Siam Commercial Bank moving into Crypto, why aren't you?

[Yellowtail]

2 minutes ago, lkn said:

What a surprise, when you can’t argue facts, attack the opponent, as is so often the case in these threads.

You equated buying crypto with buying the Brooklyn bridge, but conveniently  ignored that the people selling crypto typically hold the "title" and the people buying can generally resell any time they please. 

 

I called your argument weak (which is is) and you claim I can't argue the facts and that I'm attaching you. Poor dude, I hope I didn't hurt your feeling, but if you're going take a position, at least try to support it. The comparison you drew was lame. 

 

Next it will be that I am too stupid to have a discussion with and you're just wasting your time so you're going to ignore me. 

[LoveThai94]

1 hour ago, EricTh said:

Bitcoin is a pyramid scam. When everybody start to pull out their money, the last few ones are the ones who is going to lose a lot of money.

 

Think musical chairs

Stocks trading at levels out of the world but those are not pyramid scheme?

Look at all the stock trading at 45 times their forward earnings and still be bought by institutional investors.

 

While i don't own Bitcoin, crypto is software and here to stay.

Plain and straight most people don't even know what crypto and block chain is, these smart contracts is what will be running the world, just waiting on regulation to catch up.

[lkn]

21 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

You equated buying crypto with buying the Brooklyn bridge, but conveniently  ignored that the people selling crypto typically hold the "title" and the people buying can generally resell any time they please. 

You misunderstood my analogy. You said that currently people are making money with crypto, so right now, it is not a zero-sum game, because the last buyer has not yet run into a liquidity problem. My point with the Brooklyn Bridge was that you lose your money the minute you buy, not when you cannot resell. Rather, you make up your loss, if you manage to resell. This is because you bought a non-productive asset with no final consumer (re: the supply/demand tangent).

 

And my point has always been that no value is being created in the real economy. When you go to a casino, on average you lose something like 3% of what you spend, so that is the price for being entertained. Most people going to a casino know this. But nobody is buying bitcoin for the entertainment value, and expect to lose 3%. All the “investors” expect to get rich from this. But this is just not possible, at best, we just transfer money, but it is much worse, because the cost of running the network is in the millions of dollars per day, and a large part of the new money that enter the ecosystem is just used to pay for this.

[lkn]

24 minutes ago, LoveThai94 said:

Stocks trading at levels out of the world but those are not pyramid scheme?

Stocks represent companies that generate value, i.e. for every $100 invested in the S&P 500 index, the underlying companies generated $3.41 of pure profit during the last 4 quarters. This is what you are buying: Ownership in this cashflow.

 

You can argue stocks are overvalued, but I don’t see how you get to a pyramid scheme? If people buy a stock and expect it to sell it more expensive later, it should only be because they believe the company will have increased their earnings. E.g. Tesla expect to increase car sales with 50% yearly over the next many years, so while the stock IMHO is hugely overpriced, people buy it because they think that Tesla will sell 8-10M cars by the end of this decade, not because they think they can find a sucker who is willing to pay even more for the stock.

[LoveThai94]

37 minutes ago, lkn said:

Stocks represent companies that generate value, i.e. for every $100 invested in the S&P 500 index, the underlying companies generated $3.41 of pure profit during the last 4 quarters. This is what you are buying: Ownership in this cashflow.

 

You can argue stocks are overvalued, but I don’t see how you get to a pyramid scheme? If people buy a stock and expect it to sell it more expensive later, it should only be because they believe the company will have increased their earnings. E.g. Tesla expect to increase car sales with 50% yearly over the next many years, so while the stock IMHO is hugely overpriced, people buy it because they think that Tesla will sell 8-10M cars by the end of this decade, not because they think they can find a sucker who is willing to pay even more for the stock.

Stock price is based off trading and speculation as with any other security.

Valuation is based off what someone thinks, this same person will turn around and downgrade the stock because they can.

Look at the stock of GE, or the high flying tech stocks of 2020/21.

Tesla, Square and PayPal is accepting crypto as payment.

[EricTh]

1 hour ago, LoveThai94 said:

Stocks trading at levels out of the world but those are not pyramid scheme?

Look at all the stock trading at 45 times their forward earnings and still be bought by institutional investors.

