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Comment by sumy23 | Hacker News Reader

People are so smug when they say “I told you so.” It really bothers me. On every negative story about crypto, so many people comment “hur dur financial regulation dur”. But that’s so easy to say 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. That would be a lot more impressive to me than taking cheap opportunities to feel inferior at others’ expense by saying “I told you so” after the fact. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t say anything unless you put your money where your mouth is. Anyone can give advice from the sidelines. Show some conviction.

Disclaimer: the only crypto I’ve ever owned was $50 of eth I mined on my GPU.

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That assumes you are able to hold a short position for the indefinitely long irrational period in which the bubble can grow unpredictably large and your gains increasingly negative. It’s therefore also irrational to take a short position.

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.

Surely if you believe crypto is coming to an end in the next few years there is some way to profit.

You never know how long they’re going to be able to prop up the scams. Additionally, many of the big exchanges, being unregulated, are alleged to (either directly, or through large players they’re associated with) manipulate the market and trade against customers. Front running, etc.

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.

Not buying and keeping your currency elsewhere may just be a totally reasonable alternative.

People that are anti crypto are of strong conviction. I am sure they wish they could have their Michael Burry moment — if only it wasn’t for the damn volatility.

Maybe people don't want to play a zero-sum Greater fool game. There are better ways to spend one's time.

Like spending many hours commenting on such topics on Twitter and HN?

I have been consistently wrong about when various scams have exploded, both thinking that they would explode earlier than they did and that it would take longer. If I'd tried to short the crypto crashes so far I probably would have lost money overall even with just the ones where I was correct about them going to zero.

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.

I could take bets on the next mass shooting, too, but I prefer not to make money off of some things that I can nonetheless statistically foresee.

I made 18k betting Trump would lose the presidency with Polymarket. I literally took money from the world’s biggest morons. Feel pretty good about that.

In 2020, a lot of swing states were close, and there was a big shift towards Trump in election results vs. polls. He might have won had he not gotten covid.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

> But that’s so easy to say after the fact.

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.

Y Combinator was an investor in Coinbase and other crypto startups.

Sam Altman personally invested in Worldcoin.

You are posting on a forum of an incubator that supports crypto. The irony.

If VCs think they can make money in the next pet rock, they’ll try.

It doesn’t make pet rocks an important or useful product. Just something people can make money on.

Most products aren’t important or useful. The public uses them because, well, it’s complicated.

> Y Combinator was an investor in Coinbase and other crypto startups.

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.

It's almost as if YC and HN users have entriely different incentives and opinions. Shocking.

Have you seen the comments when one of Paul Graham’s essays is posted?

Isn’t it kind of strange to be hanging on a VC funded forum that supports crypto?

There are ~18000 cryptos, and out of all those, maybe two worth owning. Do I need to go open short positions on 17998 assets before I can tell people "don't buy shitcoins"?

The type of crypto the world ends up with will absolutely not be BTC or ETH. It will be closer to Zcash with zero-knowledge proofs, and will like only be used for things like international exchanges, escrow, new types of trusts (contracts are quite brilliant), or transfers between banks. People will use it the same way the used to use Moneygram, or the way they pay a thousand dollars for an escrow agent. I also believe every bank and country and possibly corporations will have their own blockchains. I have a strong gut feeling I'll never be buying a sandwich with crypto in my lifetime.

Wait until the point of sale terminals support Lightning. It’s coming. International trade requires transparency in a zero trust environment.

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.

"Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" - Keynes. Why does only taking short position qualify one to speak on this issue. You could be right but get wiped out in the short term when the mania drives these shitcoins to 10-20 times their fair value.

I was told a very long time ago to never sell something short because you have the risk of unlimited loss.

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.

There is ample evidence before of people predicting pretty much everything that happened (with the exception of the bizarre transfer devices that evolved out of staking, tethering, contracts, etc.).

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.

Just short $MSTR. Easy.

Maybe most people already have a job which they spend time and get money in return, so why would they spend even more of their free time in pursuit of a little bit more money? Life is more than money anyways

People are naturally greedy. Plenty of developers sacrifice their relationships, health, and appearance for high comp packages.

Most people have the attitude towards crypto that it is an over-hyped technology that is just sucking-up people's time and attention and so the best thing to do is to ignore it and hope it goes away as soon as possible so as to free-up people's time and attention towards more worthwhile things.

Facebook welcomes our return.

It is the opposite of impressive, to me: Crypto is deeply troubled and unethical, but betting against it by shorting the market and gleefully taking advantage of someone losing their shirt is worse.

Basically if I can lose your respect by not fucking people over, I don't want your respect. How's that for conviction?

Not really. It’s more likely experienced players in the market liquidate your position in times of great volatility.

Yes, there are good traders out there. But it doesn’t appear that the ones that short are anti-crypto.

Arguably its helping them— you know… not lose more money than they otherwise could.

Even if you know something will fall it's not necessarily rational to take a short position. You also have to correctly guess when it will fall. Otherwise you will lose money on premiums or get wiped out by margin calls.

I don't think that's true.

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.

I put my money where my mouth is by not investing in crypto???

This is still dismissing the con, not the people fooled. Blaming the victim, essentially.

They're a victim of their own voluntary financial decisions.

People don't take short positions against highly volatile assets like crypto because sometimes the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. The risk of a short position greatly outweighs the benefit even if you are right and if you use instruments that reduce the risk they are very timing sensitive.

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".

Some feel that it’s unethical to take any financial (not political) position concerning cryptocurrencies. I count myself as one.

Short positions:

* 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.

No. What you’ve described would apply to short selling but not all short positions. If you buy a put on Ethereum (the right to sell at a specific price by a certain date), then you are short Ethereum because you benefit from price declines. Your losses are limited to what you paid for the put. You just need to have the cash for it and you can do so on LedgerX/FTX.

You can buy short options that have capped downside.

So if you think crypto is mostly a scam the solution is to get into options trading?

Staying away and warning your friends/family about the scammy nature of many coins is a perfectly reasonable response.

No, OP is saying that you can't make fun of it unless you put your money where your mouth is. Obviously, most people disagree.

Good point

Alternatively, refer to comment archives, or historical records of your choice.

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?

People have showed conviction by staying away and investing in companies/assets that actually generate returns.

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.

The smugness is appropriate with Terra though.

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.

There are few joys in life greater than being able to self-righteously say “I told you so” to those who felt so strongly about something wrong.

I prefer "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." :-)

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