What crackdown? The SEC has only charged actual scammers and they’ve “requested information” from the legitimate players to figure out how to proceed. Other than some bad calls by sanctioning software, there’s hardly been anything considered a “crackdown.”
That means, in Republican speak, that they will allow anyone to scam anyone without repercussion.
Republicans love a good scam
Next up is the dismantling of the ACA. They will roll out these amazingly cheap alternatives. Health insurance for $10 a month!
So the poor and the stupid will sign up. They’ll go to the bar and saunter up to a “libtard” and tell them that trump fixed everything.
Then when they get sick and try to use MAGA super plan plus premium they won’t be able to find a doctor. The $10/month plan only covers an annual trip to a CVS minute clinic. They’ll go on Facebook and write up how the goddamn liberals tricked him. Other faithful republicans will pray for them and tell them that it must be a glitch because trump made things better.
The con will win because it’ll only hurt those without power.
I don’t know why this is being taken at face value with so many upvotes. The Gensler SEC was right to go after actual scammers and ponzis, but they went much further and clearly had an agenda.
Gensler targeted the most reputable exchange in the US alleging that their core business is illegal, because the Gensler SEC decided to classify crypto assets as securities rather than define a new regulatory framework that actually fits.
https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023-102
Coinbase wanted to follow the rules and spent years asking for clarity. Rather than provide clear rules, the SEC provided a lawsuit.
There wasn’t a need to “define a new regulatory framework that actually fits” because, funnily enough, the existing regulatory framework already fits. It turns out, inventing new words doesn’t actually change the fundamental nature of the thing you’re describing. Refusing to call something an “investment” doesn’t change the fact that you’re selling an investment, refusing to call something a “security” doesn’t prevent it from being a security if it meets the definition.
Edit: Sorry, let me address that ridiculous point about Coinbase “asking for clarity” directly. Yes, Coinbase repeatedly “asked for clarity” in the same manner as a dude in a girl’s DMs repeatedly asking for nudes while being told in the bluntest of terms to fuck off. They were given perfectly clear answers, they just didn’t like them, so they kept claiming, with zero fucking basis, that these will laid out rules that every financial institution has been following for decades were somehow “unclear” to them. It was a conversation not unlike a Sovereign Citizen trying to get out of a speeding ticket by claiming that they don’t understand where the officer’s authority comes from. The law is prefectly clear. If you don’t understand the law, you hire a lawyer who does. That’s a cost of doing business. Sticking “smart” in front the of the word “contract” doesn’t suddenly invent a whole new field of law. I can’t suddenly get away with murder because I call it “crypto murder”. The law is based on what you do, not what you call it.
That’s fair, but hardly so aggressive that I’d call it a “crypto crackdown.”
But it’s hardly unexpected to see lawsuits around unsettled law. Everyone should expect more as we start settling case law and bringing crypto inline with existing law.
Also, wasn’t it mostly centered around their non-exchange activities? Press release specifically mentions their “Staking-as-a-Service” offering. Not that I see anything wrong with it, but I could see how that could be considered a security. Doesn’t really pass the Howey test.
One thing that stopped me from using it is that every single crypto transaction needs to be reported on your US tax return due to the way profits from the coins are taxed in situations where the value increases. It is annoying to have to compile all the data. If that changes, I will probably start using crypto again.
Coiners: “We want to be taken seriously and treated as legitimate businesses!”
Biden Government: “OK. We’ll treat you as legitimate businesses in your respective fields and expect you to comply with the same regulations everyone else has to.”
Coiners: “Oh shit wait no this sucks, our whole business model only works because of crime, quick everyone vote for a fascist conman!”
Every time the price spikes I get the feeling its large holders cashing out while they can and the liquid from newcomers is available. Which would make it mostly a scam, kinda like the stock market but even more shallow somehow, as if the stock market wasn’t unrelated enough to actual production and very esoteric.
kinda like the stock market
It’s basically the same thing. People cry about crypto being a pyramid scheme without talking about how pyramid schemes are a major foundation of the whole economy. People cry about how crypto isn’t a worthwhile currency while the dollar (ie. paper covered with pictures of slave masters) is constantly losing value.
It really depends on the community you’re talking with. In the Bitcoin community that would not surprise me in the least if it’s just big holders dumping on little holders to cash out for fiat. In the Monero community however that’s totally different because they want to use it as actual money. They, and I include myself in this category, believe that the government should absolutely not have control of our money supply that they can manipulate at any time for any reason or no reason at all and make everyone less wealthy, with the exception of those who they choose to give “government contracts”, “incentives” or “subsidies”. This is why the libertarians say that taxation is theft because they tax you on your productive hours of your life and call it an income tax and then they give it to the people who they choose to flatter and leave you homeless and shit.
