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Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#471

Post by noxer »

giaour wrote: post #230
noxer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with this kind of "risk tolerance" usually dont take a risk even tho it would probably be totally "sane". If you think about it, many people make several million dollars over their life time but see it as to high of a risk to put 10k into something that could go to zero but it also could go to 100k or even more. That does not make much sense. The question should not be "should I risk the 10k? The question shou…

> many people make several million dollars over their life time but see it as to high of a risk to put 10k into something that could go to zero but it also could go to 100k or even more. That does not make much sense. The question should not be "should I risk the 10k? The question should be "am I in a financial position that allows me to lose 10k?" I see where you're trying to go by framing a loss against lifetime ea…

Obviously I didn't not attempt to cover ever possible case and personality you can think of that wasn't the goal anyway. Someone who gambles doesn't fall in the category of "risk intolerant" anyway. Beside that in "traditional" gambling the odds are against you so the whole risk/reward ration is out the window and "only a small lose over your whole lifetime" doesn't change this.

I would never encourage anyone to just trow money any anything that could potentially somehow give you more back. Roulette, lottery etc. are all statistically against you and you have zero way to choose clever or otherwise affect the outcome in your favor. Buying something with speculative value is completely different and it certainly is a good idea to actually inform yourself first about what yo buy. If you subjectively think the chance of loosing everything is over 50% I would look for something else after all the goal is to not lose so it should not be a blind throw it should just be something with high risk AND high reward.

I know someone who intentionally bough some rare apple device for like 1.1k. Fully aware that it might be worthless soon or break and loose most of its value. But it had a realist chance to gain value and it did, he sold it for over 10k 5 years later. Thats about +800% a risk/reward ration that does make sense.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#472

Post by naravara »

munificent wrote: post #392
IAmWorried wrote: post #9

It'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…

Here is my weird tin foil hat theory that explains, like, a lot of what's been going in the world in the past twenty years. A significant fraction of young single men feel a deep compulsion to indulge in risky behavior with a potential high reward in order to make a name for themselves or earn their place in society. I don't know if it's genetic, cultural, both. But for many young dudes, it's not enough to simply wor…

I think it's simpler than that. The ideology of the post-90s/post-Reagan neoliberal era inculcated a set of hyper-capitalist values that posited humanity as "homo economicus" and operated as if we are little more than producing, consuming animals who exist to mechanically produce generic "economic output" and consume "utility."

This is a deeply unsatisfying and spiritually empty existence. This leads to all the behaviors you mentioned as a form of rebellion and/or attempt at escaping the bonds of that kind of life. This sentiment has been catalogued in a variety of movies, including "Fight Club," the ur-text of Gen X anomie.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#473

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

capableweb wrote: post #394
epolanski wrote: post #379

Earlier 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.

That doesn’t sound right.

The obvious example being a hostile take over. One can literally buy up more of a company than anyone else and then attention to take control of the company. One defence being too literally discount shares for existing owners so they can buy up more of the company.

We just saw this happen with Twitter.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#474

Post by mirceal »

runjake wrote: post #292

Despite having money in the crypto market, I don't have an opinion or real emotional response to this so-called crash. If you're glad the crypto market is crashing, I think that speaks more about you than the crypto market.

I like this approach. Has own beliefs. Takes actions based on beliefs. Gives zero fracks about other. This is how investing should look like.

People that are "glad" that the marked is crashing are usually into 2 camps: 1) bitter that they did not invest / did not see its potential while it was small - and they somehow feel vindicated when crypto is doing bad _and_ 2) people that are on their moral high horse talking about global warming, Ponzi schemes and Argentina.

IMHO, none of these 2 positions is okay and it speaks volumes about the character of the people that adopt it.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#475

Post by lostcolony »

bickle66 wrote: post #429
capableweb wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah - any corporate takeover is via stock acquisition. That's how Musk is buying Twitter; he's buying all the outstanding stock. "A share" of stock is literally "a share" of the company.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#476

Post by fullstop »

hristov wrote: post #384

I am glad. And it is not because of schadenfreude either. I believe that crypto has actually been a serious contributor to inflation through the use of electrical power for "mining" crypto. It is no coincidence that last year when bitcoin achieved unheard of highs and many obscure cryptos, including at least one that was started as a joke, achieved multibillion market caps was also the year when many power companies…

> I believe that crypto has actually been a serious contributor to inflation through the use of electrical power for "mining" crypto.

