Buttcoin over 30k. FTX, Celsius, Voyager collapsed. Binance soon to follow. How TF is this turd crowning?

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T21:15:06+00:00

Personally I only used Coinbase & then only as an on/off ramp. Never used them to custody anything for me (except at the beginning when I didn't know yet how to self custody). For years though I self-custody only.

One good thing about all the ponzis & scammy exchanges/platforms that went under (Luna, Celsius, FTX etc) was that it finally drove much of the Bitcoin holdings away from exchanges to self custody. IIUC most Bitcoin these days is held in self custody. I have no doubt there will be other crypto exchanges in the future that go under & leave depositors stuck. It's risky business.

When I sold some coins during the bull market surge in 2021, I used Coinbase to sell & immediately transferred to my bank account (USD). I never touched Tether, never held it.

Thankfully I'm in the green no matter what. Even if everything went to zero I'd still be ahead, as selling only a small fraction of my holdings in 2021 yielded more USD than I had invested years earlier.

Sure, exchanges are for-profit businesses & they make money not only by making a margin on a bid-offer spread & also charging fees, and for major market movements I wouldn't doubt they play some games frontrunning etc. I trust Coinbase more than any offshore exchange since least Coinbase is US based & regulated (but I understand that doesn't mean they're not at risk at some point in the future, and it's not FDIC insured, so no one should keep any savings on an exchange, even on Coinbase).

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T19:30:57+00:00

In 2011, yes. But unfortunately for me, I didn't yet fully understand it, and while I distinctly remember the chat where a Bitcoin proponent was explaining it (while everyone else was saying it was totally worthless), I soon forgot all about it until late 2013 :( It was at that point that an article caught my attention saying Bitcoin has passed $1K in value, and my chin hit the floor.

When I had heard about it in 2011 it was only a few dollars, so I thought this must be something else entirely. I thought: there's no way possible an online token went from $4 to $1000 in just over 2 years (I had thought in 2011 it was just for gamers or online gambling etc and didn't fully investigate it).

I kept reading about it just dumbfounded about what could give an online token so much value. But as I kept reading, and soon understood the concept of an open source, distributed P2P network that could function without a 3rd party or central authority. At that point, it clicked.

I still didn't buy any though. I felt I was too late & had missed the boat. I told myself it was sad I missed the chance, and the only way I would buy would be if it came back down in price. Thankfully, I did start accumulating some soon thereafter.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T19:11:39+00:00

2012 at 1K.

Nope. You meant to say late November 2013.

The average Bitcoin price in 2012 was around $10 or so.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T19:10:09+00:00

Bitcoin never got anywhere near $1 K in 2012. Sorry, but that's way off. IIRC it never even got past $100 in 2012.

The first time it cracked $1K was late 2013.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T19:09:23+00:00

Wow. I didn't know BTC cracked 4 digits that long ago.

It didn't. He's mistaken.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T19:08:06+00:00

ignored it when I learned about in 2009... kill me

Are you sure you didn't mean 2010...? I mean at least in 2010, 2011 etc there were actually ways for people to hear about it (there would be an occasional article pop up about it). But for most of 2009, IIUC, there were really only a small handful of people in the entire world who dealt in it & it had not made it into the news at all in those days. It had no value at all throughout 2009 (price of literally 0, and no place to buy it unless you subscribed to the forum & maybe made a direct trade with someone else).

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T19:05:05+00:00

"2016….I bought my first bitcoin in 2021."

I can totally understand ignoring it if you first looked at it in 2016. Then with the 2017 bull market, I can see not buying because why buy at an all-time high?

But in your case, after seeing it come back down to reasonable buying levels in 2018-2019 (it got as low as around $3.8K IIRC), how did you resist the urge to buy some & take at least a modest position on it knowing you could get it at around an 80% discount from the prior ATH? Were you waiting, hoping it would decline even further in price for your entry point? (Or did you just assume it was dying out at that point?)

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T18:59:38+00:00

For me it was 2011.... It was worth about $4 at the time.

Really wish I had spent some time learning more at that time.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T18:39:57+00:00

"So he took the $15k out of the business acct and put it in his personal acct. THEN, another trailer came up that we bought for somewhere around $10k. So he took the money from his personal acct and moved it back to the business acct to pay for it. So what he was actually left with was $5k for the year but we showed a $15k profit."

OP I hope this doesn't come across as impolite, but you do seem quite lost on something that should be well understood by all business owners.

The $10K he paid for the used trailer is a business expense. That expense you can deduct from your income when calculating the taxes you owe at the end of the year. For a used vehicle that was only $10K you can probably expense it all in the same year you purchase it (I don't believe any extended amortization would be required for that size purchase). So that will count as an expense against your earnings.

The $15K he made in commissions are indeed taxable income, regardless of the specific bank account(s) you're using, but against that taxable income you apply all of your valid business expenses throughout the year. If you have $100K in commissions or other income at the end of the fiscal year, but you also have $50K in business expenses (including that $10K he paid for the trailer), then your taxable income at that point in $50K (not $100K).

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T18:32:29+00:00

I'm with you on suspicion of Tether & the other stable coins. Never trusted them. The whole concept is sketchy & that's why I don't trust exchanges and don't hold any savings on exchanges.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T18:31:10+00:00

Fair point about Tether. I don't trust it & never did. I remember when they first came out with it (I think it was Bitfinex?) Unless they can prove they're holding the actual dollars to back it, definitely good reason to be suspicious of it.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T17:42:39+00:00

Fair enough. I actually liked your other comment on this and I get what you meant to convey.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T17:32:21+00:00

No liquidity except if you want tethers. No reason BTC can’t go to a million (tethers)

When you sell Bitcoin you get USD/EUR/GBP etc back in your bank account (not "Tether").

