Bittrex to Cease Operations in the US

98 points
1/20/1970
a year ago
by cfcfcf

Comments


monero-xmr

Dexes destroyed the long-tail crypto exchange. Consolidation and shut downs are coming. Regulation is certainly an issue but the truth is Bittrex doesn’t really need to exist anymore. Cross-chain swaps are possible with wrapped assets, atomic swaps, and operations like FixedFloat. End of an era but the market has spoken. Whatever benefits a centralized exchange provides are better with deeper liquidity and larger exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.

I also believe Gemini is on its last legs. The SEC combined with anemic volumes, GUSD went nowhere, Nifty Gateway market collapsed, Gemini Earn is in bankruptcy. Winklevoss will just buy and hold BTC from now on.

a year ago

tsimionescu

Too bad DEXs can't actually get money into the ecosystem, they're only about swapping one funny token for another.

a year ago

monero-xmr

Buy USDC on Coinbase, withdraw to personal wallet, now you can use on dex. Or that’s what I do. I pay all my taxes and I pay a lot of them.

a year ago

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

This works but it's also specifically not using the dex (decentralized exchange, for anyone confused) to exchange fiat / crypto in either direction. Coinbase is doing that.

a year ago

saurik

But that relegates the centralized exchange into the position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp", and potentially literally nothing more than a trivial wrapper around Circle (in the case of Coinbase and USDC), which effectively undermines their business model of operating the whole exchange apparatus. (Hell: does Coinbase even make any money at all if you deposit USD and withdraw USDC? I think they don't have deposit fees in general, do the USD<>USDC 1:1, and then offer free withdrawals on USDC due to some fancy new "gasless" withdrawal mechanism Circle came up with.)

Regardless, the point being made in the comment upthread wasn't "you will never need a centralized entity ever again": that was a total strawman. It wasn't even that you wouldn't want any centralized exchanges! It was merely that the "long tail" of random exchanges who specialize in listing more random tokens is effectively dead as who would bother with all that trouble to navigate all the red tape--particularly to operate in the United States--to support and vet these tokens when every token ever can be made available on a decentralized exchange. You might thereby still want a handful of the largest exchanges... but do you really need Bittrex enough for them to make enough money to put much effort into existing?

a year ago

quanticle

    But that relegates the centralized exchange into the position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp"
That's actually a pretty profitable business. "If you want to interact in any way with crypto, you either have to go through Coinbase or some shady black market crypto dealer," is actually great news for Coinbase.
a year ago

saurik

I mean, you cut off the rest of that paragraph ;P. Sure: it sounds like maybe a reasonable opportunity for Circle, but Coinbase would effectively be adding no value anymore and would have to attempt to charge (a lot, if they wanted to have any hope of making anywhere near as much money as their current business model) for something that not only are they currently doing for free but which they aren't really doing in the first place (as they are just a thin wrapper around Circle). The only reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with retail and they don't really have to because Coinbase was willing to integrate it for free... but like, Paxos (which is also regulated) does deal with individual users, so there is no reason Circle can't in a world where Coinbase is otherwise irrelevant. (The reality, though, is that there is still benefit for traders to having centralized exchanges due to their limit order book model, so I wouldn't discount Coinbase just yet, anyway ;P.)

a year ago

quanticle

    The only reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with retail
That's actually a really good reason! An analogous situation is with e.g. Robinhood and Citadel. In one sense Robinhood is "just" a retail onramp. All their trades go through Citadel. So in theory Citadel could, at any moment, just cut off Robinhood by allowing retail investors to trade directly with them.

But I'm willing to bet that they won't, because dealing with retail investors is a hassle. You have to have customer service. You have to deal with additional regulation. You have to deal with random social media firestorms. It's a mess. I don't blame Citadel for leaving it to Robinhood to deal with these issues and I wouldn't blame Circle for leaving it to Coinbase to deal with the retail issues surrounding crypto.

a year ago

TacticalCoder

> does Coinbase even make any money at all if you deposit USD and withdraw USDC?

They have 75% of $33 billions (with a 'b') of the USDC circulating as short-term US treasuries (with every single individual ID of the short-term treasuries publicly posted).

So someone is basically printing free money by having about $25 bn in short term US treasuries yielding atm something insane like 4% yearly.

