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.

During the private conference call with House Republicans, Johnson’s own members criticized the speaker’s plan, according to the source on the line who was granted anonymity to share the private discussions.

That’s a real Profile in Courage right there.

“We’re doing the wrong thing, but I will go along with it because I’m afraid to speak out publicly. I mean, you’ve seen the crazies who vote for me, right? One of them might pop me…”

Stephen Miller, who yelled at Lyons during morning phone calls with administration officials

And it would be exceedingly strange if the justices take this claim seriously. The Constitution’s language is clear. The issue was settled in Wong Kim Ark. And Trump’s lawyers want to implement a 145-year-old idea that was deemed unworkable even by one of its preeminent original champions.

What the author fails to take into account is that this Court is bought and paid for. Once the justices rule in favor of their benefactors, they will be awash in gratuities…

But not before! That would be a bribe, and the Court is above bribery! They do have morals, after all.

I zoomed in a bit for you…

Only an idiot would sign that shit.

Isn’t that the demographic they are going for, though?

Just like the spammers who deliberately put bad grammar and spelling in their emails, they know the people who will click in spite of the obvious red flags are easy marks and can be fleeced for more before carrying on to the scam.

“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.

Isn’t he basically admitting that ICE is his private paramilitary organization?

Those ancient stone arch bridges are remarkably durable, and can survive with very little maintenance. Many large stone bridges and aqueducts were built with no mortar whatsoever, and everything held together strictly through gravity. That requires quite a bit of skill with the stone cutting, though, in order for the weight to be distributed properly. And it makes them extremely costly and time-consuming to build. Wikipedia says the bridge pictured here took 30+ years to build, and that’s after the original bridge built here collapsed a few years after being built.

Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face, who later apologized for being in the way of the bullet.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/18/usa.dickcheney

He said there are “a handful of states in which some local elections openly allow noncitizens to vote” and where local officials have declined to explain how they ensure those noncitizen voters aren’t also voting in federal elections.

The issue of non-citizens voting in local elections has quite an interesting history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage_in_the_United_States

Many states let non-citizens vote historically, as long as they met residency requirements. It wasn’t until the “wrong” types of people started coming over (like the Irish) in the late 1800’s that some states started clamping down on the practice. And, believe it or not, non-citizens voting in Federal elections was not made illegal on the national level until 1997!

Hopefully the Democrats kill it. But if this passes, and the inevitable challenges make it to the SCOTUS, it will be interesting to see this case where the Democrats actually have the founders on their side, and the contortions the SCOTUS goes through to rubber-stamp the act in spite of their Originalism…

Doc Gooden certainly has more wins than RFK Jr. Still not sure who has done more coke, though

Sir! You offend me. Those judges do not take bribes. That would be illegal!

They take gratuities. See? Those are totally different.

He’s just making it sexier

FYI, Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in European History…