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Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#461
post #262

I'm genuinely confused. This current crash is not nearly as bad as several recent crashes. The fall in price in the big coins (Eth, BTC) seems downright modest. A bunch of new meme coins got obliterated, which is also normal and completely predictable. Why are people treating this as if it's going to be the fall of crypto? Because a peg broke? Have people not heard of Mt. Gox?

You’re focusing on the price of bitcoin. Bitcoins market cap during Mt Gox was a few billion. Today it’s over a trillion. Luna going from a market cap of close to 100 billion to basically worthless in a few days is like 50 Mt Gox incidents in terms of wealth destruction. Bitcoin has market cap swings larger than the loss during Mt Gox in minutes these days.

> in terms of wealth destruction

It's a net zero game. Someone sells at 10, someone pays 10. But we still have the 10 in the game, they just moved.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>just stay off social media, What do you do when literally everyone you know IRL is into it? Everyones brain has been warped by speculation.

Get some new IRL relationships. I find volunteering for a cause an amazing way to make new friends. Source: I am in a tech-oriented urban environment and I know nobody who is into crypto.

>I find volunteering for a cause an amazing way to make new friends.

Even if I could live to 500 years, I don't have the time to waste on random activities like this. I've never felt like North America is my home anyways, nevermind the people. I'm mostly over having any sort of social life here, have zero hope or desire to do so left.

All I ever wanted to do was play music but all I ever ended up doing was paying rent.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Branching off, what I feel is more important is that in brokers like Robinhood you don't even OWN the underlying security of your investment; you're renting it. Not even that... you're being lied to about owning it.

What are you talking about?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#465
post #355

I'm pretty perplexed by what crypto has become in practice. All the big selling points for me are that it's a currency (that almost nobody uses as a currency) with mathematically-ensured security (which goes away if, like many people, you're holding a lot of wealth in a centralized exchange that tries to dumb everything down for the entry-level consumer) and controlled inflation (which is defeated somewhat by the mas…

It ain't over till the fat lady sings. Bitcoin (and crypto in general) is far from done. You cannot take one data point in time and derive your conclusion based on the point in time.

Also, it does not matter what decision you would make 3 months ago with the information you have today. What matters is what decision you made 3 months ago with the information you had 3 months ago. Same for the decision you are making now.

BTW: I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. I'm mostly disagreeing with the "methodology" :)

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will preface this statement by stating that I know nothing about the stock market and let my retirement account be handled by an investor... What real math is involved in predicting the stock market? I understand there is a lot of theory behind TRYING to predict it, just as there is a lot of study in trying to predict trends in the stock market, which is why you are better off investing in groups of stocks as oppos…

The math that most investors (not traders) use isn't necessarily about trying to predict the market, at least in the short term - but to get signals like "this company is over/undervalued compared to competitors or compared to the size of market its targeting" etc. These types of analysis don't necessarily predict anything on their own especially in the short term, though they likely do have value in the long term wh…

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#467

It's a Macro crash. SP500 is down -%5 YTD. Meta -37%, Netflix -65%. Lots of pain spreading. You shouldn't gloat or be happy. Give it a couple of more months like this, and lots of the HN audience would be worried about layoffs. The security of your average software developer job is strongly tied to market cycles. If you want a place to direct your hate and bitterness, I would do it at the architects of the BOOM/BUSTS…

I am happy that capitalism is working as intended.

Also, if you make software developer salary, you should absolutely be hedged against losing your job, having plenty of savings in reserve to last you well over a year.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Owning a stock means owning a piece of a business That is clearly not true. What you own, is something worth X amount of Y, where Y is what other believe it is worth. "Means of production" has a very specific meaning and what you're saying is not it.

Actually, it is true. When you buy a share in a company, you own a slice of that company. You have voting rights, access to shareholder meetings, annual reports, bod meetings etc. What that share is worth is what others perceive it's value. what it's market "worth" is completely irrelevant to the fact you own a share.

You own voting rights, that's it. The recent Twitter stuff emphasized this. Some people were wondering why they can't just refuse to sell their stock (if the deal passes the various requirements, which includes a shareholder vote) if they don't want to. The reason is because they don't actually own anything, just a vote. If the company as a whole decides to go become a new entity (going from public to private in this case), the entity you owned a vote in no longer exists.

In an increasingly large number of companies even this notion of a vote is a facade. For instance at Facebook and Google, Zuckerberg and Larry/Sergey would maintain majority control even if you bought all the stock on the open market, because of stock tiering. So when you buy stock in these companies you're practically not even buying a vote. I mean you technically are, but it's like participating in an election of with 100 other people, where one guy gets a vote that magically counts as 101 votes.

That why things like the occasional 'share holders look to force Zuckerberg out' type articles are 100% clickbait. Google and Facebook also even tried to force scenarios on shareholders where the real owners of the company were going to "sell" their shares without giving up control by introducing non-voting shares. These plans were only stopped thanks to the courts because they, of course, passed a shareholder vote. [1]

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/shareholders-for...

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Owning a stock means owning a piece of a business That is clearly not true. What you own, is something worth X amount of Y, where Y is what other believe it is worth. "Means of production" has a very specific meaning and what you're saying is not it.

Actually, it is true. When you buy a share in a company, you own a slice of that company. You have voting rights, access to shareholder meetings, annual reports, bod meetings etc. What that share is worth is what others perceive it's value. what it's market "worth" is completely irrelevant to the fact you own a share.

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#470
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a different interpretation: Crypto enabled tax dodgers and black markets. It’s a use case I didn’t consider a decade ago.

Black markets are also interesting question. How high coin value you actually need for them to operate? Certainly not tens of thousand, probably a few hundred would still be enough. If crypto was token for exchange.

I don’t know.

If you’re exchanging weapons or illicit drugs (nation state) it can easily be millions.

As a run-of-the-mill software engineer, its a world I only have a passing knowledge on.

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