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The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

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Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#121

Post by syntheweave »

sshine wrote: post #116
stephc_int13 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely fall in the category of crypto haters, for technical, political and moral reasons, and I can't help but feel some joy and excitement when I see it crashing. Of course I am aware of my strong bias, I don't think I will ever be neutral on this subject, but it does not matter as this bias is only affecting my personal decisions. Is it even possible to build a neutral judgment on this thing?

The point I derive from this is: Cryptocurrency hate will distract you from seeing the bigger picture and dealing with it. Celebrating that bad things burn when good things burn for the same reason (economic downturn) seems like it’s either uninformed or a coping strategy.

It's the scapegoating impulse, which is extremely strong right now. We know there are many things going wrong, but our way of addressing them is a total crapshoot. And it's easier to illustrate an enemy to fight against and a preexisting concept to defend than to do anything new, so there's always a lot of support for that.

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#122

Post by kareemsabri »

sshine wrote: post #117
kareemsabri wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbnb is down 58% from its 52-week high. I'm not sure the point you're making though. Even if high-flying stocks went down 99% that's not a defense of crypto per se. "Stocks go down" isn't a redemption of the crypto narrative. That said, if you did want to use tech stocks as a comparison, Bitcoin is the flagship asset of crypto, and meant to be the most stable (deflationary etc.) so more akin to Apple. Apple is esse…

> "Stocks go down" isn't a redemption of the crypto narrative. It’s not, but “reality catching up on speculative, excessive growth” isn’t purely a cryptocurrency thing; they’re just so much a symptom of everyone wanting in on that tech stonks that only VCs could afford. It’s funny how “the Uber of X” was an admirable description, considering that whole economic model is being questioned right now. Perhaps it just was…

There are two (at least) events playing out right now. The first is an asset bubble being pricked by cheap capital being removed from the market due to the fed raising interest rates after a decade or so of monetary policy that forced people to seek out yield wherever they could. That event is playing out in both crypto and stocks, which is what people seem to be pointing at to say the assets are the same.

The second is the collapse of a bunch of crypto schemes (yield farming, leveraged funds, black box firms etc.). These two things are fundamentally different.

Focusing on the first one only since that's what crypto adherents seem to defend with the "it's just like tech stocks" claim (putting aside that crypto was supposed to be different than stocks, and deflationary), what I haven't seen them explain is how "excessive growth" would even be defined in a crypto asset. In stocks, I can point to a price-to-earnings ratio or a price-to-sales ratio to describe how a business is trading far beyond a value that even has hopes of being realized. In Bitcoin, or even worse some shitcoin used for nothing at all, what can I use to distinguish between "excessive" growth and appropriate growth?

There is a critique that can be made of the stock market that it is essentially a speculative game largely divorced from the underlying business fundamentals, and that crypto assets are just a pure form of speculative capital chasing returns. I don't think that's really true though, because stocks do seem to show significant correlation to the underlying business performance. That's why Apple is flat YoY while Airbnb is down 60%.

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#123

Post by kareemsabri »

cowtools wrote: post #78
ditonal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. But…have people actually looked around? Airbnb stock is down 80% in the last 6 months. Netflix, Twilio,…

> Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. I think it's reasonably skeptical. There is a balance here. > People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. I like crypto and even I am rooting for…

What do you think is the most useful crypto project?

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#124

Post by [deleted] »

ditonal wrote: post #63
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

"And nothing of value was lost." This was one of the top voted posts in the Austin subreddit recently: https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/vmtmul/finally_some... Seriously, during other crashes, I remember thinking of the real negative externalities that happened during the crash, e.g. many economists have drawn lines to the current housing supply crunch due to underinvestment after the Great Recession. I don't…

Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. But…have people actually looked around? Airbnb stock is down 80% in the last 6 months. Netflix, Twilio,…

[deleted]

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#125

Post by rvz »

ditonal wrote: post #63
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

"And nothing of value was lost." This was one of the top voted posts in the Austin subreddit recently: https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/vmtmul/finally_some... Seriously, during other crashes, I remember thinking of the real negative externalities that happened during the crash, e.g. many economists have drawn lines to the current housing supply crunch due to underinvestment after the Great Recession. I don't…

Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. But…have people actually looked around? Airbnb stock is down 80% in the last 6 months. Netflix, Twilio,…

Well said. I'm actually laughing at both the extreme delusional anti-crypto folks and the extreme pro-crypto folks since they will both be disappointed with their vision(s) of either all of them being destroyed or all projects succeeding.

