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The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked
- marban 4y agoDon't worry, Saylor will fix it. https://news.bitcoin.com/microstrategy-ceo-expects-bitcoin-to-go-into-the-millions-despite-crypto-market-sell-off/ https://news.bitcoin.com/microstrategy-ceo-expects-bitcoin-t...
- rieTohgh6 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220520054059/https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/05/18/the-cryptocurrency-sell-off-has-exposed-those-swimming-naked https://web.archive.org/web/20220520054059/https://www.econo...
- jasfi 4y agoThis is a particularly bad time to trade crypto if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you think you do, it's dangerous in a bear market.
- babyshake 4y agoThat includes having short positions? Why would that be particularly bad if the momentum is downward?
- StopHammoTime 4y agoYou shouldn’t really be shorting if you don’t know what you’re doing, so the parent still applies.
- syzygyhack 4y agoIt includes shorts because you don't know when the market will turn around. It does, however, exclude DCA, which is almost always a sensible investment strategy.
- danuker 4y ago> DCA, which is almost always a sensible investment strategy. It might make more sense to lump-sum invest, if volatility is small relative to the return. At least for the stock market, it's not often worth sitting on cash.
- nieve 4y agoBut with cryptocurrency (the investments in question) volatility is quite high.
- tobltobs 4y agoIt includes DCA because you don't know if the market will turn around.
- Bayart 4y agoTrending downwards doesn't mean it can't retrace 24% and liquidate your position before going down again. And that's if it is trending downwards.
- danuker 4y agoShorts risk unlimited potential losses. You might owe more than you own, if the price rises, you fail the margin call, and they liquidate.
- rvz 4y ago> That includes having short positions? Yes. > Why would that be particularly bad if the momentum is downward? That is why. You are too late for justifying a short position if it is already going down as you can still get yourself liquidated quickly if the price jumps in one day after a correction.
- rabite 4y ago@BXRekt on twitter shows liquidated short positions on Bitmex in realtime. https://twitter.com/BXRekt/status/1527462460457984000 https://twitter.com/BXRekt/status/1527462460457984000 Here's a million dollar short that got liquidated all of seven hours ago. Shorting Bitcoin is madness, partially because no regulation prohibits most exchange operators from frontrunning their own customers (besides the ones that voluntarily signed on to become the benchmarks for CME's Bitcoin futures price). Exchanges and market makers will collaborate to artificially push prices around to optimally liquidate shorts -- it happens all the time. They love people shorting Bitcoin.
- puranjay 4y agoThe crypto market is unregulated and manipulated heavily by whales (most of whom operate on bitfinex which itself has close ties to Tether). Holding a short position can be profitable, but also know that a short squeeze is easy. There was an incredible shorting opportunity with the recent Luna fiasco though. Literal millions made overnight.
- frozenport 4y agoLol, what does "knowing what you're doing mean?"
- Closi 4y agoIt's dangerous to play roulette, unless you know what you're doing...
- netsharc 4y agoMissing the word "Russian" there...
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y agoFor most purposes, it's enough to know that the money you put there could go to zero. Which means that you shouldn't invest in crypto anything whose losing would take a psychological toll if you lose (let alone investing money that you need for mortgage, etc. as seen in the Luna subreddit). Then beyond that, the more information, the better, but the rest is not essential.
- weavie 4y ago1. Don't put your life savings into crypto.
- zahma 4y ago2. Don’t expect to get rich quick.
- grapeskin 4y agoKnowing that you’re literally gambling. Don’t put the money in unless you’re okay with the possibility of it being wiped out.
- anm89 4y agoJust because many people foolishly trade crypto doesn't mean there aren't savvy people quietly making huge amounts of money. I know one of them well, an individual who is up 9 figures over many years while staying market neutral. Don't be fooled into thinking there is no such thing as knowing what you are doing.
- scotty79 4y agoFollowing 6 months will be a great time to buy crypto.
- xiphias2 4y ago,,The crypto slump has been brutal’’ I’ve been holding Bitcoin since 2013, and this 50-60% retracement from the all time high was nothing compared to what I (and other people) were living through. I advise people to look at past volatility of Bitcoin before making an investment decision.
