Member Info for fleccy

I'm glad no one took my little April Fool post seriously, since it was a Saturday and a non trading day I couldn't resist it.

Yes it's Thors Day the 6th April. The spirit of Odin lives on.

I'm a bit confused as to why Unite are involved in this, as the Communication Workers Union normally provide representation within the Telecom sector. The only thing I can think of, is that this is coming from the public sector/services side of the equation.
I've always thought the chance of regulators allowing a Vodafone UK/Three merger were slim to none, due to the identical nature of their mobile businesses and their positions within the sector.

As far as any national security concerns, that'd be super easy to sort out:
1) Give Vodafone supervisory control over the combined UK entity
2) Ring fence the departments, who deal with sensitive Public sector contracts, coming under the national security umbrella
3) Limit any information relating to the ring fenced departments, to a few Board Members who have the relevant Vetting and security level clearances
4) Ensure procedures are in place to ensure the ringfencing rules are enforced

I can see loads of reasons for the regulators to block the merger, but I don't see National Security as being one of them; Since the ringfencing rules, I've listed above, are likely already in force at firms like Vodafone, BT, VMO2 and any other company bidding for sensitive public sector contracts, otherwise what's the point of having Vetting procedures?

Looks as though you guys may have been right all along:

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/100929/quantum-blockchain-technologies-announces-10-contracts-with-bitcoin-mining-companies-1009919.html

"I wish the volumes would confirm that !!!"

BT's volumes are lower on average than Vodafone and Lloyds. If you look at the Daily and weekly volumes, the Drahi purchases really stand out.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4gJMsDAQq9sJ_zHqi_JnoVTryAdb4X64c7Clw12E2sGT3N6dTJfB60O8bc5Ns4burXvSSCVFrLvWC/pubchart?oid=1272992480&format=interactive

And on a Daily Volume chart:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4gJMsDAQq9sJ_zHqi_JnoVTryAdb4X64c7Clw12E2sGT3N6dTJfB60O8bc5Ns4burXvSSCVFrLvWC/pubchart?oid=2085752711&format=interactive

"and will have no other choice but to reduce interest rates faster than the falling rate of inflation, as anyone with a brain can see that within 6 months, the worry will not be inflation but deflation"

How do you figure that?
Our Gas and Electricity bill has more than doubled, our Gym direct debit's have increased, as has our food, mobile and broadband bills; Most of the public sector are demanding double digit pay rises and much of this is mirrored in other countries. Granted wholesale Oil and Gas prices have come down, but that will take many months to filter through and wont necessarily reduce inflation for the current Financial year. I'd like to read your reasoning on why we will go into a deflationary period?
I doubt the Central Banks will drop interest rates dramatically and quickly, since they wont want to risk an inflation resurgence, causing them to raise again toward the end of the year. The chance of large interest rate reductions in the next year are slim in my opinion, even if inflation returns to 2%.
Crypto and especially Bitcoin wont fix anything, or solve any of the World's financial woes, because it's nothing more than a ledger with transaction data recorded in the Blocks, in other words it's a database with data that's valued on nothing more than hype and belief; Welcome worshipers to the Church of Bitcoin, or the Church of Ethereum? May the Priests become rich as the parishioners fill the collection boxes.

Or to put it another way:

Eywa ngahu

"'m expecting a huge crash of the stock market starting tomorrow because God always looks after me with my trading."

Which God? There are many mentioned across many different cultures, if one's real then they all must be real, alternatively none are real.
Maybe there's a Quantum intelligence permeating the Universe, it makes more sense than the notion of all powerful Gods.
See you in Sto'Vo'Kor, tlhIngan maH reH mataH wo' wISaH tlhIngan maH.

"I also see Openreach engineering workforce being outsourced to Amey or another infrastructure company, with BT keeping all the assets, IP, tech etc."

BT already own all the assets and the Openreach workforce are already outsourced in all but name. I think they'll float Openreach as a third party infrastructure management company in its own right, with its value based on current and future guaranteed contracts in force pre IPO. Once Openreach are a true company in their own right, they'll probably be able to bid for contracts looking after other networks, possibly even bidding for maintenance contracts with the surviving Altnets. If BT just outsourced the workforce, they'd miss out on a potential windfall and the beauty of a IPO is that they could retain a good portion of the shares in the new company.

