Bitcoin under pressure over defunct Mt. Gox repayments – CNBC
The bankrupt platform is expected to start distributing assets stolen from clients in a 2014 hack, according to a report.
The price of Bitcoin could be affected by the upcoming repayments to thousands of victims in the 2014 heist on the now defunct Mt. Gox virtual currency exchange, experts cited by CNBC believe.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, tumbled below $60,000 last week, marking its second-worst weekly decline of the year.
On Monday, the bankrupt Mt. Gox exchange, which is based in Tokyo, announced that it will start distributing the stolen assets in the first week of July. It is expected to return more than 140,000 Bitcoin worth almost $9 billion.
According to the court-appointed trustee overseeing the exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings, disbursements to the firm’s roughly 20,000 creditors will be in a mix of bitcoin and bitcoin cash.
Trustees put together a repayment plan and received a deadline of October 2024 from a Tokyo court last year.
Once the world’s top crypto exchange, handling over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions in its early years, Mt. Gox shut down and went bankrupt in February 2014 after suffering the biggest cryptocurrency heist on record. Hundreds of thousands of bitcoins were stolen from the exchange, which blamed hackers who took advantage of a software security flaw.
Analysts expect the upcoming Mt. Gox repayments to add selling pressure to Bitcoin markets as early investors will receive the assets at a much higher price than when they bought in, which will make some inclined to take profit on some of their holdings.
“Many will clearly cash out and enjoy the fact that having their assets stuck in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy was the best investment they ever made,” John Glover, chief investment officer of crypto lending firm Ledn, said. “Some will clearly choose to take the money and run,” he said.
However, some experts believe that there is enough market liquidity to cushion the blow of any possible mass selling. The losses are likely to be contained and short-lived, analysts told the outlet.
“I think that sell-off concerns relating to Mt. Gox will likely be short term,” Lennix Lai, the chief commercial officer of crypto exchange OKX, told CNBC, noting that “many of Mt. Gox’s early users as well as creditors are long-term Bitcoin enthusiasts who are less likely to sell all of their Bitcoin immediately.”
Bitcoin enjoyed a major rally earlier this year, climbing over $70,000 after the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of the first spot Bitcoin ETF. The latest Bitcoin halving – a mechanism to limit supply that takes place every four years – in April has also propelled the cryptocurrency’s price.
On Tuesday, Bitcoin was trading down almost 2% at $61,849 per token.
https://www.rt.com/business/600326-bitcoin-pressure-exchange-heist-repayments/
It was explained to me that creditors would receive fiat payments for the bitcoins they lost at the value of bitcoin when the hack happened. If they are actually giving BTC back that is great; though it would surprise me to see the US Gov giving up Ross' BTC at this time.
@blocktrades, censoring your 'own' platform, sad!
It's not censorship, it a reward adjustment.
Censorship is having your account blocked or shadow banned. No such thing is happening here, they can still post and everyone can see it.
They just do not get rewarded.
You are wrong, and maybe not completely honest.
This account has been systematically voted into oblivion, like many others who do not come with a NATO bias, whilst accounts repeatedly shouting 'Russia Bad, NATO good' get loads of upvotes and no "reward adjustment". So yeah, your 'adjustment' is either a lie, a dilusion or the ignorance that lets you feel good about it ;)
Anyways, we have the same on Hive like in that corrupt world, which is a bit disappointing. I simply find it astounding that the 'important' people on Hive make sure it is not free and does not work. And obviously you are part of that. But hey, be ruled (or rule) and enjoy it.
