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Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

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Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#31

Post by lordgrenville »

jo6gwb wrote: post #26
lordgrenville wrote: post #11

Tangent: as a Money Stuff fan, one minor gripe I have is that Matt often links back to previous newsletters (as in the first link here), but to find what he's referring to you have to trawl through the entire day's items. One simple fix would be adding ids to the heading ( ) tags and linking to those. Not sure how much work it would be to tweak this in their CMS but it would add a lot of value.

You should email him - his email address is at the bottom of every article.

Eh. I've emailed him before about finance stuff but I don't think this is really his department.

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#32

Post by rmbyrro »

nefitty wrote: post #29
vsareto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this has just been a casino built with entertainment and memes from the last 10 years. No one wants the old school casino experience of smoke-filled rooms, classic table games, and shows any more. We just want to buy random tokens with questionable value, see a Shiba Inu dog show, and walk past a bunch of TV walls with Twitch streamers talking about how they got rich with some new coin on the way to buy l…

It reminds me a lot of Terror Management Theory. Sure, there are apex predators who are knowingly scamming and defrauding people, but how do I describe a coworker who is enthusiastic about the $1000 of Bitcoin he has? Even a cursory, technically-minded dig in the garden shows that there's nothing at the center. Smart contracts require oracles. NFTs are addresses that depend on an external interface to make any sense…

I used to think just like that (in general, not this particular topic).

Today, it looks to me as a presumptuous way of considering what each person decides to do with they time and lives.

One could as easily argue the oxygen you and I are breathing right now is a big waste of resources.

Let's just let people do what they want to do. If they wanna spin up a machine and run a hash algo all day, just let them.

What's the real difference compared to you playing a game? Or watching YouTube? Or whatever you'd like to?

They're not forcing us into anything, let them in peace...

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#33

Post by rmbyrro »

johanneskanybal wrote: post #20
joosters wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same as any other crypto coin; a negative-sum game, where investors (as a whole) are guaranteed to lose. https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2018-07-18-0148-va...

Don't want to be grouped with some shiba fanatic but lots of misunderstandings in that paper (although always nice to hear arguments from both sides to avoid becoming a fanatic). The biggest root misunderstanding in the paper is comparing bitcoin to shares of a company instead of say usd. There's also a ton of final consumer use cases nowadays and don't really buy the negative sum game either, would be fun if he used…

Exactly. Problem is Bitcoin was meant to be a currency. But it still cannot feasibly be a currency, so in practice people see it as an investment vehicle, which it's not supposed to be

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#34

Post by vmception »

johanneskanybal wrote: post #20
joosters wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same as any other crypto coin; a negative-sum game, where investors (as a whole) are guaranteed to lose. https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2018-07-18-0148-va...

Don't want to be grouped with some shiba fanatic but lots of misunderstandings in that paper (although always nice to hear arguments from both sides to avoid becoming a fanatic). The biggest root misunderstanding in the paper is comparing bitcoin to shares of a company instead of say usd. There's also a ton of final consumer use cases nowadays and don't really buy the negative sum game either, would be fun if he used…

> Don't want to be grouped with some shiba fanatic

> But I mean we would be having the same conversation if this was a $100mm marketcap coin, instead of a $36bn marketcap coin, but the criticism would be less true

apparently pointing out the limitations of a low-hanging fruit criticism makes one a fanatic with no discussion on the common enterprise generating revenue, just the association with the meme brand.

zero discussion on whether the observer caught or missed all of the alpha, zero discussion on whether there was any conflict or any interest in the underlying asset, zero verification of whether the aforementioned exchange product created actually had the $500mm in assets and growing or daily trade volume even though people - including a Brazilian University's professor in a comment to a US securities regulator - have been trying to compare crypto assets to equities or a commodity supported by cashflow for an entire decade.

the irony being that without the token nobody would have noticed this 4 month old exchange generating $30mm-$490mm daily volume existed - earning fees no matter what the nature of the volume is - but the existence of the token and accessible branding prompts otherwise intelligent people to shut their mind off to any discussion about it, not even considering to even look at the product. just call the person that did look, or at least someone else that would look, a fanatic. probably hyperbole, as they feel the need to blend in to elevate their own opinion without similar exclusion, but frustrating none the less.

and doubling down makes me look like a fanatic, well played, ser

historians: this is the state of crypto discussions in 2021, just want a couple people now, and more people in the future, to see that.

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#35

Post by anon9001 »

vsareto wrote: post #23
StopHammoTime wrote: post #3

I feel literally like Abe Simpson "I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn’t 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!" We used to buy things that had physical value, now we just buy memes.

I feel like this has just been a casino built with entertainment and memes from the last 10 years. No one wants the old school casino experience of smoke-filled rooms, classic table games, and shows any more. We just want to buy random tokens with questionable value, see a Shiba Inu dog show, and walk past a bunch of TV walls with Twitch streamers talking about how they got rich with some new coin on the way to buy l…

> The whole movement is really good at making you feel dumb for following safe and conservative career advice like "do something practical, save your money, and retire eventually (maybe)". Why sit through yet another technical interview when you could just buy the right stock/cryptocoin?

But wait, actually, why sit through yet another technical interview when you could just buy the right stock/cryptocoin?

It seems to me that a lot of would-be conservative, career-driven tech workers are discovering that they can make more money flipping jpegs and meme coins than writing code for a big company.

Meanwhile, people like us are doing the "real" work of... using machine learning to increase engagement and sell ads for crap people don't need? running A/B tests to see which button configuration causes more UGC? optimizing conversion funnels for ad campaigns?

