12 ms·

Show HN: The Coinbase FOMO Calculator

108 points by zarie 4y ago

Made this using Power BI and the Crypto Watch API. Started making this in November 2021, but never got around to publishing it, so that is the reason for the 'FOMO' in the title - probably a good thing if you 'missed out' on the crypto hype late last year. Now it serves as a way to see how much you 'saved' by not putting in money. Hope someone finds it fun!

moritonal 4y ago
Feature Request: Is it possible to bind the values selected in the diagram with the form, and then bind them all with the query params? I'd love to share this with some friends, but on specific periods (not as gloats, just to discuss).
joezydeco 4y ago
Now add random periods where Coinbase is offline and you can't move money for +/- 4 days.
- Vladimof 4y ago
  That's the main reason why I moved away from Coinbase years ago... no problem with Kraken so far. Every time the market moves fast they don't allow you to trade for a long time and they don't give you a reason... unlike the stock market (they frequently halt trading on specific stocks but at least they tell you why).
FatalLogic 4y ago
There's a confusing bug for longer time ranges. It's impossible to select a real start date before 2015. The start date is effectively limited by the period you chose, whatever start date you tried to pick. There's no warning of this, but if you look at the start date of the chart you'll notice it may be much later than the date you thought you had picked edit: With that bug, choosing a period of 1 week is the way to get the longest possible time range for the chart, about 7 years One observation: The volatility is terrifying, but the multimillion dollar gains are interesting
senectus1 4y ago
heh, thats fun to play with.
fartcannon 4y ago
Took forever to load. Is that just on my end?
TedShiller 4y ago
You could have made trillions of dollars with ANY asset in ANY time period if you time it right, so this is not special or unique
- alephnan 4y ago
  > trillions of dollars with ANY asset There SOME assets which are not worth trillions, so no. > in ANY time period There are SOME time periods which any given assets decline in value. Over an infinite time scale, the survival rate of everything is zero. But of course you're speaking about selecting the optimal interval in that time scale. The problem is we are not immortals, infinite time scales is irrelevant. Many are born too late to be Warren Buffet.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- carnitine 4y ago
  No, you definitely could not. That would require a highly liquid asset.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Yeah not trillions and not any asset. But many millions and 99% of traded funds, yeah.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Indeed. The only entity capable of this is the Federal Reserve.
aaronwalker 4y ago
Ive heard conflicting viewpoints on the current crypto crash. Some say that this is different than the rest, and that crypto has already reached it’s all time max, whereas others say that this is just another pullback before an even larger bull run. With crypto, it is so hard to know what it’s actual value should be, since unlike a stock there are no earnings and thus you can’t look at the P/E ratio to determine its pricing. I’m curious to hear what you guys think—-and how you determine the value of crypto.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bestnameever 4y ago
  > I’m curious to hear what you guys think—-and how you determine the value of crypto. The value at any point in time is determined on the exchanges. I think a better question is what changes the value, creates the volatility, and so forth.
  - datashaman 4y ago
    Buy and sell pressure.
  - mellavora 4y ago
    No, the clearing price is determined by the exchanges. The value is the net benefit (including future benefit) that it provides. McDonalds creates value by providing convenient and consistent hamburgers, and entry-level jobs. Bitcoin, I've been told, creates value by allowing easy transfer of funds. Thus the value of Bitcoin should be based on how Bitcoin transaction costs and externalities (lack of regulation is both a plus and a minus) stack up against other money transfer systems.
- vages 4y ago
  When I had crypto assets, I came upon this article about “Greater fool theory” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory It made me sell all my crypto (luckily at a profit), and I have not looked back.
bloak 4y ago
Can we have a logarithmic scale on the y-axis as an option, please? One could argue that a log scale should be the default for any graph showing a price over time, though it would confuse people who don't know what a log is. In this case it might make it easier to compare what happened around 2018 with what happened around 2020-2021.
paulpauper 4y ago
how about the Coinbase job offer rescinded game
fishtoaster 4y ago
A good counter to "I could have made $X bazillion if I'd gotten into Y thing at Z time" is to remember that you could have doubled your money at the horse track yesterday by betting on the right horse at the right time. So the only question is: what's different between Y thing and horse betting? Did you have enough information at Z time to know you should have invested? Or are you just wishing you could have predicted the future? Anyway, that's the framing I use to counter the regret of not getting into any given asset that's appreciated a lot in a short period: BTC, tesla stock, etc.
- xuki 4y ago
  Who goes for horse betting when you could buy powerball tickets?
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    Because horse betting is a game of skill where powerball is pure randomness.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  Whenever someone says "I could have made X money if I put it into Y" I say "yeah, crystal balls are in short supply".
- ramraj07 4y ago
  The issue is that many of us WeRE present and actively monitoring crypto. Heck I even tried to mine bitcoin back when you had a chance to mine one in your own gpu. I even thought maybe I’ll buy a coin or two; it’s only 20 bucks each! But “better judgement” said that it’s a currency it shouldn’t appreciate so why bother unless you want to actually use it? So if there’s regret it’s because many of us feel almost penalized for applying better judgement. It’s like you’re rewarded for stupidity. Not a single person I know and actually respect invested in crypto, and half brained idiots I know have become millionaires. So yeah this is not like horse betting.
  - dojitza1 4y ago
daenz 4y ago
Even with god-tier timing, I would have had to invest an extremely reckless amount of savings (at the time) to make anything serious, so this calculator actually puts some of my FOMO to rest.
- bragr 4y ago
  And that's before you even touch whether there's enough liquidity in the different coins listed to put your $100k (or whatever) in at that cheap early price and get your millions out at the high price.
awk_awa 4y ago
Can someone brighter than me explain what to calculator is supposed to show? what is the "period" parameter for?
pawelduda 4y ago
Now please make one that calculates it for Coinbase employee wallets that buy dead shitcoins days before listing
rglullis 4y ago
That's cool, but what I'd really like to see would be some form of tool to define different strategies and visualize how they would've worked. I mean, probably professional traders have tons of these to do back-testing, but it would be nice to have something simple that people could use to check basic strategies. Just as an example, when I was still into BTC my "strategy" was to buy $100 very month, and in the end of the year I would sell just enough to get my money back and only if the average price went up in the year. It worked well for the bull years, and losses (if I was forced to realize them) were capped at $1200/year. I think a tool like that should be good not just for crypto, but also to help those understand that sensible investing is not about timing the market and picking the right lottery tickets.
- zarie 4y ago
  Hi, thanks for checking it out and leaving some great ideas. A graph comparing with two strategies and seeing which was more effective given a certain starting date would help people see your point.

