During the crypto boom of 2021, Riot Platforms was raking in cash from bitcoin mining. Now the company is losing so much money that it’s counting on energy credits from selling power back to the Texas grid to keep its costs under control.
Riot said on Wednesday that it earned $31.7 million in energy credits last month from Texas power grid operator ERCOT. The company generated the credits by voluntarily curtailing its energy consumption during a record-breaking heatwave.
The total value of the credits dwarfed the 333 bitcoin the company mined in August, worth about $8.9 million dollars as of the end of the month.
Texas encouraged them to set up shop, with these credits for turning their stuff off as an incentive.
This is after the freeze shower all of the cracks in the system.
Also in August they had 11 days asking people to cut back on usage, blaming lack of wind power (a small part of what is generated). Not blaming lack of other power generation or reserves to counter a shortfall, not blaming a lack of investment to keep up with demand... just no wind.
But they passed a bill that gives energy companies money to improve their infrastructure with no requirements they improve their infrastructure.
I don't even live in the US and I can provide just as good service at refraining from bitcoin mining in Texas. I'll not do it for 10% of what they get paid. Bargain!
I liked the Turkey crypto scammer guy being sentenced to 11000 years in prison. I'm not sure if they will actively maintain a crypto skeleton cell, but it seems a nice sign the world is losing patience with all the barely disguised investment scams. This Ozer guy literally just took all the "investor" money and fled the country, obviously not in a very smart way...
I also liked that his defense was apparently “I’m obviously too dumb to have committed a crime!”
I thought it was the oposite, like "If I wanted to commit a crime, you wouldnt have captured me" type of deal.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
It’s the illegal deposit of waste on land that doesn’t have a licence to hold it.
For instance I found a whole bunch of waste I was able to link back to a pizza place on the other side of the city (and yes you guessed it, their logo was all over the stuff).
It’s the illegal deposit of waste on land that doesn’t have a licence to hold it.
For instance I found a whole bunch of waste I was able to link back to a pizza place on the other side of the city (and yes you guessed it, their logo was all over the stuff).
Is it called that because the dumpster is airlifted to the illegal dumping ground?
It’s the illegal deposit of waste on land that doesn’t have a licence to hold it.
For instance I found a whole bunch of waste I was able to link back to a pizza place on the other side of the city (and yes you guessed it, their logo was all over the stuff).
Is it called that because the dumpster is airlifted to the illegal dumping ground?
I think it's more from doing your dumping 'on the fly', ie on the move. Usually you just pull up in your white van and dump your shit out in a big pile at the side of the road somewhere on your way back from a job.
It’s the illegal deposit of waste on land that doesn’t have a licence to hold it.
For instance I found a whole bunch of waste I was able to link back to a pizza place on the other side of the city (and yes you guessed it, their logo was all over the stuff).
Is it called that because the dumpster is airlifted to the illegal dumping ground?
I think it's more from doing your dumping 'on the fly', ie on the move. Usually you just pull up in your white van and dump your shit out in a big pile at the side of the road somewhere on your way back from a job.
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
NEW YORK, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Sam Bankman-Fried on Tuesday lost a bid to be released from jail so he can better prepare for his Oct. 3 trial on fraud charges stemming from the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, a court filing showed...
"Hey, you know those Stoner Cats NFTs where owning one offered you a share of revenues from the upcoming webseries? Yeah, we call those 'unlicensed securities' "
The ruling also specifically called out the royalty cut, and the Stoner Cats 2 organisation agreed to destroy the NFTs (how??? The ones in the wild are going to keep existing without the private keys, and while you can disable certain functionality remotely there may be embedded code that will still keep triggering).
"Hey, you know those Stoner Cats NFTs where owning one offered you a share of revenues from the upcoming webseries? Yeah, we call those 'unlicensed securities' "
The ruling also specifically called out the royalty cut, and the Stoner Cats 2 organisation agreed to destroy the NFTs (how??? The ones in the wild are going to keep existing without the private keys, and while you can disable certain functionality remotely there may be embedded code that will still keep triggering).
The company behind the NFTs, called Stoner Cats 2, paid $1 million in fines and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in its possession without admitting guilt.
So they will transfer the NFTs associated with their wallets to the etherium? burn address, a wallet which is not owned or controlled by anyone, where they will stay forever.
I think.
I may not actually know what 'in the wild', possession or destroy actually mean in this context.
