Cryptocurrencies

[yossarian22c]

BTC is crashing hard - 25,511 as of a short while ago. Down about 4500, since Friday.

The super bowl commercials were the beginning of the end. Last bit of the public to buy in. No more money coming in and it’s going to tank.

[cherrypoptart]

Even the "I'm George, we're all George" guy is finally calling it.

I wouldn't link to him if he was still filled with his bull around the corner hopium but since it seems like he's finally capitulating, in his way, I feel it's safe. It feels a lot worse to recommend that someone buy something like crypto and then have it crash and you lost them a lot of their money than it does to warn them about the dangers and maybe dissuade them from buying because even if it does eventually go back up it doesn't feel like you lost them any money that way, just maybe kept them from gambling even if they might have gotten lucky and won. And if they buy anyway against all the warnings hopefully at least they don't buy with leverage so they can hold long term and don't get liquidated in a squeeze.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsvfII4pzOw

"CELSIUS NETWORK STOPS ALL WITHDRAWS...BANK RUN HAPPENING?"

Celsius network may have had a hand in the Terra Luna collapse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4sS4itAf-k

"BITCOIN HOLDERS...IS IT TIME TO CASH OUT?"

----------------------------------------------------------------

His answer was no, he's not cashing out and he'll just continue to dca into it and hold long term but even the fact that he's asking the question is something for him. It means things the situation looks extremely painful.

Yup, dire indeed. Stocks are also falling terribly so there goes the idea that crypto would be some kind of safe haven or hedge against inflation and the stock market. Everyone is running for the hills.

Some might say that now is the time to buy. Not me though. I'm as scared as the rest of them of trying to catch a falling knife or a dead bouncing cat. On the other hand, I would never short either as that's another recipe for disaster. There may eventually come a time to buy back in though.

On the other hand, if people are hodling you don't want to be the guy who convinces them to sell because sure enough it seems like that point will be the low and right after that it bounces. I guess the take away is it's okay to talk about the markets but never give investment advice.


But one bit of investment advice I heard is that a successful investor always buys too late and sells too early, basically don't expect to hit the highs or lows and if you walk away with more than what you started you're doing well.

[Fenring]

cherry, do you still think the collapse of the other crypto we were discussing earlier should be blamed in certain individuals, or is it more apparent now that anytime you have something with no connection to real world values the price is simply arbitrary? The fact that crypto was disconnent from real resources was supposed to be a perk, but in my view that perk was a flaw rather than a good feature. But now even that IMO disagreeable feature is proven to be bunk, since real world monetary policy is causing crypto to crack. It's almost as if people were being blatantly dishonest about crypto being disconnected from the markets and from typical speculator gambling mentality.

[cherrypoptart]

It's a question of trust really, the same as with fiat currencies.

Right now, the trust is gone, more so for crypto than for fiat but to some significant extent with fiat too.

I don't think it was all doomed to failure. There are flaws in the system(s) but it wasn't inevitable that those would lead to the catastrophic failure that we saw and see. It took a series of unfortunate events and if those hadn't happened it could have worked out much differently. But it didn't.

If it's all a ponzi scam rug pull then it shouldn't recover but just as I don't think it was inevitable that it would collapse I don't think a recovery is impossible either. Only time will tell but there is no fate except what we make for ourselves.

As for Terra Luna, it looks like it was just a bank run. Some of the whales like at Celsius pulled out, and the collateral to help support UST was in bitcoin and that was falling at the same time, and then supposedly the peg still could have been maintained but the 2.7 billion in bitcoin collateral wasn't used early enough when it could have made a difference. It wasn't like there was no collateral behind it though. There just wasn't enough for the level of black swan it experienced and it may have been a victim of its own success, getting too big for its britches, diseconomies of scale or something. What may have worked with a market cap of 6 billion didn't work at 18 billion or whatever the numbers were.

