Nocoiner predictions: 2021 will be year of comedy gold
amycastor.com
amycastor.com
https://youtu.be/Cg10yYZjK94?t=1h10m0s
This is the CEO of MicroStrategy who mainstreamed Bitcoin investment, saying stuff like:
"Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy”
On MicroStrategy's quarterly earnings conference call in July 2020, Saylor announced his intention for MicroStrategy to explore purchasing Bitcoin, gold, or other alternative assets instead of holding cash. The following month, MicroStrategy used $250 million from its cash stockpile to purchase 21,454 Bitcoin.
MicroStrategy later added $175 million of Bitcoin to its holdings in September 2020 and another $50 million in early December 2020. On December 11, 2020, MicroStrategy announced that it had sold $650 million in convertible senior notes, taking on debt to increase its Bitcoin holdings to over $1 billion worth. On December 21, 2020 MicroStrategy announced their total holdings include 70,470 bitcoins purchased for $1.125 billion at an average price of $15,964 per bitcoin. Saylor, who controls 70% of MicroStrategy's shares, dismissed concerns by observers that the move is turning MicroStrategy into a Bitcoin investment firm or exchange-traded fund (ETF).He is frequently mentioned in Bitcoin discussions as evidence that Bitcoin is mainstream: a rational, safe investment, good enough for MicroStrategy to invest hundreds of millions
When you actually watch him talk, the credibility vanishes
This is greatly overstating his role and impact.
"Bitcoin is not scarce because each coin is subdivided into satoshis".
That's their PR message, not their goal. They were pretty clearly social attacks trying to coopt the name.
China also has a geopolitical incentive to promote crypto and counter the USD's current status as the reserve currency. The capability for the US to inject USD into itself while retaining a worldwide demand is undoubtedly at the forefront of China's mind.
The key complaint is that they are, in fact, NOT independent. You can use one to manipulate the other under the guise of being backed by USD when in reality its backed by loans backed by BTC (or some other permutation).
They so know because of bitcoin's stupendous price rise. And as the reasoning behind it they are pointing to Tether issuers' imminent facing of regulatory and criminal scrutiny.
I'm not so sure.
I'm a great supporter of Bitcoin, but:
a) Tether worries me a great deal, especially if you dig into the background of the folks behind it. Unless tether lets itself be properly audited and proves cash reserves, it can indeed, in a rater straightforward manner, be used to manipulate BTCUSD
b) The current price action also worries me a great deal: it's IMO likely going to go through more 2018-like volatility events (i.e. a x5 haircut to shed speculators) through 2021 thereby lending temporary credibility to the nocoiners arguments.
But the nature of the beast makes that proposition a difficult one until it reaches its "natural" capitalization (whatever that may be - some say that of gold).
USDC and PAX are both regulated by US financial regulators, including NY.
There are plenty of ways to be skeptical of Bitcoin or Ethereum or rest of the Crypto, but this article is not it.
However, I don’t really understand the distinction between Tether minting coins and people buying gold ETFs.
To remedy this, Tether now states USDT is backed 1 for 1 with cash and cash equivalents. For example, Tether released an "IOU" coin called UNUS SED LEO (LEO)[0] that trades at the amount of USD missing. Therefore Tether states it is now fully backed.
The veneer of sketchiness is actually preferable to a lot of crypto traders, who live in fear of various governments. This is why USDC is not as popular as USDT - many traders prefer a "vaguely sketchy" coin that is less likely to have their funds frozen by court order.
All that said, I worked at a company (Circle) that redeemed and minted billions of dollars of Tether back in 2017 / 2018. Tether serves big trade desks and is extremely popular in Asia, while USDC has become more popular in DeFi and is bigger in the west. Tether is not a giant ponzi scheme - it really has assets, and huge desks regularly mint and redeem billions of dollars.
You don’t do all billions at once, that was in total.
Ethereum is also an absolutely fascinating technology.
Some people become “experts” and refuse to see innovation when it is staring themselves in the face. The world can’t change to these people.
Also regulation has been in the crypto space for years, dunno why these guys think it is some sudden new thing.
This is what life is like for the less privileged under the anti-money laundering regime:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/comments/de0sys/kyc_is_abs...
