top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 271 points 2 years ago (20 children)

What a great fucking idea. Let's take a physical limited resource mineral and trade it for an untraceable and unregulated made up currency.

Holy shit I'm gonna have a stroke.

  • source
  • hideshow 20 child comments
  • [–] 135 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    If you want to reward your high profile friends so they can cash out with tangible assets before the whole currency or economy crashes, this is how you would do things.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 75 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Step 1: Put everything in crypto

    Step 2: Economy crashes, society no longer has power or running water.

    Step 3: Try to sell crypto but for some reason computer won't turn on.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 68 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    So couple things:

    1. Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are certainly not untraceable. Public ledger means that all the transactions are publicly visible - if you can associate a wallet to a person or organization then you know where the money went, and there are businesses that specifically do that kind of research. Every single transaction ever is part of the blockchain record. Cryptocurrency is a terrible way to make a clandestine purchase.
    2. All currencies are made up (I know, real imfourteenandthisisdeep energy, but still technicallythetruth).

    *Edit - A silly caveat to this is that if the US government starts regularly transacting in Bitcoin, it would be very easy to audit... using blockchain means there's a built-in transaction record... anybody with a little bit of experience in reading the ledger could just track everything.

    Other than that you're absolutely right.

    1. Cryptocurrencies are still largely unregulated, and the crypto market has attracted exactly the kind of people you would expect to be most interested in unregulated financial transactions - scammers, thieves, con men, ransomware gangs, money launderers, and anyone who wants buy or sell CSAM, narcotics, weapons, DDOS-as-a-Service, and North Korea's government funding crew. The crypto market is absolutely chock-full of criminal activity, so it's entirely reasonable to assume that anyone who wants to participate in that market wants to participate in the crime.
    2. As you said, trading physical gold for digital currency is a stupid idea. It's also uneccessary, because the FBI is already sitting on a collection of cryptocurrencies that have been confiscated through criminal investigations, including large amounts of Bitcoin. It is technically illegal right now for the US government to do anything with that, but that could be changed with a law. There's nowhere else for that cryptocurrency to go anyway.

    It seems likely to me that a play to distribute gold from the reserve is about having an excuse to open it and take gold out, and disappear some of it in the process. It's a cover for a plan to rob the US.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Bitcoin absolutely is traceable. Addresses might not be clear names, but all transactions are public. Which makes me wonder why the government wants to use Bitcoin.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    Because the crypto currency industry spent an absolutely ungodly amount of money helping Trump get elected.

    The government buying and holding Bitcoin pumps up the price of Bitcoin. This is just the other side of the quid pro quo. They got him elected, now he has to make them richer.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    untraceable

    Literally every transaction is stored in a public ledger that anyone can read. That's not exactly untraceable. Eventually someone will convert the Bitcoin to regular currency, which then links the transaction chain to the real world. Transactions can be clustered based on accounts at exchanges, and often patterns emerge once you do this. This is how some ransomware groups are uncovered.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (5 replies)
  • load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] 116 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The looting of US treasure begins.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 76 points 2 years ago (35 children)

    This reality is so fucking stupid. Let's sell something of value to buy something that is only valuable if someone really wants it bad enough.

  • source
  • hideshow 35 child comments
  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (34 children)

    To be fair, gold is the same. It's just more well established since it's been around much longer.

    Not defending this shit, just pointing out that gold is also only worth what people are willing to pay for it. That's kind of how all markets work.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 34 child comments
  • [–] 49 points 2 years ago* (21 children)

    Gold works without energy. It doesnt oxidise or decay as other materials

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 21 child comments
  • load more comments (14 replies)
  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    The difference is gold has carried high monetary value among human societies for nearly 3000 years while Bitcoin is a non tangible digital asset that's existed for less than two decades and remains incredibly volatile.

    This comes across as another Trump scam. He's going to bankrupt the American government by siphoning public money to himself and other private entities and the American people are going to be stuck hodling the bag.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
  • load more comments (8 replies)
  • [–] 64 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    So... I'm guessing the plebs get the cryptocurrencies. Which are backed by stablecoins... which are backed by tech grifters saying "I can cover it bro, trust me".