108 points by zarie 4y ago

moritonal 4y ago

Feature Request: Is it possible to bind the values selected in the diagram with the form, and then bind them all with the query params? I'd love to share this with some friends, but on specific periods (not as gloats, just to discuss).

joezydeco 4y ago

Now add random periods where Coinbase is offline and you can't move money for +/- 4 days.

Vladimof 4y ago
That's the main reason why I moved away from Coinbase years ago... no problem with Kraken so far. Every time the market moves fast they don't allow you to trade for a long time and they don't give you a reason... unlike the stock market (they frequently halt trading on specific stocks but at least they tell you why).

FatalLogic 4y ago

There's a confusing bug for longer time ranges. It's impossible to select a real start date before 2015. The start date is effectively limited by the period you chose, whatever start date you tried to pick. There's no warning of this, but if you look at the start date of the chart you'll notice it may be much later than the date you thought you had picked edit: With that bug, choosing a period of 1 week is the way to get the longest possible time range for the chart, about 7 years One observation: The volatility is terrifying, but the multimillion dollar gains are interesting

senectus1 4y ago

heh, thats fun to play with.

fartcannon 4y ago

Took forever to load. Is that just on my end?

TedShiller 4y ago

You could have made trillions of dollars with ANY asset in ANY time period if you time it right, so this is not special or unique

alephnan 4y ago
> trillions of dollars with ANY asset There SOME assets which are not worth trillions, so no. > in ANY time period There are SOME time periods which any given assets decline in value. Over an infinite time scale, the survival rate of everything is zero. But of course you're speaking about selecting the optimal interval in that time scale. The problem is we are not immortals, infinite time scales is irrelevant. Many are born too late to be Warren Buffet.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
carnitine 4y ago
No, you definitely could not. That would require a highly liquid asset.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Yeah not trillions and not any asset. But many millions and 99% of traded funds, yeah.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Indeed. The only entity capable of this is the Federal Reserve.

