An interesting opinion piece in The Age:
https://www.theage.com.au/business/markets/crypto-is-just-an…
The article references this speech:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard202…
I'm interested if there are any in the OzB community who "invested" in crypto, still have a holding, and remain positive?
Is it a scam…Yes, sorta, mostly
Ooo looks good. Got a referral code I can use?
I think it's unfair to liken crypto to one of those shady pyramid schemes you hear about, it's really more of a trapezoid scheme.
A truncated pyramid, if you will.
Ah, such a shame I took out a new mortgage during the middle of this. My faith in crypto has been shattered and I now hope to re-coup my $45k loss one day 3 years from today. I thought I was being risk adverse putting a lot of it away into stablecoins, little did I know that UST & Celcius were the wrong place to put it…
$45k is an ok bet as long as you can afford the repayments.
$2,500 in interest vs the massive potential gain crypto has had.
Next time btc or eth.
Imo if you are just holding - cash is better than stablecoin.
gm fam
link to unrelated Twitter prediction
some emojis, various 'meme words' (stonk, pamp, wagmi, diamond hands, BTFD)
misuse of already established financial terms (all my hard assets are chattels), interwoven with american terms straight from finfluencer Youtube (feds are going to come for your cash, pledge the fifth amendment and transfer your funds to a LLC)
vaguely unsatisfying answer that didn't actually address the question
vaguely unsatisfying answer that didn't actually address the question
Rekt's go-to comment preference
It's like they are actually here posting….
Uncanny similarity;)
Is that you rekt?
Lol
Celcius is your answer.
Add Voyager, Luna / Terra and 3 Arrow Capital to that.
For all the crap they say about fiat / fractional banking they were doing exactly the same thing. They just didn't know it. A bunch of software people who thought this is new, or they did a WeWork on the retail investors (pretending it is new). The investment banks have been doing this for ages.
Celcius offering almost 10% returns. Look at junk bond rates, returns indicate these are beyond junk. Returns reflect risk unless people gets defrauded (like the CDOs/MBS in 2008/9).
3 Arrows Capital is the best one right. Borrowing crypto, not only that, then using it as collateral to leverage up. Way higher than when Lehmans / Bear Sterns were leveraged.
For all the honesty of the blockchain people were doing dodgy stuff off chain.
The difference with fiat or whatever is that you can actually buy stuff with it and pay taxes with it. Crypto? Well you can hope others are speculating too, then sell it for real money.
The difference with fiat or whatever is that you can actually buy stuff with it and pay taxes with it
That is what I never got with the crypto crowd. If it is a hedge against debasement of a currency (loss in value from inflation / money printing) once you buy in you can never leave because you'll be entering debasement again.
Many other foolish statements from crypto crowd:
Banking the unbanked: either you don't have enough money (or some poor countries still barter), or you are undocumented (therefore unlikely to pass AML/KYC etc), then you have to be able to afford an up to date smart phone to run the wallets and security software
Easier way of sending money: first you need to pass #1 above then you got to hope that between sending and receiving and converting the crypto hasn't devalued. The volatility of crypto is a lot more than the FX markets even during normal functioning markets
Things like smart contracts are interesting but then involve a lot of standardisation like options / futures contracts. Whether or not all things to everyone will cut it is another matter.
Terra and Luna pegging wasn't innovative. The Asian currency crisis started when outflows happened with the pegged Thai Baht that bought down all the other currency pegs in Asia. In tech bad things only happens to non smart people and it is different this time.
They just didn't know it.
they did a WeWork on the retail investors (pretending it is new)
Would almost certainly be the latter.
where is rek?
bathing in champagne eating lobster and smoking cubans with this mornings gains
Otherwise known as the penalty box
I thought it said it in your profile if you were in there?
Think he is doing is FIFO mining gig
Name checks out. rekt trading.
AWOL for two weeks. Maybe he lost to the crypto bros by HODLing too long and is wallowing in self pity.
Nar he bought in big when BTC was $10 and ETH inception.
Got rekt anyway compared with a year ago.
he wouldnt feel the need to shill for crypto all day if he really did
Wouldn't matter if he put it into Celsius, assets are locks and I think they have a super massive black hole of US$1bn.
company has $4.3bn of assets, set against liabilities of $5.5bn, of which $4.7bn is owed to its users, who numbered 1.7 million as of this month.
The best one is this one:
Celsius also borrowed from a private lender between 2019 and 2021, only to find when it tried to repay the money that the lender was unable to return the collateral that Celsius had put up to secure the funds.
The cryptocurrency platform, which was valued at $3bn at one point last year, is owed $439m by the lender, $361m of it in cash and the remainder in bitcoin.
