S05.E04: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

[Athena]

Quote

Other segments: 2018 North Korea–United States summit, International Women's Day
Guests: Keegan-Michael Key

[ahisma]

Oh my god, the Fox29 anchor with his GOOD DAY sign and the doll of the other anchor ... that wasn't just him, the station was supporting his shenanigans with the camera angle and with making the prop. SO. GROSS. 

I'm so glad the show got the message out there that blockchain coins are an unregulated space with a lot of fluctuation and some bad actors, so don't invest more than you are okay with losing. Keegan Michael Key was fantastic at the close!

[SuburbanHangSuite]

I wasn't feeling this episode like I normally enjoy Last Week - - - maybe because of the topic?

 I have had ZERO interest in cryptocurrency since I first heard BitCoin referenced on The Good Wife a few years ago.  It just seemed sketchy and something that I would never venture to try.  Fast forward to earlier this year and the owner of my hair salon was devastated because she had invested in BitCoin thinking that she was about to get rich and she got scammed.  Someone had stolen a bunch of money from her BitCoin exchange and she lost a bundle. 

But I really take issue with John clowning my favorite morning anchor, Mike Jerrick.  Now, I'll admit that the clips he chose showed Mike in an unflattering light.  But those clips are seriously taken out of context.  Mike is hilarious and the best part of the morning Good Day team at Fox 29.  He went viral a few years ago after mocking the Kardashians and then Ryan Lochte.  I love Mike.  

[Annber03]

1 hour ago, ahisma said:

Oh my god, the Fox29 anchor with his GOOD DAY sign and the doll of the other anchor ... that wasn't just him, the station was supporting his shenanigans with the camera angle and with making the prop. SO. GROSS. 

The poor girl next to him...the more he went on and on, I kept watching her reactions and was just thinking, "Run". Yeesh. 

And the CBS morning team as well! Really, guys?

1 hour ago, SuburbanHangSuite said:

I have had ZERO interest in cryptocurrency since I first heard BitCoin referenced on The Good Wife a few years ago.  It just seemed sketchy and something that I would never venture to try.  Fast forward to earlier this year and the owner of my hair salon was devastated because she had invested in BitCoin thinking that she was about to get rich and she got scammed.  Someone had stolen a bunch of money from her BitCoin exchange and she lost a bundle. 

Oh, dear. That sucks. 

Yeah, I'm hesitant about this Bitcoin stuff, too. Making it hard to hack sounds promising, but even then, though, you know somebody will eventually find a way to do so. And if it does take off as a viable currency, I'd think there'd have to be some kind of regulations put on it at some point, too. I'd hope so. The whole "wild west" aspect of it, as Oliver called it, just has me very wary about ever considering using it. 

Ultimately, unless or until the day when Bitcoin becomes THE main form of payment that everyone has to learn to use, I'll stick with my dollar bills and change. 

[ganesh]

2 hours ago, SuburbanHangSuite said:

He went viral a few years ago after mocking the Kardashians and then Ryan Lochte.  I love Mike.  

Was that the youtube clip where the anchor is going "I'm a man in the morning!" mocking Lochte? Because the other anchor was literally in tears.

1 hour ago, Annber03 said:

Yeah, I'm hesitant about this Bitcoin stuff, too. Making it hard to hack sounds promising, but even then, though, you know somebody will eventually find a way to do so.

Hacking blockchain isn't overly difficult. This is the wheelhouse of my CS faculty colleague and he's not convinced. 

Key was killing me. Perfect casting for the bit. 

[attica]

Is it wrong that I've already used variants of 'be craeful' a handful of times today? It can't be wrong! It feels too right! 

[SuburbanHangSuite]

14 minutes ago, ganesh said:

Was that the youtube clip where the anchor is going "I'm a man in the morning!" mocking Lochte? Because the other anchor was literally in tears.

That's it!  And the clip where he mocks the Kardashians is just as good.  The clips that John showed made him look like a lecherous perv but he really is funny.

My DVR cut off before I could see the last few minutes. Grrrrrrrr...

[peeayebee]

3 hours ago, SuburbanHangSuite said:

But I really take issue with John clowning my favorite morning anchor, Mike Jerrick.  Now, I'll admit that the clips he chose showed Mike in an unflattering light.  But those clips are seriously taken out of context.  

That's hard for me to understand. His cohost looked disgusted, not amused. 

As for Int'l Women's Day, my BIL really did say, "Why isn't there a Men's Day?" I responded, "Because every day is Men's Day."

Why was the guy on Morning Joe talking about The Bachelor? Was that the topic they were discussing?