- oleganza 4y agoAlso bitcoin != crypto, those are not even subset/superset for the most part. Bitcoin solves one single problem of "digital cash" with the most robust and boring mechanism (known to mankind so far). While the "cryptos" aim at satisfying demand for all sorts of p2p apps and moneymaking schemes that can be funded with the digital cash to avoid getting regulated out of existence.
- pavlov 4y agoIt’s practically impossible to use Bitcoin as digital cash because it’s so slow and expensive. That was the original problem it purported to solve, but it failed miserably at that.
- barnabee 4y agoSo far. If you spend any time in the research community you’ll realise that those problems are very likely to get solved. Lightning alone probably gets us there. Its volatility and UX, as well as how negatively it is perceived currently (by some people) look like bigger blockers to me.
- rvz 4y ago> Lightning alone probably gets us there. Which that is not Bitcoin and neither is it on-chain. The parent comment is correct on Bitcoin's failure as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system and all it is instead, is a store of value. This is how you know it has failed in its intended purpose.
- redox99 4y ago
- danjac 4y agoIt's crypto we're talking about here. It's not just a few covert skinny dippers but a whole nudist colony.
- labster 4y agoWhat are you talking about? Everyone’s just wearing the latest fashions. Even the Emperor is wearing it. Philistines are everywhere, I swear.
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- Nekorosu 4y ago"Crypto’s detractors have long argued that it is useless—unless you are a money-launderer or con-artist—and predicted its demise." What a piece of opinion. So not overgeneralizing and down to earth.
- Scarblac 4y agoTotally fails to mention other uses, like ransomware payments.
- bigbizisverywyz 4y agoThe article then goes on to say: >In fact the picture is rather different: a sorting process is under way And talks more about the process of penalizing weaker crypto assets, focusing on Tether. So it's actually a balanced and interesting overview of the fallout of the current selloff on what is now becoming a rather large and very complex market all of its own. I only mention this as your comment seems a bit dismissive based on that one sentence.
- Nekorosu 4y agoThanks for bringing this up! The good stuff you've mentioned is behind the paywall for me and the intro I can read does look non-balanced.
- zahma 4y agoThere are always archive links. It’s a good idea to read the whole article before condemning it. https://archive.ph/4x3je https://archive.ph/4x3je > “… The trouble is that a draconian crackdown would put at risk the benefits that crypto eventually promises, including new financial products that bypass stodgy banks; innovations in property rights; and the possibility of a less centralised financial system.”
- sateesh 4y agoBit OT, a further good idea will be to buy the subscription and support good journalism. I am not being flippant, I believe good journalism needs support.
- jbverschoor 4y agoThere's been a huge sell offon the stock market too. FUD spreading about crypto!
- d--b 4y agoIf tether manages to make people believe that its demise would derail the regular economy, and get bailed to keep their peg, then they’ve definitely screwed everyone over.
- scotty79 4y agoSolidcoins are great deal for issuers if solidcoins. At any point they can just take their money and run. And it would be a smart choice given to what happened to money that tried to keep UST peg.
- CrazyPyroLinux 4y agoGiven what we saw in 2009, nothing could more-qualify them as a "real financial institution" than being bailed out as "Too Big to Fail"
- wodenokoto 4y agoLooking at Google's 5 year graph of Bitcoin prices, it looks like there were 2 crashes last year of similar size as this one.
- nly 4y agoWith markets it's all about narrative. Growth stocks have been coming down and so has Bitcoin, so people like to highlight that everyone is sharing the pain.
- DeathArrow 4y ago>With markets it's all about narrative. As is with pyramidal schemes, which most of crypto are.
