Slashdot Mirror
Wolf of Wall Street: Cryptocurrency ICOs Are 'the Biggest Scam Ever' (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Jordan Belfort -- the real-life Wolf of Wall Street -- has warned that ICOs (or "token sales" or "coin sales") are "the biggest scam ever" and will "blow up in so many people's faces." The former stockbroker, who spent nearly two years in prison for fraud and financial scams, says that the Initial Coin Offerings used to raise money for cryptocurrencies are "far worse than anything I was ever doing." His fears seem to stem from the way ICOs differ from the more traditional IPO. With IPOs investors gain shares in whatever company they plough money into, and profits can be easily shared. With ICOs, however, there is no mechanism in place for distributing any profits that may be made, profits are reliant on the value of a given cryptocurrency increasing and, perhaps more worrying, ICOs are not regulated in the way IPOs are. Aside from the fact that some ICOs are out-and-out scams, many people believe that the cryptocurrency bubble is just that -- a currently growing bubble that will eventually pop, leading many people to lose out.
I love this guy!!!
Seems like there are a very few worth currencies and the rest are Me-Too currencies that are only out there for pump and dump.
Really the only worthwhile currencies are those that you can use with a legit bank or a retail store. Anything else, buyer beware.
A crypto currency is a very convenient way to store and move money. Banks will charge 5% or more to convert your money from one currency to another and wire transfers are a pain and usually cost $10. Other money transfers often come with 1 or 2% fees and banks in some countries are corrupt and incompetent. Crypto currencies could replace a good portion of M2 since they work better than most traditional money. M2 world wide is equivalent to almost 30 Trillion USD. One day one crypto currency will likely approach this amount.
ICOs are a scam. They replace shares but are inferior in almost every way except they by-pass the traditional stock markets. (I suppose some conspiracy people might think this is a good idea). ICOs also don't allow high frequency trading since trades can only take place as fast as blocks are added to the block chain and buried to a sufficient depth to be trusted.
Not all crypto currencies are created equal but common sense hints that most of them will certainly pop because obscurity will kill them: 1192 are far too many.
and everyone's trying to get onboard. Is this surprising to anyone that these are popping up in this current form after Bitcoins are soaring in value for some fucking reason?
I tend to rant.
Eventually everything will pop: you, me, the planet Earth, the solar system and probably the universe itself. And no matter what Wallstreet proclaims there are no risk free investments in this world. None.
They just hate Bitcoin because they don't understand it, yet they hate to miss the boat, yet they are afraid to embark on it.
Look, if this fella had bought several Bitcoin at $117 or better, he'd be singing a different tune, the opposite of what he's talking about I guarantee.
Because a scammer knows a scam when he sees one.
Why should we listen to you instead? What are your accomplishments?
Just like in 2000-2003 values will drop, some companies will go Chapter 11, etc. But most of the companies listed have real profits and if you choose wisely and hold until dividends or a merger you will make profits.
If anyone was aware of the history of Wall Street would know that the stock market was a criminal activity to begin with.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
He's 100% correct.
ICOs and their older siblings "premines" are a true mark of bullshit. When the Ethereum bubble pops, almost every single altcoin (i.e., all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin) will crash and burn overnight. In the Bitcoin world, currencies with a significant premine were universally known as scam coins. In essence, the creators of the currency decided to print themselves tons of free currency before opening the doors to the public. ICOs are a similar deal. It's like buying stock in a company that doesn't exist. Most commonly, they're an extension of Ethereum and are a mountain of nothing, pegged to nothing, and sold for real money or Ethereum (which is quickly sold for real money).
Setting up your own ICO for some token running in Ethereum (along with a shitty site that does nothing but let you send those tokens to other idiots in the ICO) is a turnkey operation, which is why they're so prevalent.
I have no criminal history and I have been in the information security industry for over 30 years, and I'm telling you the exact same thing.
Sure, ICOs are scams, but they aren't any worse than an established company that doesn't pay dividends on their stock.
I've heard the arguments for Bitcoin and against. In theory, Bitcoin has no controls on it and is suppose to be allow you to make anonymous transactions. Which is curious because our normal physical currency was essentially like that at some point too but as society grew up it became more regulated and stable to try to help people. Then when that illusion blew up multiple times due to scams, fraud and use for mostly illegal activities, the other massive argument was there was a lot of money to be made. Usually in life if there's a lot of money to be made there's a lot to be lost as well. Money isn't magic, there needs to be some give and take. My opinion is if you want to gamble your assets on Bitcoin, go for it but realize at the same time that it could just as easily blow up in your face and when it does there's no one to provide any sense of a safety net because that's what you're going for. I won't touch it for that reason but there are many that will.
