Step 3: Profi...Jail
February 8, 2022 4:54 PM Subscribe
I made it 27 seconds into that video before I literally couldn't handle any more.
posted by ChrisR at 5:05 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ChrisR at 5:05 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
That's 22 more seconds than I could handle, and I had to distribute then one by one with random clicking.
posted by StephenF at 5:09 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by StephenF at 5:09 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Holy moly. I watched the whole thing, and I am without words.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:10 PM on February 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:10 PM on February 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
I feel like we should acknowledge that posting cringe is anyone’s right, but laundering $3.6 billion is a very serious crime - even when done in the fake bad idea currency that is bitcoin.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:22 PM on February 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 5:22 PM on February 8, 2022 [12 favorites]
After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein.
Music happens to be the food of love
Sounds to really make you rub and scrub
I say...
Pass the bitcoin back from Lichtenstein
Pass the bitcoin back from Lichtenstein
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:23 PM on February 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
Music happens to be the food of love
Sounds to really make you rub and scrub
I say...
Pass the bitcoin back from Lichtenstein
Pass the bitcoin back from Lichtenstein
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:23 PM on February 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
The first cryptocorrido is as terrible as it inevitably was going to be.
posted by mikesch at 5:25 PM on February 8, 2022 [31 favorites]
posted by mikesch at 5:25 PM on February 8, 2022 [31 favorites]
I'm no lawyer, but I've had to undergo plenty of anti-money laundering training, and this is textbook, with a few updates for the crypto age:
The criminal complaint alleges that Lichtenstein and Morgan employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques, including using fictitious identities to set up online accounts; utilizing computer programs to automate transactions, a laundering technique that allows for many transactions to take place in a short period of time; depositing the stolen funds into accounts at a variety of virtual currency exchanges and darknet markets and then withdrawing the funds, which obfuscates the trail of the transaction history by breaking up the fund flow; converting bitcoin to other forms of virtual currency, including anonymity-enhanced virtual currency (AEC), in a practice known as “chain hopping”; and using U.S.-based business accounts to legitimize their banking activity.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:26 PM on February 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
The criminal complaint alleges that Lichtenstein and Morgan employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques, including using fictitious identities to set up online accounts; utilizing computer programs to automate transactions, a laundering technique that allows for many transactions to take place in a short period of time; depositing the stolen funds into accounts at a variety of virtual currency exchanges and darknet markets and then withdrawing the funds, which obfuscates the trail of the transaction history by breaking up the fund flow; converting bitcoin to other forms of virtual currency, including anonymity-enhanced virtual currency (AEC), in a practice known as “chain hopping”; and using U.S.-based business accounts to legitimize their banking activity.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:26 PM on February 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
(Also, I honestly find this TikTok of hers so much worse.)
posted by Going To Maine at 5:27 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 5:27 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
The karaoke version of the rap video has subtitles. In case you want to catch all her wordplay without being distracted by her distinct flow.
posted by Nelson at 5:32 PM on February 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
Razzlekahn's the nameShe contains multitudes.
That hot grandma you really wanna bang
Always run the gilf game ever since i was fifteen
I'm many things
a rapper an economist a journalist a writer a CEO
and a dirty dirty dirty dirty ho
posted by Nelson at 5:32 PM on February 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
With that kind of money you’d think she could get Drake’s ghost writer.
posted by sacrifix at 5:33 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sacrifix at 5:33 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Some interesting bits from the NYT article:
But investigators traced the movement of the Bitcoin on the blockchain
The article suggests that Lichtenstein attempted to obscure the movement of the stolen Bitcoin but not how. Regardless, the Feds believe they can show transactions from the theft to an account owned by Lichtenstein.
Law enforcement officials gained access to Mr. Lichtenstein’s wallet on Jan. 31, after they obtained a search warrant that gave them entry to encrypted files in Mr. Lichtenstein’s cloud storage account.
Phrased as if the cloud provider gave access to the encrypted files. Which is ... interesting. Or possibly poor wording, or the Feds deliberately trying to obscure how they got access to the wallet.
The next day, investigators seized the 94,636 Bitcoin that remained in that wallet
Evidence seizure? Asset forfeiture?
posted by srt19170 at 5:42 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
But investigators traced the movement of the Bitcoin on the blockchain
The article suggests that Lichtenstein attempted to obscure the movement of the stolen Bitcoin but not how. Regardless, the Feds believe they can show transactions from the theft to an account owned by Lichtenstein.
Law enforcement officials gained access to Mr. Lichtenstein’s wallet on Jan. 31, after they obtained a search warrant that gave them entry to encrypted files in Mr. Lichtenstein’s cloud storage account.
Phrased as if the cloud provider gave access to the encrypted files. Which is ... interesting. Or possibly poor wording, or the Feds deliberately trying to obscure how they got access to the wallet.
The next day, investigators seized the 94,636 Bitcoin that remained in that wallet
Evidence seizure? Asset forfeiture?
posted by srt19170 at 5:42 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Both this rap and cryptocurrencies are crimes against humanity, but ripping off cryptobros should be celebrated, so I’d call her 50/50 villain/hero.
posted by rodlymight at 5:54 PM on February 8, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by rodlymight at 5:54 PM on February 8, 2022 [15 favorites]
“Cryptocurrency and the virtual currency exchanges trading in it comprise an expanding part of the U.S. financial system, but digital currency heists executed through complex money laundering schemes could undermine confidence in cryptocurrency,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia.
Well, leaving aside all that, maybe the thing that should undermine cryptocurrency is that every part of it is a scam, that pretending hard enough will create value? Let's not let it become part of the US financial system? That way, cryptocurrency fans can steal their Monopoly money from each other, and leave actual people alone?
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:04 PM on February 8, 2022 [26 favorites]
Well, leaving aside all that, maybe the thing that should undermine cryptocurrency is that every part of it is a scam, that pretending hard enough will create value? Let's not let it become part of the US financial system? That way, cryptocurrency fans can steal their Monopoly money from each other, and leave actual people alone?
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:04 PM on February 8, 2022 [26 favorites]
People look at you like you're the user
Selling Bitcoin to all the losers mad Electricity abuser
But they don't know about the stress-filled day
Baby on the way, mad bills to pay
posted by Wallace Shawn at 6:15 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Selling Bitcoin to all the losers mad Electricity abuser
But they don't know about the stress-filled day
Baby on the way, mad bills to pay
posted by Wallace Shawn at 6:15 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
this is my poker face.
posted by clavdivs at 6:34 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 6:34 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is the kind of thing SNL will just do a shot for shot remake of and call it a day.
posted by bleep at 6:38 PM on February 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by bleep at 6:38 PM on February 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
The article suggests that Lichtenstein attempted to obscure the movement of the stolen Bitcoin but not how
One piece of that:
Note that this nominal $4.5B in Bitcoin was stolen from Bitfinex, the company behind the so-called stablecoin Tether. The one that claims to be backed with US dollars but is actually leveraged 383-to-1 (as of Aug 2021). Or so we think, they aren't exactly transparent about their holdings. The rumor is it's a lot of Chinese commercial debt. That's the debt market that's been under threat of cascading major defaults the past few months.
posted by Nelson at 6:39 PM on February 8, 2022 [24 favorites]
One piece of that:
One overlooked detail in the Razzlekahn arrest. Almost all the money went through AlphaBay, using it as a mixer. The feds were able to see through this because they seized AlphaBay. Its amazing how, even years after, darknet market seizures pay dividends to the feds."Mixer" is the magic beans market's word for "money laundering system".
Note that this nominal $4.5B in Bitcoin was stolen from Bitfinex, the company behind the so-called stablecoin Tether. The one that claims to be backed with US dollars but is actually leveraged 383-to-1 (as of Aug 2021). Or so we think, they aren't exactly transparent about their holdings. The rumor is it's a lot of Chinese commercial debt. That's the debt market that's been under threat of cascading major defaults the past few months.
posted by Nelson at 6:39 PM on February 8, 2022 [24 favorites]
I wonder if the cryptocurrency endgame isn’t to get a toehold n the financial markets for endless “too big to fail” payouts.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:46 PM on February 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:46 PM on February 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
The future is so weird.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:51 PM on February 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:51 PM on February 8, 2022 [13 favorites]
laundering $3.6 billion is a very serious crime - even when done in the fake bad idea currency that is bitcoin.
