Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by proofofstake | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

proofofstake

ROI of creating an investment portfolio 1 year ago, and selling today:

- All Bitcoin: ~500%

- Mix of top market: ~2800%

- All Strat: ~13500%

Meanwhile, stock investors call 12% a good year.

View on HN

Now compare total market capitalization of equity markets to Bitcoin. I doubt you could liquidate millions of dollars of bitcoin in a day and not make the market plummet. You can do that in the last 30 minutes of the stock trading day with no very little price fluctuation.

There are equities that are up triple digits, including Nvidia...who is realistically the biggest winner in crypto mining.

«I doubt you could liquidate millions of dollars of bitcoin in a day and not make the market plummet.»

Wrong. 1.5+ BILLION dollars' worth of bitcoins are sold and bought in aggregate daily on 100+ exchanges: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

Being able to sell one cryptocurrency for another doesn't mean the first cryptocurrency is liquid.

From a quick check at coinmarketcap, the daily bitcoin/dollar volume on BitMEX alone is $455 million. Next up is Bitfinex with $182 million.

That's a very very small amount, real currency markets do trillions a day, bitcoin is the size of a large company. He's totally right, that's a small liquid market when compared to the real markets. If you tried to dump 10 million in bitcoin all at once, there's a good chance you're going to crash the market; 10 million wouldn't even move the price in the EURUSD.

Large cap stocks are not generally considered to be illiquid investments, even though they're much smaller than major currency markets.

Because there are thousands of stocks in the market, whereas BTC is about half the entire crypto market; huge difference.

If you dump ten million bucks worth of shares in a $10B company, it doesn't matter how many other $10B companies there are. All that matters is the liquidity of that particular company.

«That's a very very small amount, real currency markets do trillions a day»

It is. But that's not what partiallypro and I were discussing. We argued about whether selling "millions" would crash BTC or not.

«He's totally right»

Did you even read the link I posted? Even if you look at only the BTC/USD pair, $10M represents merely ~1% of the volume sold DAILY on the top 6 exchanges (~$800M). You would probably need to sell an order of magnitude more, so $100M, in a single day, to start affecting the markets significantly.

I think you're confusing daily volume with volume available at any one time. Read what I said, dump 10 mil at once. Just because you can trade 10 million in a day doesn't mean the market can handle a 10 million dollar order in one shot without massive slippage due to lack of liquidity. You could drop a 50 million dollar order on the EURUSD and you might maybe move the market 1 point, but a mere 10 million would instantly cause a large swing of perhaps 10% in the bitcoin market, that's why it's so volatile, it's a small market.

It's so small you have individual holders the community now calls whales who can individually manipulate the price with buy and sell walls; no individual can do anything remotely like that in the FX market. One because they don't have enough money, and two because such market manipulation is illegal.

You'd need to spread your purchase or sale out over the day to avoid massive slippage for an order that big because there just isn't enough liquidity to absorb it without the moving the price. 10 mill is about 2500 coins, go look at the order book on any exchange, a purchase that large is going to massively move the price, looks to be possibly 300-400 dollars you'd move the market with that one order. 50 million would certainly crash/bubble the market.

I make a living trading BTC. I know the difference.

The OP mentioned selling in a day, not at once: «I doubt you could liquidate millions of dollars of bitcoin IN A DAY...» This is what I commented on.

You changed the topic and started talking about selling all at once, which would of course eat a bunch of bids. However even doing this wouldn't "crash the market." The order books are deeper than you think. It's hard to find examples, because it's plain dumb to market-sell this much in one order. But I found a ~1150 BTC sell on Bitstamp around 3pm on September 13 and it barely moved the price: https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg5zig1-minzczs...

It would eat even lower bids on exchanges with less volume/thinner books, but still wouldn't crash the market. For example some idiot sold 1200 BTC in two market-sells of 600 BTC each, 30min apart yesterday on Gemini; and although it ate all the bids from $4100 to $3400, twice!, it didn't "crash the market". Other exchanges didn't react. Subsequent trades resumed exactly where the price was before ($4100).

OK, little more liquid than I expected, I just glanced at the order books on bitcoinwisdom. What happened on Gemini looks more what I'd expect, a deep and fast crash as all the liquidity was eaten.

That's irrelevant, those aren't single transactions. If you can trade $15 Million in a single transaction in bitcoin without effecting the price, I'll say it's becoming liquid.

I can personally assure you that isn't true ;)

Eh, I don't really know where to start to explain how wrong this is.

The crypto market is still niche. There are stocks that make 100-1000% performance. But the stock market is "saturated" for representing assets, equities and companies. So its growth is limited.