"Hey, you know those Stoner Cats NFTs where owning one offered you a share of revenues from the upcoming webseries? Yeah, we call those 'unlicensed securities' "
The ruling also specifically called out the royalty cut, and the Stoner Cats 2 organisation agreed to destroy the NFTs (how??? The ones in the wild are going to keep existing without the private keys, and while you can disable certain functionality remotely there may be embedded code that will still keep triggering).
The company behind the NFTs, called Stoner Cats 2, paid $1 million in fines and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in its possession without admitting guilt.
So they will transfer the NFTs associated with their wallets to the etherium? burn address, a wallet which is not owned or controlled by anyone, where they will stay forever.
I think.
I may not actually know what 'in the wild', possession or destroy actually mean in this context.
Stoner Cats 2 (the organisation issuing the NFTs) don't have the private keys to the NFTs already sold - the people who bought them do. They can't force anything to happen to the tokens themselves, they'll continue to exist on the blockchain. That's one of whole principles of crypto.
They can disable certain functionality, so for example if they control the server where the NFT art is hosted they can remove the art, so the token won't point to anything. But for example if the current owner sells the token on a marketplace that honors the royalty protocol, it'll still transfer wallets and attempt to make a royalty payment.
Think of it as if they printed a physical NFT certificate and sent it to the buyer. They can't destroy the certificate without breaking into the buyers house, the certificate will continue to exist even if Stoner Cats 2 say they will not honor anything it says any more.
"Hey, you know those Stoner Cats NFTs where owning one offered you a share of revenues from the upcoming webseries? Yeah, we call those 'unlicensed securities' "
The ruling also specifically called out the royalty cut, and the Stoner Cats 2 organisation agreed to destroy the NFTs (how??? The ones in the wild are going to keep existing without the private keys, and while you can disable certain functionality remotely there may be embedded code that will still keep triggering).
The company behind the NFTs, called Stoner Cats 2, paid $1 million in fines and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in its possession without admitting guilt.
So they will transfer the NFTs associated with their wallets to the etherium? burn address, a wallet which is not owned or controlled by anyone, where they will stay forever.
I think.
I may not actually know what 'in the wild', possession or destroy actually mean in this context.
Stoner Cats 2 (the organisation issuing the NFTs) don't have the private keys to the NFTs already sold - the people who bought them do. They can't force anything to happen to the tokens themselves, they'll continue to exist on the blockchain. That's one of whole principles of crypto.
They can disable certain functionality, so for example if they control the server where the NFT art is hosted they can remove the art, so the token won't point to anything. But for example if the current owner sells the token on a marketplace that honors the royalty protocol, it'll still transfer wallets and attempt to make a royalty payment.
Think of it as if they printed a physical NFT certificate and sent it to the buyer. They can't destroy the certificate without breaking into the buyers house, the certificate will continue to exist even if Stoner Cats 2 say they will not honor anything it says any more.
So the article says Stoner Cats 2 agreed to destroy the NFTs in their possession.
It doesn't sound like you are talking about NFTs in their possession.
So I am confused as to why not being able to restore them is such a key part of your post.
Am I missing a bit where is says those are also to be destroyed?
I suspect this is a boilerplate ruling for ruling that something is an unlicensed security: destroy all remaining stock, pay a fine, and create a fund to repay unhappy buyers. Here, I think all the NFTs got sold, so there's nothing to destroy, but there's no harm in putting that in the ruling anyway.
EDIT: Anyway, the actual definition for "destroy" here is "whatever keeps the judge from getting mad at you". As long as they don't play stupid games with the judge, they should be fine.
"Hey, you know those Stoner Cats NFTs where owning one offered you a share of revenues from the upcoming webseries? Yeah, we call those 'unlicensed securities' "
The ruling also specifically called out the royalty cut, and the Stoner Cats 2 organisation agreed to destroy the NFTs (how??? The ones in the wild are going to keep existing without the private keys, and while you can disable certain functionality remotely there may be embedded code that will still keep triggering).
The company behind the NFTs, called Stoner Cats 2, paid $1 million in fines and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in its possession without admitting guilt.
So they will transfer the NFTs associated with their wallets to the etherium? burn address, a wallet which is not owned or controlled by anyone, where they will stay forever.
I think.
I may not actually know what 'in the wild', possession or destroy actually mean in this context.
Stoner Cats 2 (the organisation issuing the NFTs) don't have the private keys to the NFTs already sold - the people who bought them do. They can't force anything to happen to the tokens themselves, they'll continue to exist on the blockchain. That's one of whole principles of crypto.