I've never heard of a 5 year contract, can you supply a link to the type of contract you're talking about?

"All of our contracts vary in length. Most of our contracts are 24 months, but we do have some that are 18. Our BT Mobile contracts are mainly 12 months for SIM Only and 24 months for handset plans. New BT mobile customers can no longer take out SIM Only plans or Handset plans. Existing customers can upgrade or regrade through our contact centre, simply call us on 0800 0121 335"

https://www.bt.com/help/account-and-billing/information-about-your-bt-contract

This is how it looks so far:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS0oSavIsBjHgD7k6NMyk7Z591Cm2IrevvLI-Jq95gOmESrOI0Vi_NhA8LIO9rMz90Y5zCOCoFuEItG/pubchart?oid=1812824850&format=interactive

That's a distinct possibility lemmy.

"BTC is set in stone, there will only ever be the last coin. Therefore if it’s adopted, it can only go one way."

If someone see's extra profit, they'll find an excuse to change the code and the community will go along with it, because the Evangelists will tell them its for the greater good, and the YouTuber's will persuade them it's the right thing to do.
The original (current) BTC is rubbish, it has a Block size limit of 1 megabyte and the Bitcoin Difficulty algorithm restricts the average block creation time to 10 minutes. Developers had a disagreement in 2017 and Bitcoin Cash was created from a hard fork, then in 2018 Bitcoin SV was created from a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin SV is clearly superior to BTC, as it has a throughput of around 50,000 transactions per second, soon to be 100,000 TPS, compared to BTC's throughput of 7 transactions per second. Clearly Bitcoin SV is far superior to BTC and wouldn't require off chain work arounds like the Lightning network to compensate for inadequacies and that's why Bitcoin is worthless, because it can be changed at will by developers, with a multitude of competitor tokens created from the same Blockchain.

"I could well be wrong but I reckon BT hold the trump cards and will, within a decade, stop any kind of telephony over copper or via a local telephone exchange unless it suits them!"

All telephony over copper will stop at the end of 2025, with the PSTN switch off, even if you're still on FTTC your phone socket will no longer work for telephony. FTTC users will have to move onto VOIP post the 2025 switch off and many have already given up on landlines, using mobiles for telephony instead, us included.

"We absolutely know the total amount of Bitcoin that will produced"

Are you sure about that? What would stop developer's creating a fork at 21 million and extending the limit by another10, 20, 40, or more millions? They could even call it something like extended Bitcoin, or ExBitcoin, or just stick with Bitcoin; Bitcoin quantity could potentially be extended up to infinity, all it takes is consensus among the developers, in the same way that developers have created the current alternatives to BTC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks

Because it's software, without any real utility, the developers can just make it up as they go along, so the scarcity argument is fake and only valid until someone decides to rewrite the software and change the rules.
Real value is based on something tangible, or so unique that it's irreplaceable. If Leonardo da Vinci had painted 21 Million Mona Lisa's, each painting wouldn't be worth much more than the cost of the canvass and the frame, as it wouldn't be unique.

"You also appears to accept Bitcoin is a commodity ( he’s little choice been as the SEC & CFTC have signalled it as such )"

I accept that it's been categorised as a commodity, but it's a fake commodity with its value based on nothing more than hype. Commodities like Lithium, Rare Earth elements, Gold, etc, etc have real world uses and appear on the periodic table, you can't replicate lithium but you can easily create another Crypto "asset". Bitcoin's scarcity is also fake and nothing more than an artificial limit coded into the algorithm, someone with coding skills and a computer could create an alternative token with an even lower artificial limit, if they wished to. The whole Bitcoin narrative is flawed and easily argued against, the believers need a reality check because they haven't thought it through.
Blockchain = Useful technology
Bitcoin = Fake narratives designed to suck in the naïve

Apparently MicroStrategy has purchased 6,455 bitcoins for approximately $150 million at an average price of $23,238 per coin. Microstrategy were among the big buyers leading up the sixty odd thousand peak price. MicroStrategy's current average purchase price is $29,817 per coin; So they must be currently sitting on a paper loss of (29,817 - 26,925) x 138,955 = $401,857,860, just short of $402 Million down.