I don't know who's pocketing that money but that's about $1 billion, yearly, in yields from the short term US treasuries.

If somehow Coinbase (or "Centre" but Centre is Circle + Coinbase) is pocketing that money, they probably could allow 0% fees trading everywhere and still be one of the most profitable HN unicorn out there.

Does Coinbase give APY on people keeping USDC at Coinbase? I have no idea. Does Coinbase give APY on people withdrawing USDC to private wallets? I think they don't. I'm nearly sure they don't.

What happens to that money?

I've never seen anything posted on the subject.

a year ago

saurik

Coinbase does provide interest on balances held in USDC. But no, if you withdraw it to your own wallet that does not happen.

FWIW, I specifically chose to say "Coinbase" as my mental model here is that Coinbase is an exchange and Circle issues the stablecoin and maybe Coinbase has a deal to get interest from Circle for all the USDC held by Coinbase and maybe even is given some kind of kickback for deposits and withdrawals, but that doesn't really mean much for the business model of running an exchange: Circle directly provides fiat on-ramp services to companies and could to individuals as well (given that their competitor Paxos supports both kinds of user).

FWIW, my defense of Coinbase in specific is that they are a very large exchange that has achieved enough of a network effect that in a world where only one exchange is used by people in the United States, it probably will be Coinbase. The only other competitors right now are Kraken--which I love but have to admit is quite a bit smaller--and... Binance.US... which I think is much more likely to perish under US regulatory crackdown.

But like, Bittrex wouldn't have been on my list yesterday and now can't be on my list as they decided to shut down in the United States, and I think the argument monero-mxr made--that this is because decentralized exchanges now exist and "long tail" centralized exchanges are somewhat pointless--makes a lot of sense.

But then people did the usual thing of kind of trying to claim decentralized exchanges were meaningless as you still are going to likely want at least one company to deal with USD directly... and that went too far, as the decentralized exchange can still dominate the landscape even if you still need this trivial dumb money pipe on the other side, the same way my ISP doesn't make anywhere need as much money as AOL was hoping to because it got commoditized by the world wide web.

a year ago

monero-xmr

Yes but the benefits of dexes, specifically the ability to earn fees by being a liquidity provider (LP) in an automatic market maker pool (AMM) are very useful. You can maintain your exposure to assets and not need to maintain a trading bot with all of its risks and still earn fees.

a year ago

latchkey

This is what my friend was doing, until CB just locked his account after making two $10k USDC purchases. He was fully KYC'd. No warning or reason given, just "convert back to USD and withdraw your money please, that's our final answer".

a year ago

[deleted]
a year ago

detrites

*in the US

Bittrex Global continues, along with the other 600+ centralised exchanges [0] unfortunately excluded in American-centric reality.

[0] https://blockspot.io/exchange/

a year ago

WFHRenaissance

I guess the issue I foresee is that many perp DEXes aren't available in the USA. Gemini is opening a perp CEX soon I think. May be the last bastion for smaller CEXes: having enough regulatory favorability/connections to copy DeFi until the music stops.

a year ago

saurik

A DEX wouldn't fundamentally exist in any specific regulatory environment... how would one somehow not be available in the US?

a year ago

quanticle

It would be unavailable in the sense that US entities would be legally prohibited from transacting with it, in the same way that US entities are prohibited from transacting with Binance (and, to the extent that they're flouting this prohibition, they're getting in trouble for it).

a year ago

orangepurple

Coinbase and Binance are firmly under the microscope of the US Department of Justice (DOJ)

a year ago

babyshake

Would you expect they will rug pull GUSD? I assume this, like with USDC, would be seriously illegal, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they had some ToS provisions somewhere waiving their obligation to redeem GUSD for USD.

a year ago

yieldcrv

End of a crappy era, in the US

The extortion racket bucket shops cant go fast enough!

