Anyone following the crypto meltdown?

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Maybe I missed the thread, apologies if so.

I have been reading a few of the articles about FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. It really sounds like a movie.

Today there was news that last night, after bankruptcy filing, hundreds of millions of dollars of various crypto was illicitly moved out at 2am.

Some report that while the CEO, Sam was negotiating a high stakes deal via conference call, he was also playing multiplayer league of legends. LOL.
 
Only as a distant observer. I never got on the crypto bandwagon. I still don't understand it's value.

Some click bait site said Tom and Geselle had 3/4 of the asserts in FTX.

Schadenfreude at its most enjoyable.

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I occasionally looked at the value of Bitcoin to see if it has gone to 0 yet. That's the extent of my following this crypto madness.

Just yesterday, saw headlines about FTX filing for bankruptcy and the founder might have used the deposited coins to do some illicit dealings. Then, about coins being secretly transferred out, or stolen from depositors. Never heard of FTX and the founder before.

I guess people want to be free from regulation and the gummint. So, how the gummint and the SEC can help them now?
 
Yes, I'm following it, although I would never invest in crypto myself.
Crypto has always been too volatile for me.

Like GravitySucks mentioned in the above post, I must admit to a little schadenfreude. At the same time I feel really bad for those who lost or are losing so much. Apparently yesterday FTX was hacked and some customers' crypto was just spirited away somewhere. So much for one's retirement! Oof.

(edited to add: Oops! NW-Bound just mentioned the FTX situation. I should know better than to post before reading the thread. :LOL: )
 
I played around with crypto a little in 2021 and walked away losing $3,000. It was a pain at tax time. At least I didn’t get hurt too bad.
 
I also don't see the value to it. Too prone to corruption as well. At least with a fiat currency like the US$, if you live here or are a citizen, you have to pay taxes in US$ or suffer the consequences. That alone give our currency value.
 
There will be a movie about FTX.
I wonder how Tom Brady is feeling these days.
 
I think the main value of crypto is as a speculative trading vehicle. Oh and then there are the criminals.

Add me to the list of folks who don't know why it is any more fascinating then tulip bulbs. Oh but there is some math involved so that makes it more interesting I suppose. I guess most of the people involved in it don't understand it.
 
I wonder how much of the phony riches generated from crypto coins add to the high inflation we are experiencing. When crypto coin values go to zero, their owners will no longer be able to spend freely, and that should help reduce inflation.
 
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NW-Bound said:
I wonder how much of the phony riches generated from crypto coins adds to the high inflation we are experiencing. When crypto coin values go to zero, their owners will no longer be able to spend freely, and that should help reduce inflation.
Click to expand...

It certainly contributes to the increase in utility rates, demand placed on the grid, and impacting local residents. In places where there is an abundance of cheap electricity generated by natural resources, the miners have moved their data centers there to advantage of it, and again take from the local population...and for what? They are playing an arbitrage game between electricity rates and the price of crypto. They aren't contributing anything of value to mankind. That being the case, eventually, they're all going to go bankrupt as folks get bored with it. The crypto purchasers primarily got involved because we've been sitting with interest rates near zero for over a decade - they were gambling for some kind of returns. Today, well off of zero, there is plenty of risk free money to be made, leaving the cryptos with less appeal. For the miners, especially those that are larger and publicly traded companies, most will collapse the moment they require additional financing. Since they are all money losers, it won't take much for it to happen.
 
Don’t be silly. Crypto is fine. Remember, we were told it’s a great store of value compared to fiat currencies.

If we ever see another edition of the book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” crypto will probably be in it.
 
Chuckanut said:
Don’t be silly. Crypto is fine. Remember, we were told it’s a great store of value compared to fiat currencies.

If we ever see another edition of the book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” crypto will probably be in it.
Click to expand...

And it is definitely inflation protected. ;)
 
Ironic that people holding in BITCOIN want to remove their investment in DOLLARS, fiat currency, backed by a 21 trillion dollar economy and the full faith and credit of a country is bad unless the currency being held is backed by nothing. Blockchain technology may have some value but not as a currency. Bitcoin will go to zero eventually.
 
Fidelity is still moving forward with crypto trading.

"But Fidelity has been in the crypto industry since 2014 and shows no signs of scaling back its efforts. For the next three to six months, the firm plans to hire 100 employees for its Digital Assets division, bringing the head count to roughly 500 staffers. Founded in 2018, the business unit provides custody and trading services for crypto investments."

https://www.barrons.com/advisor/articles/fidelity-crypto-platform-early-access-51668117323

https://www.fidelity.com/crypto/trading
 
The following sayings that predated Crypto by many generations still apply to it:
Circa 1800 - "Easy come, easy go".
400 BC, china - "Quickly come and quickly go."
 
I am among those who just don't get it and so I have stayed away. It strikes me that the description given here is that people are trying to get rich off negative production. In other words, crypto seems to try to consume without producing. It is hard to see a winner except for the providers of the consumption, in other words, the electric suppliers and anyone that manages to cash out with a profit at the expense of those left behind. If I am wrong, don't worry about it. I don't really want to understand it.
 
njhowie said:
It certainly contributes to the increase in utility rates, demand placed on the grid, and impacting local residents...
Click to expand...

Yes. If it weren't for all the coal that was burned to generate power for the coin mining hardware, all this crypto is just a zero-sum game, where money from the many naive coin buyers go to the pocket of the few promoters. After the energy expenditure, it's a negative-sum game.

But to think of all that power wasted to compute these "hard to compute" bits... Imagine if all that energy is used for something else more productive of more lasting values. What a waste.
 
Northforker said:
Ironic that people holding in BITCOIN want to remove their investment in DOLLARS, fiat currency, backed by a 21 trillion dollar economy and the full faith and credit of a country is bad unless the currency being held is backed by nothing. Blockchain technology may have some value but not as a currency. Bitcoin will go to zero eventually.
Click to expand...

And how do people value Bitcoins? Answer: in $'s. :facepalm:
 
I don't own crypto.
But I (seem to be the only one here to) see a use for the theory of it as a means of exchange. What I don't want is the Central Bank Digital Currencies. If we're going to have digital currencies anyway, might as well have one that is not programmed to prevent my electric car from charging because I bought beef last week or offended the party-in-power with a social media post.
 
Spock said:
I don't own crypto.
But I (seem to be the only one here to) see a use for the theory of it as a means of exchange. What I don't want is the Central Bank Digital Currencies. If we're going to have digital currencies anyway, might as well have one that is not programmed to prevent my electric car from charging because I bought beef last week or offended the party-in-power with a social media post.
Click to expand...

I guess the charging stations might accept bitcoin if the offended authority permitted any other currency but theirs?
 
Never into Crypto, but don't understand how you can go from $32B (or whatever they are reporting now) to ZERO in days.

Side note: Never heard of FTX until it was on the back of the fortune in a fortune cookie (started maybe a year ago). Never bothered to look it up. Is that really how they were advertising?
 
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