Is anyone else starting to become a bit worried? mod note in first post

JohnnyFlash

https://decrypt.co/7993/uproar-over-possible-plustoken-exit-scam

Plustoken? Has anyone heard of it, or invested in it? Seems to be mostly Chinese victims. 3 billion is a lot of money if the story is true (and decrypt is a reliable crypto news site).

There’s also a rumour starting to emerge that Justin Sun is under investigation by the Chinese authorities, and that is the reason he cancelled his lunch with Warren Buffett.

Bob24

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

https://decrypt.co/7993/uproar-over-possible-plustoken-exit-scam

Plustoken? Has anyone heard of it, or invested in it? Seems to be mostly Chinese victims. 3 billion is a lot of money if the story is true (and decrypt is a reliable crypto news site).

Never heard of it and while it does appear on Coingecko it doesn’t seem to be listed on any exchange they are referencing: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/plustoken#panel

Looks like to me it is more a scam website than a cryptocurrency?

el diablo

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

https://decrypt.co/7993/uproar-over-possible-plustoken-exit-scam

Plustoken? Has anyone heard of it, or invested in it? Seems to be mostly Chinese victims. 3 billion is a lot of money if the story is true (and decrypt is a reliable crypto news site).

There’s also a rumour starting to emerge that Justin Sun is under investigation by the Chinese authorities, and that is the reason he cancelled his lunch with Warren Buffett.

The same scammers now have another scam on the go called Cloud Token. There is zero evidence of any trading and looks like a 100% Ponzi scam.

makeorbrake

el diablo wrote: »

The same scammers now have another scam on the go called Cloud Token. There is zero evidence of any trading and looks like a 100% Ponzi scam.

It appears that fraudulent projects are far more likely to get pimped in emerging/developing countries where there are many more less sophisticated victims to prey on.

People still have a duty to do their own due diligence and otherwise, fraudulent projects don't define the space. Despite all the bad press, ICO's were an interesting approach to fund raising and IEO's have the potential to improve upon that. That's probably not where it stops. And it can be regulated - but the regulation needs to be workable or otherwise, the innovation gets destroyed.

Dohnjoe

South Korea Estimates 2-Year Losses From Crypto Crimes at $2.3 Billion

https://www.coindesk.com/south-korea-estimates-2-year-losses-from-crypto-crimes-at-2-3-billion

Not including exchange hacks

Nearly 2.7 trillion won ($2.3 billion) have been lost to crimes involving cryptocurrency in the last two years, according to South Korean government data.

Figures provided by the country’s justice ministry on Sunday indicate that losses from crypto scams, Ponzi schemes, embezzlement and illegal exchange transactions came to 2.69 trillion won from July 2017 to June 2019.

The government has a mandate to protect the public from scams/ponzis/fraud/etc, so regulation is only a question of when, not if

makeorbrake

No problem with regulation so long as its reasonable and not heavy handed or an innovation killer. Governments and regulators might also get busy with the $2 Trillion pa that's laundered through the conventional banking system.

Dohnjoe

makeorbrake wrote: »

No problem with regulation so long as its reasonable and not heavy handed or an innovation killer. Governments and regulators might also get busy with the $2 Trillion pa that's laundered through the conventional banking system.

They are, it's called AML and compliance. Without it, that figure would be far, far higher. It's also a constant war, as soon as one new detection system is put in place, then fraudsters develop another.. and so on, it's very fluid, requiring constant tweaks, refinements and new controls

All of this will be coming to crypto, and hopefully should reduce crypto fraud/scams/ponzis, which should in turn improve the image and optics of crypto

makeorbrake

For ICO's and ponzi projects, sure - have at it. Those guys are on a circuit in any event. They'll move on to some other scam that hangs off the shirt tails of some other industry the moment they see an opportunity.

Other than that, I hope the crypto ecosystem can muster its way up to a level that makes it workable from within (as the criminals use X, thus anyone that uses X either can't OR they'll be put threw the ringer in doing so I want no part of and there are plenty that feel the same way).

