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Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Mt Gox says hello.

We’ve been here before, we’ll be here again, a bunch of people will lose money and the cycle will repeat. It’ll all work out.

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None of it has ever happened before during a recession. Crypto basically didn’t exist the last time the world had one. Being religious and so sure about the way something is going to turn out should be a warning sign to the self.

So if it didn't exist how can you be so sure about dismissing it? It literally is a new paradigm.

EDIT: nice to see all the luddites downvoting me. Guess the meme is true -- we still are early.

Investment fraud is not a new paradigm. Selling bags of nothing is not a new paradigm. Goes all the way back to the South Sea Company in 1711 [1].

I recommend reading Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds published originally in 1841 [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madne...

Extraordinary Popular Conclusions is also available for free from Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

I don't see it usually mentioned when people cite the South Sea Company, but their principal actual business was the slave trade.

There is something about a useless or immoral business that often excites greed beyond what anything beneficial to society can.

I'm not. Bitcoin could still MOON. I'm just saying you shouldn't be so sure either way with so much uncertainty.

> None of it has ever happened before during a recession

We are not currently in a recession.

If we get into a recession in the next quarter or two, there's no harm done to crypto. The market is headed into bear territory regardless of the macro economic climate.

I swear no one remembers 2017. Thousands of projects that raised billions of dollars died. No one cares. The market rebuilds itself every 3-5 years. This is absolutely no different.

Man, I have to respect your true believer attitude about the everlasting cyclical system that has existed within a single lifetime.

I believe it until the pattern stops. No other reason to believe people won't continue to be addicted to gambling.

You are correct that people will continue to engage in stupid gambling. The problem is they're not going to have gobs of cheap money to throw into it and get leveraged 100x on which drives a lot of the speculative value.

Cheap money will come back again also, at least within 3-5 years

What’s the argument for this? Do you think rates would drop again within 3-5 years?

Yes, because after correcting for irrational exuberance and the economy being in a holding pattern for 2 years all the next politician has to say is that they alone can fix the economy by lowering rates. They will then install a dummy head of the Fed that will play along.

Rolling over our current national debt at the current rates will make the debt servicing costs too high relative to tax income. So either rates cannot stay high indefinitely, or inflation will continue until debt is smaller compared to tax income. In both cases money becomes cheap. The average maturity on debt is 5 years which is where I got that time scale, but this is also in line with previous cycle lengths-- you can't find many times where the fed has waited longer to cut rates. Debt has also never been this high as a percent of GDP, so more pressure from that shouldead to faster policy changes.

Great! That means people will invest in cryptocurrency projects with good fundamentals and that deliver value, instead of the pure speculation that we've suffered until now.

It has literally happened once before, that does not mean it is going to revive again. What if we're at crypto saturation and the demand won't cover another crash?

2013, 2017/18 and now 2022. That's three times total, two times before.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say a lot has changed in cryptocurrency since 2013

2013 isn’t even close to the first time crypto recovered from dead.

I have no idea if it's true, but it seems like people are writing about contagion within crypto, as if it is more substantial than last time, and worrying a little bit about it affecting the rest of the economy.

This game of lending crypto assets for ridiculous interest rates wasn't nearly as popular last time, was it?

> This game of lending crypto assets for ridiculous interest rates wasn't nearly as popular last time, was it?

- ICOs - DAOs - NFTs - Yield - Earn - Farming

etc. All of these can be ephemeral concepts within a single crypto bull cycle. Regardless of whether or not you think crypto is valuable, there's no denying people love money. So long as crypto remains unregulated there will always be bull markets imo.

We may currently be in a recession. The second quarter GDP numbers aren't out.

crypto could go away tomorrow and the impact on the economy would be tiny to nonexistent.

In and of itself, yes. But there's a real risk (far from a certainty, but a real risk) that it will cause some kind of crisis of confidence in the markets more broadly that could result in a much more catastrophic crash.

