Ethereum founder talks disguising purchases to make them look like a legit ICO | Hacker News Reader

Ethereum founder talks disguising purchases to make them look like a legit ICO

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57 pointsgrubles24 comments

> If true, this means that much of Ethereum’s promise to decentralize the web is in fact a lie: it may instead be controlled by a group of elites whose existence has been purposefully concealed.

> This also means that if Eth switches to proof of stake, the larger hodlers will have the power to determine consensus.

Absolutely correct and this is where the web3 hype origins were from. They are using web3 to pump their bags to get late comers buying into the Ethereum dream of 'decentralisation'. First it was the ICOs, then ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, The DAO scandal and now you have web3.

Sounds like 'decentralies' from the start. This article [0] summarises the entire problems in 'web3' and the mismatch of its proposed goals.

[0] https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchains-are-not-what-they-sa...

Taking problem with this ignores the other 6500 coins that ETH has helped turn from worthless into ETH-comparable money.

>helped turn from worthless into ETH-comparable money

So still worthless.

How do you explain all the money floating around in an industry supposedly worth $0?

I think this is the definition of a bubble.

You're conflating two things: the tokens, and the industry. The industry has value precisely because most of the tokens do not.

Getting people to buy worthless things from you is a phenomenal business.

That's why you can get all the tokens for free I guess?

Speculation does not impart value. Price and value are not the same

You could put your house up for sale at $20 million but if people aren't buying it, then that's not what it's worth. Then value and price don't match. This isn't the case for cryptocurrencies that are traded on liquid markets, price discovery is happening all the time. Maybe it's worth $100 tomorrow or $5000, it doesn't really matter. It's still what it's worth at the time.

Maybe you didn't see what I said the first time:

Price and value are not the same. Ponzi schemes require buy in but still have no underlying value.

Also lol at crypto markets being liquid. In stablecoins maybe. Liquidity literally means volume has very limited effects on the price of an underlying. $100 or $5000 tomorrow is definitionally illiquid

I read what you said, please don't assume I didn't read your reply.

Regarding liquidity, that's not really contradictory to the definition. That's only if I meaningfully impact the price by selling, so I would have to personally cause the change to $100 or $5000 for it to be considered illiquid. If Alphabet goes down or up 50% because of a bad report it doesn't make Alphabet illiquid.

You do not understand the definition of liquidity.

Price in the crypto sphere is only dictated by transactions (which is why it's illiquid) because there is no intrinsic value. There is no wealth creation occuring. Volatility is definitionally illiquid.

In the equity sphere, assets have intrinsic value, and their price may be affected by extrinsic factors as well, but if the price tanks overnight because of bad quarterlies it's because the intrinsic value declined. The business's wealth creation potential declined.

The usual way to determine if an exchange is liquid for a particular trading pair is the spread between the buy and the sell. If you can buy or sell it quickly for an agreed upon price it's liquid. That's all there basically is to liquidity. Now lets add the constraint that you want the buying or selling to happen at the intrinsic value. If crypto has no value then everything above it is basically a bonus, so by definition crypto is liquid.

Sure when volatility gets too high on the real stockmarkets, they temporarily pause the share or the exchange and make it, by definition, illiquid. This is however a completely artificial limitation and there is nothing inherently contradictory about having high volatility and high liquidity.

I presume you belong to the school of thought that says if you can't do a cash flow analysis then it doesn't have value. But I don't get that, there are tons of things that have value without being able to do a cash flow analysis on it.

I'm not interested is discussing crypto's made up redefinitions of long standing, well understood financial terms.

Crypto is illiquid. It has no intrinsic value.

I took the financial definition, there is no special crypto definition. Here's a few paraphrased definitions:

> liquidity describes the degree to which an asset can be quickly bought or sold in the market at a price reflecting its intrinsic value.

> A liquid asset has some or all of the following features: It can be sold rapidly, with minimal loss of value, anytime within market hours. The essential characteristic of a liquid market is that there are always ready and willing buyers and sellers.

Now read the first definition for example and the first paragraph of my previous post, follow the logical structure of my argument and tell me what doesn't add up. You make the assumption that it's worthless, the implicit assumption in the definition is that you don't sell for a loss basically. Since you're always above zero, it fits snugly in there.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquidity.asp

>without affecting its market price

I have replied to this before, but I can add some additional info. No regular buyer or seller has the capital to affect the market price in any significant way. Huge orders don't end up on the market, just like on regular exchanges, precisely for this reason.

> No regular buyer or seller has the capital to affect the market price in any significant way

Which is absolutely not the case in crypto, further evidence of how illiquid it is.

What do you base this on? I don't see how you can affect the market price of any of the big crypto's in any significant way as a regular buyer or seller, there are simply too many market participants. This is not the case for the smaller ones obviously, although even there you'll likely need a bit of capital (compared to the other market participants for that specific crypto). The smaller ones are basically a drop in the ocean compared to the big ones.

> Also lol at crypto markets being liquid

What have you had issues buying or selling on Uni or Sushi?

> First it was the ICOs, then ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, The DAO scandal and now you have web3.

You have it backwards. Web3 is what Ethereum called it's client APIs since as far as I can remember.

Worth noting, as it's unclear: Neither Preston Byrne (who wrote the tweet in the submission) nor Stefan W. Huber (quoted in the submission tweet) is part of the "founders" of Ethereum. However, the presentation quoted by the quoted submission tweet was made by Joseph Lubin who is one of the founders of Ethereum.

Wait, so did they do a statistical test somewhere comparing it to the formula they wrote, or is that just by eyeballing it?

Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29868324

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