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Comment by payne92 | Hacker News Reader

There's an adage in poker that's applicable to crypto trading: if you don't know who the sucker is at the table....it's probably you.

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One of the plot points of The Big Short that I found interesting was Mark Baum character finally discovering who was on the other side of the swap he buys from Jared Vennett at Deutsche Bank. And then you had the whole Florida subplot showing how the housing bubble entangled people all the way down the food chain.

I'm still not clear who the suckers are in these cryptocoin markets that are driving up the price. I'm starting to hear stories about barbers and janitors and friends of friends buying in. I guess it got popular enough in South Korea that the government had to step in.

How mainstream has crypto trading gone? Who are the suckers?

I'm still not clear who the suckers are in these cryptocoin markets that are driving up the price.

It's my coworker who is HODL'ing because "it's got better returns than our 401(k)".

> How mainstream has crypto trading gone? Who are the suckers?

I would say it's the early majority now. But it has reached the point where I see people following crypto stocks in the train regularly, and apparently all of my non-techie friends (teacher, historian, etc) all own a small chunk of crypto stocks now.

“Stocks”

That’s such an unfortunate metaphor for crypto.

It's a hard question with no good answer. However, if you are asking who the suckers are, you can be pretty sure you aren't a sucker. For the lurkers, if you are reading this on HN, odds are that you are not a sucker. That said, know your price and sell, don't try to game markets.

> if you are asking who the suckers are, you can be pretty sure you aren't a sucker

This is literally the opposite of the adage. It doesn’t say “if you never asked who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.” It’s “if you can’t identify the sucker, you’re the sucker.” With Bitcoin, everyone who isn’t an exchange or getting paid to promote an ICO is probably a sucker.

I don't believe so. The suckers are the barbers in the oilfields and Kennedy's shoe-shiners. If you are wise enough to know there are suckers in the first place, you'll likely take steps to avoid being one.

> The suckers are the barbers

In the adage about the shoe-shine boy handing out stock tips, the shoe-shine boy loses money. But so does everyone else. The non-suckers are the ones who sold and settled for cash before shit hit the fan.

> If you are wise enough to know there are suckers in the first place, you'll likely take steps to avoid being one

The entire history of frauds and schemes flies in the fact of this hypothesis. Let's pick apart a recent one: Bitconnect. Many participants seemed to know it was a Ponzi scheme. At the end of the day, only the organizers and paid promoters who cashed out their BCC came out ahead.

> Many participants seemed to know it was a Ponzi scheme

I mean, anyone that participates in a Pyramid scheme at any level is the definition of a sucker. Not a single one of them has ended well.

Everyone except the exchanges, particularly bitfinex, and some people creating coins and ICOs... and some hackers here and there

My tinfoil hat theory is that there is currently a giant transfer (or several transfers) of wealth going on outside of the purview of regulators (e.g. evasion of sanctions). The big uptick was the dark money moving into bitcoin and other cryptos. The bullish HODL propaganda is meant to pull in people to (a) provide camouflage, and (b) buttress/stabilize the price so the dark money can get out. And the suckers are the average Joes who are going to be left holding the bag once all the dark money moves out.

This is pure speculation, and I have absolutely no evidence to back this up.

It's been reported many times on HN, that even VCs from SV invested in cryptocurrencies directly - example:

http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiels-founders-fund-in...

Not sure if they are the suckers or the pumpers in the context of the article.

The problem is that the VC community and finance folk believe that they can maintain bringing enough of the masses to buy into these crypto-assets that they will gain "legitimacy" in that enough people will have a vested interest in them maintaining a certain value; all holders then of course will want to perpetuate its adoption until all of society is legitimizing its "present value."

.. know when to hodl 'em, know when to fodl 'em?

You're not allowed to make decisions in the crypto meme sphere. Only hodl.

If you don't know who the bag holder is going to be, it is you!

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