As a contributor the mentionned fund that invested 750m into that exchange (it is a mandatory government saving taking ~10% of our paycheck each month) I must say I am really pissed off. They don't invest in our own early stage startup citing "risk" and then they go and invest in a foreign crypto exchange of all things.
You should call a securities lawyer and also the legal department of the pension, and threaten to sue. Whichever idiots have done this deserve to suffer some consequences — even if you sue and it gets tossed out, they will think twice before trying some sort of ridiculous nonsense like this again.
Pensions are extremely difficult to pitch for any sort of deal, even when it’s safe and makes sense. There is definitely some sort of back-channel relationship that led to this deal. You need to figure out how this happened, because there’s likely to be more of this sort of corrupt junk in your pension’s portfolio.
You should also question how economically benefiting from proof of stake mining has any place in any fund that purports to care about ESG (that applies to everyone!).
The round was 750m, la Caisse invested 150 millions.
What's absolutely bunkers is that no major Quebec news sites are talking about this news this morning. La Presse, Journal de Montreal, TVA, nothing. (TVA is mentioning that the crypto market is down and casually mention la Caisse investment down in the article, but it's hardly an important news)
Radio-Canada did make a major investigation into this investment few weeks ago (how timely!) but has yet to update it
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/4095/caisse-depo...
Indeed. The same decline in pension funds occurred in the 2007 crash and other crashes. Unfortunately that’s often the reality when people manage other’s people’s money. The gains result in large bonusses for the money managers and the losses result in large losses for the investors. The incentives are wrong.
There is a big difference in Canadian pension funds and US pension funds.
Canadian pension funds are run more akin to a private equity firm. They invest directly in growth stage deals and therefore take commensurate risks like any other private equity firm.
That means that they make bets with more asymmetric risks and balance their entire portfolio rather than staying at a specific risk band with all of their investments. They pay for professional staff commensurate with that model. A canadian pension fund's employees earn salary and bonuses comparable to a investment bank or private equity firm.
You can't necessarily look at one off investments and have to look at return over time which is generally healthy and their funding ratio, which is generally much healthier than US pension counterparts.
There is a reason the "Canadian Model" is held up as one of the ideal pension management models.
Part of me feels like this is actually somewhat a feature. It's like a research implementation of an economy that iterates more rapidly than the current economy. What if the real value in all of this is finding out mechanisms to bake consumer protections, transparency, anti-money laundering and fraud detection into the main economy in an automated fashion?
The funny thing to me is that the BTC promoters keep talking about the blockchain being used to pay for stuff, like the occasional Tesla, or bananas in third world countries. However, last time I checked, about 90% of transactions involving BTC happened off the blockchain. It happened in marketplaces where no actual crypto is transacted and it's all in the databases of these marketplaces. The value of BTC has nothing to do with the actual use of the Bitcoin Blockchain.
If anything, the ETH blockchain might have more value in the real world, since it's used to transact stupid monkey pictures and stuff like that.
To reiterate, you're basically saying it's just speculation and greater fool theory, correct?
Because that's to me what it looks like functionally, while some people I know seem to deny this is what they're doing and telling themselves "it's the future of everything" for no other reason than that's what they want it to be (so they can make bank off of their speculative bet).
> What justifies Bitcoin being valued at 30k vs 20k?
That it's a safeguard (not hedge) against tyrannical money.
This will play out over the next few years as governments will introduce digital currencies (CBDCs) to replace their own failing currencies (simultaneously robbing citizens of their savings). The bait-and-switch of this is that they will give out free money (it costs them nothing to do so) to entice people but not tell them that their money can expire, have its purchases limited to "approved" vendors, and be taken from them instantly without recourse.
Bitcoin is a safeguard against this if you hold it in your custody. This is its ultimate value: it cannot be manipulated or stolen by the state. Something that's never existed in the history of humanity.
The supply is well-known in advance, and is an advantage to Bitcoin. US M2 money supply grew 8.04% in the past year [0], while Bitcoin's grew ~1.75% [1].
Demand is very volatile, and suffers from the bandwagon effect (price increase -> buy, price decrease -> sell).
“A loan worth more than $278 million, one of the biggest single loans on decentralized lending platform MakerDAO, is labeled as a loan made by Celsius, according to data tracker Block Analitica. If Bitcoin falls below $22,534.89, the position will be liquidated, adding more sell pressure for Bitcoin, the analytics firm said.
Data shows that the address used 17,919 wrapped Bitcoin, a version of Bitcoin that can be used in decentralized finance, as collateral for a loan worth $278,490,419 in the decentralized stablecoin DAI. While the blockchain explorer Etherescan didn’t labeled the wallet as Celsius, a wallet from Celsius sent additional 2,000 wrapped Bitcoin to support the position. Celsius did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the wallets.”
This is not looking good for Crypto. Bitcoin is around 24K USD today after a ~10% fall. Other major crypto are following or likely to follow .. Terra Luna fiasco was just the trailer .. The whole movie is going to be more horrifying ..