HE IS PART OF THE BIG SCAM HIVE IS DEAD
STOP THE ABUSE ON HIVE
FAKE HIVE POLICE
HIVE IS DEAD
HIVE IS ONE BIG FARM
!LOL !WEED !MEME !GIF
https://hive.blog/hive-104387/@bpcvoter3/se19g2
Downvoted BY HIVE FARMERS
6 days ago in #life by slobberchops (81)$0.00
Reply 3
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[-]bpcvoter2 (-5)(1) 4 days ago · Will be hidden due to low rating
NO DOWNVOTES FOR MARKY MARK'S SELF VOTING !WEED
https://hive.blog/life/@slobberchops/re-gogreenbuddy-sdr1wb
https://www.publish0x.com/the-dark-side-of-hive
https://www.reddit.com/r/stoptheabuseonhive/
https://peakd.com/hive-164833/@bilpcoinbpc/you-have-all-witnessed-this-account-being-downvoted-to-a-negative-reputation-for-no-reason
SHAME ON YOU ALL SAD PEOPLE WHO SCAM LIE AND FARM HIVE AND HIVERS
[-]acidyo (82) 3 months ago
Haha at "I shouldn't make commercial" :D Maybe something to worry about when you have more youtube subscribers! Quite interesting content though, these things should get more subs on there and here.
$4.28
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Reply
[-]gogreenbuddy (67) 3 months ago
Yeah thought that was funny too
$4.54
4 votes
gogreenbuddy: $4.47
acidyo: $0.06
holbein81: $0.01
koleso: -$0.00
https://hive.blog/life/@gogreenbuddy/i-had-to-give-up-on-my-gabion-fencing-too-much-work
@themarkymark @buildawhale @upmyvote @ipromote @gogreenbuddy @usainvote @punkteam @makerhacks @apeminingclub @leovoter @blockheadgamds @rollingbones farm @cwow2 @solominer @steevc @adm @abit @theycallmedan @dalz @abh12345
HE MAKES CURATION REWARDS WITH ALL HIS ALT ACCOUNTS BURNING TOKENS LIKE THIS DOES NOT TAKE OLD TOKENS IT MINTS NEW ONES AND BURNS THEM
https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@bilpcoinbpc/the-power
https://www.bilpcoin.com/hive-167922/@bilpcoinbpc/the-power
https://www.bilpcoin.com/hive-167922/@bpcvoter1/response-4-to-themarkymark-marcus-buildawhale-usainvote-ipomote-leovoter-gogreenbuddy-and-over-100-of-his-alt-accounts
Reply 2 to @eddiespino
Reply to @eddiespino
cwow stop the drink and drugs
Stop supporting the fake Hive police who do nothing but exploit Hive
Many people on Hive will never get to spend any of their Hive as it may become illegal in certain countries
https://peakd.com/hive-158694/@bilpcoinbpc/marks-dream
Zac the man with the scam plan
lol the Marky mark keeps dreaming
and btw., a 100% downvote from blocktrades goes faaar beyond reward adjustment. So, what you think of that?
A 100% downvote or just enough to make sure they get no profit here, it does basically the same thing. I just don't feel like wasting my time on propagandist lies calculating the exact amount. And you well know it's not censorship. In point of fact, I don't even downvote RT posts until everyone has had a day to read their BS.
but isn't it also 100% damage in reputation?
On a 'free speech' platform there shouldn't be such bullying; especially from people with an involvement and stake like yours.
I think the tweet says it all.
It says nothing; actually maybe it does tell a bit about you.
Maybe one day some people will learn again how to have a conversation (like using real arguments or answering questions), but maybe I am just a nostalgic fart and you are on the cutting edge of this modern idiocracy.
Strange to tell you of all how that platform works, but your downvote does not hide a post, it is the reputation... I'd prefer you'd openly come out and say " me and a few rule Hive" instead of some lazy arguments that do not hold true. But, do you care?
@blocktrades and @solominer , sorry if I sound a bit frustrated or edgy.
I really liked Steem and then Hive, but since quite some time I have the impression that the platform has become a bit too much like what it was supposed to be a counter-concept to. And that might be the reason there are almost no users and not much value in Hive.
Is taking this direction on purpose, is there a plan, has it been decided that Hive better stays niche niche?
Would you still call Hive decentralized?
Is there an effort to have free speech here (and how would you define that?), or was it decided against it?
In a nutshell, free speech means you have the right to say something without the government taking action against you for saying it (its a little more complicated than that, but lets leave the discussion of the meaning of this phrase for now, because I think you're interested in discussing a related, but different topic).
