6 ms·
ICOs are a new breed of gambling.
by dplgk 9y ago
ICOs are a new breed of gambling.
- tankenmate 9y agoI'll probably get down voted for this but nonetheless it needs to be said, partly tongue in cheek; ha ha, only serious. Gambling is not a sin / Provided that you always win. -- Roald Dahl
- tankenmate 9y agoFor those who abhor levity and reading between the lines the lesson is this; Risk is a spectrum; p < 1 is gambling for small n. So where does sure thing become risky become gambling become plain stupid? And one thing society as a whole will agree on is that p = 1 is not morally wrong. Therefore, "Gambling is not a sin / Provided that you always win" is true regardless of your sense of humour. The grey areas are less well defined, just like people's sense of humour.
- sktrdie 9y agoI'd argue that most of our current economy is gambling (stock markets).
- soneca 9y agoI'd like to read your arguments on that.
- notfromhere 9y agoInformation symmetry between company and investor. buybacks also obscure real stock value (and something around 75% of corporate profits go to maintaining or raising stock price)
- adventured 9y ago> I'd argue that most of our current economy is gambling (stock markets). I think you're confusing economy with speculative investment. Most of the US economy consists of manufacturing and service industry output, not the stray under or over valuation of the stock market (which is derived from non-gambling output in the first place). Since when is $6.3 trillion in gross manufacturing output considered gambling? If there is a major economy anywhere on earth that has been a more sure thing (aka the exact opposite of gambling) on average over the last ~140 years than the US, please point it out. Whether you value Apple at $500 billion or $800 billion right now, has no substantial impact on their sales or net contribution to the US economy / GDP. The same is true for Facebook, Microsoft, or 3M, Delta Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, GE, Berkshire Hathaway etc. Whether the S&P 500 has a PE ratio of 25 (2017) or 18 (2013), does not dramatically alter the US economy. There's also nothing "current" about it. The stock market has been important for the US economy for more than a century. It's increasingly less important, not more. The private non-bank market for business capital has expanded dramatically while the public market is contracting - and likely to continue contracting - as fewer companies go public.
- pc86 9y agoYou'd be wrong.
- decentralised 9y agoThrowing money at a business proposition is neither new nor gambling.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoIt is when the investors throw money at it in the hope they'll get a return on investment. You don't need $250 million to build a distributed Dropbox clone.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> It is when the investors throw money at it in the hope they'll get a return on investment Traditionally, the gambling-investment line is drawn at the zero-sum boundary. If you're buying these tokens because you think the encrypted storage business is worth that much (i.e. based on profits), it could be investing. If you're buying to avoid missing out on something other people will want to buy because it's cool (i.e. there is no discussion or thought given to profit) it's probably pyramidesque gambling.
- decentralised 9y agoHow is that different from any other investment?
- matthewbauer 9y agoBut is this really an investment in a company? It looks like they're just buying tokens in the hope that when people start using FileCoin there will be more demand for it.
- decentralised 9y agoIt works as an investment precisely because the tokens will be tradable, and with use and demand they should increase in value significantly.
- decentralised 9y agoIt's an investment because the coins are usable as a medium of exchange and as a store of value. If you can have Amazon S3 type service hosted in IPFS and actually get paid for it instead of paying for it... what is the problem with this business proposition?
- koolba 9y agoOne distinction is that legalized gambling is highly regulated. ICOs, not so much.
- bko 9y agoAre the gambling regulations actually there to protect consumers? The largest form of gambling in the us is probably lottery, which is exclusively controlled by state and local governments. The regulations don't prevent extremely poor odds (much worse than private gambling) and marketing targeted to low income Americans. At least ICOs require some sophistication
- koolba 9y agoRegulations aren't there to protect against stupidity. They're there to protect against fraud. It's to stop someone from setting up a fly by night lotto, collecting ticket money, then leaving town.
- philipov 9y agoIf you are tasked with making a better society and you use the opportunity to promote and entrench greater stupidity, is that fraud?
- ada1981 9y agoI'm always outraged when I see NY Lotto ads on the subway. This is just a way to profit off people who don't understand math and have some sort of addiction. It's a poor tax. I once saw an ad that said something like "if you are putting in your resume to be a door man, it's time to play the lottery"!!!! Not, time to go back to school, time to vote for better income redistribution, not good for you for looking for work -- no, the city decided to trivialize unemployment and poverty AND make the claim playing the lottery is better than hunting for a job. Regulation seems to be about limiting who gets to extract the profit from the poor, not protecting the poor / the people.
- KillerWhale 9y agoHolding $,€,£ etc. is gambling even if you don't realize it.
- webXL 9y agoWhat’s a truly risk-free alternative though?
- bovine3dom 9y agoEntropy. It's guaranteed to go up.
- axplusb 9y agoIn a closed system, hence not the Earth.
- KillerWhale 9y agoLife itself is a risk which includes everything in it.
- simias 9y agoThat's a rather ridiculous reductio ad absurdum. The euro/USD exchange rate has varied between roughly 1 and 1.6 over the past 10 years. That's including the 2008 crisis. Meanwhile over the last year alone the BTC/USD exchange rate varied between about 500 to 3400. My 10 euro bill is extremely unlikely to suddenly massively increase or lose in value. That's the difference.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- elmar 9y ago> The euro/USD exchange rate has varied between roughly 1 and 1.6 over the past 10 years. This low range variation is only possible because of government monetary intervention that doesn't exist on CryptoCurrency.