Income taxes go back into services that help society. How do you expect a government to fund any of the infrastructure and services that you take for granted around you without it?
First off, we have to agree that we need the government in order to fund infrastructure. If we make that assumption, then sales tax on anything other than food and base essentials.
I’m sorry, no. The point when you find yourself relating to libertarians is the time you should really ask yourself two simple questions
1 - Am I a dumbass?
2 - Why am I trying to herd myself in with a group of dumbasses?
And that’s why we are different people. I have my opinion and you have yours. You’re not going to change my mind and I’m not going to change yours and we both already know that.
ok but why not gold or silver then? also obviously without currency controls all modern countries would have drastically smaller economies.
The settlement time. Gold and silver don’t work well as currency if you need to settle over long distances quickly. So like I cannot send Amazon and ounce of silver to buy a product easily. But I can send them Monero with a few clicks of my keyboard. Almost instantaneously. Lynn Alden, who is an economist, basically says that the invention of the telegraph broke gold and silver as money, because transactions could happen at the speed of light, but settlement could still take weeks, especially if, say, the United States was paying, I don’t know, the UK or something.
You can believe that all you want, but this is an even nutter dream than achieving effective gun control in the US (one of my nutty dreams). Why in the world would the government ever give up control of the “money supply”? That’s not going to happen.
Oh, they’re absolutely not going to give it up. That’s for sure. But as a citizen, you can just stop using it as much as you can in your day-to-day life. You can’t avoid using it entirely in most cases, but you can tone down how much you use it pretty significantly. And that they cannot control.
Governments have shown in the past they will indeed never give up their money printer. That’s a key reason crypto was created. You seem to think governments are willingly allowing crypto to exist and have the ability to shut it down. Centralised e-cash has been tried (and quickly squashed). P2P crypto is immutable and exists to preserve the freedom of users.
Obligatory Line Goes Up video, although not exclusively about Bitcoin.
I do admit that early in Bitcoin’s life, around 2013, i was a interested in Bitcoin as an alternative to banking, but the volatility and speculation alienated me from the community. Anyone buying BTC now for $90k, you need to realize this turned into a pyramid scheme and you’re not at the top of it. You may be able to find someone who’s more of a sucker to take the Bitcoin off your hand and make a profit, but it’s not sustainable, someone has to loose. Any gains you make are probably less than 10% what the person made by selling it to you.
If you do end up speculating on crypto, don’t invest more than you can afford to loose, and assume you’ll loose it all. It’s very likely you’ll either get hacked/scammed, loose your wallet, leave your wallet in an online exchange who runs off with your keys, etc. You’re on your own if that happens. If you do end up making any profit, it’ll be a blessing and you’ll be way happier than if you thought this would be your key to get rich, and you end up loosing it all.
To be fair, the idea of “alternative to banking” is still very much alive. BTC and LTC are very much used as currencies, even though BTC has fees too high for small transactions. Monero was developed specifically with utility rather than investment in mind - now reading about how exactly anonymity is enforced there (especially after the Chainalysis leaks), it’s pretty interesting. I kinda hope we invent something better than blockchain-based currencies that is equivalent in uncensorability, but right now it’s the closest we got.
Yes, the line keeps going up. I don’t understand why people think this is some kind of own. That longass video just gets funnier and more irrelevant as it gets older.
And the picture is about NFTs… At worst they’re like collector plates. Just another grift. Who cares? People buying jpegs of monkeys is not a real problem for me.
. That approval made it easier to fund bitcoin investment projects, but despite the seeming endorsement, Gensler warned at the time that the SEC still viewed bitcoin as a “volatile asset” linked to “illicit activity” like ransomware, money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing.
Anybody who is not using Monero for these kinds of activities is doing it wrong. Just remember folks, every transaction on Bitcoin and similar chains is an upskirt transaction.
Isn’t USD also linked to many of those? Gangs launder physical cash through businesses, ransomware can ask for credit cards or bank accounts, terrorists may take USD as it can be spent nearly anywhere.
The difference is that 100% of crypto-currency transactions are stuff like that and only a small percentage of USD transactions.
Do you have a source for that? I’ve seen local businesses like pizza shops and such accept btc.
Edit: the majority of crypto transactions are likely between exchanges, miners, and exchange customers. An example is the Blackrock BTC ETF buys and sells btc off an exchange in realtime in relation to the ETF purchases. I’m not saying no crime happens on the btc network but to claim 100% of transactions are crime based is just false.
