Cryptocurrencies Come to Campus
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This is not going to end well.
Unfortunately no one is content with a 30% per annum gain so they all decide that they need to invest in scam ICOs that are brand new.
More recently close to no project reached their goal. Yet if we consider the 2017 ICO "batch" we should give them some more time.
Nobody is eagerly awaiting new features of some blockchain app they use, which makes their life better in any way. They are looking at the price charts.
There's plenty of useful stuff being built upon Ethereum. The platform itself is also still in development and improving with every update.
People need to give projects more than 5 minutes to succeed.
Not that I disagree however plenty of money will be lost on useless projects. But that's just the nature of the game (excluding any obvious scams). Plenty (nearly all) of venture capital money is wasted as well.
Elon Musk has proposed proper mass production of Tesla cars years ago..
Can you give an example please? So far, the only useful function I've seen for any blockchain token is its use as a stand-in for fiat money (e.g. blackmarket commerce), and bitcoin already has that covered. The usual go-to for Ethereum are smart-contracts, but I've never heard of a useful one, or even an idea for a useful one (that doesn't ignore realities that make it useless in practice).
Essentially anything where trust and/or potential corruption might be an issue.
> Land registry systems
This won't work. In most places a centralized system works fine, but in places where corruption is an issue the blockchain system is still useless because corrupt officials will just disregard whatever the blockchain says or use coercion to force you to give up the private keys. There are also many other impracticalities that preclude its use such as situation where keys are lost or stolen. What happens when the owner of the keys dies and the keys cannot be found? What happens when the state needs to force transfer of ownership from an unwilling party to another based on a judgement of the courts? Ultimately, the government is the final arbiter on any question of land ownership rights and any system that does not give the government overriding control of land ownership registrations is untenable. Of course, if the government has overriding control of the system, a blockchain is pointless.
> voting systems
This does not solve any problems that aren't already solved using a centralized system that employs cryptographic signatures. If we can trust a message signed by a citizen's private key, then all we need is a signed message with their vote; adding in a blockchain serves only to introduce needless complexity and resource waste.
> asset transfer and settlement systems
This is a solved problem. Asset transfer works fine today and actually functions better in a centralized system where the institutions can safeguard assets from unacceptable failure scenarios such as having hundreds of millions of dollars irrevocably wiped out or stolen.
> tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows),
Pointless. Copyright violators will just ignore the blockchain and if you have to petition the government to enforce a copyright claim that lives on the blockchain then there's no benefit to using one since this already happens now with a centralized database of copyright claims. "Tokenization" of things like music IP is especially absurd considering the intractable layers of ambiguity in determining which aspects of a complex artistic work fall under the copyright. There isn't even a meaningful way to map ownership of a specific piece of art to a copyright holder's private key since artistic expression is not measured in discrete streams of bytes which can appear digitally distinct while looking or sounding practically identical.
Blockchains just don't solve any of these problems.
https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/4522/what-was-t...
22 July to 5 August 2014: 2000 ETH = 1 BTC = 572-632 USD
6 August to 2 September 2014: 1999-1337 ETH = 1 BTC = 592-471 USD
- Investment Prospectus: https://github.com/ethereum/www/blob/master-postsale/src/ext...
- Premine Part I: Anyone can buy ETH in exchange for BTC for the next 42 days
- Premine Part II: On top of Premine Part I, +10% of the total ETH allocated during Premine Part I will be distributed to "early contributors"
- Premine Part III: On top of Premine Part I and Premine Part II, +10% of the total ETH allocated during Premine Part I will be distributed to the Ethereum Foundation
- The supply of ETH is uncapped and inflationary at a rate of +25% per year
- The premine is being conducted by "EthSuisse", a Swiss entity which will be prompty dissolved after the premining period ends. The Ethereum team makes no guarantee that development of Ethereum will continue after the dissolution of "EthSuisse"
- Regardless of how many BTCs are raised during the premine period, ~4000 BTC is explicitly reserved to pay for "Expenses incurred prior to and related to Genesis Sale". Translation: they are pocketing the first 4000-5000 BTC
> The Ethereum Platform is being developed primarily by a volunteer contributor team - many of whom will be receiving gifts of ETH in acknowledgement of their dedication - and will continue to be developed on a volunteer basis by some developers as well as under a more formalized contracting or employment relationship for other developers. The group of developers and other personnel that is now, or will be, employed by, or contracted with, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH ("EthSuisse") is termed the "Ethereum Team." EthSuisse will be liquidated shortly after creation of genesis block, and EthSuisse anticipates (but does not guarantee) that after it is dissolved the Ethereum Platform will continue to be developed by persons and entities who support Ethereum, including both volunteers and developers who are paid by nonprofit entities interested in supporting the Ethereum Platform.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072340
A presale hodler with 39,300 premined ETH caused the flash crash this last summer:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ethereum-flash-crash-explaine...
https://etherscan.io/address/0x7d551397f79a2988b064afd0efebe...
It's not well defined what is an ICO and what is not, but this had all the elements of the modern ICOs. Perhaps not surprising that it has found its use in the whole ICO phenomenon then.
Previously, most teens and young adults didn't care about the stock market and trading. It wasn't considered cool.
Now we have a generation that is hooked. They follow their investment on their cellphone, they take positions on a whim, and yet still to be reacting more logically than older investors [1].
I want to know what they are interested in, to sell them products they will like.
1: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/08/younger-investors-are-remain....
Looks like there's a lot of room in the middle for people who are not stupid and don't want to be left out.
I think my generation being intrinsically digital find the idea of digital money and smart contracts to make hell of a lot more sense than older folks who've been working and realize the immense challenges of implementing these currencies. Naturally they find the challenges to be worth more than what Crypto can provide because they lack the need to a digitally connected physical world younger folks desire.
