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Comment by gadnuk | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a ponzi scheme in crypto collapses almost every other week these days.

It was LUNA in May

Celsius now

Probably USDD soon

A lot of these "fake internet money" coins have no use cases other than trading with the next sucker willing to buy on crypto platforms

And then you have platforms like Coinbase facilitating trading of such "assets" or tokens with little to no due diligence

A lot of these: Failed as a currency Failed as an inflation hedge Failed as a store of value

Crypto bros will try to do whatever mental gymnastics they can to justify their investment, probably because they are all in. But I can't wait for most of these coins to implode for good as they serve no use to society. Comparable to cigarettes (zero health benefits) than wine (harmful in large amounts, has health benefits in moderation).

If someone is offering you a yield of more than 18% APY, then you are the yield to the next guy!

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i think VC involvement has made this space far more dangerous now. don’t think Celsius could’ve gotten where they are now without willing VCs pouring hundreds of millions into building the company up despite how risky the entire business model is/was. now this is going to become an existential threat to the whole ecosystem.

It also gives obvious nonsense an air of validity. VCs giving several millions to something like StepN is a drop in the bucket for the VC portfolio. But this money makes it seem to an average person that maybe the VCs see something the don’t. So they are now willing to buy in.

I also wonder how much VCs are insider trading their own project’s coins and don’t care about the actual company because they made their profit on the rug pull.

Economically speaking, nothing in crypto is a new. Only the fact that they obfucate the 'free money' with technical gargon.

Paypal paid was burning hundreds of millions of dollars a month in giving away free money in order for it to gather market share.

Implementing AMMs was new to me. I hadn't seen that before.

HN doesn't want to talk about technology on this subject

The technology is just a front, marketing material. It's not meant to be taken seriously. Even most crypto investors have the same mindset

AFAIK AMMs are a workaround for the fact that Ethereum smart contracts are too slow to implement a normal order book matching engine.

I didn't mean any of the tech in crypto isn't new, I'm bullish on the ecosystem in general. Was simply saying paying for market share is nothing new.

However, AMM's are not new to crypto. The only thing new about crypto AMM's is that plebs like me can invest in them. Usually they are reserved for the wealthy elite, where back room deals and orderflows are handshakes instead of smart contracts.

However, it is still technically illegal for US plebs to access AMM's(Non-accreddited).

Consensus capital markets are fairly novel: https://mirror.xyz/alkimiya-protocol.eth/PbTyQ3JnVtGq54fLjDr...

Okay - I am fairly bullish on crypto, but it's this kind of thing that gives the rest of crypto a bad name.

Consensus Capital Markets gives validators even more incentive to collude, Just like MEV. There has been numerous occasions where MEV has broken concensus. Theoretically these two concepts are the antithesis of what a blockchain is supposed to do.

These kind of 'Innovations' in harming the ecosystem tremendously. They are taking the centralized nature of normal orderbooks and trying to shove that into crypto.

Mirror was one of the reasons Terra failed and this concensus capital markets allowed the validators to absolutely make a killing during the collapse.

This is not true. Here's one example: perpetual swaps weren't a thing until Bitmex implemented them.

To add to what others have said, Flash Loans and Self-Repaying Loans don't have TradFi analogs.

There seems to be a surplus of capital in our economy. Macroeconomically speaking, crypto is private actors taking the fall for us all.

'Taking the fall"?

BTC is still up an incredible amount over the last 5 years. More like created a new tech elite while shaking out the free-loaders every cycle.

What is 'tech elite' here?

A fancy term for rich people who think they got rich because they're so smart.

Same as every Elite through history.

Money, Influence over politics, Knowledge of dark corners.

> A lot of these: Failed as a currency Failed as an inflation hedge Failed as a store of value

Indeed. I don't know why at the time you had people buying something at >$60K (and I warned them not to [0]) or even so-called soothsaying influencers predicting at the time that it will reach >$100,000 in the same year. [1] or even predicting DOGE reaching $1 by September 2021. [2] Certainly it was to manipulate retail at buying the top and never selling.

So today, where are these 'experts' now? [1][2]

It seems the HODL narrative of Bitcoin as either a 'currency', 'hedge against inflation', and 'store of value' means it is a complete failure and is only useful for speculation. But not all 'coins' (not tokens) are exactly as useless like Bitcoin is.

I would expect the maximalists to keep screaming HODL everywhere to be trending to keep the cult relevant until the next cycle as many of them have bought in at very high prices (Because Musk, Saylor, etc told them to)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206314

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25776080

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046019

I do not understand how some of these influencers are still influencers at all. Once a person has admitted to taking money to shilling four different rugpulls, how is it considered positive advertising to say "X has thrown his influence behind it!"?

>If someone is offering you a yield of more than 18% APY

I think you misunderstand what's happening. The 18.63% APY that they are currently offering is on a coin that went down 11.71% today. The rewards are locked for 1 year and are paid in CEL which is down 54.64% today.

The actual yield of the investment in USD is not going to be at a rate to reach 18.63% APY.

I don’t think that contradicts OP’s point, though? If you buy in you’re someone else’s yield. The mechanism for that transfer is that your investment depreciates faster than the yield, while the other person is able to liquidate and you’re not.

OP is referring to an 18% APY in USD where Celsius is referring to an APY in the target coin.

I don't quite follow your logic. Assuming withdraws weren't paused like they are now you would still be able to liquidate your position.

> Assuming withdraws weren't paused like they are now you would still be able to liquidate your position.

That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time…

>If someone is offering you a yield of more than 18% APY

USDD is next, but Justin has a habit of degening his way out of trouble. Wouldn’t bet completely against him

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