Live data from Hacker News

Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

continuations.com

61–70 of 91 posts

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#61
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at the past 10,000 years of history - commodities are useful things, objects with utility. Currencies are commodities which people begin to favor for use in trading. Currencies are commodities which have properties that make them good currencies - they have properties such as uniformity, durability, divisibility, portability. This is why precious metals like gold have been favored as currencies through his…

Papiermark got printed. BTC gets ...?

I believe that the deflationary nature of cryptocurrencies is the real problem in replacing money. Also the fact that a trail is left behind transactions is unlike it is with cash. This property is cool for the government, but the users may not want to have it.

On question that bugs me, but don't have enough knowledge bout Bitcoin: are the transactions public? (I believe they are). So anybody could map the wealth of the members of the bitcoin network? If it were used instead of cash my money movements could me monitored by anyone, eg. my employer?

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#62
post #7

Internet companies during the dotcom bubble had market value of several trillion dollars. The total market cap of crypto-currency is still only ~$70 billion. I agree with the principle, but this boom is still pretty modest.

The market cap doesn't take into account the cryptocurrency derivatives market.

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#63
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea what is going on here or are you ignoring away in bliss? This is as much a pyramid scheme as VC industry is in that early investors make disproportionate gains (and losses). Finding the right tokens to invest in is the challenge.

Well I will gladly change my mind anytime someone can provide a convincing argument against the "bitcoin pyramid scheme" that is nor an ad-hominem attack, neither a cryptic response like "value come from scarcity induced by the growing complexity of the arbitrary mathematical problem solving that require big amount of current tech silicium mostly running in a non-democratic country who don't care about power efficien…

Your statement indicates that you don't know what a pyramid scheme is, or that you do and you're expanding its definition to generalize its negative connotation to something else that doesn't fall under the proper definition of a pyramid scheme.

A company using credit card technology in combination with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is simply leveraging existing technology interfaces for companies that want to accept cryptocurrency without said companies having to deal with alternative payment systems. The payment system handles everything related to the cryptocurrency and the payee simply sees the USD (or other fiat currency) value in their accounts.

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#64

Respectfully, I think a lot of comments on this topic are missing the point of the author's advice. Whether there is or is not a bubble, and if there is, how big that bubble might get, are irrelevant here. That's not what this article is about. First, the author assumes there is a bubble brewing. That's not his thesis; that's his background assumption. His thesis is that, assuming there is a bubble , you should do X,…

One of his advices is: > 2. Beware vanity metrics Can we tell if BitCoin and other cryptocurrencies has any vanity metrics? If so, what would that be? My uneducated guess would be how valuable the currency is in Dollars. The currency seems virtually inflated as we don't know how much of that would translate to real purchasing power. It doesn't seem that it would be possible to many people to sell it all out. Thus, wh…

Current vanity metrics seem to include "market capitalization" and amount raised during ICO. It is true that those have become signal in the current noise but it speaks about how frothy things are.

Crytocurrencies simply are hard to value because you don't know how many users they've got.

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#65
post #2

Does anyone think that when the crypto bubble bursts, that will cause a stock market level crash?

It depends on how big the derivatives market for cryptocurrencies is; i.e. how much is leveraged in bets related to cryptocurrencies.

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#66
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I will gladly change my mind anytime someone can provide a convincing argument against the "bitcoin pyramid scheme" that is nor an ad-hominem attack, neither a cryptic response like "value come from scarcity induced by the growing complexity of the arbitrary mathematical problem solving that require big amount of current tech silicium mostly running in a non-democratic country who don't care about power efficien…

Your statement indicates that you don't know what a pyramid scheme is, or that you do and you're expanding its definition to generalize its negative connotation to something else that doesn't fall under the proper definition of a pyramid scheme. A company using credit card technology in combination with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is simply leveraging existing technology interfaces for companies that want to a…

I will stick to the pretty basic definition that a pyramid scheme cannot sustain itself when less foreign currency enter the system. That is because the system is blatantly unable to produce value and only produce virtual currency from foreign currency.

I stil don't see any argument, just as-hominem as usual when defending bitcoin: "Pheeww you know nothing...".

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#67
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea what is going on here or are you ignoring away in bliss? This is as much a pyramid scheme as VC industry is in that early investors make disproportionate gains (and losses). Finding the right tokens to invest in is the challenge.

Well I will gladly change my mind anytime someone can provide a convincing argument against the "bitcoin pyramid scheme" that is nor an ad-hominem attack, neither a cryptic response like "value come from scarcity induced by the growing complexity of the arbitrary mathematical problem solving that require big amount of current tech silicium mostly running in a non-democratic country who don't care about power efficien…

No one needs to prove you anything. You are free to believe what you want. The world doesn't have the responsibility to convince a stranger of a concept s/he hasn't taken time to read or finds too difficult to understand.

I would encourage you to read more about cryptocurrencies and how it has massive disruptive potential. Here are a good set of articles to get you started: https://thecontrol.co/some-blockchain-reading-1d98ec6b2f39

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Papiermark got printed. BTC gets ...?

I believe that the deflationary nature of cryptocurrencies is the real problem in replacing money. Also the fact that a trail is left behind transactions is unlike it is with cash. This property is cool for the government, but the users may not want to have it. On question that bugs me, but don't have enough knowledge bout Bitcoin: are the transactions public? (I believe they are). So anybody could map the wealth of…

Deflationary is not a bad thing at all - though I realize that most of mainstream economics thinks it is.

A few thoughts on that:

- Real wages rise when the currency deflates (good for working class, think about the effect of wealth inequality)

- Debt becomes a problem (bad for indebted, such as government)

The main official reason why deflation would be a bad thing is that it discourages spending. I think it discourages non-necessary spending. People will still eat, they just wait a few months more to buy their TV. However, they can buy more TVs now or other things because they have more disposable income.

I don't think forcing people to spend is in any way a good thing, neither economically nor ecologically.

But enough of this, I want a non-inflationary currency to save in. If there are enough of me, that's sufficient to make something "have a value".

Re the public transactions, I assume that sooner or later it can be tracked to a high probability. However, I also think this is the case with other non-cash transactions, so while it's not relatively better than fiat in that sense, it's still not worse either. For me that's ok since I'm not in the money laundering or tax evasion business.

Re: Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble

#70
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I will gladly change my mind anytime someone can provide a convincing argument against the "bitcoin pyramid scheme" that is nor an ad-hominem attack, neither a cryptic response like "value come from scarcity induced by the growing complexity of the arbitrary mathematical problem solving that require big amount of current tech silicium mostly running in a non-democratic country who don't care about power efficien…

No one needs to prove you anything. You are free to believe what you want. The world doesn't have the responsibility to convince a stranger of a concept s/he hasn't taken time to read or finds too difficult to understand. I would encourage you to read more about cryptocurrencies and how it has massive disruptive potential. Here are a good set of articles to get you started: https://thecontrol.co/some-blockchain-readi…

Still, but nicer, ad-hominem "you don't deserve explanation, because you don't know enough" followed by a link of endless references.

I don't deny that cryptocurrencies might play a huge role in the future. And algorithms are indeed pretty clever. But I don't see why that prevent current bitcoin implementation to be a pyramid scheme and thus I ask. And haven't been answered so far.

It's like arguing that tulips madness wasn't a buble because tulip are beautifull and still sells today. Evrything can be used by speculators to build a buble, even rice or corn (and that's even worse than bitcoin because lots of people don't eat as much as needed as of today).

Post reply on HN