Another Crypto Investment Firm Shuts Down, Taking Over 55% of Customers' Funds (kitco.com) 160
JustAnotherOldGuy shares a report from KITCO: Midas Investments, the hybrid centralized/decentralized (CeDeFi) cryptocurrency platform, announced Tuesday that they will shut down operations as of Dec. 27 and will deduct 55% from most customer accounts to "balance assets and liabilities." This morning, Midas' CEO shut down his own AMA with customers after less than half an hour. "I am writing to you today with a heavy heart to announce that the Midas platform is closing down," wrote Iakov Levin, CEO of Midas Investments, who also goes by 'Trevor,' in a Dec. 27 blog post.
Levin said that in the spring of 2022, the advent of the crypto winter saw Midas' DeFi portfolio lose $50 million of its $250 million market value, or 20%. Then, following the bankruptcy of Celsius on Jul. 13 and FTX on Nov. 11, "the platform experienced over 60% of AUM being withdrawn, creating a large asset deficit" of $63.3 million, based on assets of $51.7 million against liabilities of $115 million in BTC, ETH and stablecoins. "Based on this situation and current CeFi market conditions, we have reached the difficult decision to close the platform," Levin wrote.
Levin said that in the spring of 2022, the advent of the crypto winter saw Midas' DeFi portfolio lose $50 million of its $250 million market value, or 20%. Then, following the bankruptcy of Celsius on Jul. 13 and FTX on Nov. 11, "the platform experienced over 60% of AUM being withdrawn, creating a large asset deficit" of $63.3 million, based on assets of $51.7 million against liabilities of $115 million in BTC, ETH and stablecoins. "Based on this situation and current CeFi market conditions, we have reached the difficult decision to close the platform," Levin wrote.
Taking what isn't yours (Score:3, Interesting)
That's theft, isn't it?
Moreso than talking about theft when customer data got copied, anyway.
Re:Taking what isn't yours (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Taking what isn't yours (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, the blanket 55% smacks of "we haven't got a clue who paid what sums in, when, at what exchange rate, because our records are shit"; someone who bought in near the crypto peak last year should have much higher liabilities than someone who bought a major dip; e.g. I'd bought or transferred in BTC at $10k/token, I'd actually still expect to be showing a profit. YMMV as to whether that blanket 55% is purely because of shit record keeping, to cover up fraud, (e.g. FTX-style mis-appropriation of customer funds), or just a way of pretending that this isn't what, when you get right down to it, looks very much like a rugpull. Either way, that's likely to play a major factor when they likely find themselves up the same legal creek as FTX and SBF.
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That said, the blanket 55% smacks of "we haven't got a clue who paid what sums in, when, at what exchange rate, because our records are shit"; someone who bought in near the crypto peak last year should have much higher liabilities than someone who bought a major dip; e.g. I'd bought or transferred in BTC at $10k/token, I'd actually still expect to be showing a profit.
You don't really expect a grift to have good bookkeeping practices do you?
There is really no need to anyway. You set up the grift, the marks line up to give you the money, a very few make out, the rest lose everything. Just as planned.
Where it goes wrong is when someone actually believes it isn't a grift, then sticks around and gets in trouble. Amateurs, almost as dumb as the marks.
Re:Taking what isn't yours (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, the blanket 55% smacks of "we haven't got a clue who paid what sums in, when, at what exchange rate, because our records are shit"; someone who bought in near the crypto peak last year should have much higher liabilities than someone who bought a major dip; e.g. I'd bought or transferred in BTC at $10k/token, I'd actually still expect to be showing a profit.
You don't really expect a grift to have good bookkeeping practices do you?
I expect the greatest grifters have excellent bookkeepers. And accountants. They know how to keep it within the bounds of plausible deniability. And very politically connected.
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Third set for deniability. Every legitimate business needs to keep two sets of books, due to differences between GAAP and US tax treatment in a number of areas.
You know what they are talking about - one book to show investors or potential buyers, and the other with true numbers.
Re:Taking what isn't yours (Score:5, Informative)
If somebody deposits 100BTC, this means they are getting back 55BTC not the USD equivalent. Then they will have to pay a fee somewhere else to convert to cash. So the buy-in price really doesn't matter a lot. Investors aren't being liquidated (that I can tell). They are getting back 55% of their assets because, it turns out, 45% were stolen and lost.
