The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread
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Vinnik, accused of laundering more than $4 billion through the digital currency bitcoin, was arrested in 2017 in Greece at the request of the United States, although Moscow has repeatedly demanded he be returned to Russia.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said Vinnik "allegedly owned, operated, and administrated BTC-e, a significant cybercrime and online money laundering entity that allowed its users to trade in bitcoin with high levels of anonymity and developed a customer base heavily reliant on criminal activity."
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkkr8l7jjxo
Dogecoin dog Kabosu dies after 14 years as meme
Kabosu, the dog behind the "doge" meme, has died after 14 years of internet fame, her owner has said.
The Japanese shiba inu inspired a generation of online jokes and became the face of Dogecoin cryptocurrency.
She had been suffering from leukaemia and liver disease and died on 24 May.
"She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her," Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog, thanking Kabosu's fans.
"I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner."
As a rescue dog, Kabosu's real birthday was unknown, but Ms Sato estimated her age at 18.
In 2010, two years after adopting Kabosu from a puppy mill where she would otherwise have been put down, Ms Sato, a teacher from Sakura, east of Tokyo, took a picture of her pet crossing her paws on the sofa.
She posted the image on her blog, from where it spread to online forum Reddit and became a meme that bounced from college bedrooms to office email chains.
The memes typically used goofy broken English to reveal the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other shiba inu "doge" - pronounced like pizza "dough" but with a "j" at the end.
The picture also later became an NFT digital artwork that sold for $4m (£3.1m) and inspired Dogecoin, which was started as a joke by two software engineers and is now the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market capitalisation of $23bn.
Dogecoin has been backed by hip-hop star Snoop Dogg and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.
But its most keen supporter is billionaire Elon Musk, who jokes about the currency on X - sending its value soaring - and hails it as "the people's crypto".
Kabosu fell ill with leukaemia and liver disease in late 2022, and Ms Sato said in a recent interview with AFP that the "invisible power" of prayers from fans worldwide helped her pull through.
Ms Sato, 62, said she had become so used to "unbelievable" events that when Mr Musk changed the icon for Twitter, now X, to Kabosu's face last year, she "wasn't even that surprised".
A $100,000 statue of Kabosu and her sofa crowdfunded by Own The Doge, a crypto organisation dedicated to the meme, was unveiled in a park in Sakura in November last year.
Sato and Own The Doge have also donated large sums to international charities, including more than $1m to Save the Children. The NGO says it is "the single largest crypto contribution" it has ever received.
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Now, after Trump promised to create a "strategic national bitcoin reserve" and predicted bitcoin could eclipse gold's $16 trillion market capitalization, U.S. senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has introduced a bill to direct the U.S. Treasury to purchase 1 million bitcoins worth almost $70 billion
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"If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future, we'll keep 100%," Trump said during his Saturday speech at Bitcoin 2024. "This will serve, in effect, as the core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile."
Wild rumors had swirled all week that Trump could announce he'd create a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve during the bitcoin conference, with analysts comparing it to both the U.S.'s gold and oil reserves.
The U.S. currently holds around 212,000 seized bitcoin, worth some $15 billion, compared to its $600 billion worth of gold reserves.
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Peter Theil and crew are getting their money’s worth.
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The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has published a paper this week arguing bitcoin and similar assets could be taxed or banned to help governments maintain deficits.
"A legal prohibition against bitcoin can restore unique implementation of permanent primary deficits, and so can a tax on bitcoin," the paper's authors wrote, adding bitcoin creates a "balanced budget trap" that highlights spending shortfalls.
The Fed has "joined the European Central Bank in its attack on bitcoin," said VanEck's head of digital asset research Matthew Sigel, writing in an X thread that the paper "fantasizes about 'legal prohibition' and extra taxes on bitcoin to ensure government debt remains the 'only risk-free security.'"
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Really wishing I had set Luke up with a mining rig right now…
So I am at a 250% return… Cash out or let it ride?
Me/rry/Christmas
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@LuFins-Dad said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:
So I am at a 250% return… Cash out or let it ride?
Cash out the original invested amount, then let the "house money" ride.
Maybe invest the cashed out money in a mining rig.
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Not a bad idea, @Axtremus
I bought some crypto in 2021 and 2022 with the sole idea of just letting it sit and checking on it in 10-20 years. It's enough to be meaningful (I think $10k) but not enough to hurt my retirement if it's lost. I think it's at $25k right now. If I check in 15 years and it's gone... oh well. But maybe it'll be 10x higher.
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Bitcoin has passed $100K
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Problem is it still only has two use cases: speculation and money laundering. As long as that’s true it’ll just be boom and bust.
Still fun if you time it right. But not really for me.
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Yeah, you cant really "spend" bitcoin directly, without first converting it into a "real" currency.
Give someone USD$5000 and another person the equivalent of USD$5000 in bitcoin and tell each of them to live for a month, but they must convert the currency (USD or bitcoin) directly to goods and services, who would be able to have a better month?
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I prefer investments with some actual value to justify themselves, but I do regret that no investment platform I've ever had my money in, has allowed me to invest in BTC. I would have some. But I could have opened a Robin Hood account if I'd really wanted to, so my own laziness is to blame.
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I just use coinbase. Consolidated it there from other crypto platforms a few years ago. For me, it's a "check it again in 15 years" idea. So far it's up about 130% since 2020. I have a few other stocks, such as JOBY and ACHR that are all about electric vertical take off and landing (eVTOLs)...aka drone cabs, that I I'll check on in 20 years to see if we're doing that yet for transportation.
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And if I needed any further convincing:
Bitcoin: Initially, this is confusing for people, but unlike dollars, euros, pesos, and pounds, not only is there no physical Bitcoin, but there’s no digital Bitcoin either — nothing you can point at and say, “Look, there’s a Bitcoin.” Instead, the Bitcoin is just represented by the ledger saying that the Bitcoin exists. In January 2009, information was added to the Bitcoin ledger — this is what’s known as the Genesis Block — saying, in effect, “50 Bitcoins were added to the ledger.” From then on, Bitcoin existed because the ledger said so!
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Haha yup, what a concept. One could say the same thing about dollars, or gold. It's valuable because everyone says it's valuable. When the government prints more money, it's not like they found a stash of gold bars to base it on. They just made it up, printed it, and gave it to people. For me, bitcoin is like holding digital gold. Or monopoly money in a game that doesn't end.
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@89th said in The Bitcoin/Crypto Thread:
Haha yup, what a concept. One could say the same thing about dollars, or gold. It's valuable because everyone says it's valuable. When the government prints more money, it's not like they found a stash of gold bars to base it on. They just made it up, printed it, and gave it to people. For me, bitcoin is like holding digital gold. Or monopoly money in a game that doesn't end.
Not quite. There is a difference between fiat currency and precious metals. There is a reason the metal is worth something. It is worth something because of things you can do with it. Imagine the manufacturing world without gold, silver, platinum or even metals such as copper.
I'm with Mik, give me something I know what it is and so does everybody else...
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