Negative comment's here are going to be prime meme material in the future.
Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
421–430 of 670 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#422It's a Macro crash. SP500 is down -%5 YTD. Meta -37%, Netflix -65%. Lots of pain spreading. You shouldn't gloat or be happy. Give it a couple of more months like this, and lots of the HN audience would be worried about layoffs. The security of your average software developer job is strongly tied to market cycles. If you want a place to direct your hate and bitterness, I would do it at the architects of the BOOM/BUSTS…
Boom & bust cycles seem to be a built in “feature” of market economies. The architects are not trying to create booms and busts per se, but they are trying to manage them so they aren’t as devastating as 1929.
But they're booming much harder and busting much harder...
Should the fed have stepped in to prevent a flash freeze in liquidity in March 2020? Probably. Did they go way way way too far? Maybe. Did they go way way too far in Aug 2020 and Nov 2020 and Dec 2020 and Jan 2021, etc? Definitely.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#423It's less that I'm glad the market is crashing, and more that I'm glad that the insufferable crypto bros are finally getting a punch to the mouth. Seriously, these people are the worst. Your average "crypto investor" has no skills, no mathematical foundations, nothing. Except for pure stupid luck, and the ability to spew inane crypto babble 24/7. And yes, they think they are much smarter than you, because they achiev…
I will preface this statement by stating that I know nothing about the stock market and let my retirement account be handled by an investor... What real math is involved in predicting the stock market? I understand there is a lot of theory behind TRYING to predict it, just as there is a lot of study in trying to predict trends in the stock market, which is why you are better off investing in groups of stocks as oppos…
> What real math is involved in predicting the stock market?
I have a MSC in Statistics, studied quantitative finance. Generally I'd agree with you. For general investing there's often little math involved other than some simple ratios and comparisons. Three numbers I look at most often are the Price-to-Sales ratio, Gross Profit %, and annual revenue growth. There's no complex math involved here at all.
Where investing does get mathy is in calculating risk. When constructing a portfolio, generally the aim is to maximize returns while minimizing risk below some threshold. There is some very interesting and fun maths involved in this process that is beyond the scope of general investing.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#424Yes.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
> thought crypto was supposed to be a hedge against the markets This made no theoretical sense from the start and has been quantitatively untrue for years.
The crypto believers told me US dollar would enter hyperinflation very soon and Bitcoin will be the only viable currency because it has a finite supply.
Why something that has a finite supply would be viable as a currency.
Since it's deflative all the incentive is holding, not spending. Why buy a house for 5 bitcoins now, if I can get it at 4 bitcoins 3 months from now..What if I could get it at 1 bitcoin in 3 years...crazy right..?
And no one spends, because the incentive is not here.
Our economies are all based on people wanting to spend or invest rather than stock money.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#426If you haven't yet caught on that cryptocoin are Ponzi schemes and a medium of exchange for criminal enterprises, then... you haven't caught on.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish we had a better phrase than "pyramid scheme", because IMO anything that's a "scheme" has people who know better at one end, and I really don't think there's anyone involved in crypto that is deliberately "winning". What's a phrase for when everyone is getting scammed, and not by any one person, but by an idea? Where there are no winners, only lucky and unlucky. Pyramid trap? Pyramid quagmire? IDK, but "scheme"…
Mania or bubble. I don't consider crypto market overall to be any type of scam or scheme. Just like I don't consider stock, or housing market to be one. Even if there is insanity, scams, schemes and fraud inside all of them.
At least in theory, stocks and housing are underpinned by intrinsic assets (i.e. things that exist in the real world and/or intersubjective agreements whose value and status are enforced by people with guns). Crypto doesn't have that quality even hypothetically (except to the extent that people insist it does), which pushes it toward the same category as many of the well-known financial scams (which were characterized by people obscuring the lack of assets propping up the value of the scheme).
Edit: I was being overly general with the term "pyramid scheme"
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true. If you take a bitcoin miner and put it on a gas well that is leaking methane which is 10x worse than CO2 and burn that methane to create CO2 you are increasing energy usage and cleaning the environment. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-03/methan... If you have already mined coal burning in a field and instead take that coal and put it through a generator and mine bitcoin with it yo…
The disconnect isn't that energy usage is bad, it's that many folks view bitcoin as a waste with no economic value. Burned methane/negative priced reproducible energy/excess energy in general would be better spent on more valuable energy intensive pursuits such as desalinization, metal smelting, direct air carbon capture....
I agree with your point on economic value.
But on other uses of the energy you can't really do these things,
desalinization - in the middle of the country with no salt water plus inconsistent energy
metal smelting - doesn't work with rapid turning on/off
direct air carbon capture - doesn't work with rapid turning on/off
Bitcoin miners can be turned on/off quickly and don't require much infrastructure except an internet connection. How would you ever run a big plant with unpredictable times/days that it could actually run?
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What real math is involved in predicting the stock market? Are we really comparing the two markets? Owning a stock means owning a piece of a business. If you have all the stock in the world, you seized all means of production, good job. If you own all the UnpossibleJimCoins in the world what exactly has changed? Oh but that coin is not insert another coin , it doesn't have the consensus/cult.
> Owning a stock means owning a piece of a business That is clearly not true. What you own, is something worth X amount of Y, where Y is what other believe it is worth. "Means of production" has a very specific meaning and what you're saying is not it.
Actually, it is true.
When you buy a share in a company, you own a slice of that company. You have voting rights, access to shareholder meetings, annual reports, bod meetings etc.
What that share is worth is what others perceive it's value. what it's market "worth" is completely irrelevant to the fact you own a share.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn. Why? Can’t regulate the whole planet. Might be better to let go of the hate…
> Might be better to let go of the hate… So that more blockchain opportunists, web3 wanderers and crypto trojan horses blossom in the next cycle, chant the same 'this time is different' screed and cause another crash? No. This blockchain cycle needs to stop, now that we know that they have no solutions or usecases other than gambling.
I supported Ukraine with crypto. (in I've bought actual stuff I liked on Internet with crypto (the only other option was PayPal which is blocked in my country).
There is sure a lot of dirty things going on on crypto but there are definitely totally legitimate use cases. You can gamble with fiat, you can gamble with crypto.
You can donate/buy with fiat, you can donate/buy with crypto.
I'm an opportunist who is in web3 and NFT space too, which is literally a free economy, and no one has to participate. Anyone can happily buy their NFTs if they find a value in them, and anyone can use crypto to transfer/donate money or buy things. Things can surely crash, so can fiat, stock market, or whole country economies.