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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#531

Post by lottin »

gonehome wrote: post #529
lottin wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 years is a lot . To put it in perspective, the Industrial Revolution started 250 years ago in England. But feel free to disagree, of course. The evidence doesn't care if you don't agree with it. It's still there, for everyone to see.

Took me a bit to realize you are the same account from the last thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630271 ) You have a clear motivated reasoning bias (crypto = bad and useless) paired without understanding the basics of how crypto works. You don’t have conversations with people, you just ignore details that disagree with your pre-existing conclusion and focus on digressions you think prove your point (ty…

Why don't you address the arguments themselves, instead of attempting to discredit them by attacking the person who made them?

That isn't exactly arguing in good faith, to use your own words.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#532

Post by FridgeSeal »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #517
amon22 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto in it's current form is indeed useless.

Not according to the market. What makes you think you can make such a claim in stark contrast (even if you believe a large portion is frivolous speculation) to the market?

“The market” as it currently operates in crypto is a greater fool scam, coupled with cryptos being deflationary, it’s not shocking that the price increases regardless of value.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#533

Post by FridgeSeal »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #530
FridgeSeal wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I think I'd still prefer to have the energy, rather than the imaginary internet tokens, because once again, at least the energy is...useful.

Its comforting to know the loudest critics refuse to face facts. That is actually how I predicted the run up to the last bull market - when the critics resorted to old or ignorant arguments. Have you heard of Chesterton's Fence?

> That is actually how I predicted the run up to the last bull market

That’s nice for you I guess?

> Have you heard of Chesterton's Fence?

I have, but this comes across as a slightly more sophisticated version of the fallback that’s often resorted to by defenders of crypto: if in doubt, claim that your opponents “simply don’t get it” or just proclaim “have fun being poor”. We understand crypto too, we’re just not convinced.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#534

Post by [deleted] »

benreesman wrote: post #461
jhatemyjob wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how I had 6 upvotes, then the lemmings started regurgitating pro-Rust propaganda in the replies, and now I'm at 0.

Your comment is fucking perfect, clearly exaggerated for effect, and while I sometimes fail, I personally try to rein in my friggin Aspergers enough to not get precious about shit like that. You sir, are the apex predator of subtle HN trolling. (The guy with the collider thing above is hot on your heels).

[deleted]

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#535

Post by acjohnson55 »

kolchinski wrote: post #281
acjohnson55 wrote: post #39

> Claim 2: Blockchain technology has no non-monetary applications (Confidence: High) I would replace "non-monetery" with "non-financial". I think it's a perfectly reasonable (albeit, imperfect) solution as a ledger and exchange mechanism for new financial assets.

Author here, thanks – great point. Mind leaving it as a comment on the essay itself as well for posterity? Or I'm happy to add a footnote/comment quoting you.

Just saw this. I'm trying to post a more substantive version of this comment to your blog, but for some reason, it keeps erroring.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#536

Post by cableshaft »

gonehome wrote: post #463
cableshaft wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community was not fully known back then (at least not in 2009, post-launch). It was possible to play around with the bitcoin wallet software back then, let it mine some coins from your desktop, and read the bitcointalk forum but not post on the forums or trade whatever you mined until it was worth a few bucks a bit later. I was one of those people (might have been early 2010 for me though, can't quite remember wh…

This largely matches my experience fwiw - I was in college in 2010 and didn’t have much money (and coins were harder to buy back then too, mining was still not super easy without a gpu rig). I thought the tech was cool, but never owned any real amount and didn’t really have an understanding of why there might be long term value. There was Bitcoin faucet which used to give out some free - I think that was how I got so…

Yeah I remember the faucets being around, and I want to say I must have collected some, but I don't recall any wallet that might have had them in there or where they might be stored if I even did. If I did I probably only did it once or twice, but that's like $200k+ worth of coins (in today's money, back then they were pretty much worthless) that's probably got recycled with an old desktop somewhere. Oops. But maybe I didn't bother either, I can't remember, it's so long ago now.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#537

Post by fb03 »

samtho wrote: post #470
fb03 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you code the stuff yourself? How did you start? I am looking forward to writing my own stuff. I found that some exchanges like OKX/OKEX have APIs that allow you to algorithmically trade.

I was using a smaller exchange’s API but now I use alpaca.markets. I wrote the program in Node.js that just runs a callback function every N second interval and decides if it’s a good time to buy, sell, or do nothing. My best advice to getting started is write your trading algorithm or decision making logic in a parameterized way so you can feed in snapshots of time for back testing. I’m sure there are frameworks out…

Wow, I just read your comment but even without doing so, this is exactly what I did last weekend! Loaded 4+ years of crypto market data into a database using python+some binance api, so that I can feed the historic data for backtesting/development purposes!

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#538

Post by samtho »

fb03 wrote: post #537
samtho wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was using a smaller exchange’s API but now I use alpaca.markets. I wrote the program in Node.js that just runs a callback function every N second interval and decides if it’s a good time to buy, sell, or do nothing. My best advice to getting started is write your trading algorithm or decision making logic in a parameterized way so you can feed in snapshots of time for back testing. I’m sure there are frameworks out…

Wow, I just read your comment but even without doing so, this is exactly what I did last weekend! Loaded 4+ years of crypto market data into a database using python+some binance api, so that I can feed the historic data for backtesting/development purposes!

I’ve looked at one or two frameworks (that I cannot even recall now) and they all seemed to over complicates thing. I’m not smart (or educated on the specifics of) enough to invent complicated trading algos, so why not just make it simple, observable, and testable. Great to see you came up with this independently as well, I’m not in finance so its a little validating that I’m not totally crazy!

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#539

Post by fb03 »

samtho wrote: post #538
fb03 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I just read your comment but even without doing so, this is exactly what I did last weekend! Loaded 4+ years of crypto market data into a database using python+some binance api, so that I can feed the historic data for backtesting/development purposes!

I’ve looked at one or two frameworks (that I cannot even recall now) and they all seemed to over complicates thing. I’m not smart (or educated on the specifics of) enough to invent complicated trading algos, so why not just make it simple, observable, and testable. Great to see you came up with this independently as well, I’m not in finance so its a little validating that I’m not totally crazy!

Same thing for me. Both frameworks I looked (freqtrade and some other with a fancy name) had a insurmountable amount of context needed just to grok the concepts and how to make the complicated machinery go. I would probably spend months just trying to understand it.

It got me so uneasy to the point I just decided to go straight at it. Load the values and hey, let's try some backtesting. Simple stuff. If at the end of the day I end with more money than I began, shit is working. tweak that into oblivion. That's my plan.

So yeah, you also validated me (because I was thinking "this is just going to be stupid stuff. that can't work").

Thank you for existing and lucky me to be able to have this timely exchange in such a noisy communication world heh

o/

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