Bitcoin

[globetrotter]

They still had that sign up saying they accept it @PBG just days ago

[pdogg]

 

Cambodia's central bank won’t recognise bitcoin as a form of payment, making the Kingdom the latest Asian country to reject the digital currency, according to The Phnom Penh Post.

 

National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) director-general Chea Serey confirmed the regulator’s stance on the issue on Wednesday, citing the absence of any e-commerce law in the Kingdom as one of the main reasons.

 

“NBC will not recognise a currency that is not issued or backed by a government. Bitcoin’s issuer is not a central bank of any jurisdiction,” Serey said.

Serey said that the lack of pertinent regulations means consumers aren’t legally protected in case of fraud.

 

The NBC is the only organisation in Cambodia with authorisation to issue legal tender under the direction of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The NBC’s statement comes one day after the Bank of Thailand (BOT) issued a stern warning against buying bitcoins. The BOT yesterday said tracking the virtual money could pose difficulties, especially during legal proceedings.

 

Bitcoin continues to be traded in Thailand, however, despite the BOT stating that the government would not and cannot regulate the digital currency.

Last month, Vietnam’s banking regulator banned commercial banks and vendors from using or allowing bitcoin as a legitimate form of payment or trade. Prior to that, China, Japan and Russia took similar steps to discourage the digital currency’s official use.

http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/cambodias-central-bank-wont-recognise-bitcoin/

[DownLoLarry]

Cheap Air acccepts Bitcoin.

 

If any of you use Cheap Air to book flights, please use our links on Asia Hotel and Travel.  

 

http://www.asiahotelandtravel.com/index.php?/topic/280-cheap-air-accepts-bitcoin/

[DownLoLarry]

Don't want anyone who's interested in BitCoin to miss LeCat's great post in the Argentina thread.

 

http://www.ladyboyreview.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1412-argentina/?p=118410

[Pdoggg]

On 11/17/2013 at 7:25 PM, Tomcat said:

I notice that Bitcoin is getting a lot of press now. It went from 60c to around 400$ . Many Ladyboy sites take it now as payment as do plenty of other places

 

does anyone here use it yet. Maybe in 5 years it will be all we use to pay for Hotels etc

 

 

Bitcoin has broken the $5000 barrier.

I should have bought some. Nice return since you posted TC!

 

[xyzzy]

I am kicking myself also for not buying more. I bought $220 for an overseas order earlier this year. After the order I had something like $23 left over. It grew to over $100 before I recently made a $78 purchase. I considered buying $500 at the time I purchased the $220 as I knew I would make more orders online. It wouldn't be a huge profit but a nice little gain and I will likely end up buying more before long anyway. 

On Soi Buakhao either Cup F-A Restaurant/Sutus Court or the business next door The Coins accepts Bitcoin. I can't remember which but one of them has a sign out front that says Bitcoin accepted. Likely not the only one.

 

[Pdoggg]

Crypto payments in Thailand banned as of April 1st.

Details

[Pdoggg]

Crypto is in free fall.

Quote

The two main tokens from embattled crypto project Terra are now in freefall.

UST, a so-called stablecoin that’s meant to maintain a $1 peg, plunged more than 60% Wednesday from 24 hours earlier. It was trading at just 35 cents at 4 a.m. ET, according to CoinGecko data.

Sister token luna dived more than 80% to $5.

Other cryptocurrencies tumbled alongside them, with bitcoin sinking 5% to $30,321 and ether falling 4% to $2,286.

Stablecoins are akin to bank accounts for the crypto economy, offering a sound store of value to avoid the kind of volatility cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have become notorious for — in theory, at least.

UST, the world’s third-biggest stablecoin, uses a complex system of minting and burning tokens to adjust supply and stabilize prices. Its price has crumbled under the pressure of a sell-off in cryptocurrencies recently, resulting in further panic in the market.

Do Kwon, the coin’s creator, has amassed billions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin through his Luna Foundation Guard fund to support UST in times of crisis. The fear now is that Luna Foundation Guard dumps those bitcoins onto the market, resulting in an even bigger sell-off.

Bitcoin briefly slumped below $30,000 Tuesday, its lowest level since July 2021. The world’s biggest digital coin is now hovering slightly above that level. It’s fallen about 56% since setting an all-time high of nearly $69,000 in November.

