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Crypto will come back again. The reason is because it's very closely related to gambling and triggers the same obsessive thinking as gambling does - based on m

Crypto will come back again. The reason is because it's very closely related to gambling and triggers the same obsessive thinking as gambling does - based on my observations of how I felt and thought when I did some crypto investing - I found myself constantly checking prices and devoting huge amounts of thought to it - I even wrote a crypto trading bot to analyse strategies. If you know anyone into crypto you would know they talk about it non stop. There are HUGE numbers of people who's brains are deeply involved with crypto. They'll be back for more. Crypto had a big crash only recently - about 12 to 18 months ago I think, when Elon Musk made some comments that crashed the market. That crash was rapidly forgotten and people piled back in. Same thing will happen here. Logic is not the driver of people's behavior. Crypto is essentially legal, consensual large scale ponzi scheme participation - if you understand that then you might be able to win big.

Gigachad 4y ago
Crypto shills have always just sat in the background out of mind for a while before they come out with their next rebrand of the same scam. NFTs and Web3 have had their moment and likely collected a fortune, now they have to come up with the next branding. For some reason the general public doesn't learn. The most amusing part is how the general public instinctively reacted to NFTs as thinking they were a scam, but they had so much news coverage and big numbers behind them that it became an Emperor has no clothes situation where it can't be a scam because too many people are agreeing with it. Only for it all to unravel and the public opinion returning to its just a scam.
- t-3 4y ago
  > For some reason the general public doesn't learn. The type of person who tries their hand at cryptocurrency speculation isn't much interested in learning or responsible investment. They are trying to get rich, thinking they will get ahead of the rest of the FOMO idiots. Most don't have the financial resources to consider low-return "safe" investments in mutual funds or the stock market, but they can buy a few *coins for a little bit of nothing and hope it goes up. The crypto-libertarians who see it as a solution to perceived problems with fiat currencies and/or government economic power doesn't seem to have much overlap with the "get rich quick" group.
- Animats 4y ago
  Crypto shills have the problem that this is now in the money-losing phase. This is when people start complaining to enforcement agencies. Then prosecutors, the SEC, and courts start doing their thing. The SEC just doubled their "cyber" enforcement staff. They're still working down the backlog from the ICO boom of 2018-2019, at the rate of about two scams per month. I expect the hammer to come down on a number of Metaverse schemes which collected money, promised a fancy 3D virtual world, and failed to ship. That's where an unregistered public offering becomes fraud.
fictionfuture 4y ago
Only thing that revived crypto was all the free biden-bucks they printed. Free cash needs somewhere to go.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Not for nothing, but the majority of stimulus money was dispensed using checks with "Donald J Trump" written on them.
formerkrogemp 4y ago
> Logic is not the driver of people's behavior. I think people are more rational than you give them credit, but, yes, emotion often informs and overrides our logic. Feelings, emotional intuition, biases, and prejudices color the lens of the eyes through which we see the world. Logic can be like prescription glasses or like Stevie Wonder glasses depending on how we check our priors. > The reason is because it's very closely related to gambling and triggers the same obsessive thinking as gambling does - based on my observations of how I felt and thought when I did some crypto investing. I noticed the same obsessive feeling and learned more about myself through that day trading. It was an expensive lesson however.
g_delgado14 4y ago
> Crypto had a big crash only recently - about 12 to 18 months ago I think, when Elon Musk made some comments that crashed the market. That crash was rapidly forgotten and people piled back in. Same thing will happen here. Except 12-18 months ago we weren't entering into a recession. So, although I am generally bullish on crypto, I am not so optimistic on things coming back to normal any time soon. Remember the old adage folks - "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".
senectus1 4y ago
this is true. I was also flooded with some really obvious bullshit... this crash is going to sweep the table clean. There is a chance it might come back cleaner and stronger than before. More mainstream maybe, with some regulation.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I, unfortunately, agree with this. Different generations of digital assets will continuously be used to grift certain demographics, with the potential for even larger bubbles and busts in the future.
woodruffw 4y ago
This is a great point: even above speculation, a core part of cryptocurrency's "stickiness" is that it's effectively unregulated gambling with extremely large upsides. I think that points to the best recourse we have, after the next crash: it needs to be regulated into the dirt.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Luckily for the world, regulators tend to step in right after collapses. Crypto is finally large enough to have the eye of regulators, and if a real collapse materializes this time - they may pounce. I suspect they'll aggressively take out stablecoins. They are the only real source of liquidity in crypto. Price action follows liquidity, so hopefully, any future swings will be much much smaller.
- mechanical_bear 4y ago
  Regulate a useful technology into the dirt because you have incorrect assumptions, and are generally ignorant about it?
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I can assure you that, to my vague displeasure, I am somewhat of the opposite of "generally ignorant" of cryptocurrencies. And I haven't stated any assumptions, other than the relatively bland claim that "people gamble with it."
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      More to the point, consumer protection in the form of regulation is what makes a currency and banking system real. There's far too much risk for the average person to consider using cryptocurrency the way they currently use EUR or USD without such a regime.
- datadata 4y ago
dboat 4y ago
> If you know anyone into crypto you would know they talk about it non stop. Not really. There are a lot of people holding, mining, DCA'ing into projects they believe in who have no trouble at all keeping it to themselves. Your remarks about gambling are similarly projecting a portion of the community onto the rest. Those traders who treat it as a speculative asset are gambling as you say, and tend to be obsessive in the way you describe, but you seem not to be aware of everyone who deals with crypto differently than you did. There are a lot of crypto projects that people don't expect to moon, that effectively serve their purpose right now, and will just get better at it in the future. None of what you wrote is nearly as generally true as you made it out to be.
- 3np 4y ago
  At the same time, I assume that most of the liquidity in the markets come from professionals and the people described in GP, whereas the casual retail/investors you describe tend to not keep their assets on orderbooks or in liquidity pools.
- Nav_Panel 4y ago
  Yep, exactly. I've been working in crypto for 4 years and counting, still haven't purchased a single token as an investment. I don't like downside risk, I like to build product. We've weathered one bear market, we'll weather another. Thankfully there's cool stuff in the ecosystem that isn't a scam, but it's not newsworthy, so it doesn't go viral.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    Can you give some examples of cool stuff that isn't a scam? I'm genuinely curious.
    - Nav_Panel 4y ago
      One of the cool parts of crypto is that it enables new forms of social coordination that take place entirely within an online context. We haven't even scratched the surface of what could be possible with DAOs; the UIs and educational materials don't exist yet. But given how online people are in general (and they're only likely to become more online in the future), it's natural they'll want digitally-native ways to organize themselves, represent ownership, qualify membership, etc. The shift in concept required here is from viewing a token as "an investment" to viewing it as a form of legible social proof within its community context, which becomes more meaningful as communities grow beyond the "tipping point" where interpersonal proof (think webs-of-trust) is sufficient for coordination. NFTs (yes, they're still around!) are already serving this function for certain experimental communities (and even in less experimental ones, see POAPs). In general, everything above is still in the experimental, live or die phase. We don't quite know where it's going. But it's pretty damn cool to watch if you're deeply invested in the internet as a medium (and as someone who "grew up online", I absolutely am).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Strs2FillMyDrms 4y ago
I think it CAN come to an end. The backbone of crypto and the blockchain is the willingness to maintain it which has a cost. The reason why this maintenance is cost effective is because the major holders are few and at a < 1/2 of the entire base. As long as the "right" people are winning, there will be enough justification to keep the ball rolling. If there will come a day, in which the ammount of holders become so dilluted that there stops being any clear (lets say) influencers at the top, then the "cool boy's club" will be no more. This is when exchanges will no longer have any skin in the game. Massive runs and "outages" until a few weird naive dreamers are left at the helm of the sinking ship.

