Author Topic: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation  (Read 233709 times)

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1150 on: April 06, 2022, 07:40:22 AM »
And that's IF you we fortunate enough not to have been a victim in one of 11 crypto exchange hacks perpetrated in that timeframe worth undisclosed hundreds of millions of USD, which would have moved your losses up to 100% with no recourse.
Actually 2022 q1 overshadows those figures, with an 8x increase in hacking that has brought losses in the past 3 months to $1.2 billion.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/04/q1-crypto-losses-spike-695-on-year-following-massive-hacks/

Because of the +700% increase, it's safe to assume prior hacks were a fraction of the prior quarter, but call it $2.5 billion total.  The market caps of BTC and ETH are $1.25 trillion, or 500x greater.  Using these rough numbers, is it fair to estimate 99.8% of crypto has been safe from hacks?

And even in those hacking numbers, a lot of it is ransomware.  It's someone's computer getting hacked, and to pay the ransom they must send crypto.  Those ransomware cases are not really a risk for investors, so much as Bitcoin is everywhere hackers want you to be.

lifeanon269

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1151 on: April 06, 2022, 07:55:12 AM »
The lightning network?s efficiency is a direct result of the centralization of its hubs. This isn?t particularly interesting or even novel. It?s just network topology in action. I?m confused why this is contentious? This centralization obviates the point of Bitcoin?s decentralized design because it adds risk for censorship, invasion-of-privacy, etc.

Sure. Again, centralization is the reason LN is as efficient as it is. The more centralized LN is, the more you must trust the operators of the big LN hubs.

My point is, on the LN, bad actors can?and do?absolutely do these things.

I asked you to explain your reasoning for believing that Lightning is a centralizing force with bitcoin and, through three paragraphs, all you literally did is regurgitate the same baseless claim that lightning is centralized without any actual reasoning. Lightning is not centralizing one bit. One analysis of the topology if LN and you'd immediately see this. If you ran your own node, you'd also see this clear as day. Try rebalancing a channel and you'd see your node calculate hundreds of possible routes a payment could take from one channel of yours to another. Don't like one of the routes it could take? Fine, block that node and it will just take a different path. It is a mesh network through and through and to insinuate that it is a hub and spoke topology makes it clear that you don't have any experience using the technology.


Sure. Let?s define it. In this context, I understand ?trust?. In the context of Bitcoin, users do not need to trust the payment system. Bad actors (miners) cannot change order-of-transactions, block transactions, etc. because it would be too costly to do so (thanks to PoW).

To put it more succinctly, trust is the need to place confidence into someone else that they'll do the right thing and can be relied upon. As I said, with lightning, you are always in complete control of your bitcoin keys at all times. Raw lightning transactions are quite literally raw bitcoin transactions. If you're an active participant of the lightning network, you do not need to place any trust into other lightning node operators at all. That's completely contrary to your earlier claim that you need to trust other node operators. Onion routing provides privacy similar to the Tor network. Even if I had a direct channel with a peer and I make a LN payment directly to that peer, they don't know if the payment truly came from my node or if it was routing from other peers on the network. Sure, there might be some form of Sybil type attack similar to like what can take place on the Tor network, but doing so would take a great deal of capital unlike the negligible costs associated with Tor. So again, there is no trust that you must place into the network to route transactions on it. No one has the keys to your funds at any time and no one can force you to route payments through them. There are thousands of possible routes across the network with no clear centralized hubs.

Earlier you claimed I was just spouting some B.S. I read in a magazine and I took offense to that. But when you quite literally spout off a common talking point but don't actually back it up with either real-world facts or at the very least some simple reasoning beyond that talking point, it really makes me wonder who the one is that is just regurgitating talking points they heard once or twice.


You gave numbers. But it?s not clear the full picture. And again, I understand the mechanisms at play well enough to know what you?re suggesting is just not realistic. Again, I don?t need to know the details of a semi truck?s route to know that a Prius  will always do it by burning less gas. I add more detail on this below?

Yes, I gave you real-world numbers and they are not anomalous whatsoever. What do you continue to insinuate that they are not realistic? Especially considering you've never used the technology before? You say you don't need to know the details of it all to understand it, but quite simply if you knew the details of it all you'd understand why it is realistic. Simply put, by allowing the consolidation of transactions into a single on-chain channel fund, you can now spread the costs of the on-chain fee across hundreds of transactions. So if the channel open on-chain transaction cost you $1 and you have 100 lightning transactions take place over that channel, then that $1 fee cost can be spread across all those off-chain transactions. It is a simple efficiency to understand and I am not sure why you contend my numbers. Would you like me to offer you up some screenshots of the data from my lightning node? Not sure what more you'd like as proof. I suppose simply because it runs counter to your narrative, it just must be false!! Instead you continue to offer up some strange analogy between a semi-truck and a Prius.


Ohhh my. Who do you think is mining Bitcoins? The poor? Or the already-ultra-wealthy, who can afford millions of dollars of mining equipment, facilities, electric bills, etc? What about Proof of Stake? That is even more transparently a scheme where the already-wealthy are granted the most votes.

You don't need millions of dollars in mining equipment to mine bitcoin. I sold my bitcoin miner for $200 on ebay. You can find cheap miners all over the place. The big mining operations all use the same bitcoin miners in their operations at scale. It isn't like the big operators are using different types of miners than small operations. If you can mine with 1000 big coin miners, you can mine with one of those same machines given the same electricity costs. And yes, there are instances of people in these nations with unstable currencies opting to mine bitcoin.

I agree proof-of-stake is really just more of the same (people with power/money with the control). As I said, I debate the merits of bitcoin and so let's just stick with that.

Democracy is 1 person 1 vote. Bitcoin couldn?t be further from that ideal.

The US is not one person one vote, does that make it not a democracy?

This argument just pains me. It?s incredibly dismissive of the colossal waste in the system. ?Everybody exhales CO2, and my tire fire factory is no different!! LOL And one day, it may be more efficient, just you wait!? It?s a bad argument, man. Bitcoin is thousands of times less efficient than existing payment systems. Are its use-cases (which I maintain are already also detrimental) worth that? I think that?s a tough argument to make.

But the energy-use is only part of the equation. The other is: e-waste from discarded/broken ASIC mining equipment, video cards, servers, etc. A single Bitcoin transaction is responsible for nearly 300 grams of e-waste?that?s about 2 iPhones. Bitcoin alone produces more ewaste than the entire country of Germany, a nation of 83 Million.