./ has always been at the forefront of new technologies, and now crypto currencies get all the flak from the ./ crowd. Weird. And Bitcoin has been here since ... 2009, so for over 8 years already and it shows no signs of slowing down or dying.
It's kinda sad to see ./ falling victim to almost daily assaults on Bitcoins validity and future. I guess many people here are upset that they didn't invest in Bitcoin when it was sold for pennies and they hate it. I didn't buy it when it cost that little back then but I'm pretty calm about it and I won't shout at the top of my lungs that it's a bubble or a Ponzi scheme. It has its place in this world and it has proven its utility.
It's not the technology that makes it a scam, but the economics behind it. He's mostly pointing out the issues with ICOs: no oversight, no"coinholder" rights, and no regulations, which make them a powerful magnet for all manner of scammers.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
That money should be sunk into R&D. Chasing tulips may be popular, but for long term gains, being being able to be steps ahead in research, even if it is stuff that sits on a shelf for decades, will ensure things go well in the long term, regardless of the fickleness of the market.
I got a message on social media from a long time friend. We've been friends since elementary school. He's an educated man but somehow, someone got their hooks into him with regards to some new crypto coin offering. He was trying to convince me to go all in on it with him. I'm sure that he believes in this. I hope I'm wrong about it but the whole deal doesn't smell right.
The website he directed me to visit for more information consisted of a hosted blog page that was exceptionally light on details of the crypto, the infrastructure and the people behind it.
Crypto coins seem to be becoming the MLM of the next decade.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
When you want to learn about serial killers, you ask the fucking serial killers.
On the other hand (to stretch your analogy a bit)... if the serial killer says, "Oh, the best way to understand serial killers is to drive to this address tonight at midnight, but don't tell anybody that you're going there, or bring a phone, and definitely come alone" you should be suspicious.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Usually the MORE the number prominent and influential people you see calling something a bubble; the less-likely it is to be a bubble, or the more likely it is to be limited in size or impact. All the major bubbles that wound up exploding and being serious calamities were NOT widely being called bubbles until after the pop, at least not by popular figures --- For example, the housing bubble and calamotous crash that nobody really predicted, although many people later made non-credible claims of having guessed: you can tell they didn't predict it because they didn't financially bet on it imploding.
Popular figures calling things bubbles causes investors and potential investors to become more apprehensive and cautious..... that's probably the case with some ICOs. I agree that many other ICOs are likely to be scams, but that doesn't necessarily mean the whole system is a bubble.
^^ THIS.
Main St. built America.
Wall St. robbed it.
Exactly.
There's nothing wrong with blockchain technology being used in public share offerings. In fact, ICOs could eventually become a replacement for current equity funding methods.
But as practiced today, they are totally scammy. Unlike stock offerings, coin offerings are almost completely unregulated- owning a coin doesn't confer any rights or protections to the owner akin to share offerings. They have a lot of appeal to the entity making the offering, but I don't see what they offer to the investor. They are like a penny stock offering, but without the protections of SEC oversight and a bunch of tech smoke and mirrors to attempt to make up for that.
Gold does have innate value. It is a rare metal with many desirable qualities. An excellent conductor, does not oxidize. Satellites use a bunch of it. That computer your using to put in the above comment uses a trivial amount of it. Certain other electronics use it. We could also be talking about platinum or palladium or any number of other rare metals. Even the copper penny ain't so much copper any more because the value of the penny melted down (assuming pure copper) is worth more than than a penny. Silver also is now not used in coinage because the innate value exceeds the value of the coin.
I have zero sympathy, especially given the amount of warning these people have had.
Agreed. I was fairly warned that Bitcoins were overpriced when they reached $1, again at $100, again at $1000, and finally when they recently crossed the $5000 mark. I have no problem with your lack of sympathy for my predicament.
Clearly statements made from ignorance, and also why is anyone listening to one of the biggest criminals in history?
At my previous place of employment my (paper) cheques were made by that guy's company who knew a thing or two about cheque counterfeiting...
Just saying, and great movie (and book) too!
