downandout

5 ms·

1.
Elizabeth Warren is Building an “Anti-Crypto Army”(forbes.com)
4 points by downandout 3y ago|3 comments
2.
by downandout 4y ago
No, they are not. They aren’t actively participating in the transactions, and thus have no reporting requirement. Users are not allowed to structure transactions, as it is illegal for them to do so.
3.
by downandout 4y ago
Technically? Yes. But you run the risk of getting your account closed for this kind of thing.
4.
by downandout 4y ago
Sure, I used to use it. I won't explain the strategy, but I have a crypto trading bot that sometimes profits at the expense of other bots. The owners of these bots got so annoyed at this that they would blacklist the address at which
5.
by downandout 4y ago
They aren't the hotbed of money laundering you seem to think they are. I spent a fair amount of time in the gaming business, and I can tell you that this statement is patently false. Very little of it gets caught, because the people
6.
by downandout 4y ago
The intent in question is manifested in Tornado Cash's design, which doesn't pass the malfeasance smell test: you can't absolve yourself of illegality by automating the illegality. Given that it also has legitimate uses, I
7.
by downandout 4y ago
At least under US law, intent is still required. Meaning that while some users of TC may have violated this law, the devs did not, nor did they knowingly aid in it or have any provable intent to do so. I don't know what Dutch la
8.
by downandout 4y ago
Yes, but the same intent provisions still apply to the entity that enabled the structuring. Tornado Cash has legitimate use cases - I had one prior to the OFAC issue (hiding the source of funds to an address in order to prevent certain bot
9.
by downandout 4y ago
"The chief selling point of Tornado Cash is money laundering, which is in and of itself a crime in both the US and Netherlands." You have a fundamental misunderstanding of US law with regard to money laundering. Obfuscating the
10.
by downandout 4y ago
However, the weather is way better than Vegas, and I'm not just talking about summer. A cold ocean has its advantages. I grew up inland San Diego, and I can tell you that our summer days there routinely topped 100 degrees. I agree t
11.
by downandout 4y ago
"Contrast that with San Diego or New York, where the environment is not actively trying to kill you during most of the year" Las Vegas is inordinately hot only 3 months of the year. The rest of the time the weather is relativel
12.
View Covid 19 Vaccine Adverse Reaction Rates by Batch Code(howbadismybatch.info)
2 points by downandout 4y ago|0 comments
13.
by downandout 4y ago
There are countless articles showing that literal monkeys throwing darts at a dart board can pick sticks as well or better than most fund managers. This is not the case with DeFi. I’m not all over the place with anything, DeFi is a place
14.
by downandout 4y ago
Millions of micro markets that produce what, exactly? You seem to be asking me to defend the merits of crypto, which is beyond the scope of this conversation. But generally speaking, most of the coins people actually buy are tied to proto
15.
by downandout 4y ago
You are correct, but all investments have a maximum size at which returns will stop. That said, even large banks are seeing returns considered impossible in traditional markets with DeFi strategies, often with lower risk. Arb bots like mi
16.
by downandout 4y ago
No, sadly that return is based on my infrastructure costs, which I can't keep increasing and get the same return. But yes, I'm doing better than 50X my monthly infrastructure costs with this, which are my only actual risk.
17.
by downandout 4y ago
Is your counterparty risk zero? Custody risk? In the case of flash loans/swaps, the answer is yes. It's 0. Further, I never have any capital at risk, all of my bots use flash loans/swaps. These transactions are atomic,
18.
by downandout 4y ago
I run arb and loan liquidation bots, and have for over a year now. These are atomic transactions almost always using flash swaps/loans that exist only exist for the life of the transaction. I am only exposed to potential losses on tr
19.
by downandout 4y ago
Of course there are limits to every opportunity. I make money everyday from opportunities that exist on microsecond timescales. I run arb and loan liquidation bots, so I haven't had a single losing day, ever. The last two weeks were
20.
by downandout 4y ago
And the Crypto Andys were all like "you just don't understand DeFi!" to which the retort is "No, you just don't understand finance". If you believe the statement "if someone is promising you consistent
21.
by downandout 4y ago
Yes, but it’s a meritocracy. I don’t control whether or not I look like Brad Pitt. I do control whether or not I am educated enough in this space to carry out a strategy like this. If you can show that you have the knowledge to do it, get
22.
by downandout 4y ago
The owner of the $8 million was a smart contract, in this case a DEX (decentralized exchange) pair on Pancakeswap. Yes, the contract is designed to do this. I believe the fee on that pair is 0.25%. Technically this was a “flash swap,” not
23.
by downandout 4y ago
Fair point. I probably should have directed him to: https://www.openzeppelin.com/contracts That’s the closest thing to a collection of standard contracts for protocol builders to use that I am aware of. I’m more on the MEV
24.
by downandout 4y ago
They are in the sense that they level the playing field. People wouldn't give me millions of dollars to do arbitrage in real life, but I can borrow $200 million from a smart contract without issues if I find a profitable opportunity w
25.
by downandout 4y ago
The answer is yes, for DEX arbs, since you have to trade in the pools anyway and must pay the resulting fees.
26.
by downandout 4y ago
Correct, the Beanstalk thing was not a reentrancy attack. That was a governance attack on the world's most insecure DAO. The Rari Capital exploit was a reentrancy attack. https://twitter.com/BTCTN/status/152
27.
by downandout 4y ago
It is and it isn't. Getting to the point where you were the one bot fast enough to get into the right position to snag that liquidation involves writing the bot itself, writing the smart contract, understanding the lending protocol an
28.
by downandout 4y ago
On the ETH chain, Flashbots [1] has decimated profits, by turning MEV into a race to the bottom, where miners wind up with most of the profits that bots ("searchers") create. On other chains there is much more profit to be had.
29.
by downandout 4y ago
At this point, alot of this stuff floats around Twitter and substack. It's still a bit of a dark art. If you'd like to read some stuff about MEV, start here: https://twitter.com/bertcmiller/status/14026
30.
by downandout 4y ago
I write MEV bots for a living. I can tell you that the Beanstalk "hack" was evidence of extremely poor design. One of the key security aspects of designing a DAO is that you are not supposed to let the results of a vote take effe

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