bit¢oin$

theres nothing "just" about being state backed

should also be noted that say the stock market refers to companies that do actual things, obvs theres a lot of uh froth in there, but selling oatmeal that people then eat is real, oatmeal is not a ponzi scheme

the sad irony of crypto is that people who felt like the mainstream financial system is designed to fleece them, which it largely is, were driven to crypto which is a system that is completely designed to fleece them

that's true to an extent. some people, very gullible, suckers, etc.

i also think about a friend of mine, though, who has always been a libertarian, even before he had heard of it. a couple weeks ago he called me a "people policer". anyway, of course he's really into crypto. but his current life/job idea is to a) auto-generate music and b) sell this auto-generated music to people for their Unity games. i asked him if he made the auto-generator or if he's using someone else's. someone else's, of course. then i asked him why someone would buy auto-generated music if they could auto-generate it themselves. we ended by agreeing that there was a short window of time in which this plan might be plausible, and he redoubled his efforts to make some money on it while it's still possible.

keep in mind, all of this is putting aside how awful auto-generated music is and what an insult it is to use it in your game, especially when there are millions of people who "human generate" music whose main life accomplishment would be achieved if someone, ANYONE out there would just use their shitty, human music in a real, shitty, game, even with zero compensation.

that's ALSO a lot of the crypto audience. it's the hunt for energy created by perpetual motion, alchemy shit

games with generative landscapes, generative resources, generative creatures, generative skies, practically limitless, are on the same wavelength as crypto, i think. it's suspended disbelief and faith that generative worlds really will lead to "infinite growth", while completely ignoring how hollow the "content" is

eh, it's not a terrible plan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/how-to-make-money-on-spotify-a-white-noise-podcast-could-bring-you-big-bucks

yeah i mean its just greed im not trying to defend the people who were tweeting have fun staying poor a month ago or whatever, but also fundamentally they represent a societal class of losers constantly being manipulated by winners right down to the sad greedy ideologies theyre fed through instagram hustle memes or whatever

idk why anyone would use machine generated music when you could just put on some lofi beats to study/chill

xp lol caek

yeah, for real though! i'm not exactly the most effective person to criticize the employment activities of other people, but it's amazing how many people just sit around thinking "how can i scam people and make money for something that contributes absolutely nothing at all to the world?"

tbf most regular jobs contribute nothing to the world so i can understand it, tho the scamming people part is not forgivable, scamming big corps on the other hand

should also be noted that say the stock market refers to companies that do actual things, obvs theres a lot of uh froth in there, but selling oatmeal that people then eat is real, oatmeal is not a ponzi scheme

― lag∞n, Tuesday, June 14, 2022 11:08 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, people sometimes call the stock market a "ponzi scheme" because some part of the value is dependent on more money flowing in than flows out, but it's at least potentially tied to something that can actually produce and grow in a meaningful way. Most of the market is, in fact, companies that produce things and have earnings, and even though the market has tended to eschew dividends in favor of price appreciation, at bottom the value of a stock should still bear some relationship to the future cash flows it represents.

theres obvs a tremendous amount of scammy fake shit in finance but its still way less fake and scammy than crypto

tbf most regular jobs contribute nothing to the world so i can understand it, tho the scamming people part is not forgivable, scamming big corps on the other hand

― lag∞n, Tuesday, June 14, 2022 12:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

excuse me!

It's hard for me to imagine loving material wealth so much that you would think "How can I literally just screw people out of their money while contributing no value to the world whatsoever so I can drive around in a fancy car."

that "everyone calm down, it’s possible that this is just the bank experiencing a liquidity crisis" reminded me of this part:

One of the things you’ve said, if I recall, is that the cryptocurrency space is “speed-running 500 years of financial history.” By which I take you to mean that all of the financial disasters of centuries past are playing out in short order, and then they have to rediscover the solutions that were put in place for those things not to happen. So you start off thinking, “Oh, wouldn’t it be fantastic if there were no central authority?” and then all of a sudden you realize, “Actually, it really would be nice if we had a central authority to regulate fraud and such” and you rediscover the virtue of banks and government.

of this interview https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/05/why-this-computer-scientist-says-all-cryptocurrency-should-die-in-a-fire

that's a yaow

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=kraken-crypto-exchange-announces-culture-overhaul

sounds like everythings going great over there

That’s a unique way to announce layoffs

lol yeah

He's also trying to frontrun that there will be a "hit piece" coming out soon and "don't believe the news"

My dude, you've just made whatever this "hit piece" will be pretty believable. pic.twitter.com/JT4uccTmYX

— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) June 15, 2022

The culture document goes on to say that "Someone Must be Offended, Some of the Time":

"Krakenites are welcome to request (and deny) personal language and communication preferences of each other"
Everyone is responsible for their own feelings
Being offended doesn't necessarily make you right
Being offended doesn't necessarily make you "harmed"
Words nor silence are ever "violence"
We do not call someone's words toxic, hateful, racist, x-phobic, unhelpful, etc.