Paul B.
they mean value besides the currency. Gold has 'innate' value because gold is in and of itself valuable. Yes, that's probably not the strict definition of 'innate' but it's understood to be what people mean.
Air isn't valuable in that fashion not because it lacks value because it's too common. If gold were as common as dirt it would lose much of it's innate value.
The value of a currency is determined not by what people pay for it per se but what you can buy with it. The 'Big Mac Index' comes to mind here. We moved to fiat currencies because our economy out grew the gold standard. We had more economic activity than we had gold to back it. It was holding us back.
The price of bitcoin is largely based on what you can buy with it. It just so happens what you buy is kinda shady. Drugs, ransomware payments, money laundering, gambling, etc are driving up bitcoin's value. This works because those things have very little cost but a high value because they're illegal. This is true for all the big crypto currencies.
Basically, the price of bitcoin will drop when the thing underpinning it drops. Just like Zimbabwe saw hyper inflation when their country went to hell you'll get the same thing with bitcoin (but in reverse since you can't just print more). The underpinning is basically crime. Eventually the government will crack down and that'll be that. Or worse they'll legalize drugs and gambling. Either way bitcoin's days are numbered.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Substitute "technology" for physical and unique coins. Has anything changed? No.
also why is anyone listening to one of the biggest criminals in history
This is anti-intellectualism. One of the biggest criminals in history certainly qualifies as an "expert in the field".
which is probably the actual point.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What's truly sick is that this shithead continues to profit off of the misery that he caused an untold number of poor and working class folks hoping to make better lives for themselves. The fine that he has to pay is merely peanuts when compared with the sums of money he stole.
Bitcoin and its associated ilk are going to come back and chomp some people in the ass. It's one big giant bubble and when it bursts, who knows what financial ruin will face us.
Substitute "technology" for physical and unique coins. Has anything changed? No.
also why is anyone listening to one of the biggest criminals in history
This is anti-intellectualism. One of the biggest criminals in history certainly qualifies as an "expert in the field".
Well Sherlock, Bellfort had to know what he was doing in order to create such an elaborate and productive swindle so do us all a favor and don't quit your day job.
Invest in the stock market, and you become a fractional shareholder in a real company. If the company does well, you do well, it's joint ownership. Invest in a cryptocoin, then you're not really "investing", but you're speculating, gambling, etc.
Says a guy who can't figure out how to log in to Slashdot. I know that it doesn't matter if a criminal or "non-criminal" says it ... neither of you knows the answer and are just as far off base as anyone who says the opposite. Time will tell, and ONLY time will tell.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Agreed. I was fairly warned that Bitcoins were overpriced when they reached $1, again at $100, again at $1000, and finally when they recently crossed the $5000 mark. I have no problem with your lack of sympathy for my predicament.
Agreed. I have a shulker chest with three and a half stacks of diamond blocks, inside an ender chest. I have no problem with anyone's lack of sympathy for my predicament.
Deflationary means that the prices of goods and services go down because the relative value of the money goes up, based on scarcity. Just like it did before the great depression, when USA had a gold-backed currency.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Some of the ICO offering are a bubble. Which ones? What proportion? All???? Are you sure?
Nobody should invest anything in an ICO that they can't afford to lose. Everyone should realize it's a gamble with no insurance. This doesn't mean it's a bad bet, you need to estimate the probabilities and your risk tolerance. And realize that it's an estimate.
P.S.: This comment about estimating risk definitely applies to bitcoins. I consider them riskier than a stock index fund, but I couldn't quantify how much riskier, and they've got a large potential payoff. But at some point they'll crash.
That said, at one point the Senate of Rome printed some "paper money". (Well, OK, officially issued counterfeit money.) Soon afterwards it lost most of it's value, but today if you could find any it would be worth quite a lot. So would an authentic blue triangle stamp. And the number of plausibly generated bitcoins is limited. That they're currently being mined using "other peoples computers/electricity" may indicate that we've passed a point of inflection.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's chump change. I have two diamond stacks in each of the 25+ ender chests I have scattered around my world.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Invest in a cryptocoin, then you're not really "investing", but you're speculating, gambling, etc.
Speaking as a hodler of coins, I agree -- it is speculation. I make no bones about that. I put in what I could afford to lose, and I know I might lose it all.