JohnnyFlash

Dohnjoe wrote: »

They are, it's called AML and compliance. Without it, that figure would be far, far higher. It's also a constant war, as soon as one new detection system is put in place, then fraudsters develop another.. and so on, it's very fluid, requiring constant tweaks, refinements and new controls

All of this will be coming to crypto, and hopefully should reduce crypto fraud/scams/ponzis, which should in turn improve the image and optics of crypto

Excellent post. Crypto also won’t move forward while proof of work coins are the norm. Just doesn’t mix with the reality of climate change. That starved looking lad over ethereum should realise he’s sitting at a poker table with a short stack. Time to go all in on proof of stake. See how the cards are dealt. Cause the libertarian woo of the bitcoin maximalists is coming to an end.

Bob24

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Crypto also won’t move forward while proof of work coins are the norm. Just doesn’t mix with the reality of climate change.

A lot of things are way more contradictory with environmental and climate protection and are still easily accepted. See the CETA trade agreement currently being ratified by European parliaments and the one with Mercosur the EC just signed. Instead of eating local food those will facilitate for people to eat the same products but which came for across the world on super polluting container ships ... pretty much no one would argue against the fact that the environmental impact is a disaster, but yet world leaders and their citizens are letting these things go ahead.

Not saying it is good thing to ignore climate change of course, but just stating that in reality there is a lot of hypocrisy around this and it does happen (yesterday in France, the same day the parliament did a big media show about hosting environmental activists, they much mor quietly voted in favour of CETA a few hours later!)

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

Not saying it is good thing to ignore climate change of course, but just stating that in reality there is a lot of hypocrisy around this and it does happen (yesterday in France, the same day the parliament did a big media show about hosting environmental activists, they much more quietly voted in favour of CETA a few hours later!)

You're quite right. Furthermore, if someone examines a specific energy usage and sets off on that investigation with the belief that the product/service/benefit provided by that usage is of no value, those guys will never come to an objective conclusion or recommendation.


To be in the mining game, participants must use the cheapest energy on the planet. The cheapest energy on the planet is renewable and it's renewable energy produced in a place where there isn't a local market for it. i.e. stranded power.

So, if a crypto mining setup designs/funds/runs such a setup - minding their own business, what difference does it make to anyone else?

There are a couple of global exceptions - i.e the use of dirty coal where the coal is cheaper than it would be anywhere else in the world. However, that's just a failure by the authorities. Nice gentle regulation - that specifies the use of stranded renewable power only is all that's required in that instance.

It also offers a great opportunity - to drive innovation. Some have already identified the shed load of fossil fuels that get flared off on oil and gas fields around the world - with zero benefit. Now they're starting to put mining on site to use that energy. The very same with power stations (they waste a shed load of energy - co-location of mining rigs means that power gets used and not wasted.
That's innovative thinking at work. Nobody gets a bit concerned at traditional data centers (which from an energy perspective is exactly the same deal). Nor have they come up with such solutions. The data center industry is learning from crypto mining. That's what happens when you have driven innovation in play.

cnocbui

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

Excellent post. Crypto also won’t move forward while proof of work coins are the norm. Just doesn’t mix with the reality of climate change. That starved looking lad over ethereum should realise he’s sitting at a poker table with a short stack. Time to go all in on proof of stake. See how the cards are dealt. Cause the libertarian woo of the bitcoin maximalists is coming to an end.

Oh not this global warming nonsense. Apple were looking at setting up a huge data centre near Athenry that could have used more energy than Dublin does if it had gone ahead and reached the intended size. The politicians and many others were rubbing their collective hands together with glee, at the prospect.

This climate alarmism is deliberate and deceitful scaremongering by morons with an agenda. These people are blatantly lying when they say it has never been this warm in human history - it was warmer in the medieval warm period - which climate scientists have been caught out trying to erase by altering/lying about the numbers, and it was warmer at the time man first began agriculture.