This seems to be different than FTX-style fraud where there was intent to defraud all along. In this case, there seems to be some legitimate aspects to the business (although time may prove otherwise)
In this case, it seems, they used customer money inappropriately but not necessarily with intent to defraud although the result is the same. One clue here is that there is 55% of the money to return where FTX had 0%
Re:Taking what isn't yours (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that you're overthinking the 55%. Put it down more to sloppy reporting and preliminary information than any actual lack(or possession) of knowledge.
It wouldn't be 55% of their initial or overall investment, it would more likely be 55% of the balance the day that they declared bankruptcy. Or the day that they decided that they needed to declare bankruptcy, whatever.
In addition, think of the 55% as being like science reporting level accuracy. You're trying to condense what would be a multiple page chart with formulas similar to a tax return into a single sentence. Do you spend words trying to describe who's going to get 50%, and who's going to get 60% when that isn't even determined yet? Or are you going to do a ballpark figure of "Total remaining assets" divided by "Total listed balances" to get 55%?
They've got lots of protection (Score:2)
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It's a lot easier to fuck with kids.
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Legally, probably not. "Your" money at the bank isn't yours either. That is why the bank can use it for other purposes than safekeeping. Legally the bank has a "promise to pay" the money. That also means that they can break that promise, like in Greece some years ago.
Re:Taking what isn't yours (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that if the bank breaks their promise, up to a certain amount of $$$, generally government steps in and will pay the shareholders. Otherwise, people would just go back to using their mattress as an ATM, and that cash will not be available for loans or investments.
Now, a crypto exchange, even though it isn't a bank, it pretends to be, taking shareholders' holdings and loans them out via bridges and such. However, when an exchange doesn't have enough to cover withdrawals, that is on the individual depositors, since there is zero government protection. The people I feel sorry for are the ones that confused the difference. To someone new to investing, a crypto exchange and a bank are functionally similar... you set up an account, send a ton of private info for KYC/AML purposes, and throw money into an account. However, that is where similarities end. A bank won't be completely imploded, with all depositors losing their holdings by the loss of a cryptographic token.
Problem is that newcomers to cryptocurrency confused the two, and lose their shirts. Ideally, an exchange is something you use to move assets in and out, but for long term storage, an investor needs to have their own, non-custodial wallet. This can be difficult, as an app that does a wallet may wind up "leaking" one's keys, while another app is a proven, solid quantity. Same with hardware wallets, where some are open sourced and solid performers, while others, who knows what they may be doing. It takes a lot more work to secure cryptocurrency than it is to have an account at a bank.
Now someone has a hardware wallet. That takes some thought as well. First thing is factory resetting the wallet, then creating a key, saving off the recovery code, resetting the wallet again, then restoring via that recovery phrase. Otherwise, one is depending on hopes and prayers that the recovery stuff works.
After having a trusted wallet, one needs to make sure that recovery phrase... you know, what only is shown once... is saved somewhere. This means looking into stamped metal plates, or other metal wallets which ensure that even in case of a fire, they will be readable and the BIP-39 phrase can be fetched, used in another app, and one's wallet regenerated. This takes time and effort, because one divulged recovery key, and now someone else has one's wallet and everything in it.
Overall, for the average cryptocurrency investor, they are likely out of their league and not having anywhere near the security precautions that are needed. Crypto should be considered as cash, and even though there are plenty of rated cash safes for insurance, especially in Europe, there are essentially no vetted/rated devices for crypto transactions.
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Legally, the money is yours. Or rather you are legally owed that amount of money as a debt. In extreme circumstances that may turn out to be a bad debt, but heads will roll in court. In the U.S. the bank is required to be FDIC insured to see that the debt is paid (at least $100,000 of it is paid in full).
For investment funds of various types, they have a legal duty to make reasonable investments. Your protection as a customer/investor is less than for a bank, but not non-existent.
Meanwhile, to this point cr
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If anyone still has money in crypto, and hasn't moved that crypto to a non-hosted wallet, they deserve what they get.
Seriously, how many people need to get robbed by crypto bros before they learn? This has been happening for years now.
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That's theft, isn't it?.
No, that's banking.
Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
on Nov. 11, "the platform experienced over 60% of AUM being withdrawn, creating a large asset deficit" of $63.3 million, based on assets of $51.7 million against liabilities of $115 million in BTC, ETH and stablecoins.