When you look at our own banking and monetary system, and go behind the curtain, you see some things that don't inspire a lot of confidence either with some people saying the same thing about fractional reserve banking being another type of Ponzi scheme and our government minting currency, trillions of dollars out of thin air the way Luna was minting trillions of coins out of nothing. And then you factor in the even worse monetary policies of a lot of other countries like with Venezuela's hyperinflation and crypto doesn't seem like it's necessarily the worst Ponzi scheme out there anymore. If you're in Venezuela and you bought bitcoin at the high you're still probably better off now than if you'd kept your money in bolivars.

Luna oddly enough is down, way down, and I mean way, way down. But not out. For the moment it's holding up a little bit better during this crash than some others, down to 2.6 or so. This is the new Luna 2.0. Again, we just have to wait and see what happens. I doubt it'll even get back up where it was but there's a small chance in a few years it could see some recovery. Of course, it could go to zero again and there are people joking about how if that happens there will be a Luna 3.0, all for the whales to get a chance at new bag holders.

[NobleHunter]

If I understand things right, government fiat currency is backed by production and utility. You don't get inflation until there's more money circulating than either things to buy with it or that you'll need to pay in taxes or other ways to derive benefit from having the money. Which strikes me as an interesting contradiction of fiat currency vs gold/silver-based: there's way more physical value backing fiat currency (essentially the GDP of the issuer?) than currency backed by gold (just the value of the gold reserves) but the amount of physical value behind any given currency unit is so much smaller for fiat currencies.

[yossarian22c]

It's a question of trust really, the same as with fiat currencies.
...

Not really. The US dollar is valuable because of US taxes and the strength of the US economy. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Germany post WW1; hyper inflation (or currency collapse) all have commonalities. Tanking economies and debt denominated in foreign currencies. You can't print your currency to pay large foreign debts in another currency, you completely destroy the currency exchange rates very quickly. Particularly if it coincides with a period of a very weak domestic economy, so that there is limited domestic production of value. Without those two factors coinciding I'm not aware of any currency collapses. A crypto collapse only requires a loss of confidence.

[Fenring]

A vote against the U.S. dollar is effectively a vote against the U.S. economy and government. 'Losing belief' in the dollar is tantamount to saying that the U.S. government and banking system will become insolvent. White that *can* happen, it would be a disaster far beyond the mere fact of investments/speculation losing money for investors. Whereas for crypto, losing faith in them is literally just losing faith in them and nothing more. It has no further implications about the real world other than, of course, all the people trying to con you into buying crypto losing out.

It should be plainly obviously that the incentives being put out to buy crypto are a major red flag: public ads, constant online bombardment, shill comments in literally every single economic Youtube video with no exception (I'm not talking tinfoil hat, I mean outright ridiculous ads masquering as comments, copypasta all over Youtube). You get the picture. Why are these people so desperate for buyers? The answer shouldn't surprise anyone.

[cherrypoptart]

I agree to a large extent that the U.S. is in a much better position than most countries but if we'd stayed crazy with dollar printing we could still join the club. It looks like we're finally going to bite the bullet now and give the printing presses a rest for a little while. It's going to be painful but much better than if we'd kept ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away on its own.

[yossarian22c]

I agree to a large extent that the U.S. is in a much better position than most countries but if we'd stayed crazy with dollar printing we could still join the club. It looks like we're finally going to bite the bullet now and give the printing presses a rest for a little while. It's going to be painful but much better than if we'd kept ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away on its own.

We're experiencing energy and supply chain inflation. We should have been doing more with renewables (and nuclear) and electric cars over the past 20 years. But the only Republican energy policy is more drilling, tax breaks for fossil fuels, and increased taxes and regulations on renewable energies. Therefore when Trump cuts a deal with Saudi to cut production for a couple years, domestic production takes a hit because of reduced demand from a pandemic, and the world tries to quit buying from Russia overnight then oil prices go way up. Factor that in with pent up demand and supply chain issues from the pandemic. Monetary policy is 4th or below on the list of things driving inflation. Otherwise we would be seeing inflation in the US greatly outpacing inflation overseas, but Europe and other comparable economies are seeing similar inflation with different monetary policies.