The funny thing is the amount stolen was only $72m, which is obviously still a lot of money, but also not really on the same level as billions of dollars.
posted by ssg at 6:57 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
The funny thing is the amount stolen was only $72m, which is obviously still a lot of money, but also not really on the same level as billions of dollars.
posted by ssg at 6:57 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
My crypto flows remarkable, peace to Matteo
Now we HODL like Tony Montana sniff the yayo
posted by Wallace Shawn at 7:08 PM on February 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
Now we HODL like Tony Montana sniff the yayo
posted by Wallace Shawn at 7:08 PM on February 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
Looks like the hip hop hype video has been switched to private. I assume it was something that would prompt one of MeFi's 'Cocaine's a helluva drug' responses. Or, in OG rap terminology, something of a phenomenon.
posted by bartleby at 7:14 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by bartleby at 7:14 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
dam I miss Matteo.
The future is so weird.
I totally agree with you sir, which in and of itself is kinda weird.
posted by clavdivs at 7:17 PM on February 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
The future is so weird.
I totally agree with you sir, which in and of itself is kinda weird.
posted by clavdivs at 7:17 PM on February 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
Seems I missed the opportunity to hate the video. I find it hard to care too much about what amounts to thoughtcrime in a way - someone stole something that never existed in the first place except in the minds of a few random people. A possible defense could be to challenge the prosecution to prove the thing allegedly stolen ever actually existed. I mean, they don't have to prove it didn't exist, just introduce reasonable doubt that it did. If it didn't exist, they couldn't possibly steal it.
posted by dg at 7:24 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by dg at 7:24 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
A couple of questions here:
1. What does $3.6 billion in Bitcoin even mean? Is there a way to turn that amount (or even a sizable fraction of it) into money you can spend in reality? Genuine question, I have no idea how that would mean you actually have any ability to buy things in the real world except where the seller accepts Bitcoin, but that creates the same problem for the seller.
2. Related to the above, if you are a criminal and want to convert your Bitcoin into dollars or euros or yen, wouldn't the transfer of huge sums of money into the real-world banking system send up all sorts of red flags? Or wouldn't you run into the classic Capone problem if the tax man comes knocking: you have all these funds and assets but can't explain where they came from? Not to mention that every real-world transaction (buying real estate, vehicles, jewelry, etc) would generate all sorts of records for investigators to follow.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:31 PM on February 8, 2022
1. What does $3.6 billion in Bitcoin even mean? Is there a way to turn that amount (or even a sizable fraction of it) into money you can spend in reality? Genuine question, I have no idea how that would mean you actually have any ability to buy things in the real world except where the seller accepts Bitcoin, but that creates the same problem for the seller.
2. Related to the above, if you are a criminal and want to convert your Bitcoin into dollars or euros or yen, wouldn't the transfer of huge sums of money into the real-world banking system send up all sorts of red flags? Or wouldn't you run into the classic Capone problem if the tax man comes knocking: you have all these funds and assets but can't explain where they came from? Not to mention that every real-world transaction (buying real estate, vehicles, jewelry, etc) would generate all sorts of records for investigators to follow.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:31 PM on February 8, 2022
If it didn't exist, they couldn't possibly steal it.
Also known as the "I watched Matlock in a bar last night" defense.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:32 PM on February 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
Also known as the "I watched Matlock in a bar last night" defense.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:32 PM on February 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
"Rollin' down the street, smokin' indo
Sippin' on gin and juice, laid back
With my mind on my money
And my money on my mind
… Now, that, I got me some Seagram's gin
Everybody got they cups, but they ain't chipped in
Now this types of shit, happens all the time
You got to get yours but fool I gotta get mine
Everythin' is fine when you listenin' to the D-O-G-E COIN
I got the cultivatin' music that be captivatin' he Who listens, to the words that I speak
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street."
-snoop
strolling with over 3 billion coins
stolen from some fucking lap top
gotta rap now, where to flash wow
Kicking, feeling like a bling bot
hoping to crack this caper now
gonna sell it, gonna reel it,
wrote a little song about wanna hear it
hereitgoes.
sirens, larping down the street
tyrants ain't looking for me
calling me, calling me like Alice
with 3 billion dollars, baby.
posted by clavdivs at 7:38 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Sippin' on gin and juice, laid back
With my mind on my money
And my money on my mind
… Now, that, I got me some Seagram's gin
Everybody got they cups, but they ain't chipped in
Now this types of shit, happens all the time
You got to get yours but fool I gotta get mine
Everythin' is fine when you listenin' to the D-O-G-E COIN
I got the cultivatin' music that be captivatin' he Who listens, to the words that I speak
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street."
-snoop
strolling with over 3 billion coins
stolen from some fucking lap top
gotta rap now, where to flash wow
Kicking, feeling like a bling bot
hoping to crack this caper now
gonna sell it, gonna reel it,
wrote a little song about wanna hear it
hereitgoes.
sirens, larping down the street
tyrants ain't looking for me
calling me, calling me like Alice
with 3 billion dollars, baby.
posted by clavdivs at 7:38 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Is there a way to turn that amount (or even a sizable fraction of it) into money you can spend in reality?
AFAIK the US Govt is continually selling down its store of seized bitcoin. Apparently that's the job of the Marshall service.
posted by pompomtom at 7:49 PM on February 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
AFAIK the US Govt is continually selling down its store of seized bitcoin. Apparently that's the job of the Marshall service.
posted by pompomtom at 7:49 PM on February 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
So is that how non-government people do it too? Just auction their Bitcoins for cash?
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:50 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:50 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Stolen from another commenter on a different website:
"How can you commit a crime this fucking awesome and then use the proceeds on nothing but the lamest shit imaginable? Stealing billions in crypto is objectively one of the coolest things a person has ever done, and yet somehow any one of those videos is enough to render her lamer than me, an economist who hangs out on sports blogs. The mind boggles."
posted by Carillon at 8:29 PM on February 8, 2022 [29 favorites]
"How can you commit a crime this fucking awesome and then use the proceeds on nothing but the lamest shit imaginable? Stealing billions in crypto is objectively one of the coolest things a person has ever done, and yet somehow any one of those videos is enough to render her lamer than me, an economist who hangs out on sports blogs. The mind boggles."
posted by Carillon at 8:29 PM on February 8, 2022 [29 favorites]
Is it me? Or are all the videos private now?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 8:35 PM on February 8, 2022
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 8:35 PM on February 8, 2022
So is that how non-government people do it too? Just auction their Bitcoins for cash?
I have this same question! Per that long (but entertaining)! folding ideas video this is still something of a challenge, but there are exchanges (like the one that was hacked, or Binance, which is I believe the biggest player at the moment but is also being invested for money laundering where you can convert digital currencies back and forth. There are also “stablecoins” pegged to the US dollar that you can use as an intermediate step in your transfer process.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:46 PM on February 8, 2022
I have this same question! Per that long (but entertaining)! folding ideas video this is still something of a challenge, but there are exchanges (like the one that was hacked, or Binance, which is I believe the biggest player at the moment but is also being invested for money laundering where you can convert digital currencies back and forth. There are also “stablecoins” pegged to the US dollar that you can use as an intermediate step in your transfer process.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:46 PM on February 8, 2022
I am a white woman. I am so FUCKING SICK of white women like this:
“Razzlekhan is like Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz
No one knows for sure where this rapper's from — could be the North African desert, the jungles of Vietnam, or another universe. All that matters is she's here to stick up for misfits and underdogs everywhere. (We do know that she's descended from a nomadic tribe, though!)”
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:56 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
“Razzlekhan is like Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz
No one knows for sure where this rapper's from — could be the North African desert, the jungles of Vietnam, or another universe. All that matters is she's here to stick up for misfits and underdogs everywhere. (We do know that she's descended from a nomadic tribe, though!)”
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:56 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Got peeved, posted. I shouldn’t be making judgment calls on her race based on photos and dumbass copy that I think sounds like shit a white lady would write - at a meta level, this is a very gorram white-lady thing for me to do. DO BETTER, RRRRRRRRRT
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:58 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:58 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Looks like her IG is still public. With ... *lots* of videos like this one.
posted by Text TK at 9:13 PM on February 8, 2022
posted by Text TK at 9:13 PM on February 8, 2022
Where my #NYC (and global) $PACE PIMPZ at?! 🧞♀️🛸👽...
Please tell me someone is actively archiving all of these right now!
posted by lock robster at 9:55 PM on February 8, 2022
Please tell me someone is actively archiving all of these right now!
posted by lock robster at 9:55 PM on February 8, 2022
Bitcoin buys a lot of things, except taste.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:11 PM on February 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:11 PM on February 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Video is still up on Vimeo according to this tweet.
posted by Pendragon at 10:13 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Pendragon at 10:13 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Gawker has ilya's firsthand account of his wedding proposal, and a link to their cat's instagram, and heather's tiktok. It's all bonkers.
