61–70 of 215 posts
I am thinking a short position in bitcoin is in my near future. I am not saying bitcoin is doomed to fail but I am pretty confident this shit coin crazy is going to hit the fan sooner or later and it's going to drag the "legitimate" crypto currencies down.
I was involved with one of the bigger ICO right at the beginning of the ICO craze. I had pretty regular conversations with the project founder and was in talks to become the dev evangelist. The project had raised ~$5 million in ETH (this is when ETH was trading around $80). Despite the fact that this project had raised a crazy amount of money the whole project was being conceptualized and coded by a single 23 old guy…
Ponzi Ponzi Ponzi.
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The worst of is that early adopters will cash out boat loads of money and use that fact to claim they were right all along, as if somehow the top of the pyramid making money proves it's not a pyramid.
Mark my words: this will all come crashing down. I can't tell you when or why, but it's not sustainable. The irony: lots of people feel the same way about the "real" debt-based modern economy. A ridiculous Ponzi scheme, clearly unsustainable in the long run. As always, the time horizon matters when talking about investments and sustainability. Given the right time window, everything works, and everything fails.
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Even if you had a high degree of confidence that would happen eventually (which I'm not convinced you do), such a play would be absurdly risky, especially given no idea as to the timing.
It's also weird to assume that it'll "drag the "legitimate" crypto currencies down". It's much more likely that the legit ones will be a "safety" asset and only gain in credibility with large investors.
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the financial past is littered with the corpses of BTC shorts. Something to consider is that most of the ICO buyers would prefer to exit to BTC rather than exit to fiat currency. Possibly an ICO crash would make BTC go even higher. Actually, short BTC please.. I need more fuel for my long position :]
> the financial past is littered with the corpses of BTC shorts. It's also littered with the corpses of "very good investments" that will "make you rich quick". Without any securities standing behind Bitcoin but the promise that it will go higher, it comes down to gambling. Everybody hopes that another fool will come around and pay more than they did before. Bitcoin represents nothing but a currently 150GB large data…
It combines the following to achieve this [ hashing algorithms as proof of work, public key cryptography, solution for byzantine generals, game theory incentives to secure network and transactions ]
The result is something that is both digital and scarce so it is a novel way to store value digitally.
The problem is projects like these: http://bitqyck.me/ A classic hard-sell 80s pump and dump scam reborn in the ETH era. Bitqyck came to my attention through a family friend with very limited understanding of cryptocurrency, but just enough financial literacy to be in an investment group being fed these scams by people they trust as technical leadership. I imagine, ultimately, these people will demand protection from…
The problem is the whole idea of cryptocurrency as a growth investment. The symptom is a bunch of copycat scams trying to freeload on the broader market. Without the bull market of the early '90's, Belfort would have had no one to sell to. Same deal here. The root cause is the insanity happening in bitcoin (and now Ethereal, I guess). Mark my words: this will all come crashing down. I can't tell you when or why, but…
There are a lot of people in the blockchain space that believe deeply in the technology and are working to see it to fruition. There's plenty that see a quick buck and will leave their "investors" holding the bag. This cycle is not new and I don't think it means everything regarding blockchain is a scam. It's just very reminiscent of mid-to-late 90's Internet mania
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100%. I agree that BTC has been in a bubble, but if I had ever acted on this hunch, I'd be so far underwater right now. There's no telling how long the rally might continue, nor where the correction will settle. The other commenter made the astute observation that the less leveraged way to make this bet would be to go long on some competing asset.
One of my personal indicators that Bitcoin is in a bubble is when Bitcoin articles on hacker news are overrun with people talking about their bitcoin related businesses, instead of being overrun with skeptics and people saying it's in a "bubble". We have gone from %90 negative a couple years ago on HN to about %50 negative today.
Of course, if one rules out the possibility that cryptocurrency is going to be a thing, then it's in a bubble by definition any time it's worth more than zero. This appears to be the underlying view of at least some commenters here.
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It's also weird to assume that it'll "drag the "legitimate" crypto currencies down". It's much more likely that the legit ones will be a "safety" asset and only gain in credibility with large investors.
It's funny to me that you view any of the crypto currencies as legitimate.
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Makes no difference I think. Burden of proof is on the emitter. Matt Levine at Bloomberg has it explained perfectly: The ICO emitters seem to have no idea that once the SEC declares an ICO to be a security, any US-person investor who had put their money in such an unregistered security and lost some, is entitled by the full force of the law to all of their $, paid back in full...
All of their $ or all of their ETH? Most ICOs don't take $.
Doesn't matter. Delaware law has allowed contributions "in kind," e.g. with labour. When something goes wrong, the promoter has to pay cash restitution, penalties and, often, legal fees.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal nor securities advice.