Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip • Hacker News Board

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#291

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

SavantIdiot wrote: post #82

zpeti wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I still think it is revolutionary technology that may well revolutionise things in 5-10 or 50 years, who knows. If there's one thing I love most about the technology behind bitcoin, it is the permanent, public, unalterable ledger of every purchase I've ever made and every purchase I'll every make, and who I gave the money to. I'm super excited about the complete lack of personal financial privacy that Bitcoin's blo…

Monero does not have this problem. It's what bitcoin should have been.

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#292

Post by pradn » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #26

jmacd wrote: post #11

As an outside observer, who has no crypto holdings at all, but is very deeply invested in the public stock market with a heavy weight on technology stocks... this doesn't look like a crash to me at all. It just looks like some steam being let off and old investors cash out and new investors get more comfortable with how much and where to invest. I consider crypto currency as it is to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme (per…

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…

It doesn't seem like anyone believes cryptos are supposed to be currencies any more. All the talk around them is around them being a new, exciting, and potentially very lucrative investment class. If you go to Coinbase's front page, you see that you can buy and sell them, like you can with Robinhood. It's not trying to be a PayPal. The currency-ness does serve an important purpose. It helps bring in investment for the nebulous future where using them as currencies will have advantages.

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#293

Post by rvz » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

stephc_int13 wrote: post #8

I don't know why, it is probably highly irrational, but I always rejoice when the Bitcoin crashes.

Exactly. I remember the last time I rejoiced about BTC dropping. [0] At that time, I bought it at And now I am laughing at the ones who bought BTC at >$60K who are now bag-hodling around and have to wait again.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21606212

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#294

Post by dcx » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

hellow0rldz wrote: post #270

paulpauper wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by that logic, why not just buy lotto tickets?

You know... what I am curious, does this logic make sense? Why wouldn't a given % be allocated to lotto tickets?! Quite curious from a risk/reward portfolio formula.

Yes, it does, despite the negative expected value. In corporate finance it's known that companies that are approaching failure are often willing to pay for volatility.

This is also why lotto tickets are more popular with the poor.

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#295

Post by Retric » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #275

Nursie wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not understand how every time cryptocurrency comes up armchair HN users come along and comment when they, very apparently, have almost no understanding of the topic This in itself is a meme - "All criticism is ignorance!" Bitcoin is not a ponzi or a pyramid scheme, that's true, but it has aspects of both, with its declining emission and stacked rewards for early adopters. And Bitcoin is for settlement now is i…

> The truth is that bitcoin is an instrument of speculation. Little else. I actually agree. Bitcoin has failed. It's useless as a coin. New coins have been created to address its shortcomings. Monero seems to be the closest one to the original cryptocurrency dream of decentralized and private currency. Despite this, bitcoin is still king and there seems to be no way to dethrone it.

Bitcoin “dies” like bubbles do, after a peak it can’t recover from people stop thinking of it as an investment.

Tulip mania didn’t kill off Tulip farming, and even a 99.9% crash won’t kill Bitcoin. It simply returned things to the fundamental value proposition amid significant competition. In theory Bitcoin could win in a direct head to head competition, though it seems unlikely that the first coin got everything correct and was never improved upon.

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#296

Post by optimuspaul » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #215

randomsearch wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currencies are used to purchase things. If the purchasing power of 1 BTC changes dramatically, it matters.

You're assuming I care how much something costs in dollars.

Do you care how many chickens or how many beers you can get with BTC?

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#297

Post by rawtxapp » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

Even though I'm very bullish on crypto longterm and even though this crash caused me large loses on paper, I'm happy about it. I think a lot of people got very greedy and way overleveraged themselves which is not sustainable in the long-term.

For example, almost 9B$ worth of crypto got liquidated in the last 24hr, that's insane. People chasing quick money get burned.

1: https://www.bybt.com/LiquidationData

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#298

Post by quickthrowman » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #277

pilingual wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the disinterested take! It's refreshing to see this as a top comment when so often I see "Crypto makes me sick" which offers zero information and doesn't belong on HN. A few points to the repetitive comments I keep seeing: 1. Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. Various cryptocurrencies operate in such a manner, but Bitcoin and Ethereum have value propositions: settlement and programmable money respectively.…

> Bitcoin pricing is on a log scale. Dropping to $36k from $50k is not a concern on this scale. What is that even supposed to mean?

The poster you replied to is confused, I think they’re saying they chart Bitcoin with a logarithmic scale, which as we both know has nothing to do with how Bitcoin is priced, only how the price action is displayed on a chart.

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#299

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

jmacd wrote: post #11

As an outside observer, who has no crypto holdings at all, but is very deeply invested in the public stock market with a heavy weight on technology stocks... this doesn't look like a crash to me at all. It just looks like some steam being let off and old investors cash out and new investors get more comfortable with how much and where to invest. I consider crypto currency as it is to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme (per…

if crypto is a ponzi scheme, then isn't cash also a ponzi scheme? cash can become just as worthless, when no one believes in it anymore, just ask zimbabwae.

personally, if i'm going to be in a ponzi scheme, at the very least I want something with a limited supply.

Also, what other option do we have for store of value? Equities are way overvalued beyond reason. Fixed income/cash are becoming worthless very quickly. real estate is hard, very hard (just ask anyone that's bought in the last year). What else is there? put everything in gold?(the supply there is manipulated).

yes, crypto has some environmental cost. but, there's huge need for store of value. if you've been working your entire life and have 200K stored up. Losing 10K per year to inflation, year after year is not acceptable.

Re: Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip

#300

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

greg7mdp wrote: post #75

Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the purely technical level, Bitcoin’s current transactions per minute heavily limit it’s utility. The original goal was solving micro transactions which crypto coins could do, they just need to scale to ~100 Billion transactions a day +/- orders of magnitude. Unfortunately, miners benefit from the current artificial limitations. Which demonstrates an inherent issue with crypto currency, miners and users have very…

Ethereum will solve both issues, removing miners and the energy use by moving to Proof of Stake at the end on this year, and increasing the transaction throughput by 100x factors with level 2 solutions.

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