Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kiro | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you can compare Bitcoin to stocks, housing, tulips or any other commodity and draw bubble conclusions based on that. I think we're dealing with a whole new area of economic psychology that the world simply hasn't experienced this before.

Not saying it won't crash though but I think the reasons will be different than traditional bubbles.

View on HN

I think one aspect of that newness is how much more intensely international and 24/7 the crypto game is. That makes it both more vast and more terrifying. I don't have numbers to back up my claim; I just know that the cryptos have immense capital invested/speculated into it from all corners of the world (but seemingly mostly the U.S. and Asia?), it runs on a 24/7 operation and the exchanges are pretty internationally dispersed. How does this compare to the NYSE, in terms of trading hours (09:30-16:00 ET), listed securities and overall accessibility? How much more capital can be pumped (and/or coins dumped) given time spans, lack of 'circuit breakers', and so forth?

There's something about that aspect that I am sure is making this phenomenon potentially wilder than the Dot Com crash of 2001.

I tend to agree with this assessment of global markets in general. Things have accelerated to a point that no one has any idea what's going to happen anymore. Past experience is not only misleading, but meaningless now.

A quote from The Four Pillars of Investing:

"Of the four key areas of investment knowledge — theory, history, psychology, and investment industry practices — the lack of historical knowledge is the one that causes the most damage. In finance, there is no controversy: the same speculative follies play out with almost clock-like regularity about once a generation."

A whole lot of investors have come to believe that history is obsolete, and later regretted it.

“The four most expensive words in the English language are 'This time it’s different.'”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com