Cryptocurrency policy under Trump: Lots of promises, few concrete plans The 2024 presidential election tipped the United States into a new era of uncertainty, but one thing's for sure: The crypto industry was triumphant. Hundreds of pro-crypto lawmakers were elected earlier this month, alongside Donald Trump's victory in the presidential race. The cryptocurrency industry reportedly spent millions …
Right on! The Chainalysis Report indicates that cryptocurrencies are great for crypto scamming, human trafficking, and ransomware (2023 the biggest year ever for that), plus Tornado Cash and Monero are great for Russians seeking to evade Western sanctions ... what's not to like for an incoming Matt Gaetz appointing ultimate Manchurian candidate administration!?
Establishing a "strategic [sic] Bitcoin reserve" will be the best way to deeply sink the US Treasury indeed, while simultaneously greatly easing the transfer of Fentanyl and related payments across the border(s), skipping all desired (by some) tariffs ... way to go Mr. Smart!
The FBI's Cryptocurrency Fraud Report provides further support for such most sane of policy decisions by noting that: "While the number of cryptocurrency-related complaints represents only about 10 percent of the total number of financial fraud complaints, the losses associated with these complaints account for almost 50 percent of the total losses" ... go crypto! </infarctus>
Just so that you understand the context here, a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy as an average US household does in a month.
Trump bankrupted 6 casinos, institutions that, if run even mediocrity, are money printing endeavors. And he did so over an 18 year period. Think about that, and what it means about learning from your mistakes and making corrections. And as the NY fraud case showed with the release of his tax returns, he *only* had 6 bankruptcies because the rest of his money-losing enterprises were bailed out by the one thing that made money - his royalty checks from The Apprentice.
So the idea that the Trump Administration will formulate a plan for crypto, or anything else, belies the lack of planning demonstrated by the 1st Trump Administration as well as by Trump's entire history.
True, bankrupting casino's was considered impossible before Trump, or so I heard.
We have good historical examples of how liberating financial institutions from the shackles of regulation proceeds.
Recently we had the Savings and Loans crisis (Reagan), the 2008 global financial meltdown (GW Bush et al), to name just a few. The collapse of the economy of Iceland and rise of Orban in Hungary can be directly linked to the mortgage disasters where people were allowed to borrow money in a foreign currency with lower interest rates and pay back in their own. After which their own currency tanked.
So, Trump letting lose the crypto boys. What could go wrong?
National level Ponzi schemes have brought down countries before (Albania and Lebanon).
It was indeed trademark Trump
https://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/heres-how-donald-trump-bankrupted-his-atlantic-city-casinos-but-he-still/2281296/
The quote about the four times his casinos went into chapter 11 says it all:
"[Trump] repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there."
Some more details from politifact:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/21/carly-fiorina/trumps-four-bankruptcies/
Now for America! No doubt Donald will make Great Money out of it.
To expand on what you said, "orphaned wells" are oil and gas wells where the previous owner went bankrupt and the bankruptcy trustees couldn't find another company anywhere who were willing to touch them because they're worthless, and indeed an overall liability. The wells that are actually worth operating get bought up by another oil company.
In Canada orphaned wells end up in the hands of the provincial government and the cost of sealing them is paid by a fund which all oil companies must pay into (in Alberta that fund is grossly under funded in terms of future liabilities).
The idea of a crypto-mining company somehow succeeding at operating oil and gas wells where the entire industry of actual oil companies looked at it and decided to pass is a bit odd, to say the least.
I find it utterly implausible that anyone promoting this idea actually believes what they are saying about it. The fact that someone is promoting it tells me what should be obvious to anyone, it's a scam.
There is another option
Those wells are (literally) sunk costs in building a geothermal energy plant. Not to mention some of those are "Superemitters" of methane at > 30Kg H^-1. Capping them would be a benefit to everyone everywhere. :-(
This would be the logical way to make use of these wells. Actual collection of the remaining oil or gas is uneconomic, because as you say, if it was economic someone would have done so.