Energy is the name of the game right now. And it takes time to increase supplies (of any kind) and shift demand from gasoline to electric, or to more fuel efficient cars. We've had gas price spikes about every 5 years starting with Katrina. Its a pattern, then they drop enough for people to quit caring about conservation then boom another spike. The oil market is tight enough and dependent on enough unstable or unsavory countries that this pattern will continue until oil isn't the driver of our economy.

[Fenring]

I agree to a large extent that the U.S. is in a much better position than most countries but if we'd stayed crazy with dollar printing we could still join the club. It looks like we're finally going to bite the bullet now and give the printing presses a rest for a little while. It's going to be painful but much better than if we'd kept ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away on its own.

We're experiencing energy and supply chain inflation. We should have been doing more with renewables (and nuclear) and electric cars over the past 20 years. But the only Republican energy policy is more drilling, tax breaks for fossil fuels, and increased taxes and regulations on renewable energies. Therefore when Trump cuts a deal with Saudi to cut production for a couple years, domestic production takes a hit because of reduced demand from a pandemic, and the world tries to quit buying from Russia overnight then oil prices go way up. Factor that in with pent up demand and supply chain issues from the pandemic. Monetary policy is 4th or below on the list of things driving inflation. Otherwise we would be seeing inflation in the US greatly outpacing inflation overseas, but Europe and other comparable economies are seeing similar inflation with different monetary policies.

Hard for me to say since I don't track EU monetary policy country by country. However I would be very surprised to learn that they haven't been injecting money into the supply, especially during covid. Do you have data on the various monetary policies in, say, Germany, the UK, maybe Turkey, just for a bit of variety?

And I think there is about a zero percent chance the housing market hyperinflation is due to oil prices. This is just one market, of which equities is another, where the consensus seems to be that zero interest rates contributed toward immense leveraged investment, injecting huge amounts of money into the real estate demand. Even some firms like Blackrock, for instance (and I have heard this, haven't seen their numbers) have been buying up real estate to add to their portfolio.

The issue about the economic downturn coming up, along with inflated prices, is that everyone keeps wanting to push prices up because (on the selling side) they perceive that this is a trick to keep increasing profits. You think it's just a supply/demand issue? You can even look at the financials for oil companies, and it's plain as the sky that their revenues have suddenly gotten huge. It's not like their profit margins are the same, and they're just passing increased prices along to the customer. No, they're cashing in, just like wood distributers, just like food manufacturers. And the slowing of the market which will start hurting revenues and which will cause a recession is likewise not due to oil prices, but due to lack of confidence in the system, since the Fed hikes plus QT plus the general feeling that "the party is over" will cause everyone to tighten up, sell off equity holdings and try to escape into other markets, and to generally scramble. Monetary policy is hip deep in all of this, along with greed and gouging. I think very little of it is just the price of crude oil. Yes, you lost $50 a month as a family at the gas pump. Yes, transportation costs (such as for UPS) are way up. But many companies in theory should be unaffected, and most consumers should be mininally affected; food prices will hit them harder, and those have little to do with energy costs. And even then unless they are overlevered the rate hikes will not be too much trouble. None of that would explain why a major recession is being called for. The only explanation lies in the shift in monetary policy, along with speculative hyperinflation and price gouging. The abusers once again take everyone else down with them.

[cherrypoptart]

I've heard the rationalization is that some companies have to build in extra profits because of the expectation that prices will keep rising and they'll have to use those to acquire more raw materials at higher prices or offset higher transportation and operating costs. It's more about future projections and contingencies than just banking a steady consistent profit margin. And course if prices don't keep rising then they can keep that contingency margin and put it in their pocket. But their point is that it's not as simple as a company setting a certain profit margin and deciding that they won't go beyond that because it's gouging, although in the end that's certainly what it looks like. Or maybe it is just gouging and this is all their after the fact rationalization.