The topic you're discussing is one of "public forums". The idea of a public forum is a place that is created as an easy way for people to share ideas with the public (public here means an unspecified group of people, where anyone can decide to be part of that group if they want by going to the forum).
In their most original forum of an outdoor physical space, public forums needed very little maintenance, and hence were subject to little control by any private party (in fact, most public forums typically originated as a service provided by government).
Nowadays, the public forums with the ability to reach very large numbers of people are all online. These public forums are more costly to maintain than an open space of ground, so they are generally run by either for-profit or not-for-profit organizations.
Some public forums are operated to share particular forms of information, others are "general" in nature. For topic forums, off-topic information is often censored (on Hive, this censorship is done via communities). The idea is that people who "read/attend" a particular community forum have chosen to go to that particular forum because they want to hear that type of information and not others.
Next, let's define censorship: the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are “offensive" is the generally accepted definition I found, but I actually view censorship as having a broader definition. To me, censorship is not just suppression of ideas that are offensive: I think preventing someone from sharing any idea is censorship. This means that I also consider various IP rules like copyright to also be a form of censorship.
For the most part, I am strongly opposed to censorship as it is a dangerous limit on free thought and the evolution of civilization itself. But information is power, and under certain circumstances I would support censorship. The most obvious case I can think of immediately would be censorship of sensitive military information that if shared with an enemy would result in military losses.
For direct benefit, for support of internal beliefs, and because of government pressure, organizations will almost always exert some level of censorship over the forum they control. Generally speaking, I think too much censorship is applied by most such organizations.
Additionally, governments do often exert a lot of indirect control over the organizations that run these public forums, most notably in China, where there are ongoing active censorship attempts by the government of any public forum that operates in China. But almost all countries define some content as illegal content that should be censored and organizations that run public forums are often under pressure to censor such content.
With that as background, let's look at Hive: I'll finish this later, I have to go to lunch now...
Bon appetit and thanks for taking the time.
Hive is a decentralized public forum. And the "costs" for supporting it are spread across multiple organizations: 1) witnesses nodes who operate blockchain software, 2) api nodes that run blockchain software + other software that requires more hardware resources, and 3) front end website operators (peak.com, ecency, hive.blog, actifit, etc, etc).
It is relatively difficult for witnesses to censor blockchain information (it requires 75% of the witnesses to agree to the censorship). On steem, before the takeover, this happened only once, when witnesses censored transactions from the steemit account to prevent it from taking over the chain.
After the takeover, however, censorship became quite easy there, because two entities (steemit+some Korean organization) gained enough combined stake to control the entire set of witnesses. After this, massive censorship resulted. So this is the primary censorship weakness of Hive: if someone gains enough stake to control all witnesses. But even in this case, as happened with Steem->Hive, the code can be forked to avoid the censorship.
There are fewer API nodes than witnesses (maybe around 10 nodes), and API nodes can also censor, but this form of censorship is even more limited than what is possible by witnesses, because it only takes one API node that is refusing to censor information in order for the information to be easily available to all Hive users.
Also, we've dramatically lowered the costs of running an API server nowadays, and there is no election requirement to run an API node, so any information freedom advocate can decide to run a Hive API node if they see censorship at this level.
Similar logic applies to the frontends: it's basically the same situation as for API nodes (and most frontends also run their own API node).
From my point of view, the above are the only points available for actual censorship of information on Hive.
However, there is a related issue, which I believe is the one you're concerned about: "downvoting".
Downvoting does not actively prevent information from being read. You can still read any post, no matter how much it is downvoted, on every Hive frontend. On some frontends like hive.blog, you may have to go thru an extra step of clicking on a button that says you want to read it (but on ecency for example, there is no such need). The "hiding" isn't a blockchain level thing, it's just an optional thing done by the frontend software. But to my knowledge, there is no Hive frontend that doesn't leave you with an easy option for still reading the post in such cases.
