<story><title>Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/celsius-execs-cashed-out-bitcoin-price-crypto-ponzi-1849623526</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tossl568</author><text>You can&amp;#x27;t steal my Bitcoin if I don&amp;#x27;t deposit them with a custodian. This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>Oh hey look the consequences of a monetary system that isn&amp;#x27;t backed by a legal system (that is backed up by people with guns).&lt;p&gt;The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right.  And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn&amp;#x27;t listen to the legal system, there are people with guns&amp;#x2F;violence to back that up.  That&amp;#x27;s why the whole system works -- because of the threat of violence.&lt;p&gt;Crypto doesn&amp;#x27;t have that.  It has a lot of advantages (I use crypto myself) but it also has a big disadvantage, for now.&lt;p&gt;When the USA starts issuing it&amp;#x27;s own crypto they might solve this problem by requiring KYC to get the coins, but then of course you loose the anonymity aspect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karamanolev</author><text>&amp;gt; You can&amp;#x27;t steal my Bitcoin if I don&amp;#x27;t deposit them with a custodian.&lt;p&gt;Many people have lost their BTC and other coins to hacks, phishes, hardware failures, software failures and so on. So in the sense of the people from the general public, yes, I can steal your Bitcoin.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold.&lt;p&gt;You can keep it under the mattress and expose yourself to one kind of failure mode. You can also keep it with the bank with the clear expectation that the owners will &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; run off with the gold and also expect the state to go after the owners if they do. Which is not happening here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Celsius Execs Cashed Out $40M in Crypto Before Halting Withdrawals for Customers</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/celsius-execs-cashed-out-bitcoin-price-crypto-ponzi-1849623526</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tossl568</author><text>You can&amp;#x27;t steal my Bitcoin if I don&amp;#x27;t deposit them with a custodian. This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>Oh hey look the consequences of a monetary system that isn&amp;#x27;t backed by a legal system (that is backed up by people with guns).&lt;p&gt;The reason fiat money works is because at the end of the day if you run into trouble you have the legal system to make things right.  And if the perpetrator of the crime doesn&amp;#x27;t listen to the legal system, there are people with guns&amp;#x2F;violence to back that up.  That&amp;#x27;s why the whole system works -- because of the threat of violence.&lt;p&gt;Crypto doesn&amp;#x27;t have that.  It has a lot of advantages (I use crypto myself) but it also has a big disadvantage, for now.&lt;p&gt;When the USA starts issuing it&amp;#x27;s own crypto they might solve this problem by requiring KYC to get the coins, but then of course you loose the anonymity aspect.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smachiz</author><text>Except that we have regulations for banks and brokerages for how they must operate, what sort of cash reserves they have, and how they must conduct audits.  And they pay into an insurance program (FDIC&amp;#x2F;SIPC) to return money to depositors if they collapse.</text></comment>