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

makeorbrake wrote: »

Not sure how a government agency is going to get at them though ..with them being based in the BVA...??
However, it couldn't happen soon enough.

THis is another video. Not as good, and a bit more opinionated, but does a reasonable job of explaining the Tether ticking timebomb in more detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IbdzvXl0OU

As for how they get shutdown - I don't really know. I do know Tether and Bitfinex were subpoenaed in late Jan. And the US authorities have been able to shutdown sites based in other jurisdictions before: Silk Road was in Iceland, and BTC-E was in Russia.

Binance is shilling the shít out of the crypto forums on reddit, but I'd be very worried about them as well. They aren't a FIAT gateway, but are using Tether as a pairing option. Massively so. Where's their liquidity?

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#markets

ballyharpat wrote: »

i can send money a lot faster than Bitcoin, I would have to have a btc account, they would have to have a bitcoin account, then it would have to be transferred to cash or a bank account if they actually wanted to do something other than buy more crypto.

I can use western union, I can send cash from my bank account up to e1000 directly from a bank machine, I can do an intrabank transfer and it's there instantly, or in one business day for an international transfer.

Not sure what the point is?

I don't think Bitcoin was ever meant to be a Western Union replacement.

Ripple would probably be aiming at that, but of course it is something new and won't have the same physical network.

ballyharpat wrote: »

i can send money a lot faster than Bitcoin, I would have to have a btc account, they would have to have a bitcoin account, then it would have to be transferred to cash or a bank account if they actually wanted to do something other than buy more crypto.

I can use western union, I can send cash from my bank account up to e1000 directly from a bank machine, I can do an intrabank transfer and it's there instantly, or in one business day for an international transfer.

Everything has to start somewhere. As regards a btc 'account', well it depends. If it's someone who wants to use bitcoin, then all they need is a bitcoin address. You can set one of those up in 2 minutes flat. If you want to exchange it to FIAT, then of course you need another account. In the FIAT based world, you need to set up similar accounts. It's a question of the infrastructure being built out and refined so that it's user friendly enough for the consumer.
Fees and transaction times need to be improved - so that you have near instant transfers for a few cents. Western Union (when you include their FX fees!) charge a hell of a lot for their service. I'd love to see this disrupted - as I'm sure would half the planet who depend on WU to send money earned in western countries back to their home country. This is already being disrupted in the Philippines through bitcoin based startup - rebit.ph . $27 billion in remittances were sent to the philippines alone in 2016.

Bob24 wrote: »

I don't think Bitcoin was ever meant to be a Western Union replacement.

I disagree. I think that bitcoin (or similar crytpo) is ideal to disrupt Western Union.

Bob24 wrote: »

Ripple would probably be aiming at that, but of course it is something new and won't have the same physical network.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that Ripple was aimed at inter-bank transfers?

makeorbrake wrote: »

I disagree. I think that bitcoin (or similar crytpo) is ideal to disrupt Western Union.

I was specifically talking about Bitcoin which seems too slow and too costly (an not environmental friendly) to process transactions. Not saying crypto technology in general has not potential in that space. I guess Bitcoin was really meant as an experiment for a digital payment method, but failed at that while being hugely successful at becoming a digital store of value (and speculative asset). It was a nice POC but will probably be superseded by better implementations of the concept once the hype is gone and real solutions with practical uses are emerging while 95% of what was hyped-up before gets forgotten.

makeorbrake wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that Ripple was aimed at inter-bank transfers?

Yeah I was unclear. They are aiming at delivering a payment network which optimises fund transfers for banks but also payment providers. So it could be used as a backbone for a Western Union type of service (Western Union are actually experimenting with Ripple and I think there is a Mexican cross border micropayment provider which is live with Ripple solutions). They also developed a payment app with Japanese banks to but in their customers hands. So I guess they are not directly going to the end-user as Ripple, but they are still aiming at that end-user using Ripple technology to transfer money through their partners.

Bob24 wrote: »

Agree wit you to say bitcoin is currently not suited for replacing Western Union type of transfers. But it doesn't mean you can conclude that cryptocurrency technology has no potential to ever disrupt it.

Well, we're more or less on the same page. However, I think bitcoin is not out of the game yet. Transaction times and fees are coming back down again. Furthermore, if Lightning Network fulfils its potential, then it very much is ideally suited to the remittance market.

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

40 minute video, but a wonderful overview of Bitconnect, Tether, Tron, altcoins, and the December madness. Well worth a watch.



https://youtu.be/5KXHgh2rTTw

The first 10 minutes are all about the Bitconnect, a classic Ponzi and advertised as such. Anybody dumb enough to put money into that doesn't deserve much sympathy.

