The anti-crypto thread

[BFG10K]

Great news, crypto's collapsing across the board: https://www.techpowerup.com/282380/...ions-in-less-than-24-hours-did-the-bubble-pop

Also China's banned crypto, though individuals can still have it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-122712260.html

The sooner this cancerous parasite is wiped out, the better.

 

[beginner99]

Because crypto is worthless compared to real fiat currency?

No because if you pay a $1 fee for every $1 purchase you will lose money unless the price explodes. That is why you lost more than invested. In fact it's obvious. can't lose more than you invest without overpaying on fees. But yeah, I agree. crypto right now is still early and requires a certain mental capacity / learning effort to work with or else you lose money.

 

[UNCjigga]

No because if you pay a $1 fee for every $1 purchase you will lose money unless the price explodes. That is why you lost more than invested. In fact it's obvious. can't lose more than you invest without overpaying on fees. But yeah, I agree. crypto right now is still early and requires a certain mental capacity / learning effort to work with or else you lose money.

I'm not paying any fees...why do you think I'd pay $2 for $1 worth of an asset losing value??

Robinhood Crypto

Zero-fee Bitcoin trading with no commissions and no added spreads from Robinhood Crypto. Sign up today and get €10 in crypto.*

robinhood.com

 

[ultimatebob]

I got $1k in DogeCoin. I'm waiting for my boat to come in any day now...

Those 17 year old YouTube investors said I could get rich!! Rich I tell ya!

I'm struggling to understand the thought process for people buying into an obsolete cryptocurrency that's down over 75% from it's peak price. Especially because the only thing going for it at the moment is that Elon Musk seems to like it.

 

[JEDI]

I'm not paying any fees...why do you think I'd pay $2 for $1 worth of an asset losing value??

Robinhood Crypto

Zero-fee Bitcoin trading with no commissions and no added spreads from Robinhood Crypto. Sign up today and get €10 in crypto.*

robinhood.com

i was going to buy bitcoin eft (BLOK) with e-Trade.
but i can buy btc directly with no fees from robinhood?!
whats the catch?!

 

[UNCjigga]

i was going to buy bitcoin eft (BLOK) with e-Trade.
but i can buy btc directly with no fees from robinhood?!
whats the catch?!

The catch is you're buying Bitcoin

Honestly, Robinhood does seem "too good to be true". Depending on when my daily order executes, the platform will usually get $1 of ETH for $0.99 and put the penny back into my crypto cash account for future purchases (I'm sure they're pocketing the rest of the difference if price fluctuates more than a penny between order and execution.)

 

[dullard]

i was going to buy bitcoin eft (BLOK) with e-Trade.
but i can buy btc directly with no fees from robinhood?!
whats the catch?!

The catch is Payment for Order Flow. https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/08/03/robinhood-understand-payment-for-order-flow/

In very rough terms, instead of letting you buy from a wide range of potential sellers at a good price, you are forced into buying from a single seller at a worse price. And Robinhood takes a cut for doing so. Whether (A) no fee + bad price is better than (B) fee + good price depends on the size of the fee and the number of items being bought/sold.

A more real-world example would be if you were buying groceries online. Suppose I will deliver your groceries for free. You can only buy groceries at Whole Foods prices (and not Walmart or some cheaper store). Then Whole Food pays me a lump sum for this privilege of giving them exclusive access to customers. If all you buy was a single can of soup, then you win with this free delivery as my costs to deliver were far higher than the cut I got from Whole Foods. But if you do all your grocery shopping with me, then my cut is far bigger than the costs of delivering.

 

[DrMrLordX]

i was going to buy bitcoin eft (BLOK) with e-Trade.
but i can buy btc directly with no fees from robinhood?!
whats the catch?!

tbh if you want to buy BTC, you're better off using Coinbase Pro.

 

[beginner99]

I'm not paying any fees...why do you think I'd pay $2 for $1 worth of an asset losing value??

Only way to loose more than you invested is through fees. Hence your prior statement of losing more than invested is wrong or you did pay some hidden fees.

 

[dullard]

Only way to loose more than you invested is through fees.

Um, value can go down too. That is a common way to lose money.

 

[beginner99]

Um, value can go down too. That is a common way to lose money.

he said he lost more than he invested. if you invest $100 and value goes to 0 you lose $100. Can't lose more than you invested. unless fees.

 

[dullard]

he said he lost more than he invested. if you invest $100 and value goes to 0 you lose $100. Can't lose more than you invested. unless fees.

