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Comment by formerkrogemp | Hacker News Reader

there aren’t any that have been here a while and bother to chime in any more because every comment section on a crypto related story here is essentially exactly the same and has been for about 6 years, maybe more.

If this is the obit that sticks, the HN crypto commentariat can line up for their certificates of honor from the Being Right After All Foundation. Unfortunately, these will be distributed as NFTs

I mostly don’t bother commenting on crypto news. The same ignorant hot takes get trotted out and no one (on either side) is really interested in a discussion of the merits of the other side’s position. It’s one of those topics that is a bit perplexing to see how the HN community responds to it.

If you really believe it doesn't have "any value at all" then I invite you to sell it short. That's a free $30,000. The nice thing about markets is that you can express your opinion, and that market opinions without corresponding positions can be ignored.

The fact that I've seen many, many rejoinders to "crypto has no long term value" in the "well, just short it then" vein makes me think these talking points must be what the cool kids on r/Bitcoin or somewhere are spewing.

I don't necessarily believe all crypto is going to zero, but for Bitcoin specifically I believe (a) that proof of work is definitely unsustainable as the market cap grows and (b) given the power of miners in the BTC protocol, I have a difficult time believing they'll ever transition off PoW (e.g. compared to what ETH has done).

But, of course, shorting an asset requires conviction not just that its value is going down, but when. I would easily bet that within some decent extended time period, say 15 years, that the value of BTC will be zero or near zero. I am unaware how to short an asset feasibly over that long of a time period.

> cool kids on r/Bitcoin

I don't use Reddit or any other social networks. This is the only site I post anything on. My suggestion to put a trade on instead of just saying stupid things on the Internet comes from institutional trading culture.

Anyone can say anything. Almost nobody backs it up with money.

There's a difference between having a price and having value. I could order a truck load of glitter and dump it on my lawn. It has no value to anyone but it still cost me money to obtain it.

It's questionable that Bitcoin has any value but there is enough money sunk into that ecosystem and propping it up that it's unlikely to ever fall away completely. There are billionaires' egos at stake here!

> I invite you to sell it short

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Shorting for any decent stretch of time is not free, and you more or less have to do it on one of the many rigged casinos operating in the crypto space. It's a fool's game.

Banks and large investment firms are more than happy to create exotic instruments. With enough money at stake, you can definitely find an institution willing to take the other side of a bet against crypto (specifically BTC or ETH).

If you want proof, refer to what happened in the lead-up to the 2008 Sub-Prime Mortgage crisis (or check out the movie The Big Short if you want somewhere to begin).

there are BTC futures on CME, but the margin requirements are high because CME knows BTC is garbage.

It doesn't have any value at all, but the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.

Also the counterparty risk of shorting bitcoin

Also prices are manipulated like crazy to liquidate big bets like that

Oh we're here.

Just watching all this collegial self-agreement among people who don't fully understand the subject, because what they know, they learned from writers who don't understand the subject, like the author of the laughable media piece posted here.

> John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He has written many articles for the magazine, on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to the intelligence failures before the Iraqi War and the economics of John Maynard Keynes. He is the author of two books: “How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities” and “Dot.Con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era.” Before joining The New Yorker, he worked for the Sunday Times of London and the Post. He graduated from Oxford University in 1984 and from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1986. He grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

What are your qualifications?

BTC is down 53% from ATH. NFLX is down almost 75%. PTON is down over 91%. You'd actually be better off investing in BTC than in many tech darlings. I don't own any crypto, but I don't think it's fair to single out crypto in the middle of a broad tech downturn.

Yeah. The difference is you don't have people claiming the SPY or Netflix will triple each year for the next ten years. People have literally commented that about BTC and other crypto. The thought process people have regarding crypto is entirely different. It's a completely different beast. Closer to something like GME, but at least with GME GameStop was able to sell stock and pay off their debts...

Cathie Wood has said she expects ARKK to get 50% annual returns[0] despite being down 57% YTD and over 30% since she made the statement (more than BTC). Pointing to what "others" have said as some type of broad argument about an underlying security doesn't make sense. There are charlatans everywhere.

[0] https://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/cathie-wood-s...

if you're saying the sentiment of the average bitcoin investor isn't that this will make them wildly rich (or their hope, anyway) you're lying.

Compare against SPY.

Tangentially related, I think it's interesting that people used to cite VOO pretty often, and IVV sometimes, but now I almost exclusively see SPY as an analog for the S&P 500.

I wonder how much of it's high volume is just that it has the letters "s" and "p" in it?

If you're going to cherry-pick stocks why don't we compare Luna then?

He didn't say Enron.

It doesn't and never has. 0 intrinsic value.

Great to see all these idiot fueled bubbles popping

Same with greenbacks tho

EDIT: let me elaborate before you downvote: the value of a US dollar is not "intrinsic", it's the result of the strength of the US government and military, i.e. due to social factors that cause it to be accepted as a medium for exchange.

Crypto is no different: any crypto asset that has an exchange value (i.e. for which there's a liquid market) is backed by social proof of some kind, although likely on not nearly as large a scale or with as much force as the US military.

I highly doubt crypto is going to replace the dollar, because then it's internet communities vs the US government, and the US government has a lot more material power than internet communities, but there's no good reason why a cryptocurrency can't have some value as a legible unit of social proof, especially if the social relations involved have some material stakes (hence the DAO).

The idea that "money = intrinsic value" is a naive view of the world; Marx didn't believe that (he saw value as based on labor added), nor did Hayek, etc.

Remind me again what the price of BTC is most commonly quoted in?

The answer to this question does not demonstrate that USD has any intrinsic value, it merely demonstrates that USD is the most valuable and well circulated of the currencies. These currencies still have zero intrinsic value.

Yes, fiat currencies don't have intrinsic value, they have network value as the primary unit of exchange.

A good investment does need intrinsic value, which BTC does not have. It's also not a feasible payment system.

The fact that cryptos are only referenced in USD terms proves that the only real use people have for them is a vehicle of speculation. Investment without intrinsic value = speculation

The second there's a gov backed USD stable coin, the argument for any crypto as a payment system evaporates.

> A good investment does need intrinsic value, which BTC does not have.

Agree, USD is also not a good investment but it is still widespread to have some USD.

> It's also not a feasible payment system.

Disagree, it is used (not widely) but without issue for payments all the time. It isn't a feasible payment system for every single transaction, but that is a ridiculous goal. There is no payment system that is feasible for every payment.

> The fact that cryptos are only referenced in USD terms proves that the only real use people have for them is a vehicle of speculation

No, it just proves that they haven't succeeded in taking over the incumbent fiat currencies. Stocks are also most commonly referenced in USD prices, and they are not merely vehicles of speculation.

People buy stocks to make money. People buy BTC to make money.

Stocks have intrinsic value, BTC does not.

Important difference

That's the difference between an investment and money. I've never said that bitcoin is an investment, but it is a form of money.

Sats bro, and there are 100 million of them in a Bitcoin. Before too long you will notice more and more things denominated in sats.

They took the money and ran?

Why run when you can drive away in your brand new Tesla.

https://thecryptobasic.com/2022/02/03/youtube-streamer-ice-p...

Bitcoin’s “killer app” and underlying utility is illegal transactions. Money laundering and drug purchasing. As long as the government allows it; crypto will have a base value in that.

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