|
Post by bb2 on Jul 23, 2022 21:01:14 GMT
I've finally been doing some work on DeFi and stablecoins and am about to conclude that maybe Coinbase isn't such a bad investment after all because I'm starting to see how to decouple COIN from BTC. USDC is a fiat backed stablecoin, (dollars and short term government bonds) managed by an organization call Circle, of which Coinbase is a member and it's gaining share over USDT, though the latter is still maybe triple USDC. (Other collateralization mechanisms exist, one of which, algorithmic, failed spectacularly this late spring. See Luna and Terra.)
Stablecoins exist to provide value stability, (which BTC lacks), a desire of all financial market participants; lenders, buyers/sellers of goods, etc. (As far as speculators go, volatility might be a good thing. There's your BTC raison d'etre.)
Seems to me that stablecoins, despite the recent failed experiments, can be a real threat to bitcoin because the idea that BTC can be a payment vehicle just isn't panning out. Stablecoins may keep BTC as the thing it is currently - a vehicle (asset) for speculation. Digital gold. (Without all the thousands of years of human history. Could work though.)
Ironically though, it seems to me that the blockchain is almost a minor player in DeFi, as, again, ironically, central organizations are behind the creation and management of stablecoins and they use their fair share of internal information storage, off the chain, to support their businesses. And it's still all about stable fiats, like the good old USD.
I should add that BTC plays a role, (in the arbitrage as Tether exists on the bitcoin blockchain), in keeping the tether peg to a dollar and maybe that's another reson for BTC to exist.
This space is moving quickly and I'm watching. Still trying to get a feel for it. So I've gone from 100% skeptical, when I only studied how BTC worked, (brilliant as blockchain is, nobody was using it to buy a pizza), to intrigued, when I imagined blockchain as a new distributed client server architecture, (which I'm not sure was correct), then back to skeptic, when I realised how long it would take for DeFi to become a thing and how far it had to go to replace the traditional trust institutions and now intrigued again, seeing how far it all has come and the promise of stablecoins.
I should also add that it seems there's been plenty of alledged hanky panky in the crypto space; lots of accusations and studies to try to prove manipulation by various methods. Still, over time and with reguluations in place, DeFi probably has legs.
|
|
|
Post by bb2 on Nov 12, 2022 19:48:24 GMT
Interesting week for crypto. I'm amused by Mr. Wonderful's angry response to what happened at FTX, because he lost a bundle. Screaming for regulations to protect him. Sorry, Kevin, don't care that you lost money. Don't see the need for the US taxpayer to pay to regulate your wet dreams.
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Nov 13, 2022 4:58:27 GMT
Previously posted
|
|
|
Post by bb2 on Nov 13, 2022 18:52:21 GMT
I just scrolled through about 200 tweets on the "Bitcoin Archive" account, source of anitya's post about the danger of buying "shitcoins", (which I assume is NOT a dig on Bitcoin, quite the oppposite) and it sure doesn't give me warm fuzzies for a great new way to do finance.
|
|
|
Post by yogibearbull on Nov 13, 2022 18:59:59 GMT
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Nov 14, 2022 20:05:13 GMT
richardsok , Chahta , graust , bb2 , racqueteer , yogibearbull , Fearchar , uncleharley ,@waffle , Probably not a popular topic now to talk about BTC investing. If one does not want to open an account with a COIN or another crypto exchange, what are the different ways to buy into BTC exposure at any of the traditional brokerages? I will read this thread and update this post with tickers already shared. Edit: I should not have used the word “investing” in the opening sentence. Given this post has already been quoted, I can not edit out “investing” but I will try to be more careful in my future posts in this thread.
