Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

Checkmite said:
You can buy and sell Bitcoins from exchanges for dollars, which is enough to satisfy the exchange criteria for a security.
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Actually no. At least in the USA. Neither the CFTC nor the SEC consider bitcoin a security and both consider it a commodity. The SEC doesn't regulate commodities. If it did, you couldn't sell them even privately unless there were SEC mandated disclosure filings that apply to all securities that aren't exempted such as having a limitied number of owners and such. You can't, for instance, advertise a security for sale to the public unless the filings exist. Not true for commodities. You want to sell Oz's of silver. No problem. Advertise all you wish. SEC could care less. They are commodities. The CFTC regulates exchanges that buy/sell commodities. Same with bitcoin as both the SEC and CFTC consider bitcoins commodities. SEC doesn't care if I advertise corn or silver for sale as long as I'm not an exchange and even then only the CFTC regulates it. Now bitcoin miners that issue stock (ownership shares) are different. Those are securities. If they are widely held w/o a registration exemption the SEC will come down on them.
 
marting said:
Actually no. At least in the USA. Neither the CFTC nor the SEC consider bitcoin a security and both consider it a commodity.
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Yes I know that. I was adding to the conversation on the sensibility of that (or lack thereof, in my opinion). Bitcoin seems to be the lone commodity that couldn't even theoretically be used for anything besides trading and exchanging for dollars.
 
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Checkmite said:
Yes I know that. I was adding to the conversation on the sensibility of that (or lack thereof, in my opinion). Bitcoin seems to be the lone commodity that couldn't even theoretically be used for anything besides trading and exchanging for dollars.
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Yes, it's value is purely what people are willing to buy and setl it for. That it is "mined" and with a limited total that can be mined, apparently makes it appealing to traders. Further, since it has no base usage, there is also no basis to say it is overpriced or underpriced. Also, it has features other commodities don't. It can be moved cross border easily unlike, say, gold. This makes it valuable for people avoiding (or ignoring) capital control laws. Ideal as a medium of exchange for black market goods/services. Or just those that like to gamble.

There probably hasn't been as hyped a market as crypto in general and bitcoin is the original crypto.

I pretty much share the view of Molly White, a techie that is highly skeptical of crypto's use case but is somewhat open to being proven wrong. She tracks the general frauds that are widespread in the space.

Bitcoin's advantage is that so far it has escaped the rampant frauds in the general crypto community. Not that that means it has some fundamental value but it is more dependable as a rapid exchange of value or gambling mechanism.

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/
 
Imagine crypto being a tech company. Market cap about like Google Amazon Apple and so on.
Of course there is a difference, everyone uses Google apple and Amazon.
Why would crypto, that no one puts actual cash into, do better. There will be an Era of market cap stability about 1 trillion, no headway, and boredom. The parasites will get real jobs or jump from windows. Just forecasting.
 
Michael Lewis is best known for Moneyball and The Big Short. His next book in on Crypto and specifically, SBF and FTX. He was on this long before FTX's collapse which will make the book more interesting.

Going Infinite, The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

In this podcast where he announces the title, he has a conversation with Molly White, a crypto skeptic. A good chunk of it is about Bitcoin and various, evolving, use cases of its proponents.

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules/on-background-crypto-skeptic-proven-right
 
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jeremyp said:
Bitcoin has no underlying value. There's nothing to mention


In mid April it was up at 30k. It's already been through 27k - in both directions.
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Shorting at 27k is validated when the out of money, 27490 is surpassed by in money 26500. This is simple math.
 
Samson said:
I am curious at the motivation to ridicule people who predict markets. It would never cross my mind to do so, quite the opposite, but I can't deny it is a thing on this forum to do so.
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You have spent years running a poor second to a stopped clock with the accuracy of your predictions.

That might not justify people ridiculing you but it is a powerful motive.
 
Having banked plenty from the last trade (Turing, 400 dollars out of money 1000 in money) I think short is good here, 27900.
 
I'm not a lawyer. Is it bad when you tell your compliance officer you're doing crimes in email that the SEC has?

SEC sues Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao for U.S. securities violations
The defendants showed a “blatant disregard” of federal law, the SEC alleged in its complaint.

One senior executive allegedly told a compliance officer that the company was operating as a f------ “unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”
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https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sec-sues-binance-ceo-changpeng-zhao-us-securities-violations-rcna87744
 
Sounds like Binance was doing similar things as FTX. Separate trading firm with access to customer money. Unlike FTX, they haven't (yet) made bad trades that depleted their assets and thus sensitive to a bank run. If Alameda hadn't made a bunch of bad trades, they wouldn't have been caught comingling FTX funds. I'll bet they were doing wash trading. Let's dig up the SEC complaint.

https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2023/comp-pr2023-101.pdf

Well, lookie here:

12. But Defendants failed to implement on the Binance.US Platform the trade surveillance or manipulative trading controls BAM Trading and BAM Management touted to investors. Thus, Defendants failed to satisfy basic requirements of registered exchanges—to have rules designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and the capacity to carry out that purpose. The supposed controls were virtually non-existent, and those that did exist did not monitor for or protect against “wash trading” or self-dealing, which was occurring on the Binance.US Platform.
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If anyone else is wondering what wash trading means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wash_trade

If you own two different shell companies, or actual companies for that matter, you can have one of them sell to the other at inflated prices to make it appear that the value of the commodity or security being traded is higher than it actually is.
 
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