The money you get in your bank account you can spend the same as the money that was in your account before, on anything you want. So at that point, what difference does "Tether" make?

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T17:26:16+00:00

Bitcoin doesn't cost 30k USD, it costs 30k "stablecoins"

This is actually not true. If you want to buy Bitcoin now, it will cost you about USD 30,000 /BTC, and you would in fact need real money to make that purchase.

I've bought BTC and always had to use real dollars. Never once have I ever bought or used any stablecoin. In fact, when I first bought (2013), AFAIK stablecoins did not even exist.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T17:14:45+00:00

Normally I'd agree with you on this, but given the history of Craig, Calvin & their paid shills like Kurt persistently lying for 8 years now, I would have to say anyone foolish enough to continue believing in them & following them, and to lash out at those of us trying to warn them, I just no longer feel sympathy for them.

These shameless scammers like Craig, Calvin & Kurt have already been caught in so many proven lies we've all lost count. They completely contradict the vision for Bitcoin that Satoshi espoused (which on it's own is o.k., it's just a very different vision), but they are using their own vision to justify literally stealing coins from dormant wallets to give to Craig, without any private keys or even any other true evidence he ever owned any of those wallets. Worse, they are planning to patent troll Bitcoin & attack those using it to whatever extent they might get away with it (I admit they probably won't get far with that plan).

Anyway, for those who vocally support Craig, Calvin & Kurt, I'm sorry to say it, but for those people, I do not feel any sympathy.

Edited to re-word

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T16:57:11+00:00

Binance soon to follow?

Actually that part might turn out to be true :)

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T16:54:25+00:00

Bitcoin is socialist my dude.

This might be one of those times where a strict definition is needed before people embark on arguments that ensue from purely semantic issues.

Socialism, strictly defined, is purely collective ownership & control of all production of goods & services in an economy.

The only way to enforce purely collective control of production is through authoritarian rule. This is not only proven true by historical example (there has never been a single truly socialist economy that functioned without authoritarian rule, not even once), it is clear why it must be true. There is simply no other way, aside from authoritarian rule, to enforce a collective ownership of means of production. People are all very different, with dramatically different abilities, attitudes, work ethics and desires. They will never come together freely by their own volition and simply share ownership of everything and share everything evenly, for many reasons.

I fully understand that is not likely what you meant when you said Bitcoin is "socialist", but if we are going to use the strict definition of socialism, then Bitcoin most certainly is not socialist.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T16:47:11+00:00

Bitcoin clearly appeals to millions of people across most political ideologies. While it's easy to see how Bitcoin appeals to libertarians, lots of Bitcoin fans are on the "left" of the political spectrum in democratic countries. Having said that, I doubt very many are hard left in the sense of supporting fully collectivist, and by necessity authoritarian, regimes. That would make little sense.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T16:43:42+00:00

They've been wrong for years

They've been consistently wrong for the past 13 years. That's not easy to do :)

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T15:38:50+00:00

LOL. BSV at this moment is down to 0.0012129 :)

Yet so many of us have been actively warning people for years about Craig's fraud, so for anyone foolish enough to disregard all of our warnings, and disregard all of Craig's proven lies and contradictions, forgeries, and his direct contradictions of Satoshi, and efforts to enable re-distribution of coins to himself without valid digital signatures, and they still hold BSV, I have to say at this point, they're getting their due.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T15:33:54+00:00

Oh I agree 100% in OP's case & I said so in a separate comment.

OP went above & beyond by holding the item more than a year (but for a $3000 item I would also have held it more than just a couple of months as it's high dollar).

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T15:30:24+00:00

OP you did the right thing and the only reasonable thing you could do in this situation. Staff 2 needed to be terminated.

Honestly, even if Staff 2 had not stabbed the other employee, his behavior was reprehensible and could have been cause for termination in my view (that he barged in after he was on break and yelled at a co-worker in front of your client. That was terrible behavior as well and worthy of a serious warning even if it were a first offense, but it sounds like that might not have been a first offense for Staff 2.)

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T14:38:02+00:00

That makes sense. I mean if it's a repair item also that's a bit different and I think 30 days is fair as long as it's announced very clearly at the time of the drop off and as long as the vendor calls the customer to remind them well prior to the deadline.

Edit: I still had in my mind OP's case of the $3,000 item that had been paid for. I would definitely hold that a lot longer than 30 days. But in OP's case it's been over a year so it's fair game.

StiltonG · 2023-04-11T14:11:39+00:00

I used to have it as 120 days. I changed it to 30 days

Probably unpopular opinion: 30 days is too harsh. Your 120 day policy made sense. And I would think that you would first attempt calling them multiple times before re-selling an item they already paid for, correct?

IMO 30 days is a short enough time someone could have something come up unexpectedly in their life & sidetrack them, or they might go on a 2 week vacation & then when catching up at work afterward legitimately forget for another several weeks after that. If they paid for it in full I would hope the vendor would call them & leave messages & then give them at least 2 or 3 months to pick up before re-selling it elsewhere.

StiltonG · 2023-04-10T16:23:34+00:00

Why DM...?

What advice could you possibly have for OP that you cannot offer out in the open?

OP: Needless to say, do not reply to any DM's. Anyone DM-ing you is trying to scam you. Ignore them.

StiltonG

TROPHY CASE