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Posted
11 minutes ago, Walker88 said:

"It's not a Ponzi; it's the future"

 

I would say the jury is still out.

 

In the wake of the FTX debacle, Binance released a snapshot of its holdings. It might look perfectly reasonable to those sniffing the crypto vapors, but to people with any actual experience in finance, it makes one gasp.

 

Of Binance's $74.7 billion BS, here's a bit of what they have:

 

$23 billion in BUSD, a coin issued by......Binance

$6.4 billion in Binancecoin, a coin issued by......Binance

$7.8 billion in btc

$7.3 billion in eth

 

Seeing that, I got to thinking. I'm pretty wealthy, but sadly, not a billionaire (in USD). Then I thought, why set so low of a goal?  A mere billionaire? There's thousands of billionaires in the world, so it isn't as rare as one might think. But...who wants to be a TRILLIONAIRE!

 

So I set up a company called WKX, then I developed a fast working algorithm and mined 100,000,000,000,000 Walkcoins. Then I created a trading subsidiary I called Alimeda Research (Alameda Research, a sub of SBF's FTX,  is in Chapter 11 and already taken). Alimeda Research bought one Walkcoin for $1. Redoing WKX balance sheet, I have on the asset side $99,999,999,999,999 in Walkcoins, and a similar amount in shareholder equity. In an instant I am the richest man who ever lived, making even Croesus jealous.

 

I need a little wider distribution, so I created another subsidiary Walk Exchange, where Walkcoin and other coins can be traded. Customers may also store their crypto coins there and earn a fee, as Walk Exchange will loan coins out.

 

Since I have spare capital, another subsidiary---WalkPro---buys some ad time in the Superbowl and World Cup. I hire a few celebs, like Matt Damon and Tom Brady to appear in the ads, and I offer them options on Walkcoins as payment for services rendered.

 

There are 8 billion people in the world. I really only need to find one person who sees a potential rocket ship to the moon (in Walkcoin) and fears the train is leaving the station, so wants to get on board. On Walk Exchange I put an offer on the screen of a Walkcoin at $2. Am 'early adopter' lifts my offer. Walkcoin is now valued at $2, meaning my balance sheet now has $199,999,999,999,996 of assets.

 

On Walk Exchange I now see a bid come in at $1.50. I decide to put in an offer, albeit at $3. Another of the Earth's 8 billion humans, anxious to board that potential rocketship to the moon, lifts my offer at $3. I have to revalue my balance sheet yet again. I now have a net worth higher than 5 times the GDP of the planet.

 

I put in some more offers on Walk Exchange...some at $3.50, a few at $4 and a few at a gap price of $6. Walk Exchange then goes to a bank and borrows just a little....maybe $1000...and I pledge some btc and eth crypto holders have stored at Walk Exchange. I then loan that money to Alimeda Research, the trading arm, and it enters the market and lifts all of my offers all the way to $6. WKX places a few more offers at $10 and $12. Alimeda Research enters the market again and lifts those offers. Walkcoin last trade is now $12. It's meteoric rise captures the attention of a 'savvy' Wall Street Gurus like Cathie Woods or Kevin O'Leary. They want some of that Walkcoin. I offer a few thousand coins at $15, at $17 and at $20. The gurus snap all of them up and then issue some recommendations.

 

O'Leary trumpets Walkcoin on CNBC. Retail takes notice. Lots of retail bids come into Walk Exchange looking for that new can't miss coin, Walkcoin. I can unload 10-20000 Walkcoins at prices up to $25. I've now got plenty of cash plus 90-something trillion Walkcoins on the WKX balance sheet.

 

Folks want to know who is this Walker88 behind WKX. Well, he's got a BS from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford, so he's obviously a wunderkind, just like that MIT guy Sam Bankman-Fried. Heck Walker88 even turned down Harvard Biz and Wharton, choosing Stanford instead. Turbo wunderkind !

 

I go fallow temporarily. A couple of retail holders get antsy and try to liquidate. I ignore them. I put a bid in at $17.   The market is a little thin, with a $17 bid and $25 offer. My Alimeda Research hits the bid. Some holders are spooked. Is Walkcoin over?

 

Not so fast, oh ye of little faith. WKX, flush with cash from selling a few thousand Walkcoins, lifts the offer at $25, as well as next best offer at $27. Walkcoin has recovered. Looks like the next leg up is happening. Rinse and repeat.