Even these warm times are nothing compared to past geological epochs, where the CO2 levels and global temperatures have been far higher than at present. The Earth didn't turn into a Venus then and it's not going to do so now. The current average global temperature is about 10-12 °C - 10° is the annual average for Ireland, coincidentally, In the past it's been 20° and the Earth was just seething with life. Oh no, 20°, humans will become extinct, what shall we do? The average annual temperature for Sydney is 20°. Oh no we must stop Irish people from emigrating to Sydney, they won't be able to take the heat, they will all perish!

Dohnjoe

cnocbui wrote: »

This climate alarmism is deliberate and deceitful scaremongering by morons with an agenda. These people are blatantly lying when they say it has never been this warm in human history - it was warmer in the medieval warm period - which climate scientists have been caught out trying to erase by altering/lying about the numbers, and it was warmer at the time man first began agriculture.

Even these warm times are nothing compared to past geological epochs, where the CO2 levels and global temperatures have been far higher than at present. The Earth didn't turn into a Venus then and it's not going to do so now. The current average global temperature is about 10-12 °C - 10° is the annual average for Ireland, coincidentally, In the past it's been 20° and the Earth was just seething with life. Oh no, 20°, humans will become extinct, what shall we do? The average annual temperature for Sydney is 20°. Oh no we must stop Irish people from emigrating to Sydney, they won't be able to take the heat, they will all perish!

Of course there's a climate change denier in here.

stockshares

New U.S. hearings
https://www.coindesk.com/senate-banking-committee-to-hold-hearing-on-crypto-regulation-next-week

New NY crypto division
https://www.dfs.ny.gov/reports_and_publications/press_releases/pr1907231

el diablo

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Of course there's a climate change denier in here.

Man made climate change is a massive hoax and a tax grab. We're actually in the early stage of a grand solar minimum and the planet is entering a cooling cycle. The "97% of scientists concur" line is absolute nonsense. These scientists will lose their funding and be ostracized from their profession if they stray from the official narrative. :rolleyes:

Dohnjoe

el diablo wrote: »

Man made climate change is a massive hoax and a tax grab.

Cool, thanks for sharing your opinion. Not one shared by an overwhelming consensus of world scientists and climatologists obviously, which is why most nations in the world are taking it seriously and taking action - which means that crypto projects that mindlessly consume vast amounts of energy to create artificial scarcity/security may possibly be under threat. Switching to renewable sources is a potential solution (although in my opinion many of these projects are utterly pointless)

All I can say is thank god we spotted the man-made Ozone hole issue before the internet was around to deny it and call it a conspiracy

sabat

el diablo wrote: »

Man made climate change is a massive hoax and a tax grab. We're actually in the early stage of a grand solar minimum and the planet is entering a cooling cycle. The "97% of scientists concur" line is absolute nonsense. These scientists will lose their funding and be ostracized from their profession if they stray from the official narrative. :rolleyes:

Getting very off-topic here but (a) are fossil fuels infinite? (b) is it a good idea to tear open the planet and burn it?

q85dw7osi4lebg

It's not Bitcoins fault that governments run their grid off finite co2 producing resources. Maybe it'll be the exact thing that's needed to encourage the changeover.

vargoo

el diablo wrote: »

Man made climate change is a massive hoax and a tax grab. We're actually in the early stage of a grand solar minimum and the planet is entering a cooling cycle. The "97% of scientists concur" line is absolute nonsense. These scientists will lose their funding and be ostracized from their profession if they stray from the official narrative. :rolleyes:

Fukind hell, how deluded are you!!!?

The amount of scientists that packed it in and moved to new Zealand and the Nordics (feel the affects of climate change the least) over 10 years ago.

One guy did career change and has done 5 years studying wtf is wrong with people that they did nothing in 15 years+ of warnings, actually has some good papers published.

Climate is only going one way, and it isint cooling haha.


Ground the airlines, all of them. Big immediate temp drop after 9/11.

Wrong forum.

el diablo

sabat wrote: »

Getting very off-topic here but (a) are fossil fuels infinite? (b) is it a good idea to tear open the planet and burn it?

Yes, I agree that we need to gradually move away from using fossil fuels.

vargoo wrote: »

Fukind hell, how deluded are you!!!?

