends for profit.  There would be utility in genuine decentralised finance.  But right now, it's almost exclusively just a swarm of hucksters peddling centralised shitcoins.  All it achieves at the moment is to drive people away and alienate potential future users.  Which is the complete opposite of the purpose these projects should be seeking to serve.

When someone eventually gets it right, there will be no single points of failure and it will be robust and secure.  An alignment of incentives, which benefits all participants equally, will draw people in.  The resulting network effects will attract yet more users and the utility will grow exponentially.  Exactly how it happened with Bitcoin.  Notice how no DeFi project has achieved that yet, because they aren't real DeFi projects. 

[bbc.reporter]

I reckon bitcoiners should begin to do more research about different Defi projects and stop calling them scams.

I think bitcoiners should be more concerned with Bitcoin, not the whole industry that just uses Bitcoin for their (mostly) scam projects. The fact that someone who has been on the forum for years still thinks Kwon and his project aren’t completely scam doesn’t give me much hope when it comes to the future.

When you mention DeFi, what exactly are the benefits of something that generates a bunch of scams and results in financial losses measured in billions of $? This whole system is like a sieve through which someone pours water and expects that sieve to retain water, and we know that is impossible.

https://cryptosec.info/defi-hacks/

Do Kwon's acceptance of bitcoin into Terra's treasury was something no one in Defi was normally doing. No one in Defi cares about bitcoin. I reckon it would have more significance in Defi if Do Kwon used Ethereum, however, it would confirm that ETH as a better coin than Luna hehehehe.

Also, similar to anything in the cryptospace there will be many scams. If bitcoin had the ability for Defi projects to be built in the network, I am quite certain there would scams and poorly developed implementations also. However, calling all of them scams is wrong. Some of them are building the infrastructure for the future of the cryptospace.