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I’ve seen this happen in companies with stupid projects. Same thing happened with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Anyone who dares ask questions is ignored, side

by api 5y ago

I’ve seen this happen in companies with stupid projects. Same thing happened with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Anyone who dares ask questions is ignored, sidelined, or fired. Seems to be a general pattern when there is an economic or policy “bubble” and big players in an organization or sector are holding the bag. Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo. No they are not even the majority of money in cryptocurrency, but they are enough to prop up the price a lot given that it’s a fairly thin market. They are also structured so as to make it very easy to use their funny money to manipulate cryptocurrency price. Their joker CEO sounds like a cutout and fall guy.

thebean11 5y ago
> Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo. Or they recognize you can't time the market, and see upside despite a nearly-inevitable tether crash? If investors had been waiting for tether to crash they would have missed the run from $1k - $30+k, and I don't think you can claim with a straight face that was all tether manipulation. Again, can't time the market.
- freewilly1040 5y ago
  What you describe is timing the market though? Specifically, getting in on a run with confidence you can get out before the crash.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    No definitely not assuming you can get out before the crash. I'm talking about longer term investors who see the Tether crash as temporary, not a permanent end to crypto.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Everybody holding a bag of poo believes there's upside. That's why they're holding it. I will grant that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is incredibly good at not just finding but creating greater fools. [1] But the fool supply is finite, and more than 10 years on cryptocurrencies still aren't good for much practical. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781968
  - thebean11 5y ago
    If you’re criticism is based on payments you have not been paying attention to the space for the last 5 years. Anyway, it’s easy to make a circular argument of “people buy it because they are fools, and they are fools because they buy it.” You’ll be right whether it goes up or down so there’s not much of a debate to be had..
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Well I'm glad we agree that Bitcoin has failed in its original purpose. Perhaps you can set straight all the people who argue otherwise? Because there sure are a lot of them. The trouble is, it doesn't actually have another one, not a practical one.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        Payments is..part of the original purpose. And I think for everyday transactions Bitcoin has failed, so far. Lightning is a step in the right direction though, but it's not there in terms of UX. And volatility is obviously an issue. If you are actually unaware, and not just arguing in bad faith, most development right now is happening on Ethereum and DeFi apps running on Ethereum. You can get collateralized loans, there are decentralized prediction markets, stuff like that.
        wpietri 5y ago
        Payment was the entirety of the original purpose. As the original paper says, "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash". The first sentence of the introduction starts with "Commerce on the Internet" and ends with "process electronic payments". It has failed both on "peer-to-peer" and "electronic cash". It makes no material difference to internet commerce. It has signally failed in its original purpose. And yes, more development is always happening. Success is always in the future. Never mind that M-Pesa and Venmo and Android and Tesla all started around the same time. Uber and Lyft and Twitch and TikTok all launched years later. They all have actual success. None of them are hammers blundering around in search of a nail. None of them have to keep blowing smoke about the incredible future ahead. But in the same way that Bitcoin is making no difference today in the real-world payment markets, none of that development is making a difference today in their equivalent markets. Colateralized loans, if they work, are 0% of the total colateralized loan market. Prediction markets have existed for more than 20 years. Adding "decentralized" doesn't make them better. Most of that "innovation" is in the category of dancing bears: the impressive part is not that the bear dances well, just that it's a bear doing the dancing. But since you can't name a purpose, I'll just tell you: The actual current purpose of the whole circus is to enable assorted grifts. When Bitcoin got popular, that's what drove it: people seeking unearned wealth, and the people preying on the suckers with money to lose. That has kept snowballing, grift upon grift and with massive effort to create more suckers to keep the grifts going just a little longer. Are there reasonable people caught up in this? Sure. As Madoff showed, many of the people involve on both sides of a Ponzi scheme are perfectly sincere believers. But neither their belief nor their sincerity changes the underlying truth: there is no value being created. Nobody can admit that, of course, so they just claim that the value creation is just down the road if only you hodl and believe hard enough.
madmax96 5y ago
> Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo Everyone who holds Tether is holding Tether’s bag. If you don’t own tether, this doesn’t directly affect you. Most of the people I know don’t own (and have never owned) Tether.
- thephyber 5y ago
  How many people who didn’t invest directly in CDOs or subprime mortgages were affected by the Great Recession in 2008? Tether (or a substitute stablecoin) is currently a requirement for lots of the Wall Street investment in cryptocurrencies. If it turns to poo, lots of that Wall Street investment does too and it creates huge liquidity/ volume issues.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    "Then, this year, Tether Holdings started putting out a huge amount of digital coins. There are now 69 billion Tethers in circulation, 48 billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding $69 billion in real money to back the coins—an amount that would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the U.S., if it were a U.S. bank and not an unregulated offshore company." A Tether crash would take down a lot of stuff.

