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It can all go to zero

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Re: It can all go to zero

#91

Post by tessierashpool »

tbabb wrote: post #50
maxxxxx wrote: post #31

This reminds me so much of the .COM bubble. Same kind of discussions. I think there will be a place for cryptocurrency but before that has been established there will be a lot of people taking a lot of pain. People who have bought them a few years ago will only take paper losses but now there is real money flowing into this.

I have seen comparisons to the .com boom/bubble, and I don't buy it. There was a lot of economic movement while the entire economy moved over to the internet. Those who didn't adapt failed. Those who tried models which didn't translate also failed. Lots of experimentation, and lots of reinventing things from scratch. So lots of failure and lots of speculation-- but ultimately around a real sea change. I don't see how…

this makes a lot of sense to me for the simple reason that during the dot-com boom, the world wasn’t packed with people who remembered a dot-com boom.

Re: It can all go to zero

#92

Post by chocolatebunny »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72
adamnemecek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto?

> Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto? Either. Spinning up a cryptocurrency may become as mundane as creating up a database, as silly (or illegal) as trying to market a Ponzi-based hedge fund, or simply a pedagogical tool for CS students. There is nothing inherent to crypto that says it must hold value. Markets are moody.

There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value.

Re: It can all go to zero

#93

Post by Retric »

adamnemecek wrote: post #73
Joeri wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bug is discovered allowing fraudulent creation of bitcoins, and no easy or timely fix is possible. That or governments outlaw it entirely.

You are fundamentally arguing that cryptocurrencies, all of them, will be gone? That like 30 years from now, there will be 0 things that are basically cryptocurrencies or something that replaced them?

That's irrelevant. If every cryptocurrency around in 30 years has yet to be created then every current cryptocurrency would be dead.

Consider, what happens if the Internet dies? Well you could run a private coin on an old laptop, but that's not really meaningful.

Re: It can all go to zero

#94

Post by chrisco255 »

api wrote: post #11
adamnemecek wrote: post #3

The comparison with the other company makes no sense. A company has a "single point of failure". At this point there's waayy too many actors and people who want Bitcoin to succeed. The market is huge at this point. Like NASDAQ is like 7T IIRC. Crypto is today ~550B. It was like ~750B not too long ago. Note how there's no glue joining the idea of the company and crypto. It could go down but it could also go really up…

People made a version of that argument with mortgages and mortgage backed securities. Mortgages are spread across too many people, too many geographic areas, etc., and there's no way they'll all decline or default at once.

To be fair, mortgages didn't all default at once. Some companies over extended themselves with subprime mortgages and that's how we got the real estate bubble.

Crypto is nowhere near that, for one, very little of crypto's value comes from loaned money.

Re: It can all go to zero

#95

Post by charlesdm »

overhang wrote: post #65
cableshaft wrote: post #9

So many people love to parrot the 'It'll go down to zero!' line, especially if they don't have skin in the game, but there's pretty much no way. Specific cryptocurrencies, sure they could potentially go to zero. I'm watching one right now that's looking pretty darn close. But this entire industry? I don't think so. It's too late for that. Too many players, too much ease of access, too much of the potential has been d…

Were you around a few years back to see real estate values drop from $300K to $25K? I saw that. And we are talking about a physical property. $25K is not zero, but it would be hard to distinguish the effective difference if you're leveraged $250K. So, as with any investment, if you're spending monopoly money on cryptocurrencies, scoff away. But if your retirement depends on it...

$300k to $25K? That seems awfully cheap. Where did prices drop so much?

Re: It can all go to zero

#96

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

blhack wrote: post #79
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing cryptocurrencies to actual companies isn't fair. A lot of companies that went bankrupt (aka worth $0) had assets. Those assets were worth something and were probably sold off and used to pay debtors. What assets does a cryptocurrency have? What value is actually there?

It's also not fair because a company can actually "go away" as in they sell the building and stop operating. You can't really do this with bitcoin. It's never going to "shut down".

True - it's society's value on the exchange of bitcoin to $USD that could go to $0. The ledger of all those transactions would still be out there.

Re: It can all go to zero

#97

Post by chrisco255 »

sputknick wrote: post #14
whiskyant wrote: post #2

Maybe if you're holding a shitcoin, but Bitcoin? Nope.

What value does Bitcoin add to society? IF you don't add value, what's the point of having you around? Bitcoin could absolutely go to zero. I say this as a holder of some.

It's a 9 year old immutable public ledger that has yet to be hacked.

Re: It can all go to zero

#98

Post by milesokeefe »

surrey-fringe wrote: post #44

I've been thinking of starting a Medium account lately. All I have to do is wait for something bad to happen in crypto and give a first grade interpretation of events and compare them to some money movie I saw recently. I don't need to understand anything about crypto, and I can feel superior to all my friends who aren't working because they made money.

I wouldn't call his interpretation "first grade". The author has a bit of experience in this domain:

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

Re: It can all go to zero

#99

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chocolatebunny wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto? Either. Spinning up a cryptocurrency may become as mundane as creating up a database, as silly (or illegal) as trying to market a Ponzi-based hedge fund, or simply a pedagogical tool for CS students. There is nothing inherent to crypto that says it must hold value. Markets are moody.

There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value.

> There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value

Yet you will find claims, on this thread, that Bitcoin becoming worthless is not possible.

Re: It can all go to zero

#100

Post by eth1 »

tbabb wrote: post #50
maxxxxx wrote: post #31

This reminds me so much of the .COM bubble. Same kind of discussions. I think there will be a place for cryptocurrency but before that has been established there will be a lot of people taking a lot of pain. People who have bought them a few years ago will only take paper losses but now there is real money flowing into this.

I have seen comparisons to the .com boom/bubble, and I don't buy it. There was a lot of economic movement while the entire economy moved over to the internet. Those who didn't adapt failed. Those who tried models which didn't translate also failed. Lots of experimentation, and lots of reinventing things from scratch. So lots of failure and lots of speculation-- but ultimately around a real sea change. I don't see how…

.com allowed for freedom of information crypto is allowing freedom of value.

it's more disruptive

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