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It’s plausibly the collapse of the largest ponzi the world has ever known, by lrders of magnitude. Madoff was $60 billion. Crypto was $2.6 trillion at its peak.

by graeme 4y ago

It’s plausibly the collapse of the largest ponzi the world has ever known, by lrders of magnitude. Madoff was $60 billion. Crypto was $2.6 trillion at its peak. This article itself doesn’t add much but having the ones with analysis pop up frequently seems valid. Very interesting to watch this in real time, as in 2008. Ponzi doesn’t quite fit and my hope is some day crypto will be known as a Nakamoto Scheme.

pvg 4y ago
pop up frequently seems valid It's not HN-valid on a daily, never mind hourly basis which is where we're at. That's just how the site functions and maintains its own interestingness, irrespective of the interestingness of any individual topic or article.
robga 4y ago
> my hope is some day crypto will be known as a Nakamoto Scheme It’s called this in various places. See https://salbayat.org/the-strange-case-of-nakamotos-bitcoin/ https://salbayat.org/the-strange-case-of-nakamotos-bitcoin/
lamontcg 4y ago
Crypto was not a $2.6 trillion scam. The "market value" does not have any correlation to how much money was thrown into the pot. Back in 2018 the estimate of the 2017 bubble that blew it up to $1T the first time was that there was $5B-$10B or so sent into the system. This time was probably several tens of billion.
- graeme 4y ago
  They measured Madoff by amount of money promised, not money put in, iirc
rufus_foreman 4y ago
It's probably close to the peak of people not knowing what the term Ponzi means, which is notable.
mekster 4y ago
It's also the tech with largest misunderstanding of its value in HN. 13 years of existence without a center figure shilling for the most part, it's still holding as a way to store value without any central authority and more application logics built on higher levels and the conclusion that some people bring is a ponzi scheme? Do people actually know what cryptocurrencies are about or are those people someone who lost buying ATH or missed the boat seeing a friend become a millionaire?

by graeme 4y ago

pvg 4y ago

pop up frequently seems valid It's not HN-valid on a daily, never mind hourly basis which is where we're at. That's just how the site functions and maintains its own interestingness, irrespective of the interestingness of any individual topic or article.

robga 4y ago

> my hope is some day crypto will be known as a Nakamoto Scheme It’s called this in various places. See https://salbayat.org/the-strange-case-of-nakamotos-bitcoin/ https://salbayat.org/the-strange-case-of-nakamotos-bitcoin/

lamontcg 4y ago

Crypto was not a $2.6 trillion scam. The "market value" does not have any correlation to how much money was thrown into the pot. Back in 2018 the estimate of the 2017 bubble that blew it up to $1T the first time was that there was $5B-$10B or so sent into the system. This time was probably several tens of billion.

graeme 4y ago
They measured Madoff by amount of money promised, not money put in, iirc

rufus_foreman 4y ago

It's probably close to the peak of people not knowing what the term Ponzi means, which is notable.

mekster 4y ago

It's also the tech with largest misunderstanding of its value in HN. 13 years of existence without a center figure shilling for the most part, it's still holding as a way to store value without any central authority and more application logics built on higher levels and the conclusion that some people bring is a ponzi scheme? Do people actually know what cryptocurrencies are about or are those people someone who lost buying ATH or missed the boat seeing a friend become a millionaire?