|
|
|
Post by graust on Nov 17, 2022 12:42:15 GMT
richardsok , Chahta , graust , bb2 , racqueteer , yogibearbull , Fearchar , uncleharley ,@waffle , Probably not a popular topic now to talk about BTC investing. If one does not want to open an account with a COIN or another crypto exchange, what are the different ways to buy into BTC exposure at any of the traditional brokerages? I will read this thread and update this post with tickers already shared. A, There are multiple of exchange-traded products, and a mutual fund, that are pegged to Bitcoin futures: BITO (and its inverse BITI—gains as futures value of BTC goes down), BTF, XBTF, which are all ETFs; and BTCFX, a mutual fund from ProFunds. They do not actually own any cryptocurrencies. There are also some exchange-traded trust-products that mimic the CEF format (can trade at a premium or discount to the NAV of the trust), but trade on the OTC market (meaning you pay commissions at certain brokers) from Bitwise and Grayscale. Some tickers are GBTC (also ETHE which corresponds to Ethereum) and BITW. These may actually hold crypto. Here is an article from Kiplinger’s which I got this info from, and also includes some ETFs that hold miners and other crypto-adjacent equity names: www.kiplinger.com/investing/cryptocurrency/603600/bitcoin-etfs-cryptocurrency-fundsI personally have traded GBTC and ETHE, as well as BITO/BITI, but did poorly with the former pair, and didn’t hold the latter pair long enough to make any kind of impact on any portfolios. Ethereum seems to be a better blockchain technology applicable to many things, but this seems to be in some unknowable future time; Bitcoin is definitely the 800 lb gorilla of crypto. Every time I debate entering (especially with this multi-year low and FTX-related kerfluffle), I look at real businesses making real products and decide to invest in those. Lol
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Nov 17, 2022 19:24:29 GMT
graust , Appreciate it - bringing us up to date on the market place for crypto coin gambling through regular brokerages. Armed with this information, now the rest of us are ready to gamble when we think the occasion is right! If you feel charitable, as you gather new relevant information, please feel free to update your post for the benefit of the members.
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Nov 18, 2022 4:28:17 GMT
yogibearbull posted the following at MFO: "[N]ot an owner but I know that GBTC is a trust, NOT an ETF/OEF/CEF. It has high ER, 6-mo holding requirement, min $50K, and may require accredited-investor status. It has high discount now (it was at premium when Bitcoin was hot). Cathie Wood has been buying it for ARK funds (ARKW). Grayscale's application to convert GBTC to ETF has been rejected by the SEC several times and a revision is pending. grayscale.com/products/grayscale-bitcoin-trust/ "
|
|
|
Post by bb2 on Nov 18, 2022 17:59:36 GMT
anitya - google "buying bitcoin without an exchange". Risk of hacking, risk of losing your wallet, responsible for your own security, etc but it can be done and it was how it was done in the early days. People I know who bought are still up at least 400%.
Good apiece by Krugman in the NYT today. Basically, bitcoin was this decentralized promise and now all these centralized entities exist, (FTX, etc), which sort of negate the raison d'etre of BTC.
Here it is:
Recent events have made clear the need to regulate crypto, an industry that grew from nothing to a $3 trillion market capitalization a year ago, although most of that has now evaporated. But it also seems likely that the industry couldn’t survive regulation.
The story so far: Crypto reached its peak of public prominence last year, when Matt Damon’s “Fortune favors the brave” commercial — sponsored by the Singapore-based exchange Crypto.com — first aired. At the time Bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency, was selling for more than $60,000.
Bitcoin is now trading below $17,000. So people who bought after watching the Damon ad have lost more than 70 percent of their investment. In fact, since most people who bought Bitcoin did so when its price was high, most investors in the currency — around three-quarters of them, according to a new analysis by the Bank for International Settlements — have lost money so far.
Still, asset prices plunge all the time. People who bought stock in Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, at its peak last year have lost around as much as investors in Bitcoin have.
So falling prices needn’t mean that cryptocurrencies are doomed. Crypto boosters surely won’t give up. According to a report from The Washington Post, many of those who subscribed to Twitter Blue Verified, Elon Musk’s disastrous (and now paused) attempt to extract money from Twitter users, were accounts promoting right-wing politics, pornography — and cryptocurrency speculation.
More telling than prices has been the collapse of crypto institutions. Most recently, FTX, one of the biggest crypto exchanges, filed for bankruptcy — and it appears that the people running it simply made off with billions of depositors’ money, probably using the funds in a failed effort to prop up Alameda Research, its sister firm.
The question we should ask is why institutions like FTX or Terra, the so-called stablecoin issuer that collapsed in May, were created in the first place.
After all, the 2008 white paper that started the cryptocurrency movement, published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, was titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” That is, the whole idea was that electronic tokens whose validity was established with techniques borrowed from cryptography would make it possible for people to bypass financial institutions. If you wanted to transfer funds to someone else, you could simply send them a number — a key — with no need to trust Citigroup or Santander to record the transaction.
It has never been clear exactly why anyone other than criminals would want to do this. Although crypto advocates often talk about the 2008 financial crisis as a motivation for their work, that crisis never impaired the payments system — the ability of individuals to transfer funds via banks. Still, the idea of a monetary system that wouldn’t require trust in financial institutions was interesting, and arguably worth trying.
After 14 years, however, cryptocurrencies have made almost no inroads into the traditional role of money. They’re too awkward to use for ordinary transactions. Their values are too unstable. In fact, relatively few investors can even be bothered to hold their crypto keys themselves — too much risk of losing them by, say, putting them on a hard drive that ends up in a landfill.
