Know when to fold 'em...
Posted on 12/20/2017 5:23:41 AM PST by a fool in paradise
- Litecoin founder Charlie Lee said in Reddit post he has sold his entire holding of the cryptocurrency.
- Lee pins his decision on criticism that his Twitter posts about the currency were attempts at personal enrichment.
- Lee says he will remain involved in litecoin and cryptocurrencies more broadly.
LONDON — The creator of one of the largest alternative cryptocurrencies has exited his entire stake in the digital currency, citing a "conflict of interest."
Charlie Lee announced in a Reddit post on Wednesday that he had "sold and donated" all of his litecoin holdings over recent days. He said the move was motivated by criticism from people that he was trying to influence the price of litecoin with his tweets.
Lee wrote: "Whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bad news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit. Some people even think I short LTC! So in a sense, it is [sic] conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence."
Lee, a former Google and Coinbase employee, created litecoin in 2011 as a quicker and cheaper alternative to bitcoin. As of Wednesday morning, it is the fifth largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of over $17 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.com.
"Litecoin has been very good for me financially, so I am well off enough that I no longer need to tie my financial success to Litecoin’s success," Lee said in his Reddit post.
...You can read the full Reddit post here. https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/7kzw6q/litecoin_price_tweets_and_conflict_of_interest/
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Translation: Sayonara, suckers!
I see lots of cryptobubbles ripe for bursting.
BINGO! Even easier than starting a dot-com in the 1990s.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/07/nyregion/airplane-high-stakes-chain-letter.html
‘AIRPLANE’: HIGH-STAKES CHAIN LETTER
By ELIZABETH NEUFFER
Published: April 7, 1987
From Manhattan to Rochester, hundreds of New Yorkers have been dreaming of flying high in an illegal pyramid scheme called the airplane game. But law-enforcement officials warn that they may lose the $1,500 to $2,500 they have invested in hopes of winning $10,000 or more...
‘’I won $12,000,’’ a dancer in a Broadway musical said. ‘’I feel great - just great.’’
Mr. Fishlow said it was impossible for everyone who entered a pyramid scheme to win.
‘’For each investor to make profits, the number of new people must constantly double,’’ he said. ‘’The promoters can get large sums of money. The people who join later lose everything...’’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane_game
The Airplane game was a pyramid scheme active in the late 1980s in North America and Europe. The nomenclature of the various levels of the game involve participatory levels such as ‘passenger’, ‘flight attendant’, ‘co-pilot’ and at the top, ‘pilot’. Typically, one would pay up to US$1,500 to enter at the level of passenger, in the hopes of receiving a US$10,000-plus payout when one ‘piloted out’ at the top of the scheme.
When enough money came into the pyramid (people on the ‘plane’), the ‘pilot’ would leave the game with the prize money, and the #2 players would each rise to the level of ‘pilot’ waiting for enough passengers to join for them to collect their prize money.
Somewhere Hitlery Rotten Clinton is throwing dishware at the walls raving as to why her staff didn’t start her up a cryptocurrency to facilitate foreign donations.
Somewhere Al Gore Junior is muttering that HE invented cryptocurrencies when he created carbon credit offsets.
Reference a conversation about a year ago.
As you suggested, “a fool and his money are soon parted.”
However, Lee WILL be keeping his Amway pyramid. That’s where the REAL money is!
*SNORT*
In all fairness, yes he probably left on the advice of his attorneys; but also yes, he is leaving before the bubble bursts.
Which raises interesting questions. If the value of Bitcoin rises to the point where it become a currency exclusive to banks, corporations and the very wealthy, it will need to be backed with something tangible. Fiat currencies are for public use. And since there is not enough specie (gold and silver) to back Bitcoin, they will need something else.
They might go in the direction of “extended mercantilism”, which uses far more commodities than specie, but instead of a fixed price equivalency, they would need a variable trading scheme.
The other big question is if Bitcoin collapses, what will happen to all of the other cryptocurrencies? While initially there will likely be a downturn, eventually they will be valued based on their linkages, or lack thereof, with Bitcoin, the stability of the nation where they are based, and their adoption as a “second tier” cryptocurrency, by organizations other than the big names.
“Look, I’m doing this for all these principled reasons. It has nothing to do with the value of litecoin tripling over the past week or up x10 in past year.”
Pay no attention to the money changer behind the curtain
Translation: Sayonara, suckers!
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
aka “lnsider Sales” in SEC regulated markets.
If the value of Bitcoin rises to the point where it become a currency exclusive to banks, corporations and the very wealthy, it will need to be backed with something tangible.
++++
My reaction to your very astute observation was simply that of course there has to be something of real value backing Bitcoin.
But right now there isn’t.
If you have the time explain the Bitcoin phenomenon for the rest of us. I for one simply don’t understand why and how it creates value out of thin air.
Has anyone seen or heard from Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto lately?
If a bank has a 5% cash reserve requirement and a $100 deposit how much of that $100 dollars can they loan out?
a) $95 backed by the remaining $5 (5% reserve)
b) $2000 backed by the entire $100 (5% reserve)
Hint: They make a lot more charging interest on $2000 than they would on $95...
...As in here’s one way the current system creates money out of thin air.
Founder of bitcoin has a million coins!
I remember people playing the “Airplane” Ponzi scheme. some claimed to have made thousands. I also remember the Soap scheme, the Worm farm scheme, the EMU scheme, the synthetic OIL scheme...
Several years ago, AARP magazine had an article on how a Ponzi scheme worked and said they all fail. Then they said Social Security was not a Ponzi scheme because it has not failed.
A few pages later, an article by Jane Bryan Quinn in the same magazine showed how the SS system was set up and it was just like a Ponzi scheme.
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