Long live DEX’s, liquidity pool technology has been an incredible boon to the crypto space, shifting dynamics away from exchanges directly to the project issuers and community.

a year ago

gear54rus

yeah except now you will exchange your fiat into crypto with some shady guy instead of a somewhat-trustable big entity with reputation.

a year ago

yieldcrv

there are, and will be, other fiat onramps

Even Paypal and Cashapp are trusted crypto exchanges now. The crypto you receive there can be withdrawn and access the entire crypto economy.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

The code is open source, your only risks are bugs, exploits and the government.

a year ago

pawelduda

Bugs, exploits, and "only problems" in the same sentence are what makes it funny, especially when your money is on the line and the most popular smart contract lang is JavaScript for blockchain edition

I mean it certainly does the job but I'd die from stress if I would risk releasing a bug that could wipe hundreds of millions of users' money. I respect people who are good enough at Solidity to be reasonably confident.

a year ago

Atlas22

By shady guy, the commenter is likey referring to peer-to-peer marketplace swapping of fiat and crypto, not DEXes. DEXes cannot offer fiat currencies since it is inherently centralized. AFAIK, the only options to exchange fiat are centralized exchanges and peer-to-peer marketplaces, both of which rely on extensive trust in a very small number of people, and are not open-source or publicly-auditable.

a year ago

skee8383

Without any fiat on-ramp crypto is worthless. its value is always measured by how much fiat it can be sold for. without that it has no value. what are you gonna do, go mail a stranger cash for coins? send him gold bars for coins? lol. this crap is OVER. please wake up! or dont, i don't really care..

a year ago

gear54rus

Stop raging, your argument is invalid simply because I can exchange crypto for goods and services and you don't even see this simple problem

a year ago

alphanullmeric

Glad we agree the IRS shouldn’t be taxing something that has no value.

a year ago

LeoPanthera

How confusing! I thought the headline referred to the ultra-bitter chemical that stops kids eating things they shouldn't. But that "bitrex" just has one T.

Fun fact, Nintendo Switch cartridges are coated in it.

a year ago

ziml77

I thought that's what it was too! I expected to be reading about how they were forced to shut down because the chemical was super toxic after extended exposure or something like that.

a year ago

jasonjayr

Sure way to get my older kids to lick the cartridges is to tell them about that :)

a year ago

BLKNSLVR

Yeah, I don't have a Switch myself but now I'm going to need to find a friend's and work out how to slip in a sneaky cartridge lick just to have this experience.

a year ago

smithcoin

@dang can this title have “in the United States” appended to it? They’re still continuing worldwide operations.

a year ago

bdcravens

The original title is "Important Message For Bittrex U.S. Customers"

a year ago

sosuke

Yes please. I wasn't surprised they were closing the US access but I was absolutely floored to think they were closing everything.

a year ago

throwaway4837

I started using Bittrex in 2017 because they had support for altcoins I wanted to gamble with. Sadly, over the years they abruptly dropped support for coins with barely any notice, and it was a pain to keep up with them. While I'm sad to see them go, I'm sort of looking forward to being forced to move my coins out of their exchange. Unfortunately none of the other exchanges I use have support for some of the altcoins I had on Bittrex, so I'm either going to have to dump those into BTC/DOGE/etc. or spin up my own wallet.

I guess this is good for Bitcoin in the absolute shortest term... I expect Bitcoin/maincoin dominance will go up if Bittrex has any reasonable volume.

a year ago

barnabee

Not a Bittrex user but this makes me genuinely glad not to live in the US.

a year ago

sdfghswe

Imagine being happy for not leaving on the wealthiest nation on earth because a specific magic beans trading venue is shutting down.

It's like the maga incels who work at walmart but complain taxes are too high.

a year ago

hungryforcodes

This is a stupid title though. It's just Bittrex US. I can't think of a worse country to do crypto business in so it should come as no surprise. Bittrex Global seems perfectly fine.

a year ago

rchaud

What are the good countries? In crypto, most business seems to come down to converting an unstable fiat currency into a stable fiat one. DeFi is just the middleman.

a year ago

quanticle

The problem is that the countries that are good for crypto, e.g. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Lebanon, etc, aren't really all that good for anything else.

a year ago

hungryforcodes

That's not true. Crypto is fine in most of Asia. Most of these countries are very respectable.

a year ago

bdcravens

Yes, the original title is "Important Message For Bittrex U.S. Customers"

a year ago

swader999

Crypto getting killed to lock us into cbdc. Banks that don't play will be "rescued". Only big exchanges left that will be heavily locked down.

a year ago

troymc

I am in Canada and when I went to their website I found that it's not available for me either. I wonder what they do.

a year ago

teekert

I have always liked Bittrex. Have been a user for many years now. Indeed they’ve never been hacked and their support is pretty good. Sad to see this happen.

