161–170 of 688 posts
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For me, it's because the hype isn't around the technology (which is the interesting part and for the most part, why we're on HN), it's around the speculation. From the outside, looks like a bunch of gamblers constantly getting each other off on whether their bets will make them millionares. It's just...sad...at a level.
If crypto dies you will have to find a new group of people to feel superior to to feed your ego.
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My personal take: There might well be ponzi schemes on top of the bitcoin infrastructure, but the technology behind bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme. It might well be that a lot of people are crazed over it and want to buy bitcoin and push up the price, but that's because there is something here with cryptocurrency. It definitely is a new way of accounting, and it could potentially be a hedge against the fiat system. Th…
It's unfortunate that the space has attracted "pump & dump" opportunists. But if one is a student of technology and networks and markets, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is fascinating. Two recent innovations to check out: Uniswap, the decentralized exchange protocol, and Bitclout, a social blockchain that just went open source last nite https://uniswap.org/docs/v2/protocol-overview/how-uniswap-wo... https://github.com/…
Lots of defi products are already live on mainnet. https://better-call.dev/dapps/list
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, it's because the hype isn't around the technology (which is the interesting part and for the most part, why we're on HN), it's around the speculation. From the outside, looks like a bunch of gamblers constantly getting each other off on whether their bets will make them millionares. It's just...sad...at a level.
If crypto dies you will have to find a new group of people to feel superior to to feed your ego.
I love when bubbles explode. I feel like the world is a tiny bit less insane.
The full title of this article is worth noting: "Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip". For some reason, that was changed for this posting.
Bitcoin is increasingly being seen as a barometer for market liquidity. As Bitcoin goes, so go the markets. That's the real story here.
We may not be there yet, but at some point, Bitcoin will drive broader market liquidity (stocks, bonds, gold, real estate), rather than feeding on its table scraps.
Regarding the volatility, this is nothing new. Anyone involved for more that four years has seen this before and worse. What is new is the sheer number of people involved. Bitcoin's user base doubles roughly once every 1.5 years. That means that at any particular moment in time about half of the participants have been at it for one year or less. When they see their first fierce selloff, predictably accompanied by a vague announcement from China, it can be very unsettling.
When this was happening with a small user base of mostly computer nerds and libertarians, it was easy to write off. When the user base includes respected financial institutions (as it now does), things get interesting.
I don't know why, it is probably highly irrational, but I always rejoice when the Bitcoin crashes.
My rational take is that Bitcoin's carbon footprint is more-or-less a direct function of its price. The market forces are such that you can expect mining to expand until, on average, each miner's expected reward is only a little bit higher than their electricity bill and hardware costs. If prices come down, that is going to encourage some miners to take capacity offline, which is probably great for anyone who's inter…
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Bitcoin & Ether are both down -40% from a week to a month ago. Both of those are, in theory, large enough that investors "letting off some steam" shouldn't move them that much. If $SPY dropped 40% we'd all call it a crash. This isn't that different. Also unlike the stock market, crypto is under the delusion of being a viable currency. If USD or Euro dropped even 20% we'd start questioning if it's a recession, much le…
> If $SPY dropped 40% we'd all call it a crash. This isn't that different If $SPY was 40% up since last month, would that be normal? ETH is still currently higher than its value from April 19th. Cryptocurrency market is extremely volatile. This isn't that far from normal.