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Just about all cryptocurrencies are built on top of 'number go up' deflationary FOMO token-omics. New buyers are buying from older buyers. The older buyers are

Just about all cryptocurrencies are built on top of 'number go up' deflationary FOMO token-omics. New buyers are buying from older buyers. The older buyers are the fools that are looking for greater fools. But as you say, one day there might actually be real value here. But here's the rub, this is all decentralized, and thus anyone at any time can create their own chain, and many have already done so. And these technologies might just not need blockchain at all, for instance IPFS looks likely to lose to Torrents. So why would I buy a piece of an existing chain, when I can just wait for the technology to be created and spin it off on a new chain, for a price of $nearly_free instead of $massive? This is not the same as investing in Google or Amazon in 1999. If I am buying into the coin for the utility and not for the hype, I would never touch a mainstream coin. If a AAA game were to create their own NFTs, they would do so on their own chain. I would generate my own chain to confirm my own identity. No coin that currently exists has a long-term value above $0.

benreesman 5y ago
You've definitely got a point, but I think you might be oversimplifying a little in some places and maybe missing the bigger picture in some important ways. There is clearly an asset bubble in cryptocurrencies. But I'm borderline weirded out by how singled-out the crypto asset bubble is compared to say, the US equities asset bubble, or residential real-estate asset bubble, or any of the other places that we're warehousing major currencies inflation. It doesn't really matter if you look at `SPY`, or the Qs, or just one of the FAANGs: from right before the COVID overreaction to the present day a dollar (which hasn't really slipped all that badly against any of its easing-addled peers) buys you about half the amount of Big Tech as it did on Jan 1 2020. Nothing Earth-shattering has happened to the business models or 5-year outlooks of any of these companies. The smartphone market is every bit as saturated as it was 2 years ago. The FB/IG feed ad load is no less maxed out, Waymo isn't running 10MM pilot level 5 autonomous taxi rides across 50 cities in 20 countries, and Elon Musk sure as hell hasn't colonized Mars (at least his stated ambition justifies a PE ratio in the hundreds: he's on record that he's trying to own a planet). So I'd argue that Apple stock hasn't 2-3x increased in the last 2 years in any other way than dollar-denominated. I'm the last person to try to sell you a cryptocurrency token, I don't give a shit what the price of ETH is. But just because Gamestonk or `ETH` is the lottery ticket available to people who don't know a guy who knows a guy who knows Ron Conway doesn't mean that going to school, working hard, and saving a quarter of every paycheck is going to get you anywhere in a casino economy where the CPI doesn't seem to move with the cost of healthcare or education or any of the shit that's really eating the working person alive (at least in the US). `BTC` and `ETH` may turn out to be worthless tulip bulbs, it's not even all that unlikely from a Bayesian standpoint, but the pervasive implication that the `/r/crypto` people are at a casino and the A16Z people aren't is absurd. The A16Z people can just afford to lose a hand or two, and the `/r/crypto` people have nothing to lose. Doesn't make em stupid.

benreesman 5y ago

You've definitely got a point, but I think you might be oversimplifying a little in some places and maybe missing the bigger picture in some important ways. There is clearly an asset bubble in cryptocurrencies. But I'm borderline weirded out by how singled-out the crypto asset bubble is compared to say, the US equities asset bubble, or residential real-estate asset bubble, or any of the other places that we're warehousing major currencies inflation. It doesn't really matter if you look at `SPY`, or the Qs, or just one of the FAANGs: from right before the COVID overreaction to the present day a dollar (which hasn't really slipped all that badly against any of its easing-addled peers) buys you about half the amount of Big Tech as it did on Jan 1 2020. Nothing Earth-shattering has happened to the business models or 5-year outlooks of any of these companies. The smartphone market is every bit as saturated as it was 2 years ago. The FB/IG feed ad load is no less maxed out, Waymo isn't running 10MM pilot level 5 autonomous taxi rides across 50 cities in 20 countries, and Elon Musk sure as hell hasn't colonized Mars (at least his stated ambition justifies a PE ratio in the hundreds: he's on record that he's trying to own a planet). So I'd argue that Apple stock hasn't 2-3x increased in the last 2 years in any other way than dollar-denominated. I'm the last person to try to sell you a cryptocurrency token, I don't give a shit what the price of ETH is. But just because Gamestonk or `ETH` is the lottery ticket available to people who don't know a guy who knows a guy who knows Ron Conway doesn't mean that going to school, working hard, and saving a quarter of every paycheck is going to get you anywhere in a casino economy where the CPI doesn't seem to move with the cost of healthcare or education or any of the shit that's really eating the working person alive (at least in the US). `BTC` and `ETH` may turn out to be worthless tulip bulbs, it's not even all that unlikely from a Bayesian standpoint, but the pervasive implication that the `/r/crypto` people are at a casino and the A16Z people aren't is absurd. The A16Z people can just afford to lose a hand or two, and the `/r/crypto` people have nothing to lose. Doesn't make em stupid.