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TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

wsj.com

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Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#251

Post by sagarm »

bowsamic wrote: post #230
rofo1 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are not sufficiently educated about the value of things, vs. pricing, appreciation and so on. Just the fact that anybody can think that you can get 15% "risk free" over long periods of time means that they are out of touch with reality. Not to mention people thinking they will get 10x on their investments, without ludicrous amount of risk.

You can easily get (far more than) 15% return over a long period basically risk free by buying the S&P500, so it appears that you are the one who is out of touch with reality. EDIT: How am I wrong?

The long run return on the S&P500 is more like 8%, not 15%.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#252

Post by rofo1 »

sagarm wrote: post #251
bowsamic wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily get (far more than) 15% return over a long period basically risk free by buying the S&P500, so it appears that you are the one who is out of touch with reality. EDIT: How am I wrong?

The long run return on the S&P500 is more like 8%, not 15%.

I probably should have clarified that I meant yearly gains, I can see how that can be confusing to read for someone that doesn't spend time on these topics.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#253

Post by imtringued »

pa7x1 wrote: post #240
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working real hard for the past 10+ years and I have very little to show for it yet. In the meantime a couple of friends who never worked got rich(er) just because they bought a few thousands $ (money borrowed...from their family) worth of crypto at the right moment. What is this bullshit? Why am I even busting my ass trying to create value, when I could just buy shitcoins and become a millionaire? I don't t…

I have long-suspected that a significant part of the hate for crypto from tech-literate people is resentment for not figuring out the success of something they were equipped to have seen earlier. And here is a little snippet of it at work. > If your friend only had $5k in total and threw them all in Terra then I guess the lesson he got in the crash is way more valuable than any savings he might have kept. He would ha…

From what I can tell Bitcoin is irredeemably flawed. No, I am not jealous for missing the train. I don't have money to fling into a shitcoin even if I was brainwashed enough to believe that this is how one should structure society.

I am honestly disappointed that the only cryptocurrency that is worth using is dead. If anything, if I wanted to get into crypto I would have to create my own cryptocurrency which is inherently anti speculative and encourages people to work and trade instead of rent seeking. However, even if I were to do that, I would run into two problems. I don't need a decentralized cryptocurrency for this, a normal bank would be good enough, the only point would be to bypass regulations. Because taxes are payable in a different currency than my own, there would be a constant drain of people selling the currency for dollars to pay taxes for example.

Since cryptocurrency is inherently unusable as a medium of exchange, it is a complete failure.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#254

Post by randomran01234 »

jmyeet wrote: post #31

I occasionally get asked by relatives and friends of what to invest in. Now I'm no expert but I guess in the valley of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Thing is what I tell them seems to bore them because, well, it's boring. My advice is basically this: Put your money in a broad index fund and don't look at it for 10 years. In giving this advice you start to realize it's not what people want to hear. It's not that…

> There's no fundamental belief in blockchain technology.

For skeptics, sure. But there are many investors who hold crypto precisely because they believe in the technology.

> Put your money in a broad index fund and don't look at it for 10 years.

This is a good safe and low risk bet. It doesn’t invalidate an investment thesis based on crypto currencies and blockchain tech. Crypto is higher risk and higher maintenance, potentially higher returns, and better suited to those who want to manage their own portfolios.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#255

Post by junofan »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #241
pa7x1 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have long-suspected that a significant part of the hate for crypto from tech-literate people is resentment for not figuring out the success of something they were equipped to have seen earlier. And here is a little snippet of it at work. > If your friend only had $5k in total and threw them all in Terra then I guess the lesson he got in the crash is way more valuable than any savings he might have kept. He would ha…

Nah. You're just projecting your fears on me. > So if they lose money, they deserve it. I didn't say that. Just that it was bound to happen sooner or later. It's clear though that as with any other Ponzi scheme, there are people who join early and profit and people who join late and give all their savings to the early comers. OP's friend is one of the late comers. My friends are early comers. > If they win money, the…

Taking out a reasonable position is not entering a lottery. Even KPMG allocated.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#256

Post by distances »

shimonabi wrote: post #196
jmyeet wrote: post #31

I occasionally get asked by relatives and friends of what to invest in. Now I'm no expert but I guess in the valley of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Thing is what I tell them seems to bore them because, well, it's boring. My advice is basically this: Put your money in a broad index fund and don't look at it for 10 years. In giving this advice you start to realize it's not what people want to hear. It's not that…

Which are broad index funds? I put a tiny amount of my savings in a pharma ETF last year and got destroyed almost as much as crypto. I hope it recovers soon.