David Moreno Darocas, a research analyst at CryptoCompare, said the situation highlights the “fragility” of algorithmic stablecoins like UST.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/11/terra-ust-stablecoin-dives-below-1-peg-luna-cryptocurrency-down-80percent.html

 

[Pdoggg]

Bitcoin plunges below $27,000, erases 2021 gains as crypto sell-off intensifies

[Pulci Gorgon]

We use an idiom like "monkey money" that we use to define this type of money? I searched for the translation in Linguee to translate it in English. I found many expressions : peanuts, hypothetical money, funny money, phony money, softmoney, Monopoly money. That was the first virtual money and so many exist now. Would you still dare invest 1,000 €, $, £ on a new virtual money and see if it worths 50,000 €, $, £ 25 years later ?  (Be careful when changing your PC or laptop). 

[Pdoggg]

The FBI and private investigators have seized about $30 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean government-linked hackers from a video game company in March, according to Chainalysis, a US firm that said it worked with the FBI to claw back the stolen money.

It's the latest example of a concerted effort from US law enforcement to recover some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Pyongyang's hackers have allegedly plundered from cryptocurrency firms in recent months — money that US officials worry is used to fund North Korean's nuclear weapons programs.
 

[seven]

2 hours ago, Pdoggg said:

Pyongyang's hackers

I keep seeing some of them lurking here, but I didn't know they were hackers. Better fire up that McAfee again.

[Pdoggg]

In the space of days, Crypto Exchange FTX went from a $32 billion valuation to bankruptcy as liquidity dried up, customers demanded withdrawals and rival exchange Binance ripped up its nonbinding agreement to buy the company. FTX founder Bankman-Fried admitted on Thursday that he “fucked up.”   

[Klytus]

53 minutes ago, Pdoggg said:

In the space of days, Crypto Exchange FTX went from a $32 billion valuation to bankruptcy as liquidity dried up, customers demanded withdrawals and rival exchange Binance ripped up its nonbinding agreement to buy the company. FTX founder Bankman-Fried admitted on Thursday that he “fucked up.”   

In principle its sounds fantastic, in reality its a nightmare.

I was interested in XRP, but my spidey sense said different.

Not that the Cyrpto world is over, it will adapt, we will see this in the coming years.

Its a casino at the end of the day "pump n dump" in ridiculous time frames.

[Lefty]

I have never gotten interested in any crypto currency in any way, shape or form. For better or worse. Maybe I'm wrong for not ever doing so. I dunno. 

[Klytus]

Revelation 13:7

[Pdoggg]

Bankman-Fried’s full letter

“Hi all—

I feel deeply sorry about what happened. I regret what happened to all of you. And I regret what happened to customers. You gave everything you could for FTX, and stood by the company—and me.

I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and I would give anything to be able to go back and do things over again. You were my family. I’ve lost that, and our old home is an empty warehouse of monitors. When I turn around, there’s no one left to talk to. I disappointed all of you, and when things broke down I failed to communicate. I froze up in the face of pressure and leaks and the Binance LOI and said nothing. I lost track of the most important things in the commotion of company growth. I care deeply about you all, and you were my family, and I’m sorry.

I was CEO, and so it was my duty to make sure that, ultimately, the right things happened at FTX. I wish that I had been more careful.

I want to give you a better description of what happened—one I should have written out as best I understood it much earlier.

Piecing things together recently, making approximations—I don’t have full data access right now to get precise answers—and marking everything to market, regardless of liquidity, I believe that the events that led to the breakdown this month included:

1) A crash in markets this spring that led to a roughly 50% reduction in the value of collateral;

a. ~$60b collateral, ~$2b liabilities -> ~$30b collateral, ~$2b liabilities

2) Most of the credit in the industry drying up at once;

a. ~$25b collateral, ~$8b liabilities

3) A concentrated, hyper-correlated crash in November that led to another roughly 50% reduction in the value of collateral over a very short period of time, during which there was very little market bid-side liquidity;

a. ~$17b collateral, ~8b liabilities

4) A run on the bank triggered by the same attacks in November;

a. ~$9b collateral

5) As we frantically put everything together, it became clear that the position was larger than its display on admin/users, because of old fiat deposits before FTX had bank accounts:

a. ~$9b collateral, ~$8b liabilities

I never intended this to happen. I did not realize the full extent of the margin position, nor did I realize the magnitude of the risk posed by a hyper-correlated crash. The loans and secondary sales were generally used to reinvest in the business—including buying out Binance—and not for large amounts of personal consumption.

