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A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

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Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#101

Post by roywiggins »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #76
kfriede wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caring solely about money often has the side effect of making others' lives better. Amazon gainfully employs over 500k [1] people, giving them means to put food on the table. Not saying that wouldn't happen without Amazon, but more job availability is always better than less. Bezos just became the richest man ever recorded [2]. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/technology/business/amazon-e... [2]: https://news.yco…

Reminds me of: "Oh, Father. You're so wrong. Let me explain. [Puts and empty water glass on his desk] Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is destroyed [Pushes the glass off the table. It shatters on the floor, and several small machines come out to clean it up] Look at all these little things! So busy no…

Aha, that's the broken window fallacy, I think.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#102

Post by djsumdog »

skyisblue wrote: post #64

Possibly intentional market manipulation? They are in the top 200 most visited sites in the world and supply api data to hundreds if not thousands of cryptocurrency price apps. Surely they knew their change would impact the market.

I really think there is a considerable amount of market manipulation going on with crypto-currencies in general. There was an earlier thread to a blog post that got voted up quite a bit, but the comments all brought up that the author was just speculating and tried to pass it off as fact.

There was also a pastebin up earlier that showed how someone had found wallets on the blockchain that used their own hashes as passwords, and were potentially being used to funnel money around (security holes in exchanges potentially?) It was removed from HN; found it on Lobsters.

The trouble is that no one has really presented hard evidence, but a number of people I talked to who are developers in the regular financial sector do think it's highly probably that there is intentional manipulation. And with the blockchain being all hashes, numbers and mathematics, it also seems plausible that it's a system that can be gamed; or at least more easily gamed than regular fiat currency.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#103

Post by slg »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #76
kfriede wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caring solely about money often has the side effect of making others' lives better. Amazon gainfully employs over 500k [1] people, giving them means to put food on the table. Not saying that wouldn't happen without Amazon, but more job availability is always better than less. Bezos just became the richest man ever recorded [2]. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/technology/business/amazon-e... [2]: https://news.yco…

Reminds me of: "Oh, Father. You're so wrong. Let me explain. [Puts and empty water glass on his desk] Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is destroyed [Pushes the glass off the table. It shatters on the floor, and several small machines come out to clean it up] Look at all these little things! So busy no…

AKA the broken window fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#104

Post by celticninja »

djsumdog wrote: post #97
digitaltrees wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fifth element. That’s a Deep cut.

I don't remember this scene. I might have to watch it again.

When Gary oldman is talking to the priest, then he chokes on a cherry and none of his machines can save him.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#105

Post by mitchellberry »

pedrocr wrote: post #91
sgk284 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I can create a cryptocoin with 2B tokens, sell one coin to friend for $100 and have a $200B market cap. It's got nothing to do with reality. Anyone (literally) can create a $200B market cap coin by forking a github repo.

That's just how market caps work in general. The same argument has been made for startup valuations. It's not a problem with the metric at all and doesn't hold for the case being discussed as actual market based transactions in enough volume are happening. It's not just a made up number. Here's an argument that Facebook was not worth 33B$ in 2010 because only 3% of its value had ever been transacted: https://signalvn…

No one measures the marketcap of gold or soybeans. When was the last time someone mentioned the marketcap of the USD?

It's an absurd metric made worse by the fact that more coins are issued every 5 mins. If price remains the same virtually all coins will go up in marketcap regardless.

What company issues new shares every single day?

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#106

Post by Retra »

noncoml wrote: post #69
dboreham wrote: post #65

I'm beginning to see how delusional it is to think you can make money by producing something useful or of value in people's lives. That's for lusers. Instead mess with the neural pathways of a large population such that they just give you their money.

Depends on what you want in life. If all you care about is money, then yes, your post makes sense.

If you want something other than money, money will often be the quickest way to get it.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#107

Post by Meekro »

dboreham wrote: post #65

I'm beginning to see how delusional it is to think you can make money by producing something useful or of value in people's lives. That's for lusers. Instead mess with the neural pathways of a large population such that they just give you their money.

Unless you're straight-up stealing, you have to persuade people to hand over their money. The way you do that is by convincing them that what they're getting in return is valuable.

Unfortunately people tend make value assessments that I think are horrible, and that causes entire industries to pivot in ways I don't like. For example, I love Nintendo's $60 games that come with plenty of content and no microtransactions. I don't like "free" smartphone games that do the opposite.

However, huge numbers of people have determined that getting nickel-and-dimed with thousands of dollars in microtransactions is something that adds value to their lives. I certainly don't think I have any right to object to their conclusion, except in the way that I'm already objecting: by refusing to spend any money on microtransactions. It just stings a little that I'm quickly finding myself in the minority.

It sounds like you're going through something similar with respect to the cryptocurrency market.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#108

Post by Latty »

kfriede wrote: post #72
noncoml wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you want in life. If all you care about is money, then yes, your post makes sense.

Caring solely about money often has the side effect of making others' lives better. Amazon gainfully employs over 500k [1] people, giving them means to put food on the table. Not saying that wouldn't happen without Amazon, but more job availability is always better than less. Bezos just became the richest man ever recorded [2]. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/technology/business/amazon-e... [2]: https://news.yco…

I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism.

It's a good idea - people will act selfishly instinctively, so if you can align that to make it good, then everything works.

Of course, we know raw capitalism doesn't work (e.g: monopolies break it). So our systems have all sorts of hacks to try and fix it. The problem is that so many of the richest people just focus on breaking those fixes and finding gaps to exploit to avoid creating value for society.

Currently, a lot of the groups in power across the world are actively trying to make more of those gaps they can slip through, and remove the layers of fixes we have put in to support the people that are not helped by that simple system.

Yes, it's good for people to want to make money in a capitalist system, assuming the system is perfect and that there is no way to break it is to ignore reality.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#109

Post by QAPereo »

djsumdog wrote: post #95
noncoml wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you want in life. If all you care about is money, then yes, your post makes sense.

Money can be a thing of worship, like in the film Wolf of Wallstreet.

It’s just a proxy for power... and people have always worshipped power.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#110

Post by dragonwriter »

Latty wrote: post #108
kfriede wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caring solely about money often has the side effect of making others' lives better. Amazon gainfully employs over 500k [1] people, giving them means to put food on the table. Not saying that wouldn't happen without Amazon, but more job availability is always better than less. Bezos just became the richest man ever recorded [2]. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/technology/business/amazon-e... [2]: https://news.yco…

I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism. It's a good idea - people will act selfishly instinctively, so if you can align that to make it good, then everything works. Of course, we know raw capitalism doesn't work (e.g: monopolies break it). So our systems hav…

> I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism.

No, it's not; that's an after-the-fact rationalization.

I mean, we were a few centuries into the feudalism-capitalism transition before anyone started even talking about property rights in those terms in general, at least another century before capitalism as a system was even described (and by it's critics, not it's supporters), and I think several decades later till this excuse was cited specifically as a justification for capitalism as such.

Capitalism was created, incrementally over time, because rich merchants decided to use their wealth to force feudal overlords to cede progrrssively more power and influence to the rich merchants. Not as a manner to harness greed for the public good. Just as a matter of greed, pure and simple.

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