 

While i don't own Bitcoin, crypto is software and here to stay.

Plain and straight most people don't even know what crypto and block chain is, these smart contracts is what will be running the world, just waiting on regulation to catch up.

Stock has also crashed many times in the past and a lot of people were hurt or even committed suicide because they bought over-valued stock.

 

At least stock still have some real values connected to real companies giving dividends unlike these paper bitcoin. Like paper gold, it is worth nothing if nobody plays.

 

There is a real market price for stock versus inflated price. It's the real market price that holds and not the inflated price.

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by EricTh

[LoveThai94]

1 minute ago, EricTh said:

Stock has also crashed many times in the past and a lot of people were hurt or even committed suicide.

 

At least stock still have some real values connected to real companies giving dividends unlike these paper bitcoin. Like paper gold, it is worth nothing if nobody plays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not every stock has real value, some companies not even have earnings just debt.

Maybe they will make money or not, law firms circling around Wall St.

 

crypto is not just bitcoin, bitcoin itself is just like a piece of art or baseball card.

 

 

[EricTh]

On 1/4/2022 at 8:33 PM, lkn said:

As for risk, OP’s entire premise is flawed: Having a bank in charge of selling casino chips does not improve the odds when placing it all on black.

 

As for crypto, at best, it is a zero sum game, everything won in crypto, someone else lost. None of these crypto-proponents have been able to dispute that by explaining how value is being created.

 

And this is why crypto-proponents spam the non-crypto forum with this <deleted>: They need a steady stream of new money to have enough liquidity for them to cash out.

 

It's a very selfish scheme that doesn't take into consideration the feelings of those people who lose a lot of money on pyramid scheme. 

 

Many people have died after playing on the stock market and this crypto scheme is no differenr for those who will lose money.

[EricTh]

6 minutes ago, LoveThai94 said:

Not every stock has real value, some companies not even have earnings just debt.

Maybe they will make money or not, law firms circling around Wall St.

 

crypto is not just bitcoin, bitcoin itself is just like a piece of art or baseball card.

 

 

Do you think that a company can get public listed if they didn't earn profit in the first place?

 

Of course, when one invest in stock, one should invest in the blue chips stock like banks etc.

 

Some big companies like airlines lose money temporarily like during the pandemic, but they will bounce back after the pandemic. So their stock value is still tangible and will give dividend.

 

How does that equate to crypto which is just non-tangible and worth nothing if nobody plays?

Edited January 5, 2022 by EricTh

[LoveThai94]

6 minutes ago, EricTh said:

 

Do you think that a company can get public listed if they didn't earn profit in the first place?

 

Of course, when one invest in stock, one should invest in the blue chips stock like banks etc.

 

How does that equate to crypto which is just non-tangible and worth nothing if nobody plays?

Funny that you mention banks, every major bank now have a crypto division.

Are you saying the mayors of NY and Miami wants to be paid in phony money?

crypto is a digital currency, every major country is working on their own.

 

The Wall St Bears thinks cash is of no value because it is backed by nothing and governments can just print as much as they want.

[EricTh]

12 hours ago, LoveThai94 said:

Funny that you mention banks, every major bank now have a crypto division.

Are you saying the mayors of NY and Miami wants to be paid in phony money?

crypto is a digital currency, every major country is working on their own.

 

The Wall St Bears thinks cash is of no value because it is backed by nothing and governments can just print as much as they want.

Do you think that banks will give you back your investment if Bitcoin crash one day when everyone sees it as just another pyramid scam albeit legalised by certain parties?

 

Cash was backed by gold in the past but the US dollar is in a unique situation because of the link to petrodollar. Once the petrodollar link is broken, then US dollar is worth very little due to endless printing and high debt.

 

Bitcoin is not linked to a powerful country whereas the dollar is linked to it.

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by EricTh

[fdsa]

On 1/5/2022 at 7:47 AM, watgate said:

Neeram-What do you know about counterfeiting of stable value coins and do you foresee this as a problem with purchases of crypto currencies using the counterfeit stable coins?

I'm not Neeranam but I think he won't mind if I would answer instear:

- the whole "Tether" stablecoin is counterfeit, and it is a major problem because when they stop paying huge bribes to the regulatory authorities and go bankrupt then all cryptocurrencies will severily drop in price, because uncontrolled printing of Tether tokens is the only real reason for all cryptocurrencies to rise in price in the last few years.

