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

Is Web3 Bullshit?

maxread.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 383 posts

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#261

Post by notahacker »

fivea wrote: post #184
lottin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokens are neither deflationary nor inflationary. The idea that an asset is deflationary or inflationary implies that the supply of the asset determines its price. This is incorrect from a theoretical standpoint, as well as from what empirical evidence tells us. It's a misapplication of the Quantity Theory of Money. QTM is a theory of money, it doesn't apply to stocks, tokens, assets in general, or in situations wher…

> The idea that an asset is deflationary or inflationary implies that the supply of the asset determines its price. Isn't this one of the most basic properties of supply and demand, though? I mean,what do you expect to happen if your supply is artificially capped and early adopters start to pump up demand for the stuff they own? In fact, isn't that the whole point of these schemes? I mean,do you know anyone who decid…

> Isn't that one of the most basic properties of supply and demand though.

The most basic property of supply and demand is that price is determined by the interaction of supply and demand, so a fixing the supply alone determines nothing at all about its value, which is why the incessant pumping is necessary. The cryptoproponent's argument that cryptocurrencies must increase in value because there are hard limits on their growth rate is a cargo cult version of the law of supply and demand made to serve the pump

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#262

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #230
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a stock anyone is interested in that isn’t expected to go up and reward early adopters. “If the stock community wants to demonstrate that it isn't a giant Ponzi scheme, why not come up with a non-deflationary stock, which will not massively reward 'early adopters' at the expense of everyone else, in perpetuity?”

The price of the stock reflects the underlying value though, out of a increasing pool of resources. Companies transmute inputs into outputs of greater future value. Every stock is not a GameStop competing to extract a bigger share of a limited pool of tullip investors.

The price of a stock reflects beliefs about the prospect for price growth [0]. Since these beliefs may be nth-order derivatives (i.e. I believe that other people believe that other people believe that ....), those beliefs have varying levels of connection to "underlying value".

[0] or, alternatively, dividend payouts, but that's a totally different story.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#263

Post by ClumsyPilot »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #250
lkrubner wrote: post #213

For awhile I insisted that all cryptocurrencies were bullshit and also Ponzi schemes, but given how many people take pleasure in buying them, selling them, and talking about them, I've come round to viewing them as a kind of in-game currency, with the game being a bit like those role-playing games that you play in your neighborhood while interacting with the real world. Anyone who grew up playing some variation of As…

The ratio of crime to harmless fun does concern me. For example if Monero is 90% ransomware and violent gangs and only 10% innocent gambling then I'd rather not use it.

As far as wel can tell fron panama papers, etc, most money laundering and corryption schemes use 'normal' money

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#264

Post by aptidude187 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #250
lkrubner wrote: post #213

For awhile I insisted that all cryptocurrencies were bullshit and also Ponzi schemes, but given how many people take pleasure in buying them, selling them, and talking about them, I've come round to viewing them as a kind of in-game currency, with the game being a bit like those role-playing games that you play in your neighborhood while interacting with the real world. Anyone who grew up playing some variation of As…

The ratio of crime to harmless fun does concern me. For example if Monero is 90% ransomware and violent gangs and only 10% innocent gambling then I'd rather not use it.

The number 1 choice of criminals is still and will always be fiat. It doesn't require any sophisticated tools or knowledge and is accepted everywhere.

The 'crypto is for criminals' narrative has been debunked so many times, but if you still need convincing just look how crime infested traditional banking is in comparison: https://youtu.be/f8iPIV9cBAs

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#265

Post by lottin »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #222
lottin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokens are neither deflationary nor inflationary. The idea that an asset is deflationary or inflationary implies that the supply of the asset determines its price. This is incorrect from a theoretical standpoint, as well as from what empirical evidence tells us. It's a misapplication of the Quantity Theory of Money. QTM is a theory of money, it doesn't apply to stocks, tokens, assets in general, or in situations wher…

If you were to take an introductory economics course the first day would prove you wrong. Resouce scarcity combined with increasing demand means prices go up. It most certainly applies when all currencies are designed to operate in the same way because they then move in concert and there is no alternative to counter this.