Have to say that as an EU based user I feel a bit uneasy about this though. Perhaps it’s time for some cold wallets or, as I’m reading here, a dex.

a year ago

[deleted]
a year ago

nubinetwork

> The page you are trying to access isn’t available to you in the locale you are accessing from.

Well then.

a year ago

colesantiago

Good.

Crypto has no use case at all and the exchanges harboring these speculative tokens needs to be destroyed.

a year ago

wslh

Ignoring that I don't agree with you, don't you think the current financial system is a complete mess? From the technical side to the trust side.

a year ago

jasmer

How is the current system 'a mess'?

It powers the whole world. Almost every kind of transaction you can think of.

If people would follow the regs most things would work.

I think the biggest issue is transactional drag aka something needs to replace VISA, and should be nicer consumer protections for personal accounts but for the most part it works.

Nothing Crypto has offered is better, not even close.

I suggest someday that may happen, but it will 'feel' much more like traditional bakning when it happens.

There is a reason why banking is the most 'buttoned down, small-c conservative' industry because oversight, competency etc. all of that matters. It's that world.

... notwithstanding some other issues that would exist with crypto as well, such as mortgage lending etc..

a year ago

humanizersequel

>How is the current system 'a mess'? >It powers the whole world.

This is a sentence that could be said at any point in history, about any dominant "system", financial or otherwise.

How could slavery be a 'a mess'? It powers the whole world. How could feudalism be 'a mess'? It powers the whole world. How could nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes be 'a mess'? It powers the whole world.

a year ago

short_sells_poo

While the crypto industry has shown itself to be a pillar of ethics, engineering and usability?

a year ago

joemazerino

Yes?

a year ago

colesantiago

We should not be replacing a system with a completely destructive and even worse one which is crypto.

Government backed money is the worst form of money, except all the others have been tried including crypto.

a year ago

BLKNSLVR

On the timescale of money, crypto has not existed long enough to say it's been "tried" (or at least not long enough to say it's not worth continuing the experiment / continuing to try).

What it has done, which seems to exist outside the blinkered view, is that for a number of years now, bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies have been very successful at being transferable between two parties no matter their geographical location and without a third party acting as intermediary or authority.

For those who participate, this is an exchange of value. For those who don't participate it should be at least seen as a half decent proof of concept of something that could be used as an exchange of value (money).

a year ago

colesantiago

> proof of concept

Yet this 'proof of concept' is too slow to be used in the real world after 15+ years with little to nobody using it at all.

UPI has been available for 6 years with almost 700 million users and is expanding their network globally.

So even by trying to send money, there is no need for crypto at all for this case as this has already been improved and done by the current system.

You might as well use Wise, UPI and other regulated money transfer services that exist in current system.

I look forward to FedNow removing even more need for crypto to exist.

a year ago

beefield

No. Especially compared to known alternatives, very much including crypto.

Or then we have a very different definition of "complete mess". For the record, I have no reason to doubt the value of my savings account fluctuates wildly and the savings account is guaranteed by government for my practical purposes. I can make all the payments I need to make free/with very modest fee. In most cases, for practical purposes, the payments are immediate. If I happen to need, I can borrow money against my non-money non liquid assets. I can't describe this situation as "a complete mess". To my understanding crypto offers practically none of these benefits in any kind of robust way. This from european perspective.

a year ago

Atlas22

Everything you mentioned and implied here is the case for every fiat currency also. Using Japanese Yen to buy food at a US grocery store is unlikely to be practical. Just as trying to use USD in Japan is impractical. The only substantial difference is that crypto's practical jurisdiction is primarily the internet, with some adoption in the "real-world" (shops/services that choose to accept crypto). This makes crypto incredibly practical for online transactions but only practical for real-world applications where it has been adopted. Most crypto payments can be done for cheap, quickly (seconds to minutes), in a practically trust-less environment (not the case for fiat), and are irrevocable (which is a benefit for many). You can borrow crypto with crypto lenders against just about anything legally enforceable, including your house or car (although willing crypto lenders are becoming scarcer and more expensive with the increasingly inconsistent regulatory behavior of the US Government). A major advantage cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum have, is that they provide practically trust-less contracts between entities, evaluated by code rather than a possibly incompetent or compromised judge as you might get in the real-world.