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by fdsa

[LoveThai94]

1 hour ago, EricTh said:

Do you think that banks will give you back your investment if Bitcoin crash one day when everyone sees it as just another pyramid scam albeit legalised by certain parties?

 

Cash was backed by gold in the past but the US dollar is in a unique situation because of the link to petrodollar. Once the petrodollar link is broken, then US dollar is worth very little due to endless printing and high debt.

 

Bitcoin is not linked to a powerful country whereas the dollar is linked to it.

 

 

Banks do not refund money you lose on investments, read the fine prints!

 

While most of us are following big media, we are up following the markets.

 

Just like crypto people are losing their live savings each day in the stock market.

People make good money off bad securities and lose good money off bad securities

All investments carry risk, some more than others.

 

[BostonRob2]

On 12/30/2021 at 10:52 AM, Neeranam said:

Thanks for your reply. 

 

So it is hard for you to understand if you bought Bitcoin a year ago, you would be up 100%. 

If you bought it 12 years ago, you'd be up 600,000,000% and anywhere in between you would be well ahead.

 

Not exactly rocket science is it?

 

 

 

 

That's nothing, I invested in the 3.50 at Utoxeter and got 33-1. even easier. 

[ThLT]

18 hours ago, Yellowtail said:

...

 

@Yellowtail, your main argument in your exchange with Ikn—of how some people make money from crypto, so that it therefore means crypto creates value—is incorrect. BTC and cryptocurrencies don't create value. Like @lkn said, with the costs associated with it, it is even negative-sum. As based on the Greater Fool theory, the only money that is gained is when an owner sells it to a greater fool willing to pay more.

However, that there are things like crypto subscription platforms, and crypto courses, doesn't mean that value is created. It just means that there are even greater fools who are willing to waste money on things like t-shirts and crypto trading courses—which are entirely built and dependent on something that is negative-sum. You conflate the two, but making money off of a scam, for example, and creating value are two different things.

If I sell you shares of one of my tulips, or a course on how to buy tulips—rather than selling you a tulip itself, doesn't mean value is created. It's just a new category of goods being traded or sold based on even greater fools. A scam built on a scam doesn't make something not a scam.

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by ThLT

[Caldera]

1 hour ago, ThLT said:

It just means that there are even greater fools who are willing to waste money on things like t-shirts and crypto trading courses

I think a crypto t-shirt is a poor example. No matter what happens to crypto down the line, you can still wear it like any other t-shirt, so it has intrinsic value that is independent from whatever is printed on it.

[ThLT]

5 minutes ago, Caldera said:

I think a crypto t-shirt is a poor example. No matter what happens to crypto down the line, you can still wear it like any other t-shirt, so it has intrinsic value that is independent from whatever is printed on it.

Yeah, but it won't be worth $40.
The worn t-shirt will be worth $1 for you alone, and absolutely nothing for others.

[lkn]

5 hours ago, fdsa said:

the whole "Tether" stablecoin is counterfeit, and it is a major problem because when they stop paying huge bribes to the regulatory authorities and go bankrupt then all cryptocurrencies will severily drop in price

I sincerely doubt that they are bribing anyone. They have already been fined by the CFTC due to their past behavior, and they have lost all but one Bahamas-based banking connection, so effectively cut off from the established banking system.

 

A lot of this stuff happens offshore, so who are even the regulators?

Edited January 6, 2022 by lkn

[Yellowtail]

3 hours ago, ThLT said:

 

@Yellowtail, your main argument in your exchange with Ikn—of how some people make money from crypto, so that it therefore means crypto creates value—is incorrect. BTC and cryptocurrencies don't create value. Like @lkn said, with the costs associated with it, it is even negative-sum. As based on the Greater Fool theory, the only money that is gained is when an owner sells it to a greater fool willing to pay more.

False. My primary argument with Ikn is that he claimed that : ...everything won in crypto, someone else lost.

 

This is clearly a false statement, yet he refuses to admit it is false. 

 

3 hours ago, ThLT said:

However, that there are things like crypto subscription platforms, and crypto courses, doesn't mean that value is created. It just means that there are even greater fools who are willing to waste money on things like t-shirts and crypto trading courses—which are entirely built and dependent on something that is negative-sum. You conflate the two, but making money off of a scam, for example, and creating value are two different things.

