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Crypto is worthless. All the VCs pouring money into crypto/web3 (a16h, sequoia) are worthless. All the companies pivoting to web3 are worthless (square). All th

Crypto is worthless. All the VCs pouring money into crypto/web3 (a16h, sequoia) are worthless. All the companies pivoting to web3 are worthless (square). All the companies building up web3 teams are worthless (stripe, mastercard). All the fastest growing startups (coinbase, ftx, opensea) are worthless. All the devs who get started in crypto/web3 and won't go back, are worthless.

human 5y ago
I don’t know if you’re serious. Your username does check out at least. I also believe crypto itself is worthless. Only the networks behind them and actually providing a service (transaction validation) have some value. The question is: can the networks survive a crypto crash. How do you pay miners with near zero value crypto? I can see a (sad) future where we will be left with central bank digital currencies only (CBDC).
- bb88 5y ago
  There's a difference between utility and value. Plastic forks, knives, and spoons have high utility (in that they help us to eat). They have very little value, and can be purchased at any dollar store. So the blockchain doesn't have intrinsic value because the crypto currency doesn't have intrinsic value. Utility, for many use cases, it does have.
  - formvoltron 5y ago
    crypto is like the spork
    - bb88 5y ago
      Sporks aren't investment vehicles.
      - human 5y ago
        Best comment ever.
- headmelted 5y ago
  Pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic (and provocative). In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. It annoys me that people cite the run-up over the last decade as evidence of it’s brilliance when it’s nothing of the sort, but I’d just sound like a loon screaming into the wind. Personally I think it’s worthless. Honestly I suspect Satoshi Nakamoto (if they’re still alive) probably thinks the same; One of the later posts Satoshi made before disappearing was making the point that if it accrued any value at all then it would be useable to transact and therefore viable. The problem is that if that’s true of Bitcoin, it’s also true of all tokens, meaning the scarcity argument is entirely imaginary - if one token is perceived as too expensive then the perception of value will shift to another that’s viewed as ”cheaper” (and thus more likely to “mooon!”), meaning the supply of tokens taken as a whole is actually infinite and arbitrary, rather than scarce, and the value of the cryptocurrency market as a whole is therefore infinitely and arbitrarily small per unit (i.e. worthless). But what do I know? I’m just some loon screaming into the wind.
  - bb88 5y ago
    > In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. Yes, that's how scams and con games are played too. I personally can't tell the difference between a cryptocurrency and the classic gold brick scam.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    Although I agree with your view there is one aspect you aren't considering - Bitcoin is currently backed by a mining network that is managing to achieve around 200 Exahashes/second or however they measure it. A big number. While at a theoretical level different crypto tokens are the same that will not be how the market plays out. That sort of computing power isn't easily replaced and while it exists Bitcoin is unique. So it does have value at the moment, but the value is not inherent in the protocol.
    - headmelted 5y ago
      Wouldn’t smaller tokens need comparatively lower resources though?
- UweSchmidt 5y ago
  The "Networks behind them" are also worthless, if you mean blockchain. Consider the oracle problem, the fact that running Hello World requires mining a block, that software contains errors and cannot be patched on the blockchain, the curious absence of real world applications of blockchain after all those years, and the inevitable precedence of the Law in the real world that makes any "the code is the law" ideas moot... A complicated, hard to understand scheme like blockchain is just the right thing to keep the crypto hype going and to attract more of that money that is looking for investment opportunities in this world of overvalued assets and low-interest rates.
  - bb88 5y ago
    You could never ever patch log4j.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      Of course you could, you make a new version of your smart contract or blockchain and people use that instead.
      - UweSchmidt 5y ago
        This defeats the core idea of having something immutable, that no one can mess with. If you can agree to roll out a new version, why not do it with regular software?
        jakupovic 5y ago
        No it does not. Immutable for use doesn't mean it cannot change for example if the title of your house is on the blockchain when you sell it a new immutable transaction referencing your original immutable transaction would be created. Same as rolling out a new version of log4j
        UweSchmidt 5y ago
        Adding a new transaction in a new block (e.g. for a house sale transaction) is different from undoing software issues (log4j, the "DAO hack" on Ethereum). The former is problematic due to the oracle problem, the latter invalidates the concept of the blockchain entirely; it means I could lose the house because a mining/staking majority, or a vocal group on the Ethereum subreddit agreed to "fix" something on the existing blockchain. That such a sacrilegious thing was allowed to happen is evidence that no one cares except to get rich through the coins they got early (or launched themselves). (Of course there are many more ways I could lose a house that's ledgered on a blockchain, one thing I missed earlier: The impossibility for an individual to operationally secure the secrets for the crypto scheme against theft or loss.)
- clippablematt 5y ago
  Crypto has “crashed” 50% and more multiple times and has survived so far. If the value goes down the network decreases difficulty of mining so it is cheaper to mine (remember these things started being worth nothing). This also decreases economic security though, we should find some combination of what security is adequate and that will be represented in the tokens. Let’s not end up in that sad authoritarian cbdc future, instead we can build and adopt global foss systems like the ones we’ve been building the past decade. Or we could ignore it all, call it a scam, and let it be captured by VCs and governments.