Still, it makes a hell of a lot more sense! I don't know about you, but I've noticed quite a few rigged games, and I took action on that.
For example, after my work tried one last shenanigan on me last year, I quit. I did not bother applying to another corporate job. I know I'd be paid 70 cents on the dollar and thrown a bone every now and then, so instead I just started my company. Come what may!
I don't even bother with pension stuff, because of the system dynamic. I see it as very unfair, and I would be happy to vote to bring it down -- even if it meant I would be 100% sure I would not see anything in return of the money I am forced to pay. But at least, I would not contribute an unfair situation and burden the next generations.
I wonder if the generation that daytrade crypto on their cellphone feel the same about money and banking? Maybe they believe that even if it is very far from ideal, crypto is preferable to the status quo?
At the very least I can image they trust older people much less then we did when I was younger. (Gen X)
interestingly, i think this crypto stuff is bringing a lot of financial literacy to people.
IMO Fidelity/Vanguard need to figure out a better marketing campaign. Right now it is targeted to east-coast retiring boomers.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/08/coinbase-was-top-of-us-apple...
>Many of the young adults and teens do not understand the concept of compound interest at all
I'll need a source for that. It doesn't seem like humans in general are wired to really grasp the power of compound interest (or exponential functions for that matter), so if you're claiming that young adults today are less likely than average to grasp that concept, I'd need a source for that. I do not believe it to be true, but I am happy to be proven wrong.
In the current economic environment, saving doesn't make much sense. You have to work hard for 40 years just to buy a decent house. Corporations like Apple have a market cap approaching 1 trillion dollars. Existing shareholders are hoarding all the wealth and they get compound returns on it. The NASDAQ is a cesspool of well-to-dos who do nothing except collect dividends.
At least the cryptocurrency crowd is young and they work hard. They have more time ahead of them to turn the ecosystem into something useful for society. It's definitely a very long term investment.
Fear of missing out is at that powerful nexus of envy and greed that short circuits rational thought.
Bitcoin to me is like a stock for a company that has zero revenue, no product, no service...really the only thing it has going for it is that the stock is easily transferable, but otherwise the stock seems to be hyped because it is limited (which is true of every every stock/corporate capitalization certainly that doesn’t make them The new gold).
The mere fact it is coveted at all for being finite or “digital gold” is completely illogical.
Right now it's mostly used for drugs and money laundering, things which most people aren't interested in.
Eventually there will be a use case for bitcoin that will make a lot more sense than fiat, until then people will continue to be puzzled with cryptocurrencies.
Tell that to the IRS who treats them as property for purposes of taxation, that’s right all these college students will owe up to 40% on their trades and will owe regular income tax for coins earned mining. I wonder how many college kids know this, or will actually pay taxes...will bitcoin still be cool when the IRS audits them?
Also the SEC has their own opinion of cryptocurrencies being securities.
They're called cryptocurrencies for a reason.
Not only is it easy to track movement on these distributed ledgers, the vast majority of wallets are on exchanges like Coinbase that comply with KYC laws and directly hand over account information to the IRS.
It's pretty simple to hide your tracks, especially if you're not concerned with moving back into fiat.
As adoption continues tracking will become murkier.
In many ways its more reliable than regular stocks - governments can break businesses up, change the law to make the business less favorable, the company can be bought out, the behavior of a few specific individuals involved can usually wildly swing the consensus valuation, etc.
What I've learned through these years of cryptohype is that it doesn't matter what I think, because I'm not the one throwing billions of dollars at it. People believe bitcoin will make them rich, and thus bitcoins price has gone up absurdly high considering its adoption and usage for its originally stated purpose. Of course, stated and intended purposes can be quite different - I honestly think bitcoin is working out exactly as it was designed and has been architected to do. Its not supposed to change the world and usher in an era of transparent and seamless exchange between all humans anywhere, its just meant to be a pyramid scheme. It has succeeded wildly at that.
Now I don't want to leave bitcoin off in isolation - in practice its just like almost any tech company. You rapidly gain market without a business model or revenue stream, accrue an insanely large userbase, IPO or get bought out, and then either the shareholders or buyer realize there is no way to actually profit off what you did. But it doesn't matter, you ran off wealthy - the same can be said of the bitcoin whales of today. It doesn't matter if bitcoin itself ever actually functions as a currency because everyone in the insider club is already rich.
Bitcoin is down what 70%? That's hardly a great track record even if it made someone rich, it's running out of greater fools while burning though insane amounts of capital for Mining.
Remember, negative sum game means the average person loses. Aka Pointing at lottery winners does not make the lottery a good investment.
To those who say digital gold, I think the recent price swings in response to regulation show that bitcoin is not a safe store of value.
Ethereum or others after it could prove to provide enough value to justify the valuation, and I am positive something will, but we are still some time away from that being real and not super speculative.
Still, I can easily see how crypto currencies appeal to a young crowd who perhaps have anecdotal evidence of someone in their circle who made a significant return in a short space of time. I think the interest is primarily driven by this narrative rather ideals of decentralisation or actual usefulness of crypto currencies - for now anyway
I mention in my “stock analogy” the thing Bitcoin really has going if considered a stock would be that it is easily transferable. But where it begins to get tricky is others being able to offer that same function but faster and cheaper than bitcoin.
We have this policy to allow good stories multiple cracks at the bat. What gets noticed on /newest is too random otherwise, and the goal is to help the best stories get noticed.
Also, the convention on HN is to link to previous submissions of an article only when they had an interesting discussion. Otherwise users click on the link, find no there there, and get ornery.