    Meanwhile the elites will take all that worthless gold and dispose of it for us.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 57 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Mr. Art of the deal-do is robbing you blind. No matter how this ends, he and felon will have stashed piles of you cash

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well there it is. For anyone who believed that they were simply going to create a reserve to store already existing cryptocurrencies - that were confiscated by the federal agencies - and not spend federal dollars to bolster or hype up cryptocurrencies that are connected to the people in the administration, y'all are idiots.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So. America got bought by a vulture capitalist and they are selling off assets.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 46 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Fuck bitcoin. Let's bring back the beanie-baby as a monetary standard.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 46 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Dumbest. Fucking. Idea. Ever

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Well no its actually a perfect method of looting the treasury and handing all the country's future wealth to the billionaires now, making them trillionaires, and all in a way thats essentially impossible to track...

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    Copying my comment from this same story, other thread on another instance/community:

    ...

    These actual mouth breathing morons have no idea what they are even attempting to describe.

    ...

    https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/does-the-federal-reserve-own-or-hold-gold.htm

    https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_certificate_(United_States)

    ...

    The Federal Reserve doesn't actually own, nor physically possess, any physical gold, that they could just sell off or speculate with.

    When FDR outlawed gold private ownership in 1934, all physical gold was handed over to the US Treasury, and the Federal Reserve (and other banks) were given gold certificates, valued at $42.22... per ounce... a set value that hasn't changed, and is used for the Fed's modest valuation of its previously held gold reserves... which are utterly insignificant and dwarfed by the other assets it holds.

    (This isn't super current, but it gives you an idea. Light blue is gold certificates. Its a one pixel thin line at the bottom. The overall balance is even more huge than this now after Covid, and Gold Certs, even if they were revalued from $42.2222 to the current market rate, would basically be small, it would go from about 10 billion to 750 billion, when the Fed's current total assets are about 7 trillion)

    About 5% of the US Treasury's gold is held at the New York Fed, but the Fed doesn't own it, it's just there because there is a vault there. The rest of the US's gold is physically held at Treasury operated locations.

    ...

    What the Fed does own are Gold Certificates, back from 1934, which are still valued at the old $42.2222 price, in terms of the Fed calculating its own balance sheet.

    To... have the US gov... order the Fed to sell off its gold certificates... that's not a thing the US gov can actually legally do, not without asserting total direct control over the Fed, and thus basically instantly making its existence pointless...

    Again, to repeat, the US government cannot legally command the Fed to sell off its gold certificates, the Fed cannot legally sell its gold certificates, nor could said certificates be legally exchanged for actual physical gold from the US Treasury.

    This would be approximately analagous to the US government ordering a corporation to sell off its own capital assets and then just sending the money from that sale to a government account.

    It is expropriation.

    For this to be any kind of legal, they'd have to repeal or greatly amend ... at least the laws that established the Federal Reserve, and the Gold Reserve Act, likely many more... or basically do a whole bunch of rat fuckery to get their own people in positions on various Fed Reserve boards, and possibly prevent other people on Fed Reserve boards from actually voting on motions.

    This would amount to basically performing a coup on the US's central banking system, and putting total control of the monetary system within the Treasury.

    ...

    This would upend the century old bedrock of the US's financial system.

    Now, I am no full, uncritical advocate of the Federal Reserve system in its current form... but this is what it is, a complete usurpation of the US's existing monetary system, which would then be put in charge of the astoundingly incompetent current administration.

    This is how you get hyperinflation.

    This is quite literally fucking with the money at its most fundamental level.

    This is how you speed run destroying the USD as the world reserve currency.

    ...

    tldr;

    This isn't only stupid in the sense of 'sell gold to buy bitcoin' is a dubious investment strategy, it is particularly stupid in that if the actual pursued strategy is 'force the Fed to sell its gold certificates'...

    (to who? its not legal for any private entity to 'purchase' them at the market rate for gold, nor is it legal for said hypothetical purchaser, not even the Fed, to actually redeem them for physical gold, nor is it even legal for the Fed to sell them even of its own accord!)

