Celsius Was a Ponzi | Hacker News Reader

Celsius Was a Ponzi

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21 pointsekpyrotic14 comments

I think the worse part of having been a crypto skeptic for such a long time is the I told you so moments. I'm not engaging in schadenfreude, I'm not happy about seeing people lose money. As much as I hate the crypto fanatics spreading nonsense I also hate shit like /r/buttcoin for pointing at people's misfortune. My dad paid off his house about a decade ago, but now he's underwater because he mortgaged it to buy crypto. He wanted help and I said no, I can't help you, its no different from a gambling addiction. You need therapy not more money.

That's a hard story. Ouch.

You would do well to separate your dad's experience and the current speculative state of the landscape from the idea of cryptographically backed digital currency.

Being skeptical of digital money is just silly, and I'm glad you're enjoying your "I told you so" moments, but don't be a bitter old man when cryptocurrency in some form or another becomes the dominant medium of commerce.

No thanks.

Well, I certainly can't argue with that logic.

I've been arguing against cryptocurrencies since 2017. It's really simple, from a physics stand point, the value, is spent compute. I can't reuse that compute, therefore, the store of value is entropic. Entropy goes one way and the value cannot be returned, therefore, cryptocurrencies have no value outside of speculation. Speculative markets already exist and don't need to spend 127 TWh/y to use. Protection from inflation? How is inflation been going up but BTC has been going down? Decentralized? Only until the central authorities who have a staked interest fork the blockchain to save there own assests. Fuck your assets. Someone exploit your smartwallet? CODE IS LAW. But its privacy forward! Bullshit the entire transaction history is public and people have made an industry around finding out who owns what wallets.

Cryptocurrency proponents are the free energy, cold fusion and over unity quacks and cranks of this generation. So many ponzis, rug pulls, frauds, grifts, lies, and bullshit.

You're confusing a particular (naive, original) implementation of cryptocurrency with the general concept of cryptocurrency. Proof of work != cryptocurrency, and speculative markets again are entirely divorced from its foundations. So are ideas such as transactional obfuscation (an exercise left to the reader in the original Bitcoin whitepaper). All of these are implementation details of a broader class of software ecosystems known as cryptocurrency.

You seem like a reasonable person and if you take the time to understand what is taking place then you would see this as the transitional period that it is, understand the problems being solved, and know how to spot the bullshit from the real. Otherwise, you might become the digital equivalent of a senior who refuses to use a credit card over cash.

> You're confusing a particular (naive, original) implementation of cryptocurrency with the general concept of cryptocurrency.

If that is the case they why does the floor value of bitcoin track to the cost of the energy it takes to mint? Value above the floor is 100% speculative as it is value assigned by investors who buy into it.

> You seem like a reasonable person and if you take the time to understand what is taking place then you would see this as the transitional period that it is, understand the problems being solved, and know how to spot the bullshit from the real. Otherwise, you might become the digital equivalent of a senior who refuses to use a credit card over cash.

I would rather give up all technology, sell all my worldly possessions and donate it to charity, and then become a luddite and move to an Amish community before I live in a world dominated by the current iterations of digital currency.

> If that is the case they why does the floor value of bitcoin track to the cost of the energy it takes to mint? Value above the floor is 100% speculative as it is value assigned by investors who buy into it.

The price is discovered through exchange and commerce. Money is similarly speculative, however price discovery works much differently. Even still, I can point out several paper currencies which in very recent times have completely plummeted in value. What does any of this have to do with proof of work?

> I would rather give up all technology, sell all my worldly possessions and donate it to charity, and then become a luddite and move to an Amish community before I live in a world dominated by the current iterations of digital currency.

This seems like moving goalposts, given that my original position was that you should divorce the current state of cryptocurrency from the idea of cryptocurrency itself.

It's like getting mad at the first engines because they were highly inefficient, and writing off all engines, from steam to ICE to electric, because of a failure to understand the design goals of the system, or the inherently wasteful prototyping process.

> This seems like moving goalposts, given that my original position was that you should divorce the current state of cryptocurrency from the idea of cryptocurrency itself.

Let me be clear on one point, I don't have a problem with digital currency. I do have a problem with cryptocurrency.

On what basis?

Here is the link to the court filing: https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/117490...

> Celsius also admitted at the 341 meeting that the company had never earned enough revenue to support the yields being paid to investors. This shows a high level of financial mismanagement and also suggests that at least at some points in time, yields to existing investors were probably being paid with the assets of new investors.

I wonder how many more stories like this are going to come to light in the coming days. It's sad to see people being taken this way. But, as with anything that has a boom period, there were bound to be grifters taking advantage of people wanting to get in on the crypto gold rush.

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