Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 571 posts

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#391

Post by andrewmcwatters »

nadahalli wrote: post #383
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy a company, I literally can choose what to do with its earnings. That’s the point of valuing businesses. You’re not buying the stock. You’re buying a portion of the business. Say you have a drywall company in town. You and the owner are good friends and the owner wants to retire but doesn’t have a family member who is interested in the enterprise. He seeks out buyers. You mention to him you’re interested but…

Just as an aside, you cannot build the Bitcoin blockchain overnight as well - because of proof of work and network effects of bitcoin full nodes. That gives it "value". It's function is to serve as that - a store of value.

The difference to me is that gold is a precious metal with finite tangible volume. It can be used to create goods. So, there’s value there.

But Bitcoin was designed to be a currency. Certainly the software is worth something. Or maybe nothing really. Look at other FOSS.

As far as a currency goes though? I don’t want my currency to fluctuate.

The idea of bargaining with an employer or client to pay me “more” this week versus last because the value of the currency dropped 11% is ridiculous.

Bitcoin is dead on arrival because it’s design doesn’t evade the central banking problem. A currency cannot have a limited supply when value as a production of labor is not limited.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#392

Post by andrewmcwatters »

viraptor wrote: post #389
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy a company, I literally can choose what to do with its earnings. That’s the point of valuing businesses. You’re not buying the stock. You’re buying a portion of the business. Say you have a drywall company in town. You and the owner are good friends and the owner wants to retire but doesn’t have a family member who is interested in the enterprise. He seeks out buyers. You mention to him you’re interested but…

That applies to small companies where you're significant in any way. It does not apply for ~anyone investing in stock market. The larger companies neither care what you think nor know that you exist. Your investment has no impact on it and the price you get is a result of collective belief influenced by predicted valuations. If you invest in large companies on the public stock market, it's about the same as investing…

I think you make a fair argument, but it breaks down immediately under two separate but related counterarguments.

1. If companies don’t care what they’re valued at, it makes M&A infeasible. A business could never be sold.

2. Selling equity is done to raise cash. If no one cares what the business is valued at, equity is worthless, and 1. is infeasible.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#393

Post by doggosphere »

root_axis wrote: post #289
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all practical senses it is scarce. It is the protocol and consensus of the people using it that makes it scarce. If you disagree, go ahead just make your own BTC and see how "easy" it is to convince other people to use it instead of BTC or some other mainstream coin. (Some people even tried exactly that...)

You can't really know how easy it might be for me. For example, if my name was Vitalik Buterin or Elon Musk or even Donald Trump, I could trivially create my own cryptocurrency and a lot of people would use it.

Creating a new cryptocurrency doesn't make Bitcoin less scarce.

At worst your coin takes time and attention away from Bitcoin, and thus takes value. At best it outgrows Bitcoin, and grows the entire space.

But that's like saying you could build your own alternative to Facebook by whipping up some corporate partnerships and venture capital. Go ahead, we'll see which one wins in the long run.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#394

Post by feanaro »

the_gastropod wrote: post #306
feanaro wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin has been around for about a decade now. It didn’t take anywhere near that long for the internet That's not true, as is obvious with only basic fact checking. Apart from it not being obvious what you mean by "internet" (does ARPANET count?), the internet proper saw its first commercial access providers appear in 1989[1] and it certainly was nowhere near popular in 1999 as it is now. In fact, I would say the…

> the internet proper saw its first commercial access providers appear in 1989[1] and it certainly was nowhere near popular in 1999 as it is now The internet had 248 Million users in 1999 [1] Bitcoin has, estimating very liberally ~28M users worldwide [2]. > It's vastly more popular then 10 years ago, because now my plumber and barber ask me about it, it is regularly talked about in the news and there are almost no c…

> That doesn't indicate success.

Of course it does not, but it certainly is not a good argument for failure either.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#395

Post by mrbabbage »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #334
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #276

I’m enjoying sitting on the sidelines and watching people “invest” in a digital “currency” that you cannot spend, does not produce cash flow, and whose values are determined by other shmucks buying it from previous shmucks. What a time to be alive. No wonder the S&P 500 CAPE ratio is beyond the 1929 high. No one has any idea of what the intrinsic value is of anything. Investing in companies that don’t make a profit,…

> I’m enjoying sitting on the sidelines and watching people “invest” in a digital “currency” that you cannot spend, does not produce cash flow, and whose values are determined by other shmucks buying it from previous shmucks. Is that any different than a stock though? You can’t spend stocks, they don’t produce cash flow (ignoring dividends), and their value is what other’s are buying and selling it for. Just as I can…

> ignoring dividends

Well, this is a bit of an unfair premise :) the whole point of equity is that it is a claim on a company's future profits, and companies return profits either via directly via dividends or indirectly via buybacks (which push up the value of existing stockowner's holdings). It's easy to forget this in startup land, where most companies are unprofitable and thus have no profits to distribute.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#396

Post by vmception »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #380
vmception wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s supposed to be a currency. And yet it’s not. It doesn’t exhibit any of the traits of a currency I’d want to spend at least. ah that argument, I read that recently, those are skeumorphs, here is a quote > When it comes to this asset class, there are still people that argue against the concept of Bitcoin, mostly in reaction to one of its sales pitches without ever noticing what this really is. For example, peopl…

The creator was trying to make “electronic cash” that evaded central banking manipulation from what I can tell. Except there’s a fixed supply. There isn’t a fixed supply of value in the world.

