Big Blue Huddle

Quote from: MightyGiants on December 16, 2022, 01:10:16 PMFinancial regulation, at least to me, is akin to the regulations governing the airline industry.  Each time there is a scam or some event that costs people all or most of their money, there are regulations put in place to either prevent such an event from happening again or at least help people avoid such events.  This has been going on for nearly 100 years. 

Along comes Crypto with zero regulations.  FTX was essentially a bank for crypto-currency.  This would never have happened with traditional currency because banks are heavily regulated to protect banking customers.   That doesn't mean a new scam won't happen, but the chances of being scammed in the world of crypto are magnitudes greater than with traditional finance, in my opinion.

Wells Fargo did some very similar things to their customers.   They are still in business and for some reason people still use them.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/20/wells-fargo-agrees-to-3point7-billion-settlement-with-cfpb-over-consumer-abuses.html

Quote from: GordonGekko80 on December 16, 2022, 12:38:20 PMI beg your pardon, but I respectfully disagree; If the markets and the brokers would've been regulated to the right extent, this wouldn't have happened. Initially, everyone was happy because of the lack of Regulations, the independence from the normal financial system... but now this happened and most if not all are now screaming for Regulations of the Crypromarket.

You are free to disagree and it may have been harder to do but Bernie Madoff did what he did with regulation and people reporting suspicions.  Further, things like Enron, Lucent, MCI/Worlcom have all happened in the 2nd half of my life while under regulations that are supposed to prevent it.

To say scams won't happen because of regulations is false. 

I think crypto markets should be regulated but I don't think regulations are some 100% insurance against scams

I have a bit of a different take on the crypto than most here.  I think some form of cryptocurrency will be widely accepted all over the world at some point, but I think we are a number of years from that.  Even now you can purchase a wide variety of things using some forms of cryptocurrency.  I don't think there will be more than a couple of crypto currencies worth much when this does happen. 

There is a lot of issues with it being unregulated as well as the number of various crypto assets that are being created and sold.  IT's very much a buyer beware area.

FTX was really a Bernie Madoff type of scam which really has nothing to do with what crypto is or isn't.

I do own some Ethereum but have not bought any in several years.   

On the other, I think blockchain technology is really helping in a lot of industries and will continue to grow.

Sad this will end this season because I think it's far and away the best season.  This weeks episode was great.  Did not see some of that coming. 

With the Sandpiper case being settled, I assume we will see Saul make some changes soon.

Quote from: Painter on August 04, 2021, 01:35:17 PM
Good to know that you're not John Clayton whom Sean Salisbury used to refer to as the Cryptkeeper, which was in reponse to his having been called, Mr. Backup. In any case, he was let go in Disney ESPN's big (300+) layoff a year ago. I think Clayton now has a Saturday Morning radio show devoted to the Seattle Seahawks. I wonder if he still has the poneytail?

As for Salibury, Mr.Dicpic was fired way earlier. Yet he too has a radio show.

In any event, we'd rather "listen" to you, Jess.

Cheers!

John Clayton has been making some appearances on NFL Radio when regular hosts are off.  There are other media people that host shows on that network, and in some ways they understand how to create a better radio program, but the knowledge base is very different from the ex- players, coaches and front office people that I find more interesting on that station.

Mine is Matt.  Nice to meet you all.

Quote from: ps11yat14 on July 23, 2021, 10:30:24 AM
How is it going to encourage people to get vaccinated when now they are starting to tell vaccinated people that they must start wearing masks again. Talk about dividing the country even more!

Bill

Whats the big deal about wearing a mask?  How does that cause division? 

Quote from: MightyGiants on July 16, 2021, 10:24:07 AM
Ed,

I don't wear a mask outdoors, but if I go shopping or I am indoors where I don't know if I will be around unvaccinated people I still wear a mask (I step down to a surgical level mask, rather than a KN95 level).  My feeling is the vaccine is like a bullet-proof vest.   The vest provides protection but that doesn't mean you want to test that protection by walking through a gunfight.

I can also tell you that Israel is back to masking up indoors.   Israel has a high vaccination rate and they vaccinated quicker than our nation did.  So they are sort of the canary in the coal mine, so to speak.   If you want to get a sense of what's coming in the future, watch what is happening in Israel.

Here is why:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/science/Israel-Pfizer-covid-vaccine.html

"And on Monday, Israel

Quote from: DaveBrown74 on July 16, 2021, 03:21:19 AM
The idea that anyone would watch TV as a way of getting "information" with which to make the critical decision about getting vaxed or not, rather than simply listening to their own trusted doctor (or any number of other doctors), all of whom are infinitely more knowledgeable on this subject than any journalist, politician, or other medical layperson, and virtually all of whom are motivated by public health and not by politics, is what perplexes me the most. Why do people think they know more than MD doctors on this subject? Do they actually think every doctor out there is now complicit with the "deep state" and is deliberately spewing out harmful advice that is not in their patients' best interests? I find that both troubling and bizarre, to say the least.

