16 ms·

I think the fact that this is so obviously satirical and well executed, but I had to closely read the white paper and fight against the "these crypto things hav

by jmacd 4y ago

I think the fact that this is so obviously satirical and well executed, but I had to closely read the white paper and fight against the "these crypto things have so much momentum, clearly people understand things I don't" bias that has developed in my brain around these ridiculous projects probably tells us something about what has passed for real in the last 3 years. I've gone from being unengaged bystander on crypto to feeling pretty strongly that almost everything crypto is going to zero. I think if it survives, the crypto community is in for a reckoning much like 2000. Bitcoin will be the Yahoo (a brand that survives, but does not create new value, and stagnates) and all the alt-coins are the Pets.com etc of the era. Poof, gone, vanished.

tenuousemphasis 4y ago
>feeling pretty strongly that almost everything crypto is going to zero. People have been saying the same thing for over 10 years. So far that hasn't been a good bet.
- mirntyfirty 4y ago
  The next few years will see a sharp decline in liquidity that will decrease speculation compared to the last 10 years.
- proto-n 4y ago
  People also have been saying a recession is nigh for 10 years with it being the wrong bet. Until suddenly it wasn't.
  - zeven7 4y ago
    It still would have been the wrong bet if you were out of the market or short for the last 10 years. Even if you didn't get liquidated on a short in that time, you'd still be way down on your bet.
  - loeg 4y ago
    It’s not even obviously correct now.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - spencerchubb 4y ago
    If you say that a recession is coming, and keep saying it for 10 years, you are going to be right
  - pikelet 4y ago
    That's rather different than betting on the death of something.
- sumeno 4y ago
  10 whole years? Wow, cryptocurrency truly is unstoppable!
zeven7 4y ago
> I think if it survives, the crypto community is in for a reckoning much like 2000. Bitcoin will be the Yahoo (a brand that survives, but does not create new value, and stagnates) and all the alt-coins are the Pets.com etc of the era. Poof, gone, vanished. Even as a crypto enthusiast, I agree with this general sentiment. (My 2¢ is Ethereum will emerge as the Amazon.)
- fartcannon 4y ago
  From an outsiders perspective, etherium definitely has the stronger PR.
tootie 4y ago
Every time I think "I don't understand crypto" then I do some more reading and realize I actually do.
jksmith 4y ago
Not clear on your "Bitcoin will be the Yahoo" reduction. There's scarcity and commodity qualities to take into account, and making absolute statements about behavioral economics has a far greater chance of being wrong. Not arguing to a binary reduction; just suggesting signal to noise is way to low to make this kind of prognostication. So a good qualifier for this space is to explicitly say "My gut tells me that..." While I don't know what my gut tells me about BTC yet, it does tell me that the compromise elemental to all non-BTC coins, including ETH will eventually damage or even destroy them. The one exception might be ZeroStableCoin.
- legutierr 4y ago
  > it does tell me that the compromise elemental to all non-BTC coins, including ETH will eventually damage or even destroy them What is this elemental compromise you are referring to?
  - jksmith 4y ago
    Willingness to fork, which requires human choices/intervention. Seems to me the extinction of forking is (was) a design goal of BTC. I know of no example of that with alts. In fact, there seems to be zero appetite for this goal with alts.
    - kybernetikos 4y ago
      Vitalik has talked about the balance between innovation and stability and has said that it is a goal for ethereum to become more stable over time. The danger is just doing that too early and ossifying around an inadequate design.
legutierr 4y ago
> I think if it survives, the crypto community is in for a reckoning much like 2000. You very well may be right. But the most memorable headline for me from that era is this Barron's article: https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1447403828505088011 https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1447403828505088011 If Bitcoin is the equivalent of Yahoo, what are the equivalents of Amazon and Google? People love to use Pets.com as a symbol of excess for that era, but it might not be a great example to use to make that point. At its highest point, Pets.com had a valuation of approximately $300 million (of which ~30% was owned by Amazon). Compare that to the ~$3 billion that PetSmart paid for Chewey.com five years ago, and Chewy.com's current market cap of $12 billion (down ~75% from its high). It's a bit ironic that the pets.com domain redirects to petsmart.com, given that the PetSmart LBO eight years ago, and its acquisition of Chewy five years ago, and the Chewy IPO three years ago—PetSmart sold a minority interest Chewy to protect it from PetSmart's creditors and to pay down debt—were all motivated in large part by the fact that online retail has massively supplanted in-person retail throughout the economy. Was Pets.com overvalued? Or did it just run out of runway before it could displace the incumbents? Is Crypto going to zero? Or is it simply that new technologies take time to find their footing?
- syllablehq 4y ago
  Exactly: Ignore the crap, and look for the Amazons and Googles. There is so much garbage, but then there are projects like Avalanche. People love to hate on crypto and the stupid puppy coins, but meanwhile, projects like Avalanche are actually running the efficient, performant networks that everyone is shouting will never exist. It takes years to ignore fud and hype and quietly follow the fundamentals.
  - t_mann 4y ago
    Avalanche is probably the biggest disappointment out of the whole bunch. They started out strong with a new consensus algorithm, and then they started hyping 'subnets', which turned out to be plain L1s with artificial restrictions on who can be a validator. Their tokenomics are so skewed in favour of AvaLabs and their early VC backers that they removed the pie chart from their website to conceal it. It's probably the most centralized out of all the wannabe Ethereums, with Emin singlehandedly calling the shots (how much needs to be staked to be a validator, whether subnet validators need to be whitelisted...), and they don't seem to have much of an idea where they're going (they went from bashing L2s and saying subnets are so much better to saying 'let's build L2s, ours will be so much better than Ethereum's'; they still haven't managed to build a bridging solution between subnets and they seem to have given up on that, given that they don't seem capable of competing with the existing interoperability protocols that treat subnets like any other chain, Avalanche-related or not). They also lost an 8-figure sum from the Terra collapse (Emin himself promoted UST after the depeg had started), which does not bode well for an ecosystem where they are still the only truly active entity promoting new projects. They're more than ripe for replacement by a standalone EVM-compatible chain that takes the only thing that's genuinely innovative about Avalanche, the consensus algorithms, and leaves the rest to the community (ie an actually decentralized project).
DonHopkins 4y ago
After printing this allegedly white paper out, I realized it's probably a collusion with Hewlett Packard, to sell color printer ink!
- NBJack 4y ago
  I can see it now: HewlPackCoin, a crypto coin pegged to the current price per ounce of Hewlett Packard ink cartridges. They seem to synergize well. In theory, if you tweak the parameters correctly, you can print a transaction output equal to the value of the ink it was created with. Stable!
- zerostablecoin 4y ago
  We can confirm that we would never collaborate with inkjet printer manufacturers. Inkjet cartridges, like rare earth metals such as platinum, can be traded on commodities exchanges and are a reliable way to store value. Indeed, you can probably buy several kg of gold for a single CYMK cartridge package. We, in contrast, are committed to a store of value that does not change, no matter what.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by jmacd 4y ago

