About a year ago I determined to dip my toe into a crypto "investment". I never made it past the first step of trying to set up an account at a crypto excchange. The level of scrutiny and privacy invasion required to authorize me to buy even a single coin via an exchange was so horrific that I quit the signup process before I reached the funding step.
They wanted photographs of me holding my passport. They already knew all about me and asked probing questions about things they shouldn't have had any knowledge of. They wanted carte blanche access to my bank accounts, authorizing them to empty my accounts whenever they felt I needed to give them more money (just writing a check wasn't an option).
I realized that buying or selling a crypto coin through an exchange -- which is actually the only way one can normally do so - would routinely entail ten to a hundred times more loss of privacy than opening a bank account and probably a thousand times more "special attention" than cashing a large check.
And that was before the Fed tightening cycle really started and Crypto really began crashing. The collapse of crypto in perfect synchrony with the rate tightening makes clear that THE VAST MAJORITY of the crypto runup had been fooled by speculation with money borrowed at near zero interest rates.
That there WAS no practical use case for crypto. That it was NEVER an "investment". That probably 99%+ of those who owned crypto were lucky fools or people who had nothing actually invested in it than a lot of clock cycles and electricity burned "mining" on a computer...chasing that dream of something for nothing.
Anyway, since that experience, and certainly in light of the news since, it is clear that the crypto space is mostly filled and promoted by shady characters and greater fools.
I think their COULD be a good use case if it was possible to transact business with crypto WITHOUT going through anything like an "exchange". But there actually isn't! And I don't know that their ever will be.
Compared to crypto, CASH - even trash fiat cash - is actually safer, more accessible, and VASTLY (like a million times) more private.
If there was some way to just mail crypto to a third party directly, into a private wallet which would assure that the person you wanted to get the money had absolutely gotten the crypto, all that might change. But there doesn't appear to be such a wallet to wallet , no intermediary, mechanism so far. And, its lack, it seems to me, means there never will be...that their is something fundamentally impossible about it?
I'm not sure why it wouldn't be possible to, say, email a coin to someone or, even given them a code on a piece of paper with some sort of doublecgeck/guarantee of delivery WITHOUT AN INTERMEDIARY SKIMMING A MASSIVE PERCENT FOR THE XFER. But the fact that things like "coinbase", FTX, Gemini, etc. are everywhere but such a smart wallet transfer ISN'T speaks, I think, volumes. Also, of course, as is now becoming apparent, the crypto space is MOSTLY filled in with criminals, cons of every sort, absolutely NO privacy for any small players who may just want to "invest", etc.
It would be nice to have a currency which could be absolutely private, could be kept outside of a bank, could be kept with considerable safety, where you couldn't easily lose the "code" and which nobody could take from you merely because they had the code.
Thankfully, such a superior money does exist: you can legally buy it, with no privacy loss, in 10K increments in any coin shop. If you want want smaller denominations, you could also exchange vodka!
http://www.zerohedge.com/markets/2023-starts-crypto-bang-winklevoss-slams-barry-silberts-genesis-accuses-commingling-funds
2023 Starts Off With A Bang: Winklevoss Slams Barry Silbert's Genesis, Accuses Of Commingling Funds
Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Monday, Jan 02, 2023 - 03:25 PM
If anyone expected that the bursting of the crypto bubble and the resulting unprecedented tidal wave of failure and fraud would somehow be confined to 2022 we have some bad news.
As if the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire wasn't bad enough, its fallout just got much messier after digital-asset entrepreneur and Facebook billionaire, Cameron Winklevoss, accused fellow crypto businessman Barry Silbert of “bad faith stall tactics” and the commingling of funds within his conglomerate that Winklevoss says have left $900 million in customer assets needlessly in limbo since FTX’s meltdown.
First, some background: in early November, shortly after FTX imploded, Gemini Trust which was founded by the Winklevoss twins, paused redemptions on a lending product called Earn, which offered investors the potential to generate as much as 8% in interest on their digital coins. It did so by lending them out to Genesis Global Capital, one of the companies owned by Silbert’s Digital Currency Group. The Earn halt came after Genesis suspended both redemptions and new loan originations at its lending unit because of its exposure to FTX. Genesis has told clients that it could take “weeks” to find a path forward, and that bankruptcy may be one possibility.
Which brings us to today: this morning, facing pressure of his own from angry customers locked out of their Gemini accounts and a lawsuit alleging fraud, Cameron Winklevoss published an open letter saying he had provided Silbert with multiple proposals to resolve the issue, including as recently as Dec. 25. He told Silbert “this mess is entirely of your own making,” citing some $1.675 billion owed to Genesis by DCG, which it used for other business purposes within Silbert’s conglomerate. “This is money that Genesis owes to Earn users and other creditors.”
PS. So, "bitcoin" was mostly an artifact, a symptom, of artificially low interest rates. By that I mean, that bitcoin wouldn't have taken of it was possible to earn a positive return by leaving savings in a bank for borrowers to use for things like mortgages. It is a further sign of USD death dead ahead.
P.P.S. One of the key qualities which DEFINE money is that it holds value: it doesn't go "down" AND IT DOESN"T GO UP! Another is non-fungibility (it can't just disappear if you lose a combo code). Another, is that it is trivial to exchange: you give me an apple and I give you a coin. Bitcoin fails absolutely and miseraby on ALL important counts. Fiat fails to hold value, which is why it isn't very good for money. However it is WAY better than bitcoin, all in all.
I know some people continue to expect bitcoin to go to $1,000,000. I can't see - absent the dollar going to 1 penny. Bitcoin is interesting, but seems to be missing some fundamental things.
I recommend, again, plant trees which bear fruit and learn to make good vodka. Both of those are rather more private tradeable and assured.
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