ActsJuvenile

You should look at daily volume: BTC daily trade volume = $14B Tethers sloshing around in market today = $1.6B

Thus Tethers represent 14% of the market. If MtGox crash was due to a 5% heist, this 14% scam will wipe out Bitcoin and establish Ethereum as the new king.

PS: What's the story behind your username?

Couldn't agree more with the endgame you described. It will be same as MtGox's last month when prices were $2,000 higher there while everyone was trying to sell off at more liquid exchanges.

That would cause high prices on Bitfinex due to Bitcoin buying, while deflating prices on Coinbase and Gemini due to cash outs.

During the last month of MtGox it was common to see $2,000 price gap between Gox and US exchanges. I have a feeling history is going to repeat itself very soon.

The traders are not likely to withdraw anything unless Crypto prices start crashing downwards.

That would explain why Tether is so desperate to prop up the price and avoid withdrawals.

So how many Lambos are there in your garage?

The problem people have with Tether is their promise of 1 USDT = 1 USD.

Tether was kicked out of their HK and Taiwan banks, and now they are banking in Caribbean islands. They are supposedly holding $1.55 Billion USD cash in one of those banks to back USDT issued so far.

My question is, have you seen a Caribbean bank? Most bank HQs over there look like a 7-Eleven, and banks are owned by local politicians or shady characters. Anyone who deposits more than $1 million in those banks is a fool.

Coinbase code is still horrible. I have found couple of bugs/failure points in their code, but Fred Erhsam was a jerk to me so I don't feel like reporting these issues to CB.

Wire transfer fraud.

I am an insider in the Bitcoin industry, and within 1 day of opening a new bank account we started seeing fraudulent wires flooding in. When we dug deeper, it was shocking to see how many Americans' bank credentials have been hacked. It takes almost no effort for a EEU/RUS hacker to send a wire from a hacked bank account.

Once the fraudulent wire is sent, rest of the wire transfer system is tediously manual. So wire network participants simply choose to block bank accounts that receive repeated bad wires. This is why Wells Fargo cut out Bitfinex and Visa has decided to stop working with Bitcoin companies.

ACH fraud is even more rampant because you can pull money from someone's account without their consent (as long as they don't notice/contest within certain number of days). Coinbase profit margin is 0.5% per trade, so they need to keep their ACH fraud rate below that number to not lose money. ACH fraud rate is well over 1% industry-wide. This is why I strongly believe that Coinbase has to be losing massive amounts to ACH chargebacks.

I had to climb down Intel's management pecking tree for a technical issue, and it was eye opening. I passed through 6 layers of management to reach 1 engineer.

Worst part of that was the management sucked up to me when an SVP was copied on the email, and low-key ignored me when she wasn't.

This political cesspool cannot compete effectively against driven companies like NVidia. Intel seems to be the new Blackberry.

Jed McCaleb has been selling tens of thousands of ripples a day for years. Anyone investing in buying is just making Jed richer.

I am petrified of SWATting. I am in the Crypto world, and number of crazies / anarchists I deal with is insane.

What steps can I take to protect my home from SWATting attacks?

Look at Tezos Github commits: https://github.com/tezos/

Most of them are shallow changes or "busy work" to show activity. I have been watching FileCoin and Tezos Github, and I wouldn't expect much from either one of them.

Proof-of-Stake is a rich-get-richer algorithm. If you hold 1% of the coins, you will mine 1% of the blocks and keep those block rewards.

Ethereum has been a promising platform for innovation. It is doomed to become a shill infested cesspool the day POS replaces POW.

What remains of Ripple now is awfully similar to a scam: Jed McCaleb has been selling thousands of coins a day, and duped noobs are the only ones buying it.

https://themerkle.com/ripple-labs-settles-lawsuit-with-jed-m...

Coinbase has a history of canceling orders placed at lower price if the price spikes to a higher level. All other companies honor prevailing price at the time of order.

Top that off with Coinbase's buggy automated KYC system, hackable 2FA, and lack of customer support, and it makes me wonder if this is the best that $140 million investment can deliver?

You are too trusting and optimistic, which doesn't work well given irreversible nature of Bitcoin transfers. Would you let me, a total stranger, hold your Bitcoins?

If not, then you should definitely not let British Virgin Islands based Bitfinex hold them either. Use less risky options based in USA or EU, so you are at least protected by a decent legal and regulatory system.

You are claiming that Bitfinex cannot do wash trading because GDAX has higher fees. Doesn't make any sense! I am suggesting that Bitfinex is doing tons of Wash Trading: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/wash-trading-bitcoin-part-ii-...

They are pretty easy to chargeback as long as you initiate it within 30 days of your first transfer. Give a notarized letter to your bank stating that you did not do these ACH transfers to this "Coin Base" company.

You can get ACH charged back for up to 180 days with more involved procedure.

PayPal turned it around because they are a fiat-only company.

Coinbase is a Bitcoin-Fiat company, and fiat is reversible while Bitcoin is irreversible.

Do you have any good sources you recommend on the BTC-e "owner" and his story so far? I would like to read more about it.

> With that said, to Coinbase's credit, they haven't been hacked yet, which is actually quite an achievement considering the landscape.

They have been victims of massive USD chargebacks. I think Coinbase is bleeding so much money to chargebacks that co-founder Fred Erhsam figured out company is never going to turn a profit and resigned.

You are talking about Bitfinex, and using 24-hour GDAX volume to support your argument.

Bitfinex has traded 1 trillion (not billion) dollars in volume. How did a hacked exchange with no USD deposit or withdrawal method did it? Answer: wash trading and self-manipulation.

We also have some proof of this belief now. Wells Fargo stopped Wires to Tether on March 30, 2017 and Taiwanese banks stopped all international wires from Tether on April 18, 2017.

Tether has since issued 600 mill new tokens.

Source: https://tether.to/announcement/

Apparently Bitcoin is trying to re-position itself as Digital Gold instead of currency now.

https://multicoin.capital/2017/09/21/bitcoin-better-digital-... https://medium.com/@tuurdemeester/bitcoin-digital-gold-or-di...

0.25% rates are only for plebs and noobs.

There are whale volume discounts available on almost every exchange. Mid-level whales can get 0% rate for trading over certain number of Bitcoins. Back in 2013-14 you could even get NEGATIVE rates for trading large amounts. I.e., if I trade a certain number of BTC, I get a rebate at the end of the month. High volume boosts exchange's rating and brings more customers, so it is a no brainer to offer rebates.

If you remember early days of Chinese exchanges, they were doing millions of coins a day in first week of their launch. That was clear example of Exchanges themselves doing wash trading. All volume data is available in public domain for verification.

Taker fees are significantly discounted for higher volume traders, because they bring smaller traders to an exchange. I know two mid-sized whales who have almost 0% rate as long as they trade certain number of BTC a month.

I can confirm: my 2FA has been hacked on Coinbase. My Social Security number + DOB are out on the internet, and it makes it trivially easy to hack companies with poor security protocols like Coinbase, Authy, AT&T, TMobile, Comcast, Yahoo.

Bugs. I have discovered two bugs personally, reported them to Coinbase, and those are still unresolved.

For context, I reported couple of bugs to MtGox back in the day, and even MtGox fixed them in under a month which is more than what I can say for Coinbase. I guess this is what happens when Coinbase speed-hired 100 people in one year with no proper team-building exercises.

Google "Wash Trading"

Read this lawsuit: Tether only has $50 mill and their wires have been frozen by Wells Fargo since March 2017. So the remaining $600 mill tokens are backed by nothing.

http://article78againstnydfs.com/docs/317-cv-01882-BitfinexC...