tenuousemphasis 4y ago

>feeling pretty strongly that almost everything crypto is going to zero. People have been saying the same thing for over 10 years. So far that hasn't been a good bet.

mirntyfirty 4y ago
The next few years will see a sharp decline in liquidity that will decrease speculation compared to the last 10 years.
proto-n 4y ago
People also have been saying a recession is nigh for 10 years with it being the wrong bet. Until suddenly it wasn't.
- zeven7 4y ago
  It still would have been the wrong bet if you were out of the market or short for the last 10 years. Even if you didn't get liquidated on a short in that time, you'd still be way down on your bet.
- loeg 4y ago
  It’s not even obviously correct now.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- spencerchubb 4y ago
  If you say that a recession is coming, and keep saying it for 10 years, you are going to be right
- pikelet 4y ago
  That's rather different than betting on the death of something.
sumeno 4y ago
10 whole years? Wow, cryptocurrency truly is unstoppable!

zeven7 4y ago

> I think if it survives, the crypto community is in for a reckoning much like 2000. Bitcoin will be the Yahoo (a brand that survives, but does not create new value, and stagnates) and all the alt-coins are the Pets.com etc of the era. Poof, gone, vanished. Even as a crypto enthusiast, I agree with this general sentiment. (My 2¢ is Ethereum will emerge as the Amazon.)

fartcannon 4y ago
From an outsiders perspective, etherium definitely has the stronger PR.

tootie 4y ago

Every time I think "I don't understand crypto" then I do some more reading and realize I actually do.

jksmith 4y ago

Not clear on your "Bitcoin will be the Yahoo" reduction. There's scarcity and commodity qualities to take into account, and making absolute statements about behavioral economics has a far greater chance of being wrong. Not arguing to a binary reduction; just suggesting signal to noise is way to low to make this kind of prognostication. So a good qualifier for this space is to explicitly say "My gut tells me that..." While I don't know what my gut tells me about BTC yet, it does tell me that the compromise elemental to all non-BTC coins, including ETH will eventually damage or even destroy them. The one exception might be ZeroStableCoin.