They can disable certain functionality, so for example if they control the server where the NFT art is hosted they can remove the art, so the token won't point to anything. But for example if the current owner sells the token on a marketplace that honors the royalty protocol, it'll still transfer wallets and attempt to make a royalty payment.
Think of it as if they printed a physical NFT certificate and sent it to the buyer. They can't destroy the certificate without breaking into the buyers house, the certificate will continue to exist even if Stoner Cats 2 say they will not honor anything it says any more.
So the article says Stoner Cats 2 agreed to destroy the NFTs in their possession.
It doesn't sound like you are talking about NFTs in their possession.
So I am confused as to why not being able to restore them is such a key part of your post.
Am I missing a bit where is says those are also to be destroyed?
So you are correct that I misread the bit which specified "in its possession". My bad!
But my understanding is also that NFTs are minted "on demand" to be sold (because crypto orgs quickly worked out that paying for minting costs up front when there wasn't a guaranteed buyer was a rookie error), so I'm dubious that there are any material NFTs in Stoner Cats 2's possession, and as I elaborated there's nothing really that they can do to disable either any sold NFTs or the royalty functionality given that was a key callout by the SEC (although as the article points out, a lot of marketplaces are set up not to trigger the royalty protocol anyway).
They can pinky swear they have deleted the keys to the wallet associated with the royalties protocol, but given the number of other cypto scams where the developer swore a wallet was a "burner" wallet that they didn't have the keys and then, oops, it turns out SOMEONE actually did have the keys because a whole bunch of stuff got transferred out I'm very skeptical.
My original point was that the punishment doesn't appear to rectify the existing problem identified by the ruling - like ordering someone to get rid of the rest of the cake which they just ate. "Oh look, there is an absence of cake - I have complied with your order to the best of my abilities".
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
Remember the famous All the President's men quote: "The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand"
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
We are living in a golden age of Bullshit. People are demanding to be bullshitted. They're craving it, paying good money for it.
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
We are living in a golden age of Bullshit. People are demanding to be bullshitted. They're craving it, paying good money for it.
Crypto is different from Theranos or embodied cognition, I guess, in that it has no inherent value and thus can retain value purely as part of a Keynesian beauty context, whereas frauds or errors that make actual scientific or technological claims can ultimately be refuted. Paradoxically, crypto’s lack of value—actually, its negative value, given its high energy costs—can make it a more plausible investment than businesses or ideas that could potentially do something useful if their claims were in fact true.
At bottom, there’s a kind of epistemological nihilism at the base of the rampant financialization of the economy — the process by which making money becomes somehow detached from any socially useful means of production — of which “the crypto space” is merely a particularly extreme example.
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
90% of crypto in a nutshell.
You can make up an arbitrary token that trades electronically.
If you do that, people might pay a nonzero amount of money for it.
Worth a shot, no?
The other 10% are somewhat interesting technical hacks that are trying to kludge up on the blockchain the various roles, systems, and structures that already exist and work much better in the financial industry.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
When you drill down into it, you realise the core of the crypto ecosystem, the core of Web3.0, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, billionaires minted by tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification, and are looking for a do-over. Looking to synthesize a new market, where they can be the one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper-wealthy industrialist. It's a cat fight between the five percent and the one percent. Ultimately the driving forces underlying this entire movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space that they can dominate, where they can be trend-setters and taste-makers, and seemingly invent value through sheer force of will.
When you drill down into it, you realise the core of the crypto ecosystem, the core of Web3.0, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, billionaires minted by tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification, and are looking for a do-over. Looking to synthesize a new market, where they can be the one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper-wealthy industrialist. It's a cat fight between the five percent and the one percent. Ultimately the driving forces underlying this entire movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space that they can dominate, where they can be trend-setters and taste-makers, and seemingly invent value through sheer force of will.
Also the all consuming desire of rentier-ism versus actually working to generate value. (Not that the CEO's of tech firms do much actual labor, but collectively Google is putting in a lot of staff hours to produce something, compared to crypto which produces nothing but wasted kilowatts) Even the very beginning descriptions of it as a digital land rush. Why do something productive when you can be a rent seeking monopolist? Living the dream!
Ignatova's whereabouts remain unknown. If she's alive, she's a lot better at hiding than most of these ponzi artists.