1. Engaging in human trafficking, which is really unfortunate for the poor and often non-white females who are being trafficked
2. Sponsoring terrorism, which sucks for the again young and often non-white females in schools that are being blown up, the women in markets getting shrapnel wounds, and the children losing parents
3. Funneling arms to terrorists, which allows them to resist police forces and continue forcing young people to be unwilling participants in the drug trade, prostitution and other pretty subpar life outcomes
So yes, it's really inconvient to have to deal with KYC and miss out on that sweet stock growth on foreign markets - I encourage your example to work with his local government to pass the appropriate laws to join the world economy.
3. That is also the argument the Chinese Communist Party makes for its various totalitarian surveillance/control measures in Xinxiang. Anyone with a basic respect for liberal democratic principles like privacy and presumption-of-innocence/due-process will reject warrantless mass-surveillance of financial transactions and the presumption of guilt inherent to disallowing individuals who haven't proven their innocence, by disclosing private information, from conducting certain classes of financial transactions.
>>So yes, it's really inconvient to have to deal with KYC and miss out on that sweet stock growth on foreign markets
That is incredibly daft. Individuals being able to generate/accumulate wealth has massive knock-on effects for the people around them and the countries they live in.
But here is a story about poor women of color who you seem more concerned about:
https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ugly-side-kyc-aml-...
>>At a 2015 blockchain event, Nairobi-based bitcoin pioneer Elizabeth Rossiello answered an audience question about the impact on Somalians of a recent shutdown in remittance inflows after the U.S. government had labeled the country a “high-risk jurisdiction.” The AZA Group CEO’s answer was blunt: “They starve.”
I guess just more collateral damage according to the insiders in the AML/KYC compliance sector.
>>I encourage your example to work with his local government to pass the appropriate laws to join the world economy.
Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state.
And until he can transform Uzbekistan into, first, a democratic state, and second, a compliant organ of the global AML mass-surveillance regime, it's okay for insiders like you that he is a global third class citizen. All of the poverty alleviation that being presumed innocent, instead treated like a suspect/criminal by your discriminatory policies, would bring about, will be conveniently dismissed by you.
Poverty existed literal millennia before KYC. Sure, it'd be great to just end poverty, and when you do that we can talk about ending KYC. Before you end poverty, it turns out it's pretty easy to implement KYC and stop a bunch of harms.
> That is also the argument the Chinese Communist Party makes for its various totalitarian surveillance...
There's a difference between putting a Muslim ethnic minority in concentration camps, and telling people they're supposed to identify themselves before wiring around tens of thousands of dollars internationally or opening foreign bank accounts. If that difference is lost on you, your issues run deeper than KYC.
> the impact on Somalians of a recent shutdown in remittance inflows...
The ideal fix here is for Somalia to stop funneling money to terrorist organizations.
> The report titled "Following the Money", authored by former UN Expert panellist for Somalia, Jay Bahadur, said illegal payments were as high as $3.7 million between 2014 and 2020... Amal was particularly accused of handling cash sent to Abdulrab Salem al-Hayashi, who was in October 2017 sanctioned by the US Treasury for "assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material or technological support for, or financial or other services to or in support of" Al-Qaeda-linked terror groups in the Arabian Peninsula.
https://allafrica.com/stories/202010110025.html
And yeah, that sucks for the people who were just trying to survive, but that failure is entirely on Somalia and Amal who should of followed the required measures. Either follow the measures or you get expelled from the cooperative system.
It sucks to live in places like Somalia and Uzbekistan. I recommend leaving if you can, we have an international asylum process for a reason. It's not the duty of the US to help their citizens, nor is the US in a place to do so.
True or not, this argument is essentially orthogonal to Bitcoin's usefulness and success.
As others have pointed out, there are many financial institutions / instruments that also fit the bill and that does not diminish their utility.
To make the point maybe more salient: a moving vehicle can be used to kill a person, that doesn't mean cars should be eliminated.
Related! A nice list of all the articles claiming bitcoin is dead and why. https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
I'll go one step further and argue that some of the scenarios described in the article are not unreasonable.
What they fail to see is that if these actually come to pass (e.g. Tether collapse), it will actually good for Bitcoin in the long run.
Money badger don't care.
Much of that has to do with the way he expresses itself: he's really obnoxious to listen to and one has to make a great effort to get past that 100-foot wall of aggression to try and understand if there's any value in his arguments.
I have honestly tried, and once you peel off the tone and posturing, I must confess there isn't much to be found.