"Bitcoin is a commodity , it’s completely different to the rest of the crypto eco system this really is crypto 101"

Potentially a t urd is a commodity if you cover it in Gold paint and market it as something that'll change the World. Bitcoin has no real utility, eventually the Gold paint will wear off and holders will be left holding nothing more than digital manure.
As far as the Banks are concerned, it doesn't make any odds how many have been fined, or the misdeeds they may have done, what matters is they are part of a system that's operated for hundreds of years and Bitcoin/Crypto has zero chance of replacing that system. Common sense suggests that Governments aren't going to give up monetary control to Decentralised Finance, since we don't live in a World without borders. The Euro is as close an example, as you can get, to a DeFi currency under the current system and even though the EU has a currency union, a debt union still escapes them and they still need a Central bank to manage the Euro within the union.
In a compartmentalised World, DeFi would lead to chaos, since there'd be no lenders of last resort, no bail outs, no monetary control at a state level, so it would implode into chaos in short order. Unmanaged systems eventually fall into chaos, nature is a good example of that.
What's wrong with the current system? It seems pretty good to me. On the face of it I get free banking, the bank looks after the security of my money and as long as I look after my Personal Finances everything works flawlessly; Ok the banks make money out of my deposits, but I can live with that and personally I invest in order to generate more income, dependent on my risk appetite.
Binance might not be Bitcoin, but it's part of the Ecosystem and from what I've read they've been manipulating the Bitcoin price by selling stable coins to buy Bitcoin using Binance owned wallets and they may also have been trading in opposition to their customers as well as front running trades. If the US decide to really go after Binance, it'll be a lot more nails in the Crypto Coffin.

"BT needs a high level of take up to pay for it all."

Which is the exact reason for the Equinox offers. BT are using the carrot, rather than the stick, to encourage CP's to migrate off copper and onto FTTP asap as soon as it becomes available; This is what I was getting at when I said Openreach have a good internal business case for the offers and OFCOM have little reason to block it.

"Potentially massive win for Bitcoin today !"

You guys are hilarious, it amazes me how the enthusiasts twist the narrative and try to present a clear loss as if it's some kind of win. Anyone who thinks this will be the only action taken against Binance is deluding themselves, clearly the gloves are coming off and the regulators are on the verge of declaring all out war on the sector.
This is only the start, there's more going on:

"The CFTC writes that Zhao used Signal with auto-delete on “even after Binance received document requests from the CFTC and after Binance purportedly distributed document preservation notices to its personnel.” It then lists a number of things that were set to auto-delete including “group chats titled ‘Finance’ ‘HR,’ ‘Mkt hr,’ and ‘CEO office.’”

I wonder how much of Zhao’s auto-deleting Signal chats the Feds got! Do they have Zhao’s phone or something?

Anyway here are some other greatest hits of the complaint:

Compliance officer Lim explaining to a colleague, “after receiving information ‘regarding HAMAS transactions’” that “terrorists usually send ‘small sums’ as ‘large sums constitute money laundering.’ Lim’s colleague replied: ‘can barely buy an AK47 with 600 bucks.’”

Lim on Russian accounts: “Like come on. They are here for crime.” The response from our friend the Money Laundering Reporting Officer? “we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.” My love, the meme is I pretend I do not see it.
Binance’s policy was that no one had to do KYC as long as the customer withdrew less than two Bitcoin a day. “the notional value of two BTC in July 2019 was more than $22,000 and in March 2021 was more than $100,000.

Binance is trading on its own platform through 300 accounts that are “directly or indirectly” owned by Zhao. It hasn’t told its customers that, though!

I don’t think this is going to be the last we hear of the Feds looking into Binance. These are only civil charges, after all. And if one part of the US federal government has Zhao’s Signal chats, other branches probably have them, too."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/27/23659109/binance-cftc-vpn-signal-notes

If all this is true, Binance are in real trouble. Once the US authorities go after a company, or individual, it doesn't end well for them. This isn't just about commodities and securities, it appears to go a lot deeper.