These people seem **so dumb** that it seems like they might be somebody's dummies -- a la the two women who were tricked into assassinating kim jong nam or something. The plot may still be thickening. I hope they flip on somebody.
posted by wowenthusiast at 10:24 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
These people seem **so dumb** that it seems like they might be somebody's dummies -- a la the two women who were tricked into assassinating kim jong nam or something. The plot may still be thickening. I hope they flip on somebody.
posted by wowenthusiast at 10:24 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
So, 27 years ago, Neal Stephenson introduced a lot of people to the concept of cryptocurrency in a little short story that was published in TIME magazine called "The Great Simoleon Caper" in which (SPOILERS) a company trying to introduce a new virtual currency holds a sweepstakes to give away large sums of the new currency to a few people as a publicity stunt. But the US government conspires to have all the winners be stooges who will purposely squander everything in enormous disasters that bankrupt and ruin anyone involved. The government hopes this will destroy confidence in private currencies and prevent them from becoming viable.
Sometimes I wonder if the government hasn't actually tried some similar scheme that worked disastrously too well, like the monkey's paw that curled when Democrats hoped Trump would win the Republican nomination.
posted by straight at 10:37 PM on February 8, 2022 [17 favorites]
Sometimes I wonder if the government hasn't actually tried some similar scheme that worked disastrously too well, like the monkey's paw that curled when Democrats hoped Trump would win the Republican nomination.
posted by straight at 10:37 PM on February 8, 2022 [17 favorites]
Bitcoin buys a lot of things, except taste.
I mean, not GOOD taste, but
posted by 1adam12 at 10:37 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
I mean, not GOOD taste, but
posted by 1adam12 at 10:37 PM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
wonder if the government hasn't actually tried some similar scheme that worked disastrously too well
The Federal Reserve System?
posted by clavdivs at 10:53 PM on February 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
The Federal Reserve System?
posted by clavdivs at 10:53 PM on February 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Is there a way to turn that amount (or even a sizable fraction of it) into money you can spend in reality?
AFAIK the US Govt is continually selling down its store of seized bitcoin. Apparently that's the job of the Marshall service.
This predicament perhaps also catches the US Marshall Service & US Govt between a rock and a hard place, because suddenly they are the stewards of an utterly massive amount of Bitcoin, which they...what, have to sell or return to bitfinexed the shadiest of the shady? thus becoming a bitcoin market mover AND validating the whole shady ecosystem by participating in it? Bitfinex says they're going to work with the USG to get the coins back?? What's the KYC process gonna be like for that whole effort? It honestly makes my head heart.
What will all of this mean for price and regulation of the constantly pumping and dumping crypto currencies? So far, it seems mostly a like a fomo-fueled haven for criminality, cult recruiters, scams, and vast hoards of wealth? It's hard to imagine this nightmare has any sort of happy ending.
posted by wowenthusiast at 11:05 PM on February 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
AFAIK the US Govt is continually selling down its store of seized bitcoin. Apparently that's the job of the Marshall service.
This predicament perhaps also catches the US Marshall Service & US Govt between a rock and a hard place, because suddenly they are the stewards of an utterly massive amount of Bitcoin, which they...what, have to sell or return to bitfinexed the shadiest of the shady? thus becoming a bitcoin market mover AND validating the whole shady ecosystem by participating in it? Bitfinex says they're going to work with the USG to get the coins back?? What's the KYC process gonna be like for that whole effort? It honestly makes my head heart.
What will all of this mean for price and regulation of the constantly pumping and dumping crypto currencies? So far, it seems mostly a like a fomo-fueled haven for criminality, cult recruiters, scams, and vast hoards of wealth? It's hard to imagine this nightmare has any sort of happy ending.
posted by wowenthusiast at 11:05 PM on February 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
Got peeved, posted. I shouldn’t be making judgment calls on her race based on photos and dumbass copy that I think sounds like shit a white lady would write - at a meta level, this is a very gorram white-lady thing for me to do. DO BETTER, RRRRRRRRRT
She refers to herself as Turkish in her lyrics, uh, a lot, so I think the “nomadic tribe” bit is in fact a reference to her actual heritage. “Jungles of Vietnam,” well, maybe not.
posted by atoxyl at 11:51 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
She refers to herself as Turkish in her lyrics, uh, a lot, so I think the “nomadic tribe” bit is in fact a reference to her actual heritage. “Jungles of Vietnam,” well, maybe not.
posted by atoxyl at 11:51 PM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
you were warned to get ready for some game theory
posted by thelonius at 12:18 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 12:18 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Look, I don't know a lot about gilfs, but I don't think fifteen is a possible starting point for gilfdom.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:36 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Literaryhero at 1:36 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
She's a gilf in bitcoin years ... it's The Gilfed Age
posted by chavenet at 1:54 AM on February 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 1:54 AM on February 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Every microgeneration gets the Grimes it deserves.
posted by acb at 2:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by acb at 2:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [13 favorites]
This predicament perhaps also catches the US Marshall Service & US Govt between a rock and a hard place, because suddenly they are the stewards of an utterly massive amount of Bitcoin, which they...what, have to sell or return to bitfinexed the shadiest of the shady? thus becoming a bitcoin market mover AND validating the whole shady ecosystem by participating in it?
I wonder if that's why the Crypto Fear and Greed Index has been on such a rapid rise for the last few days.
posted by flabdablet at 5:03 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
I wonder if that's why the Crypto Fear and Greed Index has been on such a rapid rise for the last few days.
posted by flabdablet at 5:03 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Crypto-tumblers are last years method of money laundering, if instead they bought some NTFs from a trusted fence ARTIST, they just might have got away with this.
posted by Lanark at 5:08 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Lanark at 5:08 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
She contains multitudes.
Indeed she does. Here she is arguing for universal health care.
posted by flabdablet at 5:15 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Indeed she does. Here she is arguing for universal health care.
posted by flabdablet at 5:15 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Fully Automated Luxury Communism... on the blockchain!
Get in on the ground floor to get a migalka allowing your moon lambo to use the ZIL lanes.
posted by acb at 5:30 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Get in on the ground floor to get a migalka allowing your moon lambo to use the ZIL lanes.
posted by acb at 5:30 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Is it me? Or are all the videos private now?
Increasingly, yes. Like that was ever going to work.
Plenty more reuploads on YouTube, the 720p version of one of which appears to have a BitTorrent info hash of d98ff10d86faac45f6dc06abbd6b869176956e42.
posted by flabdablet at 5:42 AM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Increasingly, yes. Like that was ever going to work.
Plenty more reuploads on YouTube, the 720p version of one of which appears to have a BitTorrent info hash of d98ff10d86faac45f6dc06abbd6b869176956e42.
posted by flabdablet at 5:42 AM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
JEAN RALPHIO LIVES!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:49 AM on February 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:49 AM on February 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
FBI Deputy Director Paul M. Abbate: “Thanks to the persistent and dedicated work of our FBI Investigative teams and law enforcement partners, we're able to uncover the source of even the most sophisticated schemes and bring justice to those who try to exploit the security of our financial infrastructure.”
Well, there you have it. The FBI has just included cryptocurrency in "our financial infrastructure". Looks like their thinking on the Greater Fool Pool is in rough alignment with my own.
posted by flabdablet at 5:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well, there you have it. The FBI has just included cryptocurrency in "our financial infrastructure". Looks like their thinking on the Greater Fool Pool is in rough alignment with my own.
posted by flabdablet at 5:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’m old enough to remember when bitcoin was going to bring down governments. Now, it’s looking more likely that it actually will, but ironically.
posted by rodlymight at 6:02 AM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by rodlymight at 6:02 AM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Phrased as if the cloud provider gave access to the encrypted files. Which is ... interesting.
Five crazy details from Razzlekhan and Dutch’s alleged $5.3 billion Bitfinex crime:
Five crazy details from Razzlekhan and Dutch’s alleged $5.3 billion Bitfinex crime:
Here are some of the craziest details of the case:posted by flabdablet at 7:17 AM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
1. Lichtenstein allegedly kept the private keys to a wallet containing 94,636 Bitcoin (US$4.2 billion) on a cloud storage account, based in the United States.
If you’re unfamiliar with crypto, it’s hard to articulate just how dumb this is. A cloud storage account might be secure enough for a few thousand dollars worth of crypto – but billions?
The feds were able to access the account via a search warrant last year, and decrypted the files around 31 January 2022.