The other part of it is that there's not supposed to be fixed profit margins and companies are supposed to charge the highest price they can for their products. Unless the government comes in and sets price or profit caps, or until the consumers decide not to buy, which admittedly can be tough when there are inelasticities of demand and it seems like whole industries are raising prices simultaneously without collusion, then we are in for a rough ride. And of course the government coming in with price controls often just makes everything much, much worse.

On the real estate and housing issue, there are even more forces at work such as our increasing population, domestic and foreign investors buying up properties to turn them into rentals, and the price of rents going way, way up which is an incentive for more people to buy properties just to rent them out so we're in the opposite of a death spiral, unless by death we mean prices are going to keep going up.

[yossarian22c]

I agree to a large extent that the U.S. is in a much better position than most countries but if we'd stayed crazy with dollar printing we could still join the club. It looks like we're finally going to bite the bullet now and give the printing presses a rest for a little while. It's going to be painful but much better than if we'd kept ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away on its own.

We're experiencing energy and supply chain inflation. We should have been doing more with renewables (and nuclear) and electric cars over the past 20 years. But the only Republican energy policy is more drilling, tax breaks for fossil fuels, and increased taxes and regulations on renewable energies. Therefore when Trump cuts a deal with Saudi to cut production for a couple years, domestic production takes a hit because of reduced demand from a pandemic, and the world tries to quit buying from Russia overnight then oil prices go way up. Factor that in with pent up demand and supply chain issues from the pandemic. Monetary policy is 4th or below on the list of things driving inflation. Otherwise we would be seeing inflation in the US greatly outpacing inflation overseas, but Europe and other comparable economies are seeing similar inflation with different monetary policies.

Hard for me to say since I don't track EU monetary policy country by country. However I would be very surprised to learn that they haven't been injecting money into the supply, especially during covid. Do you have data on the various monetary policies in, say, Germany, the UK, maybe Turkey, just for a bit of variety?
...

The EUs monetary policy was generally tighter than the Feds. The EU has inflation roughly inline with the US. The UK has inflation equal to ours but with their own monetary policy, which I think was more inline with Europe than the US. Turkey is a bad example because Erdogan has been taking them towards a theocratically aligned dictatorship. The policies have strained business ties with Europe and the Turkish economy and Turkey has had very high inflation for years now. Australia has inflation ranging in the 5% range as well.

[Fenring]

The EUs monetary policy was generally tighter than the Feds. The EU has inflation roughly inline with the US. The UK has inflation equal to ours but with their own monetary policy, which I think was more inline with Europe than the US. Turkey is a bad example because Erdogan has been taking them towards a theocratically aligned dictatorship. The policies have strained business ties with Europe and the Turkish economy and Turkey has had very high inflation for years now. Australia has inflation ranging in the 5% range as well.

Just to be a bit more clear, I think monetary policy has had a big impact in the U.S. in real estate and equity markets, so I'm not directly imputing that the Fed is responsible for bread and ketchup prices, or even wood. I think a lot of the insane speculation was due to Wall Street's usual shenanigans, mixed with a frenzy to get into the housing market as it was racing upward (the upward demand in turn generates upward demand, initially precipiated by zero interest rates and easy credit), which was itself fueled by fiscal policy. Airbnb and foreign investors have been players, but I suspect they are hurting renters more than owners since the amount of apartments for rent seems to be going down (and therefore rent prices going up). That's a more complex issue to tackle in a short post. Data seems to show that despite power players being in the mix in home purchasing, it's still a majorty that are people buying homes for themselves, and with a crazed attitude that is certainly tied into what realtors are telling them about getting into the market before it's too late and prices double. In fact I have my theories about bubbles that realtors may create all by themselves, aside from the activities of the banking system.

But when it comes to other types of inflation, such as commodities, foodstuffs, and so forth, this is not monetary driven but rather a case of people being stuck and not being able to choose not to purchase. It's an inelastic market, and this is one of the first times that we're being shown to what extent you could charge people almost anything and they will just pay it because they have no choice. There is no 'open market' when all parties involved charge the same thing. I'll continue this point just below.

