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Crypto "market caps" are complete 100% fiction. They do not represent any kind of real value that exists. They mean nothing.

wruza 5y ago
The company I work at trades crypto deposited/withdrawn from real USD and EUR bank accounts as it would be with any stock exchange broker account, all legal. You may now reduce your fiction percentage to 99.9…9% at least, unless I’m lying for some conspiracy reason.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  It's not just that prices are complete nonsense and massively manipulated. It's also that multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real.
  - wruza 5y ago
    multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything It is also true for any regular stock. “Market cap” is just an indicator value of a stock at a given time, not the value, and no one expects all of it to be sold at that sum, because of market dynamics. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real regardless of the asset class. The only difference between crypto and some stock market traded company shares is that the latter has usually a known non-zero value at the assets level, everything else is just a thin air of trust and expectations. You may see cryptohead-ance as crypto’s base assets.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Yes, The market cap of a company is an indicator, but it is an indicator of something real: Acquiring the full ownership of the company. The market cap of crypto doesn't even indicate anything. "Buying every bitcoin" doesn't mean anything. There's no value in doing so, unlike buying an entire company.
      - wruza 5y ago
        "Buying every bitcoin" doesn't mean anything I think you err in this part. It doesn’t mean anything to you, if you’d buy that. Well, buying all of rice doesn’t mean anything to me (I can’t eat it for unrelated reasons and have no other uses beyond that). But other people value some properties of crypto, in the same way they value e.g. Intel much more than its raw factory floors and assets. Nobody would buy crypto if they thought it is worthless. But they have thought otherwise. They bought it at 0.00001, at 0.1, at 100 and at 60000 USD. You are basically saying that you don’t need crypto, even all of it for zero money. Well, this is a personal choice, not something one has to argue with or prove to others. People define value by supply and demand. Market cap is an aggregate indicator of their supply/demand equilibrium times the circulation volume.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        No, it still means nothing. The essential difference here is that if you buy all the stocks of a company, you own the company. The company still exists, it is still working, but it is now all yours, and you can control it as you'd like. If you buy every bitcoin, you have nothing. I don't meant that in the sense that bitcoin isn't backed by anything, I mean that in the sense that bitcoin is only meaningful when it is traded between people. If you buy every single bitcoin, bitcoin is dead. It is a nonsensical thing to do. Trying to figure out the price for which it can be done is nonsense, as well.

wruza 5y ago

The company I work at trades crypto deposited/withdrawn from real USD and EUR bank accounts as it would be with any stock exchange broker account, all legal. You may now reduce your fiction percentage to 99.9…9% at least, unless I’m lying for some conspiracy reason.

user-the-name 5y ago
It's not just that prices are complete nonsense and massively manipulated. It's also that multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real.
- wruza 5y ago
  multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything It is also true for any regular stock. “Market cap” is just an indicator value of a stock at a given time, not the value, and no one expects all of it to be sold at that sum, because of market dynamics. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real regardless of the asset class. The only difference between crypto and some stock market traded company shares is that the latter has usually a known non-zero value at the assets level, everything else is just a thin air of trust and expectations. You may see cryptohead-ance as crypto’s base assets.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Yes, The market cap of a company is an indicator, but it is an indicator of something real: Acquiring the full ownership of the company. The market cap of crypto doesn't even indicate anything. "Buying every bitcoin" doesn't mean anything. There's no value in doing so, unlike buying an entire company.
    - wruza 5y ago
      "Buying every bitcoin" doesn't mean anything I think you err in this part. It doesn’t mean anything to you, if you’d buy that. Well, buying all of rice doesn’t mean anything to me (I can’t eat it for unrelated reasons and have no other uses beyond that). But other people value some properties of crypto, in the same way they value e.g. Intel much more than its raw factory floors and assets. Nobody would buy crypto if they thought it is worthless. But they have thought otherwise. They bought it at 0.00001, at 0.1, at 100 and at 60000 USD. You are basically saying that you don’t need crypto, even all of it for zero money. Well, this is a personal choice, not something one has to argue with or prove to others. People define value by supply and demand. Market cap is an aggregate indicator of their supply/demand equilibrium times the circulation volume.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        No, it still means nothing. The essential difference here is that if you buy all the stocks of a company, you own the company. The company still exists, it is still working, but it is now all yours, and you can control it as you'd like. If you buy every bitcoin, you have nothing. I don't meant that in the sense that bitcoin isn't backed by anything, I mean that in the sense that bitcoin is only meaningful when it is traded between people. If you buy every single bitcoin, bitcoin is dead. It is a nonsensical thing to do. Trying to figure out the price for which it can be done is nonsense, as well.