I've come to the sincere belief that the people involved in SHIB or NFTs or any of that are actually contributing more to society than most software engineers that I know. They're trying out new ideas about property ownership and forming new communities around new values. They're doing something of questionable value, but the vast majority of tech workers are doing something of negative value.

Regardless of the topic, if your conclusion is that "No, it is the children who are wrong!", chances are you're missing the point.

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#36

Post by shard »

kybernetikos wrote: post #24
igorkraw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on physical value being a bad concept, but I still have to push back a bit >Money doesn't really have physical value, only speculative (you want it because you trust that someone else will want it in the future). And because you need it to pay your taxes in it >Shares in public companies don't really have physical value unless you own enough to change the management. Sure you 'own' that fraction of the c…

> since private property is also only legally a thing This is a particularly interesting thing to point out in this context - property ownership is a meme itself. > Things have value because we need them (inelastic part of the supply-demand curve), things have a price because we want them (elastic part of the supply-demand curve). Incidentally while it's an interesting distinction, I don't agree with your comment on…

> Incidentally while it's an interesting distinction, I don't agree with your comment on need/value want/price. I value lots of things I don't need. Humans are creatures that value things, things that are valued are valuable.

It sounds like there is a disagreement on definition of "need". Perhaps yours is closer to "will physically die if not present", and the parent poster's is "somewhere on Maslow's hierarchy of needs".

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#37

Post by animal_spirits »

anon9001 wrote: post #35
vsareto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this has just been a casino built with entertainment and memes from the last 10 years. No one wants the old school casino experience of smoke-filled rooms, classic table games, and shows any more. We just want to buy random tokens with questionable value, see a Shiba Inu dog show, and walk past a bunch of TV walls with Twitch streamers talking about how they got rich with some new coin on the way to buy l…

> The whole movement is really good at making you feel dumb for following safe and conservative career advice like "do something practical, save your money, and retire eventually (maybe)". Why sit through yet another technical interview when you could just buy the right stock/cryptocoin? But wait, actually, why sit through yet another technical interview when you could just buy the right stock/cryptocoin? It seems to…

> It seems to me that a lot of would-be conservative, career-driven tech workers are discovering that they can make more money flipping jpegs and meme coins than writing code for a big company.

To me it feels like selling snake oil. Things like NFTs do not seem to have any real value except to those who believe it has real value.

I do like your take on it that these engineers are exploring new outlets of engineering and that could have some positive externalities kind of like how car enthusiasts in the 50s' were able to build out incredible racing cars and racing series that improved engines quite dramatically

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#38

Post by Hasu »

nefitty wrote: post #29
vsareto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this has just been a casino built with entertainment and memes from the last 10 years. No one wants the old school casino experience of smoke-filled rooms, classic table games, and shows any more. We just want to buy random tokens with questionable value, see a Shiba Inu dog show, and walk past a bunch of TV walls with Twitch streamers talking about how they got rich with some new coin on the way to buy l…

It reminds me a lot of Terror Management Theory. Sure, there are apex predators who are knowingly scamming and defrauding people, but how do I describe a coworker who is enthusiastic about the $1000 of Bitcoin he has? Even a cursory, technically-minded dig in the garden shows that there's nothing at the center. Smart contracts require oracles. NFTs are addresses that depend on an external interface to make any sense…

> Sure, there are apex predators who are knowingly scamming and defrauding people, but how do I describe a coworker who is enthusiastic about the $1000 of Bitcoin he has?

The English language has plenty of words, the ones that come to mind are: rube, mark, or sucker.

It's unfortunate, the cryptocurrency and blockchain space is so filled with scams and con artists that at this point, even if a very important and significant use of blockchain appeared, or a viable cryptocurrency emerged, the majority of reasonable people would dismiss it because the space is oversaturated with bullshit. And the true believers are either joining in on the scams or becoming victims, which are ultimately the only two choices once an ecosystem is as overrun as the crypto space is now.

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#39

Post by igorkraw »

shard wrote: post #36
kybernetikos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since private property is also only legally a thing This is a particularly interesting thing to point out in this context - property ownership is a meme itself. > Things have value because we need them (inelastic part of the supply-demand curve), things have a price because we want them (elastic part of the supply-demand curve). Incidentally while it's an interesting distinction, I don't agree with your comment on…

> Incidentally while it's an interesting distinction, I don't agree with your comment on need/value want/price. I value lots of things I don't need. Humans are creatures that value things, things that are valued are valuable. It sounds like there is a disagreement on definition of "need". Perhaps yours is closer to "will physically die if not present", and the parent poster's is "somewhere on Maslow's hierarchy of ne…

Yes, I was including emotional, subjective needs in there. I think GP and I mean the same thing

Re: Doing Fraud on Securities Fraud

#40

Post by igorkraw »

kybernetikos wrote: post #24
igorkraw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on physical value being a bad concept, but I still have to push back a bit >Money doesn't really have physical value, only speculative (you want it because you trust that someone else will want it in the future). And because you need it to pay your taxes in it >Shares in public companies don't really have physical value unless you own enough to change the management. Sure you 'own' that fraction of the c…

> since private property is also only legally a thing This is a particularly interesting thing to point out in this context - property ownership is a meme itself. > Things have value because we need them (inelastic part of the supply-demand curve), things have a price because we want them (elastic part of the supply-demand curve). Incidentally while it's an interesting distinction, I don't agree with your comment on…

Like I said to the child comment, I think we are aligned on value, I included subjective and emotional needs on this. I do think this distinction makes sense because the more something has value for you, the less elastic your personal price-demand curve becomes. And certain things we all have a demand-floor. And that's kind of the difference between price and value right? Value is the thing that's stays valuable and desirable even if it's not priced and can't be exchanged
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