Hard to see how assets being withdrawn would "create" a deficit. More likely the deficit already existed. Withdrawals in themselves should just credit assets and debit liabilities leaving the whole thing in balance.
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They were probably leveraged. Another shitcoin platform bites the dust.
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Exactly the same thing would happen to any banks, even the biggest and most stable one if all their customers tried to all withdraw theirs funds at once.
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The difference is that the FDIC would step in to cover non-investment customer accounts if this happened to a bank.
*for a maximum of $250,000 by account (Score:2)
*for a maximum of $250,000 by account
https://www.fdic.gov/resources... [fdic.gov]
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People with more than that have it invested anyways, and have multiple accounts at multiple banks for the times where they temporarily exceed that sum.
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People with more than that have it invested anyways, and have multiple accounts at multiple banks for the times where they temporarily exceed that sum.
I never figured out how that never occurred to people that we aren't limited to one account. It's a good practice to have a wide spread of different accounts in different banks anyhow.
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You'd be a fool in any case to keep millions of dollars in a bank account, and not because it wouldn't be insured. The reason is what economists call "opportunity costs". If you put a million dollars in a savings account with a 3% interest rate, the bank would pay you $30,000. If you put that same million in relatively safe investments it'd make you more like $90,000. The difference of $60,000 is your "opportunity cost".
Now granted, if you took all your millions and spread it out across dozens of ins
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Re:*for a maximum of $250,000 by account (Score:4, Informative)
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Which would be basically every depositor, because nobody just leave a quarter million sitting in a checking account.
Literally nobody.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly the same thing would happen to any banks, even the biggest and most stable one if all their customers tried to all withdraw theirs funds at once.
No, not at all. A bank run means that the bank will be unable to pay back the funds _right now_. But the funds have not gone, they have been given to mortgage customers, for example. And if you have a 30 year mortgage, and there is a bank run, you have to pay back the mortgage over 30 years, because that bank run has nothing to do with you.
So the bank will have a steady income stream over many years and pay funds back over the next 30 years. Including some interest, because the mortgage customers are paying interest.
In Germans worst ever post-war bank bankruptcy (Herstatt) the bank was completely wiped out, but ended up paying 97% of deposits back over the next 30 years. What we have here, over 50 percent disappeared in thin air, that is quite unprecedented.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not unprecedented in the crypto world.
Seems like every few weeks we see another one of these.
Back in the good old days of crypto it was about 1 rug pull a year, always due to "hacking".
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You misunderstand banking regulations. Banks are legally allowed to lend more money than they have. I think it's 1/3 more, but can't remember exactly, and I think the amount varies. If all those debts were called in at once, i.e. if the accounts backing those loans were moved elsewhere or otherwise close, the bank couldn't meet its obligations. (This is called a "run on the bank".) The idea is that there would never be that large a simultaneous withdrawal, but once they start denying people the right t
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What happens if that $10 million in deposits is taken o
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Just the opposite, actually, they're traditionally required to hold ~10% back, but that has been reduced to 0% [federalreserve.gov] as of 2020.
That said, it gets complicated. You see, banks can borrow money from the federal reserve at the "federal funds rate" [fool.com]. It's at 4.25-4.5% right now. [federalreserve.gov]
If there was to be a run on a modern FDIC insured bank today, what would generally happen is that first their "excess reserves", which is the reserves over and above the legally mandated 0%(extra rules/regulations might mandate this other tha
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Tell us you don't understand banking, without telling us you don't understand banking.
Extra irony points for leading with "You misunderstand banking regulations" and then proceed to show us you don't have a damn clue.
Hint: the federal reserve exists, as well as inter-bank lending. Banks routinely use overnight loans to cover runs of withdrawls on things like payroll days when lots of customers are writing lots of checks. And then when paychecks from other banks get deposited, they pay the loan back.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
I will just fix my screen (Score:4, Informative)
From the article: Levin said he was incompetent, and my team, we were incompetent in managing funds.
Levin then began answering the submitted questions, which included harsh criticism and accusations.
After 27 minutes, he claimed he was going to fix his screen sharing and disconnected, but never returned.