- rvz 5y ago
  > I can see a (sad) future where we will be left with central bank digital currencies only (CBDC). And you can take a guess of which cryptocurrencies are going to be the ones powering these CBDCs? Stellar [0], and XRP [1]. The other useless cryptocurrencies with no other use cases such as the memecoins, meme tokens, etc will wither away. [0] https://resources.stellar.org/stellar-for-cbdcs https://resources.stellar.org/stellar-for-cbdcs [1] https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-joins-the-digital-pound-foundation-designing-a-path-for-a-cbdc-forward-future/ https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-joins-the-digital-pound-f...
nathias 5y ago
Everything is worthless in itself. We give value to things subjectively and mediate this valuation through intersubjective consensus mechanisms. I'm glad that now we are in a position where a personal decision and valuation really counts, this is why I'm only taking web3 related jobs from now on.
- MCneill27 5y ago
  This is a horrible misreading of Kantian TI. The idea of "value" is what's worthless in itself, not objects or entities. Yes, everything is worthless in itself, but that says more about "worth" than it does about "everything", and it isn't mutually exclusive with there being things in the world that are required for human life. Value at the bottom end takes its shape from these things, and in the top end, like complex financial derivatives, is far removed from human necessities. You're missing that we can get really close to things-in-themselves. It's like you got an erection as soon as you read that we were fundamentally separate from things-in-themselves, and just ran with it.
  - nathias 5y ago
    It can't be a 'horrible misreading of Kantian TI' because it isn't a reading of Kantian TI, in itself as distinguished from for itself and for others is a standard concept in philosophy since Kant and part of common sense language. My point is just that value isn't some simple natural thing that you could consider as a positive fact, like you are trying to do. Value doesn't 'take its 'shape' (whatever that would mean) from necessities of human life', and has no immediate special relation to necessities.
- trabant00 5y ago
  Everything that doesn't serve a human basic need, of which there are many. Food is not worthless in itself, nor is shelter, security, human contact, etc. Extreme subjectivism never fed nobody nor kept them worm. It only made them think they are smart.
  - nathias 5y ago
mritchie712 5y ago
Right, but how do you really feel about crypto?
cblconfederate 5y ago
ok but what is its value?
tifadg1 5y ago
hah, would like to hear what's not worthless and by which metric.
Lazare 5y ago
I must congratulate on your excellent demonstration of Poe's Law. Nonetheless, to the extent that you are being serious and not sarcastic, I largely agree with you.
- CPLX 5y ago
  If one assumes the content is sarcastic, it’s trying to point out that hey all these incredible big and successful entities support it so it can’t be worthless. Problem is that if you’ve been alive awhile you’ve seen situations over and over and over again where things that important institutions valued very highly did in fact turn out to be worthless.
  - Lazare 5y ago
    Just so. (And it's a bit ironic to see crypto enthusiasts place so much weight on the opinion of the largest players in the traditional financial system!)
wiredfool 5y ago
Money is hard to value. Fundamentally, it relies on a consensus that it's useful and valuable, but there's nothing inherent in money that makes it that way. It's a useful collective hallucination. So is crypto. Some people came up with a collective hallucination that they considered useful and valuable, and convinced some other people that it was, because, hey, we all like valuable things, especially when we can create them out of thin air and sell them to people for other shiny things that we like.
- CPLX 5y ago
  > there's nothing inherent in money that makes it that way Yes there is. Typically money is legal tender, which means you’re mandated to accept it by a government with large numbers of guns and prison cells. That’s what for all debts public and private means.
  - jkepler 5y ago
    >> there's nothing inherent in money that makes it that way > Yes there is. Typically money is legal tender ... Parent comment was right, subjective value thesis says people will value things (including money) differently. And legal tender laws are only "typical" of government coercion in the central bank era, basically the past century or so. Prior to that the king or the local sovereign may have required taxes paid in his coin, but multiple monies circulated and people freely chose which ones to spend, save, accept, or not.
    - CPLX 5y ago
      > multiple monies circulated and people freely chose which ones to spend, save, accept, or not And were routinely scammed out of their savings as a result, it should be noted.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    And legal tender is mandated within the country that issues it, but not outside of it, or on the global internet. For a global economy, we need a global currency, and USD/EUR have been the closest thing to that so far.
lariater 5y ago
This article is just pointless. Of course you can only do a valuation on cash producing assets. Non-cash producing assets can only be priced. That obviously does not mean that gold, oil, crypto, art, any highly demanded collectible have a price of zero.
- lariater 5y ago
  Downvote away. Might want to look up Aswath Damodaran's youtube videos on this very subject to have a clue. "A Viral Market Update III: Price vs Value"

human 5y ago

I don’t know if you’re serious. Your username does check out at least. I also believe crypto itself is worthless. Only the networks behind them and actually providing a service (transaction validation) have some value. The question is: can the networks survive a crypto crash. How do you pay miners with near zero value crypto? I can see a (sad) future where we will be left with central bank digital currencies only (CBDC).