Is this getting any more interesting or am I just wasting my time watching this?

unkel wrote: »

The first 10 minutes are all about the Bitconnect, a classic Ponzi and advertised as such. Anybody dumb enough to put money into that doesn't deserve much sympathy.

Is this getting any more interesting or am I just wasting my time watching this?

Huge insights. He tells you all about Tether and wait for it, he tells you how Tron was hyped up and hugely overvalued. You are missing out :pac:

unkel wrote: »

Watched it. Waste of time unless you really, really know absolutely nothing about crypto currencies (and I know very little myself) and are a person easily led on by get rich quick schemes.



+1

On a micro level, I've just installed some solar PV that will largely power (during daylight hours) the one mining rig I intend to keep long term. During night time hours, a lot of Irish electricity generation is renewable already (wind)

On a national level, many countries, including Ireland, can become 100% renewable electricity within years (rather than decades) with relatively small investments involved (and preventing Ireland to pay massive fines for exceeding our agreed emissions)

Where you getting your electricity knowledge? Seems well wide of the mark. Sadly our renewables usage is good awful. Requires mammoth investment and we're not presently investing.

Not wanting to take this too far off topic, but have a look at the Renewable Energy forum. The amount of commercial solar PV alone ready to go in is staggering. Scotland (of all places) aim to be 100% renewable electricity in 2020 (they won't make it but they're not a million miles away).

@Johnnyflash : Didn't think I'd be saying this but your more recent contributions have been informative. People are not averse to discussing the bad in crypto as much as the good if it's constructive.

I've made a fair wedge out of crypto but not in it right now as I've major concerns re. the tether timebomb. I might reconsider if this has been properly dealt with.

lifeandtimes wrote: »

The advantages when it takes hold (and it will) are huge and it take 10 minutes to sign up somewhere now, gets wallet, buy a coin with fiat (at this point in time) and send it

This is a big part of it. Signing up for a bank account in a different country or even in Ireland can be laborious. People sometimes don't have the required documentation to open one especially if they are renting (2 bills in your name etc etc)

Plus the monthly fees, service charges from the banks etc etc

Banks will still be needed for mortgages and loans though unless there's a Crypto lending platform out there.

seannash wrote: »

I get it but I'm not talking about ditching blockchain technology.
Iota for example doesn't rely on miners to update the blockchain. Any partnerships with Iota will no doubt be paying them in Fiat.
The ICO raised vast amounts of Ethereum and Bitcoin which they no doubt turned into Fiat to pay for the associated bills in starting up a business.

IOTA isnt a great example as it's not a typical tokenised blockchain project at all - they were raising funds for their own idea (similar to ETH's ICO using BTC), they aren't and weren't ever going to use ETH as the base platform. This is what the majority of ICOs are doing with an option of transferring to a competing blockchain should it suit the token's needs better.
Also, IOTA is aimed towards nano-transactions and a huge volume of them from a colossal base of devices but has yet to figure out how to decentralise itself using outside nodes without introducing spam tx attacks from bad actors who might want to harm IOTA's network. If they manage to do this it will be very impressive.
The IOTA Foundation sells portions of their supply (~5% of total supply so ~$180m worth in the coffers at today's prices ) to sustain itself.
According to IOTA their developers are so far choosing to be paid in IOTA.
They're likely already crypto-rich - these are blockchain and cryptography devs with years of experience behind them so they'll hold IOTA until it reaches wherever they think it could go, which might be a decade-or-more-long gameplan so beyond using the recent Bosch buy-in for standard business costs there isn't as much fiat introduced as you may imagine.

TL;DR - most tokens are not launching their own base platform. You've chosen one of very very few quasi-blockchain cryptos.

seannash wrote: »

Playing devils advocate here but what do they need the community for. (This is a genuine question, I'd like to know) Yes I know it will do their reputation damage but I'm sure they can and may strike contracts with logistics and Pharma company's that wont be high profile and fly under the radar.

What is the community comprised of? How does the token's economy work?
Let's take BEE as an example - they want an Airbnb type system where the company's smart contract essentially acts as an escrow between two parties until both parties conclude the transaction, at which point the full amount in the contract heads to the host. If hosts cancel with short notice a portion of their escrow heads to the renter.
Where will that token be without it's participants? Nowhere. It may die. If it gets used, it may not.
Another great example of a utility token is NMR (I say this all the time when uttering it's name but seriously, don't buy - bad for speculators until they hit near-Kaggle size).
Data scientists either have to buy or win NMR in order for the chance to stake their NMR on their data models (for a hedge fund) in order to win more NMR (X amount of a pool of funds that scales upwards with amount won determined by accuracy of the model when applied to the live market).
Where would that token be without it's users? Dead. Absolutely demolished, it wouldn't exist at all if data scientists weren't buying and selling it or if the hedge fund wasn't smartly brain-draining other hedge funds of their talent.

