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I paid off all my student loan debt and bought a house last summer because I got scammed into buying ETH about 2 years ago. Thanks for your insight though.

pessimizer 5y ago
That just means that you were part of the scam. Hell; somebody approvingly reading this comment might be the bagholder of the future, shooting himself after all of his savings have evaporated into some ETH tycoon's pocket who dumped before the market locked up.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Now that the bag holders include major investment houses... Well, if it's possible for a scam to have a successful "exit," that's what happened. They used their funny money to tap in to the real funny money. If all cryptocurrencies went to 0 tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised at all if some part of the "real" financial infrastructure got caught and there had to be bailouts, which we've learned is what happens when the wrong people lose a bet. There's too much money in the system now for it to all be from mom-and-pop marks. That's just not a viable explanation at these market capitalizations. That's not to say that average people aren't going to find out that they're long crypto - but it'd be in the way they found out they were long real estate.
- throwaway8174 5y ago
Grim-444 5y ago
As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and they become worthless, and not you, it's all good. As long as you managed to make a profit and get out in time it wasn't a scam.
- samarama 5y ago
  Except beanie babies have no inherent value, but ETH has vast inherent value in numerous ways 1. Immutability 2. Decentralization 3. Cheap, fast, secure cross-country money transfers 4. Protection against inflation 5. Independence of banks or arbitrary freezes of your funds 6. Access to a vast variety of financials services 7. Is quite likely the replacement of money The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022 is astonishing.
  - secabeen 5y ago
    YMMV. I don't put any value on most of the above.
    - samarama 5y ago
      Probably because you are rich, but 99% of humanity aren’t.
  - djur 5y ago
    1 is questionably valuable and arguably harmful, 2 is increasingly untrue, 3 and 6 aren't inherent benefits of Ethereum, 4 and 5 aren't true, and 7 is speculative and begs the question.
    - suikadayo 5y ago
      Decentralization increasingly untrue? Ethereum consensus and execution layer nodes are at about 6k, under Bitcoin, and way above other projects.
      - donmcronald 5y ago
        If the network grows [1] at 2MB/14s that's: 2/14*3600 = 514MB per hour 514*24 = 12.3GB per day 12.3*30 = 369GB per month Even if the underlying blockchain is decentralized, I have no practical way of participating without doing it via some centralized exchange. How many nodes will there be if ETH hits $0? What will happen to the services like ENS? 1. https://www.bitrates.com/guides/ethereum/how-many-ethereum-are-there https://www.bitrates.com/guides/ethereum/how-many-ethereum-a... Is the above accurate? Wikipedia says the whole network is 1TB, so that doesn't quite add up for me.
dang 5y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. In case it helps: the first two comments you posted with this account (a couple weeks ago) were much more substantive and much more along the lines of what we're looking for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pessimizer 5y ago

That just means that you were part of the scam. Hell; somebody approvingly reading this comment might be the bagholder of the future, shooting himself after all of his savings have evaporated into some ETH tycoon's pocket who dumped before the market locked up.

whatshisface 5y ago
Now that the bag holders include major investment houses... Well, if it's possible for a scam to have a successful "exit," that's what happened. They used their funny money to tap in to the real funny money. If all cryptocurrencies went to 0 tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised at all if some part of the "real" financial infrastructure got caught and there had to be bailouts, which we've learned is what happens when the wrong people lose a bet. There's too much money in the system now for it to all be from mom-and-pop marks. That's just not a viable explanation at these market capitalizations. That's not to say that average people aren't going to find out that they're long crypto - but it'd be in the way they found out they were long real estate.
throwaway8174 5y ago

Grim-444 5y ago

As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and they become worthless, and not you, it's all good. As long as you managed to make a profit and get out in time it wasn't a scam.

samarama 5y ago
Except beanie babies have no inherent value, but ETH has vast inherent value in numerous ways 1. Immutability 2. Decentralization 3. Cheap, fast, secure cross-country money transfers 4. Protection against inflation 5. Independence of banks or arbitrary freezes of your funds 6. Access to a vast variety of financials services 7. Is quite likely the replacement of money The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022 is astonishing.
- secabeen 5y ago
  YMMV. I don't put any value on most of the above.
  - samarama 5y ago
    Probably because you are rich, but 99% of humanity aren’t.
- djur 5y ago
  1 is questionably valuable and arguably harmful, 2 is increasingly untrue, 3 and 6 aren't inherent benefits of Ethereum, 4 and 5 aren't true, and 7 is speculative and begs the question.
  - suikadayo 5y ago
    Decentralization increasingly untrue? Ethereum consensus and execution layer nodes are at about 6k, under Bitcoin, and way above other projects.
    - donmcronald 5y ago
      If the network grows [1] at 2MB/14s that's: 2/14*3600 = 514MB per hour 514*24 = 12.3GB per day 12.3*30 = 369GB per month Even if the underlying blockchain is decentralized, I have no practical way of participating without doing it via some centralized exchange. How many nodes will there be if ETH hits $0? What will happen to the services like ENS? 1. https://www.bitrates.com/guides/ethereum/how-many-ethereum-are-there https://www.bitrates.com/guides/ethereum/how-many-ethereum-a... Is the above accurate? Wikipedia says the whole network is 1TB, so that doesn't quite add up for me.

dang 5y ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. In case it helps: the first two comments you posted with this account (a couple weeks ago) were much more substantive and much more along the lines of what we're looking for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html