• Willow.@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 days ago

    Once again Trump proves himself to be a mere opportunist and grifter without principles or convictions. While in office Steven Mnuchin tried to kill crypto at the behest of the banking industry and Trump was vocal against Bitcoin. Once he left the White House he peddled his own NFTs.

    • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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      18 days ago

      We all know politicians have no morals. The reason he changed his stance is very simply because the crypto industry very well could get him elected. Crypto is a growing concern for a lot of people and he has to see that.

          • Kiernian@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            But they’re almost all using it STUPIDLY, aren’t they?

            How many people who purport to have Bitcoin actually hold their own private key?

            • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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              17 days ago

              Now you make a very fair point there. If you hold Bitcoin on an exchange or an ETF or somebody else holds it for you, you don’t own Bitcoin. That’s for sure. In those cases, you hold an IOU for Bitcoin. And that’s worth just about as much as it sounds. In other words, shit.

  • treadful@lemmy.zip
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    18 days ago

    “Bitcoin mining may be our last line of defense against a CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency],” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday.

    lol, no shot he wrote this.

      • Eol@sh.itjust.works
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        18 days ago

        If they buy crypto like his bumper stickers I will make money. It’s not like the stock market and crypto aren’t already played out by rich people playing games. It’s just another corrupt rise on the chart it will all always crash. (Not an endorsement… I already have crypto.)

        • Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de
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          18 days ago

          This post reminded me that I also still had Bitcoin that I wanted to swap for Monero. Think I’m gonna wait a bit for the Trump supporters to buy in, they’ll just do whatever he says without a second thought.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      It’s like trying to watch a 5 year old lie about eatching chocolate, when theres chocolate on their nose.

      It would be funny and adorable if he weren’t so hateful and racist, with real world consequences.

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      If this is a move to commit dark money campaign fraud again before his sentencing on the last case of it is even done I would want to see a live reaction of the judge when he hears that

  • db2@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Bitcoin doesn’t move like the stock market. There’s no hedge funds to call to naked short a nonexistent Bitcoin Inc in to the dirt. This means nothing.

    That said I’d live bitcoin to go to a penny. I’d buy and hodl. I’d buy and hodl hard.

    That said, fuck Trump. But not literally because his lineage should be pruned.

    • HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      Tin-foil hat time but I’d be willing to bet they have mechanisms to do something resembling naked shorting with crypto. I have no idea what that voodoo might be, but they conjure shares out of thin air for shorting stocks, and they’ve managed to package crypto into ETFs some-fucking-how so why not. I feel like I’m increasingly noticing that nothing really seems to crash anymore.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Bitcoin has been moving like the stock market since 2020. Big investors got involved, small investors lost trust in stocks. I don’t fully expect the current halving to cause the rally like all the other times it halved. That is assuming it doesn’t keep bombing shortly after breaking $69,420, what I suspect is a meme sell limit price.

    • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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      18 days ago

      Monero is what Bitcoiners thought they bought. It’s completely fungible and private just as cash is supposed to be.

        • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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          17 days ago

          Monero uses RandomX which must be done only on CPU which limits power consumption drastically and promotes decentralization rather than mining farms like bitcoin. Both of those combined will make it much easier for utilities to handle it. Since one utility won’t be getting hit with extreme load from mining farms all in one single area, such as Texas. You’ve also got to consider how much electricity does the banking industry as a whole use for building their buildings, bringing employees to work, shuttling money around in armored trucks, all that stuff. There’s probably tons I’m not even thinking of. Proof of work is better than proof of stake simply because a governmyth can’t print more of their crap fiat currency and buy up more stake in order to hurt the network. If a government wants to attack Ethereum, they just print more fiat currency and buy Ethereum. If they want to attack Bitcoin or Monero, they have to buy the equipment to do so and then plug it in and use power. They would have to sacrifice something real in order to do that.

      • Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de
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        18 days ago

        Monero is great. Only crypto currency I actually use. Transactions are also waaay cheaper and faster than with Bitcoin.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            16 days ago

            It’s also the one being targeted by governments, who are trying harder and harder to track consumer spending.

            Even if you don’t like crypto generally, consider using Monero as a middle finger to governments. Don’t hold any long term, just make a few purchases here and there.

            • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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              16 days ago

              I think it’s worth using long-term. If they are targeting it so hard, that must mean that it actually works. Because otherwise, why would they be going after it so damn hard?

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                16 days ago

                Exactly. I don’t think they can track transactions, so the next best thing is to make it illegal. If more people use it for regular transactions, it’s even harder for them to ban.

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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                  16 days ago

                  Problem is, is that they can’t even really truly make it illegal. As long as any cryptocurrency is legal, no matter what it is, you can always buy Monero, either with it or by exchanging it for Bitcoin or Litecoin and then exchanging that for Monero. Also, the decentralized exchange, Haveno launched a month ago today and there is no way to shut it down. It’s a peer to peer decentralized exchange all done over the tor network. Good luck without killing the internet entirely.

  • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    Everyone who has not regarded crypto as a scam will certainly do, once he’s done with the pump and dump he’s setting up here.