 

I look at where 'chartreaders; think key price points are. I make sure to satisfy the chart prognostications.

 

WKX places lots of Walkcoins on offer at prices up to $50. Some of the offers get lifted. Most get lifted by Alimeda Research, but some get lifted by retail. Walkcoin last trade is $50. WKX is now worth just short of $50 quadrillion.

 

See how this works?  There is absolutely nothing behind Walkcoin but air and hype. Even GAAP allows me to value my balance sheet at around $50 quadrillion. Binance says their BS is $74.7 billion and most all of what they have is coins they created themselves and bought via subsidiaries to set a market price.

 

Someone might argue this is no different from Elon Musk having a net worth of $200 billion, as he did at Tesla's peak, even though as a large shareholder he could not possibly realize his shares at last market price. It's not the same, however, because Tesla has actual assets. It has factories. It has inventory in raw materials, that have value even if not made into a car. Tesla has an actual product.

 

Binance, with a large portion of its balance sheet in coins it conjured itself, is a far cry from Tesla. It is highly unlikely it could realize $30 billion for its BUSD and Binancecoin on its balance sheet, but that is the price they carry them at.

 

My hypothetical, 'reduce to the ridiculous' example here is pretty much the case history of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried.  When reality hit, his $26 billion fortune collapsed to $0 in less than a week. Maybe he squirreled some money away, but FTX=$0.

 

Binance may or may not be the next 'exchange' to go. Eventually more people will see how this entire crypto scheme was created. Coins were conjured, theoretically finite, but when they became 'loanable' they became part of a Daisy Chain Tautology whose value was based on a belief in its value, but with absolutely nothing behind it except flash, smoke and mirrors, marketing, hype and the proverbial Greater Fool.

 

This is a common scenario. A company is established. It creates a coin. It sets up a trading subsidiary. It sets up an exchange. These work together to manipulate coin value. FTX has hundreds of subsidiaries, so it made it look as if it had wide appeal. Also, since it was in an unregulated industry, there was no legal requirement to segregate customer coins held in storage on its exchange. SBF was free to use customer coins as collateral for borrowing dollars, which he used to buy his own coin FTT. Binance has seemingly done the same thing.

 

Coinbase has disclosures that say in the event of bankruptcy, customers storing assets there would not be able to get them until the bankruptcy courts are done, which would be years.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

 

People said the same thing 5 years ago.

Posted
20 minutes ago, Sparktrader said:

People said the same thing 5 years ago.

It is time to sit and wait now, because investors is not willing to risk anything at the moment, and without anyone to move the marked and stimulate it, it will loose until the necessary correction have been done. Safe assets for the next few years, and then start buying in to more risky projects. Natural selection and most who can not loose, will loose. Tragic, but that's the true game.

Posted
28 minutes ago, Hummin said:

It is time to sit and wait now, because investors is not willing to risk anything at the moment, and without anyone to move the marked and stimulate it, it will loose until the necessary correction have been done. Safe assets for the next few years, and then start buying in to more risky projects. Natural selection and most who can not loose, will loose. Tragic, but that's the true game.

Loose or lose ?

Posted

Bitcoin keeps falling today (as it did yesterday, and the day before) and even more crypto-exchanges are exploding in realtime. People are starting to realize it's all a ponzi. Be safe and stay out of made-up internet-money. 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2022/11/13/stay-away-binance-ceo-issues-serious-warning-over-another-crypto-exchange-after-ftx-collapse-crashed-the-price-of-bitcoin-and-ethereum/?sh=150c4798793a

Posted
9 hours ago, Celsius said:

Who is "they"?

A small number of people browsing this thread know who 'they' are. Those same people will also understand why I won't waste one minute of my time explaining anything to people that haven't figured it out yet.

 

It's not important to know who 'they' are. Only their puppets have names and at this moment the most prominent puppet is CZ. He and others will carry out their dirty work for them.

Posted
22 minutes ago, DumbFalang said:

A small number of people browsing this thread know who 'they' are. Those same people will also understand why I won't waste one minute of my time explaining anything to people that haven't figured it out yet.

 

It's not important to know who 'they' are. Only their puppets have names and at this moment the most prominent puppet is CZ. He and others will carry out their dirty work for them.