legutierr 4y ago
> it does tell me that the compromise elemental to all non-BTC coins, including ETH will eventually damage or even destroy them What is this elemental compromise you are referring to?
- jksmith 4y ago
  Willingness to fork, which requires human choices/intervention. Seems to me the extinction of forking is (was) a design goal of BTC. I know of no example of that with alts. In fact, there seems to be zero appetite for this goal with alts.
  - kybernetikos 4y ago
    Vitalik has talked about the balance between innovation and stability and has said that it is a goal for ethereum to become more stable over time. The danger is just doing that too early and ossifying around an inadequate design.

legutierr 4y ago

> I think if it survives, the crypto community is in for a reckoning much like 2000. You very well may be right. But the most memorable headline for me from that era is this Barron's article: https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1447403828505088011 https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1447403828505088011 If Bitcoin is the equivalent of Yahoo, what are the equivalents of Amazon and Google? People love to use Pets.com as a symbol of excess for that era, but it might not be a great example to use to make that point. At its highest point, Pets.com had a valuation of approximately $300 million (of which ~30% was owned by Amazon). Compare that to the ~$3 billion that PetSmart paid for Chewey.com five years ago, and Chewy.com's current market cap of $12 billion (down ~75% from its high). It's a bit ironic that the pets.com domain redirects to petsmart.com, given that the PetSmart LBO eight years ago, and its acquisition of Chewy five years ago, and the Chewy IPO three years ago—PetSmart sold a minority interest Chewy to protect it from PetSmart's creditors and to pay down debt—were all motivated in large part by the fact that online retail has massively supplanted in-person retail throughout the economy. Was Pets.com overvalued? Or did it just run out of runway before it could displace the incumbents? Is Crypto going to zero? Or is it simply that new technologies take time to find their footing?

syllablehq 4y ago
Exactly: Ignore the crap, and look for the Amazons and Googles. There is so much garbage, but then there are projects like Avalanche. People love to hate on crypto and the stupid puppy coins, but meanwhile, projects like Avalanche are actually running the efficient, performant networks that everyone is shouting will never exist. It takes years to ignore fud and hype and quietly follow the fundamentals.
- t_mann 4y ago
  Avalanche is probably the biggest disappointment out of the whole bunch. They started out strong with a new consensus algorithm, and then they started hyping 'subnets', which turned out to be plain L1s with artificial restrictions on who can be a validator. Their tokenomics are so skewed in favour of AvaLabs and their early VC backers that they removed the pie chart from their website to conceal it. It's probably the most centralized out of all the wannabe Ethereums, with Emin singlehandedly calling the shots (how much needs to be staked to be a validator, whether subnet validators need to be whitelisted...), and they don't seem to have much of an idea where they're going (they went from bashing L2s and saying subnets are so much better to saying 'let's build L2s, ours will be so much better than Ethereum's'; they still haven't managed to build a bridging solution between subnets and they seem to have given up on that, given that they don't seem capable of competing with the existing interoperability protocols that treat subnets like any other chain, Avalanche-related or not). They also lost an 8-figure sum from the Terra collapse (Emin himself promoted UST after the depeg had started), which does not bode well for an ecosystem where they are still the only truly active entity promoting new projects. They're more than ripe for replacement by a standalone EVM-compatible chain that takes the only thing that's genuinely innovative about Avalanche, the consensus algorithms, and leaves the rest to the community (ie an actually decentralized project).

DonHopkins 4y ago

After printing this allegedly white paper out, I realized it's probably a collusion with Hewlett Packard, to sell color printer ink!

NBJack 4y ago
I can see it now: HewlPackCoin, a crypto coin pegged to the current price per ounce of Hewlett Packard ink cartridges. They seem to synergize well. In theory, if you tweak the parameters correctly, you can print a transaction output equal to the value of the ink it was created with. Stable!
zerostablecoin 4y ago
We can confirm that we would never collaborate with inkjet printer manufacturers. Inkjet cartridges, like rare earth metals such as platinum, can be traded on commodities exchanges and are a reliable way to store value. Indeed, you can probably buy several kg of gold for a single CYMK cartridge package. We, in contrast, are committed to a store of value that does not change, no matter what.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]