Proof it's not the currencies that need regulation (Score:3)
It's the exchanges. All the problems are coming from currency exchanges that are pretending to be banks without the usual banking oversight and insurance. FTX is the current best example where first it was set up as a ponzi scheme and second it was built so there was no protection for the depositor's assets. Be willing to bet this winds up being a similar story and no one ever finds where the missing money actually got to.
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I'll give you a hint: It ended up in Russia.
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Re: Proof it's not the currencies that need regula (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is, you can't simultaneously have a wild west libertarian/anarchist utopia AND have regulations. The two philosophies are incompatible.
You can't have a Heinlein-like or Rand-like economic model that contains checks and balances for a common good because they refuted the very existence of such a notion.
That's not to say you can't have crypto or other ecurrency that starts from such a premise. I would argue you can. All it means is that you can't regulate the exchanges if you're working from an economic model that prohibits regulation.
Existing cryptocurrencies baked in a wild west notion of how to do things. It's part of the design. I don't see how you can change it now.
I think you're going to have to invent a new system. Perhaps derived it from crypto. I just don't see how the existing system can be changed at this point.
Re: Proof it's not the currencies that need regula (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're going to have to invent a new system. Perhaps derived it from crypto. I just don't see how the existing system can be changed at this point.
It will end up looking more or less like the existing system, because the existing systems originated from complete anarchy.
Re: Proof it's not the currencies that need regula (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Proof it's not the currencies that need regula (Score:5, Insightful)
Anarchy isn't a system. Any non-trivial system based on 2 party trust is going to fail.
I trust my nephew will return the $5 I loaned him. And maybe some random exchange will return my $5m in crypto when I withdraw it. But without a third party involved to guarantee that, eventually the exchange will fuck me. Whereas I can tell my nephew over dinner next week to shell out an extra $5 for tip.
Non-trivial finance -requires- a trusted and empowered third party to make sure everyone does what they say they will and doesn't piss away or just flat out steal the money in their trust and care.
Re: Proof it's not the currencies that need regul (Score:2)
Why are you loaning people cryptocurrency, though? Use it as a medium of exchange and store of value like it was originally intended and you'll have none of these problems.
What you are seeing now is the result of introducing traditional banking services - like lending and interest bearing accounts - that bring with them an additional layer of trust (less trustworthy overall). Those aren't really compatible with the design of the original blockchain.
So, instead of relying on a Satoshi blockchain, which is pr
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...medium of exchange and store of value...
You just posted this here to make us all laugh. Very good sir.
Re: Proof it's not the currencies that need regul (Score:2)
According to actual data, about 80% of it is used in that way. You just don't hear about it because it doesn't make the news because they aren't losing millions to scammers.
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Depends on where they store it. Try storing it with these clowns or FTX or Mt Gox or any of several others that have disappeared hundreds of millions or even billions by now.
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I wouldn't loan anyone crypto. I would never put my money into crypto and if gifted any I would immediately sell.
But when you put your money in a bank or your crypto in one of these ridiculous holding exchanges you ar effectively making a loan to them.
I'm deep in the "all crypto currency are crap" camp. Bitcoin is crap. Ethereum crap. Doge crap. Everything crap.
We do not need a new form of currency storage. Crypto has no legitimate use or purpose or function not already fulfilled better by something e
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Non-trivial finance -requires- a trusted and empowered third party to make sure everyone does what they say they will and doesn't piss away or just flat out steal the money in their trust and care.
Indeed it does. And it is not even only about trust. It is also about the complexities involved. A regulator can still understand (usually) what a bank is doing and can stop them if they are starting to do unsafe things with customer money. As the same time, the customer of a bank can trust the regulator to actually understand what is going on and keeping things reasonably sane. A trusted third party is also an "insight amplification mechanism" (for lack of a better term). Just imagine if everybody had to s
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I think you're going to have to invent a new system. Perhaps derived it from crypto. I just don't see how the existing system can be changed at this point.
Simple - Donald Trump NFT Trading cards, celebrating his life.
Only 99 dollars each!
You can't have a Rand like economy anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
We're already seeing this in crypto. The entire system has centralized around a handful of exchanges and miners who survived the last 2 shake ups. The miners have more than enough power to do 50% attacks, and the exchanges can force them to by threatening to stop buying their mined currency. Miners need exchanges because without them they don't have a reliable place to dump their mined currency in bulk. So they'll do what the exchanges tell them.
