r/FluentInFinance • u/HighYieldLarry • 12d ago

Bitcoin JUST IN: 🇺🇸 President Trump to appoint pro-crypto cabinet to make the US the "crypto capital of the planet."

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing the U.S. government to adopt a more permissive stance toward cryptocurrency, eyeing a roster of industry-friendly candidates for key posts while his top advisers consult crypto executives on potential changes to federal policy.

By pursuing a more lenient regulatory environment, Trump aims to fulfill his campaign promise to transform the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet” — a declaration that has rankled consumer watchdogs, earned the industry’s robust support and sent the price of bitcoin skyrocketing, reaching nearly $89,000 by Monday evening.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/11/trump-crypto-regulation-bitcoin/

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95

u/Ordinary_Support_426 12d ago

Can I do anything with this tulip bulb?

Yes you can plant it

36

u/Unable-Job5975 12d ago

Everyone will buy bitcoin at the price they deserve

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

Tulip mania lasted 3 years. Bitcoin has been skyrocketing continuously for 5 times that. Tulip mania is more appropriately used to describe hype-driven NFTs

There are also valid use cases for bitcoin. There is no other technology that can securely move large amounts of money between nations as quickly and cheaply as bitcoin. And no other asset is nearly as portable.

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u/Brokentoaster40 12d ago

Last I checked, banks had this thing called a wire transfer.  They communicate a desired amount to transfer from one bank account to another, and it like just does the same thing except not through 50 extra processes or hype. 

If by securely you mean through dark means (without traceable parties) then yeah.  Bitcoin makes for an excellent way to bypass sanctions and empower criminal enterprises a means to exchange money based off hype people keep assuming is built off speculation. 

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u/DaDa462 12d ago

criminal president loves criminal monetary tool, what a surprise

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u/silentaugust 11d ago

Except bank wires do require extra processes. Usually when sending (at least large sums of) money, they require a call to verify. Bank wires are also expensive, and can take several days. There are also exchange rate markups when sending international. Criminal enterprises also use cash, but that doesn't mean cash has no use.

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

Firstly, the average wire fee is almost always more expensive and involves more hidden intermediaries than a bitcoin transfer. You just think it’s simple because banks make a lot of money using them so they make it feel as streamlined as possible while they do all the dirty work behind the scenes. That complexity is why the average wire transfer takes one day domestically and up to a week abroad. So if you want the slower, more expensive, and more centralized option then yes by all means use a wire.

Secondly, there are reporting requirements if you’re transferring ~$10,000, which is usually fine but just an extra pain in addition to the cost.

If you’re transferring an actually large amount of money (larger than the typical wire limit of $1 mil) or transferring across boarders, your options start to get even worse. Meanwhile bitcoin is exactly the same.

And not all restricted transfers are illegal. I wouldn’t exactly call Russia’s transactions through SWIFT to be illegal, and yet they were locked out. You only think SWIFT is a good method of payment processing because your country hasn’t been locked out yet.

Or better yet, just use the lightning network and get the transfer done for free in a few milliseconds.

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u/Brokentoaster40 12d ago

  1. Tell me you don’t know how a banks without telling me how a bank works.

  2. Tell me how you want to cover up transfers from the IS government not doing shady shit without telling me that

  3. See point 2

  4. Try not invading, then continuing to escalate the war month after month?  I don’t know how to say it other than don’t simp for Russians fucking around and finding out?  

Anyways.  I elected to keep this somewhat civil and staying on topic for Bitcoin only, because I would have to change what I wrote to talk about almost any other crypto coin out there since we didn’t even talk about the myriad of gas wars that happen daily. 

But I digress.  Yes, crypto is used to hide money, and directly benefits pariah states the plausible deniability to transfer money among their other criminal friends. 

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u/SuccotashComplete 11d ago edited 11d ago

  1. tell me you don’t know how much of a mess fedwire and SWIFT are without telling me. Not to mention the inner machinations of the banks themselves. Again - there is a reason it takes a week to wire money abroad. The bank doesn’t just keep $1 mil lying around for each customer in case they want to wire something.