by api 5y ago

thebean11 5y ago

> Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo. Or they recognize you can't time the market, and see upside despite a nearly-inevitable tether crash? If investors had been waiting for tether to crash they would have missed the run from $1k - $30+k, and I don't think you can claim with a straight face that was all tether manipulation. Again, can't time the market.

freewilly1040 5y ago
What you describe is timing the market though? Specifically, getting in on a run with confidence you can get out before the crash.
- thebean11 5y ago
  No definitely not assuming you can get out before the crash. I'm talking about longer term investors who see the Tether crash as temporary, not a permanent end to crypto.
wpietri 5y ago
Everybody holding a bag of poo believes there's upside. That's why they're holding it. I will grant that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is incredibly good at not just finding but creating greater fools. [1] But the fool supply is finite, and more than 10 years on cryptocurrencies still aren't good for much practical. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781968
- thebean11 5y ago
  If you’re criticism is based on payments you have not been paying attention to the space for the last 5 years. Anyway, it’s easy to make a circular argument of “people buy it because they are fools, and they are fools because they buy it.” You’ll be right whether it goes up or down so there’s not much of a debate to be had..
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Well I'm glad we agree that Bitcoin has failed in its original purpose. Perhaps you can set straight all the people who argue otherwise? Because there sure are a lot of them. The trouble is, it doesn't actually have another one, not a practical one.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Payments is..part of the original purpose. And I think for everyday transactions Bitcoin has failed, so far. Lightning is a step in the right direction though, but it's not there in terms of UX. And volatility is obviously an issue. If you are actually unaware, and not just arguing in bad faith, most development right now is happening on Ethereum and DeFi apps running on Ethereum. You can get collateralized loans, there are decentralized prediction markets, stuff like that.
      - wpietri 5y ago
        Payment was the entirety of the original purpose. As the original paper says, "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash". The first sentence of the introduction starts with "Commerce on the Internet" and ends with "process electronic payments". It has failed both on "peer-to-peer" and "electronic cash". It makes no material difference to internet commerce. It has signally failed in its original purpose. And yes, more development is always happening. Success is always in the future. Never mind that M-Pesa and Venmo and Android and Tesla all started around the same time. Uber and Lyft and Twitch and TikTok all launched years later. They all have actual success. None of them are hammers blundering around in search of a nail. None of them have to keep blowing smoke about the incredible future ahead. But in the same way that Bitcoin is making no difference today in the real-world payment markets, none of that development is making a difference today in their equivalent markets. Colateralized loans, if they work, are 0% of the total colateralized loan market. Prediction markets have existed for more than 20 years. Adding "decentralized" doesn't make them better. Most of that "innovation" is in the category of dancing bears: the impressive part is not that the bear dances well, just that it's a bear doing the dancing. But since you can't name a purpose, I'll just tell you: The actual current purpose of the whole circus is to enable assorted grifts. When Bitcoin got popular, that's what drove it: people seeking unearned wealth, and the people preying on the suckers with money to lose. That has kept snowballing, grift upon grift and with massive effort to create more suckers to keep the grifts going just a little longer. Are there reasonable people caught up in this? Sure. As Madoff showed, many of the people involve on both sides of a Ponzi scheme are perfectly sincere believers. But neither their belief nor their sincerity changes the underlying truth: there is no value being created. Nobody can admit that, of course, so they just claim that the value creation is just down the road if only you hodl and believe hard enough.

madmax96 5y ago

> Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo Everyone who holds Tether is holding Tether’s bag. If you don’t own tether, this doesn’t directly affect you. Most of the people I know don’t own (and have never owned) Tether.

thephyber 5y ago
How many people who didn’t invest directly in CDOs or subprime mortgages were affected by the Great Recession in 2008? Tether (or a substitute stablecoin) is currently a requirement for lots of the Wall Street investment in cryptocurrencies. If it turns to poo, lots of that Wall Street investment does too and it creates huge liquidity/ volume issues.
- mcguire 5y ago
  "Then, this year, Tether Holdings started putting out a huge amount of digital coins. There are now 69 billion Tethers in circulation, 48 billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding $69 billion in real money to back the coins—an amount that would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the U.S., if it were a U.S. bank and not an unregulated offshore company." A Tether crash would take down a lot of stuff.