The amount of scientists that packed it in and moved to new Zealand and the Nordics (feel the affects of climate change the least) over 10 years ago.

One guy did career change and has done 5 years studying wtf is wrong with people that they did nothing in 15 years+ of warnings, actually has some good papers published.

Climate is only going one way, and it isint cooling haha.


Ground the airlines, all of them. Big immediate temp drop after 9/11.

Wrong forum.

Plenty of misinformation in your post. Just about everything you hear on the mainstream media regarding climate change is absolute horse****. Anyway, I'm not here to convince you. You'll figure it out for yourself in the coming years.

Dohnjoe

el diablo wrote: »

Plenty of misinformation in your post. Just about everything you hear on the mainstream media regarding climate change is absolute horse****. Anyway, I'm not here to convince you. You'll figure it out for yourself in the coming years.

Complete nonsense. Think. There is a near 99% scientific consensus on the issue, and these changes are unprecedented in 2,000 years

Anyway, moving on, it looks like the rumours about Sun were true, he's obviously been rapped by authorities and has issued a public apology

"“My intention of having the lunch with Buffett was because of my admiration for him and my enthusiasm for charity. It was simple, but also with self-interest to promote the blockchain industry and my project. But my immature, naive, and impulsive conducts with my big mouth have turned it into an out-of-control and failed over-marketing hype and led to a significant series of unexpected consequences,”

Bob24

Gerald Obedient Manicurist wrote: »

It's not Bitcoins fault that governments run their grid off finite co2 producing resources. Maybe it'll be the exact thing that's needed to encourage the changeover.

On this, sure renewable energy could be developed quicker (at a cost for taxpayers and likely with diminishing return as rushing a full transition would generate a lot of challengers and likely be more costly than a slower one). But still we are unlikely to have unlimited and 100% clean energy anytime soon. So controlling energy usage is a major part of environmental protection and blaming governments for dirty energy sources is just deflection for any major source of energy consumption not to do its share.

Also, it has to be acknowledged that the economics behind bitcoin do encourage mining in places where electricity is dirty. i.e. if there was no Chinese mining with dirty coil power plants, transaction fees would be higher and less people would transact.

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

So controlling energy usage is a major part of environmental protection and blaming governments for dirty energy sources is just deflection for any major source of energy consumption not to do its share.

Also, it has to be acknowledged that the economics behind bitcoin do encourage mining in places where electricity is dirty. i.e. if there was no Chinese mining with dirty coil power plants, transaction fees would be higher and less people would transact.

Microsoft's data centres are 50% run on renewables. Bitcoin mining right now is at 74%. And yet I don't see these same morons screaming at Microsoft/Amazon/Dell/Apple, etc.


It's not a case of dictating to the chinese what energy they use - nobody is going to dictate sh1t to the chinese in any event.

The economics behind Bitcoin in the majority case drive the use of clean, renewable stranded (or otherwise unused) power. There is a shed tonne of hydro being used for crypto mining in China. Dirty coal in China just happens to be an outlier.

The point is this - simply regulate miners to access stranded renewables and job done.

Bob24

makeorbrake wrote: »

The point is this - simply regulate miners to access stranded renewables and job done.

At which level do you regulate though? (ie if one or more countries don't care about clear energy as cheap coal gets them all the mining, what do you do?)

makeorbrake

Bob24 wrote: »

At which level do you regulate though? (ie if one or more countries don't care about clear energy as cheap coal gets them all the mining, what do you do?)

This is the Chinese - they're big and bold enough to ban what they like - and it seems as is their wayward strategy with everything crypto, they're going to bring in a blanket ban. But thats fine. There's plenty of other parts of the world where stranded renewables can be exploited. Chinese based miners have been slowly moving abroad anyway over the past 18 months.


It may not be as easy to ban crypto trading but mining - its possible - as there's a physical location and mining kit worth thousands at risk. This doesn't have to be rocket science. What does have to happen is a healthy approach to the topic.

