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The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

mollywhite.net

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Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#121

Post by jaggirs »

germanjoey wrote: post #44

The article (or, rather, the commentary in the link above on the article) talks about the fallacious notion of "market cap" in regards to cryptocurrencies. That is to say, e.g., multiplying the number of bitcoins in existence times the current market price is a silly metric because the entire market would never be able to cash-out at that maximum price. What I was wondering was: is there a better number? e.g., is the…

For every btc bought there is one sold, the equation you gave thus adds up to zero.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#122

Post by matheusmoreira »

flaque wrote: post #120

The issue with crypto is that reasonable use cases are early, and don’t attract attention except for niche communities. There’s a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) But realistically, the interesting projects are very small and hard to find. However, scams and ponzi schemes, by th…

Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very demoralizing.

Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better projects.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#123

Post by scottiebarnes »

loph wrote: post #119

"Crypto" to me is about cryptography, not cryptocurrencies. re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_naming_controversy and (of course) this: https://www.iacr.org/meetings/crypto/ I wish that lazy people did not overload this term.

Language is fluid and evolves over time, get over it.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#124

Post by daveed »

vageli wrote: post #15
trhaynes wrote: post #10

Does anyone know if there is a tool or platform that makes it easy to make/publish this type of "leave footnotes on an article"? The UX here is nice and simple, and I think there is utility in sharing feedback this way (vs. blockquotes in email, or Google Docs comments, etc).

I too would like to know. I mailed the author and if they respond I will let you know as well.

fwiw she responded to a Q about this on twitter: https://twitter.com/glyph/status/1507425853243756544

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#125

Post by [deleted] »

FabHK wrote: post #118
nightski wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory it sounds so logical! Is it though? Have you actually tried to apply this in practice to a trading strategy? I think once you start trying to predict prices based on NPV of future cash flows this quickly falls apart, even with large behemoths like Microsoft, Apple, etc...

I am not suggesting that you or I can compute the NPV of future cash flows and then value the share, certainly not easily. But that was not the point. The point was to distinguish shares (and other securities) from coins: the price of the former is (softly) constrained to be within the vicinity of their intrinsic value. Cryptos have zero intrinsic value.

[deleted]

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#126

Post by dogman144 »

twox2 wrote: post #94
pavlov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an important nuance to this: enough unsophisticated people think it's money, so there's lots of opportunity for finance people to make money. Traditional finance is well-trodden, every arbitrage opportunity has been tried decades ago. But crypto is full of doe-eyed innocents who think they're reinventing finance. Of course experienced traders want to take advantage of them. It must be more fun than ye olde eu…

There are financial mechanics that exist only in the scope of DeFi and not in traditional finance. It actually IS new in a lot of ways and skilled folks are teaming up to make a killing, not just experienced traders. Take a look at what's happening in the "MEV" space. None of this existed in traditional finance.

Ya this is more my point. Taking traditional algorithmic trading skills into a place specifically designed for it and with new market mechanisms.

Whoever spends some time building DeFi/L1 protocols is going to make a killing jumping over to Jump/Jane Street/HRT in a few years with that knowledge.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#127

Post by dvt »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #111
dvt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Sorry for late reply, HN time-limits nested comment replies.) Basically, if you were to issue N tokens into an AMM, you would also need to provide the counter-party liquidity. So let's say you're sending 100 MESC to a pool, and the initial price is 0.01 USD (to keep it simple), you would also have to seed the pool with 1 USD. Once that's done, people start trading -- some other people might even provide liquidity (a…

This whole discussion starts from your response to a comment that "[t]okens _are_ worthless if no one wants to buy them", asserting that this was "[f]undamentally not true". But it seems very much that it is true. Did you mean to make a different point?

I'm not sure if we disagree, my point was a technical one: traditional markets are "order book" markets where for every buyer, there's a seller. Crypto exchanges use AMMs, where there does not need to be a buyer for every seller, as the AMM handles that automatically.

If your point is that tokens without liquidity are worthless, then that's true (that's why initial decentralized exchange offerings always involve seeding liquidity pools, as mentioned). If your point is that tokens can get arbitrarily close to zero if everyone sells, that's also true.

But if you get a token that's being actively traded on exchanges and has healthy liquidity pools and a healthy market cap, that certainly is a better deal than some percentage "equity" an early-stage startup dangles in front of you.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#128

Post by _zllx »

doogerdog wrote: post #65

Molly provides a great service to skeptics like me. She concise, easy to read, articulate and funny. I feel like I live in a world where a huge train wreck is getting set up. I would like to follow along but it has gotten to the point where I can't get myself to read many of these 'News' stories about a new crypto adventure. I only have a little news reading time in a day and the typical article about NFTs or whateve…

> I would read her site even if I were on the other side of the argument

It's been a great resource to confirm that I'm not falling for the most obvious scams (like NFTs or BNB chain scams which constitute a majority of web3isgoinggreat posts) nor investing in easily exploited projects. She perhaps inadvertently helps the cryptocurrency space by pointing out scam artists to avoid working with. There is a world of good going on outside of the typical bored ape garbage in the cryptocurrency space. You would be getting a raw deal if relying solely on her for cryptocurrency information.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#129

Post by woodruffw »

eatonphil wrote: post #112
woodruffw wrote: post #2

Excellent editing. I’m an otherwise fervent defender of the NYT (even through its many mistakes), but the lack of basic critical analysis and obvious conflicts of interest in this piece were a bridge too far for even me.

I agree this piece was embarrassingly lazy. But what were the conflicts of interest? Just a quick check and I can't exactly find him having ties to any crypto company.

From one of the footnotes: it sounds like Roose used his position at the NYT to boost an otherwise obscure NFT. He's also publicly advocated[1] for a loosening of the rules that newspapers have typically imposed for financial reporting (no ownership in/positions against the companies/assets being reported on.)

Re-reading my original comment, I think I was too forward in asserting that there's a conflict of interest. But I find his public positions around becoming an interested party concerning and a potential risk to his objectivity.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220219172535/https://twitter.c...

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