What people are entirely missing here is the massive economic indicators flashing that are preempting this crypto stuff. The US dollar is about to be devalued and take with it, the entire global economy. We're heading into a serious depression, not just a little 2008 recession here. $9-10 gal of gas by October and double of all goods and food prices likely by Sept-October time frame. The outlook is growing very bleak.

What do you base that claim on?

> None of it has ever happened before during a recession.

The 2020 Covid crash was a recession. A very short one, but also one of the most severe since the Great Depression. Bitcoin crashed from about $10,000 to $4,000 in the span of 3 weeks, before recovering and peaking at nearly $70,000.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/past-rece...

What might be correct to say is that bitcoin has never gone through stagflation, but that's a terrifying prospect for every person and asset class.

Hopefully this time, we get some regulator action so we're never back here again. Each time the cycle gets bigger, the tendrils work their way into traditional finance - and more people get hurt. This time, the Quebec public servants are getting rekt on their investment into Celsius [1]. Now it's hurting pensioners, not just a bunch of degenerate gamblers and moonbois.

It's fine for a bunch of pokemon card traders to get rekt - but by the time you get to 3AC scale, it's time for regulators to put the kibosh on the whole space. They're securities. They either get registered or you go to Club Fed.

With all due respect, fingers crossed, this time it does not work out.

[1] https://www.cdpq.com/en/news/pressreleases/celsius-network-a...

Question: what is the point of crypto if it becomes regulated like traditional financial assets? Crypto doesn't have any actual use-value like stocks or real estate, and its entire selling point was that it's decentralized and unregulated.

Simplifies and modernizes cross-border flows. Try buying shares in a firm listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange—you’ll spend days to weeks dealing with middlemen. Should be a couple clicks to submit to a public ledger.

I don’t see where lack of regulation is a selling point—it greatly limits invested capital.

Isn't the reason buying international shares is slow that they don't want you to do it and therefore have regulated it?

There's no technical merit in crypto that actually makes things fast, it's just a regulation dodge. It's necessarily slower and more expensive than TransferWise.

A country that _Doesnt_ want to more capital flowing into their companies? Sounds pretty weird no?

The capital comes at the cost of sovereignity.

They have decided it's better to avoid their local businesses being beholden to foreign investors, which is a case that can be argued.

If you're being directed mostly by overseas investors who will never see your actual operation in person, that increases the pressure to cook the books, either on a direct accounting-level basis, or by cutting corners in operations, environmental or labour standards, or product quality.

Notice how some countries insist on joint ventures with a 51% local partner, which similarly ensures there's some local skin in the game.

As far as I can see, https://wise.com/us/ is in all ways a better way to simplify cross-border flows than crypto. When working with overseas teams, it is literally how they ask to be paid.

And revolute when Wise don't work. It's easy and has some of the protection of the "outdated" banking industry.

this works for c2c transfers but not for businesses, business payments, trading, lending other derivative products etc.

Sure it does, they have business offerings. Trading, use IBKR. Lending, IBKR. Other derivative products, IBKR.

No - crypto does nothing for cross-border flows. It could only make it worse. Purchasing shares in foreign countries say France often (not always) requires one to go through an approved French broker (middleman). Why?

- so there's somebody in France that can *make money* being the middle man

- so the French broker can be held to some standards reporting and what not. For example, the French broker at risk of criminal prosecution cannot sell shares to NK or Iran.

- so the rules around transfer of shares for payment and settlement are set so people can't be screwing each over or not completing settlement in a timely fashion

- because of scale: there are zillions of trades done every day. that's why netting-out is a real thing. settlement has to be fast, tight, nailed down. And regulation helps with that through known pre-approved brokers with set roles and responsibilities

Also consider that unlike crypto you gotta settle. Settlement is serious. And settle in a bonafide currency that everybody agrees is a currency: EUR, for example. And you have fixed time to do it in.