The other part of it is that there's not supposed to be fixed profit margins and companies are supposed to charge the highest price they can for their products. Unless the government comes in and sets price or profit caps, or until the consumers decide not to buy, which admittedly can be tough when there are inelasticities of demand and it seems like whole industries are raising prices simultaneously without collusion, then we are in for a rough ride.

The fact of an inelastic market means that at any time, should they just to do so, a de facto cartel can be established without true competition that will succeed without recourse for anyone. It's not actually required for people to meet in a board room and conspire together for different companies to have cartel-like attributes. Simply put, one company sees the public rushing to the supermarkets to hoard toilet paper, and start jacking up prices. Not because demand-up-price-up (which is a ridiculous and untrue teaching) but because they know demand is not correlated to price within certain bounds. The people will hoard the toilet paper at almost any price during a panic, likewise with water, hand sanitizer, etc. Normal business operation involves making $$ from volume, not from jacking up margins on a whim. You get a good market share to make your money. But if all companies are seeing the same thing, and copy each other and start raising prices - after all, why not, everyone else is doing it - then you have an effective cartel controlling prices rather than competing with each other for the customers to cut the fat out of the pricing. And we have seen during the pandemic that when people feel pressured they are not going to cut back on food, or on home renovations when they spend most of their time at home, or on anything else they essentially need in order to have a happy lifestyle. And I'm not giving one of these "they won't give up their fancy standard of living!" speeches about how their own love of luxury is to blame. You seriously expect people who are already suffering under lockdowns to also start eating less, cooking cheapo food only, and skimping on getting in the car to get away from their confined home? That's not belt-tightening; at that point it would be moving to a third-world mentality.

[yossarian22c]

...

When you look at our own banking and monetary system, and go behind the curtain, you see some things that don't inspire a lot of confidence either with some people saying the same thing about fractional reserve banking being another type of Ponzi scheme and our government minting currency, trillions of dollars out of thin air the way Luna was minting trillions of coins out of nothing. And then you factor in the even worse monetary policies of a lot of other countries like with Venezuela's hyperinflation and crypto doesn't seem like it's necessarily the worst Ponzi scheme out there anymore. If you're in Venezuela and you bought bitcoin at the high you're still probably better off now than if you'd kept your money in bolivars.
...

Fractional reserve banking works. Maybe an argument could be made that inflation should be controlled by raising banks reserve requirements instead of raising interest rates. The effect on inflation is the same, less lending and spending. The impacts on regular people may differ. There probably would be a way to slowly wind down fractional reserve banking but it would require printing a crap ton of more money to keep the economic wheels greased. Otherwise all the money ends up sitting idle in a bank somewhere and there isn't enough to circulate.

At the end of the day a country's currency is backed by the country's economy. If the economy tanks then currency takes a hit. Crypto has no economy backing it, therefore, its just a product whose only value what confidence it may inspire. The whole thing is confidence, it maybe a stretch to call them cons, because the people selling them may believe in it. But individuals trying to create their own currency when nothing of value is produced by producing the currency and no economy is backing the currency seems doomed to failure. Crypto had a much longer and stronger run than I thought it ever could. And maybe bitcoin and one or two others can avoid dropping to zero. But they are likely to decline in value and go back to their primary customers being shady.

As to Venezuela or Zimbabwe, the economies tanked and they had foreign denominated debt. Any country that doesn't have that combination of issues is exceedingly unlikely to experience hyper inflation (or a currency collapse).

Currency is supposed to be a placeholder for value (goods or service) so economics can take place without barter. So ask yourself what real value is created by any new or existing cryptocurrency. If the answer is none or simply an alternative currency, ask yourself why we need an alternative currency and what is supporting that currency? If you don't have really good answers to those questions then maybe invest in something else. Let Elon play his games of pumping (and maybe dumping?) new cryptocurrencies but try not to be the person he's dumping too.

