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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?

#551
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you are serious. Are there any for-profit museums focused on fine art?

The Louvre charges 17€ per person, and I'm pretty sure they're focused on fine art. How much they're profit focused versus just reinvesting profits is up for debate.

There are no profits. The Louvre is owned by the French government and heavily subsidized by the French taxpayer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre#Management,_administrat...

> The Louvre is owned by the French government. Since the 1990s, its management and governnace have been made more independent.[91][92][93][94] Since 2003, the museum has been required to generate funds for projects.[93] By 2006, government funds had dipped from 75 percent of the total budget to 62 percent. Every year, the Louvre now raises as much as it gets from the state, about €122 million. The government pays for operating costs (salaries, safety, and maintenance), while the rest – new wings, refurbishments, acquisitions – is up to the museum to finance.[95] A further €3 million to €5 million a year is raised by the Louvre from exhibitions that it curates for other museums, while the host museum keeps the ticket money.[95] As the Louvre became a point of interest in the book The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on the book, the museum earned $2.5 million by allowing filming in its galleries.[96][97] In 2008, the French government provided $180 million of the Louvre's yearly $350 million budget; the remainder came from private contributions and ticket sales.[92]

COVID bailout:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/france-museums-rescue-pack...

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

#552
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gloating just yet. If you bought Bitcoin at literally any other time than the two peaks that have occurred over the last year, then you're still way, way, way up. Bitcoin was last at its current price between those two peaks, a little less than one year ago. Of course, NFTs and all that were just so obviously nonsense that I don't even think it's worth commenting on.

As soon as it was clear that Bitcoin was going to be a commodity instead of a currency (why use it as a currency to buy a pizza this week when it could buy you a car next week?), it was clear it was now a pyramid scheme. That's why I didn't invest in it. What I hadn't counted on was how gullible people were for pyramid schemes.

> Bitcoin ... to be a commodity instead of a currency

According to current (May 2022) regulatory framework in the USA. In other countries it is currently a currency.

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

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said that? No one. Don't use a strawman argument. And independent of this issue: there are of course things which are objectively better for that person in Afghanistan and objectively better for everyone. Your poor Afghanistan person might like to have less heat waves than Bitcoin because he might not have enough money anyway to save it away as Bitcoin. Normally those countries use dollar or euro anyway. It's muc…

The US sanctioned them, they can't use dollars or euros https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60715707

In this case it's our responsibility not to undermine those sanctions.

While I'm not an expert in Afghanistan politics, I follow the Russian war and don't think we should support them by providing bitcoins

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

#554

Earlier 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"…

Speculative bubble. Or just bubble. People buy it because they expect the price to go up. The price goes up so more people buy it expecting further gains. The fundamentals arguably don't justify such a high price, and so you have a speculative bubble. Eventually, the bubble will pop and most investors will lose money. I suspect BTC is a bubble because everything it does can be done better by other things. I also susp…

> People buy it because they expect the price to go up.

Some* people buy it because they expect the price to go up.

Other people are switching to bitcoin because it is better money than their local currency.

> everything it does can be done better by other things

Like what? Trustless transfer of money governed by a protocol that is highly decentralized and secure.

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

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculative bubble. Or just bubble. People buy it because they expect the price to go up. The price goes up so more people buy it expecting further gains. The fundamentals arguably don't justify such a high price, and so you have a speculative bubble. Eventually, the bubble will pop and most investors will lose money. I suspect BTC is a bubble because everything it does can be done better by other things. I also susp…

I agree that BTC has little inherent value, it hasn't turned out all that useful. Even if you believe the advantages of crypto are worth all the disadvantages there are blockchains that are much better. But similar things can be said about many things, and some commodities are able to sustain their bubbles for decades or centuries. Gold is going strong for millennia, with a price far exceeding its practical value. BT…

> I agree that BTC has little inherent value

The bitcoin network is extremely valuable. Trustless money is important in a world where all other currencies are created, controlled, and manipulated by governments. We know humans are prone to make poor choices, commit crimes, etc. Especially governments. Why do we allow them to create money when and how they want?

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

#556
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 characterize…

> Crypto doesn't have that quality even hypothetically

And does paper fiat have intrinsic value?

Bitcoin is trustless money. It's mindblowingly amazing that we now have trustless money. We've never ever had that before. That is the value.

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

#557
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...I really don't think there's anyone involved in crypto that is deliberately "winning". I believe that bitcoin began as a straightforward "pump and dump" scheme, dressed up in a techno-libertarian narrative to appeal to its intended marks, young tech males with disposable income. As the size of the market has grown, I suspect the original cartel holds a smaller percentage of the outstanding supply, but I'll bet it…

I don't think it began as such, but as idealistic toy or proof of concept project where no one actually run the numbers to end goal. Then at some time it went to get rich quick loop, with some ideologues in mix.

Late stage bitcoin is:

It's trustless, sound money and therefore better than my bullshit fiat.

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

#558
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as it was clear that Bitcoin was going to be a commodity instead of a currency (why use it as a currency to buy a pizza this week when it could buy you a car next week?), it was clear it was now a pyramid scheme. That's why I didn't invest in it. What I hadn't counted on was how gullible people were for pyramid schemes.

I'm not clear on the logic here to be perfectly honest, even if I broadly agree that the real innovation with Bitcoin died when it was clear it would never be a currency. But gold is also a commodity, and I don't think I've ever heard it called a pyramid scheme.

> when it was clear it would never be a currency

But it IS a currency.. It is uses for daily payments and legally considered a currency in multiple countries today. I fully expect that list to balloon up over time.

You're talking about USA in 2022 and not the rest of the world or the future.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US sanctioned them, they can't use dollars or euros https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60715707

In this case it's our responsibility not to undermine those sanctions. While I'm not an expert in Afghanistan politics, I follow the Russian war and don't think we should support them by providing bitcoins

So you think people should starve rather than use bitcoin?

What about using it to support democracy in Russia? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/navalny-ally-urges-dono...

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay - that's cheetahs. Humans have an intrinsic need to scam other humans. It's been happening since the beginning of written history. If we're trying to blame modern technology for a rise in scams - that seems misguided. It's better to just acknowledge that you need to be on your toes for scams from other humans. Some people are gonna fall for the scams - it's inevitable.

> Humans have an intrinsic need to scam other humans. I reject this hypothesis; only assholes have an intrinsic need to scam other humans. And rather than accept this as an inevitability, the assholes should be regulated and ostracized to the point where their impact on humanity is negligible.

We've tried that - assholes are determined. As I said - if not crypto, it would be something else. Beanie babies, pokemon cards, ocean front property in Arizona, etc
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