When you buy a Chinese stock on a US exchange, you're not buying shares of that company, but a Variable Interest Entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands. This VIE is a smoke-and-mirrors entity that has no enforceable relationship with the Chinese giant, and is illegal in China.
-
Show this thread
-
But because it is convenient for everyone, this flimsy and very shady looking fiction has worked as a way to duct-tape Chinese companies to US capital markets. If you're a freshly arrived Martian just learning about money, it doesn't look much different from something like Tether
1 reply 10 retweets 38 likesShow this thread -
And shenanigans like this, which are rampant in finance, reinforce the cryptokids' assertion that the financial sector is *also* a scam, or at least just as much a scam, only that it enjoys the support of governments and the Reptilian Council and so on, and gets treated as legit
1 reply 4 retweets 46 likesShow this thread -
These scams/fictions/bubbles or whatever you want to call them function as long as enough people are willing to use them in good faith, and as long as they serve a convenient purpose. So that's why I think Tether is so resilient to all of the justified exposures of it as shady
1 reply 3 retweets 28 likesShow this thread -
Cryptocurrency exists and thrives not just because it's an unregulated casino, but because the deep rot in our hyperfinancialized economy has alienated a generation of people who rightly seek an alternative. This is the cultural motor behind crypto and we should not ignore it.
3 replies 40 retweets 113 likesShow this thread -
Cryptocurrency in 2021 is a mirror universe of Wall Street. Both run on lies, self-delusion, obfuscation, hidden risk, bankrupt premises, arrogance and waste. But crypto makes a different set of people rich, many of them outsiders, one of them a hamster.https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58707641 …
3 replies 24 retweets 64 likesShow this thread -
Pinboard Retweeted Pinboard
This is not my defense of cryptocurrency, which I've called out a lot in the past. I continue to believe what I said in this thread. But I think we need to move past saying "bubble, bubble!" and realize this poisonous phenomenon has deep roots for a reasonhttps://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1399066534769659906 …
Pinboard added,
Pinboard @PinboardThe only reason proponents have to domesticate cryptocurrency is to maintain a situation like the status quo, where part of it (like Coinbase) sits in the legal economy, the rest of remains in the illegal economy, and pathways between the two continue to function smoothly.Show this thread2 replies 10 retweets 37 likesShow this thread -
Pinboard Retweeted Clay Fouts
This is an excellent point. Crypto is a lottery ticket for the hopeless, and right now it's not such a bad lottery ticket. If you dive into enthusiast communities, you find a lot of struggling people who have no prospect of advancement in the real economyhttps://twitter.com/obelos/status/1446483485770739721 …
Pinboard added,
Clay Fouts @obelosReplying to @PinboardAll the crypto-hype folks I know who aren't techies benefitting from the dev side of the business are people with overwhelming debt (usually college) who have no prospects of ever getting out from under that burden. Crypto is the new, unregulated lottery for them.2 replies 12 retweets 43 likesShow this thread -
"We'll make our own financial system, with blackjack and HOOKERS" is not the craziest response to what happened in 2008. I'm sorry it's using more electricity than Finland, but we kind of brought it on ourselves.pic.twitter.com/Ddo1fMa0d4
3 replies 17 retweets 62 likesShow this thread -
If Trump was a raised middle finger to a bankrupt political system, then whoever the hell all these cryptocurrency moguls are is the same thing, raised to Wall Street. They're tacky, preposterous, mendacious, corrupt, and you should not underestimate their appeal.
1 reply 8 retweets 46 likesShow this thread
This is what happens when you don't let people deposit stuff in a savings account that earns a reliable 1% over inflation. Shit gets weird.
-
-
Replying to @Pinboard
Huh, if you invested in literal Wall Street - the stock market - you'd have made out really well over the last decade and you know it wasn't Vanguard who lost unique and unreplaceable representations of their clients' assets in a HDD they threw away
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @yorksranter @Pinboard
By definition, if it's a lottery ticket for the desperate it can't also be a money market fund for the middle class
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.