Crypto Billionaire Fortunes Vanish as Quickly as They Were Made | Hacker News Reader

Crypto Billionaire Fortunes Vanish as Quickly as They Were Made

bloomberg.com

37 pointspseudolus16 comments

I know that the billionaire class is hated by most and most don't believe in the concept of "good billionaires".

But when I saw the list of the billionaires listed in the news article, the first thing that popped into my head was: These people deserve to lose way more.

Changpeng Zhao

Samuel Bankman-Fried

Brian Armstrong

Mike Novogratz

Fred Ehrsam

Tyler Winklevoss

Cameron Winklevoss

All they have done is shill relentlessly a space that's so unregulated and resembles the Wild Wild West. None of their "products" actually made peoples' lives better. Endless scams, greed, mania and even fraud on these platforms (Binance, FTX, Coinbase, etc). They go down for maintenance whenever they want, list tokens that are outright scams and no oversight, they play fast and loose with the rules and even indulge in insider trading and many strategies to keep the price up.

If all of these companies go bust, the only loss will be to the people invested in it. You can still go about your daily lives with zero impact. They serve no use to 99.99% of the people on this planet.

* tiny violin plays in the background *

What you listed is pretty much people's problems with billionaires. They almost all have a source of wealth from doing something that is no longer legally available to others, because it was deemed exploitative. The writing is on the wall that this group will be no different.

(Neither part of that bothers me, my ability to articulate other people's perspective is independent of my own)

I am not an out and out billionaire hater, but there are many that have legit impacted peoples' lives in a positive way or have provided jobs in the millions. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Tesla, Reliance, etc. The amount of wealth they have might not be justified, but comparing them to this crooked list of billionaires is doing disservice to the products that they have put out in society.

But I just can't empathize with the loss of billions of the crypto billionaires, all of them seem to be founders of trading apps. The whole space operates like an MLM. Get in early, shill relentlessly and just turn the other way to the numerous scams in the space.

An example (Binance in this case): https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/fintech-...

It's been over 12 years and the space is still trying to find an answer to a problem that either does not exist or is niche. For Bitcoin:

Failed as a currency

Failed as a store of value

Failed as an investment hedge

Failed as energy or whatever mumbo jumbo some billionaires like Michael Saylor spew out

I for one won't miss it even if it magically vanishes tomorrow

Speaking of which, at least now some Nvidia graphics cards are becoming available very close to MSRP :)

Companies and founders are different, we are talking about the individuals and their ability to have done anything differently. All of the founders of the companies you listed had a choice to avoid doing an action seen as exploitative action their company is also known for. This is exclusive from the positive way that different people's lives were impacted.

Amazon, really? Just CTRL+F the frontpage of HN any day. Today they are sicking police on employees to bust unions.

Microsoft, Google, Meta, Telsa, and ... who?

Is this the argument you really want to have? One of arbitrary relative impact? The one where I point out how Standard Oil employed 100,000 people directly too?

Interesting way of compartmentalizing based on what you chose to respect.

The way to have this argument is to determine if anybody else can collect this much money today starting these businesses - whether as competitors or in the absence of those companies existence. As an example, take Google and Meta: You can't trade the same number of user's data and broker it, legally, because major economic unions prohibit this or have greatly increased the financial liability for doing so. Your overhead costs are higher before convincing Private Equity to package you up and dump your shares on the public market. Find the same for other founders/companies you chose to weigh positively based on unrelated actions.

The companies you listed are only different from the billionaires listed above in branding. These companies corporate social castes are awful institutions and the sooner they are dismantled the better. The damage they’ve done to society is incalculable and if you want to justify the ends by the means you must calculate the damages.

> billionaire hater

This phrasing seems like a thought terminating cliché intended to prematurely dismiss the plethora of well thought out criticisms of the current state of economic inequality and the wide variety of possible solutions.

That's more likely to be because ETH is going POS, nothing to do with Bitcoin.

It hasn't failed as any of those things until the price doesn't swing back up to a new high like it has each and every time someone has said what you said.

I think this DHH and Jason Fried (37Signals of Basecamp fame) always felt really applicable to crypto:

37SIGNALS VALUATION TOPS $100 BILLION AFTER BOLD VC INVESTMENT

September 24, 2009—37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1.

When 97% of the coin holders bought in at 0.000001 cents, its really the 3% of retail investors buying on margin that push the price of the coin market cap which can lead to absurd market caps.

Market cap should be determined by 97% x $0.000001 + 3% x $30,0000. It should not be determined using 100% x $30,000.

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-97-are-held-by-4-of-...

A lot of the public's lack of exposure to this is regulated by the US stock exchanges. Move over to other major stock exchanges worldwide and you'll see much more lax listing standards, such as a 1% float for the public and 99% for a single individual founder-shareholder.

Low float is the greatest of all time. But investors and traders should be more discerning, avoid circumstances where it isn't favorable to you no matter what the "fear of missing out" involves.

What's a specific example of the 99% individual, 1% float?

I'll see if I can find one, there were some extreme[ly amusing] examples on the Hang Seng Index and the Shanghai Shenzhen one, or maybe just those stock exchanges and not the index

It all helped me realize that its all just contracts. If you get someone to agree then you can do it. Most of finance is cookie-cutter stuff that the company legal and the MBAs thought was familiar, but you can do anything if the other party agrees to it. Such as buy a share at a tiny float.

In my country (Nigeria), there’s a publicly-traded conglomerate (BUA Group) where the founder and his son jointly own a 98% stake [1].

1- https://nairametrics.com/2022/01/14/366674/

Interesting. What are they trying to achieve with these listings? It might be nice for a magazine article or something, but it seems like there is little practical use? For example, I don't imagine any bank being willing to use those shares as collateral, nor an acquisition target valuing those shares as a currency. Is it just ego?

A fool and his money are soon parted.

But are people that made billions out of nothing fools?

People who end up with billions and lose it are fools. If those same people made it out of nothing, that makes them thieves too.

"Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of G-d? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, THIEVES, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of G-d." (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com