Razzlekhan also under investigation by the rap police for forgetting about Dre.
posted by interogative mood at 8:00 AM on February 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 8:00 AM on February 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
GOAT
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 8:05 AM on February 9, 2022
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 8:05 AM on February 9, 2022
Sarah Emerson at BuzzFeed: “A Woman Accused Of A $4.5 Billion Cryptocurrency Laundering Scheme Has Moonlighted As A Rapper And Forbes Writer”
posted by Going To Maine at 8:58 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 8:58 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The hubris of making a karaoke version of this song means she thought anyone could possibly listen to it and be like, ya thats my jam. The fact she's a "CEO" backed by YCombinator surprises me not at all.
posted by KeSetAffinityThread at 8:59 AM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by KeSetAffinityThread at 8:59 AM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
Wait wait wait… they had a bag labelled “burner phones”!?!? This is really the chefs kiss.
posted by misterpatrick at 9:05 AM on February 9, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by misterpatrick at 9:05 AM on February 9, 2022 [11 favorites]
You can't fool me- this is just some kind of elaborate Jenny Slate skit, isn't it?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Minor correction: Her partner, Lichtenstein, was founder of MixRank, the startup with Y Combinator backing. Morgan was the CEO of a different startup, Endpass, which did not have ties to Y Combinator.
Endpass used “Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate identity verification while proactively detecting fraud.”
posted by mbrubeck at 10:57 AM on February 9, 2022
Endpass used “Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate identity verification while proactively detecting fraud.”
posted by mbrubeck at 10:57 AM on February 9, 2022
Endpass used “Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate identity verification while proactively detecting fraud.”
Proactively? Sounds like a totally outrageous paradigm!
posted by rhizome at 11:59 AM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Proactively? Sounds like a totally outrageous paradigm!
posted by rhizome at 11:59 AM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Wait wait wait… they had a bag labelled “burner phones”!?!? This is really the chefs kiss.
Stringer Bell would be pissed.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:13 PM on February 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
Stringer Bell would be pissed.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:13 PM on February 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
> interogative mood: "Razzlekhan also under investigation by the rap police for forgetting about Dre."
Ah, if there were only a mnemonic or a little rhyme to avoid forgetting about Dre...
posted by mhum at 12:58 PM on February 9, 2022
Ah, if there were only a mnemonic or a little rhyme to avoid forgetting about Dre...
posted by mhum at 12:58 PM on February 9, 2022
I heard she's the opener for Kendall Roy.
posted by ikahime at 12:58 PM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by ikahime at 12:58 PM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
From pompomtom’s linked article, dated June 2019:
The robber had wisely converted ethereum into bitcoin, which has since appreciated in price. The authorities are in a conundrum over who should get profits from a sale of the loot.
[…]
For example, a strategically timed sale of bitcoin, which has appreciated significantly in price, would have paid dividends for a government agency’s budget. But the U.S. government has been criticized for selling bitcoins at a cheap price.
ETH was priced at approx 0.03 BTC at the time, while its currently priced above 0.07 BTC. Timing the market is speculation. Assets seized by law enforcement agencies shouldn’t be used for speculation, traditional or not.
posted by delegeferenda at 1:11 PM on February 9, 2022
The robber had wisely converted ethereum into bitcoin, which has since appreciated in price. The authorities are in a conundrum over who should get profits from a sale of the loot.
[…]
For example, a strategically timed sale of bitcoin, which has appreciated significantly in price, would have paid dividends for a government agency’s budget. But the U.S. government has been criticized for selling bitcoins at a cheap price.
ETH was priced at approx 0.03 BTC at the time, while its currently priced above 0.07 BTC. Timing the market is speculation. Assets seized by law enforcement agencies shouldn’t be used for speculation, traditional or not.
posted by delegeferenda at 1:11 PM on February 9, 2022
Rap Snitches, telling all their business
Sit in the court and be their own star witness
Do you see the perpetrator? Yeah, I’m right here
Fuck around, get the whole label sent up for years
posted by mubba at 1:25 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sit in the court and be their own star witness
Do you see the perpetrator? Yeah, I’m right here
Fuck around, get the whole label sent up for years
posted by mubba at 1:25 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Man, I scoffed when Eric Adams said that thing about bringing swagger back to NYC, but this is making me rethink that.
I shouldn’t be making judgment calls on her race based on photos and dumbass copy that I think sounds like shit a white lady would write
This is a fundamentally decent approach, but I feel like there's a way for us to acknowledge how wildly culturally appropriation-y and Orientalist her schtick is without assuming anything about her background.
Also, how fucking hard is it to understand that rap is, at its core, poetry set to music, and not a matter of cobbling together a bunch of someone else's words, a few of which happen to rhyme?
A thousand years dungeon.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:51 PM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I shouldn’t be making judgment calls on her race based on photos and dumbass copy that I think sounds like shit a white lady would write
This is a fundamentally decent approach, but I feel like there's a way for us to acknowledge how wildly culturally appropriation-y and Orientalist her schtick is without assuming anything about her background.
Also, how fucking hard is it to understand that rap is, at its core, poetry set to music, and not a matter of cobbling together a bunch of someone else's words, a few of which happen to rhyme?
A thousand years dungeon.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:51 PM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
They’re lucky. With $B in stolen funds, there are many people in this world who would have rubber hosed the private keys and dumped them in a ditch.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 2:22 PM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by a robot made out of meat at 2:22 PM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I am so sad that Razzlekhan does not seems to have had any friends who could be honest with her.
posted by 3j0hn at 2:33 PM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by 3j0hn at 2:33 PM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
The album cover in the second link is giving me strong “Geddy Lee, but with boobs” vibe. As a cishet male Rush fan it’s … weird. Sorry, idk why my brain went there.
posted by freecellwizard at 3:37 PM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by freecellwizard at 3:37 PM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
> Moonlighted As A Rapper And Forbes Writer
This Nieman Lab article uses the fact of her being a Forbes contributor to begin an article about the decline of Forbes.
posted by Monochrome at 4:38 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
This Nieman Lab article uses the fact of her being a Forbes contributor to begin an article about the decline of Forbes.
posted by Monochrome at 4:38 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Forbes seem to have taken the WSJ business model (pay for good journalism, use it to prop up tendentious hard-right editorials, but draw a clear line between the two) and decided that it'd work even better if you let the shitty vanity opinions into the journalism.
posted by acb at 6:45 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 6:45 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sometimes I wonder if the government hasn't actually tried some similar scheme that worked disastrously too well, like the monkey's paw that curled when Democrats hoped Trump would win the Republican nomination.
This image is going to stay with me for a long, long time.
posted by craniac at 8:26 AM on February 10, 2022
This image is going to stay with me for a long, long time.
posted by craniac at 8:26 AM on February 10, 2022
This is a fundamentally decent approach, but I feel like there's a way for us to acknowledge how wildly culturally appropriation-y and Orientalist her schtick is without assuming anything about her background.
How can this not hinge, to some degree, on her background? I shouldn’t pretend that I do know her background, just from her lyrical claims - maybe it’s all actually adopted from her “world traveler” persona. I just know that a lot of people who are actually from the part of the world she repeatedly refers to fit somewhat awkwardly into American racial categories, which makes me feel weird about saying “oh she’s clearly not Eastern.”
posted by atoxyl at 8:48 AM on February 10, 2022
How can this not hinge, to some degree, on her background? I shouldn’t pretend that I do know her background, just from her lyrical claims - maybe it’s all actually adopted from her “world traveler” persona. I just know that a lot of people who are actually from the part of the world she repeatedly refers to fit somewhat awkwardly into American racial categories, which makes me feel weird about saying “oh she’s clearly not Eastern.”
posted by atoxyl at 8:48 AM on February 10, 2022
1. What does $3.6 billion in Bitcoin even mean? Is there a way to turn that amount (or even a sizable fraction of it) into money you can spend in reality? Genuine question, I have no idea how that would mean you actually have any ability to buy things in the real world except where the seller accepts Bitcoin, but that creates the same problem for the seller.
2. Related to the above, if you are a criminal and want to convert your Bitcoin into dollars or euros or yen, wouldn't the transfer of huge sums of money into the real-world banking system send up all sorts of red flags? Or wouldn't you run into the classic Capone problem if the tax man comes knocking: you have all these funds and assets but can't explain where they came from? Not to mention that every real-world transaction (buying real estate, vehicles, jewelry, etc) would generate all sorts of records for investigators to follow.
Yes, if you own it legitimately, it's pretty easy to turn into real money. Here's the key though - anyone who plays that conversion role has to follow real world Know Your Customer rules, like a bank. So it's very easy to convert... but in a way that leaves a trail at financial institutions with your real name. That did happen here.
Also, you do need to explain the source of your funds as part of that KYC process, the same way that you need to any other funds. (if you only have PAYE employment income, you probably never run into this because it's pretty obvious what the source of funds is so they don't ask but anyone with a business bank account definitely needs to be able to explain where the money comes from).
In fact, this is a problem they ran into as well. She claimed that the source of (some) of her bitcoins was that her boyfriend had given them to her a few years ago... but when they asked for evidence of this she was obviously unable to provide it. So the accounts were frozen. They were spectacularly unable to effectively launder almost any of this money.