Just FYI, payments in the traditional banking systems are very much not immediate, they just appear that way from your perspective. The perspective usually breaks down if you try to move a large amount of currency around, you will get anything from straight up denials, many month waiting periods, money getting "lost" in processing for months, and large surprise fees. The "immediate" transaction illusion you see are just agreements between major financial entities to make transactions appear fast but are limited volume to reduce banks risk. For example, common credit card transactions, no matter how small, are not actually cleared for over 150 days. Based on my experience European banks are no different although I haven't tried it as often as I have in the US.

a year ago

beefield

> Japanese Yen to buy food at a US grocery store is unlikely to be practical.

Hmmm. There is this thing within the current awful mess of a finacial system called credit card which allows me to pay very practically all over the world. Funny enough, though, that cryptofolk were at some point very vocally telling that you can "use" crypto by using a crypto credit card.

> Just FYI, payments in the traditional banking systems are very much not immediate, they just appear that way from your perspective

And that is why I was careful to formulate "In most cases, for practical purposes"

a year ago

repomies69

They are only ceasing to operate in US, they will continue to serve rest of the world (95.75% of world population).

a year ago

Mizoguchi

The US has 20% of the global crypto market and it's responsible for 40% of all transactions. That's pretty significant.

a year ago

colesantiago

Usually (and in almost all cases) the world follows the US so will be not surprised when governments will completely ban crypto into the dark web.

a year ago

yashg

When it comes to crypto regulations though, US is lagging behind. Crypto is already taxed as gambling in India and is pretty much out of popular discourse. Just one season of crypto platforms advertising on India's biggest sporting league (IPL) made the regulators sit up and take notice of the shady practices and put an end to it. I believe crypto is very much dead in China as well.

a year ago

yieldcrv

financial services, for speculation, is the biggest industry on the planet

saying “no use case” and “speculative” in the same sentence is always hilarious, yeah, service the speculators

its financial services and entertainment, the latter of which is also a big sector and valuable to humans

a year ago

colesantiago

I'm not sure what use case is a speculative pyramid scheme like crypto, where there is no intrinsic value at all.

It is a morally repugnant gambling speculative vice which destroys lives and is even worse than fiat.

Not to mention Bitcoin and the like burning the planet trying to solve useless puzzles.

a year ago

super256

> I'm not sure what use case is a speculative pyramid scheme like crypto, where there is no intrinsic value at all.

Modern currencies like USD, EUR, JPY etc. don't have intrinsic value either.

> It is a morally repugnant gambling speculative vice which destroys lives and is even worse than fiat.

We should ban speculative buying of comics, gaming skins, Pokémon cards and, of course, gambling in casinos worldwide too. Also, the gambling on Robinhood is morally repugnant too, as grown up adults can't be trusted to manage their money.

> Not to mention Bitcoin and the like burning the planet trying to solve useless puzzles.

The value in solving the puzzles is securing the network (no other network is as secure as Bitcoin, see [1]). Gold mining uses the same energy amount as BTC. [2] Only 8% of Gold of the gold dug up is used for productive means by the industry. The rest is bought by speculators, jewelries and central banks because it's shiny. [3]

[1] https://howmanyconfs.com/

[2] https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in...

a year ago

didibus

> Modern currencies like USD, EUR, JPY etc. don't have intrinsic value either.

Arguably, they are like ownership into the country's GDP and military influence no?

a year ago

super256

> Arguably, they are like ownership into the country's GDP and military influence no?

Well, yes, but that doesn't give you intrinsic value. If you are long a currency, you make a bet that other people have confidence in the government's ability to enforce the currency and keep economic output high enough to keep the value stable.