[cherrypoptart]

I have to admit to not knowing as much about the utility of cryptocurrencies as I should, but supposedly those are the ones to look for when investing. I've read articles about some of them but I still don't totally get it. By the Buffett school of investing that means stay away. But those are the questions to ask. What is the utility of this? What problem does it solve? What does it make easier?

Many seem to be built around bitcoin and making bitcoin transactions smoother. Some may be trying to serve the purpose of saving electricity or speeding up processes. Obviously on a day like today none of that is helping very much but if there is some legitimate utility to some of the cryptocurrencies then at least those ones might have some staying power. Obviously if they have no utility, serve no function, then that's pretty much the definition of being useless which is only one small step away from being worthless.

[yossarian22c]

I have to admit to not knowing as much about the utility of cryptocurrencies as I should, but supposedly those are the ones to look for when investing. I've read articles about some of them but I still don't totally get it. By the Buffett school of investing that means stay away. But those are the questions to ask. What is the utility of this? What problem does it solve? What does it make easier?

Many seem to be built around bitcoin and making bitcoin transactions smoother. Some may be trying to serve the purpose of saving electricity or speeding up processes.
...

Hope you'll listen to Buffet and yourself. You don't understand their utility because they are deliberately vague in describing it because they have almost none. And if their entire utility is to facilitate bitcoin. Then ask those same questions about bitcoin. If your answer at the end of the day is I see no utility in alternative currencies, then pick another investment. There are strong arguments to be made around monetary policy and currency availability. But crypto that isn't backed by a major economy probably isn't the answer.

[TheDrake]

My Take: Their primary utility is in tax evasion and black market payments, including ransomware payoffs and sale of contraband. That's my take. it's awfully hard to USE it for anything else, and most people seem to just trade it back and forth. So its kind of like speculating in currency futures, but with less transparency. Now you'll find lots of companies that accept bitcoin in some form, but its generally not as convenient as currency so I don't think it sees much use. As far as accepting any of the other cryptocurrencies, I haven't seen much. Etherium maybe?

[NobleHunter]

NFTs also allows for new packaging on old scams long since outlawed in established markets and speculative ventures.

[Fenring]

One rule of thumb is that if you have purchased an investment hoping for growth, and it does go up in value, you should ask yourself why it's worth more now than it was before. If you cannot answer the question then you're not investing, you're gambling.

[Tom]

A couple years ago, I had some extra money left over after refinancing our home (since the rate required that we take out a minimum amount), and wanted to see if I could get a better return than just putting it back on the loan. Since it wasn't money I particularly cared about, I threw about half of it in an interest-bearing stablecoin account paying around 8.6% (of the sort that is now banned in the U.S. due to regulatory oversight) and put the other half into Ethereum, because after doing a little research I decided that it was being lowballed at the time (when it was around $700) and had a likely ceiling of around $1500.

It then proceeded to blow past $1500 on the way to nearly $4K. I kept selling at every new peak and moving the proceeds into the stablecoin account but keeping the original stake in there.

Ethereum has of course since cratered (although not back down to my original $700), and stablecoins have demonstrated that even when they claim to be fiat-backed they're probably not all that stable, so I'd love to start pulling money out. But honestly the tax implications worry me enough that I keep balking, even if selling stablecoin means that I'm not selling at anything resembling a "bottom" at present.

But I want to emphasize that this was gambling. Sure, I was right about Ethereum being valuable to the crypto ecosystem in general and blowing past $700, but my initial ceiling estimate was less than half of what it actually was. I was grossly wrong, but wrong in a way that happened to be lucky. This definitely wasn't anything like investment.

[NobleHunter]

I have an investment in an company that is developing a technology that would basically let them print money. At the point, it's a gamble that the tech will pay off before the firm runs out of money. Fortunately for my state of mind, I've already lost enough money as everyone cashed out looknig for safer or at least more efficient speculation. Equally fortunate, I count it as money already spent.