We've actually seen this power exercised a few times. Exchanges have refused to accept "stolen" currency. Ethereum, being centrally owned already, did a split (remember "Etherum Classic"?) when one of the owner's scheme's didn't work out and since those owners were the ones with all the currency people went to their new chain. And I recall at least one chain that did a 51% attack to get back stolen currency and called it a "community vote".
Crypto has the same problem all anarcho-capitalism has: no referee. And if you introduce a referee (i.e. the gov't) crypto collapses because it's just a much, much worse way to do banking. Slower, less energy efficient, riskier and just as centralized. It's a failed experiment.
Re:You can't have a Rand like economy anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. Decentralized self-organized systems are _very_ hard to get stable. In fact you have to put strong rules into each "agent" that limit possible action severely before you even start the system. That can and does work. But that is not the type of thing we are talking about here. It is by now well understood that self-organized distributed systems without strong rules can be sabotaged and taken over by just a few of their elements and it always happens as long as some elements have the capability (and motivation) for such a take-over or sabotage.
And that is why "anarcho-capitalism" does not work and cannot work. It assumes most people are decent and, as important, most people see and can understand what is going on, and then keep the few "defectors" in line. We may have that most people at least try to be decent. But we already do not have that they see or understand what is going on. Hence the defectors can play their games and often raise to unimaginable levels of wealth and power, just because they abuse the mechanisms and nobody can stop them.
With this installment of the human race we have here, self-organization will always collapse and degenerate into something run centralized by a few. If we had a much better mix of people than the say, 10% independent thinkers, 20% of people capable of understanding a rational argument (but generally not able to create them), 60% sheep that will just follow the crowd without insight or understanding and about 10% defectors that will do whatever as long as it lines their pockets or gives them power, self-organization could work. But we do not and anarcho-capitalism is a pipe-dream.
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It's the exchanges. All the problems are coming from currency exchanges that are pretending to be banks without the usual banking oversight and insurance. FTX is the current best example where first it was set up as a ponzi scheme and second it was built so there was no protection for the depositor's assets. Be willing to bet this winds up being a similar story and no one ever finds where the missing money actually got to.
Afaik his wasn't an exchange that was supposed to keep their clients deposits separate but yield bearing accounts and that inherently comes with a risk as the deposits by design are used elsewhere to give yield. The exchanges are imho not pretending to be banks but brokers, and are expected to keep their customers accounts separate and make their money from fees, spreads etc.
Why the government should step in and compensate those who lost crypto speculating (Midas) or those who got defrauded (FTX) is not obv
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Why the government should step in and compensate those who lost crypto speculating (Midas) or those who got defrauded (FTX) is not obvious to me,
The guvmint shouldn't. That would just encourage more grift and more marks, and connect Guvmint to the ponzi scheme.
KYC=pii sales (Score:4, Informative)
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Clearly (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a major flaw in the concept. That doesn't mean electronic currency is bad, it doesn't even mean cryptocurrency is bad (although I'm dubious about the existing implementations).
What it means is that we need to look closely at each impairment and each collapse and understand how it happened.
In some cases, that seems simple enough, at least on the surface. Too much hype, too much gambling, and too much corruption. In short, it was both desirable and doomed because it was the fantasy idyll of the Wild West.
In other cases, places have died because people realized the Wild West isn't quite as attractive as they thought.
I'm going to posit that existing cryptocurrencies will largely survive and stabilise, but that you'll see a raft of new economic models and new electronic currencies (some crypto, some otherwise distributed) based on those models.
It's easy for those of us who were never enamoured by anarco-libertarian philosophies to point fingers, but whatever emerges from these collapses will certainly expect us to prove our ideas are any better in the only place that matters.
It's easy to spout ideas or voice contradictions, but either we can prove our points or we can't.
Criticise existing crypto all you want, but they had the guts to actually put their ideas into practice. Out of all of the groups with novel ideas on economics, they made the effort first.
The question now is whether they'll be last, or if someone else with different ideas is willing to give it a go.
Re:Clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a major flaw in the concept. That doesn't mean electronic currency is bad, it doesn't even mean cryptocurrency is bad (although I'm dubious about the existing implementations).
What it means is that we need to look closely at each impairment and each collapse and understand how it happened.