However, if the government collapses, the money becomes completely worthless. There is no commodity, product, or service backing it up.

a year ago

Atlas22

Education is speculative gambling that teaching the student will amount to them increasing productivity enough to be worth the resources (time, money, supplies) spent educating them. Driving is speculative gambling that reaching your destination faster will be more profitable than the cost of the vehicle, wear and tear, gas/electricity, cost associated with risk of car crash. Eating is speculative gambling that the one eating will provide more value in some way than the value of the food and water they consume.

a year ago

colesantiago

this laughable line of argument isn't even worth a debate, we both know that education, driving and eating aren't pyramid/ponzi schemes.

a year ago

Atlas22

Yeah, your right, there is no point in arguing with someone who just labels everything as laughable but cant back up anything they say.

a year ago

colesantiago

You only have to look here to see why $12 billion worth of hard earned cash has been wasted to crypto on scams, hacks, rugpulls and just straight up fraud.

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

> Education is speculative gambling... Driving is speculative gambling...Eating is speculative gambling...

I also hope and assume you have reputable evidence of all three of these in the next hour or two (!)

a year ago

yieldcrv

speculation is a use case, you’re grasping for a distinction that’s not found, and if you find it you’ll simultaneously be talking about 99% of all transactional activity in the world economy.

yes, gambling is a big industry too, why do you keep naming use cases that have validation of their value?

a year ago

colesantiago

What can you do with speculation other than causing people to lose their life savings?

What good is there in a so called currency based on fictitious tokens created out of thin air and backed by completely nothing and adding nothing useful to society?

Even Nvidia agrees:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/26/cryptocur...

At least gambling is regulated where as crypto is a unregulated decentralised wild west where there is no protections whatsoever.

Where is the use case in people losing money in a pyramid scheme using crypto tokens?

a year ago

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF

I'm not convinced you know what you're trying to ask. What do you mean by "use case" other than the reasons for which people want something? The person you're responding to said that people want it so they can speculate and gamble with it. You can dislike these vices all you want but you're seeming to speak to some objectivity which you haven't done much to explain.

a year ago

colesantiago

We both know the whole point of the crypto use case is to become an alternative or a replacement to fiat, to which it isn't and cannot be.

Speculation is not a legitimate use case for something that aims to become a currency. If I am trying to buy a loaf of bread with a crypto token and the price plummets and fluctuates wildly for no reason that is backed by nothing, it is not useful at all.

You can try and justify crypto all you want, However and objectively speaking, there are far too many pyramid schemes, far too many ponzi schemes, scams, rugpulls and ransomware crypto payments, unregistered ICOs that crypto is harbouring to even take seriously after 15 years of its existence.

I'm glad the crackdown is happening.

a year ago

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ

Are you older than 15?

a year ago

colesantiago

Are you struggling to make a point here?

You could just say a relevant point rather than failing to make a point like crypto.

a year ago

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ

It was a genuine question, and from your response I'm guessing the answer is "no". If you're wondering what provoked the question, it was the crying about "unregistered" ICOs - at that point it was clear that you're either a child or an adult with a child-like need for external authority to make you feel safe.

Pro-tip going forward in life: try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

a year ago

colesantiago

It's an irrelevant question and doesn't change my point at all.

In fact crypto bros like yourself are the ones asking for regulatory clarity, to which it is you that is in need of an external authority to save you from yourselves.

Because crypto and it's industry clearly cannot save itself, that's why it needs regulation. With or without regulation crypto will collapse anyway.

a year ago

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ

I didn't choose 15 at random.

It's unclear why you think putting words in my mouth is going to achieve anything. ICOs don't need any special regulations, existing contract law is fine.

Finally, I'm not sure why you've written "regulatory clarity" there. Of course we'd like the authorities to act in a predicable way, but that's an orthagonal issue to how restrictive those regulations should be. It feels like you're just throwing out phrases you don't quite understand.

a year ago

colesantiago

> I didn't choose 15 at random.

So? Whether or not you chose 15 at random, it still does not change my point.

I still don't see the point you're trying to make here, crypto is completely unregulated and doesn't provide any benefit to society at all.

At best it needs to be pushed off shore, banned completely or both.

It is great to see this crypto exchange ceasing operations and getting the message that they are not welcome in the US, hopefully other countries will do the same and show crypto the door.

a year ago

gear54rus

[flagged]

a year ago

teekert

I like the podcasting 2.0 ecosystem. With boosting and satoshi streaming. Cool usecases of the btc lightning network if you ask me.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

Crypto does a pretty great job of keeping your hands off of other people’s money, is that a problem?

a year ago

colesantiago

But it does an even better job of losing your money, a problem for millions of people.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

Which is completely irrelevant because you’re free to use whatever currency you want, crypto or not. This discussion is about whether or not you have the right to make it illegal for me to do the same.

a year ago

colesantiago

> Which is completely irrelevant because you’re free to use whatever currency you want, crypto or not.