It went down by 30 points yesterday on a bad press release. Another opportunity to learn that *censored*ing around on the stock around leads to finding out.

[Fenring]

It went down by 30 points yesterday on a bad press release. Another opportunity to learn that *censored*ing around on the stock around leads to finding out.

Sorry to hear that. But at least you should still consider it an investment if you did your research. I've heard it said that while investing in young startups is highly risky and generally untouchable by certain firms, at the same time investment in small risky firms is extremely important for the market and for innovation. So while any given risky investment may go to zero, that doesn't mean it was a bad idea. You have a high risk high yield situation, where if you believe in the product and/or the company, somethings things go badly but at least you and the other investors tried to bring it to market.

[LetterRip]

I have an investment in an company that is developing a technology that would basically let them print money. At the point, it's a gamble that the tech will pay off before the firm runs out of money. Fortunately for my state of mind, I've already lost enough money as everyone cashed out looknig for safer or at least more efficient speculation. Equally fortunate, I count it as money already spent.

It went down by 30 points yesterday on a bad press release. Another opportunity to learn that *censored*ing around on the stock around leads to finding out.

Curious what the company is - want to read about their tech, not invest.

[NobleHunter]

Cielo Waste Solutions CMC.V

They had, at least, good press about their tech last year but I missed the retail trading peak and have been holding an increasingly empty bag.

[yossarian22c]

Cielo Waste Solutions CMC.V

They had, at least, good press about their tech last year but I missed the retail trading peak and have been holding an increasingly empty bag.

Waste to energy. Interesting tech, tough engineering. Wood waste to diesel could be profitable with the current diesel prices if they could get operational. I can see other organic material working, grass clippings/yard waste, but not more general trash. Could be a nice profitable niche industry if they can get it going at scale and are able to broaden beyond wood. Could be an interesting long shot stock. But I'm not doing much trading/long shooting these days.

[LetterRip]

thanks,

good readup here,

https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2019/08/31/heavenly-trash-dream-in-the-sky-or-bringing-it-down-to-earth-cielo-and-the-future-of-waste-to-renewable-diesel/

[NobleHunter]

I got convinced by some very optimistic PR, especially about plastic but solving the engineering problems has proven difficult.

I've lost so much value, I might as well take the long shot.

[TheDrake]

Don't count Bill Gates among the fans of cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Those digital asset trends are "100% based on greater fool theory," the Microsoft co-founder said Tuesday at a TechCrunch conference, referencing the notion that investors can make money on worthless or overvalued assets as long as people are willing to bid them higher.

[yossarian22c]

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/21/1105815143/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-blockchain-security-tampering-darpa

Another example in the report of this kind of concentration is the fact that 60% of Bitcoin traffic is handled by just three internet service providers.

"Let's say somebody with great top-down control of the internet in their country starts to interfere with that network," Guido says. By slowing down or stopping legitimate blockchain traffic, an attacker could become the "majority" voice in the consensus of what's written to a blockchain at that moment.

"They can rewrite history. They can censor transactions. They can make it so that you can't spend your Bitcoin," says Guido. "It's definitely something people would want to do if they want to 'grief' the network."

The notion of this kind of attack isn't new, but what the Trail of Bits report does is compile research into different kinds of "unintended centralities" to better understand the technology's overall vulnerability.

Some of the findings are "eyebrow-raising," says Josh Baron, project manager of the unit at DARPA that commissioned the report.

"For example, the idea that 21 percent of Bitcoin nodes are running an old version of the Bitcoin core client that's known to be vulnerable," Baron says, referring to the basic software running that blockchain. That means all those computer are open to the same kind of hack — a big first step for an attacker trying to dominate a blockchain network, sometimes called a "51 percent attack."

Crypto's boom will be its crash. Enough money in the space for shorts and sophisticated attacks. The end result is loss of confidence and we've discussed once confidence is gone, crypto is going to zero.