The climate scientist Michael Mann said that no one is without "carbon sin". It is an acknowledgement that everyone contributes to climate change through our actions in some fashion. Who has a lower carbon footprint, the carnivore that doesn't ever fly? The vegan who drives a pickup truck? The couple with no kids, but travels the world? The push from the fossil fuel industry to put the burden onto individual action is a deliberate effort to shift the narrative and blame onto others and away from them. At the end of the day fossil fuels are to blame for climate change and we must shift away from using fossil fuels as a means of energy production. I often see this immense outrage over bitcoin's energy use from people who eat meat or drive big trucks and it is really just a bunch of virtue signaling. It lacks the calmed reasoning that realizes that bitcoin's emissions is the tiniest fraction of a percent of our world's carbon emissions and energy production. Yes, bitcoin does use a lot of energy, but so do a lot of things we use. Cloths dryers in the US alone use as much energy as bitcoin. Phantom energy loss from power adapters use as much energy loss as bitcoin does. You don't hear any outrage about the energy use of those things though. At the end of the day we just need to make sure that the energy we're using is for things humans find useful. So ultimately that is where the disagreement and outrage comes from when it comes to bitcoin. The people outraged over bitcoin's emissions and not the meat on their plate is simply because they're outraged over bitcoin and not the meat they enjoy. All the while it distracts from the real issue which is fossil fuels.

Yes, e-waste is a concern as it is with all computing industries and bitcoin's computing life-cycle with ASIC has been increasing over the last few years. There is also reason to believe Moore's law is slowing down, so I don't think the e-waste issue is any different for bitcoin than it is for other computing industries. Your analysis of "transaction per e-waste" is also a tired talking point that completely misunderstands how bitcoin works. Equating things on a per-transaction basis is a misunderstanding of how it functions as on-chain transactions are settlements and bitcoin doesn't scale on a strictly transactional basis. In otherwords, there is no correlation to the amount of e-waste or energy consumed to how many transactions are processed. A single bitcoin transaction can also equal hundreds/thousands/millions of individual point of sale transactions.

Last year, a single coal mine in China flooded, and Bitcoin?s hash rate dropped to the tune of 35%. Just 0.1% of miners control half of all mining capacity (source: https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-mining-capacity-ownership-concentration-top-investors-nber-study/ ) Additionally, there are very few manufacturers of ASICS, which is yet another source of centralization.

Do you have a source showing mining getting more decentralized in the last several years?

Bitcoin's hashrate didn't fall that much because of a single coal mine. It fell that much because China shutdown and put a ban on coal mining across the country. If anything, it shows the resiliency of the bitcoin network to not even be phased by a massive drop in mining power.

Missed in your Forbes article with NBER research was the fact that those 0.01% of miners consists of 50-60 mining entities that make up that percentage. This is just the make up you get when you have thousands of people and corporations around the world that are mining bitcoin. You have a long tail of thousands of individual miners mining bitcoin with corporations that have large amounts of hash rate making up the top percentages. But those top percentages on their own have been continuing to get more decentralized on their own as proof to the fact that there are over 50-60 mining corporations in that small top percentage alone. In 2015 there were only about 20 mining companies that made up an even much larger percentage of the hashrate pie. Many of these new bitcoin mining companies are new within just the last few years with companies like Stronghold Digital Mining, Riot Blockchain, Bitdeer, Foundry Digital, etc and have moved a lot of their operations to the US.

That's for mining entities, but even the mining pools have become more decentralized compared to what it looked like in say 2015. In 2015 there were just 3 mining pools with over 50% of the hashrate with several entities controlling over 20% of the hashrate alone. Today there isn't a single mining pool that controls over 20% of the hashrate and there are 6 mining pools that have between 10-20% of the hashrate. One look at the historical breakdown of the mining pool trends over time and you can clearly see it becomes more and more distributed as time goes on. So I am afraid your claim that mining has become more centralized as time went on fails to even the slightest scrutiny.

https://btc.com/stats/pool?percent_mode=latest#pool-history



Sorry, I?m not trying to disparage you. Maybe it?s a coincidence that you?re talking about the same few countries every other Bitcoin enthusiast I?ve listened to brings up. Were you interested in the problems in Venezuela and Lebanon before you got interested in cryptocurrency?

"I'm sorry for disparaging you...but before I go, let me disparage you one last time by calling into question the source of your empathy."

Oh, please. Save it. Trying to insinuate that I have no empathy for others and the only reason I care about any one else's plight is because of bitcoin is insulting. As I said, the main reason I am vegan is because I have empathy for others. Even if it being vegan didn't save animals, I would still be vegan because of the horrible work conditions that humans are forced into in the meat industry. People in hardships in other countries have always empathized with and I've always made it a point to help out where I can. Whether it is refugees from geopolitical turmoil, or villages like those in Ecuador destroy by Chevron's carelessness, Uyghur muslims being concentrated and killed in China...to say I don't care about any of those things going on and the only reason I might care for others is because of my interest in bitcoin is extremely disrepectful and frankly I am done debating you because all your arguments are either complete logical fallacies, ill-researched talking points, or insulting name calls.

Cheers.

StashingAway

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1152 on: April 06, 2022, 09:21:05 AM »
The climate scientist Michael Mann said that no one is without "carbon sin". It is an acknowledgement that everyone contributes to climate change through our actions in some fashion. Who has a lower carbon footprint, the carnivore that doesn't ever fly? The vegan who drives a pickup truck? The couple with no kids, but travels the world? The push from the fossil fuel industry to put the burden onto individual action is a deliberate effort to shift the narrative and blame onto others and away from them. At the end of the day fossil fuels are to blame for climate change and we must shift away from using fossil fuels as a means of energy production. I often see this immense outrage over bitcoin's energy use from people who eat meat or drive big trucks and it is really just a bunch of virtue signaling. It lacks the calmed reasoning that realizes that bitcoin's emissions is the tiniest fraction of a percent of our world's carbon emissions and energy production. Yes, bitcoin does use a lot of energy, but so do a lot of things we use. Cloths dryers in the US alone use as much energy as bitcoin. Phantom energy loss from power adapters use as much energy loss as bitcoin does. You don't hear any outrage about the energy use of those things though. At the end of the day we just need to make sure that the energy we're using is for things humans find useful. So ultimately that is where the disagreement and outrage comes from when it comes to bitcoin. The people outraged over bitcoin's emissions and not the meat on their plate is simply because they're outraged over bitcoin and not the meat they enjoy. All the while it distracts from the real issue which is fossil fuels.