It's kind of a fun thought experiment, if you were the boss of a "crypto investment exchange" and run away with a ton of cash, how exactly would you evade international law enforcement? Facial reconstruction, defect to North Korea, pick somewhere quiet in Africa or SouthEast Asia and bribe local officials, go off the grid in some mountains or forest.
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
A day before the start of the Bahamas conference, Bankman-Fried had all but admitted that much of his industry was built on bullshit. During an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the columnist Matt Levine asked a straightforward question about a practice called yield farming. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme.
“You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does — or pretend it does literally nothing.”
Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said.
Levine said that the box and its “Box Token” should be worth zero. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, Box Token. Maybe it’s cool.’” Curious people would start buying Box Token. And the box could start giving out free Box Token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of Box Token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.”
After a moment of contemplation, Levine said, “I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, ‘Well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.’”
Bankman-Fried said that was a reasonable response. “I think there’s like a sort of depressing amount of validity …” he said, trailing off.
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
We are living in a golden age of Bullshit. People are demanding to be bullshitted. They're craving it, paying good money for it.
John Blunt of the South Sea/Swordblade Company rug pull and John Law, the architect of the 18th century Mississippi bubble, look on in awe of the level of bullshit of this new generation.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
When you drill down into it, you realise the core of the crypto ecosystem, the core of Web3.0, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, billionaires minted by tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification, and are looking for a do-over. Looking to synthesize a new market, where they can be the one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper-wealthy industrialist. It's a cat fight between the five percent and the one percent. Ultimately the driving forces underlying this entire movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space that they can dominate, where they can be trend-setters and taste-makers, and seemingly invent value through sheer force of will.
Is it really a fight, though? Do the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of the world really care, are they fighting against the cryptocults?
When you drill down into it, you realise the core of the crypto ecosystem, the core of Web3.0, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, billionaires minted by tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification, and are looking for a do-over. Looking to synthesize a new market, where they can be the one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper-wealthy industrialist. It's a cat fight between the five percent and the one percent. Ultimately the driving forces underlying this entire movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space that they can dominate, where they can be trend-setters and taste-makers, and seemingly invent value through sheer force of will.
Is it really a fight, though? Do the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of the world really care, are they fighting against the cryptocults?
You know those shows where in the first adventure the protagonists unknowingly annoy someone who declares themselves their eternal rival?
When you drill down into it, you realise the core of the crypto ecosystem, the core of Web3.0, the core of the NFT marketplace, is a turf war between the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. Technofetishists who look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, billionaires minted by tech industry doors that have now been shut by market calcification, and are looking for a do-over. Looking to synthesize a new market, where they can be the one to ascend from a merely wealthy programmer to a hyper-wealthy industrialist. It's a cat fight between the five percent and the one percent. Ultimately the driving forces underlying this entire movement are economic disparity. The wealthy and tenuously wealthy are looking for a space that they can dominate, where they can be trend-setters and taste-makers, and seemingly invent value through sheer force of will.
Is it really a fight, though? Do the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of the world really care, are they fighting against the cryptocults?
They don't beyond that these people take up money they might otherwise have access to. But they are a goal the crypto losers will never be.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
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But they passed a bill that gives energy companies money to improve their infrastructure with no requirements they improve their infrastructure.
What more could you want them to do?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I liked the Turkey crypto scammer guy being sentenced to 11000 years in prison. I'm not sure if they will actively maintain a crypto skeleton cell, but it seems a nice sign the world is losing patience with all the barely disguised investment scams. This Ozer guy literally just took all the "investor" money and fled the country, obviously not in a very smart way...
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I thought it was the oposite, like "If I wanted to commit a crime, you wouldnt have captured me" type of deal.
And we catch quite a few because we find their names amongst all the rubbish.
And all say “if I was fly tipping, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave my name on it”
At which point I say feel free not to pay the fine and tell a judge that.
I googled it - illegal dumping.
Ant-man getting drunk and going cow tipping
It’s the illegal deposit of waste on land that doesn’t have a licence to hold it.
For instance I found a whole bunch of waste I was able to link back to a pizza place on the other side of the city (and yes you guessed it, their logo was all over the stuff).
Is it called that because the dumpster is airlifted to the illegal dumping ground?
I think it's more from doing your dumping 'on the fly', ie on the move. Usually you just pull up in your white van and dump your shit out in a big pile at the side of the road somewhere on your way back from a job.