However, what people choose to legally do or not do with their own bodies is their decision. Yes, they put others at risk by not vaccinating, but the overwhelming majority of others they are putting at material risk are other like-minded individuals who have, for whatever reason, made this same choice. That does not make their lives less valuable in my opinion, but they did make a conscious choice and therefore have indicated that they are prepared to live (or die) with the consequences.

I think you nailed it with that bold part.  There are plenty of places to get factual information about the vaccine.  I think those that are pulling information from TV opinion shows are the epitome of American apathy and intellectual laziness. 

I do have an issue with people that can get the vaccine (they are healthy enough and old enough) that are not because there are those that cannot get it and they are also being put in danger. 

Bottom line to me is that places with low vax rates are likely to have huge surges (already started) and potentially cause more shutdowns and/or hospitals to be above capacity.  We are already seeing more cases of advanced cancers because routine screenings were largely not performed during the pandemic. 

https://www.astro.org/News-and-Publications/News-and-Media-Center/News-Releases/2021/COVID-19-pandemic-has-led-to-more-advanced-stage-c

"In an informal analysis published on Medium, Meyerowitz-Katz compared the infection-fatality rates from influenza to several calculated around the world so far for COVID-19. Like COVID-19, influenza also has a high number of mild and asymptomatic infections. These cases are not accounted for in the majority of calculations of influenza severity made by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which rely instead on hospitalizations. For the flu, doctors and hospitals are less concerned with mild cases that don

Quote from: DaveBrown74 on July 06, 2021, 08:50:09 AM
That percentage is likely to decrease over time, since a huge number of the total deaths occurred when there were no vaccinations available and also before people were taking lots of precautions and before doctors/hospitals fully understood the disease.

No doubt though that if you're fully vaccinated your chances of dying from this are very low. They're not zero, but they're low enough that you should be able to feel a lot more comfortable in day to day life then prior to receiving the vaccine.

I believe the measurement is from when vaccinations were deployed.

Trying to find where I heard this, but I thought it was relevant to the conversation:

99.5% of Covid related deaths right now are in unvaccinated people.

I can answer some of your questions. 

First, most crypto is completely traceable.  In fact, that is one of the principles of it's existence.  Through this link you can watch every single Ethereum transaction world wide: https://etherscan.io/
There are some forms of crypto known as "privacy coins" that make it more difficult to see transactions.   Bitcoin and Ethereum are NOT privacy coins and their ledgers can be viewed publicly. 


That being said, all you will see on that link is addresses (long lines of numbers and letters) and not who owns those addresses.

The government was able to recoup that money because of the way the money was being stored. It's amazing that you could be tech savvy enough to hijack a huge corporations systems, but lack such basic crypto commone sense.  So here is what happened:

The hijackers left the money on a US based crypto exchange.  Because that exchange is regulated by US authorities, they were able to freeze the account and take the money back.  Now, had these hijackers spent $75 dollars and purchased a cold storage wallet (there are other ways as well), they would not have been able to access the money that easily. 

It's like they kidnapped a person, got the ransom money and immediately deposited into an FDIC regulated bank.  In this case, there is a public record of what address the money was sent.  Once they FBI (or whoever) realized it was a Binance (I think that's the exchange) address, they were able to contact the company and freeze that address. 

So while these transactions are anonymous, they are not "secret", they are the opposite.  The anonymity goes out the window if you are just logging in from your computer and not taking steps to block tracing (like using a Tor browser for example).  While an average person might not be able to figure out who is making a transaction, a group like the FBI could definitely see your IP address and track where you are logging on from. 

I hope what I wrote makes sense.  I think politicians who want to try and ban crypto are completely wrong.  This form of currency will exist moving forward, it's just a matter of regulation and adaptation. 

BTW, I consider my understanding very rudimentary.  I own some crypto and have used it in some transactions.   I really don't get the full understanding of why mining uses some much electricity. 

Quote from: jimmyz on April 19, 2021, 06:27:55 PM
Yeah, the paramilitary contractor paradigm now allows countries to wage war unofficially.

And making some people very rich in doing it.

I realize that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks there was wide feelings that this attack was able to be coordinated because it happened in a country with a failed central government.  The objective as I understood it then, was to:

- Capture or kill Al-Qaeda leaders 
- Setup a democratic government that could run on its own.

The first objective was somewhat achieved but never finished.

The second objective has never really even been close and may never happen.

I think in the case of Afghanistan we need to pack it up and leave and if there is worry about attacks being planned from that country we can use other means to monitor the situation.  The reaction to the attacks of 9/11 has shaped the current world in many ways and cost a lot of lives as well as money.  Is the world a safer place now?