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Could you provide details on how you know it’s bad? I’m not a big “believer” in crypto, but investments can do well on an IRR basis for many years before things

Could you provide details on how you know it’s bad? I’m not a big “believer” in crypto, but investments can do well on an IRR basis for many years before things go south. See we work in 2017... in crypto, have the companies they investments been marked down?

arcticbull 6y ago
Well, the best performing token is down 8% from ATH (and it launched this morning) and the worst is down 98.59% [1]. All this is leading me to believe they're a poor investment vehicle. [1] https://athcoinindex.com/ https://athcoinindex.com/
- nemothekid 6y ago
  a16z isn't investing in coins. I don't know if Coinbase was in Crypto Fund I, but it if it was, then I don't think Fund I could have done too bad.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Are you sure about that? The Winkelvii sure did. Plenty of funds were set up solely to invest in various coins. Why would a16z be any different?
  - enginar 6y ago
    I think they have invested directly in cryptocurrencies (that is why they decided to register as an RIA), along with a range of other bets that include Coinbase, Compound and Anchorage.
  - mhluongo 6y ago
    It certainly is. They put in quite a bit into Maker and Dfinity, for example.
- thesausageking 6y ago
  You can't project a16z's performance based on what happened on exchanges. During the ICO boom, they got access to tokens before they ICO'ed, usually at 70-90% discounts. They also make a lot of equity investments into the companies behind the protocol. I have no idea what their numbers look like right now. And it will be hard to judge as most of their investments are illiquid at this point and don't know how they'll work out. Chia, Filecoin, Libra, ... haven't launched so could end up being worth a lot or could be worth 0.
- fraggle222 6y ago
  Silly to look at % down from ATH when we had a massive bubble that peaked and popped. If you look at return overall, crypto beats ALL stock market investmets.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    If you look at it back from when nobody cared, sure, but you can't tell me you wouldn't rather invest in Uber's seed round than BTC.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Uh, I'd take BTC from 2009-2012 over Uber's seed round any day. Bitcoin is the best-performing asset class of all time. See: https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrating-20-million-pizza-order/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrat...
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        I mean, look, the point is that you can't compare when bitcoin first opened up to an asset, it was a toy that surprisingly people pay for today even though it's being propped up by Tether and Bitfinex. It's akin to comparing the par value (1/10th of a cent) per share that the Uber founders received at formation - a 5,000,000% return. That makes the returns quite comparable. Starting something can be lucrative. It is by no means the best performing asset. Anyone with shares from the formation of a startup has outperformed.
        chrisco255 6y ago
        Yeah but the difference is the founders had to put in sweat equity while Bitcoin is a passive investment.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Equity is passive investment once you own it whether you remain employed or not. It's capital gains once you own the shares, not ordinary income. You can also include anyone you want in the cap table at formation, not just employees -- if you wanted, you could easily issue your advisory shares at that time. Not to mention, at formation, you're more than welcome to pay market salaries to your founders, that's your perogative as a founder.
- martinko 6y ago
  So you're saying the fund invested at all time highs into small cap shitcoins, or whats your point? FB is 10% off all time highs - Are all investors doing terrible? Seems like you just have an axe to grind.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    I'd say if $AAPL were down 98% from ATH then investors probably shouldn't be running out to buy the next $AAPL. Who's running out to buy the next GameStop? In fact GameStop is only down 90% from ATH so you'd have made out 5X better on a $GME investment at peak than you would have buying $ZEC. It's like a16z launching a fund to invest in retail video game sales (due to the overwhelming success of $GME) in shopping malls but also run by criminals and utilizing more power than your average country. It's stupid technology. And for the record, I've no axe to grind, I made a bunch of money in the run-up, and sold all my crypto at BTC$17000. That doesn't mean I think it's at all valuable, or would recommend literally anyone buy any, ever.
    - fraggle222 6y ago
      Maybe you weren't around for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble By the end of the stock market downturn of 2002, stocks had lost $5 trillion in market capitalization since the peak.[39] At its trough on October 9, 2002, the NASDAQ-100 had dropped to 1,114, down 78% from its peak.[40][41] Many online shopping companies, such as Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as communication companies, such as Worldcom, NorthPoint Communications and Global Crossing, failed and shut down.[42][43] Others, such as Cisco, whose stock declined by 86%,[43] and Qualcomm, lost a large portion of their market capitalization but survived, and some companies, such as eBay and Amazon.com, lost value but recovered quickly.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Mmm indeed but those companies did things that weren't just heating the planet to solve math problems.
three_seagrass 6y ago
The crypto fund or cryptocurrencies in general? Most cryptos (that are not ICO scams) are hammers looking for nail. Outside of some very niche use-cases, most are non-competitive with centralized payment systems. Keep in mind there is a difference between an investment vehicle and a currency, and just about anything is a decent investment if your risk tolerance is high enough. The fervor by which they're pushed by fans is almost religious in that their arguments stem from asking you to ignore certain facts and have faith, usually in the holy whitepaper.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > hammers looking for nail Blockchain tech, specifically is this. There are a handful of interesting, viable use cases, but most are solved better in other ways.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > ... their arguments stem from asking you to ignore certain facts and have faith, usually in the holy whitepaper. As the scriptures of the great Satoshi Nakamoto [1] foretold, the bankers are coming to steal our net worth through inflation. Therefore, help me move my narcotics proceeds overseas. [1] (Satoshi is likely the international narcotics and arms trafficking, real-life, super-racist Bond-esque villain Paul "Solotshi" Calder Le Roux: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-international-drug-dealer-maybe/ https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...)