bb88 5y ago
There's a difference between utility and value. Plastic forks, knives, and spoons have high utility (in that they help us to eat). They have very little value, and can be purchased at any dollar store. So the blockchain doesn't have intrinsic value because the crypto currency doesn't have intrinsic value. Utility, for many use cases, it does have.
- formvoltron 5y ago
  crypto is like the spork
  - bb88 5y ago
    Sporks aren't investment vehicles.
    - human 5y ago
      Best comment ever.
headmelted 5y ago
Pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic (and provocative). In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. It annoys me that people cite the run-up over the last decade as evidence of it’s brilliance when it’s nothing of the sort, but I’d just sound like a loon screaming into the wind. Personally I think it’s worthless. Honestly I suspect Satoshi Nakamoto (if they’re still alive) probably thinks the same; One of the later posts Satoshi made before disappearing was making the point that if it accrued any value at all then it would be useable to transact and therefore viable. The problem is that if that’s true of Bitcoin, it’s also true of all tokens, meaning the scarcity argument is entirely imaginary - if one token is perceived as too expensive then the perception of value will shift to another that’s viewed as ”cheaper” (and thus more likely to “mooon!”), meaning the supply of tokens taken as a whole is actually infinite and arbitrary, rather than scarce, and the value of the cryptocurrency market as a whole is therefore infinitely and arbitrarily small per unit (i.e. worthless). But what do I know? I’m just some loon screaming into the wind.
- bb88 5y ago
  > In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. Yes, that's how scams and con games are played too. I personally can't tell the difference between a cryptocurrency and the classic gold brick scam.
- roenxi 5y ago
  Although I agree with your view there is one aspect you aren't considering - Bitcoin is currently backed by a mining network that is managing to achieve around 200 Exahashes/second or however they measure it. A big number. While at a theoretical level different crypto tokens are the same that will not be how the market plays out. That sort of computing power isn't easily replaced and while it exists Bitcoin is unique. So it does have value at the moment, but the value is not inherent in the protocol.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    Wouldn’t smaller tokens need comparatively lower resources though?
UweSchmidt 5y ago
The "Networks behind them" are also worthless, if you mean blockchain. Consider the oracle problem, the fact that running Hello World requires mining a block, that software contains errors and cannot be patched on the blockchain, the curious absence of real world applications of blockchain after all those years, and the inevitable precedence of the Law in the real world that makes any "the code is the law" ideas moot... A complicated, hard to understand scheme like blockchain is just the right thing to keep the crypto hype going and to attract more of that money that is looking for investment opportunities in this world of overvalued assets and low-interest rates.
- bb88 5y ago
  You could never ever patch log4j.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    Of course you could, you make a new version of your smart contract or blockchain and people use that instead.
    - UweSchmidt 5y ago
      This defeats the core idea of having something immutable, that no one can mess with. If you can agree to roll out a new version, why not do it with regular software?
      - jakupovic 5y ago
        No it does not. Immutable for use doesn't mean it cannot change for example if the title of your house is on the blockchain when you sell it a new immutable transaction referencing your original immutable transaction would be created. Same as rolling out a new version of log4j
        UweSchmidt 5y ago
        Adding a new transaction in a new block (e.g. for a house sale transaction) is different from undoing software issues (log4j, the "DAO hack" on Ethereum). The former is problematic due to the oracle problem, the latter invalidates the concept of the blockchain entirely; it means I could lose the house because a mining/staking majority, or a vocal group on the Ethereum subreddit agreed to "fix" something on the existing blockchain. That such a sacrilegious thing was allowed to happen is evidence that no one cares except to get rich through the coins they got early (or launched themselves). (Of course there are many more ways I could lose a house that's ledgered on a blockchain, one thing I missed earlier: The impossibility for an individual to operationally secure the secrets for the crypto scheme against theft or loss.)
clippablematt 5y ago
Crypto has “crashed” 50% and more multiple times and has survived so far. If the value goes down the network decreases difficulty of mining so it is cheaper to mine (remember these things started being worth nothing). This also decreases economic security though, we should find some combination of what security is adequate and that will be represented in the tokens. Let’s not end up in that sad authoritarian cbdc future, instead we can build and adopt global foss systems like the ones we’ve been building the past decade. Or we could ignore it all, call it a scam, and let it be captured by VCs and governments.
rvz 5y ago
> I can see a (sad) future where we will be left with central bank digital currencies only (CBDC). And you can take a guess of which cryptocurrencies are going to be the ones powering these CBDCs? Stellar [0], and XRP [1]. The other useless cryptocurrencies with no other use cases such as the memecoins, meme tokens, etc will wither away. [0] https://resources.stellar.org/stellar-for-cbdcs https://resources.stellar.org/stellar-for-cbdcs [1] https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-joins-the-digital-pound-foundation-designing-a-path-for-a-cbdc-forward-future/ https://ripple.com/insights/ripple-joins-the-digital-pound-f...