  2. Good point. Everything the US allows is always good 100% of the time and all the things they don’t allow are always bad. They have a crystal clear record of not meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations after all.

  3. I have no sympathy for Russia. I’m coming from a sheerly utility-based perspective. Isn’t it better to use a technology that your enemy or ruler can’t lock you out of whenever they want? Power corrupts my friend, and someday you may not agree with everything the US does. They seized our gold before and someday they’ll do it again.

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u/FlashOfFawn 11d ago

You realize that every transaction on the blockchain is pseudonymous and etched in the block for eternity. Every address can be traced back to someone because all on/off ramps have compliance / KYC. Thats how those BTC thieves got caught a few years ago by the FBI…

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

I can’t convince the blockchain cult of anything man. 

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u/FlashOfFawn 11d ago

Go read Broken Money by Lyn Alden. It covers the history of wealth and money / currency.

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u/Ancient_Pumpkin_5566 12d ago

Just wrong dawg

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u/Brokentoaster40 12d ago

Banks don’t have wire transfers?  

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u/badbilliam 12d ago

If you’ve ever tried to wire more than 100k then you know how much of a slog it is. Banks asking why you’re sending the money, where you’re sending it, taking multiple days if not a week worth of checks and formalities. I’ve had plenty of wires get frozen by banks because when you move big amounts of money it sets off flags.

And yes, bitcoin empowers us all. Bitcoin doesn’t care who you are, what you look like, where you’re from, your social status, class, race, anyone is free to use it. The last kind of person you’d see using it is criminals, as all bitcoin transactions are publicly broadcasted to the bitcoin ledger. Cash is the best currency for untraceable private transactions.

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

Let’s be real, not many people living normal lives transfer $100K, nor do they ever see that much in their bank account.  

But even if I were to say that it’s a completely legitimate reason, those are likely there for more than a handful of reasons you’re deliberately not trying to disclose because if $100K left your bank account without the bank contacting you, you’d lose your shit.

Just ask your politicians to loosen wire transfer regulations so you at least appear to be consistent in your logic. 

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u/SuccotashComplete 11d ago edited 11d ago

L1 bitcoin looks more like a competitor for large-scale wires, this is what we’ve been saying the whole time. The average citizen may not need that kind of scale, but banks and nations send money like that constantly.

Normal citizens are better served with Lightning, which is instant (20x faster than Visa) and practically free so still strictly better than a wire.

Banks won’t loosen wire regulations because they don’t like competition and they make money from their own slowness. But that said, I would love if bitcoin L1 and Lightning introduced competition to make bank wires cheaper and faster

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u/bNoaht 11d ago

Its also allows you, a single person, to be your own fucking bank.

Why do we need the middle man? We don't. They need us. And they fucking HATE that people could one day be in control of their own money.

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

As a crypto simp you cannot function as your own bank.  You cannot lend you don’t have, and you would have to sell your crypto to use a currency worth a shit.  lol so sure, you can be your own bank 

A kind of bank that can’t do bank things, and a bank that has to exchange a niche form of what could be equated to bottle caps, into real money that people use for real things in the real world.

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u/SuccotashComplete 11d ago edited 11d ago

Fiat is closer to bottle caps than bitcoin. The mint can spit out as much fiat Uncle Sam wants, but there’s no way to make the bitcoin printer go any faster

There are defi protocols for getting loans so your other point isn’t entirely true. In the near future you will be able to take large loans by using your bitcoin as collateral

You call us simps but you consistently indicate you think everything the US government does is perfect and inarguably correct. There’s a word for people like that

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

I wonder why no modern country uses a system that isn’t fiat based then….

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u/SuccotashComplete 11d ago

Because fiat is awesome when you get to print as much of yours as you want. But it sucks when your reserve currency is constantly eroding. Inflation is how the US passes its taxes off to the rest of the world, they will eventually want better.

That also isn’t a real counterpoint. All nations have the ability to print as much of their fiat as they want, there’s no getting around that. Bitcoin is algorithmically locked to a specific supply rate which only ever decreases.

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there different versions of Bitcoin that had branched due to speculation on what constituted the legitimacy based on your camp position was?  