 

Ok. Have fun staying poor.

Posted

A year ago the coin Solana, once a darling of the cryptosphere, was trading at $259.96. As I write this it is trading at $12.83, a loss of 95% in a year.

 

Solana is down 65% in one week.

 

And some folks bark about the USD losing a similar amount of value in 100 years.

 

Winner: Fiat.  (Also because nobody gets paid in 1922 wages)

 

But hey, Solana owners, if you bought at $.01, you're still waaaaaay ahead.

 

Is it starting to sink in that entities based solely on confidence need confidence to be maintained? When value is 100% dependent on the Greater Fool, a large supply of Greater Fools is desperately needed. As Mr. T might have said about Solana, "Pity the Fool!"

 

Yes, all fiat will eventually die, though there are currently 180 fairly stable versions in good working order, readily accepted in the land of the sovereign who issued them. Plus, one has to guesstimate the life horizon of the means of exchange one uses vs the expected life span of the user. If you're a Mayfly who lives but a single day, crypto might work for you (though some cryptos tumble double digit % in a single day), but if you expect to live longer, perhaps fiat is the right thing.

 

And we can all take some Solana...solace in the fact that economic juggernaut El Salvador uses btc as its currency. If someone is going to argue that since El Salvador adopted btc its inflation is running upwards of 400% (in btc terms), well, they're just to old to understand the beauty of the crypto future.

  • Like 2
Posted (edited)
15 hours ago, Celsius said:

Neeranam's favorite crypto.com is currently experiencing a bank run.

 

Will it survive?

 

FhcDuGeXwAMLz0a?format=jpg&name=large

 

I no longer have any funds on that exchange. However, I will keep using my card every now and then. 

Actually, they were never an exchange I used to trade or stake, I only like them for the card. 

 

 

Edited by Neeranam
Posted

Ideally sell it when it has more value that what you acquired it for.  As of current I  dont think there's many of the original HODL'ers left.  Although there may be some who got in when it died sub 5K back in 2018.
 

Posted (edited)

I'll say this much.  I'm a long time Bitcoin adopter and holder.  I believe in the tech, I believe in blockchain as a concept but we are in some really dark days right now and it's certainly not looking good for the current ecosystem.  

We dont know what happens now, the world has never seen what happens during a crypto bear market.  Maybe this is the fallout.  13 years for something like this isn't a long time to have all of the <deleted> worked out especially given the cavalier approach since it's inception.

It's a risk.  A huge flipping risk and a lot of speculation.  I asked myself last week why I was still in it after all thats transpired.  The answer is the same reason it was when I first got into it. It's interesting to me.  The evolution of technology and use cases are interesting.  However I'm pausing my involvement at the moment until the smoke clears and we get some solid rules around this.  My exchanges were Gemini, Binance and BlockFi.  I didn't use FTX, never trusted them since they were based in the Bahamas.

Do I think it's close to being right?  Hell no.  No way.  What this has done right now is expose the criminals within the eco-system.  And when you consider what BTC was initially used for in the early days it doesn't seem now like to far of a stretch that the biggest holders are the criminals who dealt in it from it's inception.  Kinda like the other criminals we know who occupy various administrations in various lands of various people.  They're all criminals.  This being as new as it is has the most loop holes and therefore ways to get burned.  And thats whats happening.  

 

there's no one in the crypto space right now who's NOT feeling the burn of the current state.  I dont care who you are.  You're pinched some way.  BlockFi shut off my credit card.  I found out when I went to pay for something while being out on Saturday.  I mean even something like that is a huge inconvenience and impact on someones life.  I have to to in and adjust approximately 15 different services that autobill to that card now costing me time, frustration, and ultimately money.

 

Am I cashing out? No.  Am I completely done with it? No.  Am I going to continue to support these lawless exchanges by using their cards and paying interest and buying crypto from them. No.  Gemini , I will.  they've made a big effort to separate themselves from the pack.  I still dont trust them though and wont leave any money on their exchange.  All my stuff was migrated to cold storage. Still waiting on the final 10 % of it to complete processing.  Shall see what happens.