That said, if I'm honest, the stock market is pretty speculative in its own right. Maybe worse.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
At some point, people will realize that they're worth more in the future than at the present time and you won't be able to make use of any of them because nobody is willing to sell.
At some point people will realize that USD is inflationary, and you won't be able to make use of it, because noone will be willing to accept it.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
That depends on the kind of investment you make. If you actually buy stock in a company, you don't have any really tangible value. If you don't own more than, say, 5% of the stock you have no effective control, and people have no real reason to pay you anything for your stock...unless it's part of a package where you are combined with other minor investors.
If you buy shares in an index fund your connection is even less tangible. It's *there*, but it doesn't give you any leverage. All you can do is sell out or collect dividends (if there are any).
That said, the time averaged value of an investment in the stock market has, thus far, been better than most other investments. But that's only on an average, and there are lots and lots of particular cases where it didn't work that way at all, at all.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It's one big giant bubble and when it bursts, who knows what financial ruin will face us.
That's what people were saying when XBT first reached $1,000 back in December 2013. Nothing to worry about at all.
Bubbles only really happen when people buy things with little to no intrinsic value for purely speculative reasons. If this were really a bubble you would have a sensational rise in price of XBT. What's more the price would have been largely unresponsive to news of increasing moves to regulate or outright ban it by various governments around the world.
So yeah, just go ahead and plow all your life-savings into XBT ... it's as safe as silver!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Sure, they can work if they stay reasonably stable, because there actually is real work necessary to produce more "coins" and they can be used for other purposes than speculation. But as soon as the value fluctuates wildly (as Bitcoin does at the moment), they become unusable for anything except speculation and then they turn into a game of chicken and will eventually crash, just like a pyramid-scheme does.
The main reason to back a currency (or stocks) with something solid is to prevent wild fluctuations and to make it something that can be used to store value and to exchange in trade.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are mistaken, because minor shareholders don't have any meaningful say in how that company is run
Not relevant: OP's point was not about control, but about the fact that equities give you a legal share in tangible property.
If I understand OP's argument correctly, what is being said is that a crypto-coin, being devoid of intrinsic value, cannot properly be called an 'investment.'
of the economy by talking your way through it; even without the backing of a course in economics. Those sorts of discussions are the bedrock of a democracy. To your point, it would be nice if folks were better educated. But it's tough to get people (read: voters) willing to pay for it. We've been cutting education for 30 years straight. There are consequences for that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
because it's attractive without staining your skin when you wear it. The attractiveness of it helps you attract valuable mates and contacts to network with. Being attractive is a valuable resource. If you can't do it with natural good looks you do it with cloths and jewelry.
I'm going to go off on a tangent here, so feel free to stop reading. Gold won't be worthless unless we devolve to the point where we can't support a ruling elite who trades in beauty and influence. And that scenario is more a fantasy than anything else in your post. I suspect a number of people would like to see that world because, well, as nerds we like to think it would be an equalizer.
I remember a zombie anime (japanese cartoon if any older nerds are reading) where a nerdy survival nut was getting lots of attention from girls because he could shoot. That's the kind of fantasy I see bitcoin obsessives indulging in. It's not helping. You want a better real world for yourselves. And that starts with things like single payer healthcare, high minimum wages, college for everybody, an end to our eternal wars and real public works projects. The sorts of things that build a society where nerds like us get the support we need to no longer be the kind of nerds we don't want to be.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Requiem for the American Dream
Requiem for the American Dream
You don't see the problem with that? Good currencies are not supposed to rapidly change in value over a short period of time. And if Bitcoin is not a good currency, then what is the value proposition?
USD is supposed to be inflationary. That is intentional. The whole point of money is to spend it. The purpose of maintaining inflation is to encourage people to spend or invest their money instead of hoarding it. Hoarding money is worse for the economy than having a little inflation.
At some point, people will realize that they're worth more in the future than at the present time and you won't be able to make use of any of them because nobody is willing to sell.
Most national currencies gradually inflate with time, meaning that it takes more dollars, pounds or euros to buy a beer than it did previously. This is not a big problem if it happens slowly, but if it happens too fast (the Zimbabwe dollar after the farmers were run off their land and everyone starved to death) then people bail out of the currency and it becomes worthless. Conversely if the money supply grows too slowly with respect to goods (the Swiss franc, on several occasions) then speculators hoard the currency and it no longer functions as a medium of exchange.