Free to use any regulated currency. Crypto is completely unregulated and too volatile to be used as a currency. It will be made illegal very quickly in a few years time, we already have India and China clamping down so you won't have to wait that long.

Inevitably, we will see when the governments of the world band together to push crypto into the dark web and you'll never be able to cash out your crypto tokens into the real world through exchanges.

Once again, another easy way to lose your money.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

Oh no, how will you ever survive without regulating other people’s money. Hardest part about business is minding your own, however difficult it may be for people like you to keep your hands out of other people’s wallets.

a year ago

colesantiago

> Hardest part about business is minding your own, however difficult it may be for people like you to keep your hands out of other people’s wallets.

Except if you are in the crypto exchange business and you need to unload your fake tokens for real cash, just like how FTX and other failed exchanges took everyone's money from their wallets when they failed.

When will you stop running from exchange to exchange to try cash out your tokens because of a bank run?

a year ago

alphanullmeric

If it’s investor protections it should be opt in. If it’s not opt in, stop pretending it’s investor protections. Your economic policies depend on seizing other people’s money and I’m sure that has nothing to do with this at all.

Should it also be illegal to trade my fake tokens for other fake tokens other via decentralized exchanges?

a year ago

colesantiago

> stop pretending it’s investor protections.

There is no investor protections in crypto at all, especially if is all retail getting scammed all the time.

> Should it also be illegal to trade my fake tokens for other fake tokens other via decentralized exchanges?

Once it is deemed an unregistered security then yes, it should be illegal and it will be illegal.

There is no way around it once crypto gets pushed down into the dark web where you can only cash out with illegal drugs instead of fiat.

This is where crypto is heading.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

I’m glad we agree that the policies you are defending are state sponsored looting and not supposed investor protections. The code for all decentralized exchanges is open source. You aren’t being scammed by anyone, you volunteered to participate in the market. You aren’t a victim for losing a trade you chose to participate in.

a year ago

colesantiago

> I’m glad we agree that the policies you are defending are state sponsored looting..

Seems to me that FTX's spectacular collapse was a bigger case of looting than what your getting confused with, caused by their own mess rather than the state.

> ...and not supposed investor protections

I fail to see where was investor protections were when FTX and other exchanges collapsed.

> The code for all decentralized exchanges is open source.

Irrelevant.

> You aren’t being scammed by anyone, you volunteered to participate in the market. You aren’t a victim for losing a trade you chose to participate in.

When family members, cousins, in-laws and friends are getting themselves involved with crypto and asking everyone around to bail them out or join, it is a major problem for everyone who knows them.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

You can go after FTX, what do I have to do with that? Looting my wallet in the name of FTX smells strongly of the redistribution of consequences. Authoritarians like yourself sure do love to punish innocent people for the actions of the guilty.

I’m not in favour of bailouts to anybody, nor taxes that fund those bailouts. Take nobody’s money from them and give nobody’s money to me. Like I said, the code is all open source, you can verify any suspicions you have yourself. There is no scam, you’re just grasping for reasons to regulate other people’s money.

a year ago

colesantiago

> You can go after FTX, what do I have to do with that?

Liquidity for cashing out will begin to dry up and more on other exchanges such as Binance will do the same thing.

Decentralised Exchanges (with absolutely no investor protections, unregulated and are highly prone to rug pulls) will be ordered to shut down, also forcing a drain on liquidity.

Once crypto crashes the market will 'loot' your wallet by deeming your crypto worthless and you will forever try to cash out your worthless coins.

> There is no scam, you’re just grasping for reasons to regulate other people’s money.

It is a scam, just ask the people who lost money with FTX.

Or the many people who have been rug pulled here:

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

a year ago

alphanullmeric

That’s cool, I don’t really care though. Leave my money alone, I’ll take that risk if I want to.