Every capital system has a major flaw, and that flaw is that it's easiest to accrue capital by acting like a shithead. They all thus require regulation to make that kind of activity unprofitable. The only way inadequate regulation could fail to be the whole of the explanation is if there are regulations that are simply not being enforced.
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I absolutely agree.
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Sorry, you oversimplify. It doesn't just need to be ENOUGH regulation, it needs to be the CORRECT regulation. There's no real agreement about what *that* means. And, yes, they also need to be enforced. The system also needs to be attractive to enough people that it won't just be ignored.
AFAIKT, the *main* problem with the current system is lots of regulatory capture. This should be prevented by forbidding anyone who works as a regulator from ever again accepting ANY payment in ANY form from those they
There's absolutely an agreement on it (Score:2)
Elizabeth Warren has a few books written for laymen over on Amazon.com that cover how to regulate investment in order to prevent cyclic downturns and crashes, assuming you can stomach her "school marm" style. It's nothing earth shattering or
True, but we don't have a real regulatory system (Score:2)
The stock market is a great example of what is wrong with our regulatory system. The SEC and FINRA basically exist to create the illusion of a well-regulated system, but once you get past the surface it's clear that the US is much closer to Russia in terms of corruption than Germany, Singapo
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tl;dr: Money handling without oversight will be subject to greed and thus embezzlement.
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Well, yeah. Question is, how to bake in the oversight, since existing crypto has the notion of no oversight baked into it already.
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Too late for the current batch of thieves and their bright eyed victims who still stupidly continue to make shocked face every single ti e all the way back to Mt Gox.
How many times must the suckers lose everything before the rest figure out it's all a scam?
Once you put in real regulation you end up with the modern banking system so there's no point in crypto anyway.
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Well, yeah. Question is, how to bake in the oversight, since existing crypto has the notion of no oversight baked into it already.
No oversight needed. Just keep your money on your own systems, send it to an exchange in reasonable batches when you need to exchange it and immediately transfer it out. Basically, treat any crypto platform the same way smart people have been treating PayPal for ages.
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Well, yeah. Question is, how to bake in the oversight, since existing crypto has the notion of no oversight baked into it already.
The lack of oversight is the core of planet crypto.
Where people go wrong is thinking that it is an actual investment. While sometimes people can make money, the main purpose of Crypto is to pay dollars for
Nothing.
This crypto winter stuff is just the end game. The dollars are gone to their new owners, and the market is collapsing. It would be nice if the few who profited could get some more dollars from the marks, but don't worry - there will always be new grifts and new marks to hand over their dolla
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It doesn't require bravery to setup a crypto ponzi company, steal the depositor's money, and flee to a non-extradition country.
Re:Clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a major flaw in the concept. That doesn't mean electronic currency is bad, it doesn't even mean cryptocurrency is bad (although I'm dubious about the existing implementations).
What it means is that we need to look closely at each impairment and each collapse and understand how it happened.
It really is simple: If you hand your money over to someone else, be really, really sure that they won't make it disappear (or disappear together with it).
Somehow, crypo companies managed to convince people that what's essentially a long number needs to be stored on their platform, not on your own system (with adequate backups, of course).
Then they did the usual: "Give me your money and I'll double it, pinky swear." - just with crypto instead of fiat currency. Old game, new labels, same old fools falling for it.
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Then they did the usual: "Give me your money and I'll double it, pinky swear.
Midas Investments - "Wait, did we say we were going to turn all your assets into gold? You misheard us, we said "coal".
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Maybe not the best example. The coal price has more than doubled this year. The gold price is about where it started.
Re:Clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
Criticise Charles Ponzi all you want, but he had the guts to actually put his ideas into practice.
There, I fixed it for you.
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Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is a digital asset that uses cryptography for secure financial transactions and to verify the transfer of assets. It o
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We criticize because we saw it happening. You know the whole history repeating itself sort of thing.
Cryptocurrencies now, or the whole "DeFi" movement of deregulated finance, was so obvious - because it happened before. Today's regulations in finance came about because of what happened in the past. Just instead of cryptocurrencies, it happened with regular dollars. And anyone knows it can happen regardless of dollars, coins, Yen, Rupees, etc.
DeFi is the problem - without regulations, you have these problems
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The fact that there is no [easy]* "undo" capability makes it irresistible to fraudsters and scammers.