I agree with:

> The crypto market is still niche. There are stocks that make 100-1000% performance. But the stock market is "saturated" for representing assets, equities and companies. So its growth is limited.

so I do not see how my post was wrong. These are the numbers. With such numbers, it would be foolish to discard the crypto market as "too volatile" and stick with stocks.

There are crypto coins that did way better than Strat, but there was not enough volume to make a decent profit. Even Doge did 260%. The only "loser" is STEEM with a 80% ROI.

No, these numbers do in fact suggest the crypto market is extremely volatile. Many, many people who invest regularly in stocks should not invest in cryptocurrency because it is too volatile.

People/companies that are able to understand and accept the risk that comes from speculating on cryptocurrencies should consider doing so, because it is possible to make a profit, perhaps a significant one.

But if you're looking at the past and saying "wow, I should buy BTC because it made 1000% last year - it can't lose!" then you're ignoring a quite serious risk that volatile growth could change into volatile collapse in the future.

See Shimon comment. Economists/Traders/Finance guys have this concept that: Every stock/asset/price is equal. It is the volatility that matters.

Traders don't look for "potential growth". In their frame of reference, that potential of growth is already "priced in".

Now if you disagree with that, it is another story.

Edit: replied to the wrong guy.

I always read these posts as all or nothing, so forgive me if that's not what you mean. Why not take a smaller chunk of a portfolio, say 2%, and invest in crypto?

That way you can get potentially huge gains with little at risk.

They're volatile, but they have low correlation with other asset classes. You can put a small portion of your assets in crypto and lower the overall risk of your portfolio.

They also have very high Sharpe ratios (the ratio between returns and volatility), though given crypto's short history we shouldn't trust that too much.

https://www.bletchleyindexes.com/blog/idx_perf_post

You can say it's not the whole purveyor, or even misleading, but it certainly isn't "wrong"

*picture

Meanwhile, people said stuff like this before 2000 about all sorts of individual stocks.

Agreed, and there probably will be a year where nearly all coins tank. It would be foolish to invest all your profits back into the market, year after year.

But should this stop you (or any investment firm) to seriously look at the profit potential here? What do you get for correctly calling the bubble in 3 years? Nothing.

> What do you get for correctly calling the bubble in 3 years?

Well, if you knew when the bubble was bursting, then there would be no problem!

A slot machine is known to give a 200% ROI and allow a single pull each day. You play this slot machine every day for 500 days, until you notice it stops rewarding you.

Then someone says: "Look I told you so, I've been telling everyone for 2000 days now: This slot machine will crash one day!". And you say: "Ok. You were right. Guess the party couldn't last forever. Thanks for the warning!". Out of habit you play for 30 more days, but the rewards stay gone, so you exit with some nice profit.

Meanwhile, the other person knew of the existence of a highly profitable slot machine, while it was still profitable, but never actually played it, because they feared that one day it may not be profitable anymore.

This isn't quite right. To stick with the casino example, a large number of Bitcoin speculators are "letting it ride." They've won a bunch of times, and they continue to bet more and more money.

Your example only works if you are regularly selling BTC as its worth increases. If you're just holding onto it, your gains are never realized.

My investment horizon is a bit more than 530 days.

I can do you one better because I made 200x ROI investing in the roulette wheel in just a single day.

Some people told me that I'm confusing good investment decisions with high volatility ones, but what do they know? They're just stupid investors! /s

Yup. Few people realize Bitcoin has been literally the best performing investment in human history. One dollar invested in March 2010 is worth $1+ million today. 1,000,000× returns.

But the downside of performing so well is that it is too easy to get distracted by the price and disregard the radical improvements that Bitcoin brings over legacy financial systems...

What? Practically every day, someone wins $millions from a $1 lottery ticket somewhere in the world. That's the same or better returns...

A "lottery ticket" does not quite fit the traditional definition of "investment".

Besides, almost no one who buys a lottery ticket ends up winning millions, but everyone who bought and held bitcoins since 2010 is a winner.

They seem perfectly equivalent to me. Lottery winnings came from everyone else buying tickets, yes.

So where are the 'winnings' of these magical 2010-era bitcoin holders coming from, if not from other people buying bitcoins?

"If these trends continue..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6LOWKVq5sQ

Nice quip. To stick with analogy: Some people in this thread are in the 70s, telling record companies to ignore the disco genre entirely, because it is a fad that can't last more than a decade. Instead, telling them to stick with what they know: 50s rock and roll.

What about the Sharpe ratio? Divide the return by the (daily?) standard deviation of returns.

Quite high in crypto: https://www.bletchleyindexes.com/blog/idx_perf_post

All Strat?

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/stratis/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com