    ... then that method blows up the entire concept of a legally defined, semi-independent Federal Reserve, and that then blows up the entire basis of the US monetary system.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • load more comments (6 replies)
    [–] 37 points 2 years ago

    Now ladies and gentlemen I will astound you with demonstration of my mighty mystical methods. Right before your very eyes I will make this gold disappear. Not just to your eyes, not just to thin air, but such that it will only be a logical concept of worth. One, two, three...............

  • source
  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I am guessing that Musk will create a Muskcoin, and offer to 'sell' it for a preferable rate to the US government. Coincidentally, the Muskcoin uses the X Everything platform for all transactions.

    With each day that passes, I am becoming more convinced that shifting 99% of my money into Euros is the right call.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • load more comments (6 replies)
    [–] 36 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Curiously, thanks to Trump Gold has been breaking record after record on the upside since January - you see, Gold is the ultimate "oh, shit" form of wealth storage because it's its own "currency" (so if traditional currencies lose value gold just goes up in those currencies) so people flock to it in situations of high Economic uncertainty, and Economic uncertainty is the only achievement of Trump's Administration.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 33 points 2 years ago

    I've never been this high

  • source
  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So Trump wanted to get the gold from fort Knox so he could hand it over to Chinese hackers?

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 31 points 2 years ago

    A purchase shortly followed by one of the biggest bitcoin and market crashes in modern times.

  • source
  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What Happened: Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, suggested in an interview that the U.S. could capitalize on the gains from its gold holdings to purchase more Bitcoin.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Hines

    Robert "Bo" Hines (born August 29, 1995) is an American former college football player from North Carolina. He played college football for the NC State Wolfpack and Yale Bulldogs. In 2022, he was the Republican nominee in North Carolina's 13th congressional district.

    Call me a traditionalist, but it seems to me that if you're going to be advising the President on digital assets, it'd be nice to have an economics background.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    Call me a traditionalist, but it seems to me that if you're going to be advising the President on digital assets, it'd be nice to have an economics background.

    None of the rest of Trump's cabinet have any qualifications, so why should this guy?

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Make America Great Depression Again

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 27 points 2 years ago*

    BWAHAHAHAHAHA Genius. Step 1: Buy Shitcoin with actual gold (the most stable wealth storage)

    Step 2: Bitcoin price rises

    Step 3: Sell all your bitcoin, rugpull the entire thing

    Result: You have now robbed Fort Knox. Legally.

  • source
  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It’s about at this point where I stop being snarky and stare in fascination

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I didn't know lemmy had so many brain broken crytpo losers

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 20 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I don't know why so many commenters think this is just a joke or funny. They're talking about stealing the wealth of America to give to their rich friends directly through Bitcoin scams. That's what this will be. Giant government-funded pump and dump for their rich fascist friends.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] 19 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Step 1 - Break numerous laws to sell gold.
    Step 2 - Sell gold to fellow cronies for cheap.
    Step 3 - Use gold money to buy bitcoin to drive the price up.
    Step 4 - Sell bitcoin when price is high.
    Step 6 - Bitcoin crashes.
    Step 7 - Profit for Trumpy and his cronies

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 18 points 2 years ago
    [+] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
    [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    The biggest pump and dump scam of all time?

  • source
  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    Donald the felon trump, doing his best to rape every single American he can.

  • source
  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    budget neutral

    What the actual fuck. If you trade gold for bitcoin, you no longer have the gold. Budget neutral my ass.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (11 children)

    So personally, I think the government should have some, but I don't specifically think selling gold for it is the right idea.

    Everyone seems to be on about how this is just about cashing out his buddies, but what I'm worried about is these dumbfucks won't know how to properly secure it or won't properly secure it and itll get easily stolen, or they'll outright steal it themselves.

    Like they just used signal to talk about bombing Yemen and included a journalist on it...

    So while I think it's not a bad idea to have some, it's fucking terrifying that Trump is doing this and can influence it.

  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    load more comments
    view more: next ›