Ie: fly tipping
MWO: Adamski
But what's the pump before the dump?
https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-denies-bankman-frieds-request-pretrial-jail-release-2023-09-12/
"Hey, you know those Stoner Cats NFTs where owning one offered you a share of revenues from the upcoming webseries? Yeah, we call those 'unlicensed securities' "
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/13/23872048/stoner-cats-nft-sec-mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher
The ruling also specifically called out the royalty cut, and the Stoner Cats 2 organisation agreed to destroy the NFTs (how??? The ones in the wild are going to keep existing without the private keys, and while you can disable certain functionality remotely there may be embedded code that will still keep triggering).
So they will transfer the NFTs associated with their wallets to the etherium? burn address, a wallet which is not owned or controlled by anyone, where they will stay forever.
I think.
I may not actually know what 'in the wild', possession or destroy actually mean in this context.
They can disable certain functionality, so for example if they control the server where the NFT art is hosted they can remove the art, so the token won't point to anything. But for example if the current owner sells the token on a marketplace that honors the royalty protocol, it'll still transfer wallets and attempt to make a royalty payment.
Think of it as if they printed a physical NFT certificate and sent it to the buyer. They can't destroy the certificate without breaking into the buyers house, the certificate will continue to exist even if Stoner Cats 2 say they will not honor anything it says any more.
So the article says Stoner Cats 2 agreed to destroy the NFTs in their possession.
It doesn't sound like you are talking about NFTs in their possession.
So I am confused as to why not being able to restore them is such a key part of your post.
Am I missing a bit where is says those are also to be destroyed?
EDIT: Anyway, the actual definition for "destroy" here is "whatever keeps the judge from getting mad at you". As long as they don't play stupid games with the judge, they should be fine.
But my understanding is also that NFTs are minted "on demand" to be sold (because crypto orgs quickly worked out that paying for minting costs up front when there wasn't a guaranteed buyer was a rookie error), so I'm dubious that there are any material NFTs in Stoner Cats 2's possession, and as I elaborated there's nothing really that they can do to disable either any sold NFTs or the royalty functionality given that was a key callout by the SEC (although as the article points out, a lot of marketplaces are set up not to trigger the royalty protocol anyway).
They can pinky swear they have deleted the keys to the wallet associated with the royalties protocol, but given the number of other cypto scams where the developer swore a wallet was a "burner" wallet that they didn't have the keys and then, oops, it turns out SOMEONE actually did have the keys because a whole bunch of stuff got transferred out I'm very skeptical.
My original point was that the punishment doesn't appear to rectify the existing problem identified by the ruling - like ordering someone to get rid of the rest of the cake which they just ate. "Oh look, there is an absence of cake - I have complied with your order to the best of my abilities".
Yeah, that's insane. Ponzi didn't admitted to anything until the jig was up and people were literally trying to kill him. The guy just...spells it out.
Remember the famous All the President's men quote: "The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand"
We are living in a golden age of Bullshit. People are demanding to be bullshitted. They're craving it, paying good money for it.
And crypto's gooseshit factor makes it harder to combat as opposed to, say, a scientific fraud like Theranos:
The other 10% are somewhat interesting technical hacks that are trying to kludge up on the blockchain the various roles, systems, and structures that already exist and work much better in the financial industry.
Also the all consuming desire of rentier-ism versus actually working to generate value. (Not that the CEO's of tech firms do much actual labor, but collectively Google is putting in a lot of staff hours to produce something, compared to crypto which produces nothing but wasted kilowatts) Even the very beginning descriptions of it as a digital land rush. Why do something productive when you can be a rent seeking monopolist? Living the dream!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66793135
Ignatova's whereabouts remain unknown. If she's alive, she's a lot better at hiding than most of these ponzi artists.
It's kind of a fun thought experiment, if you were the boss of a "crypto investment exchange" and run away with a ton of cash, how exactly would you evade international law enforcement? Facial reconstruction, defect to North Korea, pick somewhere quiet in Africa or SouthEast Asia and bribe local officials, go off the grid in some mountains or forest.
Coffeezilla commented in this about a year ago
If only there were signs this was all nonsense.
John Blunt of the South Sea/Swordblade Company rug pull and John Law, the architect of the 18th century Mississippi bubble, look on in awe of the level of bullshit of this new generation.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
pleasepaypreacher.net
Is it really a fight, though? Do the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of the world really care, are they fighting against the cryptocults?
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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You know those shows where in the first adventure the protagonists unknowingly annoy someone who declares themselves their eternal rival?
They don't beyond that these people take up money they might otherwise have access to. But they are a goal the crypto losers will never be.
pleasepaypreacher.net