Matt Levine made the point that There is a strange debate about crypto and money laundering. Crypto skeptics will often say “Bitcoin is mostly useful for money laundering”; crypto proponents will occasionally say “what of it, money laundering is fine, freedom, man,” but mostly they will instead say “no, Bitcoin is useless for money laundering because it creates a permanent public record of all transactions and why would you want to launder money that way.”
You might think that a federal criminal indictment for $4.5 billion of Bitcoin money laundering would be vindication of the “Bitcoin is for money launderers” side, but I want to tell you: No it is not! What allegedly happened here is that hackers stole $4.5 billion of Bitcoin from a crypto exchange (and stealing from exchanges absolutely is a major function of crypto), and then they had a horrible time laundering it. They managed to extract only a relatively small portion of the money for actual spending, and each time they got money out the feds were able to trace it from the hack all the way to legitimate accounts with their names on it. The laundering efforts were small-scale, and they are also how they got caught.
If you rob a bank and steal a sack of money and the bills are sequentially numbered and a dye pack explodes in the sack and you drive directly to another bank and hand them the dye-stained sack and say “I’d like to make a deposit please” you will totally get arrested, and you will probably get charged with money laundering, but in no meaningful sense did you launder the money. It still has the dye on it! That happened here.
Other highlights from his column:
...What a cover story. I am certainly not telling you to steal $4.5 billion of Bitcoin from a crypto exchange and launder it through the financial system. That is frowned upon, it is not nice to the people whose crypto was stolen, and you will probably go to prison. It’s not good. It is, however … look I am sorry it is cool. Like if I met the person who did that I would be impressed, by the boldness, and by the fact that she has $4.5 billion. And when I think about the person who did that, the words that do not come to mind are “Forbes rapper.” ...
Still, you can identify some tradecraft flaws here:...In a sense, turning stolen Bitcoins into physical gold is a money-laundering success. In another sense, giving your driver’s license to a regulated financial institution so that it can ship the gold to your home address is, in hindsight, not.
posted by atrazine at 10:40 AM on February 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
2. Related to the above, if you are a criminal and want to convert your Bitcoin into dollars or euros or yen, wouldn't the transfer of huge sums of money into the real-world banking system send up all sorts of red flags? Or wouldn't you run into the classic Capone problem if the tax man comes knocking: you have all these funds and assets but can't explain where they came from? Not to mention that every real-world transaction (buying real estate, vehicles, jewelry, etc) would generate all sorts of records for investigators to follow.
Yes, if you own it legitimately, it's pretty easy to turn into real money. Here's the key though - anyone who plays that conversion role has to follow real world Know Your Customer rules, like a bank. So it's very easy to convert... but in a way that leaves a trail at financial institutions with your real name. That did happen here.
Also, you do need to explain the source of your funds as part of that KYC process, the same way that you need to any other funds. (if you only have PAYE employment income, you probably never run into this because it's pretty obvious what the source of funds is so they don't ask but anyone with a business bank account definitely needs to be able to explain where the money comes from).
In fact, this is a problem they ran into as well. She claimed that the source of (some) of her bitcoins was that her boyfriend had given them to her a few years ago... but when they asked for evidence of this she was obviously unable to provide it. So the accounts were frozen. They were spectacularly unable to effectively launder almost any of this money.
Matt Levine made the point that There is a strange debate about crypto and money laundering. Crypto skeptics will often say “Bitcoin is mostly useful for money laundering”; crypto proponents will occasionally say “what of it, money laundering is fine, freedom, man,” but mostly they will instead say “no, Bitcoin is useless for money laundering because it creates a permanent public record of all transactions and why would you want to launder money that way.”
You might think that a federal criminal indictment for $4.5 billion of Bitcoin money laundering would be vindication of the “Bitcoin is for money launderers” side, but I want to tell you: No it is not! What allegedly happened here is that hackers stole $4.5 billion of Bitcoin from a crypto exchange (and stealing from exchanges absolutely is a major function of crypto), and then they had a horrible time laundering it. They managed to extract only a relatively small portion of the money for actual spending, and each time they got money out the feds were able to trace it from the hack all the way to legitimate accounts with their names on it. The laundering efforts were small-scale, and they are also how they got caught.
If you rob a bank and steal a sack of money and the bills are sequentially numbered and a dye pack explodes in the sack and you drive directly to another bank and hand them the dye-stained sack and say “I’d like to make a deposit please” you will totally get arrested, and you will probably get charged with money laundering, but in no meaningful sense did you launder the money. It still has the dye on it! That happened here.
Other highlights from his column:
...What a cover story. I am certainly not telling you to steal $4.5 billion of Bitcoin from a crypto exchange and launder it through the financial system. That is frowned upon, it is not nice to the people whose crypto was stolen, and you will probably go to prison. It’s not good. It is, however … look I am sorry it is cool. Like if I met the person who did that I would be impressed, by the boldness, and by the fact that she has $4.5 billion. And when I think about the person who did that, the words that do not come to mind are “Forbes rapper.” ...
Still, you can identify some tradecraft flaws here:...In a sense, turning stolen Bitcoins into physical gold is a money-laundering success. In another sense, giving your driver’s license to a regulated financial institution so that it can ship the gold to your home address is, in hindsight, not.
posted by atrazine at 10:40 AM on February 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
If she really is Turkish, my desire to move to Rojava and join the YPG just went up a few notches.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:28 AM on February 10, 2022
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:28 AM on February 10, 2022
According to the NY Times: In a less mundane example of where the authorities say the stolen Bitcoin went, the couple is accused of using some of it to buy nonfungible tokens, or NFTs
If the NFT seller was in on the scam, that could be one way to launder the money (buy my NFT and I'll return half the money in dollars), or equally it could have been how they were caught.
posted by Lanark at 11:40 AM on February 10, 2022
If the NFT seller was in on the scam, that could be one way to launder the money (buy my NFT and I'll return half the money in dollars), or equally it could have been how they were caught.
posted by Lanark at 11:40 AM on February 10, 2022
In November, when the price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $69,000 (yes, really), their Bitcoin wallet had a theoretical value of $8,263,026,000.
That’s, like, the amount the entire federal government allocated for pandemic relief in early March 2020.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:57 AM on February 10, 2022
That’s, like, the amount the entire federal government allocated for pandemic relief in early March 2020.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:57 AM on February 10, 2022
Here's a link to the Matt Levine column (Bloomberg, soft paywall) that atrazine quoted above. Today's column has a section on the question of who gets the recovered Bitcoin:
posted by ectabo at 12:11 PM on February 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
If you have $10,000 in your bank account, and thieves hack into your account and drain all of the money, and you go to your bank and establish that that’s what happened, and the hackers get away successfully, what will the bank do? The three main theoretically possible answers are:See, in 2016 when the hack occurred, Bitfinex responded by taking 30% of the Bitcoins from every account and replacing them with newly-printed BFX tokens which people then bought, sold, exchanged for Bitfinex stock, etc. So Bitfinex says that they already reimbursed their depositors and therefore the recovered Bitcoin is rightfully theirs. The depositors, of course, disagree, and I can't imagine what a mess that will be to sort out in the courts.
1. The bank will give you the $10,000 back and eat the loss.
2. It won’t, and you will eat the loss.
3.The bank will give you some of the money back, and you will split the loss.
Which one it chooses will be determined mostly by regulation and somewhat by how effectively you complain, but none of that is the point here. The point is that what will not happen is:
4. The bank will say “Well the dollars are gone, but we can credit you with 10,000 Theft Bucks, enjoy!”
posted by ectabo at 12:11 PM on February 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
replacing them with newly-printed BFX tokens
It's grifters all the way up the food chain.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:42 AM on February 11, 2022
It's grifters all the way up the food chain.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:42 AM on February 11, 2022
What does $3.6 billion in Bitcoin even mean?
It's based on the market price for Bitcoin. So it's sort of like, if you stole 1,000 shares of MSFT from me somehow, saying that you stole $295,670 worth of Microsoft stock (because the current share price is ~$295.67).
Obviously, this is sort of an approximation. In the case of MSFT, you probably could sell 1,000 shares at the market price and walk off with something close to $300k. This is because MSFT shares are pretty liquid and the market depth is good. Selling those 1,000 shares probably isn't going to change the price very much.
However, it's not clear that Bitcoin is particularly liquid. The transaction costs of converting BTC to USD are quite high, and I have an idea that the market depth is smaller than it appears. Someone who tries to sell a few billion USD "worth" of Bitcoin may well find themselves trying to grab a falling blade, as the saying goes, driving the price down by effectively creating a glut on the market at a particular price.