My sister has been investing in cryptocurrency for several months, maybe a whole year, I'm not sure. For a while that's all she would talk about. I tried to be a good listener, but I was a big skeptic and simply not interested. She doesn't talk about it as much, but she's still excited about it. She first got into it thru an investment group. She is a devoted follower of a guy named Teeka Tiwari, who tells his clients (I guess you'd call them) exactly what to do. Funnily enough, as I watched that one guy, Carlos Matos, doing his bitconnect shtick, I googled a pic of Teeka Tiwari, and they look very similar. 

One thing I've read about cryptocurrency that John didn't mention is that it uses a lot of energy. The servers that are used to store all the data just eat up electricity. Anyway, I don't really understand it. If it does get into general use, I imagine criminals will love it.

Nice seeing Keegan-Michael Key. 

Edited March 12, 2018 by peeayebee

[Annber03]

36 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

Why was the guy on Morning Joe talking about The Bachelor? Was that the topic they were discussing?

 

Oh, god, that clip. I was cracking up because the rest of the anchors on the screen kinda had this, "...are we seriously just going to let this guy keep talking about this?" look on their faces. Apparently every other type of newsworthy situation out there must've been dealt with, then, I guess, if they can waste their time on that. Sheesh. 

Quote

My sister has been investing in cryptocurrency for several months, maybe a whole year, I'm not sure. For a while that's all she would talk about. I tried to be a good listener, but I was a big skeptic and simply not interested. She doesn't talk about it as much, but she's still excited about it. She first got into it thru an investment group. She is a devoted follower of a guy named Teeka Tiwari, who tells his clients (I guess you'd call them) exactly what to do. Funnily enough, as I watched that one guy, Carlos Matos, doing his bitconnect shtick, I googled a pic of Teeka Tiwari, and they look very similar. 

Your sister sounds like she should meet Dan :p.  Hopefully this guy she's following proves trustworthy, at least. 

Edited March 12, 2018 by Annber03

[attica]

35 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

Why was the guy on Morning Joe talking about The Bachelor? Was that the topic they were discussing?

I really cannot imagine the universe in which I'd care about that show. No disrespect to those who watch it/enjoy it, but it's just so far out of my own watching wheelhouse, I cannot fathom it. I did enjoy watching Willie Geist try to look interested during the speech, tho.

[Robert Lynch]

Brock Pierce...what a weirdo. Unicorn wedding?!!? What drugs is he on? Now we know why his career dried out.

Edited March 12, 2018 by Robert Lynch

[Victor the Crab]

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As for Int'l Women's Day, my BIL really did say, "Why isn't there a Men's Day?" I responded, "Because every day is Men's Day."

The BIL must have seen Tucker Carlson's special about men and their accomplishments throughout history on the same day as International Women's Day. Something I would have thought Ollie would have shown, because Tucker Carlson doesn't get enough ridicule in his pathetic life.

After watching the main story about Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies, I know as much about them as when I started watching it. Which is Jack! Squat! Which is why I have no interest in them whatsoever. Keegan Michael Key at the end for the win!

[bijoux]

I just sort of talked with friends about cryptocurrencies, since one went to a seminar over the weekend. I said then and kind of still feel the same, that I don’t really understand the point of them. Maybe I’m just a bumpkin and this is how some people felt when money is introduced instead of trading goods, but I honestly don’t get how you can use it, what can you purchase with it? Apparently not even entrance to a Bitcoin convention? 

1 hour ago, Robert Lynch said:

Brock Pierce...what a weirdo. Unicorn wedding?!!? What drugs is he on? Now we know why his career dried out.

I did google him afterwards. According to Wikipedia:

Quote

Pierce retired from acting in favor of producing, producing a show for gay teenagers called Chad's World.[3][4][5] Pierce began enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles riding the Dot-com bubble with the Digital Entertainment Network. As an 18 year old, Pierce was making $250,000 a year and held 1% of the company's shares.[6] After the collapse of the Digital Entertainment Network, Pierce fled the U.S. with co-founders Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Schackley after a number of former underage DEN employees accused the three of sexual abuse, drugging them, and making violent threats. They were later dubbed by the New York Post as the "dot-com perverts."[7][8][9] The three were arrested by Spanish police before being returned to the U.S. to face charges of transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts. Only Collins-Rector was charged.[10]

[meowmommy]

5 hours ago, Victor the Crab said:

After watching the main story about Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies, I know as much about them as when I started watching it. Which is Jack! Squat! Which is why I have no interest in them whatsoever. Keegan Michael Key at the end for the win!

My DVR cut out before the final bit, since this week went 34 minutes.  Had to go find it on demand to catch the ending.  I was surprised John didn't talk about how Bitcoin has become the new scam of choice for wannabe millionaires in Kentucky.  People who don't have two nickels to rub together are apparently day trading this stuff, with some big winners, and of course, predictably, some huge losers.