Scenario 2 is what is happening now in Bitcoin. It's no longer a currency, but is being treated as an "investment." Whether my scare quotes apply to it long term is something we will have to revisit after a few centuries of it holding its value.
And if Bitcoin is not a good currency, then what is the value proposition?
Bitcoin is not a good currency for general use. Neither is gold. That doesn't mean it is not valuable to an individual investor.
Bitcoin is deflationary by design. That means it is designed to go up in value over time. That makes it a bad currency, but a good investment.
Of course they'll trash it. Cryptocurrency totally undermines the giant legalized scam they've been perpetrating for like 120 years.
Yeah, and the ICOs even have their own theme song! https://youtu.be/UtKADQnjQmc?t... Buy! BUY!! BUY!!! Get 'em while they're hot! You don't want to feel left out, do you?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
It's still in the discover stage. Volatility is expected. When adoption stabilizes, so will the price.
The value of Bitcoin for speculators is its volatility. A commodity that fluctuates in value by 10-20% per day means that you can make huge returns by selling while it's high and buying while it's low. Lots of speculators doing this increase the volatility: when the value is low, lots of people buy and the value goes up. This will likely continue until something else looks more attractive, at which point the people holding Bitcoin will all try to sell them (slowly, if they're sensible) and the value will crash.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If drug dealers still accept Bitcoin, they are likely to stop soon. Bitcoin is a public ledger of all transactions. If someone is identified as a drug dealer then it's trivial to backtrack all of their Bitcoin receipts and find all of the people that they've sold things to, and all of the people that they've bought things from.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And it's just as much fiat as most other currencies
No it isn't. Fiat isn't just a word Libertarians throw around, it has an actual meaning. Literally, the value of a fiat currency is imposed by decree. More practically, the requirement for a government (and, usually, other people) to accept the currency is imposed by law. The IRS, for example, is required to accept payments for taxes in USD. This guarantees that there are always going to be buyers for USD as long as there are taxpayers in the US: even if all of your other income and expenditures are in Euros, Bitcoin, or Disney Tokens, you need to be able to produce a sum of US dollars to pay taxes if you are a US taxpayer.
This is in contrast to commodity-backed currencies. The earliest recorded currency was backed by grain (I forget which kind and I'm too lazy to look it up now). The city granary guaranteed that it would pay you a fixed amount of grain in exchange for the token. The currency had value because everyone needs to eat and so there were always people who wanted to be able to go to the granary. Later commodity-backed currencies were backed by precious metals, on the basis that there is an endless supply of idiots who want a shiny thing.
The move away from commodity-backed currencies was due to many factors, but one was that currencies behave as commodities in their own right and pegging the value of one commodity to another is awkward. If there's more demand for Pounds Sterling than there is for sterling silver, then the value of the pound goes up, but the linking of value means that the value of silver goes up artificially and the only way to fix it is to find a pile of silver somewhere.
The problem with bitcoin is that it has neither value from people who want to exchange it for something at a fixed rate, nor value from people who have a legal requirement to pay for certain things using it. It has value solely from the fact that people use it for speculation. As soon as the speculators move on to the next shiny unregulated high-volatility commodity, the value of Bitcoin goes away.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It has value solely from the fact that people use it for speculation.
Gold has been using that strategy for thousands of years, and even central banks are doing it today.
A commodity that fluctuates in value by 10-20% per day means that you can make huge returns by selling while it's high and buying while it's low
No you can't, because on the other side of the trade is someone just like you.
I listened back in 2009 when all you guys told me Bitcoin was pointless. A couple of years later I thought for myself and got hold of a few...which are now worth 20X that amount...oh and any initial 'fiat' investment has since been taken out and I still have thousands of $$$ worth! So to all the naysayers - I have bitcoin, it didn't cost me anything and I'm happy.
The stock marjet it self or most of the people that opperated in it?
Consider the points being made before dumping your kneejerk responses.
>> has value solely...
> Gold has been using that strategy for thousands of years
That is incorrect. Gold has tangible value, insofar as it has unique physical properties that are in demand. This is also true of diamonds (although synthetic diamonds have DeBiers trying to pretend there is a tangible difference), which is not the equivalent situation. Keyword, "solely". The bank valuation of types of debt is getting closer to the pure speculative situation.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Says a guy that can't conceive of a person not wanting to log into Slashdot, as if logging in imparts you with some magical power.