The way that I understand from what Rekt said is he put all his money into BTC (or whatever crypto), then took a margin loan paying 1% (plus interest earnt) to live on and never sell so no CGT (let the estate handle it). The problem when you have assets in the bank that just went under (with no government protection) and a loan, you become a creditor (assets) and your debts are an assets of the company in bankruptcy. I can be pretty sure the bankruptcy trustees will move heaven and earth to get the assets of the company back if they think you got the money (and not a big fry able to defend it with pricey lawyers). Take their big fat cut (business advisors, lawyers etc) then give the creditors their cut. So you could pay back $1 and get 50c.
You could have bought BTC at 1c and ETH at 1c but how it is valued as a creditor is another question. 1 BTC is same as 1 BTC of another creditor and you both get 50% of $1 recovered? So you could be seriously screwed.
I am not an insolvency expert but it sounds really bad.
@netjock: But was any of his crypto in Celsius? It is more likely he left here because he got tied of taking flack every post he made.
taking flack every post he made
The week after toping the forums highest post count for the month?
Unlikely.
But was any of his crypto in Celsius?
I can't say for sure but all of those high yielding crypto deposit taking institutions are shaky. If they are offering 8% interest rates or more. If a bank was going to offer you 8% and assume safe lending (residential property 80% LVR) is like 3% you're paying 5% at a loss (or worse out of capital you don't have or other investor money = ponzi).
That is not the only problem. If he was taking a margin loan. It is a crunch.
Say for example I get $5k a month (100k salary). I put all of that into crypto. I get 8%pa return. 1% margin loan interest. Rekt (apologies i keep on saying he, could be a she) was on 20% LVR. Also all his savings are in crypto.
Now $5k of assets is now $2.5k. Your margin loan is now 40% LVR (not sure if they even lend that high and sure isn't at 1%, I believe it was a tier table). You are not getting your 8% either. So the question is how many months you been doing it, how much loans you got and how much is your margin call. Don't forget you have to pay your margin loan and fund your living expenses (whatever that might be).
he got tied of taking flack every post he made
Didn't stop the posts even after btc went from $69k to $30k ish. Just after Celsius and Voyager went under Rekt disappeared.
I feel for Rekt but he didn't listen. I hope nobody here tried his grand plan. It was utter financial destruction. Would work at the beginning to the cycle but we're at the end of a bull cycle (long term markets will still go up).
@netjock: NFT of the world's smallest violin now available for the low low price of 1 HUBRI$ coin
https://www.theonion.com/man-who-lost-everything-in-crypto-j…
Probably homeless
waiting for RT to add their unwise words of acronym nonsense
waiting for RT to add their unwise
words of acronymemoji nonsense
NFT's are scams, most cryptos are scams too but i'd hazard to say some cryptos will make 'amazing' investments esp if you are entering at the lows .
If you treat it like a lotto ticket you will be fine
'amazing' investments esp if you are entering at the lows
Doesn't make sense with this:
If you treat it like a lotto ticket you will be fine
No tax on lotto but tax on crypto.
if you purchased 100 dollars of BTC at 1 dollar it would be worth 3m today if you dont think that is amazing then i dont know what is?
If you purchased 100 dollars of these "highly prized" Tulips at 1 dollar it would be worth $0 today.
Whats your point?
@Drakesy: well 100 to a 3million is the best return on an investment you have seen…. 100 to zero is very common…what was your point?
Give it another few years and i think it'll be back to where it started.
you got a Crystal ball?
you got a Crystal ball?
Yet used effectively a Crystal ball level of price picking/time machine powers to show btc returns.
@Drakesy: comparing btc/ETH to tulips? seriously? thousands of researchers, coders spending their time to update the protocols /implementation etc that does so much more than just looking pretty? are you serious
Do you have $3m? Or maybe you have $30m?
You know I bet 3 arrows capital back tested their strategy and it works. Minting money. Maybe you'd have a trillion dollars if you could do it from 2010 - 2020. But you get caught by the perfect storm. You didn't only lose all your own capital but you lost other people's money on other platforms like Voyager too.
I was listening to a podcast. Some guy did like 10 successive good trades and went from like $10k to like $3m, he is using his capital to put together an app for other people to be able to do the same thing. What are the chances of someone making 10 successive killer trades? Gamestop forced a hedge fund to close down but also a lot of retail investors bought in at all time highs, you just don't hear how many people are now financial stuffed and probably never recover.
I lost some money in the GFC only a few grand, pick up tens of thousands during Eurozone financial crisis but net net not worth the effort. Just stick it into the index or let the professionals manage it.