But Hive is more than just a public forum. It also has an "incentive" system to encourage information sources to post information on Hive. And downvoting will potentially dis-incentivize some posters from posting, especially if they are primarily posting for the reward and not just because they have some reason to share the information. So, for information sources where the reward is a primary motivator, voting both positive and negative can affect what information gets shared. But I don't consider this censorship. This would result in some censorship if we lived in a world where people's primary income source was income from posting articles on Hive, but I don't think we live in that world.
To get down to specific cases, I don't think that whoever is posting RT articles (I don't really know if it is RT or not) is particularly motivated by the rewards, and so they keep posting despite the downvotes. If they stop, I think it will just be because they don't think it is worth their time, not because of getting posting rewards or not.
Now, there is one argument still left that could be related to downvoting as a form of censorship. Another way to view Hive is as many "public forums". In this view, every community is a public forum, trending is a public forum, hot is a public forum, and everyone's "feed" is yet another public forum (this is a really cool feature is it means literally anyone can easily establish their own public forum).
Downvoting a post lowers posts in the rankings of many of these forums (it doesn't affect feeds, however). So a downvoted post is not likely to be read in the trending forum.
But I view the trending forum as an "overbooked" public forum. There's not enough " attention time" to allow every "speaker"/poster to have his equal say on the trending forum. So somehow such speakers have to be prioritized. This is an unavoidable problem: it is a hard limitation on human attention.
Upvoting/downvoting is the mechanism that Hive uses to make this determination. Not everyone gets the chance to "speak" on the trending forum whenever they want, and unpopular posters may never do so, but Hive still supplies plenty of other public forums for those posters, and it isn't difficult for people who want to listen to them to find them.
First of all: I am glad you are taking that time; as mentioned before, communication has been tried repeatedly by me and many others, and if there were answers they were often pretty offhand, usually not answering the question, and if so then often with arguments that on closer inspection did not hold true. So yeah, thanks!
On the topic: I am not concerned about downvotes themselves; I actually think it is a great concept, it's only that people coming from a world full of likes and void of criticism might need to learn how to handle it.
I am concerned about the way power is being wielded by a few, and having quite an impact on the many.
In my opinion (and most probably in the opinions of quite some critics of your downvotes) censorship is suppression of information by exercising power; manipulating the flow of information to create a 'narrative' that is more in line with a certain taste, a bias or some agenda. Call it censorship or not, but that's what most of this is about. In Hive's case this is done by a few who 'staked' their way to power, and they do have a proportionally huge impact. This is not about community-based guidelines or some consensus, this is not your private feed, this are heavy handed actions by you and a few others. You kind of rule Hive, and I do like a good ruler. But some activities really surprise me, as they do not make sense to me.
You are right, RT hasn't been 'censored' yet (only suppressed to some extend), but the effort is obvious. It was quite telling when a few months ago that account was bombed into oblivion from a reputation of 70+ by what looked much like a concerted effort or at least an interesting dynamic. Whoever posts from that account is astoundingly resiliant; maybe they aren't in it for the rewards, nor the fun, but to simply share/spread information. I don't care much about RT, but it's an ok addition to the spectrum.
Many others didn't take too well to being harassed with out of proportion dvs and left, and among them were world reknown artists and journalists. If you would have appreciated Hive (like I did) as an 'alternative' platform that also provides art/culture/information... from the other side of the coin, you would have noticed that as quite a loss of potential, esp. provided that wider adoption is something being aimed at. Which I don't see, and is one of the things not making sense to me.
And in light of that I also ask myself: To what extend 'de-centralized' is still the appropriate adjective for Hive? I see it on the blockchain-level being a distributed ledger, but to what extend is it true for the distribution of influence? Obviously zero. So maybe that slogan should be changed? Actually it would suffice if with power came responsibility ;)
Curious to read your thoughts on that
thanks
k
I wasn't responsible for designing Hive's "influence based on staking power", so I don't particularly feel compelled to defend it. It has some obvious weaknesses, but in the end I'm quite certain that Hive is still a much more decentralized solution than existing social media. It's not a trivial thing to fix the influence, because this design decision is baked into Hive at the core.