That is correct, there are a lot of things as well as incomplete features in the first versions of bitcoin that were deprecated by the open source community, some of it while in ongoing communication with Satoshi Nakamoto. One of the strengths of this asset class is that it has no static limitations, while any improvements to its core concept must reach overwhelming consensus otherwise it debilitates the entire system.

The amendment ratification process has a long lead time, even when it is not politicized. The current Taproot and Schnoor amendments actually improve the "electronic cash" feature set, and has signaling consensus already but they must signal for I think 6-12 months before the nodes start updating their software. Hopefully wallets and exchanges use this time to implement the technology as default for the users (but they won't, human nature)

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#397

Post by sithlord »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #276

I’m enjoying sitting on the sidelines and watching people “invest” in a digital “currency” that you cannot spend, does not produce cash flow, and whose values are determined by other shmucks buying it from previous shmucks. What a time to be alive. No wonder the S&P 500 CAPE ratio is beyond the 1929 high. No one has any idea of what the intrinsic value is of anything. Investing in companies that don’t make a profit,…

You don't buy stocks because the company "makes money" you buy stocks because the expectation is that they will make more money in the future than they are now.

Also, stocks don't really produce cash flow either - A dividend drops the price of each stock by the equivelent amount. So if you get a 3% dividend a year, the stock price is dropping by the same amount.

I will say, it is easier to quantify that Apple/Google/other company is in an industry and makes things, and has revenue/expense to look at and thats why they are worth xyz today. I can't explain why bitcoin goes up or down. (other than whale buys a bunch, so the sheep follow)

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#398

Post by anm89 »

safog wrote: post #64
anm89 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin cash comes in at #7 on coinmarket cap and while I wouldn't call it a scam, it's not a respectable project IMO. And it quickly gets worse from there over the next 10. Strongly agree that the best bucket is going to be composed of a vast majority of bitcoin and ethereum. I don't believe crypto is on the whole in a bubble right now but the fact that Bitcoin Cash has a market cap of >$5B is one of the biggest thi…

I think BCH is a reasonable idea, block size is a problem with BTC and increasing it is fine even if it makes it less likely that normal users will run full nodes. The scumminess of it comes from people like Roger Ver who peddle it as the "true" BTC. e.g., bitcoin.com is owned by the BCH folks and they have several intentionally misleading things there that try to re-brand BCH as BTC and BTC as BTC legacy or whatever…

I agree, that community is it's own worst enemy.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#399

Post by doggosphere »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #276

I’m enjoying sitting on the sidelines and watching people “invest” in a digital “currency” that you cannot spend, does not produce cash flow, and whose values are determined by other shmucks buying it from previous shmucks. What a time to be alive. No wonder the S&P 500 CAPE ratio is beyond the 1929 high. No one has any idea of what the intrinsic value is of anything. Investing in companies that don’t make a profit,…

I'm enjoying sitting on the sidelines and watching people "save" in a fiat "currency" whose value is not linked to anything intrinsic, whose supply can magically be increased at the discretion of a few powerful individuals, and whose value has been declining relative to almost any tradeable assets.

What a time to be alive. No wonder the M2 money supply is at an all time high. No one has any idea of what the intrinsic value is of anything.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#400

Post by anm89 »

lawn wrote: post #230
anm89 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin cash comes in at #7 on coinmarket cap and while I wouldn't call it a scam, it's not a respectable project IMO. And it quickly gets worse from there over the next 10. Strongly agree that the best bucket is going to be composed of a vast majority of bitcoin and ethereum. I don't believe crypto is on the whole in a bubble right now but the fact that Bitcoin Cash has a market cap of >$5B is one of the biggest thi…

That you take Bitcoin Cash as an example of a non-reputable cryptocurrency is pretty sad. (And it's #5 not #7.) Ripple is for instance not a cryptocurrency, and everyone knows about the scam that is Tether. Litecoin has zero development (except to copy what Bitcoin is doing) and the development in Bitcoin itself has some serious issues.

It has the number 7 next to it on coinmarketcap. That seems a good indication of it being 7th on coinmarketcap.
Post reply on HN