This is entirely based on the bigger fool method. I can make money as long as I find a bigger fool to sell it to.
Sooner or later you run out of fools.
Yes, and they will lose if they are slower than you. It's a zero-sum game, but as long as there are people willing to play then some will win and some will lose.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Gold is a good conductor and doesn't tarnish, and so has value independent of speculation. The current value of gold owes a lot more to speculation than to these properties, but if everyone decided tomorrow that gold was a poor store of wealth then its value would be non-zero. The same does not hold for Bitcoin.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Perhaps you don't get much of a vote in the management of a public company as a small shareholder, but you are protected from things like insider trading and the company is required to report its financials and major corporate events to a government regulatory body. If you are investing through large mutual funds, those funds may have a pretty big vote in company management.
Moreover, if a company is being seriously mismanaged, there's a decent chance that someone (either an activist investor or private equity fund) will come along and buy enough shares to seriously challenge or replace the management. With current coin offerings, you could own every single coin and the company still wouldn't be required to give you the time of day.
I have zero sympathy, especially given the amount of warning these people have had.
Agreed. I was fairly warned that Bitcoins were overpriced when they reached $1, again at $100, again at $1000, and finally when they recently crossed the $5000 mark. I have no problem with your lack of sympathy for my predicament.
How many of those bitcoins have you converted to dollars?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Both were illegal when the practice began.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Bitcoin is, IMHO, without a doubt a good investment.. I wouldn't invest into ICOs though. I can't see a single advantage over just buying BTC outright. The coins have the same situation as gold, as the supply will get scarcer and scarcer over time. And you would think every /. reader oughta know this, right?
Certainly some of the traders and speculators I respect most are high on bitcoin, and, in fact, other cryptocurrencies, like Doug Casey, and others. Of course he also thinks pot stocks are going to shoot up in value. No shit! I was also amazed that there's actually pot stocks on Wall Street. Who'd a thunk it?
Yes ... and no.
First off, it only tracks the wallet addresses. Those are arbitrary and there's a functionally unlimited number of them with no mechanism to guarantee a link to an individual. You can 'follow the money' all you want but you still have to identify who's hold it and if a certain transaction is for illegal goods or legitimate purposes.
Furthermore, there are 'bitcoin mixers' which intentionally obfuscate the path of the coins by sending them in random amounts through random paths. While not impossible to track through, it greatly complicates any attempt to tie a particular amount of coin back to some particular address....which, again, you still need to tie to a person.
The hardest part of it all, and where there's some traction on linking bitcoin purchases to individuals are the initial trade of fiat to crypto. But once you're in the game, or if you provide a service that gets paid for in crypto...then you can be pretty damn anon unless you keep records otherwise.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
The biggest difference...the stock market is an extremely mature game at this point. Joe Q. Public is only getting bits and pieces and has virtually no clue what actually goes on.
The crypto market is extremely immature but big enough to be noticed now. It won't be long before it's controlled and manipulated to a very large degree for very great profit to those who have the power/money/computing to do so.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Diamonds are almost entirely speculative value. Their scarcity vs. usefulness does not come anywhere close to justifying their cost. That you can credit DeBeers for entirely. If the bubble bursts on diamonds, the actual utility value is very small, manufactured diamonds substitute seamlessly (or are the primary source) for almost any industrial need, and the need for jewelry-grade stones is very small outside of...well...jewelry.
Gold is a similar, but not as extreme example. It IS a very useful metal and cannot be manufactured but a large portion of the value is still speculative.
Diamonds are a far bigger scam than any crypto currency. At least the price of bitcoin follows market demand instead of monopoly cartel decisions.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
> Diamonds are almost entirely speculative value.
> Diamonds are a far bigger scam than any crypto currency.
Rephrasing to concede the point and then doubling down on the opposite logical conclusion, is not compelling. Good luck.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Currently, I have stock in the 3M Corporation. It's not enough to have any effect on management. However, there are solid benefits. If the company distributes profits, I get some. If it reinvests, the stock price will probably go up (no guarantee, though). If the company were to be acquired by another, I'd get paid my share of 3M's value. In short, I have rights concerning an enterprise that is actually producing stuff and creating wealth.
If I have some cryptocurrency, it's worth precisely what someone else is willing to pay me for it, and it's value is completely intangible. If it goes out of fashion, I lose everything. I consider this to be a lot more speculative than buying stock.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes