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Fools and their crypto

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Re: Fools and their crypto

#71

Post by agumonkey »

cromwellian wrote: post #64

Every few decades, libertarians need to be reminded why regulations exist. Time passes, and people forget why the SEC, FTC, FDA, FDIC, OSHA, child labor laws, et al were even created. Cryptocurrencies created a completely anarchic monetary system, which people have used to layer investment systems on top of. Naturally, low hanging fruit scams and cons have arisen, and some form of governing structure will eventually…

Same with Uber. IMO rebooting attracts people because regulation free allows for wild (easy, quick) gains, so lots of people will jump on the "opportunity" until the real cost reveal themselves at which point they will realize the losses. It's a bit physical, this crowd needed a way to unleash their energy and the official market was outside of their reach, providing another petri dish so to speak allowed for the reaction to occur, but it's unsustainable and transient. I think that America was the same in the 17th. Also the movie industry moved away from the East coast to the wild west to free themselves of regulations; only to create their own decades later.

Re: Fools and their crypto

#72

Post by solo1717 »

cromwellian wrote: post #64

Every few decades, libertarians need to be reminded why regulations exist. Time passes, and people forget why the SEC, FTC, FDA, FDIC, OSHA, child labor laws, et al were even created. Cryptocurrencies created a completely anarchic monetary system, which people have used to layer investment systems on top of. Naturally, low hanging fruit scams and cons have arisen, and some form of governing structure will eventually…

There is a vast difference between emergent, organic, "in market" regulations and protections (voluntarily agreed upon reciprocal protection type schemes ala escrows, insurance, etc) and government financial and behavioural regulations enforced at gunpoint and threat of violence.

Libertarians, rightly in my view, argue that Governments only have the moral right to enforce, with their monopoly on force, the non aggression principle.

Maybe insider trading is bad, and the best exchanges would have internal arbiters who economically punish insider trading, but having a centralised government enforce that with threats to life, limb, and liberty is unjust.

Re: Fools and their crypto

#73

Post by sumedh »

eksemplar wrote: post #45
icodemuch wrote: post #5

Hopefully a wake up call.. but probably won't be.

It won’t be. Every ICO I’ve bought into and the subsequently sold once it hit the exchanges has made me ridiculously amounts of money. Some sells were stupid, others were brilliant but they were all green. My stocks have increased as well and hold the majority of my investments, but they increased by 11% last year. My Cryptocurrency increased by 1153% in the same period of time. As long as that happens Cryptocurrency…

> but they increased by 11% last year.

S&P 500 rose 23% last year, maybe you just invest in an index fund.

Re: Fools and their crypto

#74

Post by stevekemp »

cdancette wrote: post #58

There's a thing that bothers me with ICO, it's when people call it an investment. It has nothing to do with an investment, it's basically a presale for the service that the company will provide. It offers you nothing of what buying shares of the company will (except when explicitly specified in the token sale) : no dividend, no voting power... Expecting to earn money by buying tokens in an ICO is pure speculation, as…

Agreed 100%. Buying tokens from an ICO is akin to funding a project on kickstarter - and we all know how often kickstarter projects fulfill their promise..

Re: Fools and their crypto

#75

Post by apatters »

cromwellian wrote: post #64

Every few decades, libertarians need to be reminded why regulations exist. Time passes, and people forget why the SEC, FTC, FDA, FDIC, OSHA, child labor laws, et al were even created. Cryptocurrencies created a completely anarchic monetary system, which people have used to layer investment systems on top of. Naturally, low hanging fruit scams and cons have arisen, and some form of governing structure will eventually…

The notion that cryptocurrencies would displace fiat in our lifetimes was always a red herring.

This is the real impact they will have in the long run: the technology will greatly expand the set of people and organizations who can issue a currency. Fiat will have a lot of competition that it didn't have before. Competition is bad for incumbents, but good for the rest of us.

So the libertarian dream will probably still be realized, just in a more measured manner than some frenzied speculators and early adopters would have you believe (which shouldn't come as a surprise at all).

Re: Fools and their crypto

#76

Post by ThomPete »

rootusrootus wrote: post #48
fuddcoinn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all the same laws are applicable and fraud is fraud. what is more interesting is that a variety of traditional control mechanisms appear to be ineffective at stopping the two voluntary parties from interacting whereas for banking and brokerages they are sufficient. I'd hate to see a second useless set of laws be made, similar to "hate crimes" (a crime is a crime - except when you say a certain something or think a ce…

I've never understood the problem some people have with hate crimes. Don't we already have plenty of crimes where the only differentiator is mental state or intent? Hard to see how a hate crime classification is any different than, say, Murder 1 versus Murder 2.

Because hate crime isn't easily defined. Some things are obvious but a lot aren't.

Re: Fools and their crypto

#78

Post by simias »

KasianFranks wrote: post #49
mrep wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name 1 that has used that capital to achieve over 10$ million in profit per year.

It's early days. Think Netscape.

Name one use case for cryptocurrencies where they work better than existing technologies and that does not involve buying illegal stuff online.

Seriously, I must be writing a comment like this one at least two times a week lately on HN. I keep hearing "blockchain technology is here to stay, think of the possibilities!" and I say that it's already showing its limitations and people are scrambling to find real world use cases for them. See the Diamond Coin story the other day, or that Kodak Coin thing. When you look closely you realize that the technical side of things doesn't really hold up or could be achieved using good old non-buzzword technologies.

Cryptocurrencies are amazing if you want to create a ponzi scheme or buy drugs online. For everything else there's Mastercard.

Re: Fools and their crypto

#79

Post by indigochill »

csomar wrote: post #67
cromwellian wrote: post #64

Every few decades, libertarians need to be reminded why regulations exist. Time passes, and people forget why the SEC, FTC, FDA, FDIC, OSHA, child labor laws, et al were even created. Cryptocurrencies created a completely anarchic monetary system, which people have used to layer investment systems on top of. Naturally, low hanging fruit scams and cons have arisen, and some form of governing structure will eventually…

I think it is about timing. Myspace didn't work out but Facebook did. Apple couldn't push its product until later. The reason people keep going back to 0 is that the current system is not the most efficient one. The process will repeat until it hits the right time. At that time it'll gain momentum and thwart the current system.

I'm not sure MySpace's chief sin was timing. Plenty of people used it. However, I seem to remember that people could easily modify the style of their profile page and so you had garish glittery bright-colored pages all over the place. Facebook came along then and gave users absolutely no control over the style of their page, keeping things clean and standardized.

Re: Fools and their crypto

#80

Post by CPLX »

monadmancer wrote: post #65
scandox wrote: post #63

> Imagine you’re investing in Apple in 1980. There is plenty of risk involved and you’re still not sure this Jobs kid has what it takes, but do you like the idea? The mission? The product? This is delusional. From Apple's Wikipedia: "Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%" They were selling products that people wanted for profi…

We aren't there yet. Successful projects are building protocols with the goal of developers using them to build next-gen products that people actually want. Current speculation (a16z, polychain, ...) is that it will take another few years for this rollout to really take effect.

> products that people actually want

This part of the process is usually considered one of the first steps in a successful business.

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