3 ms·

>If anyone is saying the word "investment" while talking about a cryptocoin, smile and nod while slowly receding in the other direction. >EDIT: I think it's po

by elif 9y ago

>If anyone is saying the word "investment" while talking about a cryptocoin, smile and nod while slowly receding in the other direction. >EDIT: I think it's possible to invest in cryptocoin smiles about 1000% gains and walks away

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Heh. Have I told you about my Sillycoin ICO? Wait, don't go... I realized that pg has some bitcoins, so it's a stretch to say he's just gambling and not investing. But Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to attract huge numbers of get-rich-quick people that try to convince others the flip is real investing.
simias 9y ago
It's like encouraging people to play the lottery because you won the big prize once. It's an very risky investment and I think it's incredibly irresponsible to encourage people to dump money in it if they don't understand fully what it's about. The "to the moon" memes aren't funny anymore when gullible people start buying bitcoins with money they can't afford to lose. Bitcoins will have to overcome massive challenges if it's to become something more than a vessel for speculation and black market purchases. It needs to scale to several orders of magnitude more transactions (none of the proposed scaling methods so far come even close). Then you need to convince the broad public to switch to an unregulated currency (not everybody is a crypto-anarchist/libertarian). Maybe it'll make it, maybe it won't. And if it does we'll be left to wonder if it's fair that a small share of early adopters end up owning a significant share of the world's money (the new 0.1%). At any rate I'd strongly encourage you to diversify your 1000% gains if you haven't done so already...
- kanzure 9y ago
  > none of the proposed scaling methods so far come even close you sure? what happened to the estimates related to payment channel proposals: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/overview-of-bips-necessary-for-lightning/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/o...
  - simias 9y ago
    It'll help but it's really untested and nobody knows for sure how the network will react when you change the topology and incentives like this. In general it's a pretty complex technology that introduces a big number of new variables in the mix. Look at the example in your paper: >You're probably buying a coffee only once, right? Well, maybe the coffee is $5, and you put $50 into the channel and leave it open. Then someone else comes to the coffee shop and she does the same thing. But she has a channel with the grocery store. There's me, coffee shop, Alice, grocery store, they all have channels. When I go to the grocery store next time, I don't have to open a channel. Payments are routed. [...] >I am guessing the mean is going to be 3, but it will probably be an exponential distribution. Most people will probably have 1 channel, and then some might have 100s of channels open. Note the use of "I am guessing". And what happens if I'm not willing to put $50 in the channel to leave it open because it's a one time thing and there's no point for me to do that? I'd say that most of ebay and other "peer to peer" purchases are like this. Would you put 10 times the amount of the transaction in a channel to some alibaba seller just for the sake of being a good bitcoin-izen? In general I find the idea of people opening only 3 channels a year to be a tad optimistic if bitcoin is to replace Visa. So it remains to be seen how well it'll work in practice. Maybe it'll work great, but maybe it'll be a huge mess. At any rate I wouldn't say that bitcoin scaling is a solved problem.
- elif 9y ago
  a lottery is an absolutely horrible metaphor abuse. If you put $2 into buying a powerball ticket, you have a ~1:290 million chance at becoming a millionaire and a ~1:50 chance at breaking even. If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even. If you left $2 sitting in your wallet for 2 years, you lost $0.05-0.10 depending upon who you believe
  - simias 9y ago
    >If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even. That does not compute. What do you mean here exactly? Clearly if you invest $2 in BTC and the value of bitcoins increases 500,000% you're a millionaire. Conversely if it crashes and becomes worthless you've lost everything. But more generally I wasn't arguing statistics, just pointing out that it's just a big gamble, like the lottery. It's extremely difficult to predict the future of bitcoin so investing in it is not entirely unlike playing the lottery.
    - clarky07 9y ago
      I believe he is referring to the past. The history so far is such that there haven't been many losing 2 year stretches. So far, it also hasn't gone up 500,000% in two years either. So, not nearly as risky as a lottery, and not quite the same upside either.
      - sillysaurus3 9y ago
        The risk is yourself, not the market. Losing your coins is equivalent to the market crashing to 0. And it's shockingly easy to completely lose your coins, even if you're not incompetent.
- zby 9y ago
  I can imagine a future where bitcoin plays a role similar to what gold does now. This would not require much scaling - it would be about few, but high value transactions. But yeah - more probably it will be replaced by something else that would have less costs (i.e. POS, https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 ), and/or scale. This is the gamble in cryptos investing now - it is conceivable that in the long run some crypto will be worth much - but you don't know which one. Maybe Etherium, which showed it can change rapidly, will do this, but most probably this will be something new. Maybe EOS or Tezos - but they are too much hype machines - this does not fit good development.