This is one of the important aspects of any project - does the token have a use-case without which the job could not be done or without which the job would be much more expensive to get done?
Again, looking at NMR - they're benefitting from data scientists/quants from other companies doing complex work for them in the guise of a competition. An average hedge fund typically has a small-ish team working on their algos for trading, NMR has thousands with a potential for tens of thousands and they get to skim the cream of the best results from the best scientists and reward them.
How would they gain that benefit as easily if they didn't tokenise it? How would their market work without a token and thus without their users, methods of production, creators of value?

I dunno, it sounds like you don't really "get" utility tokens. It'll click for you at some point, but you have to stop thinking of companies strictly as dividend sharing endeavours who need to screw over their users to protect shareholders.

While company shares can be tokenised and allow much more fluidity, token economies add another layer altogether.

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

I'd also question how blockchain can be used in any sort of IoT rollout in its current form. IoT devices are designed to be low power (up to 10 years on a watch battery), and to transmit tiny pieces of data using ultra narrowband networks. Certainly not able to hold a copy of a distributed ledger.

IoT devices won't need to store whole blockchains, they'll just need to interact with one.

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

To be honest; I'm even sceptical about the practicalities of using blockchain in obvious use-cases like banking, insurance, and utilities. Just not seeing it at the moment. I'd be more interested in sticking some cash into Microsoft shares to be honest. What those fúckers are doing with their Azure cloud is truly exciting.

I'd love to hear WHY you're sceptical, as opposed simply hearing that you are for...reasons.

Agreed about Azure, sher just look at some of the things that will be allowed thanks to Azure and... Oh, what's this? Blockchain?

Very sharp drop in value for all cryptos in the past week btw. Another few days like this and everything which was regained since the early Feb bottom will have been lost again.

seannash wrote: »

I do, but perhaps the crypto's I'm interesrted in dont conform to the standard but telling me that Iota doesn't apply to you're view is exactly like me telling you your examples dont apply to mine. Shipchain and Medicalchain are others I'm very interested in but falls into the same category as Iota. They have a token as well.

What if Numeraire paid the data analysts in Litecoin. Is there own token rendered useless?
I understand that they are still being paid with a crypto but the community is vital for Litecoin to function due to mining.

Shipchain and Medicalchain are much closer to what happens with Ethereum, they'll allow multi-faceted contracts with each facet having different push-pull effects on their token's economy and thus pricing.
IOTA as a token is (currently) dumb, the platform is smart but (currently) limited in scope and isn't decentralised and therefore lacks the element of trust. It'll evolve beyond, it just hasn't yet.

Numeraire: it wouldn't be rendered completely useless, just much less useful. Back when the token wasn't ERC20 the data scientists had to form their own OTC trading channels to trade and it was just for staking in order to win BTC, as an ERC20 it's available on multiple exchanges, easily integrated by exchanges at their behest or by others to decentralised exchanges, and programmable within the confines of Numer.ai and Ethereum's ecosystem for reward, payment and staking mechanics or integration with the Numer.ai API so data can be fed from their server to a data scientist's programmable bot which can interact directly and appropriately with the smart contract without having to do lots of busywork.
Parts of it's current functionality could have been mimicked by a standard database but that would require more upkeep and push more cost onto the fund than the current setup, interoperability with other ETH projects would have been much more difficult, at least up until the point Wanchain or Kyber or OmiseDEX are all up and running. Even then, that would have been less elegant/tailored-to-purpose and opens the whole rigamarole up to more points of failure.

Most tokens aren't planning to be their own chains, so it is a little unfair to include those new contenders as they're not typical of a standard blockchain startup's utility token which is what you were discussing re: a utility token startup abandoning their token or rendering it worthless by abandoning their users while still having extracted value from them and somehow still using blockchain for their service (how? Why? A private blockchain? Instantly untrustworthy and insecure so only works if the nodes are set up between companies who already trust eachother - in which case they should share a database). Expand on those points for me, I'm always hearing of scepticism but never a sounding out of why and how a company would do this considering the inherent risks.
Any startup that does this would/should be considered a scamcoin (i.e. sells token claiming X use in Y blockchain, backtracks and makes deals which divorce the token from it's own economy, but somehow still uses Y blockchain with their token while rendering it valueless?)