This paragraph puts a stake in it for me, the kind of thorough philosophy salad that seems to follow crypto around that on a geological scale analysis just doesn't pass muster. I get the sentiment, and its easy to straw man the virtue signalers, but from a bird's eye view it just comes across as fingerprinting and whattaboutism. I could talk all day about why it rubs me the wrong way.

Scandium

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1153 on: April 06, 2022, 09:34:21 AM »
...

As usual this devolve into technical minutia about crypto mechanics, which I find pretty dull. Some invest because "line goes up", ok sure. It's a gamble, it might work. It's fair enough. But it doesn't require caring one way or another about crypto being a fad, bubble, ponzi etc. Exit at the right point and it won't matter.

Do you think there is a purpose or utility to crypto? What will it do in the future, that solves an actual problem? So far I've been told a store of wealth for people fleeing war and despots. Ok, sure. But that's a rather miniscule market. Hundreds of millions of people, especially in the west, will never need that. Sending money across borders, between functioning nations, is easy and cheap these days, I do it all the time. No need to do a crypto middle-man, with the associated insecurities and volatility.

So if I don't want to gamble, I don't live in Vuvuzela, I don't do drugs. Why should I have crypto?

For everyday transactions crypto is awful. Slow, insecure, no consumer protections, zero privacy. Not to mention expensive! From what I can tell BTC is only $2 per transaction, ETH is $15, down from $100! So what should we use this for?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2022, 09:36:09 AM by Scandium »

Telecaster

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1154 on: April 06, 2022, 09:57:20 AM »
Nice to see some good discussion on this again.

It would be better if we could get away from the underlying assumption that every pro-crypto person is either a greedy scammer or a gullible victim of said scammers, and is motivated purely by selfish interest and fuck everyone/everything else.

It's a fairly safe bet that most on this forum generally share similar Mustachian values - and I think we'd all agree that Mustachians are, by and large, good people with good intentions. A few of us have an interest in crypto too . . .

I heartily agree.   While there is plenty of fraud in the crypto space, Bitcoin is not a fraud or a scam.  When you buy a Bitcoin you get exactly what you expect:  One Bitcoin.   That meets no definition of a fraud or a scam. 

Similarly, it is not useful to assume criminal intent.   The people here who have stated their motives for owning Bitcoin usually point to libertarian principles.  It is entirely fair to take those statements at face value. 

So it comes down to the use case, at least for me.   




GuitarStv

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1155 on: April 06, 2022, 10:08:46 AM »
Nice to see some good discussion on this again.

It would be better if we could get away from the underlying assumption that every pro-crypto person is either a greedy scammer or a gullible victim of said scammers, and is motivated purely by selfish interest and fuck everyone/everything else.

It's a fairly safe bet that most on this forum generally share similar Mustachian values - and I think we'd all agree that Mustachians are, by and large, good people with good intentions. A few of us have an interest in crypto too . . .

I heartily agree.   While there is plenty of fraud in the crypto space, Bitcoin is not a fraud or a scam.  When you buy a Bitcoin you get exactly what you expect:  One Bitcoin.   That meets no definition of a fraud or a scam.

Similarly, it is not useful to assume criminal intent.   The people here who have stated their motives for owning Bitcoin usually point to libertarian principles.  It is entirely fair to take those statements at face value. 

So it comes down to the use case, at least for me.


I'm not sure the above logic makes sense.  For example:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pyramid-scheme-victims-win-6-5m-in-b-c-lawsuit-1.2524843

More than 2000 people purchased memberships for themselves, at $3,200.  They were promised $5,000 for each similar membership they sold once they sold over 20 memberships.  But this pyramid scheme was considered fraud by our courts . . . even though people got exactly what they signed up and paid for.  They got exactly what they should have expected.

Shane

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1156 on: April 06, 2022, 10:44:55 AM »
Can't wait to invest in some Will Smith Inu! #diamondhands

Will Smith's slap became crypto.


Scandium

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1157 on: April 06, 2022, 11:20:46 AM »
Can't wait to invest in some Will Smith Inu! #diamondhands

Really? That's the name they went with? No Wild wild west or MIB pun? Fresh prince? no? Nothing? Sheesh, so lame.
Slapcoin? Smackbucks?
« Last Edit: April 06, 2022, 12:05:19 PM by Scandium »

Telecaster

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1158 on: April 06, 2022, 11:38:17 AM »
I heartily agree.   While there is plenty of fraud in the crypto space, Bitcoin is not a fraud or a scam.  When you buy a Bitcoin you get exactly what you expect:  One Bitcoin.   That meets no definition of a fraud or a scam.


I'm not sure the above logic makes sense.  For example:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pyramid-scheme-victims-win-6-5m-in-b-c-lawsuit-1.2524843

More than 2000 people purchased memberships for themselves, at $3,200.  They were promised $5,000 for each similar membership they sold once they sold over 20 memberships.  But this pyramid scheme was considered fraud by our courts . . . even though people got exactly what they signed up and paid for.  They got exactly what they should have expected.

They didn't get memberships for one, right?  They also expected they would get paid $5000 for every membership they sold after 20.   How do you pay a $5,000 commission on a $3,200 product?   The answer is the early adopters did get the $5K commissions, paid for by later adopters.    This motivated them to sell lots of memberships until the pyramid collapsed. 

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1159 on: April 06, 2022, 12:39:49 PM »
Can't wait to invest in some Will Smith Inu! #diamondhands
Really? That's the name they went with? No Wild wild west or MIB pun? Fresh prince?
I believe Chris Rock had some "fresh prints".

GuitarStv

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1160 on: April 06, 2022, 12:39:58 PM »
I heartily agree.   While there is plenty of fraud in the crypto space, Bitcoin is not a fraud or a scam.  When you buy a Bitcoin you get exactly what you expect:  One Bitcoin.   That meets no definition of a fraud or a scam.


