Every defendant in the US is entitled to a presumption of innocence, and the Prosecution is obligated to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. So, a defense attorney can be seen as performing a valuable service, to keep Prosecutors in check, and make sure they are doing their jobs correctly.

But I do wonder sometimes if these defense attorneys ask their clients whether or not they did the thing, or if they expressly say “Don’t tell me whether or not you did it”…

Bitcoin burns so much energy because it’s developers are stubborn. It’s really that simple. Ethereum transitioned to a different algorithm that uses a fraction of that energy and only a few dorks care.

He managed to keep it up until all of a sudden he couldn’t. Madoff was undone when he had to produce 440 million that he didn’t have.

Meanwhile, Tether was able to meet billions on withdrawals, several times. After Terra collapsed, I seem to recall they saw $15B in redemptions, but I can’t find any reputable links on that. If Tether was a scam, shouldn’t it have failed a long time ago?

People outside of crypto don’t realize how massive Tether is, and how much money it has under management. As much as the crypto bros dislike Central Banks, Tether has turned into one. If Tether were to ever implode, it would take most Crypto businesses with it.

Tether is an interesting experiment here. They are traded as smart contract tokens on top of various blockchains. They don’t really have any intrinsic value, other than Tether LTD saying “every Tether is 100% backed by currency reserves”, and releasing unsatisfactory “audits” now and then. It’s main utility is that it provides foreign exchanges with a way to trade in something that is like Dollars without opening them up to the regulation that comes with trading actual dollars. It’s market cap is currently in excess of $180 B.

But, USDT has been around, in one form or another, since 2015. And while other “innovative” crypto products have crashed and burned, Tether has been able to keep its peg and has never failed to meet redemptions. Furthermore, it doesn’t need to be a scam. It’s whole point is to always be worth one currency unit, so all they have to do is invest that currency in safe conventional investments and they can literally make billions of dollars with very little overhead. The most obvious answer is that they are not a scam.

I still don’t really trust them, but I have used them on exchanges, always making sure to trade through Tether to something I can redeem on a US exchange for actual dollars. But, I have to acknowledge they have lasted longer than most crypto entities. I wish they would get a complete audit together, but at some point their reputation for having lasted so long needs to be worth something?

You’re not wrong, but why is not having the backing of a government a bad thing?

I found crypto earlier than some. (not everyone – if I had more I wouldnt have to work anymore, haha!)

IMHO, the main value proposition of crypto is permissionless peer-to-peer payments. If we both have crypto wallets, and you send me an address to make a payment to, I can send that without needing anyone’s approval first. I don’t need any bank to agree to have me as a customer first, or any government to approve why the transaction is taking place. All I need is a functioning payment network, and the original Bitcoin white paper solved how to provide that and preserve anonymity. (Really Pseudo-anonymity, but only the nerds and Monero shills care about the difference)

As an academic experiment regarding permissionless payments, it is a resounding success. But, it turns out, Governments have laws regarding who can pay who, and about scamming people, regardless of the medium. So, just because Bitcoin enables permissionless payments doesn’t mean you can pay whomever you want, or makes scams somehow permissible.

Furthermore, the rapid increase in crypto prices really doomed any chance at all for useful adoption. Because people don’t want to spend crypto anymore. They view it as a Store of Value, and who can blame them, given how it has risen from nothing to a > $2T market cap, even after the recent downturn? You used to be able to use crypto in regular transactions, but not anymore.

“Scientific Community” is kind of a broad term. It is composed of a lot of smarty-pants types who are unlikely to take “no” for an answer, and will keep trying to fix the problem.

In the end, you may be right, and there’s no way to stop the runaway train, and all these folks will accomplish is getting our hopes raised while they earn their PhD’s and present papers in worldwide conferences they all burned jet fuel to get to.

But, what if you turn out to be wrong, and one of those poindexters actually figures out how to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere in an economical fashion, and they manage to stop the train? That person will be instantly famous, and the Nobel Prize might be the least of their accolades. They will be remembered as one of humanity’s greatest minds. If they happen to be British, they will be buried in that cathedral next to Newton and Darwin and Hawking, that’s how important it will be.

So, they will keep trying, because it’s as close as you can get in this life to immortality.

Seems to me like ChatGPT isn’t even the main plot. This is a CEO who has bad ideas and doesn’t take “No” for an answer. In the before times, he would just fire people who don’t agree wih him until he has a staff who can’t think for themselves. But that takes time, so all the bot did is speed it all up.

My #1 tip for stopping media addiction is to turn off notifications. There is simply nothing going on that requires your immediate attention. It can wait until you have time to check. Try it!

I’m kind of hoping the rest of the world wakes up and realizes that sending teams to the US to compete right now us just as bad as sending teams to Russia. The world should boycott it, and let the US claim its trophy after the Saudis field the only other team.

It’s possible either the US or Israel had some extremely timely intelligence on the location of the old leader, and the new one is just being more careful…

US Catholic Clergy: Really? Those are rookie numbers…

Communism

Roger, Roger.

People who are in the country illegally do not have authorization to work. You can’t tax them at all, at least officially, without giving them the authorization to work.

Now, of course these folks are working, and either getting paid without their employers declaring them, or paying them and withholding taxes with fraudulent identities, both of which are illegal for the employer as well as the employee. So, unofficially, they may be paying taxes, but if the authorities knew they were illegal they would probably be deported, especially in today’s hyper ICE environment.

A solution like you propose would acknowledge the basic humanity of these people, which is against everything the ruling party here stands for. So it will never happen.

(Edit: see the replies downstream, most of my post is uneducated bullshit)