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Comment by radicalbyte | Hacker News Reader

If you were caught off-guard then you've been sitting in a massive bubble. There has been open distrust and hatred of cryptocurrencies since long before NFTs were a thing.

I would argue that NFTs did more to spread the word that cryptocurrencies are a farce than they did to create "value" for those behind them.

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it's not a question of you getting caught off-guard but a massive exchange being trapped now (what do they do?) I kinda feel for them because they tried to build a legit-looking exchange business unlike the famous scams, but now they are stuck and these losses are mind-bending

I feel the same about HOOD. I own some of their stock but every time I see them announce a new crypto product, investment, team, feature etc I cringe. They have coupled themselves and the success of their non crypto products tightly to the success of crypto and I wonder if there will come a time when they try to cut out crypto or if it's too late to do so. I'm holding because I'm hoping they can swing it, but it's been tough to watch because I'm a crypto bear and always have been. I love what they've done with their equity marketplace and their new retirement product seems interesting - but so long as crypto is still around stinking up the place it's hard for me to be a consumer of theirs.

The Indian version of Robinhood - Zerodha - reported a profit of nearly $250M on revenues of $650M last year. It never raised venture funding and never sold any crypto.

Bootstrapped businesses have the best execution.

I've seen hatred of crypto, constant insistence that it's 100% fraud, and claims that it's worthless and will collapse for many years now.

In 2019, no one was saying it would crash in 2022; they were saying it would crash in 2019 or just "it will crash eventually"

In 2020, they weren't saying it would crash in 2022, they were saying it would crash in 2020 or just "it will crash eventually"

In 2021, they weren't saying it would crash in 2022, they were saying it would crash in 2021 or just "it will crash eventually"

In 2022, they said it would crash in 2022 or just "it will crash eventually", and people who didn't realize it would actually happen in 2022 were in a bubble?

It turned out that 2022 was different, but the predictions weren't any different, which means they weren't actually meaningful predictions.

I mean, if it was easy to time when things would collapse, you could make a lot of money. But it is sometimes possible to point to something and say "that'll collapse, sooner or later, because it doesn't make any sense" where it isn't practical to predict the time of the collapse.

People started saying "yeah, there's a problem here" about the Irish property market in 2003 or so. Lots of people were saying "this will crash any day now". For years. Then between 2006 and 2010, prices halved, for broadly the reasons the doomsayers were saying (the global financial crisis was arguably a trigger, but doesn't explain the whole thing).

(Also, I would note that Bitcoin did crash in 2021, as well. And it's not like 2022 is likely to be the last crash, either).

This house is garbage, it's gonna collapse. Didn't collapse last month.

Didn't collapse the next month.

Finally collapses the one after. Was it still a POS garbage house? Probably.

You are intentionally mixing up 2 types of prediction and belittling the one that's a more powerful driver than "it will crash on X date".

"it will crash eventually" is more important, it results in people staying away/getting out of this market, for good. It's much more powerful than oh it's gonna crash on this or that date.

To be clear, this is the thread we're in:

> > I think everyone was completely caught off-guard by the ferocity and pace of the crypto drawdown.

> If you were caught off-guard then you've been sitting in a massive bubble.

OP is saying people were caught off-guard by the specifics of the crash. That doesn't require being in a bubble, because there weren't any specific correct predictions that were distinguishable from the specific incorrect predictions.

Non-specific predictions may be useful, but they don't prevent you from being surprised by the specifics.

They are very useful when the prediction resulted in not participating in this market at all.

For those who are in this market (as Coinbase is), they are useful in terms of planning and setting up a large reserve of rainy day funds - for less risky venture it may not be necessary, but for crypto it absolutely is. Unless plan B is to crash and burn which seems to be the MO for most crypto companies.

Coinbase was caught off guard because they drank the koolaid.

You know who didn't drink the koolaid? Cumberland/DRW and Jump.

If it can prevent any buy-and-hold/long-term retail investors from putting their money into something vastly overvalued, I'd argue that "it will eventually crash" is an extremely meaningful prediction even without a precise time frame.

People were calling crypto a scam. Which is not a prediction, just an observation. Trying to market time an irrational bubble like crypto is a fool's errand.

Note that they were all saying "it would crash"

You're being way too kind to the crypto haters, who were predicting crashes in 2014, too.

HN has predicted 10 of the last two crypto crashes.

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