I'm not sure the above logic makes sense.  For example:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pyramid-scheme-victims-win-6-5m-in-b-c-lawsuit-1.2524843

More than 2000 people purchased memberships for themselves, at $3,200.  They were promised $5,000 for each similar membership they sold once they sold over 20 memberships.  But this pyramid scheme was considered fraud by our courts . . . even though people got exactly what they signed up and paid for.  They got exactly what they should have expected.

They didn't get memberships for one, right?  They also expected they would get paid $5000 for every membership they sold after 20.   How do you pay a $5,000 commission on a $3,200 product?   The answer is the early adopters did get the $5K commissions, paid for by later adopters.    This motivated them to sell lots of memberships until the pyramid collapsed.

They did get the memberships (valued at 9000$) that were initially purchased.  They also got the 5000$ commission if they met to contractual obligation (which was to sell 20).

The pyramid scheme didn't collapse . . . it's just that late adopters weren't able to sell 20 memberships.

Everyone got exactly what they were sold though.

Telecaster

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1161 on: April 06, 2022, 02:43:06 PM »
They did get the memberships (valued at 9000$) that were initially purchased.  They also got the 5000$ commission if they met to contractual obligation (which was to sell 20).

The pyramid scheme didn't collapse . . . it's just that late adopters weren't able to sell 20 memberships.

Everyone got exactly what they were sold though.

This is incorrect.   The memberships cost $2300.  Having a membership allowed the to sell the $9000 vacation package.   The founder didn't pay out the commissions because he absconded with the money.  That is 100% guaranteed example of fraud. 

erjkism

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1162 on: April 06, 2022, 05:41:00 PM »
"What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation"

Why ask this to a forum where 90+% of the people here have been completely wrong and missed the entire crypto wave?

Missed it ? Do you think it's all over ?

i think it has a pump or two left

the_gastropod

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1163 on: April 06, 2022, 07:08:39 PM »
Yes, I gave you real-world numbers and they are not anomalous whatsoever. What do you continue to insinuate that they are not realistic? Especially considering you've never used the technology before? You say you don't need to know the details of it all to understand it, but quite simply if you knew the details of it all you'd understand why it is realistic. Simply put, by allowing the consolidation of transactions into a single on-chain channel fund, you can now spread the costs of the on-chain fee across hundreds of transactions. So if the channel open on-chain transaction cost you $1 and you have 100 lightning transactions take place over that channel, then that $1 fee cost can be spread across all those off-chain transactions. It is a simple efficiency to understand and I am not sure why you contend my numbers. Would you like me to offer you up some screenshots of the data from my lightning node? Not sure what more you'd like as proof. I suppose simply because it runs counter to your narrative, it just must be false!! Instead you continue to offer up some strange analogy between a semi-truck and a Prius.

😂 I know you said you’re done with me, and that’s cool. But I want to address this for anyone else interested. This is a common theme among Bitcoiners—ignoring magnitudes. Bitcoin, because of proof-of-work (which should really be called “proof of waste”), is literally millions of times less efficient than traditional financial systems. Lightning improves this for some rather narrow use-cases, but it’s still a horror-show in most practical use-cases. Therefore, you can absolutely conclude given an apples-to-apples scenario, the traditional system has a massive advantage, and will always be cheaper than the crypto one. You suggesting otherwise tells me with virtually total certainty, your example is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

The US is not one person one vote, does that make it not a democracy?

Lol. Yea, again: the US already has plenty of issues, and is far from a great example of a democracy, you’re right! But Bitcoin is again, many many many orders of magnitude worse in this respect. You have this tendency to reduce things to binary thing where imperfection is the same as terribleness. They’re not the same. Imperfection is preferable to terribleness.

The climate scientist Michael Mann said that no one is without "carbon sin". It is an acknowledgement that everyone contributes to climate change through our actions in some fashion. Who has a lower carbon footprint, the carnivore that doesn't ever fly? The vegan who drives a pickup truck? The couple with no kids, but travels the world? The push from the fossil fuel industry to put the burden onto individual action is a deliberate effort to shift the narrative and blame onto others and away from them. At the end of the day fossil fuels are to blame for climate change and we must shift away from using fossil fuels as a means of energy production. I often see this immense outrage over bitcoin's energy use from people who eat meat or drive big trucks and it is really just a bunch of virtue signaling. It lacks the calmed reasoning that realizes that bitcoin's emissions is the tiniest fraction of a percent of our world's carbon emissions and energy production. Yes, bitcoin does use a lot of energy, but so do a lot of things we use. Cloths dryers in the US alone use as much energy as bitcoin. Phantom energy loss from power adapters use as much energy loss as bitcoin does. You don't hear any outrage about the energy use of those things though. At the end of the day we just need to make sure that the energy we're using is for things humans find useful. So ultimately that is where the disagreement and outrage comes from when it comes to bitcoin. The people outraged over bitcoin's emissions and not the meat on their plate is simply because they're outraged over bitcoin and not the meat they enjoy. All the while it distracts from the real issue which is fossil fuels.

Again… Magnitudes matter. Bitcoin is on the order of 2.5 Million times less efficient than Visa. 2.5 Million. This is a far cry from “the truck-driving vegan” vs “the flightless carnivore” comparison, where one of these may have a 50% difference. We’re talking about a  250,000,000,000% difference. Absurd. Putin-level absurd “both-sides” anti-climate propaganda, this is.

Yes, e-waste is a concern as it is with all computing industries and bitcoin's computing life-cycle with ASIC has been increasing over the last few years. There is also reason to believe Moore's law is slowing down, so I don't think the e-waste issue is any different for bitcoin than it is for other computing industries. Your analysis of "transaction per e-waste" is also a tired talking point that completely misunderstands how bitcoin works. Equating things on a per-transaction basis is a misunderstanding of how it functions as on-chain transactions are settlements and bitcoin doesn't scale on a strictly transactional basis. In otherwords, there is no correlation to the amount of e-waste or energy consumed to how many transactions are processed. A single bitcoin transaction can also equal hundreds/thousands/millions of individual point of sale transactions.