It's caused a scarcity of video cards, sure, but the vast contributor for inflation has been government money printers running on full blast.

Crypto, in my opinion, is a waste of electricity, but you're not seeing the forest from the trees.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#477

Post by nightski »

lbrito wrote: post #386
DeathArrow wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Given the apparently inability of active funds to routinely outperform passive funds[0], "not much" would be my response. Renaissance Technologies and Two Sigmas are just two examples of firms that constantly beat the market using math, algorithms and machine learning. It's doable, but not easy.

Until the day they don't. This kind of thing is inherently un-provable. You can have a method that works stupidly well for decades, and then it stops working. Building a model that provenly (in the mathematical sense) works with X% efficiency would be akin to building a free energy device.

It's very likely you put your life on the line every day with things that can't be proven. That is engineering after all.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#478

Post by noduerme »

id wrote: post #274
IAmWorried wrote: post #9

It'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…

There are also those of us who played with Bitcoin when it emerged, found it promising and mined it or bought some. Who took some profits along the way and never promoted it. Who still think it's a useful concept, _despite_ the hype that gets too much at times. For what it's worth, you seem consumed by your envy. Accept that crypto investors, even the most stupid ones, took a risk you didn't take and were rewarded ha…

When I launched a home built casino in 2011, I bought 5000 BTC to initially bank it. I didn't want to take BTC, I wanted to get licensure in Malta and take credit cards. But I didn't have any investment, or $500k to buy a license. I just had good software, so I launched it in BTC as a proof of concept and to try to earn enough to bootstrap the cost of licensing.

Long story short: That project is long gone. I viewed BTC as an interesting payment method that might have some inherent value as an efficient and anonymous means of transfer, which it's not anymore. I never trusted it and I didn't want to gamble on its fluctuations since the casino was denominated in USD and I was already exposing my savings to literal gambling risk (albeit playing as the house - still scary). So eventually I took to just getting rid of BTC daily, trading out the day's rake, and only buying it to do payouts. Closed the casino in 2013 and never saw any major profit, stakes being as low as they were.

I'm a middle aged working coder with a net worth short of $1m. I've thought a lot about what my life could have been like if I hadn't done ANYTHING except hold that initial 5000 BTC instead of getting out of it. And you know what? I'm not sorry about it. I did what seemed smartest to me at the time: I got rid of what I thought was a bad investment. And by then I knew plenty more about Bitcoin than most of the people who've bought into crypto since. Under the same set of conditions, where that was a meaningful chunk of my savings, I'd do the same again every time.

You're absolutely right that there is nothing healthy about being bitter or angry towards people who strike it rich - even, or perhaps especially, if they do so by pure luck.

Life is a casino. Envy gets you nowhere, and it's not a good look. Show a little class and you might get comped for the show.

[edited for readability]

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#479

Post by ayngg »

runjake wrote: post #292

Despite having money in the crypto market, I don't have an opinion or real emotional response to this so-called crash. If you're glad the crypto market is crashing, I think that speaks more about you than the crypto market.

I think it is actually kind of crazy how so many people here, a proverbial VC techbro hub, just love to get on their soapbox to preach sanctimoniously about the great cryptocurrency evil that is destroying the world with so much glee, without looking in the mirror and realizing that what is going on in cryptocurrencies isn't really that much different than what is going on in the valley or elsewhere in society.

The behavior exhibited by those insufferable cryptobros (who I am not a fan of either to be clear) isn't much different than that of techbros having some of the highest paying salaries in the world with a matching ego, working on some vaporware juice package squeezer or creating incredible amounts of social discord through social media and data harvesting, or the degenerate gamblers of wallstreetbets memestocks like amc or gme, or any of the pandemic stocks that are down 75-90% right now. People spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on jpgs is not much different than people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bananas taped to walls at Art Basel, I could go on and on.

A lot of the smugness and resentment comes from a response to human behavior which has not been exclusive to cryptocurrencies, so I don't get the fixation on this one thing, it isn't even like cryptocurrences are some ubiquitously salient thing, you can very easily filter it out from your life and social media feeds and hear next to nothing about it.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#480

Post by fullstop »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #147

I have been sitting on cash since end of last year, I am finally seeing opportunities to buy at reasonable price: stocks and crypto. Stocks, cryptos, houses: people kept buying no matter the price, even though, it was so obvious that those prices were not sustainable. And we are finally seeing a proper correction. I think, houses are next in line.

If you're in the USA, look into Series I Bonds.
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