Gigachad 4y ago

Crypto shills have always just sat in the background out of mind for a while before they come out with their next rebrand of the same scam. NFTs and Web3 have had their moment and likely collected a fortune, now they have to come up with the next branding. For some reason the general public doesn't learn. The most amusing part is how the general public instinctively reacted to NFTs as thinking they were a scam, but they had so much news coverage and big numbers behind them that it became an Emperor has no clothes situation where it can't be a scam because too many people are agreeing with it. Only for it all to unravel and the public opinion returning to its just a scam.

t-3 4y ago
> For some reason the general public doesn't learn. The type of person who tries their hand at cryptocurrency speculation isn't much interested in learning or responsible investment. They are trying to get rich, thinking they will get ahead of the rest of the FOMO idiots. Most don't have the financial resources to consider low-return "safe" investments in mutual funds or the stock market, but they can buy a few *coins for a little bit of nothing and hope it goes up. The crypto-libertarians who see it as a solution to perceived problems with fiat currencies and/or government economic power doesn't seem to have much overlap with the "get rich quick" group.
Animats 4y ago
Crypto shills have the problem that this is now in the money-losing phase. This is when people start complaining to enforcement agencies. Then prosecutors, the SEC, and courts start doing their thing. The SEC just doubled their "cyber" enforcement staff. They're still working down the backlog from the ICO boom of 2018-2019, at the rate of about two scams per month. I expect the hammer to come down on a number of Metaverse schemes which collected money, promised a fancy 3D virtual world, and failed to ship. That's where an unregistered public offering becomes fraud.

fictionfuture 4y ago

Only thing that revived crypto was all the free biden-bucks they printed. Free cash needs somewhere to go.