FREEBIRRRRD! More both sides malarkey. I’ll say it again: Bitcoin is—BY DESIGN—millions of times less efficient than traditional systems. There is no equivalency here. You pretending otherwise is just silly. And the “it doesn’t matter how many transactions” retort isn’t as clever as Bitcoin proponents seem to think it is.  It’s a financial system built for handling transactions. That there aren’t very many transactions, and the carbon footprint is still as massive as it is isn’t the great defense you think it is.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2022, 07:27:47 PM by the_gastropod »

DaKini

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1164 on: April 06, 2022, 11:59:51 PM »
Official Formula 1 NFT Game Shuts Down, Tokens Are Now Practically Worthless
https://kotaku.com/f1-formula-1-one-delta-time-nft-crypto-cursed-shut-down-1848748953


Reminds me of something, what was it again?

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1165 on: April 07, 2022, 03:04:07 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

But notice the first Venture Capital (VC) firm in the list: Sequoia Capital is legendary, but I'll quote just one VC investment: "In 1978, Sequoia became one of the first investors in Apple."  That said, most VC investments fail - so that could be the case with STEPN.  It's still noteworthy they invested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Capital

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1166 on: April 07, 2022, 06:47:57 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but why would this work?  I mean, what difference does crypto make on this?  If someone came to me and said "I'm building an app that will pay people a dollar per 10000 steps" my response would be "that sounds like a nice way to incentivize good behavior but how will you make any money?".  Switching dollar to a new crypto coin doesn't make a difference (in my limited understanding) as far as the feasibility of this.  What am I missing?

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1167 on: April 07, 2022, 07:33:59 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but why would this work?  I mean, what difference does crypto make on this?  If someone came to me and said "I'm building an app that will pay people a dollar per 10000 steps" my response would be "that sounds like a nice way to incentivize good behavior but how will you make any money?".  Switching dollar to a new crypto coin doesn't make a difference (in my limited understanding) as far as the feasibility of this.  What am I missing?
If anything, my liking STEPN was more off topic than your question, which brings this back to earnings and relevance to investors.  Here's the short explanation on their "lite paper" (as opposed to deeper dive in their "whitepaper"):
"We take small taxes from in-app activities, such as NFT trading, Shoe-minting and Shoe-rental."
https://stepn.com/litePaper

It's worth noting that media hype is worth something - it's advertising.  When athletes wear Nike brand clothes, that sells more clothes.  Similarly, it's possible for STEPN to create a marketplace and generate credits without crypto, but they do receive an advertising benefit from using crypto in this novel manner.

That same page goes on to explain their goal, which I suspect captured the imagination of VC investors.  As an aside, I suspect nobody cares about what VC means until they do some VC investment themselves?
"We aim to be the leading Web3 Health + Fitness app"

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1168 on: April 07, 2022, 08:03:55 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but why would this work?  I mean, what difference does crypto make on this?  If someone came to me and said "I'm building an app that will pay people a dollar per 10000 steps" my response would be "that sounds like a nice way to incentivize good behavior but how will you make any money?".  Switching dollar to a new crypto coin doesn't make a difference (in my limited understanding) as far as the feasibility of this.  What am I missing?

You're looking at it wrong.  Obviously there's no money to be made in paying people to walk.  The goal of NFTs is not to implement something that works and make money by profiting after implementation.  That's a boring traditional business model.  Most of these NFT projects work by generating investments for a while, then declaring bankruptcy and quitting.  Profit is created by failing and walking off with the investment capital.

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1169 on: April 07, 2022, 09:47:56 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but why would this work?  I mean, what difference does crypto make on this?  If someone came to me and said "I'm building an app that will pay people a dollar per 10000 steps" my response would be "that sounds like a nice way to incentivize good behavior but how will you make any money?".  Switching dollar to a new crypto coin doesn't make a difference (in my limited understanding) as far as the feasibility of this.  What am I missing?

Because they can create their own currency out of thin air, therefore they're not "paying" anyone anything in real money. They can use capital to "exchange" some for USD (perhaps with themselves), pay influencers/friends/bots to pump the value of their crypto, sell of tons of it, make a few million in untraceable/unaccountable transactions. Then bail.
Rinse, repeat.

The fact that you have thought about it for 5 sec means it's not for you. As 'line goes up' explains this works on people who are stupid, low social literacy, or both.

LateStarter

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1170 on: April 07, 2022, 09:59:22 AM »
. . . 
Bitcoin is on the order of 2.5 Million times less efficient than Visa. 2.5 Million.
. . .

I assume this mighty number comes from the openly anti-Bitcoin Digiconomist article.

For an alternative openly pro-Bitcoin interpretation, see What Bloomberg Gets Wrong About Bitcoin's Climate Footprint.

Lots of agendas here and I suggest that scepticism should be liberally applied to both sides of the argument.

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1171 on: April 07, 2022, 11:04:49 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but why would this work?  I mean, what difference does crypto make on this?  If someone came to me and said "I'm building an app that will pay people a dollar per 10000 steps" my response would be "that sounds like a nice way to incentivize good behavior but how will you make any money?".  Switching dollar to a new crypto coin doesn't make a difference (in my limited understanding) as far as the feasibility of this.  What am I missing?
Because they can create their own currency out of thin air, therefore they're not "paying" anyone anything in real money. They can use capital to "exchange" some for USD (perhaps with themselves), pay influencers/friends/bots to pump the value of their crypto, sell of tons of it, make a few million in untraceable/unaccountable transactions. Then bail.
Rinse, repeat.

The fact that you have thought about it for 5 sec means it's not for you. As 'line goes up' explains this works on people who are stupid, low social literacy, or both.
Earlier I mentioned $2.5 billion in hacked crypto compared to $1.25 trillion in crypto market cap, hinting at just 0.2% being hacked.  Do you think your view balances the 0.2% an 99.8% views, or just focuses on the 0.2% view?

The team participated in a hackathon competition, where they weren't anonymous.  They created a company and attracted VC heavy weight Sequioa Capital, who has over $100 billion in assets and can afford the best lawyers.  How exactly would they defraud their VC investors and get away with it?

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1172 on: April 07, 2022, 11:44:55 AM »
"Users earn cryptocurrency tokens by walking or running outdoors, which they can use in the game to trade assets or exchange for other currencies to cash out."