Please define "creating value" as you understand it and we'll go from there.

 

3 hours ago, ThLT said:

If I sell you shares of one of my tulips, or a course on how to buy tulips—rather than selling you a tulip itself, doesn't mean value is created. It's just a new category of goods being traded or sold based on even greater fools. A scam built on a scam doesn't make something not a scam.

I never said it was or was not a scam. You are confused.

[ukrules]

6 hours ago, fdsa said:

I'm not Neeranam but I think he won't mind if I would answer instear:

- the whole "Tether" stablecoin is counterfeit, and it is a major problem because when they stop paying huge bribes to the regulatory authorities and go bankrupt then all cryptocurrencies will severily drop in price, because uncontrolled printing of Tether tokens is the only real reason for all cryptocurrencies to rise in price in the last few years.

 

There's a group of people out there known as 'Tether truthers' - they believe for some reason that because the company that operates Tether (or any of the other stable coins) has the ability to 'mint' money out of thin air that is unbacked that they would naturally do so.

 

It's a fringe group made up of conspiracy theorist loons who believe that large companies are not allowed to use their own money by banks to purchase stablecoins which are then used to trade crypto. I've seen them argue that a company would not be allowed to use a few hundred million dollars of its own money for a transaction without all sorts of special permissions from government, this is of course pure nonsense.

 

I've come across a lot of these people who hound Paolo Ardoino (the Tether company guy) on Twitter every day, they've been at it for years and I've been following their arguments which are almost 100% nonsense, many people used to listen to them but not so much any more.

 

Essentially I believe that it boils down to this :

 

If the 'tether truther' had the chance to rip off everyone in the world by making tens of billions of dollars worth of completely unbacked tokens then they would 100% do it without thinking twice and they can't believe that anyone else in the same position wouldn't also do the same  - therefore all the stablecoins must be unbacked and printed uncontrollably.

 

They're projecting, they would steal it all, so surely everyone else is as corrupt as them - they can't see it any other way - everyone must be corrupt because that's just how people are.

 

This attitude that if you can steal from people then surely you will reveals the character of the 'tether truther' - they're a bunch of dishonest crooks who assume that everyone else is just like them, if they had the chance to fraudulently mint billions in fake money they would of course do it, therefore everyone else would as well.

 

This person is a 'tether truther'

Edited January 6, 2022 by ukrules

[ThLT]

13 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

False. My primary argument with Ikn is that he claimed that : ...everything won in crypto, someone else lost.

 

This is clearly a false statement, yet he refuses to admit it is false. 

Well, no. It is correct. If you take only crypto—and not things around it, like you imply in your argument—if someone makes money from buying and selling 0.01 BTC at a profit, for example, where did that extra money come from?

From someone else's pockets. 

And no value was created. Nothing new generated—physical or non-physical.

Even more, value was lost, in wear of hardware/consumed electricity. So not only is it not positive-sum, or even zero-sum for that matter, but it's negative-sum.
 

Edited January 6, 2022 by ThLT

[Yellowtail]

58 minutes ago, ThLT said:

Well, no. It is correct.

Now YOU are saying that "everything won in crypto, someone else lost."  too. Again, this is not true. For example, if I buy $500 worth of crypto, and sell it to someone for $350K, and they turn around and sell it for $700K, then I "won" money and the "someone else" did not lose the money I "won", so the statement is a lie.

 

Again, you could argue that what I "won", someone will eventually lose, but that is a different argument. 

 

58 minutes ago, ThLT said:

If you take only crypto—and not things around it, like you imply in your argument—if someone makes money from buying and selling 0.01 BTC at a profit, for example, where did that extra money come from?

From someone else's pockets. 

When I trade equities, the broker gets a cut, where is that money coming from? 

 

58 minutes ago, ThLT said:

And no value was created. Nothing new generated—physical or non-physical.

Even more, value was lost, in wear of hardware/consumed electricity. So not only is it not positive-sum, or even zero-sum for that matter, but it's negative-sum.

Again, please define "creating value" as you understand it. Without a clear definition further discussion is pointless.

