Repeat after me: A good currency is a bad investment
but what about a basket of four bad currencies?
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Coinbase Index Fund
311–320 of 346 posts
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#312There is a person who bought 800$ worth of cryptocurrency via 66 coins [1]. On Day 40 the total value is 388.58$. 1: https://66shitcoins.com
He bought in the heat of the biggest alt boom ever, no shit that it's a loss.
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the casino your risks are known, and well-defined. In blackjack with basic strategy your expected value is, what, 49%? Craps, it's similar. Just look it up. Nobody at the table playing, or even running the show, can manipulate the outcome except by changing the parameters of the game as posted in the (I assume) regulated odds boards. Investing in an unregulated market is absolutely nothing like that. Your outcome…
> In blackjack with basic strategy your expected value is, what, 49%? Assuming you number is correct, that's after just one game. So you're expected to lose 2% each game (51-49). So if you play 20 games, you lose 33.3% (1-0.98^20). And you can't win against the casino in the long run. With cryptocurrency investments you can. In fact, if you choose a random time to invest, in, say, Bitcoin, you will win most of the ti…
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Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's to make it difficult for a player to calculate the odds of a particular hand . The odds of the overall game are still pre-defined and regulated. Casinos can't/won't promise that you'll make money by playing their games. Securities are generally purchased with the expectation that you'll make money, and are marketed up to the allowable line of suggesting they are good ways to make money. Allowing people to play…
That's to make it difficult for a player to calculate the odds of a particular hand. The odds of the overall game are still pre-defined and regulated. My Average Joe brain is too small to calculate probability when there are a bunch of hands involved, much less one. It is, however, large enough to place bets on which cryptocoins might be more useful than others, based on a lot of data and current event news that I ha…
Consider the contrast between the two things you just said:
* "place bets on which cryptocoins might be more useful than other" * "The Casino ALWAYS wins, in aggregate."
In the former, you expect you have some better than even odds of winning money -- otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. In the latter you clearly understand that the odds are against you. See how different those are?
We can argue about the ability to day-trade the cryptocurrency market, but it's hard to argue that the odds there are more clearly defined than in a casino. The reason there's a moving market is because we don't all agree on those odds.
> Okay, fine, so then regulate the 'telling' part and not the 'playing' part
They do regulate the telling part, quite tightly. But it's extremely difficult to control what people may tell each other outside the bounds of an issuance document. E.g. the SEC can't control what folks in r/bitcoin might be out there telling people as reasons to buy this Index fund.
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should check out the Bitwise HOLD10 (where I work). We are backed by Naval Ravikant (Cofounder of AngelList and CoinList. Partner at Metastable), Avichal Garg (Part-time Partner at Y Combinator. Previously Director at Facebook), and Keith Rabois (former COO at Square: https://www.bitwiseinvestments.com/about
It's 2.5%
Yeah yikes.
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
$8 per tx seems like a very high fee for cryptocurrency transactions.
It’s really not. Gdax charges 0.25% (only to one party, so let’s call it 0.125 on average). You only have to buy less than $10,000 worth before the fee is higher than $8
And Gdax is totally required to charge their index fund customers that 0.25%?
I figured that the comment I was originally responding to made it sound like transaction costs are a technical reason for the management fees being high.
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Casinos (and lotteries) are subject to heavy regulation, including oversight on the odds of the games they offer. The problem with back-end enforcement (and those laws do exist) is that it doesn't remove the incentive to try issuing a scam-ish security and hope you will evade prosecution, and the damage done can take years to unwind, if it's even possible at all. This is why there are regulations on public offerings…
Really? 1) So what lottery odds are not allowed? 2) Can you name a single lottery with odds in your favor? Cause with cryptocurrencies, so far, the investors have made money on average.
1) Here's the lottery code for CA. Payouts are regulated - by it's nature, the odds of a lottery depend on the number of tickets, but typically, there are strict rules about the minimum % of receipts paid back to winners (which is effectively equivalent to setting house odds), and in many cases, only the state government can run them.
http://static.www.calottery.com/~/media/Publications/Lottery...
2.) There's been multiple cases where lotteries were -accidentally- setup such that the odds were in the favor of players if they pursued the right strategy. Here's one: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/how-mit...
A history of gains to investors aren't an definite indicatio that an investment is good, or that the overall odds favor the investor. If I go into a casino and win roulette 3 times in a row, that doesn't mean the wheel is biased in my favor. Similarly, in most ponzi schemes, all of the early investors make money.
(And even in a non-fraudulent situation, simply having an investment go up doesn't mean it was a good investment, when examined on a risk-adjusted basis vs. other alternate options.)
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same problems with re-balancing my own portfolio and ended up creating a trading bot that automatically diversifies my investment portfolio across the top 20 coins by market cap (10% capped). It is heavily inspired by the crypto20 whitepaper. For anyone that is interested, you can find the project here: www.hodlbot.io I'm about 1-2 weeks from the MVP launch. Only the top 20 coins by market cap fund will be…
This is a really clever idea, but as someone who's trying to stay as legal as I can with reporting my crypto transactions for taxes, this sounds like it could potentially be a nightmare to report (or possibly to pay taxes on), especially with the recent GOP addition to the tax reform law that made every cryptocurrency transaction, even a trade from currency to currency, a taxable event. I really wish I could just fre…
I've found that IRS requirement is really difficult to comply with. Does anyone have any tips for tracking trades?
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree with all 4 of these: 1) They are publishing which coins are held by the index, so the choice of coins is being given away for free, not just to investors. 2) Coinbase's main product is a SaaS account that lets you buy the same coins without knowing how to manage a wallet - so you can implement the index and skip the management fee using an account with them. 3) Controlling administrative access to an account…
> 4) Funds have to pass through taxable events to customer (other than some structures which must pay the tax themselves) -- the taxation doesn't disappear because it's wrapped by another entity. Plus, the prospectus shows that the Coinbase fund will only need to rebalance once a year when it recalculates available supply on Jan 1. Doesn't that depend on the structure? Mutual Funds pass taxable events but I don't bel…
Also, mutual funds can be forced to take fewer taxable distributions since they can use cash inflows to handle things they’d otherwise need to take a distribution for.
Re: Coinbase Index Fund
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
LTC was just surpassed by BCH in transaction volume. It's creator peaced out two months ago. Dunno if an unused payment channel means more than stuff like that.
peaced out? Like dead, unconscious, or just left? (is it just me or is HN becoming more unreadable due to increased usage of slang?)
He (claims that he) sold/divested all of his LTC right around the peak in December because he wanted to be neutral in its development.