"On 20 January, STEPN announced that it raised $5m in seed round financing from technology investors, including Sequoia Capital, Folius Ventures, Solana Capital and Alameda Research."
https://capital.com/stepn-gmt-price-prediction

I really like the concept of crypto currency you earn by walking and running.  It's a way to encourage healthy behavior by adding a game like score to it.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but why would this work?  I mean, what difference does crypto make on this?  If someone came to me and said "I'm building an app that will pay people a dollar per 10000 steps" my response would be "that sounds like a nice way to incentivize good behavior but how will you make any money?".  Switching dollar to a new crypto coin doesn't make a difference (in my limited understanding) as far as the feasibility of this.  What am I missing?
Because they can create their own currency out of thin air, therefore they're not "paying" anyone anything in real money. They can use capital to "exchange" some for USD (perhaps with themselves), pay influencers/friends/bots to pump the value of their crypto, sell of tons of it, make a few million in untraceable/unaccountable transactions. Then bail.
Rinse, repeat.

The fact that you have thought about it for 5 sec means it's not for you. As 'line goes up' explains this works on people who are stupid, low social literacy, or both.
Earlier I mentioned $2.5 billion in hacked crypto compared to $1.25 trillion in crypto market cap, hinting at just 0.2% being hacked.  Do you think your view balances the 0.2% an 99.8% views, or just focuses on the 0.2% view?

The team participated in a hackathon competition, where they weren't anonymous.  They created a company and attracted VC heavy weight Sequioa Capital, who has over $100 billion in assets and can afford the best lawyers.  How exactly would they defraud their VC investors and get away with it?

uuuh what? I have no idea what the first part means. I'm not balancing or focusing or hacking anything...

There's no oversight or consumer protection in crypto, so it's not strictly 'fraud'. Which of course is why they choose to use it for this scheme!
And they will of course not "defraud" the VCs. Just their marks. Sorry; "customers", or "users"? The VCs will get their money and profit first.

OK, a charitable interpretation is that it's just marketing. Saying crypto these days get attention and money thrown at you. This app of course has no need for crypto, NFT and all that nonsense, but they do it to get funded. It will probably suck, like all other token-bullshit, and shut down pretty quickly. (with a completely borked internal economy with skewed incentives overrun by scammers and middle-men). So yes I'll allow for the possibility the founders are just marketing-savvy and idealistic with a naďve and idiotic idea.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2022, 11:47:29 AM by Scandium »

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1173 on: April 07, 2022, 04:35:48 PM »
Scandium - Your view of STEPN seems to be based on very deep distrust of crypto.  You can probably cite news stories of scams or frauds - but when I compared all money from crypto hacks to all money in crypto, there was about 500x more money in BTC and ETH than in all the hacks of crypto, combined... ever.  So my starting point would be not the number of news stories about crypto, but the overall money going to fraud versus money currently in crypto.  I think, like hacks, it's a very tiny percentage by comparison.

(link from ChpBstd's earlier post, showing $2.4 billion in total hacks of crypto)
https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks/

---
My past few posts have links backing up what I'm saying.  I see LateStarter posting a couple links - even more links per sentence than me.  But when you look at posts calling any new crypto coin a fraud or scam... no links.  To me, that suggests some people are sharing their emotional views of crypto, while others are sharing information found outside the forum.

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boarder42

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1176 on: April 07, 2022, 05:08:14 PM »
#ibuycryptotohelpdestroydemocracy



boarder42

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1179 on: April 07, 2022, 05:15:49 PM »
Mooooooooorrrrreeeee linksssss pleeeasssse

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ChpBstrd

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1182 on: April 07, 2022, 05:23:34 PM »

(link from ChpBstd's earlier post, showing $2.4 billion in total hacks of crypto)
https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks/

Key caveats:
1) That’s only the sum (per that particular site) of exchange hacks where the amount was publicized.
2) The value of a heist was at the time it occurred. E.g. $600M was a larger percentage of bitcoins back in 2014 than if the same amount was lost today.

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1183 on: April 07, 2022, 05:36:44 PM »
Mooooooooorrrrreeeee linksssss pleeeasssse
The forum rules state "no spam", so I've reported you for spamming.

Quote
5. No spam.
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/forum-information-faqs/forum-rules/

boarder42

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1184 on: April 07, 2022, 05:43:47 PM »
Good luck with that report.

I'll tag some mods bc of how ridiculous the report is

@FrugalToque
@arebelspy

Almost as ridiculous as the thread. If that's the direction of the forum I'll be glad to be banned again.

MOD NOTE: Yes, eight posts in a row (starting here) is spam. You could easily combine that all into one coherent post. Chill out.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2022, 09:39:46 AM by arebelspy »

boarder42

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1185 on: April 07, 2022, 05:45:29 PM »
I thought this was a satire thread like top is in.

My apologies.

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1186 on: April 07, 2022, 05:49:54 PM »
Sorry forgot to provide a link to my beliefs.
https://birdsarentreal.com/

Scandium

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1187 on: April 07, 2022, 07:30:13 PM »
Scandium - Your view of STEPN seems to be based on very deep distrust of crypto.  You can probably cite news stories of scams or frauds - but when I compared all money from crypto hacks to all money in crypto, there was about 500x more money in BTC and ETH than in all the hacks of crypto, combined... ever.  So my starting point would be not the number of news stories about crypto, but the overall money going to fraud versus money currently in crypto.  I think, like hacks, it's a very tiny percentage by comparison.

(link from ChpBstd's earlier post, showing $2.4 billion in total hacks of crypto)
https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks/

---
My past few posts have links backing up what I'm saying.  I see LateStarter posting a couple links - even more links per sentence than me.  But when you look at posts calling any new crypto coin a fraud or scam... no links.  To me, that suggests some people are sharing their emotional views of crypto, while others are sharing information found outside the forum.
I'm confused, I said nothing about hacks? And there is no hack involved here?

My view is simply based on the fact of crypto being pointless, especially for a fucking exercise app! So yes, it's either marketing, or a ponzi scheme. There is no other reason to "NFT your step goal bro!". Occams razor, qed.

Juan Ponce de León

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1188 on: April 08, 2022, 02:46:24 AM »
Making massive investment returns is 'pointless'?  Isn't this an investment forum?  LMAO you people really do take the cake.  Peace out!

Scandium

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1189 on: April 08, 2022, 06:37:52 AM »
Making massive investment returns is 'pointless'?  Isn't this an investment forum?  LMAO you people really do take the cake.  Peace out!
For an exercise app? Yes. The concept of crypto is pointless.
Some people made gains with Madoff for a decade, that doesn't mean it wasn't dumb in the end. Get out at the right time, sure it can "work" for you

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1190 on: April 08, 2022, 07:03:09 AM »
Making massive investment returns is 'pointless'?  Isn't this an investment forum?  LMAO you people really do take the cake.  Peace out!