You can get an idea of how bad this is, if you look at the limiting case: suppose that everyone wakes up on Monday and thinks "holy shit, this crypto stuff really is a scam! Bitcoins are just synthetic tokens only usable on a shitty system with astronomically-high transaction costs! I better get my life savings the fuck outta there!" and tries to sell. The result would be almost instant panic, and the price would collapse. The first few people to sell would get out okay, selling to fill the open orders at or just below the current spot price, but everyone else would have to find someone else to sell to, presumably at lower prices, and you get a race to the bottom. In traditional securities, there's usually a price floor because the security actually represents ownership of real stuff—the liquidation value of the company's property, its cash holdings, etc.—which the price might irrationally dip below, but it will (in theory) recover to as value-seeking investors buy it at a discount. But Bitcoins have no underlying value, so their price could easily fall all the way to zero.
This is why breathless articles looking at the "market cap" of Bitcoin (spot price of a single BTC multiplied by the number of BTC in existence) are basically meaningless. There's no way that everyone invested in Bitcoins can actually recover anything like their present paper value.
Eventually, it's all going to collapse. Right now, and pretty much since its inception, BTC's "value" has been propped up by new suckers coming to the table and buying in, but if the parade of new money stops, well, things are going to get ugly in a hurry.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:07 PM on February 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's based on the market price for Bitcoin. So it's sort of like, if you stole 1,000 shares of MSFT from me somehow, saying that you stole $295,670 worth of Microsoft stock (because the current share price is ~$295.67).
Obviously, this is sort of an approximation. In the case of MSFT, you probably could sell 1,000 shares at the market price and walk off with something close to $300k. This is because MSFT shares are pretty liquid and the market depth is good. Selling those 1,000 shares probably isn't going to change the price very much.
However, it's not clear that Bitcoin is particularly liquid. The transaction costs of converting BTC to USD are quite high, and I have an idea that the market depth is smaller than it appears. Someone who tries to sell a few billion USD "worth" of Bitcoin may well find themselves trying to grab a falling blade, as the saying goes, driving the price down by effectively creating a glut on the market at a particular price.
You can get an idea of how bad this is, if you look at the limiting case: suppose that everyone wakes up on Monday and thinks "holy shit, this crypto stuff really is a scam! Bitcoins are just synthetic tokens only usable on a shitty system with astronomically-high transaction costs! I better get my life savings the fuck outta there!" and tries to sell. The result would be almost instant panic, and the price would collapse. The first few people to sell would get out okay, selling to fill the open orders at or just below the current spot price, but everyone else would have to find someone else to sell to, presumably at lower prices, and you get a race to the bottom. In traditional securities, there's usually a price floor because the security actually represents ownership of real stuff—the liquidation value of the company's property, its cash holdings, etc.—which the price might irrationally dip below, but it will (in theory) recover to as value-seeking investors buy it at a discount. But Bitcoins have no underlying value, so their price could easily fall all the way to zero.
This is why breathless articles looking at the "market cap" of Bitcoin (spot price of a single BTC multiplied by the number of BTC in existence) are basically meaningless. There's no way that everyone invested in Bitcoins can actually recover anything like their present paper value.
Eventually, it's all going to collapse. Right now, and pretty much since its inception, BTC's "value" has been propped up by new suckers coming to the table and buying in, but if the parade of new money stops, well, things are going to get ugly in a hurry.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:07 PM on February 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
There's no way that everyone invested in Bitcoins can actually recover anything like their present paper value.
To be fair, given that fractional reserve lending is a thing, the very same issue applies to bank accounts. As long as there isn't a run, everything just keeps on ticking along. As soon as there is then the house of cards falls over, the casino operators tidy up all the cards, and those who already have the least lose the most. Again.
Eventually, it's all going to collapse.
In a just world I'd agree with you. I don't think we live in one of those. I think we live in a world where finance is almost totally composed of consensually reinforced delusions, carefully cultivated and tended and fertilized by the wealthiest of the wealthy in order to preserve their own largely spurious sense of self-worth.
Disgusting though the prospect absolutely is, cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin in particular might already be too big to fail; the world's wealthiest man is already using them to let him tweak Tesla Motors's profit number in whatever direction he finds most convenient. All he needs to do is tweet in order to re-value Bitcoin at whatever he wants.
Yes, it's all a scam. The point is that it's the same scam that's already been in continuous operation for longer than I've been alive.
posted by flabdablet at 1:38 AM on February 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
To be fair, given that fractional reserve lending is a thing, the very same issue applies to bank accounts. As long as there isn't a run, everything just keeps on ticking along. As soon as there is then the house of cards falls over, the casino operators tidy up all the cards, and those who already have the least lose the most. Again.
Eventually, it's all going to collapse.
In a just world I'd agree with you. I don't think we live in one of those. I think we live in a world where finance is almost totally composed of consensually reinforced delusions, carefully cultivated and tended and fertilized by the wealthiest of the wealthy in order to preserve their own largely spurious sense of self-worth.
Disgusting though the prospect absolutely is, cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin in particular might already be too big to fail; the world's wealthiest man is already using them to let him tweak Tesla Motors's profit number in whatever direction he finds most convenient. All he needs to do is tweet in order to re-value Bitcoin at whatever he wants.
Yes, it's all a scam. The point is that it's the same scam that's already been in continuous operation for longer than I've been alive.
posted by flabdablet at 1:38 AM on February 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
given that fractional reserve lending is a thing, the very same issue applies to bank accounts
Not in any economically meaningful way. Dollars are obligations of the US government; as long as the government survives they will have value. It can fluctuate, sure, and the value can be inflated away. But it's deeply tied to a large and relatively stable political system.
Bitcoin magic beans are a pure contemporary invention. You can't exchange them for useful goods and services. You can't pay taxes with them. No government is working every day to keep their value relatively stable. They have had temporary value, mostly as a means of Chinese money laundering. Much of that value is pinned to Tether, which I have many links about above. In just a few years Tether has gone from a promise of being 1-to-1 with the US dollar to 383-to-1, or at least that's our best guess. When it collapses I think it will take Bitcoin with it.
If you want to make an optimistic comparison of Bitcoin to something, compare it to gold.
To the question above about "What does $3.6 billion in Bitcoin even mean?" I'm skeptical it means $3.6B of real money. I'd love to read a treatment of what it's like to legally and legitimately turn significant sums of Bitcoin into US dollars. Like let's say I'm a legitimate billionaire with long established accounts at investment banks, Coinbase, etc. And I have $1B in Bitcoins. How many dollars could I really cash that out for and how long would it take? My impression is $1M is something one could exchange, with difficulty, but $1B would be effectively impossible.
cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin in particular might already be too big to fail
The Economist considered that question six months ago and concluded it isn't. Almost no real world economic activity is conducted through cryptocurrency. But they do warn that it would have significant impacts and that cryptocurrency's role in finance is only growing. One long bet some crypto enthusiasts are making is that their currency will become too big to fail, and that will somehow overcome the obvious chicanery of the current economics. That seems like dangerous thinking to me and I wish governments would do more to prevent it from happening.
posted by Nelson at 6:42 AM on February 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Not in any economically meaningful way. Dollars are obligations of the US government; as long as the government survives they will have value. It can fluctuate, sure, and the value can be inflated away. But it's deeply tied to a large and relatively stable political system.
Bitcoin magic beans are a pure contemporary invention. You can't exchange them for useful goods and services. You can't pay taxes with them. No government is working every day to keep their value relatively stable. They have had temporary value, mostly as a means of Chinese money laundering. Much of that value is pinned to Tether, which I have many links about above. In just a few years Tether has gone from a promise of being 1-to-1 with the US dollar to 383-to-1, or at least that's our best guess. When it collapses I think it will take Bitcoin with it.
If you want to make an optimistic comparison of Bitcoin to something, compare it to gold.
To the question above about "What does $3.6 billion in Bitcoin even mean?" I'm skeptical it means $3.6B of real money. I'd love to read a treatment of what it's like to legally and legitimately turn significant sums of Bitcoin into US dollars. Like let's say I'm a legitimate billionaire with long established accounts at investment banks, Coinbase, etc. And I have $1B in Bitcoins. How many dollars could I really cash that out for and how long would it take? My impression is $1M is something one could exchange, with difficulty, but $1B would be effectively impossible.
cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin in particular might already be too big to fail
The Economist considered that question six months ago and concluded it isn't. Almost no real world economic activity is conducted through cryptocurrency. But they do warn that it would have significant impacts and that cryptocurrency's role in finance is only growing. One long bet some crypto enthusiasts are making is that their currency will become too big to fail, and that will somehow overcome the obvious chicanery of the current economics. That seems like dangerous thinking to me and I wish governments would do more to prevent it from happening.
posted by Nelson at 6:42 AM on February 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Not in any economically meaningful way. Dollars are obligations of the US government; as long as the government survives they will have value.
