Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin

#161

Post by lmm » Sun, Dec 24, 2017, 7:53 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #160

lmm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that's correct. A security doesn't have its own value independently of the payment stream it represents, any more than the deed to a house has its own value independently of the house. But the same payment stream (or house) might be of different value to different people, so buying or selling it can create wealth.

So the risk and form that the payment stream takes (ie. bond coupons are different from rental property income) might both be $100 for example, but if someone is overindexed in real estate in their portfolio, there may be more value to them in the bond?

Yeah. A risk profile isn't just a percentage, it's also a question of what it's correlated with.

Re: Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin

#162

Post by jjeaff » Tue, Dec 26, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

BadCookie wrote: post #151

jjeaff wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing as the market always recovers and then some, you are going to need to make very, very good returns in the downturns to make up for all the list potential on the upside. In other words, the overall return of the markets over their entire lifetime is positive, not negative. It would be great to ride the bull and then switch to the bear in a down market. But that would require timing the market.

The market always recovers? Japan must not have gotten the memo. Or is the U.S. too special to ever have the same problems as Japan?

By "the market", I was referring to the US Markets. We have a few hundred years of history of always recovering. Japan is the special case though. Small and landlocked, rather xenophobic with an aging population. Things that could happen in the US, but the US is just a completely different, and much larger animal.

Re: Three Delusions: Paper Wealth, a Booming Economy, and Bitcoin

#163

Post by SkyMarshal » Tue, Dec 26, 2017, 10:52 PM UTC

ramphastidae wrote: post #127

SkyMarshal wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? The protocol is standardized, there are 3 implementations in testing, they're sending multi-hop transactions across all 3 different implementations on the Bitcoin mainnest, there's at least one client plus an explorer. https://news.bitcoin.com/lightning-networks-new-infrastructu... It's clearly on track for a 2018 release.

"On track for a 2018 release" is not a timeline, IMO. Elizabeth Stark said we were https://twitter.com/starkness/status/676599570898419712 And for the downvoters: I am no shill. I've been holding BTC long-term. I am just a realist with a good understanding of the reliability of software engineers' estimates, esp. in this case.

You can ignore what people say and just look at the evidence, which in this case is pretty clear. Segwit made LN a lot easier, the software is here and working, the fact that they can send a) multihop tx's b) across multiple different clients is a substantial signal about the project's progress. And yeah, don't expect anyone to commit to a more concrete timeline than "in 2018 sometime" when folks like you hold them to it.