Leverage will do it too.

 

[JEDI]

tbh if you want to buy BTC, you're better off using Coinbase Pro.

buy btc proxy such as microstrategy.
they bought on the dip recently and have 125k btc.
thats $4.6B worth of btc!

 

[DrMrLordX]

buy btc proxy such as microstrategy.
they bought on the dip recently and have 125k btc.
thats $4.6B worth of btc!

Okay. Still fail to see how that's substantially better than just buying it yourself, unless you're banking that they know when to buy better than you do.

 

[JEDI]

Okay. Still fail to see how that's substantially better than just buying it yourself, unless you're banking that they know when to buy better than you do.

im assuming they paid less fees to buy btc as a % of purchase than i would on coinbase

 

[VirtualLarry]

More than $320 million stolen in latest apparent crypto hack

Wormhole, one of the most popular bridges linking the ethereum and solana blockchains, lost about $320 million in an apparent hack Wednesday afternoon.

www.cnbc.com

another defi hack.

 

[beginner99]

More than $320 million stolen in latest apparent crypto hack

Wormhole, one of the most popular bridges linking the ethereum and solana blockchains, lost about $320 million in an apparent hack Wednesday afternoon.

www.cnbc.com

another defi hack.

And obviously solana. All the "Ethereum killers" aren't looking that great now. They simply trade security for performance. The lower gas fees will bite you when you loose it all due to a hack.

 

[AdamK47]

Crypto bro scams crypto bro suckers.

https://kotaku.com/youtube-twitch-streamer-ice-poseidon-stole-money-crypto-1848463229

 

[DrMrLordX]

And obviously solana. All the "Ethereum killers" aren't looking that great now. They simply trade security for performance.

U wot m8

DeFi hacks are endemic on the Ethereum blockchain. Badly-written smart contracts will get you every time. So will credential leaks on interface websites.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

One thing that always bothered me about smart contracts: how the hell do you secure the things?

Nowadays the understanding with any software you make is that it will have bugs. Doesn't matter how good you are, how much test-driven development you do or how many best practices you follow, it's really damn hard to be perfect. So you accept it's imperfect, lock it down as best you can and monitor in case something does go wrong.

But with smart contracts, the compiled binaries have to sit out there on the chain, right? Sure they're compiled, but decompilers exist. You'd lose all the variable names and formatting but in effect it's a giant bug bounty for whoever finds an exploit. And it's immutable so you can't actually fix any bugs you find without implementing a patch function that ends up being yet another attack vector.

How on earth do you secure the thing? Fall back on waterfall-style development and chart out every single possible use and risk before starting?

 

[DrMrLordX]

One thing that always bothered me about smart contracts: how the hell do you secure the things?

Hire auditors. Push early versions to the test net, and then invite people to exploit them.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

So, get a security audit, outsource your QA and hope they got everything? For your application that will be immutable once it's deployed? Which is responsible for irreversible transactions?

That doesn't sound sustainable. At all.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Smart-contract development is an entirely different beast than that of traditional programming. Line by line the code is simple. But the world of crypto will not be kind to any bugs/exploits. To me it's almost analogous to crypto being so secure but at the cost that losing your private key means you've lost your funds for good. It's not a technology you fool around with. But if you do it carefully and right, nothing beats it.

Hacks and exploits might as well be baked into R&D costs at this point because they will keep happening. The opportunity that comes from being first mover in this space means that a $320M exploit might be recovered by the business model in short time. You have to get it right only one time. But your application or business model will dictate how many rolls you get. You may get one roll, or you may get a few. A VC just covered the $320M loss out of their own pocket. That kind of says something of the opportunity in this space.

 

[DrMrLordX]

That doesn't sound sustainable. At all.

Take a look at UniSwap for an example of a smart contract that has (mostly) gotten it right.

 

[beginner99]

How on earth do you secure the thing? Fall back on waterfall-style development and chart out every single possible use and risk before starting?

There have always been different types of development practices and just because agile is all the hype in the more public areas, doesn't many other areas use it to. check out clean room development. How do you think software for things like the james web telescope gets developed? certainly not like your average web app. The cost per line of code will probably also be 100x higher but there is zero room for failure. Same for smart contracts.

 

[ultimatebob]

Sorry, crypto haters, but it looks like prices are on the rebound. Bitcoin is back over $40,000, Ethereum is back over $3,000, and Solana is back over $100.

Dogecoin seems to be struggling to get back to over 20 cents, though. Much coin not so wow anymore?