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Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

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Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#71

Post by philosopher1234 »

cybernautique wrote: post #70
philosopher1234 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone is buying NFTs because they believe the price is going to go up, and they tell themselves that the reason the price is going up is because NFTs are useful, but in reality NFTs are not, that is irrational. So it allows them to have monetary value while contributing nothing useful to the economy, and in fact causing people harm. It is possible NFTs do have value in the sense of being good, but them being pr…

That's not irrational in the sense of there lacking inherent reasoning or rationalization, it's just a poor deduction. If you mean that rational agents are incapable of flawed reasoning, then I agree that humans are somewhat irrational (and further that no human could ever be rational). I suppose my biggest gripe is this: how do you construct a notion of rationality which allows for some people to be perfectly ration…

I think irrational is something like retaining a false belief despite it being clear that it is false. It’s got something to do with holding on to a point of view despite its inadequacy.

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#73

Post by cybernautique »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #71
cybernautique wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not irrational in the sense of there lacking inherent reasoning or rationalization, it's just a poor deduction. If you mean that rational agents are incapable of flawed reasoning, then I agree that humans are somewhat irrational (and further that no human could ever be rational). I suppose my biggest gripe is this: how do you construct a notion of rationality which allows for some people to be perfectly ration…

I think irrational is something like retaining a false belief despite it being clear that it is false. It’s got something to do with holding on to a point of view despite its inadequacy.

Then much of science is irrational; what about those times where it's understood that a belief is false, but it also holds the most explanative power of all other considered beliefs?

And, again, the notion that something is 'clearly false' at some point presupposes perfect information about the context within which the belief is held.

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#75

Post by mdorazio »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #31
mdorazio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Want" has nothing to do with it. If people are willing to pay money for a service, that service is by definition valuable. Many thousands of people are willing to pay money in the form of gas fees to transact on the Ethereum network, so the network must be providing value. Whether you think the endpoints (assets/coins/whatever) themselves have value is irrelevant. I have a feeling that whatever definition you're usi…

> If people are willing to pay money for a service, that service is by definition valuable. This is only true if you define "value" to mean "people are willing to pay money for it." But that's a useless and circular definition. It's only tolerated because assuming that money is a proxy for value was useful for making crude models in economics.

You're welcome to provide a better definition.

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#76

Post by mdorazio »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #25
mdorazio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Want" has nothing to do with it. If people are willing to pay money for a service, that service is by definition valuable. Many thousands of people are willing to pay money in the form of gas fees to transact on the Ethereum network, so the network must be providing value. Whether you think the endpoints (assets/coins/whatever) themselves have value is irrelevant. I have a feeling that whatever definition you're usi…

If 1000 people participate in lynchings and pay money to enact them do lynchings have value? Very comfortable saying that my definition of value is opposed to many companies and startups

To those people? Yes, by definition. You seem to be conflating value to individuals with value to society, which is a massively different thing.

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#77

Post by mdorazio »

dicefordeath wrote: post #33
mdorazio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Want" has nothing to do with it. If people are willing to pay money for a service, that service is by definition valuable. Many thousands of people are willing to pay money in the form of gas fees to transact on the Ethereum network, so the network must be providing value. Whether you think the endpoints (assets/coins/whatever) themselves have value is irrelevant. I have a feeling that whatever definition you're usi…

And what utility are they extracting, exactly? It's incorrect to assume that a willingness to pay is always indicative of durable underlying value. See every bubble ever, for example. The real problem in the world of crypto is that it's gone through many boom and bust cycles without real innovation to match. The future of what crypto could deliver is as speculative now as it was five years ago.

You've redefined general value to "durable underlying value". I'm not even sure what you would consider that to be outside of physical assets. Does GitHub have durable underlying value? I would strongly argue it does not, but it's still valuable because it provides something people find enough use for to pay money.

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#78

Post by moepstar »

a_square_peg wrote: post #55

I think crypto space has managed to create a class of unregulated financial instruments and markets - I feel like I'm watching what would happen if the stock market was not regulated at all. If I were Wall Street trader, I think this is really fascinating - sufficient amount to be interesting (billions of dollars at play) and regulators are yet to make sense of what's going on. FYI, there are less than 5000 publicly…

Actually, it's way more than 6000..

CoinMarketCap lists 13684, Coingecko lists 10394 - which probably includes a truckload of BSC "shitcoins", getting more by the minute...

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#79

Post by mohanmcgeek »

swalsh wrote: post #7

I think Crypto is a bunch of things to a bunch of people. Some see it as a fun way to make a quick buck, some see it as an alternative to gold in a time with unusual inflation of the dollar. I see it as the future of the web. There's a lot of energy coming around the concept of Decentralized Apps. or Web 3.0, today we have web 2.0 with large centralized websites ran by huge tech monopolies. Regardless of your politic…

Even if we assume cryptocurrencies have some role to play in the future dWeb, wouldn't that be the new currencies created by those dWeb services and not these ones being hyped right now?

Re: Ask HN: Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

#80

Post by mohanmcgeek »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #37

Highly recommend episode #231 of Lex Fridman talking to Alex Gladstein - it's a long but interesting discussion on human rights, democracy, totalitarianism, and how money fits into the picture. Alex describes BTC as a trojan horse, a "number go up" technology that attracts buyers by being the best performing asset (certainly a tautology, it keeps performing well because it's been performing well) - once it becomes th…

> people value money that is not controlled by their government.

And that's how banknotes came into being

Reserve banks are banks, not their respective countries governments

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