Edited March 13, 2018 by meowmommy

[purist]

Next time some man whines at you, 'When is International Men's Day?' tell them there actually is one and it's on 19 November. Sigh.

8 hours ago, peeayebee said:

I imagine criminals will love it.

I am a book editor IRL, and a couple of years ago I worked on a fantastic book about the online drug marketplace Silk Road. The author, Australian journalist Eileen Ormsby, provided an excellent history and explanation of bitcoin in the book - because it was the method by which people bought and sold drugs on Silk Road. So seeing bitcoin all over the news in the past few months has been fascinating to me, and I enjoyed LWT's coverage of it. (I highly recommend the book, if you're interested. Ormsby's new one, The Darkest Web, is actually being published tomorrow.)

[sum]

11 hours ago, bijoux said:

I just sort of talked with friends about cryptocurrencies, since one went to a seminar over the weekend. I said then and kind of still feel the same, that I don’t really understand the point of them. Maybe I’m just a bumpkin and this is how some people felt when money is introduced instead of trading goods, but I honestly don’t get how you can use it, what can you purchase with it? Apparently not even entrance to a Bitcoin convention? 

I did google him afterwards. According to Wikipedia:

Quote

Pierce retired from acting in favor of producing, producing a show for gay teenagers called Chad's World.[3][4][5] Pierce began enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles riding the Dot-com bubble with the Digital Entertainment Network. As an 18 year old, Pierce was making $250,000 a year and held 1% of the company's shares.[6] After the collapse of the Digital Entertainment Network, Pierce fled the U.S. with co-founders Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Schackley after a number of former underage DEN employees accused the three of sexual abuse, drugging them, and making violent threats. They were later dubbed by the New York Post as the "dot-com perverts."[7][8][9] The three were arrested by Spanish police before being returned to the U.S. to face charges of transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts. Only Collins-Rector was charged.[10]

 

I have no idea who Brock Pierce was, yet that Wikipedia excerpt sounded familiar. Yep, because I've read the story a few months ago, when Bryan Singer went AWOL and got fired subsequently. As people speculated he must be scared that some damning sexual abuse accusations against him were about to emerge I looked up old reports about the 2014 court case.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bryan-singer-sex-abuse-case-699828
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/found-the-elusive-man-at-the-heart-of-the-hollywood-sex-abus
So Pierce is the one who settled with the accuser, though he still denied any wrongdoing.

[iMonrey]

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After watching the main story about Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies, I know as much about them as when I started watching it. Which is Jack! Squat! 

Yeah same here. I've had people try to explain it to me and I still don't get it. You can't use it to buy anything - you can't buy a house, or a car, or something off Amazon.com with it. People keep saying it's a way to transfer money without an intermediary, but under what circumstance would I ever need to do that, and what's the point if you can't use said currency to buy anything with? Near as I can tell it's like investing in currency futures or currency future options - like if you invest in  Japanese Yen futures and the value of the Yen goes way up you make money. I just don't get how the value of BitCoin goes up or down if it's not attached to any economy and isn't actually usable. 

[trow125]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

Yeah same here. I've had people try to explain it to me and I still don't get it. You can't use it to buy anything - you can't buy a house, or a car, or something off Amazon.com with it. People keep saying it's a way to transfer money without an intermediary, but under what circumstance would I ever need to do that, and what's the point if you can't use said currency to buy anything with? Near as I can tell it's like investing in currency futures or currency future options - like if you invest in  Japanese Yen futures and the value of the Yen goes way up you make money. I just don't get how the value of BitCoin goes up or down if it's not attached to any economy and isn't actually usable. 

You can definitely buy houses with bitcoin, as long as the seller accepts it. It's still newsworthy when someone does advertise that they'll take bitcoin, even here in the Bay Area. There are quite a few auto dealers that accept it as well, including a Lamborghini dealer (#LAMBO!).

I feel the biggest issue with the piece is that it could literally have been 2 hours long and only begun to scratch the surface of bitcoin and blockchain. I've listened to several podcasts about it and read news stories, and I don't understand everything either. This is a decent explainer with links to other articles if you want to explore further.

I recently read that the city of Berkeley is considering doing its own coin offering, which sounds pretty wacky. But if dogecoin is worth more than $1 billion who even knows anymore.

[ganesh]

3 hours ago, trow125 said:

I recently read that the city of Berkeley is considering doing its own coin offering, which sounds pretty wacky.

Formerly living in Berkeley for quite a long time, I'm not surprised. 

How about the recent theft of all the servers in Sweden (i think there) that were mining bitcoin? Now all your stuff is gone because there's no regulations, and basically really savvy cons are going to Ocean's 11 all the bitcoin servers and you can't stop it because you don't know where they actually are. 