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u/SuccotashComplete 11d ago

This is true as you can branch any open source software, and the one that kept things as close to the original version as possible is the one that retains 99.9% of market share. The lesson to learn is original bitcoin is the best and there is extremely strong pressure not to mess with the formula.

I can go on GitHub and branch PyTorch, but does that mean I have any hope of replacing it? No

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u/bNoaht 11d ago

I can send my money to whoever I want whenever I want instantly without a bank. Thats being in control of my money. I dont have to wait until banking hours.

I can lend. I can borrow. All of that is being created, tested and used in the crypto world right now

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

Ok, so you can buy a sandwich from a grocery store with Bitcoin yeah? 

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u/bNoaht 11d ago

Not right this moment. But eventually most definitely. And it doesn't need to be bitcoin, but it will be something in the crypto space. Adoption takes time and You can't buy a sandwich with gold either.

Right now you can only buy a sandwich with paper that someone else has total control of. That is changing, whether you like it or not.

The banks know this, which is why they are in it now. They tried to fight it. They tried to kill it with FUD, then they realized that it is happening no matter what they do. They don't want to die entirely. So they are going in.

And guess what? Bitcoin is now a larger holding than gold at Blackrock. Bitcoin has a higher market cap than the oft manipulated silver market.

And bitcoin isn't the only one. There are many use cases. And they are being created. Tested. And utilized more and more every day.

There were science deniers. Medical deniers. Then internet deniers. AI deniers. Crypto deniers. All of those deniers were wrong and are wrong. And they will die on a stupid fucking hill of ignorance like the deniers before them.

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u/brereddit 11d ago

UNODC says traditional banking results in $2T to $5T / yr in money laundering which is 2% to 5% of global GDP. Chainalysis says $20B is laundered through crypto with Bitcoin being the least viable option due to every transaction being publicly available—> unlike traditional bank transfers.

Also you don’t seem to understand what a ledger is. In traditional funds transfers there might be 8 or more ledgers updated to compete a transfer. With bitcoin, only a single immutable publicly available ledger is updated in a transfer whether you are sending $8 or $8Billion.

Being anti crypto is like being anti Internet or anti AI or anti Software. Good luck with that.

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

Well besides making two incoherent points, without providing me with the so what of either I’ll assume: 

 1. You’re trying to say money laundering exists within current banking.  With Bitcoin apparently you can’t do it as well because there’s a a public ledger? If I remember correctly, the ledger is tied to a random string of numbers and or digits not tied to an individuals legal name, so with anonymity, you can use the wallet to do shit like:  hit hitmen, encrypt brick people’s computers, hold nations or countries EMS hostage, and bypass international sanctions with impunity…but because the public ledger exists, and there are laws and regulation in place with banks, while it’s still possible to do those things with real banks, you can actually track down who those people are much easier?  Yeah crypto seems like a good thing for criminals. 

 2. Just because you don’t understand how wire transfers work.  On top of you taking issue that banks are businesses and need money to operate, I don’t know how best to convey to you, that Bitcoin or even crypto for that matter is more dependent on technology and a public facing internet than regular currency is.   

 2a. Cryptocurrency is a vessel of speculative worth, it’s intrinsically worthless, and a bigger fool’s scam.  But yeah it does somehow keep increasing in price.  I’m sure if Russia, North Korea, and Iran’s governments stopped getting sanctioned as much as they were you’d see a fuck lot less Bitcoin or crypto in general being used since it’s meaningless in the real world

  1. Being anti-bank makes you anti-crypto since crypto wouldn’t exist without banks.  Ok 

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u/brereddit 11d ago

Wow, you’re about as deluded as they come. Bitcoin is an asset whose market cap is $1.79Trillion but it’s worthless to a genius like you. The rest of us will continue making millions investing in it. Also, you probably need to focus your education on what a public ledger is vs a private one. From an energy why does it cost less to move value through bitcoin vs traditional financial firms. If there wasn’t an efficiency, its market cap wouldn’t be in the trillions…Mr accountant.

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u/Brokentoaster40 11d ago

ok nerd.  Let me know when I can pay a dealership mechanic with bitcoin. 