Not all these projects will survive, 90% of crypto projects will die, just like the 90% of these startups failing and the fact that we are seeing the many projects and startups getting wiped out in this crash, like the dotcom crash we will see the projects that have utility continue to survive this crash.

Like in the replies to your comment, many of the angry anti-crypto folk continue to fall into the absolutism trap and the only absolute that exists: is none. Just look at the free software-foundation, after 37 years of fighting the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc of trying to get rid of all non-free software, it has completely failed and the tech bros have hijacked the point of open-source. It has gotten so bad in that realisation that there are now tech bros that are branded as 'traitors' in this noble conquest of ridding all non-free software.

Now the tech-bros are screaming at destroying all crypto-projects towards the crypto-bros. Destroying 'all of them' doesn't seem to be going well for them and they are no better than the crypto maximalists in aiming for this goal.

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#126

Post by Animats »

brianobush wrote: post #70
Animats wrote: post #31

But the guy who wrote the article is sure ad spend on crypto is coming back. Maybe not. Most of crypto works like a Ponzi scheme. Gains to early investors come from later investors. Eventually, you run out of suckers. We're there. Last 24 hours: - Someone pulled another $160 million out of USDT. Look at their market cap graph for the last 3 months. Every few days, somebody pulls out another $100 million+ amount. Pret…

I think people overuse the phrase "Ponzi scheme". You could argue that most stocks are Ponzi schemes. I haven't seen a damn dime from some companies.

Long story there. It's an artifact of bankruptcy and tax law.

A company exists to pay dividends, and its value is the present value of all future dividends. That's the classic view, and it was the normal pattern for companies until the 1970s or so.

Two things changed. One, bankruptcy became less painful. "Secured creditors" became a more general concept. This meant that banks and bondholders moved up in priority, at the expense of unpaid vendors, customers with deposits, and others who never wanted to lend money in the first place. This paved the way for Michael Milken and the junk bond industry.

Second, interest and principal payments on debt are not taxed, while dividends are. This makes debt more attractive than equity as a means of obtaining capital. A high-interest loan with the strong possibility of bankruptcy is effectively an equity investment but is taxed as a debt.

This combination has warped capital markets out of shape. It's why there's "private equity", which is essentially a leveraged buyout. It's what powered the financialization of everything.

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#127

Post by overtonwhy »

jquery wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #31

But the guy who wrote the article is sure ad spend on crypto is coming back. Maybe not. Most of crypto works like a Ponzi scheme. Gains to early investors come from later investors. Eventually, you run out of suckers. We're there. Last 24 hours: - Someone pulled another $160 million out of USDT. Look at their market cap graph for the last 3 months. Every few days, somebody pulls out another $100 million+ amount. Pret…

I wonder what the remaining USDT holders are waiting for? Is it just the market isn't liquid enough to pull out more than $100M/day?

Tether is not regulated or licensed by any body AFAIK so they aren’t required to process payment requests with any sort or timeliness. lul

Same with the unlicensed and unregulated exchanges that they do business with. You want out? Take a number and get in line.

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#128

Post by overtonwhy »

Zamicol wrote: post #99
cowtools wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is some net utility cryptocurrency provides as a means of payment, but the cryptocurrency "community" has largely veered away from that narrative since bitcoin and others have butted heads with their transaction volume issues.

What is Ethereum, chopped liver? Those that disagreed with the small block Bitcoin plutocrats moved to other projects, mainly Ethereum.

Russian

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#129

Post by cowtools »

kareemsabri wrote: post #123
cowtools wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. I think it's reasonably skeptical. There is a balance here. > People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. I like crypto and even I am rooting for…

What do you think is the most useful crypto project?

Right now it is probably monero. It does one thing (anonymous transactions) and does it alright.

But I think we will see increased adoption of less decentralized and anonymous systems like GNU Taler or Nano for micropayments, which are generally lower-risk and hinge more on per-transaction fees. I think that is the "real" use-case of cryptocurrency besides buying drugs on the DN- to serve as an micropayment/spam-prevention system and an alternative to advertisement-based funding for websites.

Output obfuscation is a really useful feature, but it comes at a pretty great cost of bandwidth. I think this area will continue to improve in the future.

Re: The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum

#130

Post by dang »

ddjsn111 wrote: post #51
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

"And nothing of value was lost." This was one of the top voted posts in the Austin subreddit recently: https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/vmtmul/finally_some... Seriously, during other crashes, I remember thinking of the real negative externalities that happened during the crash, e.g. many economists have drawn lines to the current housing supply crunch due to underinvestment after the Great Recession. I don't…

If you do not recognise that there is value in decentralised, self-sovereign, permissionless, censorship resistant, anonymous, Internet native money then you are retarded.

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