[Kel Varnsen]

On 12/03/2018 at 10:48 AM, SuburbanHangSuite said:

 I have had ZERO interest in cryptocurrency since I first heard BitCoin referenced on The Good Wife a few years ago.  It just seemed sketchy and something that I would never venture to try.  Fast forward to earlier this year and the owner of my hair salon was devastated because she had invested in BitCoin thinking that she was about to get rich and she got scammed.  Someone had stolen a bunch of money from her BitCoin exchange and she lost a bundle. 

That is one thing I wish John had talked about. I mean if the bitcoin ledger and the blockchain system that supports it is so secure, how do these kind of scams and thefts happen? Because I don't believe this is the first time I have read about bitcoins being stolen.

[SuburbanHangSuite]

Kel, I'm not entirely sure because English is not Ellen's first language so when she was telling me that she got wiped out, I couldn't tell if it was because she was hacked or if she unwittingly allowed access of her funds to someone.  Either way, she was sick because it was right before the Bitcoin price skyrocketed and all she could think about was how much profit she'd lost on top of the initial investment.  They wiped her out leaving a mere 72 cents in her exchange account.  She had filed a report with local police but I suggested she report everything she knew to the FBI taskforce for cyber-crime.  I go for my color touchup in a few weeks.  I'll see if she has any new news.

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

In a Dear John Oliver missive, EOS simultaneously challenged the famous comedian and his recent diatribe against ICOs, and cryptocurrency in general, while dismissing crypto-advocate Brock Pierce.

According to the post on Medium;

“Brock Pierce was an early advisor to Block.one for several months and made significant contributions to the awareness of the EOSIO project. His past experience working with projects such as Ethereum, Blockchain Capital, and as chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation have proved immensely valuable. As we mentioned last week, we recently came to a mutual agreement that Brock would end his role at Block.one as he transitions to independent community building and investment activities. We thank Brock for his contributions, support, and continued larger than life passion for the EOSIO project.

 

Brock Pierce Sacked from EOS Following John Oliver Video on Cryptocurrencies
 

Quote

 

The penny dropped for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin on Wednesday as prices plummeted on bad news from Google, international regulators and Congress.

Major cryptocurrencies fell by double-digit percentages on legitimate markets Wednesday after a triple whammy of adverse developments: Google announced that it will ban cryptocurrency-related ads, the International Monetary Fund called for a worldwide regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrencies, and members of Congress clobbered them at a hearing on Wednesday.

Bitcoin dropped by more than 16 percent in 24 hours on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, falling from $9,346 to $7,831 on Wednesday night. Litecoin, another popular cryptocurrency, lost 13 percent, settling at $155, and Ethereum plunged by more than 17 percent, to $582.

 

Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies plunge on wave of bad news

Edited March 15, 2018 by OneWhoLurks

[EllieH]

After catching up last night, my husband and I discovered there were a lot of times in our day where it made sense to bring up/ emphasize-yell "responsibility!"  And then laugh about it.

I was also amused by "Dan", as I've got two coworkers who are very into talking about bitcoin (I'm 99% sure neither has invested in it).

[rainsmom]

On 3/14/2018 at 10:18 PM, SuburbanHangSuite said:

Kel, I'm not entirely sure because English is not Ellen's first language so when she was telling me that she got wiped out, I couldn't tell if it was because she was hacked or if she unwittingly allowed access of her funds to someone.  Either way, she was sick because it was right before the Bitcoin price skyrocketed and all she could think about was how much profit she'd lost on top of the initial investment.  They wiped her out leaving a mere 72 cents in her exchange account.  She had filed a report with local police but I suggested she report everything she knew to the FBI taskforce for cyber-crime.  I go for my color touchup in a few weeks.  I'll see if she has any new news.

I highlighted the important statement: She left her funds in an exchange account, which left it vulnerable.

Prior to 1933 and the implementation of FDIC insurance, if a bank failed (or was robbed), the people who had money in that bank lost it. A cryptocurrency exchange is not a bank, but many people are storing their cryptocurrency in exchanges as if they were banks. But exchanges are not banks and are not insured for losses, even losses due to theft. Theft from an exchange isn't EASY (any more than robbing the NY Stock Exchange would be -- or even any more than robbing a big casino or a huge bank would be), but because the potential payout is so huge, it makes a lucrative target.

Savvy cryptocurrency investors keep their coins in "wallets." The most secure are offline wallets like Trevor. They send money to exchanges ONLY when they want to trade, and they send ONLY the amount that they want to trade -- and they immediately move the new coin back to their wallet.

Edited March 18, 2018 by rainsmom