Total market / All world are very common.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#257

Post by lawn »

gonehome wrote: post #176

Lots of noise in the crypto space and the HN comments are always bad. BTC and ETH are the interesting and worth putting a small percentage of your holdings into (BTC [0] as an international store of value that has benefits over gold, ETH as the core programmable token that backs anything that stores stuff on chain to manage decentralized state). Vitalik is earnest and his writing is pretty great. Everything else I'd…

Monero is far better than ZCash privacy wise since it's privacy by default. It really is the closest to money, which was Bitcoin's original purpose, not the silly store of value only that just translates to a purely speculative asset.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#258

Post by marcus_holmes »

bowsamic wrote: post #228
marcus_holmes wrote: post #223

So, what are we going to do about this? We've known that the whole crypto scene in general is a fraudulent, cynical ploy to get rich at other people's expense. Any conversation with anyone involved in the industry quickly reveals that their goal is to get rich from asset speculation. And that means for them to win, someone else must lose. The thing that the article describes is an inevitable consequence of this proce…

> Any conversation with anyone involved in the industry quickly reveals that their goal is to get rich from asset speculation. Do you really think if you ask Charles Hoskinson (creator of Cardano) this, then this will become clear? If so why bother with so much peer-reviewed academic research? Is that all part of the scam? Similar question about Vitalik > This is fraud. There needs to be consequences, and the liars g…

they have all profited by destroying other people's lives. It's possible that they didn't know that's where the money was coming from. But unlikely, because they're smart people and they have extensive knowledge of this industry.

Where did they think the money was coming from, if not ultimately gullible individuals whose lives are being ruined by this?

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#259

Post by koonsolo »

jmyeet wrote: post #31

I occasionally get asked by relatives and friends of what to invest in. Now I'm no expert but I guess in the valley of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Thing is what I tell them seems to bore them because, well, it's boring. My advice is basically this: Put your money in a broad index fund and don't look at it for 10 years. In giving this advice you start to realize it's not what people want to hear. It's not that…

I think you can allocate 1 to 5% of your investment money into more risky bets. I did with crypto and was lucky enough to do very well. If I lost my 1%, that was part of the game. The benefit/risk at the time was worth it.

But even there, the most boring strategy works best: hold on to it for several years and sell a part when it becomes too big.

I tried timing the market on stocks and crypto, but it basically can't compete with just holding it.

The biggest problem is of course that you hear these stories how some people made a crazy amount of money, and then "why didn't you know about it?". But you never hear about the people who made nothing.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#260

Post by randomran01234 »

gonehome wrote: post #176

Lots of noise in the crypto space and the HN comments are always bad. BTC and ETH are the interesting and worth putting a small percentage of your holdings into (BTC [0] as an international store of value that has benefits over gold, ETH as the core programmable token that backs anything that stores stuff on chain to manage decentralized state). Vitalik is earnest and his writing is pretty great. Everything else I'd…

They are both volatile and unpredictable, any investment could easily be wiped out in a day or week, and there is the added challenge of having to maintain and secure one’s own keys and use privacy preserving tools and techniques.

But if you are OK with all that, ETH and BTC are fine investments for those seeking to self-manage a high risk high reward portfolio, and ofc. for only a small percentage of net wealth

but I would argue against BTC on the grounds of PoW energy waste - keeping your portfolio greener - and the fact that ETH is able to achieve the same international digital-gold-like properties but with better cryptographic tech, interoperability and privacy features. It is hard to see the long term 10 years BTC thesis - maybe only scenario where it continues to surpass ETH is if PoS proves to be an untenable consensus mechanism.

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