 

 

Edited by happydreamer
  • Like 1
Posted

Two points...call me cynical, but I see this ramp in btc today from 15.7 to 17.1 and cannot help but think Michael Saylor or some other over-levered long is doing a Nick Leeson impersonation. Time will tell, but the trading pattern is identical to how Leeson pushed up Nikkei futures and ended up imploding Barings. There was enough selling that anyone who really wanted to load on on btc could have just stayed best bid and caught all the selling, rather than play Pacman and paint the tape. If it smells like desperation and looks like desperation.....

 

Second point....people are equating Blockchain with btc. Blaockchain is a possible useful technology upon which btc sits. An analogy might be the internet and Pets.com. The internet or world wide web is a useful technology upon which Pets.com sat. That the internet/www has value does not mean Pets.com had value.

Posted
48 minutes ago, Walker88 said:

Two points...call me cynical, but I see this ramp in btc today from 15.7 to 17.1 and cannot help but think Michael Saylor

Nope. Musk pumped it a little overnight. Gave it a slight nudge if you will.

 

People are sheep. They really deserve to get rekt

Posted
2 hours ago, happydreamer said:

I'll say this much.  I'm a long time Bitcoin adopter and holder.  I believe in the tech

Other than paying the Winklevoss twins to buy and sell tokens at their exchange, what exactly are you using it for? I.e. what benefits does it give you that are only made possible by bitcoin and/or blockchain?

Posted
24 minutes ago, Celsius said:

Nope. Musk pumped it a little overnight. Gave it a slight nudge if you will.

 

People are sheep. They really deserve to get rekt

wrong people were reacting to a tweet by CZ

 

literally nothing to do with musk

 

Posted
2 hours ago, happydreamer said:

I'll say this much.  I'm a long time Bitcoin adopter and holder.  I believe in the tech, I believe in blockchain as a concept but we are in some really dark days right now and it's certainly not looking good for the current ecosystem.  

We dont know what happens now, the world has never seen what happens during a crypto bear market.  Maybe this is the fallout.  13 years for something like this isn't a long time to have all of the <deleted> worked out especially given the cavalier approach since it's inception.

It's a risk.  A huge flipping risk and a lot of speculation.  I asked myself last week why I was still in it after all thats transpired.  The answer is the same reason it was when I first got into it. It's interesting to me.  The evolution of technology and use cases are interesting.  However I'm pausing my involvement at the moment until the smoke clears and we get some solid rules around this.  My exchanges were Gemini, Binance and BlockFi.  I didn't use FTX, never trusted them since they were based in the Bahamas.

Do I think it's close to being right?  Hell no.  No way.  What this has done right now is expose the criminals within the eco-system.  And when you consider what BTC was initially used for in the early days it doesn't seem now like to far of a stretch that the biggest holders are the criminals who dealt in it from it's inception.  Kinda like the other criminals we know who occupy various administrations in various lands of various people.  They're all criminals.  This being as new as it is has the most loop holes and therefore ways to get burned.  And thats whats happening.  

 

there's no one in the crypto space right now who's NOT feeling the burn of the current state.  I dont care who you are.  You're pinched some way.  BlockFi shut off my credit card.  I found out when I went to pay for something while being out on Saturday.  I mean even something like that is a huge inconvenience and impact on someones life.  I have to to in and adjust approximately 15 different services that autobill to that card now costing me time, frustration, and ultimately money.

 

Am I cashing out? No.  Am I completely done with it? No.  Am I going to continue to support these lawless exchanges by using their cards and paying interest and buying crypto from them. No.  Gemini , I will.  they've made a big effort to separate themselves from the pack.  I still dont trust them though and wont leave any money on their exchange.  All my stuff was migrated to cold storage. Still waiting on the final 10 % of it to complete processing.  Shall see what happens.

 

 

Its all part of the plan! We are on the precipice of adoption of blockchain and they want as much people out as possible.

Nobody in their right mind would be investing now but as they say "He who dares wins"

Posted
On 2/15/2022 at 4:07 PM, Pravda said:

double digit inflation worldwide and I just can't in good faith watch my savings evaporate. 

40k to 16k and looking at 14 or even 4k. i hope your big boy panties are on for whats in store. 

Posted
2 hours ago, lkn said:

Other than paying the Winklevoss twins to buy and sell tokens at their exchange, what exactly are you using it for? I.e. what benefits does it give you that are only made possible by bitcoin and/or blockchain?

Im holding it on speculation.  Like I said I'm interested in seeing what future use case might evolve to be and see where the technology goes.  

  • Like 1

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