Yet nobody seems to have asked where those millions of dollars came from. As the only source could be the millions of fools who have staked a fortune on this pretend money, the only sensible conclusion is that the crypto industry is hoping that the paid-for deregulation in the form of "campaign contributions".will entice even more fools to pile their cash in and cover the cost of buying it.
31m picked at random (lucky too) or because that would mean BTC would have the same value as all assets in existance on the planet?
I just can't understand how people can legitimately believe it should have anywhere close to the value that it has, or 'should' have. In reality, if any of these whales attempted to liquidate they would tank it and get just a fraction of it's 'value'.
So the only way to keep it's value is to borrow against it, and use that money to prop and pump up its value. I wonder who will be the bag holders when it collapses, or will the US be invested in it that it's 'too big to fail' and more debt taken on to prop it up.
Indeed, most of the first million that were mined (by Nakamoto and other insiders) haven't moved since and are presumed to be inaccessible.
It's also possible to audit the blockchain to work out how many haven't moved in a given amount of time, or identify wallets that suddenly ceased activity at some point. It should be possible to loosely estimate how many are "lost" based on some educated assumptions.
Approx 2.5m BTC havent moved in the last 10 years, so knocking off $77T at that $31M/coin price needed to wipe out the US debt. Meaning now it's is only needed to be 'worth' 87% of the worlds total asset value.
Which i'm sure they could do, they just need to rebrand to AI BTC, watch the money roll in.
Except for the dirty little precedent in quite a few countries where abandoned bank accounts, funds, properties etc pass to the state.
Some smart arse somewhere in gubbermint will figure out they can snatch unmoved, unclaimed coins
Crypto, never forget it's scammers all the way down
No, to access a bitcoin wallet you need to know its private key
Or have a friendly nation-state 'persuade' the BTC developers to write them a backdoor - much like Andrew Wright wanted them too (mind you - judging by his abilities, I'm not guarenteeing it's possible - he made up (badly) so many things that I'm not sure wether the idea is one he made up or if it's actually possible...)
NPR - Nov 22, 2022, "Wringing its hands over FTX's collapse, Washington hopes to prevent more crypto pain" Lawmakers have issued short statements, and the relevant committees, including the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, and the Senate Agriculture Committee, have promised to hold hearings. But there is still no clear path to comprehensive crypto legislation.
Remember that time? After FTX failed but just before the criminal charges against FTX CEO et al. Bankman was scheduled to undergo another kid glove questioning by House Financial Services Committee - The same committee many of whose members (R&D - and it doesn't stand for research and development) had received large contributions from FTX. But he was arrested instead.
NYT Opinion, Nov 27, 2022 - In this light, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s downfall is spectacular and interesting — especially the revelations about his extreme disorganization — but really nothing new. He is yet another person in a long line of people who couldn’t stand to see all that money idly sitting by. FTX was supposed to be the best of the crypto exchanges. Mr. Bankman-Fried said he intended to give his fortune to effective altruist causes and was known as one of the few exchange C.E.O.s actively calling for better regulation of crypto. If he couldn’t resist the temptation to treat customers’ funds like his personal piggy bank, it seems likely that other crypto exchanges might be doing the same thing. - only the last half sentence has any truth. The rest is horrifyingly slimy attempt to wriggle out of responsibility.
In the past 4 years a multitude banks and financial institutions have adopted Bitcoin products -- how on earth can you call that a firewall? That's exactly what the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee should have to prevented. At least Democrats should have used their votes to say "Solid No" to allowing crypto in banking.
"I fear we may soon wave goodbye to such a firewall as Trump's crypto-enthusiastic administration and the new Congress allow crypto to enmesh itself within the broader financial and banking system," White predicted. -- How can this be printed with a straight face?
Brandon has written - "Crypto opponent Molly White". Nah. She's the just the face to spin the message. Politics Today = Fundraising + Messaging. Without changing that Democrats risk Democracy itself.