arcticbull 6y ago

Well, the best performing token is down 8% from ATH (and it launched this morning) and the worst is down 98.59% [1]. All this is leading me to believe they're a poor investment vehicle. [1] https://athcoinindex.com/ https://athcoinindex.com/

nemothekid 6y ago
a16z isn't investing in coins. I don't know if Coinbase was in Crypto Fund I, but it if it was, then I don't think Fund I could have done too bad.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Are you sure about that? The Winkelvii sure did. Plenty of funds were set up solely to invest in various coins. Why would a16z be any different?
- enginar 6y ago
  I think they have invested directly in cryptocurrencies (that is why they decided to register as an RIA), along with a range of other bets that include Coinbase, Compound and Anchorage.
- mhluongo 6y ago
  It certainly is. They put in quite a bit into Maker and Dfinity, for example.
thesausageking 6y ago
You can't project a16z's performance based on what happened on exchanges. During the ICO boom, they got access to tokens before they ICO'ed, usually at 70-90% discounts. They also make a lot of equity investments into the companies behind the protocol. I have no idea what their numbers look like right now. And it will be hard to judge as most of their investments are illiquid at this point and don't know how they'll work out. Chia, Filecoin, Libra, ... haven't launched so could end up being worth a lot or could be worth 0.
fraggle222 6y ago
Silly to look at % down from ATH when we had a massive bubble that peaked and popped. If you look at return overall, crypto beats ALL stock market investmets.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  If you look at it back from when nobody cared, sure, but you can't tell me you wouldn't rather invest in Uber's seed round than BTC.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Uh, I'd take BTC from 2009-2012 over Uber's seed round any day. Bitcoin is the best-performing asset class of all time. See: https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrating-20-million-pizza-order/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-day-celebrat...
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      I mean, look, the point is that you can't compare when bitcoin first opened up to an asset, it was a toy that surprisingly people pay for today even though it's being propped up by Tether and Bitfinex. It's akin to comparing the par value (1/10th of a cent) per share that the Uber founders received at formation - a 5,000,000% return. That makes the returns quite comparable. Starting something can be lucrative. It is by no means the best performing asset. Anyone with shares from the formation of a startup has outperformed.
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Yeah but the difference is the founders had to put in sweat equity while Bitcoin is a passive investment.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Equity is passive investment once you own it whether you remain employed or not. It's capital gains once you own the shares, not ordinary income. You can also include anyone you want in the cap table at formation, not just employees -- if you wanted, you could easily issue your advisory shares at that time. Not to mention, at formation, you're more than welcome to pay market salaries to your founders, that's your perogative as a founder.
martinko 6y ago
So you're saying the fund invested at all time highs into small cap shitcoins, or whats your point? FB is 10% off all time highs - Are all investors doing terrible? Seems like you just have an axe to grind.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  I'd say if $AAPL were down 98% from ATH then investors probably shouldn't be running out to buy the next $AAPL. Who's running out to buy the next GameStop? In fact GameStop is only down 90% from ATH so you'd have made out 5X better on a $GME investment at peak than you would have buying $ZEC. It's like a16z launching a fund to invest in retail video game sales (due to the overwhelming success of $GME) in shopping malls but also run by criminals and utilizing more power than your average country. It's stupid technology. And for the record, I've no axe to grind, I made a bunch of money in the run-up, and sold all my crypto at BTC$17000. That doesn't mean I think it's at all valuable, or would recommend literally anyone buy any, ever.
  - fraggle222 6y ago
    Maybe you weren't around for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble By the end of the stock market downturn of 2002, stocks had lost $5 trillion in market capitalization since the peak.[39] At its trough on October 9, 2002, the NASDAQ-100 had dropped to 1,114, down 78% from its peak.[40][41] Many online shopping companies, such as Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as communication companies, such as Worldcom, NorthPoint Communications and Global Crossing, failed and shut down.[42][43] Others, such as Cisco, whose stock declined by 86%,[43] and Qualcomm, lost a large portion of their market capitalization but survived, and some companies, such as eBay and Amazon.com, lost value but recovered quickly.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Mmm indeed but those companies did things that weren't just heating the planet to solve math problems.

three_seagrass 6y ago

The crypto fund or cryptocurrencies in general? Most cryptos (that are not ICO scams) are hammers looking for nail. Outside of some very niche use-cases, most are non-competitive with centralized payment systems. Keep in mind there is a difference between an investment vehicle and a currency, and just about anything is a decent investment if your risk tolerance is high enough. The fervor by which they're pushed by fans is almost religious in that their arguments stem from asking you to ignore certain facts and have faith, usually in the holy whitepaper.

dehrmann 6y ago
> hammers looking for nail Blockchain tech, specifically is this. There are a handful of interesting, viable use cases, but most are solved better in other ways.
arcticbull 6y ago
> ... their arguments stem from asking you to ignore certain facts and have faith, usually in the holy whitepaper. As the scriptures of the great Satoshi Nakamoto [1] foretold, the bankers are coming to steal our net worth through inflation. Therefore, help me move my narcotics proceeds overseas. [1] (Satoshi is likely the international narcotics and arms trafficking, real-life, super-racist Bond-esque villain Paul "Solotshi" Calder Le Roux: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-international-drug-dealer-maybe/ https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...)