by elif 9y ago

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Heh. Have I told you about my Sillycoin ICO? Wait, don't go... I realized that pg has some bitcoins, so it's a stretch to say he's just gambling and not investing. But Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to attract huge numbers of get-rich-quick people that try to convince others the flip is real investing.

simias 9y ago

It's like encouraging people to play the lottery because you won the big prize once. It's an very risky investment and I think it's incredibly irresponsible to encourage people to dump money in it if they don't understand fully what it's about. The "to the moon" memes aren't funny anymore when gullible people start buying bitcoins with money they can't afford to lose. Bitcoins will have to overcome massive challenges if it's to become something more than a vessel for speculation and black market purchases. It needs to scale to several orders of magnitude more transactions (none of the proposed scaling methods so far come even close). Then you need to convince the broad public to switch to an unregulated currency (not everybody is a crypto-anarchist/libertarian). Maybe it'll make it, maybe it won't. And if it does we'll be left to wonder if it's fair that a small share of early adopters end up owning a significant share of the world's money (the new 0.1%). At any rate I'd strongly encourage you to diversify your 1000% gains if you haven't done so already...

kanzure 9y ago
> none of the proposed scaling methods so far come even close you sure? what happened to the estimates related to payment channel proposals: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/overview-of-bips-necessary-for-lightning/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/o...
- simias 9y ago
  It'll help but it's really untested and nobody knows for sure how the network will react when you change the topology and incentives like this. In general it's a pretty complex technology that introduces a big number of new variables in the mix. Look at the example in your paper: >You're probably buying a coffee only once, right? Well, maybe the coffee is $5, and you put $50 into the channel and leave it open. Then someone else comes to the coffee shop and she does the same thing. But she has a channel with the grocery store. There's me, coffee shop, Alice, grocery store, they all have channels. When I go to the grocery store next time, I don't have to open a channel. Payments are routed. [...] >I am guessing the mean is going to be 3, but it will probably be an exponential distribution. Most people will probably have 1 channel, and then some might have 100s of channels open. Note the use of "I am guessing". And what happens if I'm not willing to put $50 in the channel to leave it open because it's a one time thing and there's no point for me to do that? I'd say that most of ebay and other "peer to peer" purchases are like this. Would you put 10 times the amount of the transaction in a channel to some alibaba seller just for the sake of being a good bitcoin-izen? In general I find the idea of people opening only 3 channels a year to be a tad optimistic if bitcoin is to replace Visa. So it remains to be seen how well it'll work in practice. Maybe it'll work great, but maybe it'll be a huge mess. At any rate I wouldn't say that bitcoin scaling is a solved problem.
elif 9y ago
a lottery is an absolutely horrible metaphor abuse. If you put $2 into buying a powerball ticket, you have a ~1:290 million chance at becoming a millionaire and a ~1:50 chance at breaking even. If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even. If you left $2 sitting in your wallet for 2 years, you lost $0.05-0.10 depending upon who you believe
- simias 9y ago
  >If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even. That does not compute. What do you mean here exactly? Clearly if you invest $2 in BTC and the value of bitcoins increases 500,000% you're a millionaire. Conversely if it crashes and becomes worthless you've lost everything. But more generally I wasn't arguing statistics, just pointing out that it's just a big gamble, like the lottery. It's extremely difficult to predict the future of bitcoin so investing in it is not entirely unlike playing the lottery.
  - clarky07 9y ago
    I believe he is referring to the past. The history so far is such that there haven't been many losing 2 year stretches. So far, it also hasn't gone up 500,000% in two years either. So, not nearly as risky as a lottery, and not quite the same upside either.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      The risk is yourself, not the market. Losing your coins is equivalent to the market crashing to 0. And it's shockingly easy to completely lose your coins, even if you're not incompetent.
zby 9y ago
I can imagine a future where bitcoin plays a role similar to what gold does now. This would not require much scaling - it would be about few, but high value transactions. But yeah - more probably it will be replaced by something else that would have less costs (i.e. POS, https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 ), and/or scale. This is the gamble in cryptos investing now - it is conceivable that in the long run some crypto will be worth much - but you don't know which one. Maybe Etherium, which showed it can change rapidly, will do this, but most probably this will be something new. Maybe EOS or Tezos - but they are too much hype machines - this does not fit good development.