For me, the value of this forum isn't that it's an investment forum.  There are tons of investment forums out there, with all sorts of strategies, some of which have undoubtedly made way more money than index funds over the last decade or two.  And there are lots of forums (and probably even more that no longer exist) promoting strategies that have lagged index funds.

The value of this forum to me, though, is the reproducibility of the results generally espoused here.  I am 45 years old.  After spending my 20's teaching English in Asia, I started working full-time at 30.  I never earned dramatically high salaries (started out at $40K, am now at $80K).  My wife has typically earned about half of what I have earned, and she took two years off when our daughter was born.  Today, we have over $1.3 million dollars in investments, and with annual expenses of ~$55K, we are effectively financially independent.  Our investment strategy has been extremely simple -- 90/10 stocks/bonds, with my stocks global market cap weighted.  We saved somewhere around 30-50% of our income each year, largely in tax advantaged accounts, while living a conventional middle class lifestyle.

This is certainly not the FASTEST way to reach financial independence, but I do believe it is the fastest way to RELIABLY reach financial independence.  It doesn't require luck, or skill, or specialized knowledge.  For me, that is the real power of the ideas in this community.

I don't care one way or the other about crypto (or gold, or options, or whatever).  If there is a reproducilble strategy of investing in them that will work reliably for decade after decade, I'd be all for it.  I have yet to encounter that strategy, though.

Juan Ponce de León

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1191 on: April 08, 2022, 07:24:14 AM »
Making massive investment returns is 'pointless'?  Isn't this an investment forum?  LMAO you people really do take the cake.  Peace out!

For me, the value of this forum isn't that it's an investment forum.  There are tons of investment forums out there, with all sorts of strategies, some of which have undoubtedly made way more money than index funds over the last decade or two.  And there are lots of forums (and probably even more that no longer exist) promoting strategies that have lagged index funds.

The value of this forum to me, though, is the reproducibility of the results generally espoused here.  I am 45 years old.  After spending my 20's teaching English in Asia, I started working full-time at 30.  I never earned dramatically high salaries (started out at $40K, am now at $80K).  My wife has typically earned about half of what I have earned, and she took two years off when our daughter was born.  Today, we have over $1.3 million dollars in investments, and with annual expenses of ~$55K, we are effectively financially independent.  Our investment strategy has been extremely simple -- 90/10 stocks/bonds, with my stocks global market cap weighted.  We saved somewhere around 30-50% of our income each year, largely in tax advantaged accounts, while living a conventional middle class lifestyle.

This is certainly not the FASTEST way to reach financial independence, but I do believe it is the fastest way to RELIABLY reach financial independence.  It doesn't require luck, or skill, or specialized knowledge.  For me, that is the real power of the ideas in this community.

I don't care one way or the other about crypto (or gold, or options, or whatever).  If there is a reproducilble strategy of investing in them that will work reliably for decade after decade, I'd be all for it.  I have yet to encounter that strategy, though.

Good post.  I totally understand your mindset as that's where I started out with my investing as well.  I just didn't see it out for anywhere near as long or as successfully as you have.  What I don't understand in some of these other posters is the absolute hostility and anger they have about a $2T market cap basket of assets.  In my view, to say crypto is 'pointless' or a scam has about as much validity as saying Apple shares are the same.  There is nothing to be proud about in completely missing out on a 2T run up in market cap.  If it's not your cup of tea, no worries, but all these 'I hope it fails and all these con-artists get rekt I just hope it doesn't effect my ETFs too much' posts around here are just pathetic.

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1192 on: April 08, 2022, 07:28:01 AM »
Making massive investment returns is 'pointless'?  Isn't this an investment forum?  LMAO you people really do take the cake.  Peace out!
For an exercise app? Yes. The concept of crypto is pointless.
Some people made gains with Madoff for a decade, that doesn't mean it wasn't dumb in the end. Get out at the right time, sure it can "work" for you
That's the story for every investment bubble. Had one sold pets.com at just the right time in 1999, one would have gotten rich. Enron doubled from 1999 to 2000. And as mentioned, Madoff ran his scam for decades at a time, but regardless of timeframe all these things end in the old turkey chart.
http://stephenkinsella.net/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/turkey.jpg

 

lifeanon269

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1193 on: April 08, 2022, 08:32:18 AM »
That's the story for every investment bubble. Had one sold pets.com at just the right time in 1999, one would have gotten rich. Enron doubled from 1999 to 2000. And as mentioned, Madoff ran his scam for decades at a time, but regardless of timeframe all these things end in the old turkey chart.
http://stephenkinsella.net/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/turkey.jpg

There is a reason why fewer and fewer people with credibility make the claim that bitcoin is going to go to zero after making a parabolic bubble price moves. The reason being is that it has made many parabolic price moves in its lifetime and even after each of those bubbles have burst, it hasn't gone to zero. It is safe to say there has never been another asset that has made numerous parabolic moves through out its life and has gone to zero afterward. None of the examples given that have gone to zero afterward that are often used in comparison with bitcoin (Enron, dot com bust, etc) have had multiple parabolic moves in their lives like bitcoin has. Also, if something has had multiple parabolic moves and survives those bubble bursts, history has shown that it makes it more likely that they'll survive longer term (Apple, Amazon, Tesla, etc).

I think at the very least we can all agree that bitcoin's historical price moves are unlike anything anyone has ever seen from a price perspective. Period. To make claims that bitcoin will not be around following any exuberant parabolic move it makes is just ignoring the reality of the situation outside of the price chart they're so fixated on.

Meanwhile, the bitcoin company Strike just partnered with NCR and Blackhawk, two of the largest point of sale payment companies in the country to bring bitcoin lightning network payments to in-person point of sale merchants (McDonald's, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Whole Foods, Kroger, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc). People that really keep telling themselves that bitcoin is just going to go to $0 are delusionally ignoring an unrelenting growth that is happening at the industry and user level and taking place outside of the uncorrelated price movements that are just based on speculative trader moves. I hate to break it to you, but bitcoin isn't going to $0.