Bob24

makeorbrake wrote: »

This is the Chinese - they're big and bold enough to ban what they like - and it seems as is their wayward strategy with everything crypto, they're going to bring in a blanket ban. But thats fine. There's plenty of other parts of the world where stranded renewables can be exploited. Chinese based miners have been slowly moving abroad anyway over the past 18 months.


It may not be as easy to ban crypto trading but mining - its possible - as there's a physical location and mining kit worth thousands at risk. This doesn't have to be rocket science. What does have to happen is a healthy approach to the topic.

Miners will operate wherever is the most profitable. So if a country (China or another one) decides that it's OK to favour dirt and cheap energy to make some quick bucks on crypto, miners will pop-up in that country. I don't think this is in China's plans actually (the government probably sees better use than crypto-mining for its energy and is trying to get cleaner), but I think this is an inherent challenge with a decentralised infrastructure like bitcoin. Besides making a list of dirty countries/miners and banning them from the network, there isn't really any way to control which type of energy is used to do the mining work (if individual countries introduce environmental regulations which make mining less profitable than in less regulated places, miners will just move location).

Dohnjoe

It seems more to do with cryptos consuming vast amounts of energy while not doing much in return for that energy use. In a perfect world with 100% renewables, it wouldn't be an issue, but we aren't there yet

At the moment fiat consumes a vast amount of energy, but that's validated by the fact it's an essential service. Crypto is largely a superfluous service (for now)

cnocbui

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Complete nonsense. Think. There is a near 99% scientific consensus on the issue, and these changes are unprecedented in 2,000 years

Anyway, moving on...

This is how the climate liars are operating - 'it hasn't been this warm for x period of time' - leaving out the fact the temperature record clearly shows that if you go further back to get a bigger picture, nothing happening now looks in the least bit out of the ordinary, and given the obvious pattern, it's actually to be expected:

Temperature estimates relative to today from over 800,000 years of the EPICA ice cores in Antarctica. Today's date is on the right side of the graph.

EPICA being the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica.

You see those dips - those are ice ages. If you think a bit of warming is a threat to humanities comfortable existence, you are wrong. A metre or two of sea level rise is absolutely nothing compared to a 4 km thick slab of ice covering and crushing most of Europe. Look at the periodicity in that chart - guess what? We are overdue the next ice age. What happens just before an ice age?

If CO2 causes warming - can you explain who exactly was burning enough fossil fuels in the multiple previous interglacials to cause those temperature rises. Of course, maybe something else causes it rather than the minuscule 0.28% that humans contribute to global warming via the greenhouse effect.

By the way, the scientific consensus isn't 99%.

In the strict sense, the 97% consensus is false, even when limited to climate scientists. The 2016 Cook review found the consensus to be “shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists.” One survey found it to be 84%. Continuing to claim 97% support is deceptive. I find the 97% consensus of climate scientists to be overstated.

And that's among climate scientists, not scientists in general. The claim really falls apart when you look at scientist in general:

Survey: Most Scientists Skeptical of Global Warming Crisis

Published on December 18, 2016

Written by James Taylor

It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem. globe

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

https://principia-scientific.org/survey-scientist-skeptical-global-warming-crisis/

Dohnjoe

cnocbui wrote: »

This is how the climate liars are operating

It's how denialists work. Regardless of subject, they use the same convoluted technique over and over, distorting reports, leaving out context, highlighting weak studies, ignoring stronger studies, ignoring the consensus, highlighting isolated experts/cranks/woo doctors over the consensus, unrecognised internet pseudo-scientific blogs over recognised scientific organisations, playing endless games with semantics, numbers

On the internet, any crank can deny anything, which is why we have 300 page vaccine denial threads, climate denial threads, even holocaust denial threads - same bull**** over and over

So if someones thinks that vaccines are a conspiracy or that man-made climate change isn't happening, that's cool. It's utter nonsense of course, but it's cool.

So yeah, anyhow, way off topic, moving swiftly along

q85dw7osi4lebg

There have always been ice ages and hotter periods. Always will be. Some will be influenced by man, others not.


Can we please move along...