Posted on 05/24/2018 7:13:03 AM PDT by bananaman22
Reports that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a criminal probe into potential illegal manipulation of cryptocurrency prices has seen bitcoin lose 3 percent this morning, down to just over $7,300 in the early morning hours.
The DoJ, as reported by Bloomberg, is investigating illegal tactics of traders, including the issuing of fake orders for cryptocurrencies, causing their prices to go up and down artificially.
In cooperation with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the DoJ is specifically probing what is commonly known in the trading world as spoofing and washing.
(Excerpt) Read more at safehaven.com ...
How are tulips doing?
Invisible money. What could go wrong?
Trading in cryptocurrency is rather like buying up the air rights to timeshare units.
In the end, that is all you have, a piece of paper, or perhaps a data entry on an electronic record somewhere, in a server half-way around the world, and no way to recover the investment.
Property rights are not truly rights if they cannot be enforced.
Bah! Just the creation of a new buying opportunity. /sar
I’ve got some prime lunar real estate on the tranquility sea beach for sale. Right next to the Armstrong place. The deed is clean and ready to transfer for a small deposit...
When I go to the chart page, I only see used bitcoin - “USD” - why can’t I buy new bitcoin? /Emily-litella
If it includes a bridge across Tranquility Sea, I’ll take it!
Sorry, I sold all my bridges last year to reinvest in this really awesome opportunity called Amway. I can get you a presidential level membership for $1000, you get to buy a lot of great soap products at discount, and meet some really great friends as you rise up in the corporate pyramid :)
With tulips it was all based on the bulbs of pretty, real flowers.
Governments can pull the plug on official bitcoin use whenever they choose. Perhaps barter would make more sense for people avoiding the law and the taxman.
3% down is not plummets. Maybe 30% or more.
Coincidently, I bought 2 tulips in a vase yesterday.
“In the end, that is all you have, a piece of paper, or perhaps a data entry on an electronic record somewhere, in a server half-way around the world, and no way to recover the investment.”
That is exactly how most currency and property data is stored these days. On digital records on a few number of servers that can be killed at any time. By banks, government and terrorists. Once the digital records are deleted, the paper you hold is meaningless because anyone can print paper.
One day soon after I left the USSR, the government forced banks to close and issued all new paper currency. Everyone lost 90% of the wealth that they saved into banks and paper cash all their lives. This has happened countless times in history and today’s dependence on electronic banking only makes it easier.
The idea of blockchain is everyone has a record of property with their own unbreakable key and there is no way to lose it short of a worldwide collapse of all electronics. No bank or government can manipulate the blockchain short of creating some quantum machine that can break any encryption.
Blockchain technology can be applied to banking with government backed currency. That way there is full record of your account AND privacy even if all the bank servers on earth are permanently wiped.
Things like bitcoin are people filling the void in the blockchain market with their own private currency. Exactly how private banks were the first to issue paper money (IOU’s for metals) because metal was not always practical and there was a market for paper money.
Private digital currency “minters” are simply using the far superior technology of blockchain instead of paper (or bank servers). Governments and banks will catch up soon
They are quite nice looking.
BitCoin is an inferior virtual currency any way. Everyone should buy my new currency, MoonCoin, which is based on the deeds to square footage of Lunar real estate. That way you have something totally solid backing your virtual currency, so you can’t go wrong!
Still good protection against fiat money.
Moon coin? Bah! I have the.biggest coins in the solar system from the planet Jupiter. They are called Jovians and are based on gases found to make up Jupiter itself.
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