"someone must be offended, some of the time" tells you all you need to know. whoever wrote that is someone who offends at least one person every single time they do anything, and had to move mountains and time and space in order to come up with a theory of the world that accounts for how awful they are while completely absolving them from any responsibility

HEY THERE, STOP! We do not call someone's words hateful around here. That is not our culture.

totally separate issue but the corporate world's swift and total appropriation of the word "culture" is fucking bonkers

corporate culture is important to the functioning of a company but its funny how the bosses think its something they can control by decree

theres a glimmer of insight thats immediately subsumed into management mind

tho tbf there are tons of bosses out there who do understand culture better

presumably as the bubble pops and you can no longer effectively market crypto as a way to get rich nor as a way to get revenge for the financial crisis by replacing the international banking system with a subreddit there's gonna be a lot of pivoting to marketing it as a way to own the libs (tho if i wanted to own the libs i would just buy a rude t-shirt; then i could have it and see it and wear it and be happy, instead of losing a bunch of money on crypto). nevertheless as the mainstream fad passes this feels like the inevitable next step to retain and deepen the loyalty of some portion of the faithful, who are after all just about to get dolchestossed again.

i sure as hell have never worked for one xp

here's the piece the kraken ceo was trying to get ahead of https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/technology/kraken-crypto-culture.html

The sheer mind-pretzel of people are responsible for their own feelings and no one has a right not to be offended BUT ALSO you can't call people's words toxic, racist, homophobic, etc.

lol what

Those who disagreed could quit, Mr. Powell said, and opt into a program that would provide four months of pay if they affirmed that they would never work at Kraken again.

promise to never come back here

Mr. Powell, who attended California State University, Sacramento, started an online store in 2001 called Lewt, which sold virtual amulets and potions to gamers. A decade later, he embraced Bitcoin as an alternative to government-backed money.

In 2011, Mr. Powell worked on Mt. Gox, one of the first crypto exchanges, helping the company navigate a security issue. (Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014.)

looool

(Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014 because of a security issue.)

good piece of this kind of boss https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/62a7fbc951acba00209259f5/elon-musk-brian-armstrong-coinbase-crypto/

hahaha

"In the time between me scheduling this newsletter and its publication, Coinbase:

Laid off 18 percent of its workforce. Fired employees were given no notice and woke up locked out of their email.
Ran an ad during the NBA finals mocking tweets saying that crypto is dead. (Bitcoin has fallen 25.32 percent in the past five days.)"

Bleeding. Another $700 million withdrawn from Tether, following a like amount yesterday. Nearly $13 billion in a month. The peg can’t get to $1.00. Won’t allow an audit. Won’t disclose their CP/US T-bill custodian. Says they redeemed Celsius positions with no realized losses. 1/ pic.twitter.com/sNAqM8pVeR

— Christopher Bloomstran (@ChrisBloomstran) June 15, 2022

guess well see if tether actually has those reserves

It went below 20k

Briefly below 19 even

someone sold some

https://i.imgur.com/gatYgpR.png

A great thing about #bitcoin Twitter right now, is only the real ones are left. Goodbye #bitcoin tourists.

But there is still much pain before we get rid of the real ones and have just the #Bitcoin purists. Remember, it went from $32 to $2; so $69k to $4k would be a great purge. pic.twitter.com/rY7aLCzNkr

— Bitcoin (@Bitcoin) June 18, 2022

thats not blood its victory wine

love to purge my world-changing currency of "tourists"

lol the whole thing is so fn psychotic

Yeah, but when you lose all your money from gambling it’s very normal for the casino to publicly post about how they’re glad you’re gone, right

Crypto’s genius is to take that “oh well, I was betting against the house, what did I think was going to happen? At least I had fun losing my money” feeling and converted it to “it was my fault, and I didn’t even get a free drink out of it, or even a glimpse of ugly psychedelic casino carpeting from 1983”

What happens when the price is below the cost of mining? Do all the mining operations just shut down and no new bitcoins get made?

considering theyve spent a lot on their mining computers one would think that theyll keep mining hoping the price will go up in the future, but then if the price stays low some will drop out leading mining to become cheaper until its profitable again i guess

dropped below 18k now

down ~13% today

Below 10 coming