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The anti-crypto thread

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MrSquished said:
But yes while you may be beating the house, it's still gambling. Some people may have better odds due to certain insights
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LOL okay, go right on thinking that.

If you walk into an actual casino and lose your shirt, do you get to wait around 3 years in the lobby until they give you your shirt back, plus a bunch of money on top of it? Nah.
 
DrMrLordX said:
LOL okay, go right on thinking that.

If you walk into an actual casino and lose your shirt, do you get to wait around 3 years in the lobby until they give you your shirt back, plus a bunch of money on top of it? Nah.
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You are being too literal. You can gamble on longer term things too. Think relationships, businesses, real estate, careers. Try to think bigger.
 
MrSquished said:
You can gamble on longer term things too.
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You can, but when you deal in things like that, it isn't gambling anymore. You're stretching the definition of a word. Risk factors may be high, but if you define anything as 49% success chance or lower as "gambling" or anything with uncontrolled factors as "gambling" then you're encouraging people to not take any risks. Futures and other derivatives are extremely risky, but they are also not classified as gambling, except by those who are critical of their market function.

Opening a restaurant is also gambling under that mindset given their appalling failure rates.

There are plenty of blockchain projects driving a train to 0, and there are a few that are not. The major problem is that, in the short term, some of those projects (like "meme" coins) can produce tempting returns. DOGE investing was quite profitable last year, for example. For the most part it's worthless, though, no matter how desperately people attempt to attach functionality to it after-the-fact. It's still just a joke cribbed from Litecoin (which itself is at least partially abandonware).
 
It seems like things have stabilized for now, but serious damage was done. Bitcoin is once again below $30,000, and Ethereum is below $2,000. Dogecoin and Solana also got slaughtered, and are down by another half.

It's also pretty safe to assume that LUNA isn't coming back to $80 anytime soon 🙂
 
JEDI said:
how far did btc drop during the last recession?
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As a share of its previous high, or just its price?

The last high was ~$20k, and it dropped to around $3k briefly. Overall an ~85% dip from its old ATH. If it follows that pattern then it could hit $10k. I doubt it will go that low but, we'll see!
 
DrMrLordX said:
As a share of its previous high, or just its price?

The last high was ~$20k, and it dropped to around $3k briefly. Overall an ~85% dip from its old ATH. If it follows that pattern then it could hit $10k. I doubt it will go that low but, we'll see!
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thx

going to put in a buy order for Microstrategy (defacto bitcoin) at 40% of it's current price.
(btc=24k currently. $10k is 40% of that)
 
Good luck! I don't know if I would make a large trade on that basis, but if history is any guide, it's a safe bet that BTC won't stay that low for long, and again it may not go that low at all.
 

Cautionary Tales from Cryptoland

Web3 is off to a rocky start. Optimists may rattle on about progress on the horizon, but at present the space is rife with fraud, hacks, and collapses. In this Q&A with Web3 critic Molly White, creator of the website Web3 Is Going Just Great , White argues that as this technology becomes more...
hbr.org hbr.org

Web3? Not so fast.... lots of outstanding issues...
 
MrSquished said:
You are being too literal. You can gamble on longer term things too. Think relationships, businesses, real estate, careers. Try to think bigger.
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On the gambling angle:
www.currentaffairs.org

Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”

UC-Berkeley’s Nicholas Weaver has been studying cryptocurrency for years. He thinks it’s a terrible idea that will end in disaster.
www.currentaffairs.org www.currentaffairs.org
So the stock market and the bond market are a positive-sum game. There are more winners than losers. Cryptocurrency starts with zero-sum. So it starts with a world where there can be no more winning than losing. We have systems like this. It’s called the horse track. It’s called the casino. Cryptocurrency investing is really provably gambling in an economic sense. And then there’s designs where those power bills have to get paid somewhere. So instead of zero-sum, it becomes deeply negative-sum.
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Effectively, then, the economic analogies are gambling and a Ponzi scheme. Because the profits that are given to the early investors are literally taken from the later investors. This is why I call the space overall, a “self-assembled” Ponzi scheme. There’s been no intent to make a Ponzi scheme. But due to its nature, that is the only thing it can be.
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guidryp said:
On the gambling angle:
www.currentaffairs.org

Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”

UC-Berkeley’s Nicholas Weaver has been studying cryptocurrency for years. He thinks it’s a terrible idea that will end in disaster.
www.currentaffairs.org www.currentaffairs.org
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The issue with the comparison to bond and stock completely ignore the aspect of start-ups and venture capital. eg what happens before the stock market. And crypto is bascially 100% in this phase. And let's not pretend investing in start-ups isn't gambling. Most will fail. same with crypto. But the ones that don't offer a huge payoff making the gamble worth it.
 
beginner99 said:
The issue with the comparison to bond and stock completely ignore the aspect of start-ups and venture capital. eg what happens before the stock market. And crypto is bascially 100% in this phase. And let's not pretend investing in start-ups isn't gambling. Most will fail. same with crypto. But the ones that don't offer a huge payoff making the gamble worth it.
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Yes and No, startups have a business model and a product with a way to return the investment (good or bad). That is what you buy into, when you invest in startups or stocks, some are high risk some are low risk. What is the business model of buying cryptocurrency? What is it you invest in?
 
beginner99 said:
The issue with the comparison to bond and stock completely ignore the aspect of start-ups and venture capital. eg what happens before the stock market. And crypto is bascially 100% in this phase. And let's not pretend investing in start-ups isn't gambling. Most will fail. same with crypto. But the ones that don't offer a huge payoff making the gamble worth it.
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No, the author is pointing out a basic truth. Crypto Coins are at best a zero sum game.

Crypto coins are some combination of gambling and a Ponzi Scheme (intentional or not).

The stock market is full of high and low risk stocks. Sensible people diversify to limit the risk and then the stock market is a positive sum game. Where there is real wealth generation where companies are creating real products that are sold, increasing the value of companies.

Not a zero sum game in search of the greater fool
 
biostud said:
Yes and No, startups have a business model and a product with a way to return the investment (good or bad). That is what you buy into, when you invest in startups or stocks, some are high risk some are low risk. What is the business model of buying cryptocurrency? What is it you invest in?
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We can be cyncial and say the companies product are only made to make the shareholders rich. Just look at intel shareholders block the executive salaries. Why? Because they actual want to to something long term by suffering short term. Big shareholders want money now not in 5 or 10 years.

With crypto you invest in blockchain technlogy and that something good and profitable will come out of it. On a very high level. On some level it's like investing into apple or ms or ibm in the 70s or 80s. (more later no time anymore)
 
beginner99 said:
We can be cyncial and say the companies product are only made to make the shareholders rich. Just look at intel shareholders block the executive salaries. Why? Because they actual want to to something long term by suffering short term. Big shareholders want money now not in 5 or 10 years.

With crypto you invest in blockchain technlogy and that something good and profitable will come out of it. On a very high level. On some level it's like investing into apple or ms or ibm in the 70s or 80s. (more later no time anymore)
Click to expand...

You invest in blockchain technology if you invest in a company that make use of block chain technology. Cryptocurrency is the product (or whatever it is), not the company. And that is quite different. In a company you can do a due dilligency to see what assets the company hold, and then based on that and theit business plan, do some calculated risks towards your investments. You cant do that by buying cryptocurrency, it is more comparable to buying some new exotic raw metarial, and hoping someone will find it useful at some point, which I find highly unlikely. (Not blockchain technology, but cryptocurrency)
 
DrMrLordX said:
He's not a very good computer scientist if he can't find any gains from blockchain technology, whether centralized or decentralized. Even in very simple terms, you can use something low-to-no-fee like Nano for remittances.
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I'd bet that a PHD senior research scientist at Berkeley ICSI, with a specialty in computer security understands blockchain MUCH, MUCH better than you do.

He's pointing out that block chain is nothing new, it's basically 30 year old tech called Hash Chain, a security technology, and remember, PHD senior researcher, with specialization in security.