It is my plan to create a solution to the problems caused by wealth-based influence, but my plan for that will likely take a couple of years in the best case. I mentioned some details about this plan a long time ago in two posts and the ideas behind it have been under development for almost two years now. But even the design isn't yet finished, and we probably won't start coding of the actual software until next year.
As to my voting down of some high-reputation accounts, I do it to fix what I believe is a problem with the existing reputation system: it doesn't allow lower reputation accounts to lower the reputation of higher ones. So in the case of a few accounts that got high reputations from repeated voting by a few high staked accounts in the distant past, those reputations can't be lowered by anyone except an account with a very high reputation. For this reason, sometimes people contact me and ask me to help them downvote temporarily. This doesn't happen often, it's happened in two cases to my recollection: RT and world-travel-pro. There may have been one or two others in the past, but if so I can't recall.
I continue to downvote RT because I truly view them as a source of disinformation and I don't mind it being known.
To answer your final question, Hive is decentralized as a source of information.
But as to distribution of influence, its core design is staked-based influence, not democratic-based influence. This doesn't mean the system isn't decentralized, but it isn't particularly democratic. Nonetheless, anyone can continue to post whatever they want here, despite the opposition of "whale" token holders. The same cannot be said of centralized social media platforms.
Stake-based influence was probably an easy choice for Hive's design, because it matched the goal of the original coders to create a token that gave people influence by purchasing it, giving the token a tangible source of value, and equally important from a design perspective, it doesn't require the software to distinguish who are real people and who are bots.
Good to read that there is some plan to reduce influence of staked power; as the implementation naturally will take a long time, it would be even better if you already followed the idea with your personal DV-policy. I'll say it once (again) and then leave you to it:
(personally I can't fathom why you would do that in case of Hivewatchers).
If the few in power would respect those two points, Hive might be a much nicer place.
So the general drift I got out of this conversation:
You obviously play the long game, no quick 'mass adoption' or significantly expanding of the userbase. You rather take the time that it takes to work on a more fair and solid structure. If that's what it is, I am all for it, and even though I am kind of fading out of Hive, this makes me curious enough to check in again in a few years.
Thanks again for taking the time and shedding some light into that corner of Hive. I might direct some of the critical crowd to this comments as I think it quite a rare gem!
STOP THE ABUSE ON HIVE
FAKE HIVE POLICE
HIVE IS DEAD
HIVE IS ONE BIG FARM
!LOL !WEED !MEME !GIF
https://hive.blog/hive-104387/@bpcvoter3/se19g2
Downvoted BY HIVE FARMERS
6 days ago in #life by slobberchops (81)$0.00
Reply 3
Sort: Trending
[-]bpcvoter2 (-5)(1) 4 days ago · Will be hidden due to low rating
NO DOWNVOTES FOR MARKY MARK'S SELF VOTING !WEED
https://hive.blog/life/@slobberchops/re-gogreenbuddy-sdr1wb
https://www.publish0x.com/the-dark-side-of-hive
https://www.reddit.com/r/stoptheabuseonhive/
https://peakd.com/hive-164833/@bilpcoinbpc/you-have-all-witnessed-this-account-being-downvoted-to-a-negative-reputation-for-no-reason
SHAME ON YOU ALL SAD PEOPLE WHO SCAM LIE AND FARM HIVE AND HIVERS
[-]acidyo (82) 3 months ago
Haha at "I shouldn't make commercial" :D Maybe something to worry about when you have more youtube subscribers! Quite interesting content though, these things should get more subs on there and here.