    • voracitude@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      I dunno man, the trumpets still buy whatever shit he shovels out and they don’t seem to have caught on that he’s a scammer yet…

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      Crypto isn’t a scam, though lots of cryptocurrencies are scams. Don’t buy crypto to try to get rich or even as an investment, get it if you want to buy stuff with it. Monero is a great cryptocurrency for that, and you can tell it’s doing well by how many countries are threatened enough by it to make it harder to get (it has truly private transactions, just like cash).

      I don’t think he’s doing any sort of pump and dump, he just wants crypto bros to vote for him. He tried courting libertarians at their convention (and rightfully got booed), and now he’s courting crypto bros specifically (many libertarians are into crypto). He’s just trying to expand his base a bit.

      • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee
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        16 days ago

        I didn’t say crypto was a scam, but it is regarded as a scam in general and as you said, it’s pretty easy to get scammed trading it or using it if you don’t know what you’re doing - which would definitely be true for anyone buying in on a public figure’s advice.

        It’s also an incredibly volatile market which is relatively easily influenced by large players without much regulation. If he does have the influence to manage to impact it, I am pretty sure he would happily take his gains from his followers. If he doesn’t, well let’s just hope all the people who buy in without any research don’t lose their money by selling as soon as the next crypto winter comes for a massive loss.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          16 days ago

          You’re strongly implying it:

          Everyone who has not regarded crypto as a scam will certainly do

          It is easy to get scammed, but it’s also easy to get scammed with legitimate-sounding services. I just had a scammer try to steal my money from my bank by claiming to be the fraud department, does that mean the banking industry is a scam? People on the sidelines will try to make a buck in any industry. What about cosmetics? There are plenty of MLMs that peddle cosmetics, and they’re scams, but that doesn’t make all cosmetics or even MLMs scams (e.g. tupperware is an MLM and not a scam imo).

          Whether crypto is a volatile market doesn’t have anything to do with being a scam, it just increases the number of people trying to make a quick buck, and some of those will try to pump and dump or pull some other scam. Before crypto, that was more common with stocks, and it’s fairly common today with third party resellers of various things.

          I don’t think Trump is trying to pull a crypto scam here, I think he’s just trying to get elected. He wants the scammers to promote him, as well as the crypto apologists. He just wants more people talking about him so he can increase his chances of being elected.

          • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee
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            16 days ago

            Sorry, but I think you’re reading into my words something they didn’t say or imply. In fact I tried my best to avoid wording it in a way that implies crypto is a scam (because I don’t believe it myself).

            What you’ve quoted strictly implies 2 things:

            1. There are people who consider crypto a scam
            2. Everyone will regard crypto as a scam after trump’s future actions.

            The 2nd is definitely an exaggeration, but neither of them claim crypto is a scam only that it has an image that it is - which I maintain it does with a significant portion of people.

            I do think trump picked crypto as a target for his attention because it’s a volatile and under regulated market he may be able exploit to try to make money off of whoever listens to him. I hope I’m wrong though.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              15 days ago

              I apologize, there’s a lot of anti-crypto group think here on Lemmy, and your comment read like that. There absolutely are a lot of crypto scams and reasons to dislike the technology generally, but there are real problems being solved and ways to use the technology productively, so I get a bit aggressive in pointing out that the group think is imprecise at best.

              The second being an exaggeration is what made it look like group think.

              trump… make money

              Idk, I honestly think his entire focus is on getting elected. Yeah, he wouldn’t say no to more money, but I think it’s in service of getting himself onto office again, not to get even more rich. I think he saw hating crypto as advantageous in the past, and now he sees supporting crypto as advantageous.

              Yeah, maybe it’s just a grift. I guess we’ll see.

              Here’s the evidence I see:

              • Trump and Biden are close in the polls
              • Trump speaks at the Libertarian convention (many are into crypto) and gets booed
              • with RFK in, the election could come down to a small number of votes

              I think he’s trying to convince conservative leaning libertarians, single-issue RFK voters (he’s pro-crypto too), and other fringe voters to vote for him instead of whatever protest vote they’d normally go with. He’s not trying to appeal to Biden voters, he’s trying to pull protest votes back in.

              • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee
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                15 days ago

                No problem!

                Your thinking seems more insightful than mine.

                My reasoning that he is mainly after the money is that in the past year he has been paying a lot of legal fees and fines, while trying to run a campaign. He had his NFT collection which made him a quick buck to then immediately floor in value, same for trump media stocks - except they then skyrocketed again, and now flooring again. So… Just seems like something he’d do.

                The 2nd reason is that crypto is a very divisive topic with loads of people hating on it - including banks and some other financial institutions. I’d expect it’s a double edged sword for supporters, but maybe he’s gaining more from it than losing in terms of votes.

                Considering that it’s been a few days since he made his statement and there hasn’t been massive movement on BTC price, he’s either not influential enough to impact it or I was wrong.