Instead, cryptocurrencies are largely purchased through exchanges like Coinbase and, yes, FTX, which take your money and hold crypto tokens in your name.
These exchanges are — wait for it — financial institutions, whose ability to attract investors depends on — wait for it again — those investors’ trust. In other words, the crypto ecosystem has basically evolved into exactly what it was supposed to replace: a system of financial intermediaries whose ability to operate depends on their perceived trustworthiness.
In which case, what is the point? Why should an industry that at best has simply reinvented conventional banking have any fundamental value?
Furthermore, trust in conventional financial institutions rests in part on validation by Uncle Sam: The government supervises banks, regulates the risks they can take and guarantees many deposits, while crypto operates largely without oversight. So investors must rely on the honesty and competence of entrepreneurs; when they offer exceptionally good deals, investors must believe not just in their competence but in their genius.
How has that been working out?
As boosters love to remind us, previous predictions of crypto’s imminent demise have proved wrong. Indeed, the fact that Bitcoin and its rivals aren’t really usable as money needn’t mean that they become worthless — you can, after all, say the same thing about gold.
But if the government finally moves in to regulate crypto firms, which would, among other things, prevent them from promising impossible-to-deliver returns, it’s hard to see what advantage these firms would have over ordinary banks. Even if the value of Bitcoin doesn’t go to zero (which it still might), there’s a strong case that the crypto industry, which loomed so large just a few months ago, is headed for oblivion.
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Nov 18, 2022 20:08:29 GMT
There are a bunch of ETFs for crypto (blockchain) which ETFs may or may not include coins (tokens). Y-charts is a good source for a lot of market information.
|
|
|
Post by bb2 on Nov 19, 2022 21:03:05 GMT
Re regulation, I think I agree with a biz prof on CNBC yesterday who was arguing to no crypto regulation. Like I'd posted earlier, why spend $ to regulate/protect the wet dream of Mr. Wonderful, et al. Forgot the prof's name, italian name, also suggested if the US regulates then the US will bail them out too. Good point. So tired of bailouts. I'm writing my representatives urging them to NOT vote to regulate. Looking like there's no systemic issue here.
|
|
|
Post by bb2 on Nov 29, 2022 18:27:53 GMT
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2022 21:40:16 GMT
|
|
|
Post by uncleharley on Apr 1, 2023 19:37:39 GMT
|
|
|
Post by yogibearbull on Apr 1, 2023 19:48:59 GMT
uncleharley, I think that cryptos are banned in China and India, may be other BRICs countries too. Each BRIC country is working on CBDC, with China most ahead with digital-yuan, India in testing stages with digital-rupee. As for the proposed BRICs currency, they are talking about a regional currency backed by reserves, some in commodities. It would be used for trade among the BRICs. They are also talking about expanding BRICs to include South Africa (easy, as the "s" just becomes "S") and some Middle Eastern countries. They are NOT going cryptos, as we know them - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin (started as a joke with Dog-e-coin), etc.
|
|
|
Post by uncleharley on Apr 1, 2023 19:53:00 GMT
uncleharley , I think that cryptos are banned in China and India, may be other BRICs countries too. Each BRIC country is working on CBDC, with China most ahead with digital-yuan, India in testing stages with digital-rupee. As for the proposed BRICs currency, they are talking about a regional currency backed by reserves, some in commodities. It would be used for trade among the BRICs. They are also talking about expanding BRICs to include South Africa (easy, as the "s" just becomes "S") and some Middle Eastern countries. They are NOT going cryptos, as we know them - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin (started as a joke with Dog-e-coin), etc. My Bad. I drew too many conclusions.
|
|
|
Post by bb2 on Jun 25, 2023 18:10:12 GMT
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Jul 9, 2023 18:46:27 GMT
BRICS want to introduce a BRICS currency backed by gold. That is more like a gold standard. I think these guys just talk S**T - it is just entertainment for the leaders of these countries to talk these things.
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Jul 9, 2023 19:02:33 GMT
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Jul 12, 2023 15:37:17 GMT
The following constitutes my full retraction of my dissing Crypto -
Vanguard filed Forms 13G (filed as investment adviser) showing more than 10% ownership in each of RIOT & MARA, two Crypto miners.
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Jul 12, 2023 18:02:41 GMT
With nearly 10 firms filing for spot BTC ETFs and COIN stock price rocketing up recently, there is a lot of buzz in the press about crypto but notice how BTC and ETHE prices have been pretty much range bound and have not made any meaningful progress during this time? A lot of equity prices are also going up lately. Both BTC and ETHE also took a dip when SVB failed.
