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As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

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Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#191

Post by amvalo »

mindfulplay wrote: post #179
jMyles wrote: post #66

The discussion of blockchain tech on HN is puzzling to me. On the matter of value: I suspect that if we find ourselves able to send a message back in time two years (when BTC was less than $1,000 USD) and report that the price is now over $3,700, that we'll find this message to be met with an understanding that this is, at least, a validation of the use of blockchain tech as a store of value. I suspect that if we des…

You are conflating greed with innovation. We did not rally optimism and childlike curiosoty from the general public for HTTP or TCP/IP. You are shilling based on the popular Bitcoin playbook of Quotes and Comments. If it's really about the technology then people shouldn't care about the USD value of this crapshitcoins era... But no you folks not only took on the technologically inclined people but dragged the unaware…

Hey now... don't drag Signal into this.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#192

Post by hndamien »

GavinMcG wrote: post #167
krrrh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preston Byrne pointed out since there is no pyramid, this can’t be called a Ponzi scheme. It deserves a new name, the “Nakamoto scheme”: https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/

"Scheme" implies a unified/central schemer, though. We can already call it a fad, or a mania (a la tulip mania).

It certainly does seem to be a "scheme" but I wonder how it compares to other fiat or gold currency when looked at through a "scheme" lens.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#193

Post by ryanSrich »

verdverm wrote: post #60
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #11

Ah, the Bloomberg and TechCrunch bottom signals I’m looking for.

A year ago, I was explaining to family why crypto was a thing. This year I'm explaining why it crashed and why it's to be avoided. Also, why blockchain and crypto are not the same thing. There are many who participated in the 2017 speculation that will actively avoid and advise against participation this go around. The bubble popped and it will be many years before we see worthy investments take shape.

To think anyone can predict the market (good or bad) is foolish. You could easily flip your statement in support of crypto and it would be equally meaningless. Having participated in crypto since 2013, the only thing that I (or anyone else for that matter) knows is that _no one_ has a clue what they're talking about it.

It's pure speculation in both directions.

We could see BTC go sub $1k in Q1, or we could see it hit another ATH as those that got left out in 2017 FOMO in.

No one, not a single person, has any idea.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#194

Post by gizmo686 »

bdcravens wrote: post #136
ForHackernews wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty adjustment only occurs after a certain number of blocks are mined. If the price drops rapidly enough that most miners shut down, it might never get to the difficulty adjustment.

That would have to be a pretty spectacular decrease. The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks, which is typically 2 weeks. If 3/4 of all miners dropped out, it'd take 8 weeks instead. Once that difficulty change kicks in, it'd likely be a pretty big drop, yo-yo'ing in miners that may have been unprofitable before. Keep in mind that many miners are operating with little to no marginal costs (ie electricity costs) so t…

Also kerp in mind that a 75% reduction in the net hashrate would result in congestion, and therefore higher transaction fees which would dampan the loss of mining power until the adjustment.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#195

Post by elvinyung »

krrrh wrote: post #87
DenisM wrote: post #73

The most remarkable thing about BTC is diffusion of responsibility. If it was issued and marketed by a single entity the participants would be in hot water by now for violating the Securities and Exchange laws. However here we had one non-affiliated group of bigger miners issuing the coins and another group of volunteer enthusiasts hyping them up. Since the second group was not hired by the first, the first group can…

Preston Byrne pointed out since there is no pyramid, this can’t be called a Ponzi scheme. It deserves a new name, the “Nakamoto scheme”: https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/

I guess you can say it's less like a scheme and more like a meme.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#196

Post by jMyles »

mindfulplay wrote: post #189
jMyles wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We did not rally optimism and childlike curiosoty from the general public for HTTP or TCP/IP. Yes we did! It took a lot to get people excited about the internet, and a lot of naysayers made it a dramatic feat. The difference is that I'm hoping not to find this kind of negativity and name-calling here on HN. > you folks not only took on the technologically inclined people but dragged the unaware general public into…

Please at least add a HUGE disclaimer that all the NuCoin things are your own products and not some childlike curiosity. It's important that people understand that because HN doesn't allow ads without disclaimers.