As long as I can exchange these federal reserve notes for coffee, I'm in.
posted by mikelieman at 7:49 AM on February 12, 2022
As long as I can exchange these federal reserve notes for coffee, I'm in.
posted by mikelieman at 7:49 AM on February 12, 2022
“Fractional reserve banking is a scam” is a very Austrian goldbug idea, much like the ones underpinning inherently deflationary cryptocurrencies. Modern monetary theory has largely settled on the idea that money supply reflects economic activity, rather than a reserve of valuable materials, and the holdouts are usually uncomfortably close to some very unsavory conspiracy theories.
posted by acb at 8:27 AM on February 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by acb at 8:27 AM on February 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
And I have $1B in Bitcoins. How many dollars could I really cash that out for and how long would it take? My impression is $1M is something one could exchange, with difficulty, but $1B would be effectively impossible.
If you need your billion US dollars tomorrow, then you're going to crater the market, but if you have some time, then you definitely could get $1B out without affecting the market too much (assuming everyone else isn't trying to do the same).
Inflows to BTC last year were over $6B, so there's certainly room for someone to take out $1B slowly over a year or so. There are also a few billion flowing into other cryptocurrencies, so you'd probably be wise to do some of your trades through those so as not to unduly affect the BTC/USD price.
It's entirely possible that the BTC price will collapse badly over the time it takes you to pull your billion out, but it's probably not that likely at this point. With the wild fluctuations in BTC price, it's likely that you would end up with an amount that is significantly different from the $1B you started with, in either direction.
$1M wouldn't be difficult at all.
posted by ssg at 9:37 AM on February 12, 2022
If you need your billion US dollars tomorrow, then you're going to crater the market, but if you have some time, then you definitely could get $1B out without affecting the market too much (assuming everyone else isn't trying to do the same).
Inflows to BTC last year were over $6B, so there's certainly room for someone to take out $1B slowly over a year or so. There are also a few billion flowing into other cryptocurrencies, so you'd probably be wise to do some of your trades through those so as not to unduly affect the BTC/USD price.
It's entirely possible that the BTC price will collapse badly over the time it takes you to pull your billion out, but it's probably not that likely at this point. With the wild fluctuations in BTC price, it's likely that you would end up with an amount that is significantly different from the $1B you started with, in either direction.
$1M wouldn't be difficult at all.
posted by ssg at 9:37 AM on February 12, 2022
It's worth considering, for your $1B that, depending on how/when you got it, you could be facing some fairly stiff capital gains taxing, although, if you have $1B to throw around, I hope you have some external money to hire a really good accountant....
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:03 PM on February 12, 2022
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:03 PM on February 12, 2022
Yeah I wonder how much of various cryptocurrencies it costs to buy $1M in dollars.
posted by rhizome at 4:39 PM on February 12, 2022
posted by rhizome at 4:39 PM on February 12, 2022
Dollars are obligations of the US government; as long as the government survives they will have value.
Agreed. If I'm holding a dollar bill, I can reasonably expect to be able to exchange that for a dollar's worth of goods. This is because, as you correctly point out, that dollar bill is an IOU for the value of those goods, and the party that wrote that IOU is the US Government.
But if all I have is a bank statement that says I have a dollar in savings, and my bank is now insolvent because there's been a run on it and the dollar in question was one of those over and above the FDIC insurance amount, then I can't exchange it for actual goods any more.
That's not goldbuggery, that's just how private banking works when the law permits banks to issue more debt than they can fund. Bank accounts are IOUs backed not primarily by governments, but by huge webs of interlocking private IOUs.
And sure, there's no FDIC guarantee for accounts denominated in Bitcoin and kept on public blockchains, but that's a difference of degree, not of kind. It's just a fact that the banking system, and by extension the entire economy that relies on it, keeps working for only as long as the major participants expect it to.
So it's movement in the Bitcoin holdings of the extremely wealthy, not theoretical analyses of "underlying" or "inherent" or "actual" value, that I personally pay attention to in order to gauge the likelihood of an imminent cryptocurrency market collapse.
posted by flabdablet at 5:56 PM on February 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Agreed. If I'm holding a dollar bill, I can reasonably expect to be able to exchange that for a dollar's worth of goods. This is because, as you correctly point out, that dollar bill is an IOU for the value of those goods, and the party that wrote that IOU is the US Government.
But if all I have is a bank statement that says I have a dollar in savings, and my bank is now insolvent because there's been a run on it and the dollar in question was one of those over and above the FDIC insurance amount, then I can't exchange it for actual goods any more.
That's not goldbuggery, that's just how private banking works when the law permits banks to issue more debt than they can fund. Bank accounts are IOUs backed not primarily by governments, but by huge webs of interlocking private IOUs.
And sure, there's no FDIC guarantee for accounts denominated in Bitcoin and kept on public blockchains, but that's a difference of degree, not of kind. It's just a fact that the banking system, and by extension the entire economy that relies on it, keeps working for only as long as the major participants expect it to.
So it's movement in the Bitcoin holdings of the extremely wealthy, not theoretical analyses of "underlying" or "inherent" or "actual" value, that I personally pay attention to in order to gauge the likelihood of an imminent cryptocurrency market collapse.
posted by flabdablet at 5:56 PM on February 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
> and above the FDIC insurance amount
Uh, that's a pretty big condition to just slip in there. One of the major reasons that fractional-reserve banking works is because it's backstopped by a state, who has agreed to guarantee most deposits.
(And let's be honest: if you have more than $250k kicking around in your bank account, you're probably capable of Googling "fdic insurance limit" and learning about CDARS, which offers de facto unlimited-size FDIC insured cash accounts. So not a lot of sympathy for anyone who leaves their quarter-million-plus cash account uninsured.)
The Austrians are right in the very limited sense that in a completely unregulated financial environment, I wouldn't want to keep my money in a fractional-reserve bank, or I'd at least demand a significantly higher interest rate. In the absence of any regulation, banknotes are basically corporate paper, and different banks' paper would fluctuate in value against each other in a pretty obnoxious way. (As was historically the case in the US a few times, and it sucked.) You'd have to be pretty dumb to create a totally unregulated financial system, given that.
It's the state regulation that makes the system work. That's the bedrock that it's built on. US dollars will always have real value as long as there's a US government, because the government can demand everyone in the US pay taxes in them, and that debts between individuals can be settled in them. (The value of not having the IRS show up at your door? Not quite priceless, but close.) It's the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:40 PM on February 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Uh, that's a pretty big condition to just slip in there. One of the major reasons that fractional-reserve banking works is because it's backstopped by a state, who has agreed to guarantee most deposits.
(And let's be honest: if you have more than $250k kicking around in your bank account, you're probably capable of Googling "fdic insurance limit" and learning about CDARS, which offers de facto unlimited-size FDIC insured cash accounts. So not a lot of sympathy for anyone who leaves their quarter-million-plus cash account uninsured.)
The Austrians are right in the very limited sense that in a completely unregulated financial environment, I wouldn't want to keep my money in a fractional-reserve bank, or I'd at least demand a significantly higher interest rate. In the absence of any regulation, banknotes are basically corporate paper, and different banks' paper would fluctuate in value against each other in a pretty obnoxious way. (As was historically the case in the US a few times, and it sucked.) You'd have to be pretty dumb to create a totally unregulated financial system, given that.
It's the state regulation that makes the system work. That's the bedrock that it's built on. US dollars will always have real value as long as there's a US government, because the government can demand everyone in the US pay taxes in them, and that debts between individuals can be settled in them. (The value of not having the IRS show up at your door? Not quite priceless, but close.) It's the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:40 PM on February 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
US dollars will always have real value as long as there's a US government, because the government can demand everyone in the US pay taxes in them, and that debts between individuals can be settled in them.
And we've already seen the government of El Salvador implement the same demand wrt Bitcoin. And sure, El Salvador isn't the US and sure, El Salvador's Bitcoin holdings are still a very tiny fraction of its total economy, but the point remains that all it takes to turn Monopoly money into actual money is the ongoing participation of enough people who all agree amongst themselves that it's a suitable unit in which to denominate debt.
Is cryptocurrency good money? No. Is it safe money? No. Is it money that anybody with a clue should ever be denominating more than a small fraction of their disposable wealth in? No. But at this point there are enough people trading in it that it definitely counts as money, and that number of people is growing, not shrinking, despite the fact that the cryptocurrency markets have already seen multiple price collapses, any one of which would have been enough to terminate tulip mania or a South Sea bubble.
And that's why I disagree with you about the FDIC's role being any kind of bedrock. It's a stabilizer for sure, but it's not like money didn't exist before the panic of 1893. As I said, the difference between account keeping in currencies with government insurance and those without is a difference of degree, not of kind.