- b112 4y agoIt's not even that. It's all about click through. I pretty much think all real news articles are completely dead. Historically, there were always catchy headines in newspapers. But they had some factualality to them, and if not they were trash rags like the National Enquirer, a newspaper sold at grocery checkouts, often explaining how a celebrity was really an alien, or time traveller, or some such. Real newspapers had to adhere to some standards, and usually ran mostly on sales for revenue. They sold ads, and classified ads, but they were paid papers, and each paper sold meant more profit, and for advertising revenue. This meant that if the paper had a headline, but the headline was a lie/untruthful, some people would get upset and demand their money back. And if this continued, people would stop buying it, because they were paying for it, and who wants to buy something which lies to get sold?! Beyond that, if the article was poorly written, if the article was poorly researched, many would be annoyed at wasting cash. If the newspaper ended up with a reputation for this, sales would likely drop. Point is, when paying hard cash for something, people typically demand something of value in return. Compare that to today, where modern news is like a poster someone stuck on a lamp post. Are you gonna complain, if the free poster is just made up drivel?! Modern news is this. Nothing you read has any incentive to be true, the only incentive is to get you to click, and look at the ads. So you do, because OMG! Bad thing happened! Modern democracies depend upon pillars of society to hold it up, news being one of them. And news used to serve this purpose, being primarily consumer facing. And now it's not. Now, it's gone.
- DeathArrow 4y agohttps://archive.ph/4x3je https://archive.ph/4x3je
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- seydor 4y agoIt's not like you can't swim when naked
- throwaway744678 4y agoSure you can, and some people do. But when there's no water anymore, everyone lies on the sand... no more swimming!
- ulzeraj 4y agoTether truthing the eminent doom of tether is all well and good but why aren't we talking more about YCombinator promoting startups that burned their customer's money by sending it to anchor protocol UST ponzinomics while lying that those investments were held in USDC and USD? https://twitter.com/fatmanterra/status/1527153694218797058 https://twitter.com/fatmanterra/status/1527153694218797058 https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains Or is it bad to talk about such things around here?
- d3nj4l 4y agoIt was one of the most upvoted threads just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224
- ulzeraj 4y agoThat's not the link under the Latest news section on https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains
- lupire 4y agoThat's a YC page ("they are talking"), not an HN page ("we are talking"). We already knew YC's ethics -- they proudly look for "naughty" founders who "hack real world systems" for personal gain.
- robbiep 4y agoDefinitely looks pretty bad - but on the other hand, an accelerator not making any bets in crypto is not a sensible accelerator. You need to make bets everywhere and hopefully some stick. The other side of that is some don’t stick, and some go proper pear shaped. Make enough bets, it has to happen. I’ve got no idea what their original pitch is, I certainly wouldn’t back a crypto startup that ostensibly aims to do something like what it looks like they tried to do, but if I was making 300 bets a couple times a year I’d be silly not to do something in the space. Whether a ycombinator seal of approval lead to investment which lead to consumers getting fleeced and culpability in that situation, I don’t know. It’s crypto. If you’re silly enough to think it’s a safe investment, you’re blind. A company can also say a lot of things differently from first pitch to accepting millions from consumers. As an investor with 10%ish equity, you’ve got some sway, but you don’t have much sway. And who is to say their bet isn’t the right one. A stain, but I don’t know about righteous indignation, I don’t know how much culpability transfers back to yc… but I don’t feel it’s a whole lot
- teekert 4y agoI sold everything when btc hit 23000 man that felt like it was never getting any higher. But then again I remember screaming to my wife in disbelieve when 1 btc was 10€, and then shortly after that 100! So I’m just waiting for a dip below 23000 now. Btw, I like swimming naked.
- scotty79 4y agoIt might happen in the next 6 months. Be ready.
- ur-whale 4y agohttps://archive.ph/4x3je https://archive.ph/4x3je
- xvilka 4y agoThis is a good thing since it will make sure that mostly useful projects that have real applications will continue developing and improve the adoption.
- twirlock 4y ago
- m0d0nne11 4y agoPlease stop linking to paywalled content.
- gsibble 4y agoPeople are realizing crypto has no use beyond store of value. It's a solution looking for a problem. Crypto and Defi are a joke.
- MichaelBosworth 4y agohttps://archive.ph/4x3je https://archive.ph/4x3je Without the paywall