6 ms·

They mean from an investment perspective.

by new_realist 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rowanG077 6y ago
From an investment perspective everything is a casino.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  Not cryptocurrency (seriously). From an investment (my) perspective from day one of its introduction cryptocurrency has been inevitable. The world is better off with a currency that can't be manipulated and printed on a whim. Its amazing to me that this one sure bet is being treated so unfairly as a gamble.
  - canadianfella 6y ago
    There is more than one cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is even worse than beenie babies and tulips, because of this. Sure thing? No freaking way.
  - high_byte 6y ago
    Kinda side-tracked, but I can agree. although will it be specifically Bitcoin? I think that's where the debate is. IMO Ether is the most prominent at the moment.
    - CyberDildonics 6y ago
      Whatever it will be, it won't be bitcoin. Two days ago the -average- transaction cost $16 USD and the throughput is only a few transactions per second. Etherium already has three times the transaction throughput of bitcoin. There is no technical reason it has to be this way, it was acknowledged that the temporary block size limit needed to be increased over seven years ago, but it was kept tiny to push an unnecessary secondary layer.
  - maest 6y ago
    > The world is better off with a currency that can't be manipulated and printed on a whim. Honest question, how come? You can maybe argue something bout inflation, but it's not a very strong argument since a. the effects of extreme monetary easing aren't fully understood and b. there are countries which have been printing money with limited inflation.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    TL;DR If you buy a pizza with your bitcoin you will always regret it. Long explanation: If you build a country around a sufficiently deflationary currency then it will stagnate over the long term because keeping your money yields better returns than investing or running businesses. Let's say you run a company that buys $800 worth of ingredients to make a product that sells for $1000. The problem with physical reality is that you first have to buy before you can sell and the sell date may lie very far into the future. So what happens is that you will do the regrettable act of spending money first and once your product has hit the shelves of a retail store you have to sell your products for $900. Let's say you are a lone carpenter for ease of argument and you are running the entire business yourself. Those $100 are your income. Incomes of workers are going down over time. In short what you are doing is sell low and buy high all the time because of physical reality. This can get really nasty, to the point that if you have product stock that isn't selling at all you can actually make a loss! Lets say you have a table that only sold after 3 years for $700. It clearly wasn't worth it so why do it again? Even if you wanted, at some point your business will go bankrupt if you keep doing losing strategies. Why is this a problem? If you were using Bitcoin to save for retirement then there will eventually come a tipping point where your Bitcoin are worthless because you cannot exchange them for services or goods anymore because the real economy is gone or not big enough to support your retirement.
    - doopy1 6y ago
      "The problem with physical reality is that you first have to buy before you can sell and the sell date may lie very far into the future. " In practice though we have things like net90 payment terms.
- new_realist 6y ago
  There is a world of difference between the calculated risk of investing in a car company and the blind volatility of a spin of the roulette wheel.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Not really. A spin on the roulette wheel is also a calculated risk.
    - chii 6y ago
      A house-odds game is always going to be a bad bet. If you really did do a calculation, you'd avoid them completely.
      - rowanG077 6y ago
        Not really. There are completely valid reasons to take a bad bet if you have no better alternative. Or, of course, for sport.
        chii 6y ago
        If you take into account personal enjoyment, then yes, house-odd games can be good - after all, it's fun to play 'em. But purely financially, they are a terrible bet. > a bad bet if you have no better alternative. there's always a better alternative. For example, putting the money in a bank account with interest. Or placing it into an index fund.
        jon-wood 6y ago
        There isn’t always a better alternative. Almost always, yes, but not absolutely always. Admittedly we’re deep into edge cases here. The only one I can think of is that you have $1,000 today, and need $100,000 by tomorrow. Maybe someone is holding your cat to ransom, and you really love that cat. No one is going to loan you a hundred grand to give to catnappers, so you go to the casino hoping for some really good luck as you put everything on black. Good luck, Mittens.
- chii 6y ago
  The difference between speculating (in the stock market/shares/commodities) and a casino is that casinos' house-odd games (i.e., odds that are always in favour of the house) are guaranteed long term losing propositions by definition. Speculating on the markets is not gambling in the same way as in a casino - there's some element of skill in speculating in the markets, and there's not house-odds on the markets. I would compare speculating on the markets to be similar to a game of poker (which is not a house-odds game).
- amir734jj 6y ago
  I work at a large financial company in the investment department writing software to analyze public market. Your statement is very wrong. We literally write a bucketing application that makes calculated risks that works almost all the time. From outside yes. It looks like a casino but when you get deeper into it, it's very calculated and the math behind risk calculation can get very complex.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    Not disagreeing with your main point, but you can also make calculated risks at a casino. If you're clever you can even get average positive returns.
    - mnahkies 6y ago
      I think you mean lucky. Unless you're talking about games where your adversary is other players such as poker rather than the house like blackjack. I believe that for a while some video poker games like jacks or better had bugs in their pay table that meant with perfect strategy you could make a positive return in the long run, but I'd be very surprised if this is still the case
      - muskox2 6y ago
        I assume you haven't heard of "card counting", which is a famous way to beat the house advantage in blackjack. Of course, if they suspect you're doing it, they'll kick you out.
        akvadrako 6y ago
        Also many casinos offer special blackjack promotions that mean you don't even need to count cards to win.
        mnahkies 6y ago
        I was under the impression that casino's operated with either continuous shuffling, or enough packs of cards to effectively negate the benefits of card counting these days