I am confused as how this is a story about crypto and not story about Celsius. If Robinhood stopped withdrawals, would we be having a conversation about solvency about of US government? It is interesting, but it shows that crypto has an oddly rabid opponent base.
Just to put it in perspective, everything is falling today.
For the record, I don't disagree with some of the criticisms, but the knee-jerk reaction to anything crypto is just odd.
minor edit: I have minor stake in crypto, but nothing that would make me retire/commit suicide over losses.
Crypto is starting to invoke a tribal, emotional response in people now. It's bizarre to see these comments. Scammers scam. Surprise. Unregulated waters are dangerous unless they're tread carefully. Surprise. People using a technology for a completely different reason than it was invented for are ruining it for the rest of us. Surprise.
Should the tribal response really be so unexpected, considering the relentless way Crypto Enthusiasts, especially the NFT variety, hounded every other online community with hype?
Bitcoin is at 24k now, down 20% in a few days... at 21K the Microstrategy margin call kicks in. That may cause 130000 bitcoin to be dumped onto the market.
Has anyone done an investigation into how this current issue, Luna previously, etc. is hitting the various VC cheerleaders? a16z in particular for their rampant pumping.
VCs got in at stupid early prices on a lot of these projects, unlikely they're hurting. a16z if you hadn't noticed was shilling Solana hard through their latest "State of Crypto" deck. What is hurting though is all the project and company grants that rely on the value of the underlying token. You've got a lot of crypto startups who have to sell on the open market to continue ops that will start to feel the heat.
Let me see if I understand this: I put 10 bitcoin into this bank, and it gets loaned to you. If you cash it out to 10 bucks immediately, and bitcoin later drops to half a buck, you can buy 10 bitcoin, pay back the loan and keep 5 bucks, right? Not including whatever interest, I guess.
So this is a way to short bitcoin?
Edit: Sorry, maybe just to short Celsius' own tokens, although maybe it's indirectly shorting other currencies
I still remember looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum back in day. I was just curious and I know my friends bought and sold some. Back in 2017 (video is earlier) I looked at a video that explains, what Ethereum is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clw-qf1sUZg
This video has not aged well. It's full of so many buzzwords that my mind can't keep up. Also, the idea of anonymity and privacy...clearly they gave up on that as everybody is using their real names, addresses, etc so sign up for exchanges.
Again, I don't know enough about it, but since I've looked it back in 2017, until today, I'm still as confused, which is why I've stayed away from it.
That's why I have a problem with someone else managing my money (outside of direct fund managers, of course, who take a fixed percentage fee and are incentivized to have the fund grow, not to fleece me).
[+] [-] Sytten|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numair|3 years ago|reply
Pensions are extremely difficult to pitch for any sort of deal, even when it’s safe and makes sense. There is definitely some sort of back-channel relationship that led to this deal. You need to figure out how this happened, because there’s likely to be more of this sort of corrupt junk in your pension’s portfolio.
You should also question how economically benefiting from proof of stake mining has any place in any fund that purports to care about ESG (that applies to everyone!).
[+] [-] jeromegv|3 years ago|reply
What's absolutely bunkers is that no major Quebec news sites are talking about this news this morning. La Presse, Journal de Montreal, TVA, nothing. (TVA is mentioning that the crypto market is down and casually mention la Caisse investment down in the article, but it's hardly an important news) Radio-Canada did make a major investigation into this investment few weeks ago (how timely!) but has yet to update it https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/4095/caisse-depo...
[+] [-] huijzer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpicolo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ypzhang2|3 years ago|reply
Canadian pension funds are run more akin to a private equity firm. They invest directly in growth stage deals and therefore take commensurate risks like any other private equity firm.
That means that they make bets with more asymmetric risks and balance their entire portfolio rather than staying at a specific risk band with all of their investments. They pay for professional staff commensurate with that model. A canadian pension fund's employees earn salary and bonuses comparable to a investment bank or private equity firm.
You can't necessarily look at one off investments and have to look at return over time which is generally healthy and their funding ratio, which is generally much healthier than US pension counterparts.
There is a reason the "Canadian Model" is held up as one of the ideal pension management models.
[+] [-] Saint_Genet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trompetenaccoun|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dontbenebby|3 years ago|reply
Bitcoin et al are a Paypal killer, as in a low cost way to transmit currency or whatever, but you can do that in other less wasteful ways.
It's a shame what it turned into is something people place on comprmised mnachines to silently siphon up CPU cycles for profit.
(Especially since often those profits went towards things like Juche nukes.)
[+] [-] adam_arthur|3 years ago|reply
The answer is nothing. And same applies to 10k. Since there's no measurable intrinsic value, there's zero fundamental factor limiting the downside
[+] [-] donkeyd|3 years ago|reply
If anything, the ETH blockchain might have more value in the real world, since it's used to transact stupid monkey pictures and stuff like that.
