The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'statue of liberty on fire bitcoin.'
Crypto exchange Bittrex has announced that it is winding down US operations. I've been a happy customer for years and the news came as a shock. It turns out that regulators have made it impossible for the exchange to operate. Lately the Securities and Exchange Commission has been shaking down down exchanges like Kraken for settlements amounting to tens of millions of dollars. These settlements are basically protection money, paid to government thugs. Bittrex has always led the industry in regulatory compliance, but maybe they're unwilling to support the SEC's new protection racket.
The closure of Bittrex is costing me money directly. I had WAX on the exchange that I couldn't sell anywhere else so I had to sell it into bitcoin/transfer it for a fee. I think the price of WAX will increase significantly, but not immediately, so I missed out on future gains along with the fee. These things aren't great. And the implications for Hive are worse.
Bittrex has long been the exchange of choice for Hive in the US. Without the exchange, US residents are left with few options for selling their tokens. BlockTrades may work after a thorough kyc. Beyond that, the question of how to sell our Hive just became very pressing. Hive earnings were about 5% of my income last year, and now it's not clear if I can even get paid.
Personally, I'm tempted to just convert all future earnings into HP and keep blogging, hoping that some accessible exchange someday lists Hive and HBD. But I'm worried about Hive. About the Hive ecosystem. My hope is that the exchange setback is temporary. Yet I fear for the future of my blogging platform.
In a larger sense, it seems the crypto world is finally under serious attack in the US. It was bound to happen eventually and here we are. Allowing centralized exchanges to control our trade at all was probably a strategic mistake. But this need not spell the end of the industry here. It is technically feasible for networks of people to establish new exchange mechanisms, circumventing the centralized exchanges and thwarting attempts at government overreach.
There are people out there who are capable of bringing new decentralized exchanges with high quality liquidity online. If millionaire scammers like Sam Bankman-Fried and Justin Sun exist, surely there are also high net worth individuals with relevant expertise, dedicated to actually realizing the promise of crypto.
That promise, in case you've forgotten, is the promise of financial empowerment; of money without banks or governments. I don't know why all of these bankers think crypto will just become part of their legacy system. Nor do I understand how regulators can be so shortsighted, shaking down the industry for relatively small settlement sums when they could realize far greater proceeds from simply taxing crypto appropriately.
I've been a Bittrex customer since 2016. This exchange is part of what has made it possible for me to survive despite the legacy economy failing to provide me with a sufficient income most years. There are people out there who think that the legacy system should be the only game in town, and these people are the enemies of a free future. Right now, they're winning. Maybe we should do something about that.
Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.
Don´t worry, US is not the world!
True enough! And yet, I am here.
Fascinating and concerning, all at once! How many Hive bloggers are from the US, you think? I wonder what an effective movement would look like for Hive leadership (and its users) to step up and create a new and accessible exchange in response to this.
We'll see how it all shakes out. You're right that someone may step up to offer exchange services eventually.
Hive Engine makes it easy to buy and sell your hive. Want to buy hive? Buy some LTC (or your major crypto of choice) on whatever exchange you have access to (e.g. Coinbase), transfer it to Hive Engine and trade it for hive. Want to sell hive? Same process in reverse.
That's great, thanks! Is there a link?
Hive Engine: https://hive-engine.com/ or you can also use Tribaldex to accomplish the same thing: https://tribaldex.com/
Since these are both hive blockchain based you can simply log in with your normal hive credentials. Sending LTC or BTC or whatever other coins are supported to either one will result in SWAP.LTC, etc. which can be traded for any other hive-engine token, hive, HBD or whatever SWAPs are supported. I'm in the U.S. and this is always how I have bought hive. While not the cheapest exchange to use, I've mostly used Coinbase to buy coins with fiat, unfortunately hive isn't supported there directly but hive-engine allows you to convert. And since it is decentralized and doesn't deal directly in fiat, there is a lower chance it could be shut down.
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