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Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#521

Post by Mehringotio »

mirceal wrote: post #365
Mehringotio wrote: post #38

I follow climate change for a while. Especially the co2 concentration in our air, wild fires, droughts etc. I'm looking forward to burning less resources for just hashes. I'm also getting tired of having the same fruitless discussions. There are a lot of people who have never thought about a ton of implications of crypto. Real issues are ignored, unknown, or just never even mentioned.

> I'm looking forward to burning less resources for just hashes. you do not understand or don't want to understand why those hashes are necessary. Are you okay with burning resources for running a bloated financial system or sponsoring "innovators" out of public money? Are you okay with the money you worked hard for to literally lose value due to inflation? Are you okay with a society where if we stop producing and c…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#522

Post by gsibble »

conductr wrote: post #453
gsibble wrote: post #98

I feel bad for people losing money, but crypto has not lived up to its potential at all, remains a solution looking for a problem, and is an environmental disaster. I used to be a huge believer. Brian Armstrong gave me my first Bitcoin in 2011 at District in SOMA. Electricity was included in my rent so I bought 10 video cards and mined for about two years on 5 systems. At a company I founded, I use Bitcoin to pay for…

I agree with this. I hate that I actually tried to use bitcoin as currency. My first transaction, I bought a bag of weed on silkroad early enough on that those coins would be worth ~$1m right now. But I smoked it.

Hey, you can say you were rich enough to smoke a million dollars. There's some street cred to that.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#523

Post by gsibble »

cwkoss wrote: post #255
gsibble wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I cannot stand the modern crypto bro. I've met some truly insufferable people. The term "New Money" doesn't even do enough justice to how horrible these people behave.

I think how the SV techbros in this thread view cryptobros is probably fairly similar to how most of society views SV techbros.

Probably. Except I don't live in SV. I did for 10 years but now live in Boston. Entirely different environment.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#524

Post by scoofy »

surfpel wrote: post #437
MattyMc wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What real math is involved in predicting the stock market? I have a MSC in Statistics, studied quantitative finance. Generally I'd agree with you. For general investing there's often little math involved other than some simple ratios and comparisons. Three numbers I look at most often are the Price-to-Sales ratio, Gross Profit %, and annual revenue growth. There's no complex math involved here at all. Where investi…

> There is some very interesting and fun maths involved in this process that is beyond the scope of general investing. Are there some search terms or resources you would recommend looking into to learn more about this fun maths?

Nassim Taleb's academic papers are all about the fun math of risk-management. He basically invented the barbell/butterfly strategy which is effectively a "normal distribution risk profile" to "students t distribution risk profile" arbitrage, where you are making a big bet that the market underestimates both the downside risk and upside rewards of equities in general.

Very bizarre strategy, but really, really interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#525

Post by logifail »

nightski wrote: post #477
lbrito wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the day they don't. This kind of thing is inherently un-provable. You can have a method that works stupidly well for decades, and then it stops working. Building a model that provenly (in the mathematical sense) works with X% efficiency would be akin to building a free energy device.

It's very likely you put your life on the line every day with things that can't be proven. That is engineering after all.

> your life on the line

Your life at 0.00000x% risk is one thing. I'm fairly relaxed about that.

Your capital at - say - 50% risk of total loss is another. I don't play that game.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#526

Post by jreese »

nwiswell wrote: post #132
jjeaff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can charge admission to view fine art in person.

I'm not sure if you are serious. Are there any for-profit museums focused on fine art?

The Louvre charges 17€ per person, and I'm pretty sure they're focused on fine art. How much they're profit focused versus just reinvesting profits is up for debate.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#527

Post by Mehringotio »

cdiddy2 wrote: post #344
yabones wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no clean energy, just some that are cleaner than others. For every solar panel, there's a pile of toxic garbage that must be dealt with after ~20 years. It's unquestionably better than the billions of tonnes of CO2 that would be produced by the equivalent coal plant, but it's still a problem. There is no "ethical consumption" of cryptocurrency.

Why is it ethical for you to fly in a plane and run your clothes drier but not for someone in Afghanistan to buy food and protect their money by using bitcoin?

Who said that?

No one.

Don't use a strawman argument.

And independent of this issue: there are of course things which are objectively better for that person in Afghanistan and objectively better for everyone.

Your poor Afghanistan person might like to have less heat waves than Bitcoin because he might not have enough money anyway to save it away as Bitcoin.

Normally those countries use dollar or euro anyway. It's much easier for them than being able to remember a Bitcoin wallet

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#528

Post by Mehringotio »

cdiddy2 wrote: post #442
blibble wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that would be fine logic if we had unlimited clean energy unfortunately as its supply is limited... it being consumed for useless work means it can't be used for useful work, and as a result dirty energy is being generated for that instead

What about when clean energy is negatively priced would you be ok using bitcoin miners to make it more economical then?

No.

Bitcoin would still compete for other things which are much more critical toost people on our planet.

Things like a storage battery. Or melting aluminum or other ors.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#529

Post by mrzimmerman »

robocat wrote: post #383
mjburgess wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transfers of wealth from productive to unproductive industries arent risks worth rewarding, neither economically or with praise. It's slothful both as a personal vice, and as an economic activity.

> Transfers of wealth from productive to unproductive industries arent risks worth rewarding Down that path lies authoritarianism: who decides what is productive? Is art productive? Is your comment on HN productive? Is beer productive? Is Haskell productive? Are you productive? It isn’t hard to argue most everything is non-productive. Remove all non-productive uses of money or time, and what is left?

I think you may be confusing economics terms with moral and ethical distinctions. I’ll grant that the idea of productive and unproductive labor is an outdated economic concept.

Regardless, academically defining something as more or less productive than something else is not authoritarian. Nor is deciding personally if something is “good” or “bad”.

Now if someone in government decided to create and pass legislation based on their personal academic or philosophical beliefs, and not based on some factual usefulness of the legislation, than I think that would fall under the definition of authoritarian.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?

#530

Post by giaour »

noxer wrote: post #471
giaour wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many people make several million dollars over their life time but see it as to high of a risk to put 10k into something that could go to zero but it also could go to 100k or even more. That does not make much sense. The question should not be "should I risk the 10k? The question should be "am I in a financial position that allows me to lose 10k?" I see where you're trying to go by framing a loss against lifetime ea…

Obviously I didn't not attempt to cover ever possible case and personality you can think of that wasn't the goal anyway. Someone who gambles doesn't fall in the category of "risk intolerant" anyway. Beside that in "traditional" gambling the odds are against you so the whole risk/reward ration is out the window and "only a small lose over your whole lifetime" doesn't change this. I would never encourage anyone to just…

"Betting 10K on black" was meant to be a metaphor for buying 10K of cryptocurrency. Just like there are professional cryptocurrency traders, there are professional gamblers, but everyone else playing the game is expected to lose money to the sharks.

The example you provide of purchasing a fragile collectible is similar; almost all collectibles (be they fine art, beanie babies, or NFTs) lose value, so purchasing one is very much a bet.

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