Not a very good store of wealth when everyone can track your every movement...
Welcome to the PMBug forums - a watering hole for folks interested in gold, silver, precious metals, sound money, investing, market and economic news, central bank monetary policies, politics and more.
Why not register an account and join the discussions? When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no Google ads, market data/charts, access to trade/barter with the community and much more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!
Trump administration ends Polymarket investigations without charges
Two federal investigations of the online prediction betting site Polymarket have been closed with no charges filed against the cryptocurrency-based marketplace, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC on Tuesday.
- The Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have ended their investigations of online prediction betting site Polymarket without bringing any charges.
- The conclusion of the probes is the latest example of the Trump administration dropping actions initiated under the Biden administration against crypto companies or online betting markets.
- The Justice Department and CFTC had been investigating whether Polymarket was accepting bets from people in the United States
More:
...
If anything I'll find some Monero.
It seems like there's a growing risk of Monero being 51%-attacked soon. What does this mean for Monero and PoW coins in general, including Bitcoin?
Both absolute and relative security budgets (the amount paid to miners) must be high enough. Bitcoin's absolute daily security budget is $50M per day, while it's only $150k for Monero. Sounds good for Bitcoin? Hold on. When you compare these values to the total asset value (market cap), they become just 0.002% for both!
How does Qubic operate? Not going into deep details, they just pay miners some extra using a pump-and-dump scheme with their own token. Their goal seems to be to attack Monero for marketing reasons? Or just for fun? It really doesn't matter. What matters is, it takes a very small amount of money to attack. You need to pay 51% of the miners, say, a 10% premium (not sure what they pay exactly) to make them switch to an attacking pool. That would be just 0.51 * 0.10 * $150k = $7.65k per day. Well, plus some initial costs. Not that much! I guess even a small short position would cover that (one can short Monero on Kraken).
As for Bitcoin, obviously, the absolute cost of a similar attack will be much higher for two reasons: a higher total security budget and a higher premium that must be paid to miners because of the PoW algo.
Monero's RandomX (ASIC-resistant algo) has its advantages and disadvantages over Bitcoin's SHA-256 (dominated by ASICs). RandomX is more decentralized in nature: ordinary CPUs are needed to mine it. But this has a security downside. If a 51% attack dooms Monero, these CPUs will be usable elsewhere. That can't be said about ASICs: if Bitcoin is doomed, it's a huge loss of capital investment into hardware: you can't use it anywhere else. A 10% bribe won't make ASIC holders happy.
So, Bitcoin can't be attacked by a small entity such as Qubic, but it's plausible to assess that it might be attacked by bigger players (governments) for bigger reasons (definitely not for fun, more like for freezing non-compliant parties). Remember the 0.002% figure? Relatively, Bitcoin has the very same problem, just at a different level.
The solution for Monero? Increased adoption. 0.6 XMR per block might not be enough. There needs to be a stable fee revenue, which currently isn't really large enough with only 30k transactions per day. There are other options such as switching to PoS. But still, the main idea is that a cryptocurrency must be actually used to stay secure.
The solution for Bitcoin? Increase the block size ASAP for the same reason: it needs increased adoption (more on-chain transactions paying fees to miners).
Do you think Monero will get attacked? Let's see what happens.
The bear case is that by stitching Bitcoin so tightly into our financial infrastructure, we’re effectively creating an Achilles’ heel. If the protocol fails — whether through technical failure, regulatory choke-off, or security breach — it could spark a systemic liquidity crisis. And because Bitcoin is now widely held by institutions, pensions, and retail investors alike, the contagion wouldn’t stay in the crypto corner; it would ripple out into the broader economy.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoiled the dreams of Bitcoiners worldwide Thursday, stating outright that the federal government will not be purchasing additional Bitcoin to supplement its existing supply of the cryptocurrency.
“We’re not going to be buying that,” Bessent said during a Thursday morning appearance on Fox Business.
...
"...
Most central banks publish press releases and papers on their CBDC projects. They are working hard to develop systems that do the same thing that existing crypto systems are doing. The big difference though is that CBDC systems are closed systems (wallet creation is tightly controlled) designed for centralized control whereas cryptos are open systems (wallet creation is free and available to anyone) designed for decentralized control (with democratic systems for governance of network development and management).
Centralized control means that the central bank controls the creation and ownership of wallets. For wholesale CBDCs (aka wCBDC), this means the central bank controls the dissemination of wallets to participating banks. For retail CBDCs (aka rCBDC), they control the dissemination of wallets to the general public. That's a huge task and in order to do it, governments are preparing to roll out digital IDs that will be integrated with CBDC wallets.
In addition to the opportunity for total financial surveillance, CBDCs can be smart technologies. They can be programmed to reject transactions with specific wallets. The central bank can shut off access to anyone, anywhere, any time. That's total financial control. If you think operation choke point or algorithmic debanking are odious today, just imagine how central bank owned AI systems in the future will decide if you are allowed to buy a loaf of bread. Better keep your social credit in the green comrade!
...
A common denominator in the war on crypto and the war on cash is the cry and focus on anti-money laundering efforts. Money laundering - whether supporting drug cartels or terrorists - is the rallying cry used to justify attacks on financial privacy. It's the fulcrum over which the balance of financial privacy/liberty and surveillance/control are being decided/justified.
..."
.. https://www.pmbug.com/threads/cbdcs-tofo-tools-of-financial-oppression.7022/
"...
It is with the development of digital money systems that a seventh characteristic for money becomes apparent:
Money should be free of counterparty entanglement
Where digital money systems require even the most basic transactions to involve third parties for payment clearance, there is no guarantee that money will fulfill it's function as a medium of exchange.
...
There are tidal forces at work to deter the use of cash. As mentioned previously, the drift towards a cashless society encompasses consumers willingly choosing to use electronic payment systems, banks/atms restricting or hampering access to cash and anti-money laundering laws/rules discouraging cash businesses.
The latter prong is particularly troubling as it is the lynchpin justification for both algorithmic debanking and the war on crypto. It's the fulcrum over which the seesaw of financial freedom teeters between security and liberty irrespective of the medium of money.
..."
.. https://www.pmbug.com/threads/the-seventh-characteristic-of-money.6960/
America is supposed to be the land of the free. We do not need Draconian financial surveillance and control rivaling China. The WEF can stick Agenda 2030 where the sun doesn't shine.
President Trump has declared that he wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. Any effort to impose a digital ID on the crypto industry will only serve to drive crypto innovation away from the USA.
It's pretty clear to me they are holding Bitcoin down now and trying to rotate it into Ethereum and some alt's. They have to have Bitcoin down by the end of Gamestops quarter (believe its July 31) because that gain/loss will flow to their earnings. They hit BTC hard but rallied Eth back up to unch.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?