Yeah, this town demands some "Solid No" action (beyond "Fundraising + Messaging"), and comes January, it will need an enema as well, bad, mass protests, general strikes, the whole enchilada. Being ruled by the ilk of Sam Fried-Bankman will be gothically medieval, an old chums aristocracy of robber barons and fraudsters, angling to fill a swamp full of like-minded ponzi reptiles and penguins! All under the watchful eye of FBI director nominee ... deep-state conspiracy money nutbag ... Kash "Ka-ching!" Patel!
There's just no rest for the wicked (nor weary)!
Molly White is no friend of the cryptocurrency industry
Well it does look as if they paid the FOCF enough for that.
Just a reminder. Anyone who voted for the FOFC and is going with "But this is not what I voted for!"
This is exactly what you voted for.
Feeling the fangs going in? You knew he was a snake when you chose him.
To be fair, Trump hasn't been talked into this yet. There is still a decent chance that he'll rebel.
Why? Because (1) it's blatantly not what most of his voters wanted, and (2) he's got plenty of other revenue streams, crypto will never be more than a minor sideline for him.
He's hard to predict. He is undoubtedly evil and greedy, but also narcissistic enough to want to pose as the people's champion if he can do so without significant sacrifice, and this might be one of those cases.
"To be fair, Trump hasn't been talked into this yet. "
Um, have you seen anything about World Liberty Financial (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/17/trump-crypto-project-allows-ex-president-family-to-make-75percent-of-revenue.html)?
The Trump family "owns" 75% of the revenue, but NONE of liability in that particular endeavour. He's already well situated to make a great deal of money from crypto. I expect he will specify WLF cryptocurrency be used for the US strategic reserve, or failing that, he will arrange that any "favors" that might arrive for him be paid in said crypto. After all, the best part of transactions using cryptocurrency is that they cannot be traced, right?
"also narcissistic enough to want to pose as the people's champion"
FTFY
"also narcissistic enough to want to pretend as the people's champion"
he doesn't give a fuck
he just wants money and power.
so not a fucking chnace he would block it, his youngest kid is the latest crypto scammer so of course he will make crypto the main scam
Methinks established current pioneering Bitcoin whales will ensure that no changes negatively impact upon the present rate of exponential progress that values its product increasingly rewarding and untouchably influential and wonderfully incorruptible.
The amount of intellectual masturbation around funny money is absolutely astonishing.
There is nothing strategic about Bitcoin (or any other funny money scam). The only strategy is to get idiots to buy in and then sell high (or just disappear with the real money).
It is not a question of how much money will be made, but like all pyramid schemes, who loses..
Yes some people will become insanely wealthy, but many more will lose there shirt. Bitcoins do not aid productivity, add economic value. They are nothing more than a cryptographic con
the orange one made most of his wealth by getting other people to take the risk, and then disappearing just before the birds came home to roost. Bitcoin seems just perfect for him
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And they need more "pump" to support the rising prices. Taking a million bitcoins out of circulation for 20 years would be their dream scenario. Hopefully the republicans who still care about fiscal sanity won't sign up for throwing away money on something that quite possibly will be worthless in 20 years.
If someone ever gets quantum computing working well enough to break encryption, I hope one of the first things they do is steal all the bitcoin. Someone has to be first, and if they did it subtly at first they could pay back all their development costs until their activity is noticed and the price drops to 0.
Someone should tell Trump that instead of refabbing leaky oil wells or throwing up windmills everywhere to power his cryptoslop, he should just take over all those data barns being used for AI development and get a much quicker turnaround The resulting scrum between the two groups of con artists would be quite the slapfight, and might keep him occupied enough that he can't get around to implementing the more harmful stuff.
They are not.
It's called a blockchain for a reason.
Now while it may not have someone's home address on it it is traceable. And that process has (for some chains) already been carried out.
The question is can you pin down that IP address to someone (or where) specifically?
Joe public? Somewhat.
State level actor able to invoke international treaties and substantial intelligence assets? Better keep a bag packed and a really well maintained new ID.
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