Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
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Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#2Michael Lewis' "Big Short" was a decent account, but after that he's gone mad, if he's simply not on the payroll of Big Crypto.
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#3Crypto and NFTs are the ultimate scam.
It's wooden nickels, the Brooklyn Bridge and Bernie Madoff all taken to their ultimate logical conclusion --- something with no intrinsic value whatsoever (electrons) is being exchanged for real functioning currency.
But what really sets the crypto scam apart is the fact that no is really lying about the fundamental nature of the transaction.
No one is hiding the fact that by buying crypto, you are exchanging your legal working currency for nothing more than an entry in a database with no real guarantees of any kind --- legal or otherwise. No one is hiding the fact that with only moderate technical skill, anyone can create a similar database and mint their own version of Bitcoin.
All crypto really does is provide a quasi-viable excuse to entice people to lie to themselves about economic reality and what we call "money".
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#4Those who criticize SBF most harshly now are in the crypto industry. It is not impossible that, after SBF is completely expelled from the crypto industry, SBF's critics will engage in similar behavior.
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#5Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin.
Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar").
The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say.
It has downsides too: the ability to be lost or stolen if custody is sloppy, energy use, and many others. But the balance between its utility and its limitations is something that enough holders recognize that it maintains a value above $26k for now.
The US debt recently increased by the entire market cap of bitcoin ($275 billion [1]) in a single day.
That doesn't guarantee anything, but in the old days when the global reserve currency started to become frankly inflationary, there was no easy recourse - you could only jump to the next best national fiat (which could have the same problems or worse), or gold (with all of its limitations). Now, due to bitcoin, an alternative exists.
People on HN are smarter than me, and they all seem to hate bitcoin with passion, but I haven't yet understood why. I think it might be harder to recognize its value when it's part of your implicit cultural background: the dollar is money. We lack the perspective of our great grandparents, who lived through the great depression, and understand that the dollar has no intrinsic value, either. Once that epiphany is reached by the masses, the appreciation in bitcoin value could come quickly.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fw...
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#6The article is missing a point. The author says he underestimated the impact on crypto. But he was completely right - after so many years crypto and the blockchain didn't really find its place.
But he underestimated the get-rich-quick mentality. That's what made crypto big. Everyone wanted to be a part of it. And naturally, this type of mentality is filled with fraudsters.
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#7Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin. Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar"). The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say. It has downsides too: the ability to be lost…
> People on HN are smarter than me, and they all seem to hate bitcoin with passion, but I haven't yet understood why
"Hate" is a strong word, but I dislike Bitcoin because so much of its value doesn't come from utility, but from speculation. People rarely buy Bitcoin to actually use it, but instead because they hope/expect the price will go up. And that's what leads to cases like SBF.
> and understand that the dollar has no intrinsic value, either.
You need US dollars to pay US taxes and buy/sell into the world's largest consumer market. That's why there's a strong demand for dollars.
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#8Crypto does have utility, but there's only room for one: bitcoin. Everything else is just a me-too derivative that can add nothing except the possibility of central control (like the "digital dollar"). The ability to instantly transmit the hardest asset known to man (harder than gold, in the sense of inflation resistance) does have utility, regardless of what critics say. It has downsides too: the ability to be lost…
> That doesn't guarantee anything, but in the old days when the global reserve currency started to become frankly inflationary, there was no easy recourse - you could only jump to the next best national fiat (which could have the same problems or worse), or gold (with all of its limitations). Now, due to bitcoin, an alternative exists.
Or you just buy assets priced in dollars; bonds, real estate, equities, etc. Nobody with half a brain holds their wealth in currency. Currency is for transacting, not storing wealth.
> People on HN are smarter than me, and they all seem to hate bitcoin with passion, but I haven't yet understood why.
See above and below.
It has 0 intrinsic value. It also has no cash flows. The only “value” it has is speculative.
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#9>Then we get to claims about events that happened in the real world. Here, you would hope Lewis asks himself the question, “Are the characters making these claims reliable narrators?” But his book is not interested in that question, which gets relegated to a footnote and is answered with a Meh, I believe him.
I'm like 80% through the book and am enjoying it. Feel like I've definitely gained a better understanding of who SBF was with the pre-FTX context. But I 100% agree with the quote above and it almost reads like an autobiography.
Re: Crypto Fooled Us Once. It Will Fool Us Again
#10Those who criticize SBF most harshly now are in the crypto industry. It is not impossible that, after SBF is completely expelled from the crypto industry, SBF's critics will engage in similar behavior.
I think it's more that they're already engaging in that behavior, and hate SBF because he did it so openly and poorly. Nobody hates an incompetent scammer like a competent scammer.