I deeply regret my oversight failure. In retrospect, I wish that we had done many many things differently. To name a few:

a) being substantially more skeptical of large margin positions

b) examining stress test scenarios involving hyper-correlated crashes and simultaneous runs on the bank

c) being more careful about the fiat processes on FTX

d) having a continuous monitor of total deliverable assets, total customer positions, and other core risk metrics

e) Putting in more controls around margin management.

And none of this changes the fact that this all sucks for you guys, and it’s not your fault, and I’m really sorry about that. I’m going to do what I can to make it up to you guys—and to the customers—even if that takes the rest of my life. But I’m worried that even then I won’t be able to.

I also want to acknowledge those of you who gave me what I now believe to be the right advice about pathways forward for FTX following the crash. You were right, of course: I believe that a month earlier FTX had been a thriving, profitable, innovative business. Which means that FTX still had value, and that value could have gone towards helping to make everyone more whole. We likely could have raised significant funding; potential interest in billions of dollars of funding came in roughly eight minutes after I signed the Chapter 11 docs. Between those funds, the billions of dollars of collateral the company still held, and the interest we’d received from other parties, I think that we probably could have returned large value to customers and saved the business.

There would have had to be changes, of course: way more transparency, and way more controls in place, including oversight of myself. But FTX was something really special, and you all helped make it that. Nothing that happened was your fault. We had to make very hard calls very quickly. I have been in that position before, and should have known that when shitty things happen to us, we all tend to make irrational decisions. An extreme amount of coordinated pressure came, out of desperation, to file for bankruptcy for all of FTX—even entities that were solvent—and despite other jurisdictions’ claims. I understand that pressure and empathize with it; a lot of people had been thrust into challenging circumstances that generally were not their fault. I reluctantly gave in to that pressure, even though I should have known better; I wish I had listened to those of you who saw and still see value in the platform, which was and is my belief as well.

Maybe there still is a chance to save the company. I believe that there are billions of dollars of genuine interest from new investors that could go to making customers whole. But I can’t promise you that anything will happen, because it’s not my choice. In the meantime, I’m excited to see some positive steps being taken, like LedgerX being turned back on.

I’m incredibly thankful for all that you guys have done for FTX over the years, and I’ll never forget that.

—SBF”

 

[Rom]

The mea culpa above is no more than a delusional attempt to get "billions of dollars of genuine interest from new investors that could go to making customers whole".   BILLIONS! I repeat BILLIONS!   That SBF cargoshorts SOB stole at least 10 billion in customer deposits that he blew in highly risky margin-trades that went sour and now has the nerve to ask for billions more to cover those deposits.  He made sure not to mention his other company  Alameda Research which is where the 10 billion went and no one knows yet if they were disastrously invested or just outright stolen...  Probably a mix of both.  Moreover, not only FTX depositors can not cash out their deposits, some 1 billion in deposits simply disappeared from the record.  Imagine waking up one day and your bank account does not exist.  Or it still exists and shows a balance but you can't cash it...

The only upside is that most digital currency investors were greedy types who knew a day like this would come but did not care as long as they had made gains which many did... so there is some justice in that.

The question going forward is: as of this writing, that made up thingy known as bitcoin is still worth USD16,000 ...  in my opinion it's USD15,999.99 too much, but I dont have the balls to go short on it...

 

[Pdoggg]

17 hours ago, Rom said:

The mea culpa above is no more than a delusional attempt to get "billions of dollars of genuine interest from new investors that could go to making customers whole".

So I guess you're not starting a Go Fund Me campaign for SBF?   

[Pdoggg]

SBF was arrested in the Bahamas.

[Zeppie]

it is going to be very interesting to watch this unfold.  What interest me the most is his Democrat connections.  They are extensive, so could he be the next suicide in jail while on 24hr around the clock suicide watch. Anytime your connected to the Clinton's you better watch your back.  My suspicion is that there will be a turn of event that no one saw coming, or a master plan to prevent the truth from coming out.  Like in the movie "The Drop", the Det. says to Bob...."No one see you coming, do they Bob".  You know darn well there were strings being pulled for him at very high places, coz they were getting Millions from him.