Beyond that he's pointing out that in almost all cases of someone "But people who spout “Blockchain!” don’t understand the technology. Or claiming "You need blockchain for X", is a clear sign that the person hyping this "doesn't understand X".

Even if you find something that is done better with blockchain, you don't need ponzi scheme crypto coins to use block chain/hash chain.
 
guidryp said:
I'd bet that a PHD senior research scientist at Berkeley ICSI, with a specialty in computer security understands blockchain MUCH, MUCH better than you do.
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And yet he's still claiming it's a zero-sum gain, which is false. Nice appeal to authority also.
 
beginner99 said:
With crypto you invest in blockchain technlogy and that something good and profitable will come out of it. On a very high level. On some level it's like investing into apple or ms or ibm in the 70s or 80s. (more later no time anymore)
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No. The crypto coins are just a Ponzi scheme.

You don't need ponzi coins to use block chain/hash chain. That's just a basic computer security technology.

Break this down to technology that is used everywhere in software, that people can understand, like a linked list.

If you had a linked list based coin, and you "invested" in that coin, you are not investing in the future of linked lists. You are just sucked into a ponzi scheme, that uses the technology, but using a linked list does not require "linked-List" coins.

These are Ponzi-coins.
 
DrMrLordX said:
And yet he's still claiming it's a zero-sum gain, which is false. Nice appeal to authority also.
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I'ts a pretty strong claim, since it demonstrably 100% correct.

These ponzi crypto-coins are obviously a zero sum game. There is is no underlying product, everyone is trading them based on assuming a greater fool will buy them for more than they paid, but underlying them is nothing.

100% of the value, is just the latest greater fool buying in.

It's significantly worse than the Tulip Mania, because at the end of the day, Tulips still had some value.
 
DrMrLordX said:
Nice appeal to authority also.
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Nice try. I just posted a link to a story.

You then did an Ad Hominem attack on the subject of the story, saying he wasn't a good computer scientist.

My reply was to say that a Senior, PHD (in computer scientist) researcher with a specialty in computer security was very likely a very good computer scientist, and this is in his area of expertise.

Also note that an Appeal to Authority is only a logical fallacy, if the authority is unqualified.

Legitimate Appeal to Authority
Legitimate appeals to authority involve testimony from individuals who are truly experts in their fields and are giving advice that is within the realm of their expertise, such as a real estate lawyer giving advice about real estate law, or a physician giving a patient medical advice.
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Or you know, a PHD security researcher at a prestigious institution, specializing in computer security, commenting on block chain, a computer security technology.
 
biostud said:
You cant do that by buying cryptocurrency, it is more comparable to buying some new exotic raw metarial, and hoping someone will find it useful at some point, which I find highly unlikely. (Not blockchain technology, but cryptocurrency)
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Yes to some extent you are right. Bitcoin has been compared to gold. if you think of crypto as gold but there are no gold smith you are investing into future adoption. and once the adoption is here and demand increases so will the price of your gold.

And there are actual potential use-case most obviously in finance. stocks could be NFTs and could be exchanged by anone on decentralized exchanges for close to no fees (On Layer 2, fees will be minimal, they are already now, search for loopring).
One could also imagine a decentralized "kickstarter" and you can be part of it with just $100. Which us impossible right now with venture capital.

Then the whole decentralized part, not being able to be shutdown or blocked by the goverments. In that case crypto would simply be a different currency and the ideal one obviously for this job is monero. For me personally this is the most important part. freedom. But of course its hard to give that a specific value.

See also

Note: I don't actually own any ada.
 
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beginner99 said:
Yes to some extent you are right. Bitcoin has been compared to gold. if you think of crypto as gold but there are no gold smith you are investing into future adoption. and once the adoption is here and demand increases so will the price of your gold.
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Gold is real, large amounts are used to build electronics, and other important physical product.

Ponzi crypto coins aren't.

Again, Ponzi-Coins are NOT block chain, they just use block chain.

Nothing depends on Ponzi coins, except Ponzi coins.
 
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