> Resouce scarcity combined with increasing demand means prices go up.

And? The demand for an asset is tied to its utility. You can't just assume that the demand will continue to increase forever, but that's exactly what the notion of "deflationary asset" implies.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#266

Post by legutierr »

speedgoose wrote: post #47
legutierr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the latest crypto pyramid scheme The client libraries for Ethereum are called “web3”, and have been for half a decade at least. Web3 has been a core concept promoted by the Ethereum team from the beginning. Say what you will about Ethereum, it is not the “latest crypto pyramid scheme”.

Yes I guess we can drop the "latest".

Regardless as to whether Eth is currently overpriced, real people pay gas fees to the Ethereum network to use the services it provides. And regardless as to how you feel about value of those services, to those people who are paying those fees, those services do have value.

In other words, the price of Eth is derived in part from real demand for the use of the services of the Ethereum network. If speculative interest in Eth were to completely collapse, its price would not go to zero, because demand for the use of the Ethereum network would sustain it.

I imagine that you would argue that demand for Ethereum network services is itself driven by pyramid schemes, and is therefore inflated. Perhaps. That does not mean, however, that Ethereum itself is a pyramid scheme. And certainly not all of the demand for Ethereum services is illegitimate.

A pyramid scheme requires that cashing out of one's investment depend on new investment money entering the scheme. It is not unreasonable, however, to purchase Ethereum with the hope that the price will go up because it will need to be purchased by users of the network, who will pay higher prices in the future when demand for the network's services goes up.

You can disagree with this proposition without calling Ethereum a pyramid scheme. Just because you think Eth is a bad investment does not necessarily mean that it is a pyramid scheme.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#267

Post by diveanon »

bsenftner wrote: post #111

Yes it is bullshit. Any of you positive activists have any financial literacy? I've not met a single person who is positive about cryptocurrencies that also has a finance degree, that is not also a conman selling crap securities. Every respectable financially knowledgeable person I know calls them a fraud.

This is laughably false and easily disproved by even a cursory search of who is putting time and money into this space.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#269

Post by woodruffw »

lottin wrote: post #258
woodruffw wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of some cryptocurrency exchanges that offer stablecoins , which are a dollar-denominated asset that’s (theoretically) backed by cash in the bank. We’ve seen plenty of evidence that the largest stablecoin players are actually fraudsters. I don’t know of any exchange that offers a deposit account that’s dollar-denominated but backed by cryptocurrency. I can think of lots of reasons for that, FDIC regulations bei…

I'm talking about bitcoin-denominated accounts backed with bitcoins. These are the standard exchange accounts that most people have.

Okay. In what world would any retail consumer accept a Bitcoin-denominated account based on marginal Bitcoin reserves? Exchanges would be forced to purchase on the open market to meet their withdrawals during demand, which would cause another deflationary spiral. It’s a nightmare scenario with no conceivable upside compared to actual currency.

And again, this is before we get to the problem of “the government lets you do this.”

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#270

Post by chewbacha »

woodruffw wrote: post #237
chewbacha wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks (aka securities) and other products also suffer from Ponzi schemes though. Hence the bureaucracy of the SEC and other governments tasked with regulating and policing the industry.

The SEC could be called many things, but “massive” isn’t one of them. They have fewer than 5,000 employees, which makes them microscopic on the federal government’s scale and virtually nonexistent proportional to the size of market they’re tasked with regulating.

Thanks for that. I had thought they were bigger based on their impact but compared to the FDA (14k) and USDA (100k) they are much smaller by head count. I’ve edited that adjective out of the original post.

I’m disheartened by how small the FTC and SEC actually are upon review.

Post reply on HN