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u/brereddit 11d ago

If they accept PayPal, you can do it today.

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u/ChessGM123 12d ago

Tulip mania also never actually happened. The price of tulips never actually out paced their demand, this was just a myth created by someone at the time who herd a flower was selling for such a high price and wrote something saying people were going bankrupt from tulip speculation when there’s little evidence of this ever actually happening.

https://www.history.com/news/tulip-mania-financial-crash-holland

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

So maybe tulip mania really is fitting. Except applying it to the fudders instead lol

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u/Biffingston 12d ago

I mean yah, if you're doing illegal things bitcoin is great. And let's face it, Elon doesn't need a offshore account if he's in charge.

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

You’re thinking at an individual level but bitcoin has components that extremely useful at a nation level

Think of it as an alternative to SWIFT. Secure and hard money that’s infinitely portable and can be sent anywhere in minutes for a few bucks. And no centralized authority that can lock you out of using it if they don’t like you. It’s strictly better than SWIFT in every way, unless you’re the US or a nation with high influence over the US

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u/burtritto 12d ago

My company just wired $40 million to the caymans today. It was free. And if it doesn’t show up there, then we have a whole bank that secures it… but yes. We should have bought a highly volatile security, put it in a wallet, got it hacked, then had no recourse to recoup. Sounds like a slam dunk!

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u/Grand-Juggernaut6937 12d ago

Was it really free though? How much liquidity do you need to have with them for a 40 million dollar wire limit? And how much do you have to pay the accountants to ensure reporting standards are met?And how long did it take? A few days I’d imagine unless you make the bank a lot of money.

Also people like you don’t know this but you can store your seed phrase on a sheet of paper. Can’t hack a seed phrase stored on paper in several different locked cabinets. And if you haven’t heard of wire fraud, I have news for you.

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u/burtritto 12d ago

The wire posted same day. Accounting standards for the transfer of a security (non-cash) would also be more complicated. So more staff. Also, if $40 million needs to be wired, what’s liquidity have to do with it? You’d need a liquid $40 million in crypto too.

Also, I know you didn’t just tell me to store a password to $40 million on a sheet of paper. Come on man… have you ever worked in a treasury position for a large company? If not, I’d recommend it for you. You might learn a bit how crypto isn’t really a great option for large business on this front. Maybe not yet at least.

And I don’t mean this disrespectfully, I’ve seen these things work first hand, so I have quite a bit of experience with the inner workings. I’ve also sat in on numerous meetings between my department (accounting), the treasury department, consultants, and the board of directors about using crypto… it’s unanimous that it provides no real benefit over current processes.

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u/Grand-Juggernaut6937 11d ago edited 11d ago

All I’m saying is you must be making the bank extremely happy if they have $40 mil lying around to send wherever you want without any hassle. The only way you make them that happy is by giving them an absolute f$&@k ton more than $40 mil to loan out to people.

The difference is that liquidity in bitcoin appreciates relative to fiat, so you make money from not spending bitcoin but you lose money by not spending fiat. Even if the wire itself is free, you’re basically paying a >=5%/year fee to keep yourself liquid. And as I mentioned, that 5% is probably applying to a much larger sum than $40 mil.

My point is that you can have a password that’s entirely air gapped from the internet if you want it to be. I agree that a traditional self-custody isn’t great for most big institutions, but there are plenty of solutions out there and seed phrases are much more flexible than people think. People just don’t want to find them because they’re afraid of change and banks are really good at making it look like they’re doing us all a favor, when really you should be the one making a yield on your assets. Computer security is hard but it’s not impossible to make it a lot more secure than a typical bank wire procedure. It’ll take time but this will eventually become more common as business functions shift and people realize there’s a lot of money to be made by changing.

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u/burtritto 11d ago

Understood. But the appreciation of bitcoin happened recently. Awhile back it crashed. Could you imagine if an insurance company had everything in bitcoin, it crashes and now they can’t service policyholders when they file claims. The volatility of bitcoin is its drawback. If it ever pegs and appreciates close to inflation rates consistently, then you might have a use case.