You can't be waving your hands with some stupid story about how your broker/holder of crypto,

- stopped you from withdrawing your stuff

- is down

- is in chapter 7 or 11

- that you forgot your crypto keys

- and the entity getting the cash for selling shares isn't gonna wait around for some miner to "approve" your transfer maybe in 10 mins ... or maybe tomorrow

I think the settlement story for bitcoin is actually superior than with USD/EUR. Yes you have to wait 10min x a few blocks, but that is final, irreversible settlement.

Except for the possibility of unconfirmed transactions if the network is under load right? With both centrally registered clients and counterparts what’s the case for decentralisation here again?

If the network is under load you can prioritize by paying a higher fee. If mining slows down it can take more time for a block, but difficultly will adjust to get back to 10mim cadence.

I'm not sure what you mean by centrally registered clients. You can still use bitcoin peer to peer. Also the idea that banning peer to peer bitcoin would be what would make decentralization not worthwhile feels rather circular.

Surge pricing to settle stock trades? Obviously this is worse than the existing tech

To trade you need to be registered by regulated entity, it’s already a centralised environment. You’re also purchasing shares issued by a centralised issuer, the corporation. Your suggestion that bitcoin offers any solution to settlement (much less a superior solution), just escapes me

I'm not sure why you are talking about stock trading. Settlement is a general, non stock specific thing. I'm talking about settlement in regular transactions, e.g. paying rent or buying groceries.

I mean, so is FedNow and RTP and SEPA - the list goes on and on - none of which are blockchain powered. They settle instantly and finally. In the case of international transfers, the delay is intentional for regulatory and risk management purposes. Not technical reasons. So the advantage of crypto isn't technology but regulatory arbitrage.

These work if you either have a master fed account or have credit with some bank that does. You can't settle instantly with an entity that is not already known in the system.

I can't see how that's a problem.

Do you think a bearer asset like cash has zero use cases? Bitcoin allows settlement much like this with a party that doesn't need to be identified and already trusted by a central clearing house. Of course this can be dangerous and might not be desirable for every transaction, but there clearly a technological achievement to make it possible.

No, my point is that having to use an intermediary is not an issue. If you really don't want to be identified open an LLC.

Proposing opening an LLC is a pretty involved workaround that again requires more supervision and gatekeeping (e.g, for many people and many countries this is not even possible). Cash like settlement with any person on the planet without any intermediary is a pretty big technical achievement that absolutely was not possible before blockchain.

"Crypto doesn't have any actual use-value..." Same can be said for most financial instruments yet they're regulated. Gambling has no "real world use-value" yet it is heavily regulated.

Any advice for those getting rekt in the traditional markets, or are you hoping that doesn't work out too?

Wait it out or become an active investor in value creation. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

There was never any in crypto either. Anyone who thought so is just as stupid as the HN'ers that think cryptocurrencies are bogus. Thinking a few over leveraged crypto companies getting wiped out will destroy cryptocurrencies is laughable.

> Now it's hurting pensioners, not just a bunch of degenerate gamblers and moonbois.

No, that's your public institution making degenerate gambles on late-stage startups. The largest venture capital investor in Canada isn't some poor victim, they are the perpetrators, the owners. It's completely laughable to paint them as a victim of some crypto-ecosystem heist.

The pensioners are the victims of both the fund and Celsius.

Neither should the fund be allowed to invest in Ponzi schemes, nor should the so-called investments be permitted to run them in the open.

[edit] I'd have the same criticism of both if they'd invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

It should be illegal for fiduciaries to invest client funds in crypto schemes without client consent, not illegal for individuals to speculate.

I take the position that cryptos are clearly securities under the Howey test. It's pretty self-evident. As such, they must be registered in order to be traded by anyone other than an accredited investor. To be clear, this is the law of the land today. All that's missing is regulatory enforcement action.

The victim is the pensioners, not necessarily the gambling fund. "regulator action" can refer to simply preventing sensitive/prison funds from going into certain classes of risky ventures, and not regulation against crypto itself.

Mt. Gox happened when crypto was a small fraction of what it is today, in terms of capital, transactions, even # of players.

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