Bitcoin and NFTs

[Levin]

[COLOR=#14171A][FONT=&quot]https://twitter.com/HardBTC/status/897040811883364352[/FONT][/COLOR]

Not my tweet but I've seen lots of these ads on the tube for cryptocurrency portfolios.

[WOM]

"All trading involves risk. Only risk capital you're prepared to lose."

Yeah...no fucking kidding.

[ursus arctos]

Jamie Dimon is no longer amused

Do we have traders who trade it? If we had a trader who traded Bitcoin I’d fire them in a second. For two reasons: It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.

I’m going to be really clear in this one. Forget the blockchain, that’s a technology… But… the currency isn’t going to work. You can’t have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think the people buying it are really smart. It’s worse than tulip bulbs, OK?

It won’t end well, and it won’t end well for two reasons. One is, someone’s going to get killed and the government’s going to come down. The second is, you just saw in China, governments like to control their money supply.

The first thing that a nation does when it forms itself — literally, the first thing — is form a currency. They have a bank and they have some kind of support, legal support, legal tender, sometimes support by gold or silver, that is a currency. However bad you think that is, this one’s worse.
So it will blow up, China’s just kicked them out, someone’s going to lose money somewhere else — don’t ask me to short it, it could be at 20,000 before this happens, but it’ll eventually blow up. It’s a fraud, OK?

And honestly I’m just shocked anyone can’t see it for what it is. The only good argument I’ve ever heard for it — and there is one good one — there may be a market for it, particularly if Bitcoin can keep itself to 21 million coins, if you were in Venezuela, or Ecuador, or North Korea… or if you were a drug dealer or a murderer, you are better off dealing in Bitcoin than US dollars. You are better off bypassing the system of your country, even if what I just said is true. So there may be a market for that, but it’ll be a limited market.

[WOM]

That's excellent. But they won't listen.

[caja-dglh]

This all from the man who claimed the CDX Whale trades were a tempest in a teapot. He does provide good copy.

[Sam]

I liked his line about how his daughter bought some and they went up a bit, 'and now she thinks she's a genius.'

[Ginger Yellow]

Of course Tim Draper is a fan of ICOs. He is, after all, the guy who was bigging up deregulation of crowdfunding while China's biggest crowdfunding site was being run as a ponzi scheme.

“Society is being transformed by this,” says Mr Draper. “We are going to be a much more affluent and fair world when the dust settles here. ICOs are filling in where governments have failed.”

[Ginger Yellow]

Nice summation of ICOs in the NYT:

If you’re having trouble picturing it: Imagine that a friend is building a casino and asks you to invest. In exchange, you get chips that can be used at the casino’s tables once it’s finished. Now imagine that the value of the chips isn’t fixed, and will instead fluctuate depending on the popularity of the casino, the number of other gamblers and the regulatory environment for casinos. Oh, and instead of a friend, imagine it’s a stranger on the internet who might be using a fake name, who might not actually know how to build a casino, and whom you probably can’t sue for fraud if he steals your money and uses it to buy a Porsche instead. That’s an I.C.O.

Not entirely unrelatedly, on the "moral disengagement" of tech CEOs. Probably a read-across to the theory that a disproportionate number of successful CEOs are psychopaths, but it doesn't mention that.

[Gangster Octopus]

GY, what did you think of this article in Saturday's Graun?

[Ginger Yellow]

Well, I didn't read it at the time, but it comes across as typical bitcoin boosterism, albeit not as fanatical as some of the things you see. This conclusion...

There are already more than a thousand cryptocurrencies, each designed for a different purpose. In a few years, just as we have different apps on our phones, so will we have different “wallets” with different currencies: one we might use for tipping (dogecoin), another for transactions we want kept private (monero, zcash) another for fast transactions and so on.

...is apparently supposed to be the bull case for crypto, but as is so often the case with blockchain bollocks, he never stops to say why this is a world worth moving toward. Dear god, it's hard enough managing a bitcoin wallet in a largely fiat world. Why on earth would you want to have dozens of discrete currencies and wallets to manage, with massive transactional friction? You know what's really good for tipping, and keeping things private, and is fast? Cash.

[Ginger Yellow]

Also, I'm giggling at the thought of the VaR exposure JPM would have it its hypothetical Bitcoin trading activity had a material impact on its profits. Trying to hedge that would make the London Whale's efforts look tame.

[WOM]

It's quite a shit article, full of sentiments like "People say Bitcoin is a fraud, but there's no arguing with its popularity."


This is my favorite:

Dimon says he’ll sack traders who trade it. Last time he denounced bitcoin (he has previous) was late 2015 – Bitcoin’s value is now about 1,000% higher. Who’s the stupid one? Would Dimon really sack traders who netted him a 1,000% increase in less than two years? I’m not sure JP Morgan’s shareholders would approve.

Umm...it's called a speculative investment, and could just as easily have gone the other way. And may still.

Bitcoin is indeed a very exciting idea. But it's not one that I'd put $10 of my own money into. See also Steorn.

[Ginger Yellow]

Ooh, that reminds me, I haven't checked in on them for a while. Turns out they're being liquidated. Among the assets put up for auction:

Full size Replica Suit of Armour incorporating candle shelf within the pierced metal Torso complete with Shield and Axe

Investors' money clearly put to good use. Also, supposedly the government owes them nearly EUR 300k in tax credits, though given that I doubt they ever turned a profit, I'm not sure how that would work.

[caja-dglh]

The whole idea that he should understand Bitcoin is a little strange to claim; he runs a 2 trillion dollar bank. There are a lot of other things that he should know about, like its business.

Would Jamie Dimon really sack traders who netted a 1,000% return in less than two years? The bank’s shareholders wouldn’t approve

Is an absolute bullshit claim, as it basically suggests they should be doing prop trading, which they (mostly) don't. And making markets in volatility like bitcoin has is... stirring.

[Lang Spoon]

"A bubble is a bull market you're not part of" was my favourite. At the height of turn of the century tech boom, I remember some squeaky disrupter claiming that the market was now so efficient now bubbles were eliminated, and the idea of profit itself might become meaningless, such was the predictability of the new paradigm. Hopefully not too long now till this Graun booster hack looks similarly sharp and prescient.

[Ginger Yellow]

Hahahahahaha.

"Bitcoin is a revolt against fiat money, and an all-meat diet is a revolt against fiat food."

Of course, being bitcoin nuts, they're completely wrong about ancestral diets too.

[Ginger Yellow]

Also, the first ICO prosecution in the US. This one is an actual alleged fraud, though, not just an unauthorised securities offering.

[Ginger Yellow]

Frankly it could be anything. Most of the stuff blockchain is being used for (or rather is being claimed to be used for) has fuck all to do with distributed ledger technology, certainly trustless DLT. It could be basically any database project. Or any software project. Or, it seems, any product sales project.

[Ginger Yellow]

This was supposed to be one of the better ICOs

[Ginger Yellow]

Spotted on the tube: an ad for bitcoin contracts for difference.

[ursus arctos]

That's even better than the "Uber for Helicopters" advert that I saw on the New Haven line.

[Ginger Yellow]

Ha. What a gap in the market. All those underutilised helicopters and qualified helicopter pilots, going to waste.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I don't understand a single bit of this thread, yet find it vastly interesting. What's a good place to start finding out about blockchain, etc.?

[ursus arctos]

This from MIT is good.

This may be a bit more accessible to those (unlike GY and me) who haven't been following this for years.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Cheers, ursus.