                /shrug

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  15 days ago

                  Yeah, you might have a point. Let’s see which scam, electoral or financial, he’s trying to pull. Or maybe it’s both… I’m guessing things will heat up one way or another as we get closer to the election.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      Bitcoin is only a few points off it’s all time high… Who’s getting scammed by that?

      (On the other hand I would recommend switching to a sustainable crypto.)

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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    18 days ago

    I’m quite frankly glad to see this, because that means that the United States will have no ability to ban it, what with the ETFs and everything, and as long as you can buy any kind of crypto at all, you can buy Monero. Also, the launch of decentralized peer-to-peer exchanges is helping to give the middle finger to the government.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      …I’m so out of the loop here. I want to say I disagree with you, because it sounds insane, but I don’t know enough about the subject matter to dispute it. What the hell is Monero?

        • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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          18 days ago

          I don’t know. Personally, I haven’t dealt any drugs using it. But I have purchased groceries for the last year and a half with it. You have a right to be private with your money. Would you want absolutely everybody knowing everything you spend your money on and when you spent it? Forever? Personally, I don’t.

            • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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              18 days ago

              Can I send an envelope full of cash to Amazon to buy a product? Cash is great for the physical medium if you are in person face to face and can exchange a physical commodity but when you need to exchange value over the internet then cash isn’t a real option

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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                  18 days ago

                  I buy groceries with Instacart and have them delivered. It saves me money since I’m not walking through the store and seeing all those items I can just get what I need and so I’ve done it that way for years

          • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            “Fake money for drug dealers” is just a general crypto joke from a meme I saw here on lemmy. It just so happens that the flavor of fake money that you fell in love with actually is for drug dealers.

            You’ve got me curious now though. It’s apparently important to you to keep the details of your grocery purchase completely private and that’s totally fine if it makes you happy. I don’t need to understand it to accept it. What I want to know is how far do you go to protect that privacy? Do you give Instacart your neighbor’s address? Do you use a fake name?

            • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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              18 days ago

              I haven’t gone that far. It’s mainly online privacy I care most about, and financial privacy. I mean… I use lemmy, mastodon, proton, degoogled my devices, run linux, DNS level ad/tracker/malware blockers, use Monero, Signal, SimpleX, have no fb, x, insta, tiktok, etc.

              As for the whole fake money thing, anything can be money. It’s just what people choose to call money. And since I can use it to buy groceries, and pay my phone bill, and pay my insurance, and buy products I want, it is money. You know the money most used to purchase drugs is the US dollar?

              • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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                17 days ago

                Lol, yes I do know that. I’ve spent quite a few US dollars on drugs myself.

                I really was just joking. I’m not judgemental about privacy, drugs, or most things really. I also realize that ALL money is fake money that only has value because we have agreed that it does. If the topic had been short term rentals instead of crypto, I’d have made an “illegal hotel chain” joke instead.

                Also, If I offended you I’m sorry. I hope you have a good night (or day if you live far away from me).

                • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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                  17 days ago

                  Sorry, I might have come off a bit harsher at the end of that last message than I meant to. I get it so often here because so many people want to just bash crypto without ever thinking about any good sides about it.

        • magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org
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          17 days ago

          Yet another fake currency for drug dealers.

          Well yeah you don’t wanna make illegal online transactions with a fake currency the government owns.

          Plus that ones got an encrypted ledger so its got a real use case there.

          That being said if you got a problem with drug dealers, where the fuck do you get your drugs?

      • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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        18 days ago

        Monero is cash. You cannot see who sent Monero to who or how much they sent. It’s completely private. The government has a half a million dollar bounty out for anybody who can break it and it’s been out for years because nobody has been able to do so.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    18 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Last month, his campaign began accepting crypto donations, calling the decentralized currency a reflection of Trump’s commitment to “freedom over socialistic government control.”

    “Bitcoin mining may be our last line of defense against a CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency],” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday.

    The former President met with the country’s largest Bitcoin mining companies on Tuesday night, according to The New York Times and several photos posted by crypto executives.

    Trump may be hard-pressed for cash these days given his recent conviction, ongoing legal cases, and, oh yeah, the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election that’s less than five months away.

    The crypto community, which is searching for allies in D.C. to create friendlier policies, could offer a meaningful source of funding to Trump in this critical final stretch.

    Tech venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya also just threw a fundraiser for Trump last week, which drew high-profile Bay Area executives and big donations.


    The original article contains 435 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • the_doktor@lemmy.zip
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    17 days ago

    A criminal saying that a laughable scam that is mostly used for criminal activity is good? Who would have thought? Oh right, everyone.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      17 days ago

      He was anti-Bitcoin until recently though. Now suddenly he’s all-in on it. Obviously something major has changed. One person speculated that this is to appeal to libertarians. I’m suggesting that along with that, the Saudis, who are in tight with Trump, just announced that they are abandoning the petrodollar and are considering trading in Bitcoin.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Everybody sell. You know how you can’t really tell when a stock is going to tank? Well, this time it’s like we’re doing economics with training wheels. You won’t get hurt, and you can see what’s coming. You just gotta sell now before the floor drops out.