Gee, if you purchased an Amway dealership when it first started in Australia you'd be a billionaire now. That's classic pyramid scheme thinking - a handful of people do make it big, the massive majjority do their dough. You'd have better odds with OzLotto.
@derrida derider: if you purchased an Amway dealership when it first started in Australia you'd be a billionaire now
Yes, just like many people who took it to China and Eastern Europe are millionaires now.
Opening a new market = gold.
Obviously when it reaches saturation point, then no point.
No tax on lotto but tax on crypto.
There's tax on lotto!
There's no tax on lottery winnings in Australia
It has been said that lotto itself is a tax on people who are bad at maths.
Only because people have made them such.
NFT and crypto tech (i.e. blockchain) are actually quite good (in my opinion); and NFTs and crypto currency are good uses of that tech. However people got involved who saw both as a way to try and get rich quickly (and some managed to do so). Crypto sometimes seemed to me like some people were using it as a pump-and-dump.
Calling NFTs themselves a scam is like calling art a scam. Yeah, it's an industry that sometimes seems rife with scams, but that doesn't make the field itself a scam. To me, NFTs are like a certificate of authenticity for digital art. Sure, duplicates can be made; it's just much more difficult to make true duplicates with physical art and incredibly easy to do so with digital.
Calling cryptocurrency a scam is like calling the stock market a scam. Yeah, there's some coins that are true scams, but the same can be said for some stocks/markets. To me, there's two parts the crypto - the decentralised currency side, and the speculation side. Speculation side is full of scams, especially with every man and his dog thinking they can start their own coin. But the decentralised currency side is important, in my opinion.
In regards to some of the crypto craziness, I wouldn't be surprised if banks are involved. They have a vested interest in crypto not working, and they'd be stupid to ignore it.
Sure, duplicates can be made; it's just much more difficult to make true duplicates with physical art and incredibly easy to do so with digital.
An "original" piece of digital art is a meaningless concept. It's identical to every other copy.
Calling cryptocurrency a scam is like calling the stock market a scam
Stocks represent actual companies. They have assets, IP, people working for them and so on. Crypto currencies have none of these.
To me, there's two parts the crypto - the decentralised currency side, and the speculation side. Speculation side is full of scams
Speculation is the only reason anyone ever buys crypto. Either that or you've been scammed into buying crypto based on false promises. There are zero cryptocurrencies with real world usage or applications. Every idea involving blockchain could be done without it and it would be a far superior solution.
NFT and crypto tech (i.e. blockchain) are actually quite good (in my opinion)
It's just trying to find a problem they solve well.
A certificate of authenticity with zero proof it's authentic.
A lot of NFTs use stolen art. They are worthless.
You are basically paying a thief to own an illegal copy of art that is available much cheaper or free from the original artist.
Crypto will fail because no one uses it as a currency, they use it to make money on the real currencies of the world.
This.
It is more of a "store of value", a digital gold if you will. And that and real gold are virtually worthless commodities. They only have value because of its rarity, non-fungible, and most important of all because we believe/assign value to it.
However, I will say that real gold, it's price could plummet greatly if they find huge deposits (Uganda?) or start mining an asteroid which has thousands of tonnes of it.
Cryptocurrency/Blockchain doesn't have that issue. Well, unless the protocol gets updated and it is also fiat/limitless (eg Ethereum), or some company manages to make a new type of computer which can mine much more effectively than all current mining rigs, and they decide to keep a monopoly on that system (effectively taking the currency hostage, destabilizing its confidence, and tanking the value).
@Kangal: Not sure the volatility lends itself to a "store of value" or "digital gold". I recognise gold changes price too, and as you mention potentially could have large fluctuations, but it sounds like you think BTC is a better store of value because they can't find a new deposit? (wouldn't broaden the "can't find more" to crypto/blockchain given they're all done differently)
@sssx: Volatility doesn't take away from it being a "store of value". The most volatile asset you can have are Fine Art. Yet we see time and time again, with Multi-Millionaires going this route. Remember a store-of-value is not the same as an investment, they can be similar, but different.
Well, that's exactly what I'm saying.
If there's a maximum limit of 21 Million Btc, then it will have intrinsic value like gold, and unlike fiat/unlimited money. However, if Intel decides to take control of a large portion of Bitcoin (like they're trying to do), it will destabilise the value and crash it. Other known bad-actors the likes of the IMF or OPEC organisations. Then it could be Tether which is the largest holder of Bitcoin, and are on a trajectory to crash the entire market. And it's barely been a decade (we won't even mention NFTs). Whilst fiat currency has had less than a century, and it's proven itself to be a poor store-of-value.