The fact that cryptocurrencies offer very limited opportunities to be exchanged directly for goods and services isn't a disqualifier either. As an Australian I have always had almost no opportunity to exchange anything but Australian dollars for goods and services at Australian businesses, but that doesn't stop me from trading in foreign exchange markets. Cryptocurrencies operate like a worldwide forex target, and the fact that there's close to zero underlying economic activity associated with them natively doesn't change that, any more than it would change the ability of somebody from a huge economy like the US to trade forex in a tiny currency like Somali shillings.
Yes the whole thing is scams on scams on scams on scams all the way down, but it would require a Just World for that to have anything to do with its actual likelihood of permanent collapse. Amway is still a thing, for fuck's sake.
posted by flabdablet at 11:52 PM on February 14, 2022
And we've already seen the government of El Salvador implement the same demand wrt Bitcoin. And sure, El Salvador isn't the US and sure, El Salvador's Bitcoin holdings are still a very tiny fraction of its total economy, but the point remains that all it takes to turn Monopoly money into actual money is the ongoing participation of enough people who all agree amongst themselves that it's a suitable unit in which to denominate debt.
Is cryptocurrency good money? No. Is it safe money? No. Is it money that anybody with a clue should ever be denominating more than a small fraction of their disposable wealth in? No. But at this point there are enough people trading in it that it definitely counts as money, and that number of people is growing, not shrinking, despite the fact that the cryptocurrency markets have already seen multiple price collapses, any one of which would have been enough to terminate tulip mania or a South Sea bubble.
And that's why I disagree with you about the FDIC's role being any kind of bedrock. It's a stabilizer for sure, but it's not like money didn't exist before the panic of 1893. As I said, the difference between account keeping in currencies with government insurance and those without is a difference of degree, not of kind.
The fact that cryptocurrencies offer very limited opportunities to be exchanged directly for goods and services isn't a disqualifier either. As an Australian I have always had almost no opportunity to exchange anything but Australian dollars for goods and services at Australian businesses, but that doesn't stop me from trading in foreign exchange markets. Cryptocurrencies operate like a worldwide forex target, and the fact that there's close to zero underlying economic activity associated with them natively doesn't change that, any more than it would change the ability of somebody from a huge economy like the US to trade forex in a tiny currency like Somali shillings.
Yes the whole thing is scams on scams on scams on scams all the way down, but it would require a Just World for that to have anything to do with its actual likelihood of permanent collapse. Amway is still a thing, for fuck's sake.
posted by flabdablet at 11:52 PM on February 14, 2022
El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment is going very badly. Turns out it takes more to make magic beans a new form of money than just saying so.
Once again I'll say: cryptocurrency is functioning more like gold than money right now.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Once again I'll say: cryptocurrency is functioning more like gold than money right now.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment is going very badly
Considering that of all the extant cryptocurrencies Bitcoin is the one with the slowest and most expensive transactions, that's only to be expected.
In order for a cryptocurrency actually to function as a currency in day-to-day use by real people doing real business, the user experience would need to match or better Mastercard, Visa and the like on both convenience and security. Anybody who has actually tried to use Bitcoin to buy anything would readily concede that it's simply not capable of this and never will be.
El Salvador's problem is essentially the same as Greece's was, in that it needs control of its own money supply in order to fund such public spending as its democratically elected government deems appropriate. Bukele's choice of Bitcoin as an attempted solution to that problem was, to put it in the kindest possible terms, ill-considered. If he were going to experiment with cryptocurrency he would have been much better off experimenting with one that had some chance of actually supporting the required transaction volume.
But the failure of the Chivo payments system that both its rushed implementation and the complete inadequacy of the underlying technology made inevitable has now burnt any goodwill that the citizens of El Salvador might have been willing to extend to further experimentation based on any of the better designed platforms.
I would not be at all surprised to see a nation with a better track record on appropriate use of IT, perhaps Estonia, make a much better fist of this at some point. I would be astonished if Bitcoin were their platform of choice.
cryptocurrency is functioning more like gold than money right now
and yet very few people will come right out and accuse trading in gold of being a pyramid scheme and a scam. Which it absolutely is and always has been, as have all forms of foreign exchange. That's exactly my point. Cryptocurrency is new technology, but it's but the latest instantiation of a very old principle, and expecting it to shrivel up and go away because it has no underlying value is completely missing the point of it.
The fact that some string of bits has no inherent value is a complete red herring; such utility as actual physical gold has got has essentially nothing to do with the prices it trades at on any given day. Likewise the actual economic potential of the countries whose currencies forex traders trade in. Far and away the dominant factor affecting the prices people are willing to pay for all of these things is beliefs about what they will trade for tomorrow, and those beliefs are and always have been shaped far more by rumour and the largely superstitious notion that the past performance of a chaotic system can predict its future returns as anything resembling sound economic analysis.
If you have anger and resentment at seeing people "falling for" Bitcoin, I suggest you open your eyes a little wider until you can see that your ire is better directed not at cryptocurrency specifically, but at the relentless privatization of everything that's been giving this oldest of ancient scams free rein to metastasize since Reagan and Thatcher came to power, and against the organs of propaganda operated by the tiny few who are mentally ill enough to believe that having billions of dollars at one's beck and call is a healthy thing for a human being to aspire to.
posted by flabdablet at 9:58 AM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Considering that of all the extant cryptocurrencies Bitcoin is the one with the slowest and most expensive transactions, that's only to be expected.
In order for a cryptocurrency actually to function as a currency in day-to-day use by real people doing real business, the user experience would need to match or better Mastercard, Visa and the like on both convenience and security. Anybody who has actually tried to use Bitcoin to buy anything would readily concede that it's simply not capable of this and never will be.
El Salvador's problem is essentially the same as Greece's was, in that it needs control of its own money supply in order to fund such public spending as its democratically elected government deems appropriate. Bukele's choice of Bitcoin as an attempted solution to that problem was, to put it in the kindest possible terms, ill-considered. If he were going to experiment with cryptocurrency he would have been much better off experimenting with one that had some chance of actually supporting the required transaction volume.
But the failure of the Chivo payments system that both its rushed implementation and the complete inadequacy of the underlying technology made inevitable has now burnt any goodwill that the citizens of El Salvador might have been willing to extend to further experimentation based on any of the better designed platforms.
I would not be at all surprised to see a nation with a better track record on appropriate use of IT, perhaps Estonia, make a much better fist of this at some point. I would be astonished if Bitcoin were their platform of choice.
cryptocurrency is functioning more like gold than money right now
and yet very few people will come right out and accuse trading in gold of being a pyramid scheme and a scam. Which it absolutely is and always has been, as have all forms of foreign exchange. That's exactly my point. Cryptocurrency is new technology, but it's but the latest instantiation of a very old principle, and expecting it to shrivel up and go away because it has no underlying value is completely missing the point of it.
The fact that some string of bits has no inherent value is a complete red herring; such utility as actual physical gold has got has essentially nothing to do with the prices it trades at on any given day. Likewise the actual economic potential of the countries whose currencies forex traders trade in. Far and away the dominant factor affecting the prices people are willing to pay for all of these things is beliefs about what they will trade for tomorrow, and those beliefs are and always have been shaped far more by rumour and the largely superstitious notion that the past performance of a chaotic system can predict its future returns as anything resembling sound economic analysis.
If you have anger and resentment at seeing people "falling for" Bitcoin, I suggest you open your eyes a little wider until you can see that your ire is better directed not at cryptocurrency specifically, but at the relentless privatization of everything that's been giving this oldest of ancient scams free rein to metastasize since Reagan and Thatcher came to power, and against the organs of propaganda operated by the tiny few who are mentally ill enough to believe that having billions of dollars at one's beck and call is a healthy thing for a human being to aspire to.
posted by flabdablet at 9:58 AM on February 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Endpass used “Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate identity verification while proactively detecting fraud.”
So it was a less well connected id.me?
posted by wierdo at 12:03 PM on February 15, 2022
So it was a less well connected id.me?
posted by wierdo at 12:03 PM on February 15, 2022
Crypto isn’t even functioning like gold at this point. There is no actual scarcity, central banks don’t consider it a meaningful part of their balance sheets or recognize it as such in the portfolios of others. El Salvador probably gold in the NY Fed’s vault — most countries do — but no Crypto.
Gold isn’t a ponzi scheme, it has historically been bad investment; but there is a liquid market and about half the buyers in that market actually use the material to make things like jewelry, electronics components, etc.
posted by interogative mood at 6:31 PM on February 15, 2022
Gold isn’t a ponzi scheme, it has historically been bad investment; but there is a liquid market and about half the buyers in that market actually use the material to make things like jewelry, electronics components, etc.
posted by interogative mood at 6:31 PM on February 15, 2022
I mean, aren't we all "descended from a nomadic tribe?"
posted by spitbull at 12:51 AM on February 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by spitbull at 12:51 AM on February 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
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