So you want a trustless system with trust?

Obviously there's a whole spectrum of trust.

It's pointless debating you though, you're just so far behind. Please catch up.

Have you been regurgitating these same points for the last 8 years or have you just started now?

Exactly, anyone that doesn't buy in just doesn't "get it".

Bitcoin doesn't do anything better than what we have now.

It's not more secure than money. It doesn't store value better than any other commodity. It's not technologically capable of functioning as a currency. Its irretrievable in case of fraud or theft. It's deflationary (in theory) which makes every purchase a mistake.

What is the benefit? If you want a system with electronic currency held by custodial accounts (banks) with insurance (FDIC) we already have that. If you want a store of value, we already have those.

You may not intend for it to replace Visa/PP but it occupies the same arena. Why would I "be my own bank" given all the risks when those services or their foreign equivalents are so damn easy to use?

ELI5 consequences of Bitmex going offline for maintenance and BTC painting a big green candle. What happens to the people with shorts open? If they got liquidated I guess they will instant settle when mex comes back online... that means they have to market buy to settle right? I still don't understand trading with leverage that well and have or won't do it - still think it's funny that this happened when Mex went offline. No way it is a coincidence right?

Apparently there was a 4k BTC market buy the second bitmex went down, based on my 30 seconds of research on reddit

Looks like all that Tether from last night got out to good use...

Per WSJ:

lold @ "tether's chief compliance officer" - that's an oxymoron like Giant Shrimp, or Military Intelligence.

But ya pretty nice pump. I expect it will give it all back after the ETF gets rejected on thursday.

It wouldn't surprise me if ETF rejection causes price to go up. The reverse of the sell-the-news.

Nothing wrong with leverage, especially on bitmex where it is isolated margin.
Just never have a position much bigger than your risk.
So say I'm willing to risk $100 on a trade, my position will be like $110 and I'll crank up the leverage as high as I can until my stop is just before the liquidation point (within reason).
Then worst case scenario if my stop fails I'm looking at $110 loss + liquidation fees but sure beats having $1,000 position when you only want to risk $100 and something goes wrong on the Mex (not super uncommon).

In this instance, they got liquidated becaue the pricing mechanism for how bitmex calculates contract value (bitmex xbt and futures are derivatives) is based on cash exchanges (50% gdax/bitstamp) so if the price moves up and your margin runs out, you get liquidated. A small % of every liquidation goes towards Bitmex's insurance fund which guarantees that every trade is fully collaterized 1:1 for long/short. The insurance fund stands at 11,5k btc. It's literally gone down only once because some guy found a way to game the system for how bitmex liquidates people.


It was not a coincidence, just a guy who decided he wanted to **** some people in the ass while bitmex was down. Happens all the time.


No one wants to audit them or any crypto based exchange because of the brand and political risks involved with putting their name down on any official document. That's why the Freeh "audit" is what it is, he logged in, saw the balance in the banking accounts and logged out.

ETF denied, as expected. Market reaction pretty tame so far.

It's up 0.83% in the past hour since rejection.

SEC Announcements:

https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nysear...8/34-83904.pdf (ProShares)

https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nysear...8/34-83912.pdf (Direxion)

Article from https://chainstate.org/2018/08/22/se...-bitcoin-etfs/

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected two Bitcoin ETF proposals on Wednesday – the ProShares and Direxion Bitcoin ETFs – earlier than their respective deadlines. This comes shortly after the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF denial, which occurred less than a month ago on July 26th.

The SEC’s highly anticipated ruling on ProShares ETF was expected to be finalized Thursday, on the deadline of the decision, but was instead rejected Wednesday along with the Direxion Bitcoin Bear and Bull Shares. According to MarketWatch, the Direxion ETFs were expected to be decided on later this year, on September 21st, but the SEC appears to have decided the same outcome for both Bitcoin investment vehicles. The SEC’s announcement states that the ETFs were not accepted due to concerns about manipulation, lack of regulation and fraud that may surround the ETFs and cryptocurrency markets in general.