nathias 5y ago

Everything is worthless in itself. We give value to things subjectively and mediate this valuation through intersubjective consensus mechanisms. I'm glad that now we are in a position where a personal decision and valuation really counts, this is why I'm only taking web3 related jobs from now on.

MCneill27 5y ago
This is a horrible misreading of Kantian TI. The idea of "value" is what's worthless in itself, not objects or entities. Yes, everything is worthless in itself, but that says more about "worth" than it does about "everything", and it isn't mutually exclusive with there being things in the world that are required for human life. Value at the bottom end takes its shape from these things, and in the top end, like complex financial derivatives, is far removed from human necessities. You're missing that we can get really close to things-in-themselves. It's like you got an erection as soon as you read that we were fundamentally separate from things-in-themselves, and just ran with it.
- nathias 5y ago
  It can't be a 'horrible misreading of Kantian TI' because it isn't a reading of Kantian TI, in itself as distinguished from for itself and for others is a standard concept in philosophy since Kant and part of common sense language. My point is just that value isn't some simple natural thing that you could consider as a positive fact, like you are trying to do. Value doesn't 'take its 'shape' (whatever that would mean) from necessities of human life', and has no immediate special relation to necessities.
trabant00 5y ago
Everything that doesn't serve a human basic need, of which there are many. Food is not worthless in itself, nor is shelter, security, human contact, etc. Extreme subjectivism never fed nobody nor kept them worm. It only made them think they are smart.
- nathias 5y ago

mritchie712 5y ago

Right, but how do you really feel about crypto?

cblconfederate 5y ago

ok but what is its value?

tifadg1 5y ago

hah, would like to hear what's not worthless and by which metric.

Lazare 5y ago

I must congratulate on your excellent demonstration of Poe's Law. Nonetheless, to the extent that you are being serious and not sarcastic, I largely agree with you.

CPLX 5y ago
If one assumes the content is sarcastic, it’s trying to point out that hey all these incredible big and successful entities support it so it can’t be worthless. Problem is that if you’ve been alive awhile you’ve seen situations over and over and over again where things that important institutions valued very highly did in fact turn out to be worthless.
- Lazare 5y ago
  Just so. (And it's a bit ironic to see crypto enthusiasts place so much weight on the opinion of the largest players in the traditional financial system!)

wiredfool 5y ago

Money is hard to value. Fundamentally, it relies on a consensus that it's useful and valuable, but there's nothing inherent in money that makes it that way. It's a useful collective hallucination. So is crypto. Some people came up with a collective hallucination that they considered useful and valuable, and convinced some other people that it was, because, hey, we all like valuable things, especially when we can create them out of thin air and sell them to people for other shiny things that we like.

CPLX 5y ago
> there's nothing inherent in money that makes it that way Yes there is. Typically money is legal tender, which means you’re mandated to accept it by a government with large numbers of guns and prison cells. That’s what for all debts public and private means.
- jkepler 5y ago
  >> there's nothing inherent in money that makes it that way > Yes there is. Typically money is legal tender ... Parent comment was right, subjective value thesis says people will value things (including money) differently. And legal tender laws are only "typical" of government coercion in the central bank era, basically the past century or so. Prior to that the king or the local sovereign may have required taxes paid in his coin, but multiple monies circulated and people freely chose which ones to spend, save, accept, or not.
  - CPLX 5y ago
    > multiple monies circulated and people freely chose which ones to spend, save, accept, or not And were routinely scammed out of their savings as a result, it should be noted.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  And legal tender is mandated within the country that issues it, but not outside of it, or on the global internet. For a global economy, we need a global currency, and USD/EUR have been the closest thing to that so far.

lariater 5y ago

This article is just pointless. Of course you can only do a valuation on cash producing assets. Non-cash producing assets can only be priced. That obviously does not mean that gold, oil, crypto, art, any highly demanded collectible have a price of zero.

lariater 5y ago
Downvote away. Might want to look up Aswath Damodaran's youtube videos on this very subject to have a clue. "A Viral Market Update III: Price vs Value"