• rigatti@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Ah, so that’s why bitcoin spiked out of nowhere. All the grifters passed around some inside information and stocked up before this went public.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Hey, constituents! Ever wanted to find out the breaking point of society through inequality?

  • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    If we want to have some sort of strategic crypto reserve, or some crypto dollar currency, why the Hell would we buy Bitcoin to do it? We can just whip up our own coin. Flat out call it CryptoDollars if you want. IDK. The federal government can create a coin, give it out to people for free, and then in turn accept it for taxes, the same way any currency is backed. Buying up existing market Bitcoin is just idiotic.

    • fluxion@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Because it’s not tied to whatever shitcoin Trump and Musk are trying to pump and dump

  • DickFiasco@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    If you have a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin but you can’t sell it for a billion dollars, then you really don’t have a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin.

    • Breve@pawb.social
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      1 month ago

      Yup, and it only takes one whale trying to cash out too much to cause a run on the market.

      • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        One whale isn’t going to be able to cause a run on a $2T market cap.

        Bitcoin has absorbed the liquidation of the remaining assets from an entire defunct exchange before.

        • Breve@pawb.social
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          1 month ago

          Market cap isn’t liquidity. There’s only a few billion dollars of Bitcoin on offer at any given point so dumping another few billion into the market all at once would cause an enormous swing in price. The market may absorb it quickly enough for the price to recover, but it could also trigger panic selling which lowers the price further, which causes more panic selling… and voila there’s your run. It wouldn’t destroy Bitcoin, but the price could take a very long time to recover if it does at all.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Agreed. I’ve been hearing that Bitcoin is going to all come crashing down for at least 14 years, possibly 15. I suppose it still could happen - but.

  • Roopappy@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    North Korea has stolen many billions of dollars in Bitcoin in the last 5 years due to targeting hacking efforts. However, they struggle to spend it or launder it because nobody will be the ones left holding stolen NK Bitcoin.

    If we make Bitcoin strong and fungible, we empower North Korea more than anyone else. It’s a bad idea.

  • adarza@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    would literally be funding terrorists, terrorist states, organized crime, state sponsored hacking groups, weapons dealers, drug cartels…

  • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The only thing worse than big corporations owning the government is big corporations and con artists sharing ownership in the government.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Coincidentally, it is rumored that Satoshi holds a little over a million Bitcoin that has never moved, from the project’s early days when it was worth a fraction of a cent and he was the only one mining it, earning 50 worthless BTC every 10 minutes. It’s been widely assumed that those early Bitcoin wallets are lost. But what if they’re not? Someone is sitting on billions of dollars, but can’t sell, because that valuation is based, in part, on those particular assets being lost.

    The article is right that this is all about banking out the largest BTC investors, because they can’t just go to the markets and dump thousands of BTC at once. But they can sell that BTC directly to the Government, bypassing the markets entirely. The same government who can keep the BTC on the balance sheet, and print dollars in exchange. Just like Tether does, only legally this time. And if Satoshi (or his heirs) still have access to that early BTC, the Government is perhaps the only entity they can sell it to that won’t cause a massive panic the minute those coins are moved on the blockchain.

    But the article notes that Bitcoin was born out of a distrust of central banking and the Government in general. If this is the plan, I am sure that Satoshi is spinning in Hal Finney’s grave over it.

    • Webster@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Here’s the thing … if there aren’t buyers enough to maintain the price, the paper value isn’t correct. This is an artifical scarcity, and this bill would be a bail out to the rich and leave the US taxpayers holding the bag when the market crashes. The US taxpayers would then own all this bitcoin with no way to sell without crashing the market so it’s just a direct transfer of wealth to the current holders.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Bitcoin does have artificial scarcity, though. There can only ever be 21 million in existence under the current protocol. Nearly 20 million have been released through mining, so there are only a little over 1 million left to mine. (There’s that number again…)

        Yes, Bitcoin is an open-source project and anyone can modify the code, but the network operates based on all the mining nodes accepting the same rules. If I were to run a node that changes the rules to mine more BTC out of thin air than the protocol allows, other nodes would just reject it. Changing the 21 million limit would involve getting all these miners to decide to change that code, and why would they do that, when it would dilute the coins they have already mined?

        I agree with you, though, that it is too risky for the US Government to keep BTC in reserve. It’s price widely fluctuates, it has reached $100k but is probably going to be valued at less then $50k at some point in Trump’s term. It will also be valued at more than $200k at some point during Trump’s term. Speculators are betting on which will come first. The US Government shouldn’t be involved at all.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Yeah, this is ALL about the grifting.

    The rubes voted for donvict hoping he’ll “hurt the right people” and he may. But the REAL fucking goal is to make the broligarchs even more fucking money and the rubes - they’ll get fucked as much as anyone.

  • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Thats an odd way of saying the government will buy and hold crypto, theyve stolen as much from bitoin pioneers like Ross Ulbricht, about time they start actually paying for it.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Just wait until the Divorced Fascist Trenchcoat Buddy Association department of government “efficiency” hears about this…

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I drove past a really sketchy Circle K earlier today that had a Bitcoin ATM sign. Looked like the sort of place where someone would stick a gun to the back of your head and force you to make a large cash withdrawal.