They mean from an investment perspective.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rowanG077 6y ago

From an investment perspective everything is a casino.

kylebenzle 6y ago
Not cryptocurrency (seriously). From an investment (my) perspective from day one of its introduction cryptocurrency has been inevitable. The world is better off with a currency that can't be manipulated and printed on a whim. Its amazing to me that this one sure bet is being treated so unfairly as a gamble.
- canadianfella 6y ago
  There is more than one cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is even worse than beenie babies and tulips, because of this. Sure thing? No freaking way.
- high_byte 6y ago
  Kinda side-tracked, but I can agree. although will it be specifically Bitcoin? I think that's where the debate is. IMO Ether is the most prominent at the moment.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    Whatever it will be, it won't be bitcoin. Two days ago the -average- transaction cost $16 USD and the throughput is only a few transactions per second. Etherium already has three times the transaction throughput of bitcoin. There is no technical reason it has to be this way, it was acknowledged that the temporary block size limit needed to be increased over seven years ago, but it was kept tiny to push an unnecessary secondary layer.
- maest 6y ago
  > The world is better off with a currency that can't be manipulated and printed on a whim. Honest question, how come? You can maybe argue something bout inflation, but it's not a very strong argument since a. the effects of extreme monetary easing aren't fully understood and b. there are countries which have been printing money with limited inflation.
- imtringued 6y ago
  TL;DR If you buy a pizza with your bitcoin you will always regret it. Long explanation: If you build a country around a sufficiently deflationary currency then it will stagnate over the long term because keeping your money yields better returns than investing or running businesses. Let's say you run a company that buys $800 worth of ingredients to make a product that sells for $1000. The problem with physical reality is that you first have to buy before you can sell and the sell date may lie very far into the future. So what happens is that you will do the regrettable act of spending money first and once your product has hit the shelves of a retail store you have to sell your products for $900. Let's say you are a lone carpenter for ease of argument and you are running the entire business yourself. Those $100 are your income. Incomes of workers are going down over time. In short what you are doing is sell low and buy high all the time because of physical reality. This can get really nasty, to the point that if you have product stock that isn't selling at all you can actually make a loss! Lets say you have a table that only sold after 3 years for $700. It clearly wasn't worth it so why do it again? Even if you wanted, at some point your business will go bankrupt if you keep doing losing strategies. Why is this a problem? If you were using Bitcoin to save for retirement then there will eventually come a tipping point where your Bitcoin are worthless because you cannot exchange them for services or goods anymore because the real economy is gone or not big enough to support your retirement.
  - doopy1 6y ago
    "The problem with physical reality is that you first have to buy before you can sell and the sell date may lie very far into the future. " In practice though we have things like net90 payment terms.
new_realist 6y ago
There is a world of difference between the calculated risk of investing in a car company and the blind volatility of a spin of the roulette wheel.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Not really. A spin on the roulette wheel is also a calculated risk.
  - chii 6y ago
    A house-odds game is always going to be a bad bet. If you really did do a calculation, you'd avoid them completely.
    - rowanG077 6y ago
      Not really. There are completely valid reasons to take a bad bet if you have no better alternative. Or, of course, for sport.
      - chii 6y ago
        If you take into account personal enjoyment, then yes, house-odd games can be good - after all, it's fun to play 'em. But purely financially, they are a terrible bet. > a bad bet if you have no better alternative. there's always a better alternative. For example, putting the money in a bank account with interest. Or placing it into an index fund.
        jon-wood 6y ago
        There isn’t always a better alternative. Almost always, yes, but not absolutely always. Admittedly we’re deep into edge cases here. The only one I can think of is that you have $1,000 today, and need $100,000 by tomorrow. Maybe someone is holding your cat to ransom, and you really love that cat. No one is going to loan you a hundred grand to give to catnappers, so you go to the casino hoping for some really good luck as you put everything on black. Good luck, Mittens.
chii 6y ago
The difference between speculating (in the stock market/shares/commodities) and a casino is that casinos' house-odd games (i.e., odds that are always in favour of the house) are guaranteed long term losing propositions by definition. Speculating on the markets is not gambling in the same way as in a casino - there's some element of skill in speculating in the markets, and there's not house-odds on the markets. I would compare speculating on the markets to be similar to a game of poker (which is not a house-odds game).
amir734jj 6y ago
I work at a large financial company in the investment department writing software to analyze public market. Your statement is very wrong. We literally write a bucketing application that makes calculated risks that works almost all the time. From outside yes. It looks like a casino but when you get deeper into it, it's very calculated and the math behind risk calculation can get very complex.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  Not disagreeing with your main point, but you can also make calculated risks at a casino. If you're clever you can even get average positive returns.
  - mnahkies 6y ago
    I think you mean lucky. Unless you're talking about games where your adversary is other players such as poker rather than the house like blackjack. I believe that for a while some video poker games like jacks or better had bugs in their pay table that meant with perfect strategy you could make a positive return in the long run, but I'd be very surprised if this is still the case
    - muskox2 6y ago
      I assume you haven't heard of "card counting", which is a famous way to beat the house advantage in blackjack. Of course, if they suspect you're doing it, they'll kick you out.
      - akvadrako 6y ago
        Also many casinos offer special blackjack promotions that mean you don't even need to count cards to win.
      - mnahkies 6y ago
        I was under the impression that casino's operated with either continuous shuffling, or enough packs of cards to effectively negate the benefits of card counting these days