And an avalanche of "I told you so". Don't forget that part.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
You just made generic anti-crypto recommendations, some of which look good in hindsight. That’s not the same as identifying the specific mechanism that proved to be Luna’s downfall; it’s more like being a permabear who predicted 8 of the last 3 stock market crashes. You can likewise claim to have “told you so” about Dai’s collapse, with equally good epistemic grounding.
It’s fine to be risk-averse and avoid crypto as a rule; that’s not the same thing as knowing Luna couldn’t work long-term.
No, they really cant. Like, I have no idea what DAI/Compound are, and trivial googling didn't answer. A random counterexample doesn't disprove every famous and/or high market cap coin crashing.
To use your market example, if you kept saying tech stocks are overpriced we would judge it based on the performance of the NASDAQ. You wouldn't be able to say "well, Apple still convinces people to give them all their money and they're still doing well so you were wrong."
Besides, it's not enough for the greater fools to continue to exist. There needs to be a credible mechanism for wealth to actually be created.
> It’s fine to be risk-averse and avoid crypto as a rule
Being risk-averse and avoiding crypto are different things. I don't touch crypto because I think it's a scam
Well ... yeah, that kinda highlights the problem. If you don't know what something is, and are unwilling to learn, and have a hard time with google[1], then no, you don't get to claim vindication as having wisely made an appropriate inference based on valid evidence. Hence my point.
To fill you in: articbull's comments were vague enough to apply equally well to lending out the stablecoin DAI no the Compound platform, which did not crash or have to suspend withdrawals at any point.
Also, you have no idea, but you knew to switch Dai to all caps? :-p I think you're switching modes.
>A random counterexample doesn't disprove every famous and/or high market cap coin crashing.
>To use your market example, if you kept saying tech stocks are overpriced we would judge it based on the performance of the NASDAQ. You wouldn't be able to say "well, Apple still convinces people to give them all their money and they're still doing well so you were wrong."
Okay, and if you had been saying to avoid tech stocks for the past ten years, then you wouldn't be able to claim credit for the few times it does fall back, esp if it was up o average (hence my point about predicting 8 of the last three crashes).
You definitely wouldn't be able to claim credit for "having warned" someone about a specific stock's fumble (like Netflix's unforced errors), if "tech bad" is all you were basing it on, which is what arcticbull was doing when claiming to have to have warned about Luna in his comments merely because of a general anti-crypto stance.
>I don't touch crypto because I think it's a scam
The point is that that's not the same as differential insight into which specific ones are scams and why. If some aren't scams, that makes you wrong about them, and inability to differentiate means you can't claim to have had deep insight even when some do turn out to be scams.
IOW, you can be right for the wrong reasons, and if so, you can't claim that as vindication.
[1] Also, really? "dai cryptocurrency" and "compound cryptocurrency" both take you directly to explanations of what they are. On google, the latter pops up a "what is compound..." question which, when expanded, explains that it's a protocol for lending and borrowing.
I wasn't unable to find anything about DAI/Compound. Google turned up results. I couldn't find succinct enough information to see why it would be uniquely different.
> If you don't know what something is, and are unwilling to learn
I don't have to read 1,000 pages on crystal focusing power with amethyst to dismiss it. At some point the burden is on you to explain simply enough why everything else sucks but this is different for me to continue.
> All you needed from that reference was that it was another stablecoin and platform that was on solid grounding and didn’t collapse,
Disclaimer: the only crypto I’ve ever owned was $50 of eth I mined on my GPU.
The sensible thing to do was to stay away - and I think it’s perfectly fine for people who did so to smugly say ‘I told you so,’ presuming they did indeed do that.
Put up a large short position, and soon enough there will be a pump and dump to liquidate it. And if you do make money, have you noticed that these exchanges often go down for “maintenance” when big price movements are happening? There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to close out a position when you need to.
The only way to win is not to play.
With a lot more research I perhaps could be net positive, but I don't actually want to spend a lot more time digging into something that I consider stupid bullshit.
HN was almost always negative about the crypto currency hype. Even when shitcoins were at ATH. So, no. The criticism is not after the fact.
> If these people really could foresee these events happening, then they could have made a lot of money by taking short positions.
Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent has been a cliche for almost a century. That is to say nothing of the absurd cost of taking a short position and the counterparty risk of dealing with unregulated exchanges.
> As far as I’m concerned, you don’t say anything unless you put your money where your mouth is.
The motivation for a lot of us was to prevent our less sophisticated friends and family from blowing up their savings. The idea that one shouldn't be critical of obvious scams unless one has a financial interest in them is not a particularly well thought out take.
Sam Altman personally invested in Worldcoin.
You are posting on a forum of an incubator that supports crypto. The irony.
It doesn’t make pet rocks an important or useful product. Just something people can make money on.
This doesn’t necessarily indicate anything other than that they believed the business could make money.
They also invest in traditional banking startups. Even that isn’t necessarily a contradiction with crypto investments.
Isn’t it kind of strange to be hanging on a VC funded forum that supports crypto?
I do like privacy tech and coins but no, I think we are far off acceptance. The risk of zk schemes is way too great for anything beyond science right now.
But another drawback, from what I read, is that selling something short is taking out a loan, and if something is obviously a very lucrative short, then the interest will usually cancel it out.
Free lunches exist, but if it seems really obvious, don't get your hopes up.
I think smugness is 100% warranted, especially given the intensity of the attacks from the other side.
Even your smugness with, "Well, if you're so smart why didn't you short and make a mint," is just sour grapes. Because shorting crypto required even more effed up investments into highly sketchy exchanges. There was really nothing to short in the traditional investment sense.
Basically if I can lose your respect by not fucking people over, I don't want your respect. How's that for conviction?
Yes, there are good traders out there. But it doesn’t appear that the ones that short are anti-crypto.
First, shorting is expensive. Second, people have jobs and bills and don't need their money tied up in some short position. Third, just cause you think something is gonna collapse doesn't mean you know when it will collapse.
I think certain assets are shit (crypto or otherwise). I'm not going to short them all, and I still reserve the right to say I think they are shit. I'm not a professional trader.
Was it always going to zero? Yes. Could I tell you when that was going to happen? Nope. Therefore no short opportunity other than going for a momentum trade.
Most of the people saying "I told you so" have held the exact same line of reasoning on the way up, at the peak and on the way down. The only people that have decided things are different are the people selling crypto, i.e the people that bought and and yes, "We told them so".
* Have unlimited downside
* Are more difficult to get your hands on
It's not really reasonable to expect everyone bearish on crypto to also take uncapped risks.
Staying away and warning your friends/family about the scammy nature of many coins is a perfectly reasonable response.
Some, many here, have consciously objected to speculating on crypto valuation.
>unless you put your money where your mouth is
What about your pocket? That’s not an acceptable alternative?
Taking a short position in illiquid assets likely to go to zero would be almost as stupid as going long. You are also highly likely to lose your money as most schemes to short use some other ‘stablecoin’ and you’d have to be able to time the bubble. That’s not a sensible position and just as risky as being long.
Why insert the hur dur?
Mentioning financial regulation in the context of unregulated get rich quick schemes is totally appropriate and people have been warning about these scams for a long time.
This is the guy at the helm in the face of criticism that the whole thing could implode: https://www.twitter.com/stablekwon/status/146489797779372851...
Anyone exhibiting or associating with that level of hubris drove up the smugness of skeptics when it imploded.