In contrast, gold/bullion has had thousands of years in the field. Its "battle tested" as a store of value. Then again, there are heaps of asteroids out there with precious metals/natural resources out there, which could/would crash its financial value. But that's a problem we will face in 50-100 years, we haven't invested in the technology quiet yet to achieve such projects.
The problem with most discussions around NFTs is that they focus on the "ownership of digital art" or "proof of ownership of physical art".
What about the other potential use cases for the technology that may (may) be worthwhile and add value?
i'd hazard to say some cryptos will make 'amazing' investments esp if you are entering at the lows
I think that needs to be qualified.
I don't see many current investments opportunities in crypto that are based on fundamentals or utility.
Crypto's underlying mechanism for value appears to be speculation that one day it will have real utility and of course plain old FOMO.
While the masses are busy speculating and fomo-ing, the whales and traders are manipulating the market and getting rich(er).
Due to the lack of fundamentals it's almost impossible to predict when any crypto will go in any given time.
One thing is for sure though. Unless utility is found, all crypto will eventually return to zero value.
In other words, don't invest any more than you are prepared to lose.
still have a holding, and remain positive?
bro at this point what can i do but be positive and just HODL
you can make money from a pyramid scheme, you just have to be early
training the participants to tell each other HODL/DIAMOND HANDS/TO THE MOON helps keep it going as well
then you train them to BTFD to give yourself the exit liquidity you need
(yes, all their cool slang was specifically designed to allow them to be manipulated by those further up the chain. you don't design a cult based around a democracy or socialism)
20k -> pyramid scheme
10k -> bitconnecttt
50k -> ah well, no FOMO, remember the last dump?.
100k -> when buy?
Crypto will give the public financial freedom, liberate El Salvador and Africa from poverty, and help destroy the global elite.
Or do the complete opposite?
All of El Salvador's bitcoin purchases are underwater. I bet the poor people of El Salvador are delighted their president is spending the country's hard earned money on magic beans.
but what if they climb the bean stalk and find the golden egg laying goose?
Considering blockchain voting is based on who holds the coins its just giving more power to the elite….
Musk.
Don't choke on that lump in your throat.
Loll. I see what you did there.
It will also make Thor real and he will donate the magic hammer to everyone and anyone.
Crypto already liberated El Salvador, from a vast some of the currency that was backed by an established system.
If you ask me, the Aussie dollar is a pyramid scheme. The government can literally print more money whenever they want!
But at least they are government, not just some random terrorist with powerful gpu
Yes, it's the government running the pyramid scheme.
Yes, but the Aussie dollar is backed by the Aussie government. Just trust the government. Look at other countries like Sri Lanka and Turkey.
Classic they always bring out Zimbabwe and third world countries comparision, these countries collapsed for a reason, they don't have proper rules of laws and control and financial regulations aka like Crypto compared to developed countries such as Australia, Canada, UK,US, France etc…
Yeh but Scomo had a money printer he got on a prime day sale for $50, now hes just printing money for himself non stop. No wonder we're experiencing inflation. Thank god I have crypto to hedge inflation and store value. Lettuce costs me the same as last year
@JoeSchmogan: What store of value? its value dropped from $68000 to $20,000
it basically destroyed any crypto bro falsehood regarding inflation hedge and store of value
if it was an inflation hedge it should be up there in the 70,000 marks but it not
@MrMarket: Sarcastic store of value. I'm just being silly. That's the buzzword atm for bitcoin, because its 10+ years on and its still terrible for transactions so they need to find some other hype to sound sophisticated and get people on board.
@MrMarket: Those countries have laws as well as the best of them; the USA.
Remember what happened with the Bank Bailout in 2008. Or the DotCom crash, or the Exxon incident, or the move towards fiat, and the poor response during The Great Depression.
History shows that if you're greedy enough and rich enough, you can fail badly in the USA and have others pay for your mistakes/gambling. So it's a stretch to say these third-world countries are far worse when the thieves are having fun during the current recession.
What store of value?
Sure bitcoin is down, but to compare it to a spike ATH to its current price is foolish. Might want to learn a thing about moving averages.
if it was an inflation hedge
Bitcoin is NOT an inflation hedge. Anyone who says this is also foolish and wrong.
@askbargain: It isn't an inflation hedge. But Michael Saylor the biggest corporate holder of Bitcoin say's it is, along with alot of other crazy dumb shit. And alot of people follow that. Jack Dorsey and many other successful corporate assholes / billionaires probably say it too.
third world countries comparision
You might have heard of this currency called the Euro recently. I hear it went up by 20% or something.
don't have proper rules of laws and control and financial regulations
Because corruption isn't a thing.
Still stuck in the matrix I see? You took the wrong pill.
Yes, yes, maybe