aaronwalker 4y ago

Ive heard conflicting viewpoints on the current crypto crash. Some say that this is different than the rest, and that crypto has already reached it’s all time max, whereas others say that this is just another pullback before an even larger bull run. With crypto, it is so hard to know what it’s actual value should be, since unlike a stock there are no earnings and thus you can’t look at the P/E ratio to determine its pricing. I’m curious to hear what you guys think—-and how you determine the value of crypto.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bestnameever 4y ago
> I’m curious to hear what you guys think—-and how you determine the value of crypto. The value at any point in time is determined on the exchanges. I think a better question is what changes the value, creates the volatility, and so forth.
- datashaman 4y ago
  Buy and sell pressure.
- mellavora 4y ago
  No, the clearing price is determined by the exchanges. The value is the net benefit (including future benefit) that it provides. McDonalds creates value by providing convenient and consistent hamburgers, and entry-level jobs. Bitcoin, I've been told, creates value by allowing easy transfer of funds. Thus the value of Bitcoin should be based on how Bitcoin transaction costs and externalities (lack of regulation is both a plus and a minus) stack up against other money transfer systems.
vages 4y ago
When I had crypto assets, I came upon this article about “Greater fool theory” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory It made me sell all my crypto (luckily at a profit), and I have not looked back.

bloak 4y ago

Can we have a logarithmic scale on the y-axis as an option, please? One could argue that a log scale should be the default for any graph showing a price over time, though it would confuse people who don't know what a log is. In this case it might make it easier to compare what happened around 2018 with what happened around 2020-2021.

paulpauper 4y ago

how about the Coinbase job offer rescinded game

fishtoaster 4y ago

A good counter to "I could have made $X bazillion if I'd gotten into Y thing at Z time" is to remember that you could have doubled your money at the horse track yesterday by betting on the right horse at the right time. So the only question is: what's different between Y thing and horse betting? Did you have enough information at Z time to know you should have invested? Or are you just wishing you could have predicted the future? Anyway, that's the framing I use to counter the regret of not getting into any given asset that's appreciated a lot in a short period: BTC, tesla stock, etc.

xuki 4y ago
Who goes for horse betting when you could buy powerball tickets?
- charcircuit 4y ago
  Because horse betting is a game of skill where powerball is pure randomness.
bcrosby95 4y ago
Whenever someone says "I could have made X money if I put it into Y" I say "yeah, crystal balls are in short supply".
ramraj07 4y ago
The issue is that many of us WeRE present and actively monitoring crypto. Heck I even tried to mine bitcoin back when you had a chance to mine one in your own gpu. I even thought maybe I’ll buy a coin or two; it’s only 20 bucks each! But “better judgement” said that it’s a currency it shouldn’t appreciate so why bother unless you want to actually use it? So if there’s regret it’s because many of us feel almost penalized for applying better judgement. It’s like you’re rewarded for stupidity. Not a single person I know and actually respect invested in crypto, and half brained idiots I know have become millionaires. So yeah this is not like horse betting.
- dojitza1 4y ago

daenz 4y ago

Even with god-tier timing, I would have had to invest an extremely reckless amount of savings (at the time) to make anything serious, so this calculator actually puts some of my FOMO to rest.

bragr 4y ago
And that's before you even touch whether there's enough liquidity in the different coins listed to put your $100k (or whatever) in at that cheap early price and get your millions out at the high price.

awk_awa 4y ago

Can someone brighter than me explain what to calculator is supposed to show? what is the "period" parameter for?

pawelduda 4y ago

Now please make one that calculates it for Coinbase employee wallets that buy dead shitcoins days before listing

rglullis 4y ago

That's cool, but what I'd really like to see would be some form of tool to define different strategies and visualize how they would've worked. I mean, probably professional traders have tons of these to do back-testing, but it would be nice to have something simple that people could use to check basic strategies. Just as an example, when I was still into BTC my "strategy" was to buy $100 very month, and in the end of the year I would sell just enough to get my money back and only if the average price went up in the year. It worked well for the bull years, and losses (if I was forced to realize them) were capped at $1200/year. I think a tool like that should be good not just for crypto, but also to help those understand that sensible investing is not about timing the market and picking the right lottery tickets.

zarie 4y ago
Hi, thanks for checking it out and leaving some great ideas. A graph comparing with two strategies and seeing which was more effective given a certain starting date would help people see your point.