Note to self: I should read the entire thread once.
|
|
|
Post by Capital on Aug 29, 2023 19:07:29 GMT
Interesting twist at this LINK
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Aug 30, 2023 17:52:29 GMT
Yesterday's enthusiasm is deflating today (BTC down more than 2.5%) but the general tech and speculative tech are doing well. So, may be the loss of enthusiasm in BTC today is probably BTC specific. But as time goes by, things are coming to a head for potential centralized BTC and crypto. SEC is pretty much cornered and not sure who will bail them out. Can the recently launched FedNow Service make Crypto coins (definitely, Stable Coins) unnecessary for many of the use cases touted by the Crypto enthusiasts? Discl: I own GBTC.
Per BARD:
"The Federal Reserve launched its new instant payment system, the FedNow® Service, on July 20, 2023. The FedNow Service is available to depository institutions in the United States and enables individuals and businesses to send instant payments through their depository institution accounts.
The FedNow Service is a 24/7/365 payment system that offers same-day settlement for payments. This means that funds are available to the recipient immediately, even if the payment is made outside of normal banking hours or on a weekend or holiday.
The FedNow Service is designed to be a flexible and neutral platform that can support a variety of instant payment use cases. Depository institutions and their service providers can use the FedNow Service to offer a variety of innovative instant payment services to their customers.
The FedNow Service is expected to benefit a wide range of users, including:
Consumers who need to make fast payments, such as for bill paying or peer-to-peer payments. Businesses that need to make fast payments to suppliers or customers. Financial institutions that want to offer innovative instant payment services to their customers. The government, which can use the FedNow Service to make fast payments to individuals and businesses. The FedNow Service is a significant development in the U.S. payments landscape. It is expected to help to make payments faster, more convenient, and more secure."
|
|
|
Post by yogibearbull on Sept 1, 2023 12:40:52 GMT
While the recent events have been favorable to cryptos, the market was expecting immediate results. That just doesn't happen.
So, after the recent setbacks in courts, that basically sent stuff back to the SEC for re-review, the SEC delayed ALL physical-crypto ETFs YESTERDAY. The SEC now has to come up with some new angle to reject them or approve them. IMO, Gensler is the problem at SEC and not much would change until there is a new SEC head. Most government agencies are different than the Supremes where sometimes the Chief Justice may have a minority/losing opinion. Most agency head prevail over their members and do almost whatever they please - look at the SEC, FTC, Fed, etc.
Rejection of a class action suit was also a positive development on crypto firms' liabilities.
FedNow has to be offered by our banks. We cannot signup and use it. The rollout is gradual and in phases. I have mentioned this elsewhere also, I can shift money to India, and within India, faster than within the US - that is how behind the US has gotten on real-time payments.
|
|
|
Post by Fearchar on Sept 1, 2023 13:09:50 GMT
Crypto in most forms is a scam and something that the criminal element sees great potential.
Surprised to see anybody on this board falling for it.
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Sept 1, 2023 19:47:26 GMT
yogibearbull, "Rejection of a class action suit was also a positive development on crypto firms' liabilities." I missed this news item. Could you please elaborate or provide a link? Thanks. I know Federal Reserve has been very slow to implement FedNow, which is putting more and more pressure on SEC but looking at BTC price action since the day after the Grayscale Appeals Court decision, Crypto investors seem to be not convinced that SEC has run out of bullets. P.S.: If I were a betting man, SEC likely is going to appeal the DC Appeals Court Graysacle ruling and SEC might succeed. There are other instances when S. Ct. has overruled Appeals Court decisions in APA matters.
|
|
|
Post by yogibearbull on Sept 1, 2023 19:53:33 GMT
|
|
|
Post by anitya on Sept 1, 2023 20:51:01 GMT
yogibearbull, Thanks. Yes, I did know about that NYSD court ruling; your original comment was too cryptic for me to be clued in. It is a Federal District Court ruling - the article unintentionally makes it sound like a less important case. That District Court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeal rulings carry a lot of weight. On a separate note, Is there any ProBoard update / revision on - Is there a way for me to mark a post unread (so I can go back to it or use it as a marker where I left off in the Recent Posts view)? Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by yogibearbull on Sept 1, 2023 21:00:02 GMT
anitya, PB Mark-Unread is not at post level, but only at Thread level. Only way to start where you left off here may be via Notifications. BTW, many sites don't go to the latest post but start where you left off (FIC that I don't visit now; Twitter and Threads on phone only, etc)- I find that distracting.
|
|