I am unable to edit my comment at this time, but reading it, I think it's very, very obvious from my language ("If I am permitted to send one of my recent talks[0] back with this message about our progress at NuCypher...") that I work at NuCypher. It's not like I mentioned it in passing; I mentioned it specifically to talk about my own experience.

And what are "NuCoin things"? What are you talking about? Do you even have a sense of the technology in this space at all? Or are you just pointing at things about which you've never heard and throwing a tantrum?

Your accusations with the lambos and things are just truly over-the-top. You are targeting the wrong people. We have consistently put out top-shelf high-level cryptographic tooling. We have vowed not to do a public sale until our network is functional in sufficient measure to be worth what we ask for it. And we have made good on that promise.

If you have specific suggestions about how to be more responsible than we have, please offer them and stop with the melodrama.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#197

Post by dustingetz »

seibelj wrote: post #174
dustingetz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is even involved in finding a buyer for $10mm btc in usd and then getting that usd into a legal/compliant bank account? Sounds non-trivial. It's my understanding from some work I did for a crypto startup that there is approximately zero usd/btc liquidity, the apparent "usd liquidity" and "usd price" last year was actually dominated by tether-btc and tether-eth liquidity. There was not actually a functional usd/b…

Circle Trade and Cumberland do OTC trades of large amounts. Nothing is magical about this. https://www.circle.com/en/trade

Sure OTC services exist (I believe Coinbase has one) but I think the whales spending $10m on BTC might have an inkling about buy low and sell high – aka they are decidedly not buying during the period between August 2017 and today, which is exactly the period they would need to be buying at scale for all these startups to unload their disintegrating assets.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#198

Post by zik »

mindfulplay wrote: post #179
jMyles wrote: post #66

The discussion of blockchain tech on HN is puzzling to me. On the matter of value: I suspect that if we find ourselves able to send a message back in time two years (when BTC was less than $1,000 USD) and report that the price is now over $3,700, that we'll find this message to be met with an understanding that this is, at least, a validation of the use of blockchain tech as a store of value. I suspect that if we des…

You are conflating greed with innovation. We did not rally optimism and childlike curiosoty from the general public for HTTP or TCP/IP. You are shilling based on the popular Bitcoin playbook of Quotes and Comments. If it's really about the technology then people shouldn't care about the USD value of this crapshitcoins era... But no you folks not only took on the technologically inclined people but dragged the unaware…

Not everyone's who's interested in decentralized trustless payment technology is a "shill".

You're dismissing innovation and tarring it with greed.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#199

Post by hndamien »

twblalock wrote: post #173
mdpopescu wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fascinating how strongly we believe that now == how things should be. Humans have been using gold as a currency for thousands of years, and yet nowadays everyone seems to believe that nothing but state-backed paper can work as such - and anyone who wants (as you said) an apolitical currency is just weird.

State-backed paper works so much better than gold-backed currency that it's difficult to find economists who advocate returning to the gold standard without being regarded by their colleagues as quacks. Gold currency can hardly be described as apolitical. It has been a major political issue in every country that adopted it. Political issues have included debasement and forgery of coins, bimetallism, deflation vs infl…

Everything you just listed here seems to have been solved by Bitcoin, including forking politics - which leaves the users in control (albeit with some political influence from lead devs) ultimately this appears to be a fair power distribution as it is economic nodes deciding the current consensus on the rules set - not miners. (For your list - no forgery, no metal debasement, no long term inflation and infinite divisibility, why shouldn't you be able to own real money? Why shouldn't market set exchange rates? No sinking ships, country stockpiling and transferring is all fair game but custody is easy for anybody to take an maintain.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#200

Post by atiffany »

When I first invested in Bitcoin several years back, I tried to imagine ways that it could one day be deterred from becoming increasingly adopted and valuable. Government regulation and hacking were obvious possibilities, but I never considered “death by fragmentation” at the time. I think Bitcoin would be a lot more valuable today if it had not been for the explosion of largely greed-motivated shitcoins (and later ICOs) entering the market.
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