Godel_unicode 4y ago
Not for nothing, but the majority of stimulus money was dispensed using checks with "Donald J Trump" written on them.

formerkrogemp 4y ago

> Logic is not the driver of people's behavior. I think people are more rational than you give them credit, but, yes, emotion often informs and overrides our logic. Feelings, emotional intuition, biases, and prejudices color the lens of the eyes through which we see the world. Logic can be like prescription glasses or like Stevie Wonder glasses depending on how we check our priors. > The reason is because it's very closely related to gambling and triggers the same obsessive thinking as gambling does - based on my observations of how I felt and thought when I did some crypto investing. I noticed the same obsessive feeling and learned more about myself through that day trading. It was an expensive lesson however.

g_delgado14 4y ago

> Crypto had a big crash only recently - about 12 to 18 months ago I think, when Elon Musk made some comments that crashed the market. That crash was rapidly forgotten and people piled back in. Same thing will happen here. Except 12-18 months ago we weren't entering into a recession. So, although I am generally bullish on crypto, I am not so optimistic on things coming back to normal any time soon. Remember the old adage folks - "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

senectus1 4y ago

this is true. I was also flooded with some really obvious bullshit... this crash is going to sweep the table clean. There is a chance it might come back cleaner and stronger than before. More mainstream maybe, with some regulation.

heavyset_go 4y ago

I, unfortunately, agree with this. Different generations of digital assets will continuously be used to grift certain demographics, with the potential for even larger bubbles and busts in the future.

woodruffw 4y ago

This is a great point: even above speculation, a core part of cryptocurrency's "stickiness" is that it's effectively unregulated gambling with extremely large upsides. I think that points to the best recourse we have, after the next crash: it needs to be regulated into the dirt.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
arcticbull 4y ago
Luckily for the world, regulators tend to step in right after collapses. Crypto is finally large enough to have the eye of regulators, and if a real collapse materializes this time - they may pounce. I suspect they'll aggressively take out stablecoins. They are the only real source of liquidity in crypto. Price action follows liquidity, so hopefully, any future swings will be much much smaller.
mechanical_bear 4y ago
Regulate a useful technology into the dirt because you have incorrect assumptions, and are generally ignorant about it?
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I can assure you that, to my vague displeasure, I am somewhat of the opposite of "generally ignorant" of cryptocurrencies. And I haven't stated any assumptions, other than the relatively bland claim that "people gamble with it."
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    More to the point, consumer protection in the form of regulation is what makes a currency and banking system real. There's far too much risk for the average person to consider using cryptocurrency the way they currently use EUR or USD without such a regime.
datadata 4y ago

dboat 4y ago

> If you know anyone into crypto you would know they talk about it non stop. Not really. There are a lot of people holding, mining, DCA'ing into projects they believe in who have no trouble at all keeping it to themselves. Your remarks about gambling are similarly projecting a portion of the community onto the rest. Those traders who treat it as a speculative asset are gambling as you say, and tend to be obsessive in the way you describe, but you seem not to be aware of everyone who deals with crypto differently than you did. There are a lot of crypto projects that people don't expect to moon, that effectively serve their purpose right now, and will just get better at it in the future. None of what you wrote is nearly as generally true as you made it out to be.

3np 4y ago
At the same time, I assume that most of the liquidity in the markets come from professionals and the people described in GP, whereas the casual retail/investors you describe tend to not keep their assets on orderbooks or in liquidity pools.
Nav_Panel 4y ago
Yep, exactly. I've been working in crypto for 4 years and counting, still haven't purchased a single token as an investment. I don't like downside risk, I like to build product. We've weathered one bear market, we'll weather another. Thankfully there's cool stuff in the ecosystem that isn't a scam, but it's not newsworthy, so it doesn't go viral.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  Can you give some examples of cool stuff that isn't a scam? I'm genuinely curious.
  - Nav_Panel 4y ago
    One of the cool parts of crypto is that it enables new forms of social coordination that take place entirely within an online context. We haven't even scratched the surface of what could be possible with DAOs; the UIs and educational materials don't exist yet. But given how online people are in general (and they're only likely to become more online in the future), it's natural they'll want digitally-native ways to organize themselves, represent ownership, qualify membership, etc. The shift in concept required here is from viewing a token as "an investment" to viewing it as a form of legible social proof within its community context, which becomes more meaningful as communities grow beyond the "tipping point" where interpersonal proof (think webs-of-trust) is sufficient for coordination. NFTs (yes, they're still around!) are already serving this function for certain experimental communities (and even in less experimental ones, see POAPs). In general, everything above is still in the experimental, live or die phase. We don't quite know where it's going. But it's pretty damn cool to watch if you're deeply invested in the internet as a medium (and as someone who "grew up online", I absolutely am).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Strs2FillMyDrms 4y ago

I think it CAN come to an end. The backbone of crypto and the blockchain is the willingness to maintain it which has a cost. The reason why this maintenance is cost effective is because the major holders are few and at a < 1/2 of the entire base. As long as the "right" people are winning, there will be enough justification to keep the ball rolling. If there will come a day, in which the ammount of holders become so dilluted that there stops being any clear (lets say) influencers at the top, then the "cool boy's club" will be no more. This is when exchanges will no longer have any skin in the game. Massive runs and "outages" until a few weird naive dreamers are left at the helm of the sinking ship.