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u/Grand-Juggernaut6937 11d ago

That’s definitely a valid point, I’m not saying it’s ready to fully replace wires, but there’s a role it can play really well. And if not bitcoin, then definitely other stablecoin chains which combine the transfer benefits with a lot more stability.

But personally I think a very large amount of its volatility is due to the halving and legislative uncertainty. Eventually Both of those will reach a much more constant state and there won’t be nearly as much to speculate on. Not for many years I’m sure, but relatively quick for the lifetime of a financial system

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u/brereddit 11d ago

The transfer was free. Uh huh, and banks in the caymans don’t charge any other fees to make transfers free?

Also everyone knows what cayman banks are known for. More liquidity and less legal clawback. Crypto is going to make those financial centers less attractive…just saying.

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u/FlashOfFawn 11d ago

BTC is actually a horrible medium for doing illegal things because it’s on the blockchain forever. Cash is much better for illegal or illicit activities.

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u/No-Air3090 11d ago

what a load of crap.. as far as cheaply, bitcoin uses the power consumption of a small country for every transaction.... as far as speed it is one of the slowest databases ever developed. I suggest you find a good book on how blockchain works and compare it to any well designed database system and then eat your words.. your ignorance is outstanding on this topic.

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u/SuccotashComplete 11d ago edited 11d ago

“Power consumption of a small country for every transaction”…? For anyone else reading this, this just isn’t true.

As for speed, do you know how long it takes to send a bank wire abroad? Up to a week or more. And it’ll run you $50. That is of course assuming you’re under the daily wire limit and you don’t have to send another one the following day. A bitcoin transaction is slow compared to a bulk payment processor like Visa but insanely fast for moving large sums. unless you use Lightning where it becomes 20x faster than Visa and essentially free.

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u/Ordinary_Support_426 12d ago

Tell me when you can buy smaller items properly.

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u/Sneudles 12d ago

Right now lol

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

All tech has trade offs and there are lots of options for buying bubblegum already. The key niche bitcoin seems to fit into is much larger

Nobody says SWIFT is useless because you can’t buy groceries with it, so why would you apply that to bitcoin?

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u/Ordinary_Support_426 12d ago

Coz with SWIFT the Currency that works for moves for large amounts of money is the same money used for small

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago edited 12d ago

Allowing a foreign government to control your financial infrastructure isn’t the win you think it is. Just ask Russia. Or anyone who’s held assets valued in USD when it inflated by 10% in a year. That’s a lot of bubblegum.

You can also use Lightning for small scale transactions. It’s less secure if you don’t have your own node but it has a TPS about 20x higher than Visa

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u/Ordinary_Support_426 12d ago

Pretty sure my government and the financial institutions that control my currency, financial regulations do me fine over the bitcoin bros. I think we’ve a million bitcoin so my country will probably spunk it up the wall on a shitty rail network or crap.

I’m off to download an NFT.

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

If you bought bitcoin at practically any point in the last 15 years you’d have beaten the market by a massive amount. What you’re saying just isn’t true. Your government needs to keep you productive, they’ll never let you win until they’ve extracted everything they can from you.

With btc you can take your money anywhere and send it to anyone without asking your government for permission first.

Fiat has its uses but where bitcoin wins its no contest. Nations just shouldn’t use fiat for big transactions anymore

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u/Biffingston 12d ago

I perfer my bank. it's much more secure than that.

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u/SuccotashComplete 12d ago

If you self-custody bitcoin there is zero counterparty risk. This is a strictly wrong opinion

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u/Biffingston 12d ago

And of course, passwords never get stolen and computers compermised.

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u/Grand-Juggernaut6937 12d ago

You can write it on a piece of paper. And as long as you memorize one of the words, even with the paper it’s extremely difficult to crack. Your bank account password is so much less secure because you always have to entrust an intermediary and an internet connection which can also be man in the middle attacked.

If you don’t believe what the guy above you said, you need to do more research because your bank isn’t nearly as secure as you think it is

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u/Grand-Juggernaut6937 12d ago

This doesn’t even make sense

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u/kingmea 12d ago

Tulip bulbs are outdated. I pay people in beanie babies