Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

mollywhite.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 331 posts

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#221

Post by thinkmassive »

cdiddy2 wrote: post #195
germanjoey wrote: post #44

The article (or, rather, the commentary in the link above on the article) talks about the fallacious notion of "market cap" in regards to cryptocurrencies. That is to say, e.g., multiplying the number of bitcoins in existence times the current market price is a silly metric because the entire market would never be able to cash-out at that maximum price. What I was wondering was: is there a better number? e.g., is the…

I am late to this question but there is actually a method that really only works for cryptos. Its called realized cap. Multiply the each coin by the price at which it last moved and sum it all together. This gives a closer estimation of how much money is really in the system. It is not perfect but neither is mcap and this gets a bit closer. https://messari.io/charts/bitcoin/mcap-realized

Realized Capitalization came from CoinMetrics. Many details in their original announcement: https://coinmetrics.io/realized-capitalization/

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#222

Post by f7ebc20c97 »

Liron wrote: post #169
matheusmoreira wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very demoralizing. Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better projects.

Yes Monero is great as private digital cash… as long as its usage level remains relatively low-profile so that governments keep allowing sites like Kraken to legally act as fiat on and off ramps, voluntarily handicapping their ability to track money laundering. This is why Monero today is useful for tech-savvy people and motivated black-market buyers/sellers, but we will never see a user-friendly Monero market for th…

You think TPTB want to handicap the ability to launder money?

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#223

Post by schainks »

alex_sf wrote: post #105
vasco wrote: post #5

This format is interesting at first but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet, point-by-point-repliers in internet forums circa 2006.

> This format is interesting at first I agree. > but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Yeah, that's true. > Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet Isn't there usually? > point-by-point-repliers in internet forums I still think it's a good format. > circa 2006 What's wrong with 2006?

:clap emoji:

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#224

Post by zamfi »

jakupovic wrote: post #177
eoo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is as obsolete as POSIX. It's ossified, and not changing is a feature.

Terrible POSIX, 50+ years later it's everywhere. Any project can only hope yo be as successful

…that was the parent poster’s point, I think?

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#225

Post by cuteboy19 »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #202
rvz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only 'NFT' that has a use-case so far is ENS [0] and domain names on the blockchain. The JPEG NFTs (which don't have a use-case) have captured the hype of the critics and that will likely collapse in the long term and those NFTs are what the critics will just keep talking about. There is a product that is using it for identities already: [1][2] I can see businesses using ENS or similar solutions as a way to repla…

Using NFTs for generating concert tickets or supply chain logistics & tracking seems like it could be economically viable. I'd bet the biggest use case for NFTs at present is money laundering. It's hard to imagine someone having the talent to acquire $800,000 yet still being gullible enough to spend it all on a hyperlink of a hand drawn monkey with the expectation that they bought an appreciable asset.

The whole point of NFTs is that they are decentralised. If you are going to a concert, you are by definition centralizing power in the hands of the organizer, making NFTs entirely pointless for this. You might as well have the concert organizer send out emails with ticket numbers.

Supply chain I am not even sure why you would want it. NFTs don't prevent false data being input into the system. it only "protects" against falsification after the entry is made, which email does as well.

> Seems like it would be economically viable

why?

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#226

Post by sneak »

bawolff wrote: post #217
flaque wrote: post #120

The issue with crypto is that reasonable use cases are early, and don’t attract attention except for niche communities. There’s a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) But realistically, the interesting projects are very small and hard to find. However, scams and ponzi schemes, by th…

People always say the same thing when someone is critical of crypto. Its too early! I mean after all, we are only 13 years in. Or: there is a lot of bullshit but the interesting things are outside of your echo chamber. But then never link to such counter examples. At best people talk about filecoin, which does pass the bar of not being a literal scam, but still makes no sense from a product-market fit (storage has 3…

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/09/ukraine-has-rec...

This happened primarily in a matter of hours. In cash. Across borders. Without being subject to sanctions or restrictions by any country.

It may not be your use case, but it has definitely "put up".

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#227

Post by cuteboy19 »

ipaddr wrote: post #150
acdha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually it would reach ~0 share price and effectively a 0 market cap. This is the misunderstanding breaking your argument: AMZN shares are fractional ownership of a company with assets and ongoing revenue. In the event of a business downturn, those will go down but they’re not going to zero in any plausible scenario - even bankruptcies usually return some fraction of value to shareholders. This is important to u…

They represent the same value prop as any stock. Any company could go to 0 and the floor of the exchange is littered with delisted companies. Amazon is big and the chances it goes to 0 are less than a company still making vcrs. The same can be applied to bitcoin. Government and other contracts could be cancelled. The value of assets can be lower the debt. Bitcoin has no debt while a company like Amazon can have billi…

> Bitcoin has no debt

True, but it also burns many TWHrs of electricity everyday. Also I doesn't have any revenue.

If you look at it like you would look at a normal company, then it would be a terrible purchase. A company that just burns cash for no reason and generates 0 revenue

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#228

Post by sgift »

sneak wrote: post #226
bawolff wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always say the same thing when someone is critical of crypto. Its too early! I mean after all, we are only 13 years in. Or: there is a lot of bullshit but the interesting things are outside of your echo chamber. But then never link to such counter examples. At best people talk about filecoin, which does pass the bar of not being a literal scam, but still makes no sense from a product-market fit (storage has 3…

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/09/ukraine-has-rec... This happened primarily in a matter of hours. In cash. Across borders. Without being subject to sanctions or restrictions by any country. It may not be your use case, but it has definitely "put up".

It obviously isn't cash, it isn't even money - that's the reason the amount received is stated in something else, namely dollars, which this has to be exchanged into to be useful.

What happened here is a wire transfer, not different from me sending money from my bank account to someone else bank account. Just with two additional transformation steps (make money into whatever crypto, make whatever crypto back into money).

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#229

Post by cuteboy19 »

d13 wrote: post #159
doogerdog wrote: post #65

Molly provides a great service to skeptics like me. She concise, easy to read, articulate and funny. I feel like I live in a world where a huge train wreck is getting set up. I would like to follow along but it has gotten to the point where I can't get myself to read many of these 'News' stories about a new crypto adventure. I only have a little news reading time in a day and the typical article about NFTs or whateve…

It’s a brilliant site, but definitely cherry-picked for entertainment value. It’s only a small part of the whole picture and provides a very distorted view

People shilling crypto are heavily incentivised to cover up the negatives or pretend they don't exist. Every crypto news site is basically paid news. Even when they publish negative articles, it's usually because they are shilling an alternative. The journalism quality is terrible.

The site is probably the most neutral crypto view out there, just because the author has no perverse incentive

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#230

Post by galaxyLogic »

trophycase wrote: post #82
phone8675309 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not hire anybody with a crypto startup on their resume.

Former newspaper exec probably: "I would never hire someone who started out writing a blog "

I would never join a club that allowed people like as its members - Groucho
Post reply on HN