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Comment Re:So I've read the article now (Score 2) 119

Apparently he took out a "Flash Loan" and borrowed the tokens. Once he executed his trades to grab the money he bought up enough tokens to repay the loan and all was fine.

It seems it is totally normal for 18-year-olds to take out multi-million dollar loans with no collateral to back them in the crypto world? I feel like this points to a whole lot of other potential problems in the crypto/DeFi world.

Comment Re:Texas (Score 1) 284

You only need a something over 50% of the mining power -- as long as they can add new blocks with no Assange transactions at a faster pace than than the rest of the mining pool they can keep the longest chain Assange donation free. A 51% attack isn't just for double spending, and simply blocking particular transactions is the kind of thing you might be able to get tacit agreement for; and it does only have to be tacit if you are fine with a few transactions getting through every now and then (which also helps hide any collusion).

Comment Re:Texas (Score 1) 284

It solves the problem of "where do I go if Powers That Be decide to boot me off traditional wire transfer systems". Like has already happened in case of Julian Assange and his legal defense fund.

It swaps in some different powers that be. If Wikileaks published something that embarrassed people behind a bunch of the major miner consortiums and they decided to just not include any bitcoin transfers to Assange or Wikileaks in blocks they mined that could severely limit or completely stop such transfers, depending on how big a proportion of the mining pool they pissed off. And let's be clear, there are a very small number of mining consortiums that control a very large fraction of the total hashing power; this is a lot more possible than it may appear at first blush.

Hell, even the old school powers that be could put a severe crimp in things if they were sufficiently motivated. If such a power decided to lean on the mining consortiums they could likely get the result they want with either enough bribes or a big enough stick (and they would have both).

Comment not really important (Score 1) 18

Who cares about this article? This kind of spy-counterspy action is going to happen all the time in that space. I would be surprised if there was someone who in "internal" who isn't doing what he did.

Comment Re: We abandoned real value (Score 1) 231

There is real innovation happening in the space, and as it all transforms from pure speculation into tangible, useful applications and assets, prices rise.

The biggest current (last couple of years) price rises have been in Bitcoin, which is over a decade old now. Since it has been around so long, but the price is still going up a lot, presumably that is happening because of "tangible useful applications". So what are those applications? As a currency it has stalled, not least due to price volatility. Despite occasional bursts of announcements of retailers accepting Bitcoin, the number of retailers actually accepting Bitcoin remains very small, and often quite niche. Bit coin is not taking over as a currency. How about Bitcoin as a means of fast, easy, cross border money transfer (remittances). In the early days of Bitcoin is was widely touted that Western Union was going to get crushed by Bitcoin. It turns out Western Union is doing just fine. And over the major money transfer corridors WU fees are often lower than Bitcoin. Other major remittance agencies are also doing just fine using traditional methods. If any service is getting squeezed out of the remittance industry it is crypto ... fees can be larger, money often still needs to be exchanged from Crypto to local currency with all kinds of associated other costs, and so on. How about "digital gold", a hedge against inflation? It is not clear Bitcoin is really doing any better here, and assets and investments to hedge against inflation is a pretty huge market; Bitcoin has very limited appeal over all the other options available. So again, what are the magical tangible useful applications that make Bitcoin so very valuable? It's been a decade, but there still isn't anything to show ...

Comment Re:Critcism (Score 1) 169

Bitcoin is cheap: It's worthless as a currency!
Bitcoin is expensive: It's a bubble!
Bitcoin prices are volatile: It's useless as a currency, it's too volatile!
Bitcoin prices are stable: It's dead! Nobody is buying!

The first mistake is evaluating bitcoin by its "price". Assuming the key is that it is a currency the real question is the volume of actual transactions going on in bitcoin.

What is the amount of good purchased with bitcoin? It certainly isn't huge. How about remittances? Money transfer was one of the big use cases. It turns out that, despite a lot of hype and years to make a difference, bitcoin in particular and crypto-currencies in general, have made practically no dent in the remittances market. How about total volume of transactions? That's certainly higher, but how much of that is speculation trading based on the price of bitcoin? Hard to say, but surely we would see higher amounts of goods purchases and remittances if it really mattered.

So, instead of looking at prices, if we look at utility how is bitcoin doing? It's been a decade and it still hasn't had any significant uptake as currency -- not on any scale that justifies the hype anyway. Might it still be useful and gain traction in the future? Sure, it's possible. But the outlook isn't that great.

Comment Re: Netflix DVD is the best service out there (Score 3, Interesting) 78

Here is a list of the 100 best American films according to the AFI. Less than 5% of them are available to stream over Netflix, but over 95% are available through Netflix DVD. If you limit yourself to Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime streaming, you are watching the results of the best ROI for production investment for their shareholders, not the best art. I'd rather get a great story than a cost effective one, even if it means I have to put in two minutes of physical effort every 90 minutes.

Comment Re:Netflix DVD is the best service out there (Score 1, Troll) 78

You are confused between two products: "Netflix" which is their streaming service with about 6,000 titles, and "Netflix DVD" which has over 100,000 titles.

Consider understanding what someone has stated before you dive into personal attacks. It makes you look ignorant and petty.

Comment Re: Netflix DVD is the best service out there (Score 3, Interesting) 78

Netflix DVD is the original version of the Netflix product. You get so many DVD/Blu-ray discs at a time, and drop them in the mail after you watch them. No lag/jitter problems and better audio/video quality across the board. It's not an option for people with phones and tablets only, but a much better experience if you have a TV with an HDMI input.

Comment Netflix DVD is the best service out there (Score 5, Interesting) 78

Every month I spend an hour or two looking for movie recommendations, and 10-15 minutes filling my queue. I rarely lose time scrolling through the endless, mostly bland choices on six different streaming services. I have seen more fantastic movies and television in the last six months than I have in the last five years of slogging through broken interfaces.

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