Calling it a scam doesn’t make it a scam. Again, the source is available online, free for you to see. That is the contract you agree to when you choose to participate in crypto. You cannot consent to being scammed, that goes against the very definition of being scammed. Making it illegal for consenting individuals to do what they want is typical authoritarian trash behaviour. Perhaps you’d be happier in Cuba where you can freely control other people’s money to your liking.

a year ago

colesantiago

> Calling it a scam doesn’t make it a scam...You cannot consent to being scammed, that goes against the very definition of being scammed. Making it illegal for consenting individuals to do what they want is typical authoritarian trash behaviour.

Who consented their crypto funds to be lost to rug pulls, ransomware, thefts, hacks, pump and dumps, commingling of funds, and their funds being used for leveraged trading?

So $12+ Billon lost in crypto is not a scam? and the users agreed and consented to all of this?

I'm assuming then that you know some information that suggests that the $12 Billion lost is somehow insured?

> Again, the source is available online, free for you to see.

This doesn't mean anything.

All the people who completely lost their money in FTX, LUNA, BlockFi, etc. do not care about source code. This makes no sense at all. If I was rug pulled in a scam the last thing anyone would care about is the source code.

> That’s cool, I don’t really care though. Leave my money alone,

You will care once liquidity goes dry and once the crypto crackdown ramps up, then all these tokens plus Bitcoin go to zero.

I shouldn't see you moving money or cashing out your crypto because another exchange has fallen down due to regulations or insolvency and the price of these tokens crash.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

Again, it’s simple. You can’t get scammed by an open source project. It’s akin to running a script off of github that gives you a dollar for every two you give it, and then playing victim when lose money. You had the choice to read through the code, you consented to the operation. The results of something you did to yourself are completely irrelevant, regardless of whether or not it worked in your favour.

If you actually get scammed by a proprietary and centralized entity like FTX, then go after FTX and not me. Stop defending the redistribution of consequences, my money is not your basic human right.

a year ago

colesantiago

Please, we both know that users are not here for the code nor can or have the time to read through it, you shouldn't be kidding yourself about this fact and we know that you don't read the code of all the crypto smart contracts you interact with.

This is why what your saying about 'open source' and 'reed the code' is irrelevant.

> You can’t get scammed by an open source project...If you actually get scammed by a proprietary and centralized entity like FTX, then go after FTX and not me.

Wormhole got exploited for $320M even though it was an open source DeFi project, this hack is the 2nd biggest of all time for a DeFi project.

PolyNetwork got exploited for $620M even though it was an open source DeFi project, the biggest of all time.

Where were those reading the code there to stop it?

So when your wallet gets drained are you going to 'reed the code' to reassure yourself that you're not going to get your money back?

> ...then go after FTX and not me. Stop defending the redistribution of consequences, my money is not your basic human right.

It's already happening that FTX is being brought to the law, privacy coins will follow and will be outlawed as they already are from governments around the world.

The law is doing all the work and the precedent for crypto will be set from there.

You can have a tantrum all you want. But you wanted regulation and regulatory clarity, it's coming and it will affect the crypto prices negatively and will tread on your wallet.

a year ago

alphanullmeric

So you chose to run code you couldn’t read? On you again. Doesn’t make it any less voluntary.

As far as I’m concerned, all those exploits were 100% fair game. Again, it’s not a centralized exchange. There is no CEO making promises to you, there are no guarantees. The code you chose to interact with behaved exactly as it was written. That’s what makes crypto unique, there are no “Bitcoin developers”, they don’t have any more power over bitcoin than anyone else. Their changes are only merged in because holders voted those changes in. That’s the very thing that makes it not a security.

Don’t like that? Make better choices next time, or don’t use cryptocurrencies. As I said, that was always an option.

a year ago

colesantiago

I don't use crypto or lose my money in crypto at all, you do.

So I'm assuming you know every function and know the control flow of any crypto project or smart contract that your interacting with in detail and reviewing each PR. Unless you use a vulnerability scanner like everybody else and you don't bother reading the code.

The Ronin Network (which is open source) was hacked for $620M even though the code was 'allegedly' solid and those playing Axie Infinity were indirectly affected and lost their money as a result. Where does 'reed the code' fit here?

In the eyes of the law 'reed the code' is a moot point. You can't lose 'money' in the billions and expect no regulation or nothing to happen.

a year ago