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1194 on: April 08, 2022, 08:57:04 AM »
Scandium - Your view of STEPN seems to be based on very deep distrust of crypto.  You can probably cite news stories of scams or frauds - but when I compared all money from crypto hacks to all money in crypto, there was about 500x more money in BTC and ETH than in all the hacks of crypto, combined... ever.  So my starting point would be not the number of news stories about crypto, but the overall money going to fraud versus money currently in crypto.  I think, like hacks, it's a very tiny percentage by comparison.

(link from ChpBstd's earlier post, showing $2.4 billion in total hacks of crypto)
https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks/

---
My past few posts have links backing up what I'm saying.  I see LateStarter posting a couple links - even more links per sentence than me.  But when you look at posts calling any new crypto coin a fraud or scam... no links.  To me, that suggests some people are sharing their emotional views of crypto, while others are sharing information found outside the forum.
I'm confused, I said nothing about hacks? And there is no hack involved here?

My view is simply based on the fact of crypto being pointless, especially for a fucking exercise app! So yes, it's either marketing, or a ponzi scheme. There is no other reason to "NFT your step goal bro!". Occams razor, qed.
You seem to stop reading my posts before I make the main point?

Scandium - Your view of STEPN ... So my starting point would be not the number of news stories about crypto, but the overall money going to fraud versus money currently in crypto.  I think, like hacks, it's a very tiny percentage by comparison.


Scandium

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1195 on: April 08, 2022, 09:03:29 AM »
Good post.  I totally understand your mindset as that's where I started out with my investing as well.  I just didn't see it out for anywhere near as long or as successfully as you have.  What I don't understand in some of these other posters is the absolute hostility and anger they have about a $2T market cap basket of assets.  In my view, to say crypto is 'pointless' or a scam has about as much validity as saying Apple shares are the same.  There is nothing to be proud about in completely missing out on a 2T run up in market cap.  If it's not your cup of tea, no worries, but all these 'I hope it fails and all these con-artists get rekt I just hope it doesn't effect my ETFs too much' posts around here are just pathetic.

I haven't read every post, but I don't see much of this "hostility" or anger towards crypto? People say, and debate, that it's a ponizi scheme, scam, pointless waste etc. That doesn't mean one is angry.. You  seem to take any negativity towards crypto very personally, and reflectively; project that we are emotionally invested in "bringing it down". I for one am not. It's stupid, pointless, and i like to laugh out all the nonsense crypto-broh BS out there.

You also seem to miss the point by constantly bringing up "market cap". Nobody is saying people aren't currently paying lots of money for BTC ETH etc. Nobody is disputing that. By "pointless" I mean it solve no current large scale problem (except the "fleeing dictatorship" edge-case), has no utility as a product, and current iterations have no plausible way to do so in the future. It's value is wholly irrational and (usually manufactured) hype.
The apple stock comparison does not hold up. Some people pay $20k for a handbag made by slave-workers for a few bucks. I think that's pointless and (almost) without value as well, probably a more apt comparison.

GuitarStv

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1196 on: April 08, 2022, 09:07:51 AM »
If I create a private company with one employee (me) and no profits or business model at all, but issue one trillion shares . . . then sell a single share (to my mom) for one cent . . . I'm now the owner of a company with a market cap of A BILLION DOLLARS!

Market caps are really fun and easy to use if you want to manipulate/inflate the value of something.

lifeanon269

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1197 on: April 08, 2022, 09:37:59 AM »
If I create a private company with one employee (me) and no profits or business model at all, but issue one trillion shares . . . then sell a single share (to my mom) for one cent . . . I'm now the owner of a company with a market cap of A BILLION DOLLARS!

Market caps are really fun and easy to use if you want to manipulate/inflate the value of something.

Yes, market cap is a pretty meaningless metric for determining how much money is truly supported by a market. Liquidity/market depth is a much better indicator. If an asset has a market cap of $20 billion but only a few million in liquidity or market depth, then the price would crash hard if anyone attempted to get any real value out of the market. That means the value you think you had in that asset evaporates instantly. This is true of all markets. It is why it is pointless to measure a billionaire's usable net worth by the stock holdings they have in a company since they'd never actually be able to cash out all that value without also destroying the value of the company's stock. People thinking that a billionaire with $200B in stock holdings would be able to cash out even a fraction of that don't understand this. What they would need to do is find an OTC buyer that would be willing to by their shares at the market rate so as not to impact the market liquidity.

All these alt-coins that have "billions" in market cap only have a few million in actual liquidity. Anyone that has any substantial money saved up in these alt-coins probably should think twice about how much they actually have saved in them. The other dangerous game with many of these alt-coins is that many of them are pre-mined or corporate controlled which means that these large stake holders can fake a lot of liquidity in the market which makes the market seem like it is larger than it really is.

MustacheAndaHalf

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1198 on: April 08, 2022, 09:44:37 AM »
If I create a private company with one employee (me) and no profits or business model at all, but issue one trillion shares . . . then sell a single share (to my mom) for one cent . . . I'm now the owner of a company with a market cap of A BILLION DOLLARS!

Market caps are really fun and easy to use if you want to manipulate/inflate the value of something.
I think we'd agree that's fraud, with buying and selling within your family not really constituting a "market".  So it's not really "market cap" without a market.

Meanwhile, CME runs a Bitcoin futures market.  You can buy & sell on that market, get tax forms, etc.
https://www.cmegroup.com/media-room/press-releases/2017/10/31/cme_group_announceslaunchofbitcoinfutures.html


GuitarStv

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Re: What do you think of adding a low% of crypto allocation
« Reply #1199 on: April 08, 2022, 10:14:19 AM »
If I create a private company with one employee (me) and no profits or business model at all, but issue one trillion shares . . . then sell a single share (to my mom) for one cent . . . I'm now the owner of a company with a market cap of A BILLION DOLLARS!

Market caps are really fun and easy to use if you want to manipulate/inflate the value of something.
I think we'd agree that's fraud, with buying and selling within your family not really constituting a "market".  So it's not really "market cap" without a market.

Meanwhile, CME runs a Bitcoin futures market.  You can buy & sell on that market, get tax forms, etc.
https://www.cmegroup.com/media-room/press-releases/2017/10/31/cme_group_announceslaunchofbitcoinfutures.html

It's not fraud if the shares were publicly traded and mom has no insider information about my business other than me owning it.  100% above board.  Market cap is meaningless when it's so easy to fake a market.