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Are You Trading or Gambling?

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Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#401

Post by jameshart »

kqr wrote: post #375
ak39 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the result?

If I remember correctly, somewhere in the range 17--23. The way one should have thought of it, with hindsight, is that there are going to be several groups of people: - those who don't understand the problem and just guess a number between 1 and 100, - those who only reason to one degree, and guess 33, - those who only reason to two degrees (ah but if everyone else guesses 33 I should aim for two thirds of that!) - t…

The way you originally stated the problem was to pick a number between 1 and 100, so 0 wouldn't even be an option, and 1 is probably the pareto optimal strategy (proof left as an exercise for the reader, etc.).

But then you probably still have to account in your strategy for estimating the proportion of people who will reason to infinite degree and estimate 1, as well as the proportion who will reason to an infinite degree and misread the rules, and guess 0...

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#402

Post by IgorPartola »

tekknik wrote: post #385
IgorPartola wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that to be a somewhat reductionist view. First, some things have a fundamental energy cost. Food is one example. You can’t value food for free even if we agree to, because it takes kWhs to produce it and they have to come from somewhere. I guess you could say your life isn’t worth the cost of the food to sustain it and stop eating it, but not many will do that. Second, you have natural scarcity: truffles are n…

The difference being one is the laws of physics and the other is artificially man made, doing nothing.

How about Helium? It is scarce and very useful for scientific research. He-3 is exceptionally rare and is not renewable at any kind of reasonable price. Is that still an artificial price?

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#403

Post by ReggieCommaRose »

Raidion wrote: post #389
ReggieCommaRose wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to play full-time and I currently work in trading. Poker is definitely gambling. Casinos are gambling, they’re just doing so with massive volume and tiny risk (afaik). Trading is gambling. Gambling well is a subset of gambling.

I think I would be OK if we wanted to define all endeavors with an unsure outcome gambling, but I believe that makes most things in life gambling which means we need another word for especially risky endeavors with an unsure outcome. I think we have the same concept, but I'd be happy to call trading gambling if playing poker table games was called gambooooling.

I think if we have to make a distinction, then categorizing games of chance where you're wagering money or direct money equivalent seems like a fair one. And in that sense, I wouldn't consider every trip I make to a hole in the wall eatery gambling.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#404

Post by Dumblydorr »

hckrnrd wrote: post #216
Dumblydorr wrote: post #196

Many are neither trading nor gambling, but spending hundreds on meme stocks for the belonging and cultural value.

Sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience.

If WSB millions holding stocks irrationally for meme status counts as personal experience, then yes, we all do. The evidence is there for anyone to see.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#405

Post by papito »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #117
papito wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HF traders DO NOT lose money. They see the trading world a few milliseconds into the future. The whole game is rigged in a way where they cannot lose. They only lose if someone screws up, human error, all that.

This is 100% not true. As mentioned below, HFT competes against itself, and there are measures to protect against latency manipulation.

I go from the account of Flash Boys where an HFT firm manager claimed they lose only once in four years - due to a human error.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#406

Post by tekknik »

IgorPartola wrote: post #402
tekknik wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being one is the laws of physics and the other is artificially man made, doing nothing.

How about Helium? It is scarce and very useful for scientific research. He-3 is exceptionally rare and is not renewable at any kind of reasonable price. Is that still an artificial price?

He-3 being natural, and therefor required to follow the various laws that allowed it to come into existence. Energy going into creating something useful. BTC on the other hand is just difficult to control supply artificially.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#407

Post by tekknik »

conanbatt wrote: post #397
tekknik wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If BTC makes it so the aggregate demand in currencies is split partially from fiat into BTC itself, then it will be a great transfer of wealth from governments into BTC owners. And will quickly be banned by said country.

If this scenario happens, BTC will have demonstrated enormous power and value, and it is supposedly designed precisely to resist such attacks. I also doubt on the feasibility of a global crackdown on miners in the entire world.

The enormous value being money laundering? Also the miners ultimately have to swap for some fiat, so they can’t stay in BTC “heaven” forever. Further buyers set the price, not miners. Especially given that using BTC is a luxury except for the underbanked, who also don’t have money and are selling their BTC to get some.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#408

Post by criticaljudge »

rjbwork wrote: post #399
criticaljudge wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any pointers? I was under the impression that nobody besides socialists takes LTV serious anymore. And I gave some reasons why it doesn't make sense. I haven't heard any counterpoints that make me think investing more time into it would be worthwhile. Edit: from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value ) it seems quite a mess, perhaps a bit like planning economy where they add yet another equat…

Value != price, nor does LTV make said assertion. Things like markets and preferences (time, kind, etc.) help determine price. The assertion of LTV is that all value created is created by labor, as it is the transformative aspect provided by humans of the "Labor + Raw Goods + Means Of Production = Final Product" view of production.

Then as I suspected, it is just mumbo jumpo to allow people to make demands (I created the "value", so I deserve that thing).

Again my question, what is the actual use for the concept? If you can not use it to determine price, what is it for?

And there are still examples that show how useless it is, like an apple has no value because it grows by itself? But apple juice (or sugar extracted from apples) has more value than an apple, because labor is used to extract it from apples? What possible use could be for that metric (and what is the unit of "value" - a vague feeling that stuff is owed to you?)? Even though the nutritious value of an apple is higher than apple juice or sugar?

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#409

Post by MajorSauce »

gerritsg wrote: post #336
MajorSauce wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently made a bot to find profitable cryptocurrency pairs loops and while most exchanges already have dozens of users doing exactly the same thing (if the exchange itself is not doing it), I really liked the motivation it gave me to start a new coding project in a language I did not touch for some time (C#) instead of my traditional python approach. You post just inspired me to make something similar (whether sto…

Are you having much success with it? What platform are you using? I've wanted to do something similar in Rust. Or if your bot is just _finding_ the pairs now but not trading, is there a platform you plan to use?

So far the only exchanges where I found some opportunities are the ones that do have a public API, probably because there is less competition on those.

For example, I have yet to find a single profitable pair loop on Binance, despite parsing their WebSocket feed.

But on exchanges that implement anti-scripts, it is not uncommon to have pair loops with a ±1% profit after fees. The hassle is to implement trading with tools like Selenium to proceed with the trade.

Re: Are You Trading or Gambling?

#410

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

8note wrote: post #355
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I can buy a pizza for a coworker in a different country without worrying about exchange rates or anything else. FYI, everything you said can be done with cold hard cash.

Is there no exchange rate from your country's currency into Bitcoin?

Yes, but there are usually no exchange fees.
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