$4.28
1 vote
Reply
[-]gogreenbuddy (67) 3 months ago
Yeah thought that was funny too
$4.54
4 votes
gogreenbuddy: $4.47
acidyo: $0.06
holbein81: $0.01
koleso: -$0.00
https://hive.blog/life/@gogreenbuddy/i-had-to-give-up-on-my-gabion-fencing-too-much-work
@themarkymark @buildawhale @upmyvote @ipromote @gogreenbuddy @usainvote @punkteam @makerhacks @apeminingclub @leovoter @blockheadgamds @rollingbones farm @cwow2 @solominer @steevc @adm @abit @theycallmedan @dalz @abh12345
HE MAKES CURATION REWARDS WITH ALL HIS ALT ACCOUNTS BURNING TOKENS LIKE THIS DOES NOT TAKE OLD TOKENS IT MINTS NEW ONES AND BURNS THEM
https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@bilpcoinbpc/the-power
https://www.bilpcoin.com/hive-167922/@bilpcoinbpc/the-power
https://www.bilpcoin.com/hive-167922/@bpcvoter1/response-4-to-themarkymark-marcus-buildawhale-usainvote-ipomote-leovoter-gogreenbuddy-and-over-100-of-his-alt-accounts
Reply 2 to @eddiespino
Reply to @eddiespino
cwow stop the drink and drugs
Stop supporting the fake Hive police who do nothing but exploit Hive
Many people on Hive will never get to spend any of their Hive as it may become illegal in certain countries
https://peakd.com/hive-158694/@bilpcoinbpc/marks-dream
Zac the man with the scam plan
lol the Marky mark keeps dreaming
STOP THE ABUSE ON HIVE
FAKE HIVE POLICE
HIVE IS DEAD
HIVE IS ONE BIG FARM
!LOL !WEED !MEME !GIF
https://hive.blog/hive-104387/@bpcvoter3/se19g2
Downvoted BY HIVE FARMERS
6 days ago in #life by slobberchops (81)$0.00
Reply 3
Sort: Trending
[-]bpcvoter2 (-5)(1) 4 days ago · Will be hidden due to low rating
NO DOWNVOTES FOR MARKY MARK'S SELF VOTING !WEED
https://hive.blog/life/@slobberchops/re-gogreenbuddy-sdr1wb
https://www.publish0x.com/the-dark-side-of-hive
https://www.reddit.com/r/stoptheabuseonhive/
https://peakd.com/hive-164833/@bilpcoinbpc/you-have-all-witnessed-this-account-being-downvoted-to-a-negative-reputation-for-no-reason
SHAME ON YOU ALL SAD PEOPLE WHO SCAM LIE AND FARM HIVE AND HIVERS
[-]acidyo (82) 3 months ago
Haha at "I shouldn't make commercial" :D Maybe something to worry about when you have more youtube subscribers! Quite interesting content though, these things should get more subs on there and here.
$4.28
1 vote
Reply
[-]gogreenbuddy (67) 3 months ago
Yeah thought that was funny too
$4.54
4 votes
gogreenbuddy: $4.47
acidyo: $0.06
holbein81: $0.01
koleso: -$0.00
https://hive.blog/life/@gogreenbuddy/i-had-to-give-up-on-my-gabion-fencing-too-much-work
@themarkymark @buildawhale @upmyvote @ipromote @gogreenbuddy @usainvote @punkteam @makerhacks @apeminingclub @leovoter @blockheadgamds @rollingbones farm @cwow2 @solominer @steevc @adm @abit @theycallmedan @dalz @abh12345
HE MAKES CURATION REWARDS WITH ALL HIS ALT ACCOUNTS BURNING TOKENS LIKE THIS DOES NOT TAKE OLD TOKENS IT MINTS NEW ONES AND BURNS THEM
https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@bilpcoinbpc/the-power
https://www.bilpcoin.com/hive-167922/@bilpcoinbpc/the-power
https://www.bilpcoin.com/hive-167922/@bpcvoter1/response-4-to-themarkymark-marcus-buildawhale-usainvote-ipomote-leovoter-gogreenbuddy-and-over-100-of-his-alt-accounts
Reply 2 to @eddiespino
Reply to @eddiespino
cwow stop the drink and drugs
Stop supporting the fake Hive police who do nothing but exploit Hive
Many people on Hive will never get to spend any of their Hive as it may become illegal in certain countries
https://peakd.com/hive-158694/@bilpcoinbpc/marks-dream
Zac the man with the scam plan
lol the Marky mark keeps dreaming