Despite the recent trend of ETF rejections, the fight for approval is not over yet – other ETF proposals including the VanEck-SolidX Bitcoin ETF still have a chance at acceptance. The VanEck ETF’s ruling deadline is September 30th.

Well that's certainly one possible explanation.

Nice, that's nice

What percentage of all wealth does the top 5% own in general?

In other news, the sky is blue. More at 11.

Lol @ ATH shorts on finex. Bless their brave souls.

Source? I think if private keys on the Bitcoin blockchain were vulnerable to hackers, we would have heard about it.

All the btc ETFs as currently structured will be denied, they need amendments in their s1 applications to comply with Exchange Act Section 6(b)(5) which states that there must be market surveillance on regulated exchanges. In the denial today the SEC goes a step further saying that there must also be surveillance of markets with a significant size.


They did not move the goal posts since the winklevoss denial & review denial, but they were very clear. Interestingly because the vaneck etfs were CME and CBOE futures based the SEC made clear distinction between regulated and unregulated exchanges. They made no since distinction in the winklevoss denials. I think the SEC is warming up and the language they used was not nearly as harsh this time around.


Important pages to read are 2 6,7, 18,24

https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nysear...8/34-83904.pdf

Winklevoss are already setting up infrastructure to comply with 6b5 https://www.wsj.com/articles/winklev...ers-1534804308

The current class of etfs will all be delayed/denied; once someone files an updated s1 which satisfies 6b5, that would be a serious contender for approval.

Couldn't find a good example for 5%, but in the US, the top 1% owns 38.6% of the wealth.. Worldwide, the top 1% owns roughly 50% of the wealth.

That's a strange line to draw. Immense amounts of money have been SFYL'd in all sorts of ways largely unique to crypto. It's part of the game.

Not strange at all. I would love to hear about Blockchain vulnerabilities responsible for Bitcoin thefts that amount to money greater than all robberies of safe deposit boxes and other scams. Sources please.

I don't think there's been any examples of "the blockchain being hacked" or whatever you're talking about. There are plenty of examples of frauds and hacks occurring as part of the BTC ecosystem tho.

If someone's software wallet or phone gets hacked, or an exchange gets hacked or is a scam, that would seem to be a reasonable strike against crypto since the same issue with a bank account/credit card wouldn't happen. Bitcoin may be the single safest technology ever created, but if the infrastructure required to use or exchange that technology exposes it to more weaknesses, I don't think it's reasonable to say it's still that secure.

Why would any ETF have a chance when the reasons the previous ETFs got rejected still exist. At a minimum a properly regulated bitcoin exchange is needed.

Because big Finance is the greediest industry in the history of mankind and they are drooling over the fees and financial derivatives they will someday have built upon BTC.

SEC made it easier for ETFs to come to fruition this summer with re wording of some boring rules (this applies to all industries...not just crypto).

It's no longer IF...it's WHEN (I don't believe it happens anytime soon).

If someone's wallet gets stolen, that would seem to be a reasonable strike against fiat since the same issue with Bitcoin wouldn't happen.

The blockchain has never been hacked. If people decide not to safely secure their private keys for whatever reason, that's their fault.

Among the most valuable properties of Bitcoin is the ability to store and transfer value without the need of a 3rd party intermediary. Yet here you are, claiming that failure of 3rd parties to secure someones coins is a strike against Bitcoin. Lol.

Not enough infrastructure? What exactly is so complicated about setting up a Trezor or Ledger? I had more difficulty setting up a bank account than the 10 minutes of installation required to set up a hardware device.

Exchange hacks are irrelevent to Bitcoin. People who decide to trade on exchanges understand the risks and is factored into the market valuation of crypto (which is clearly high enough to trigger you. bitter nocoiner?)

I don't disagree with the first part, one of the downsides of cash is that it's irrecoverable if lost/stolen. Saying it wouldn't happen with BTC is nonsense though, it happens all the time with BTC and is equally irrecoverable.