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For my part... Crypto, as they see it, is the only asymmetrical bet of their lifetime this is the part that makes me feel the most cynically incredulous about
by dvtrn 4y ago
For my part...
Crypto, as they see it, is the only asymmetrical bet of their lifetime
this is the part that makes me feel the most cynically incredulous about some of the claims and aspirations not just from my friend but others who have bought entire box cars on the web3 hype train, andit's probably my own biases and notions about the world, but:
is it really all that asymmetrical? I presume you mean in the same spirit that the people who jumped in on the GameStop wagon did so not only because they saw dollar signs, but they bought into the notion that there had been some discovery, an inefficiency to exploit and they were "sticking it" to the institutional trading system by refusing to sell?
If that's not what you meant, feel free to stop reading, as my skepticism is borne out of completely misunderstanding your point (and I concede the misunderstanding on my part).
On the other hand if so....
I don't see the asymmetry, really. I just see a new set of thumbs on the scale. That's the cost of admission isn't it? Is that what I've been so oblivious to in my own apoplectic shock at all of this?
- IanCal 4y agoThe asymmetry is not in information but in the potential gains and losses. Even if the overall EV is lower than 1, it's about risking £100 for a potential £10000 or other much larger figure, 10x/100x/10000x.
- lxgr 4y agoIf you don't care about negative expected values, bets of that nature are widely available in many countries in the form of lotteries.
- IanCal 4y agoI didn't say people don't care, but that the EV is not relevant for calling it an asymmetrical bet. The EV may also be under 1 for the value but may be >1 for utility. That can easily be true for things with more moderate returns than the extremes of lotteries.
- fleddr 4y agoSay you have 10K USD. If you don't know what you're doing, take extraordinary risks, have poor timing or just bad luck...you'll lose all of it. If you do know what you're doing, you can turn it into 20K, 30K, 50K, 100K. The potential upside is many multiples of the downside, hence it's asymmetrical. There's no asset I can think of with this potential upside on such small timescales. Isn't it risky? Yes it is. Like I said, -100% when fully incompetent. Against many multiples of potential upside. That's what makes it asymmetrical.
- headmelted 4y agoOr you could just randomly put it all on a horse or a greyhound. No less asymmetrical, greater odds of success, and less rigged against you most likely.
- fleddr 4y agoThis suggests that crypto investing/daytrading is entirely random, which is a ridiculous thing to say. Further, explain to me how sport bets have greater odds of success? If you want the upside of crypto in sport bets, you'd have to place your bets on the absolute worst odds, as only those pay out a high upside. Meanwhile, in crypto during a bullrun you can buy any garbage coin and it will go up.
- headmelted 4y ago1) You’re assuming sports betting is completely random, then assuming I’m comparing this completely random thing to your supposedly not random thing. 2) Cryptocurrency is 13 years old, give or take. The idea that there’s a predictable cycle of bull runs and bear markets based on such a short timeframe is nothing more than hype and fantasy. 3) They’re all speculative tokens, so I’m not sure which ones you think are garbage or not garbage. PG wrote an essay quite a while back about filtering out solutions in search of problems, which would include almost all of the cryptocurrency sphere (e.g. Web3), but I’m not sure what else there is outside of money trees.
- 4y ago