China's Central Bank Bans ICOs • Hacker News Board

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#51

Post by richardknop » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 9:58 AM UTC

Does this spell trouble for Ethereum? Without ICOs (one of it's major features if not the most important one) what else will drive the price speculation?

I believe prices are inflated because of ICOs. People are buying tokens counting on ICO hype to increase their value so they can flip their initial invested principal with 2x/3x/4x return.

Without ICOs this speculative technique will not be possible so we will see how many people are actually interested in buying these worthless tokens because they believe in their "features", rather than speculate on their price.

I wonder though if the speculation will just move from China to other countries though and the bubble will continue until there is more action by regulators around the world against this.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#52

Post by oskarth » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

Lots of people dislike ICOs, some for good reasons. But ICOs is a general mechanism and the specifics differ. Are some ICOs ponzi schemes? Sure. But this move is about capital controls, little else. I am surprised so many people are defending this as a good thing. Do you want to outlaw all VC money too?

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#53

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:01 AM UTC

oskarth wrote: post #52

Lots of people dislike ICOs, some for good reasons. But ICOs is a general mechanism and the specifics differ. Are some ICOs ponzi schemes? Sure. But this move is about capital controls, little else. I am surprised so many people are defending this as a good thing. Do you want to outlaw all VC money too?

[deleted]

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#54

Post by dmichulke » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

richardknop wrote: post #48

bhaak wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not get the SEC memo? The US doesn't have to ban ICOs as most of them are securities and unregistered selling of securities is already illegal.

That SEC memo was weak. They should have made much more forceful statement. Thousands (likely tens of thousands) of US citizens are still investing in ICOs, there needs to be much stronger action taken to stop their gambling.

Because you and the SEC know much better than all of them?

You know we're talking about the same SEC that didn't saw the real estate bubble coming in 2007/08 (size > trillions, CDOs are obviously fine) or the dotcom bubble in 2000 (size > trillions, they approved the IPOs, right)?

If so, please give me reasons (instead of opinions or references to SEC "authority") as to why the ICOs in a 175 bn market are "dangerous".

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#55

Post by vortico » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

billpg wrote: post #10

Yes! We should use PNG files for icons rather than Microsoft's proprietary format. What?

But without ICOs, China will now see nasty missing-file images for all of its programs, since many users still use Windows XP, which doesn't support PNG icons.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#56

Post by Tepix » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:09 AM UTC

richardknop wrote: post #51

Does this spell trouble for Ethereum? Without ICOs (one of it's major features if not the most important one) what else will drive the price speculation? I believe prices are inflated because of ICOs. People are buying tokens counting on ICO hype to increase their value so they can flip their initial invested principal with 2x/3x/4x return. Without ICOs this speculative technique will not be possible so we will see h…

It will slow the crazy growth if ICOs are regulated in some countries, but it may also prevents a total collapse of the whole unhealthy ICO bubble that we've seen this year. You're also right with regards to speculation - it seems to me like most buyers of ICO tokens don't care about the project at all, they merely want to make a quick buck by selling the tokens after the crowdsale at a higher price.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#57

Post by vortico » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:09 AM UTC

nickserv wrote: post #27

Had to dig around 3 sites before finding a definition for ICO: ICO (Initial Crypto-Token Offering) refers to financing through the issuance of encrypted tokens (Crypto-Token).

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

People should really learn to define acronyms before using them in all writing mediums. I don't care if the author has used the term 10,000 with colleagues, he should still define them upon their first use in the article body.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#58

Post by namelost » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:09 AM UTC

simias wrote: post #40

Jedi72 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the things about bitcoin nobody has ever explained to me adequately. Governments use monetary policy & other economic tools to regulate the economy. Assuming we're all Keynsians here, this is a pretty important feature that govts will not give up, so how is Bitcoin ever supposed to supplant fiat currency?

I think many of the Bitcoin fans[1] are also in favor of the gold standard. They don't want the government to be able to "print money". Actually I just noticed that the Wikipedia page on the gold standard has a section about bitcoin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Gold_standard_an... [1] At those who bother to think about the long term economic consequences of Bitcoin instead of just trying to Get Rich Q…

I'd disagree. What Bitcoin fans want is "digital gold", not the gold standard.

The gold standard is a system where paper currency is backed by a guarantee that it is redeemable for a given amount of gold. Of course the govt can rescind this promise at any time.

What Bitcoin fans want is something more akin to gold coins, where the value of the currency is independent of any state.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#59

Post by richardknop » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:10 AM UTC

dmichulke wrote: post #54

richardknop wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That SEC memo was weak. They should have made much more forceful statement. Thousands (likely tens of thousands) of US citizens are still investing in ICOs, there needs to be much stronger action taken to stop their gambling.

Because you and the SEC know much better than all of them? You know we're talking about the same SEC that didn't saw the real estate bubble coming in 2007/08 (size > trillions, CDOs are obviously fine) or the dotcom bubble in 2000 (size > trillions, they approved the IPOs, right)? If so, please give me reasons (instead of opinions or references to SEC "authority") as to why the ICOs in a 175 bn market are "dangerous"…

My opinion is not important. The issue is lots of unsophisticated investors are betting their savings / money they can't afford to lose on cryptocurrency in hopes to flip their investment quickly and get rich. This is something which should be regulated so you can't just randomly dump your IRA/401k to buy some random cryptocurrency generated over a weekend by some person in a garage with shell company in Cayman Islands.

Re: China's Central Bank Bans ICOs

#60

Post by lsd5you » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 10:11 AM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #43

lsd5you wrote: post #35

People will see the authoritarian aspect of this, but in my view the Chinese are particularly vulnerable to financial scams for cultural reasons. - They have recent communist history/lack experience of crashes/associated fraud. - Traditionally they actually worship money - By burning fake money. - MLM scams are popular (at least in Taiwan). - When I watched a video by Andreas - that Bitcoin guy - the audience (in US)…

> Traditionally they actually worship money - By burning fake money. Burning hell money is a symbolic offering to the deceased, not an act of worshipping money itself. Or do Westerners "actually worship flowers" because we place them on graves? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_money

Good point and saying they 'worship money' was an unintended pejorative.

Still it is a bit more than that. Flowers are merely a gesture/ritual whereas burning money is an attempt to send money to the afterlife (if my understanding is correct), which inevitably does elevate it somewhat in the minds of believers. I feel the original point is partially intact, in that they definitely do have superstitions surrounding money e.g. red packets ... etc.