[+] [-] deebosong|3 years ago|reply
Because that's to me what it looks like functionally, while some people I know seem to deny this is what they're doing and telling themselves "it's the future of everything" for no other reason than that's what they want it to be (so they can make bank off of their speculative bet).
[+] [-] rglover|3 years ago|reply
That it's a safeguard (not hedge) against tyrannical money.
This will play out over the next few years as governments will introduce digital currencies (CBDCs) to replace their own failing currencies (simultaneously robbing citizens of their savings). The bait-and-switch of this is that they will give out free money (it costs them nothing to do so) to entice people but not tell them that their money can expire, have its purchases limited to "approved" vendors, and be taken from them instantly without recourse.
Bitcoin is a safeguard against this if you hold it in your custody. This is its ultimate value: it cannot be manipulated or stolen by the state. Something that's never existed in the history of humanity.
There's a reason the genesis block contained this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/File:Jonny1000thetimes.png
[+] [-] olalonde|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danuker|3 years ago|reply
* supply
* demand
The supply is well-known in advance, and is an advantage to Bitcoin. US M2 money supply grew 8.04% in the past year [0], while Bitcoin's grew ~1.75% [1].
Demand is very volatile, and suffers from the bandwagon effect (price increase -> buy, price decrease -> sell).
[0] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_m2_money_supply_yoy
[1] - https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-inflation/
[+] [-] ars|3 years ago|reply
The answer is the same: nothing.
Except that that's not true for gold and it's not true for Bitcoin. Something has value if people want it.
That's it.
People want Bitcoin, therefore it has value.
Your search for fundamentals is simply inappropriately applied. It's like asking what color is a smell, it's simply the wrong question.
[+] [-] hacknat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|3 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/SilvermanJacob/status/153617697375127961...
Classic run on the bank scenario. And the bank behind all of this is not secured or even worse, so it makes sense.
[+] [-] mathieubordere|3 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/davthewave/status/1535760979333873665?s=...
"#Bitcoin lows around these levels lining up with previous lows as time-relative to previous halvings.
Previous halving cycle shows a mini parabolic breakout from the lows.
Chart shows a regularity and logic for the ongoing macro bull."
The amount of pseudo-science bullshit is mind boggling.
[+] [-] chinathrow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] secondcoming|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
Data shows that the address used 17,919 wrapped Bitcoin, a version of Bitcoin that can be used in decentralized finance, as collateral for a loan worth $278,490,419 in the decentralized stablecoin DAI. While the blockchain explorer Etherescan didn’t labeled the wallet as Celsius, a wallet from Celsius sent additional 2,000 wrapped Bitcoin to support the position. Celsius did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the wallets.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-13/bitcoin-s...
[+] [-] haasted|3 years ago|reply
https://nitter.net/DU09BTC/status/1536353233156902914#m
Seems to have managed to push it to 18k. Quite the gamble.
[+] [-] BenoitP|3 years ago|reply
So, am I reading this right that 403 M$ are used to secure 278 M$?
Or maybe are they accounting for market impact (by way of thin order book) for when the position is liquidated?
[+] [-] justforfunhere|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toolz|3 years ago|reply
bitcoin falls 56% - 2012
bitcoin falls 83% to $50 - 2013
bitcoin falls 84% to 12k - 2017
bitcoin falls ~50% to ~30k - 2021
"crypto is not looking good long term" - numerous people on hacker news every single time crypto is down.
[+] [-] geerlingguy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foepys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] altdataseller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|3 years ago|reply
Just to put it in perspective, everything is falling today.
For the record, I don't disagree with some of the criticisms, but the knee-jerk reaction to anything crypto is just odd.
minor edit: I have minor stake in crypto, but nothing that would make me retire/commit suicide over losses.
[+] [-] Night_Thastus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaaaaaaaata|3 years ago|reply
Or digital tokens?
[+] [-] seanw444|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EamonnMR|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|3 years ago|reply
A friend of mine loves his freedoms and avoiding the terrible big banks who he thinks might steal his money / do things he doesn’t like …
[+] [-] thr0wawayf00|3 years ago|reply
- Billboards all over Austin, TX right now
[+] [-] sgt101|3 years ago|reply
This is what I call a significant bear case.
[+] [-] ctvo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dQw4w9WgXcQ|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerblang|3 years ago|reply
So this is a way to short bitcoin?
Edit: Sorry, maybe just to short Celsius' own tokens, although maybe it's indirectly shorting other currencies
[+] [-] unfocused|3 years ago|reply
This video has not aged well. It's full of so many buzzwords that my mind can't keep up. Also, the idea of anonymity and privacy...clearly they gave up on that as everybody is using their real names, addresses, etc so sign up for exchanges.
Again, I don't know enough about it, but since I've looked it back in 2017, until today, I'm still as confused, which is why I've stayed away from it.
[+] [-] speedylight|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papito|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvZSpET11ZY
[+] [-] lykahb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpmoral|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] circa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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