 

But you could say the same thing about a ballgame. What value is created by people kicking a ball around? 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Yellowtail

[ThLT]

24 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

Now YOU are saying that "everything won in crypto, someone else lost."  too. Again, this is not true. For example, if I buy $500 worth of crypto, and sell it to someone for $350K, and they turn around and sell it for $700K, then I "won" money and the "someone else" did not lose the money I "won", so the statement is a lie.

If you buy $500 worth of a crypto coin and sell it for $350,000, the $349,500 in fiat currency you made comes from the next greater fool's pockets. If that person sells it for $700,000, the extra $350,000 came from the next greater fool's pockets.

Once no greater fool is found (the "bagholder"), who for example paid $1 million, then he is stuck with the crypto coin and can't sell it. Essentially, the $1 million in fiat currency from that last greater fool will have been shared between all the lesser fools. Even if the speculative trading continues for 10 years, it doesn't change anything—there is simply a large number of greater fools to continue the speculative trading from one person to the next.

It therefore is in fact zero-sum—but considering a whole bunch of electricity and heavy wear of hardware, from the thousands of blockchain transactions, it's rather negative-sum.

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by ThLT

[Yellowtail]

6 minutes ago, ThLT said:

If you buy $500 worth of a crypto coin and sell it for $350,000, the $349,500 in fiat currency you made comes from the next greater fool's pockets. If that person sells it for $700,000, the extra $350,000 came from the next greater fool's pockets.

Once no greater fool is found (the "bagholder"), who for example paid $1 million, then he is stuck with the crypto coin and can't sell it. Essentially, the $1 million in fiat currency from that last greater fool will have been shared between all the lesser fools. Even if the speculative trading continues for 10 years, it doesn't change anything—there is essentially too many greater fools.

It therefore in fact is zero-sum—but considering a whole bunch of electricity and wear of hardware, from the thousands of blockchain transactions, it's rather negative-sum.

You can't show it's not a lie (because it is) so you regurgitate the same thing over again. 

 

Why do you refuse to define "creating value"?

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Yellowtail
text

[ThLT]

1 minute ago, Yellowtail said:

Why do you refuse to define "creating value"?

It's a separate issue from the crypto being negative-sum, but:

When you build a house with raw materials, the result is a house, that people can live in. The construction workers did in fact create value.

When you buy a crypto coin, and then sell it to someone—no value whatsoever was created.

[ThLT]

3 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

You can't show it's not a lie (because it is) so you regurgitate the same thing over again. 

Go read finance literature:

 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greaterfooltheory.asp

[lkn]

1 hour ago, ukrules said:

This attitude that if you can steal from people then surely you will reveals the character of the 'tether truther' - they're a bunch of dishonest crooks who assume that everyone else is just like them

Please look into the people who run Binance, Bitfinex, Tether, Celsius Network, etc., many of them have questionable pasts, and there have already been lots of action (fines, cease and desist orders, warnings, etc.) from U.S. district courts etc. related to many of the operators in DeFi.

 

If you read the report from CFTC about Tether you will see that they were not fully backed for some of the time periods that the CFTC looked into, that Tether and Bitfinex commingled customer funds, had non-documented lending arrangements with several third parties etc.

 

Personally I like to see hard evidence before jumping to conclusions, and I don’t fully understand how, if USDT is unbacked, it can last for this long (although I think staking/yield farming is playing a crucial role), but you must admit, there is a hell of a lot of smoke surrounding Tether.

 

And if they are actually backed, why are they refusing to submit to a proper audit? Contrary to what they promised in the past. They also refuse to reveal any of their partners, or even what commercial papers they are holding. This doesn’t make any sense, if they are actually running a legit business.

[Yellowtail]

5 minutes ago, ThLT said:

It's a separate issue from the crypto being negative-sum, but:

When you build a house with raw materials, the result is a house, that people can live in. The construction workers did in fact create value.

When you buy a crypto coin, and then sell it to someone—no value whatsoever was created.

So everything but homebuilding is not crating value.

[Yellowtail]

5 minutes ago, ThLT said:

Go read finance literature:

 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greaterfooltheory.asp

That's hilarious. If you don't know, just say you don't know and leave it at that. 

 

 

[ThLT]

3 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

So everything but homebuilding is not crating value.

It's an example. I thought by using something as simple as building houses you'd understand.