*unless you're a criminal [xkcd.com]
We know exactly how it happened (Score:3)
Mix in a little money laundering... Okay a lot of money laundering, so yo
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Criticise existing crypto all you want, but they had the guts to actually put their ideas into practice. Out of all of the groups with novel ideas on economics, they made the effort first.
They faced low-to-no barriers putting their ideas into practice, compared to people who would need to (for example) reorganize extant, physical industries to implement their ideas.
Also, Lenin would like a word with you.
A fool and his money are soon parted. (Score:2)
Fools deserve their fate. There is no lesson to be learnt because fools don't learn. They can however amuse their betters.
Trust no one. Think critically. Live in a way to mitigate your own fuckups and do not repeat others fuckups.
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Here's your cup of soda, pass the popcorn.
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"Trust no one" doesn't work in complex systems. Your answer is either intended as humorous or stupid, and I can't tell which.
In this situation, I agree, it was pretty obvious (to me) that this was a wild gamble. Whether it's a bad gamble depends on whether you bet your lunch money or your savings. I've occasionally taken wild gambles, and not regretted it, even though I lost.
Re: A fool and his money are soon parted. (Score:2)
The reality is most of these people aren't really the fools you imply. They do learn from their mistakes. They just fail to learn from the mistakes of others.
Every new cycle, there's a flood of new "fools" who come in, get scammed, make headlines, then learn their lesson for the next cycle. The other "fools" who got burned bail out of the whole market and so also learned this isn't for them.
Midas Investments CEO's own funds ... (Score:2)
everyone loses 55%. How much of his own funds did the CEO lose ? How much did he rake in while he was CEO of Midas Investments ?
I suspect that he did quite nicely out of it. The fine words in the announcement are more to persuade the FBI/... that these losses were just unfortunate, down to market conditions, blather, blather.
Re: (Score:2)
He lost nothing. Not because he didn't take a 55% hit. Because it went something like this:
1) ceo founds company based on nothing with zero or insufficient backing
2) gets suckers to put money into giant pot
3) as ceo his contract says he owns a piece of pot (he didn't put in personally)
4) ceo takes 45% of "his" account out and shuts down the scam.
How much did he lose? I'd say everything he got out was free money since he didn't put in anything anyway.
Re: Midas Investments CEO's own funds ... (Score:2)
He put in time. Different people's time is valued differently, but to say he put in nothing is silly.
Re: (Score:2)
His time has negative value. His time cost his "investors" 55% of their money.
Re: Midas Investments CEO's own gun ... (Score:2)
If the grift delivers a payout for investors, then his value is definitely non-zero.
Re: (Score:2)
if only those investors were warned (Score:5, Funny)
In multiple posts per week?
Over the last few years?
Re: if only those investors were warned (Score:2)
FTX offered 10% returns on investment.
You shouldn't need anyone to tell you it's a Ponzi scheme.
Re: (Score:2)
Yet people fail at that again and again. I do remember many children really struggling with that "percentage" math back in school and when it came to calculating interest effects over multiple years, they completely conked out. Maybe there is a connection?
how ? (Score:2)
"the platform experienced over 60% of AUM being withdrawn, creating a large asset deficit"
How? What were they doing with the money entrusted to them? Were people aware that they were giving the platform a loan without guarantees?
55 percent??? (Score:2)
So many "Russian" sounding people. (Score:2)
Why does it seem like an outsided portion of crypto companies run by people with Russian-sounding names? Is it a real, modern-day "Kholstomer"?
Also hilarious that we have a "web3" name for "Hybrid centralized/decentralized platform". How much longer until we go full circle and the next big thing is "CeFi".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why does it seem like an outsided portion of crypto companies run by people with Russian-sounding names? Is it a real, modern-day "Kholstomer"?
Also hilarious that we have a "web3" name for "Hybrid centralized/decentralized platform". How much longer until we go full circle and the next big thing is "CeFi".
Would you prefer a crypto company run by somebody named 'Creimer' ?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, we had an investment company run by somebody named "Madoff", where the jokes wrote themselves when it turned out that he indeed made off with investor money.
keys (Score:2)
What, 45% of customer funds left? Amateurs! (Score:2)
Obviously these people are amateurs! A decently run Crypto-Exchange Scam will at the very least get 85% of the money separated from the fools that used to own it.