11 ms·

Crypto Is Crashing, But Companies Aren't Acting Like It

45 points by samizdis 4y ago

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
Well it's not the first, or last time Crypto has crashed. It seems that a lot of companies have already invested in some form of crypto related metaverse, one company even changed their name, Meta. If there is money to be made, and clearly there is, it will live on in some form - just needs to shake some of that bad reputation and sliminess along the way - or at least superficially present it as more legitimate.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Ha ha, is that a back-handed compliment? I read: "If there is money to be made, ___gambling___ will live on in some form." Or fill in the blank with any other vice.
  - NoPie 4y ago
    Well, gambling is legal in many places. The US does not allow it online but many other countries do. For the same reason crypto will survive as a form of gambling in many countries even if some countries won't allow it.
    - TecoAndJix 4y ago
      Online gambling is allowed in certain US states: Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
    - ourmandave 4y ago
      It would be nice if the crypto ponzi schemes presented themselves as gambling, instead of "investing" (with 30%+ APY, lol) and hawked by celebrities. At least gambling is regulated by states.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      Not debating the legality of gambling/crypto. Just pointing out that "things that make money" can be a fairly low bar.
  - kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
    In fact, fill in the entire sentence after “If there is money to be made…” with any words.
- amelius 4y ago
  If it crashes often enough it will be banned by governments as there are also other negative side effects (e.g. it enables certain criminal activities like ransomware).
- herbst 4y ago
  Is there any indication that meta has any interest to use any kind of NFT standard or anything else that has to do anything with crypto meta verses?
giaour 4y ago
> at least in 2008 we weren’t subjected to a barrage of defensive Twitter antics from the bankers asleep at the wheel. We were subjected to similar rhetoric from Enron execs as that house of cards crumbled[0]. Refusing to face reality in the face of financial calamity is the only rational choice when you are involved in a confidence scam, so we shouldn't be surprised at the Crypto community's recent behavior. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/business/enron-s-many-strands-ex-chairman-s-finances-lay-sold-shares-for-100-million.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/business/enron-s-many-str...
jacknews 4y ago
"The prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two most popular coins, have tumbled more than 70 percent from pandemic highs; the NFT market has cratered; and optimism is in short supply. Everywhere you look, the dominoes are falling: One prominent firm, Three Arrows Capital, is reportedly approaching collapse, while other companies are desperately seeking bailouts to stay afloat." As the article indirectly acknowledges, this sounds just like 2008. I didn't see the banks all pack up their tables and go home then. In fact they were collectively bailed out by government. That is, each and every one of us, indirectly. edit: I certainly don't think crypto should be bailed.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  some banks were bailed out. Many hundreds of banks went bust.
- NoPie 4y ago
  Interesting that many people expect that crypto which was hailed as independent of any government now needs to be bailed out by the government. Why would banks even care about crypto except for transaction fees they can collect?
  - LewisVerstappen 4y ago
    Literally no one is expecting Crypto to be bailed out by the US gov.
    - dogma1138 4y ago
      https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4050676/bank-england-bailout-systemically-stablecoins-case-collapse https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4050676/bank-england-b... It would be just a matter of time until other governments consider this too.
      - DennisP 4y ago
        That's just for stablecoins backed by off-chain assets.
superkuh 4y ago
Actual cryptocurrency does exist and has very little to do with these modern scams (ie, stablecoins, nfts, or anything else centrally controlled). It hasn't been possible to grow a cryptocurrency up from the vulnerable grassroots state since massive public attention and "investors" got involved ~2015. Pretty much every "crypto" project after that date has just been a normal financial scam dressed up in "crypto" clothing. And these "news" companies, and all the "investors" can't tell the difference, which is the point, I guess. I really hope this is the end of people "investing" in currencies but I doubt it. So the ignorant "investor" opinion that drove speculation up now drives it down... but it has zero impact on me actually using the bitcoin blockchain to pay for things.
- msoad 4y ago
  I honestly don’t think actual cryptocurrency’s exist. I was very excited when bitcoin came out in 2008 or so but soon after I thought this is not really useful as a currency
  - shaky-carrousel 4y ago
    It's globally used for cheap international money transfers. I use litecoin for that.
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      Litecoin also has some privacy features now too — MWEB (mimblewimble extension blocks) that aggregates all MW tx into a single blob, and hides the amounts transacted. Check it out if you haven’t seen it, it would be good for the network to expand the volume of the anonymity set.
      - shaky-carrousel 4y ago
        I didn't know, I'll check it out, thanks!
  - voldacar 4y ago
0des 4y ago
Posting cryptoasset focused articles on HN is such a weird thing. Do you expect level headed unbiased commentary or are you trying to reaffirm some internally held biases? HN's response is not variable with regards to crypto, it's predictable, but in a world where you can't buy anything with karma, what is the point? Be more interesting than that.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  It’s possible to still have fruitful conversations with a completely negative valence. And it’s not even completely negative. There’s always people making comments like these ones, of the form “woe is me, everyone is unfair to my favorite scam!”
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    My fav scam is TCP/IP. I can’t believe they made every computer on earth speak it and in general accept traffic from anyone else on the planet! Without permission! Haha it’ll never work.
    - ntoskrnl 4y ago
      TCP/IP is used for ransomware. I hope regulators save us from these criminals!
      - randomhodler84 4y ago
        AES, the criminal math. Every day countless innocent bytes are diffused and confused JUST because someone might be watching. Where will the madness end!
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Not even clear to me what parallel you’re trying to draw, even under a generous interpretation.
      - 4y ago
ntoskrnl 4y ago
Crypto has given back its money-printer-fueled gains since 2020. Tech stocks have done the same. Why should one set of companies should be more worried than the other? The market gives, the market takes away.
- giaour 4y ago
  The market for Tesla cars is still red hot, though. I would be extremely worried about Tesla if there were no factories and dealers, just stock and hype. If hype is your only asset, it's hard to see how you recover from a crash.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Hype seems to be the one infinitely renewable resource.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      So too are AdWords.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    This is not crypto's first crash, and won't be its last. From early 2018, ETH dropped 94%. The current price is about fifteen times higher than it was at the bottom of the 2018 bear market. So either you can recover when hype is your only asset, or hype isn't crypto's only asset.
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  Crypto companies are tech stocks. But even so, crypto itself has actually given up LESS than the typical high growth tech stock. The pre-pandemic price of BTC was around 9-10k. It's still double that right now. Meanwhile, companies like Teladoc and Shopify have fallen BELOW their pre pandemic levels, and newly IPO'd companies like Palantir, Robinhood, etc. are floundering down to new lows every other week.
  - 4y ago
logicalmonster 4y ago
Without commenting specifically on crypto, I’d say that any kind of financial speculation is a cut-throat endeavor and taking any media reports at face value is foolish without doing your own research and using your gut. Big players FUD the assets they want to buy cheaply, and hype up the bags they want to get rid of. This has been going on online even before crypto was invented.
- abrichr 4y ago
  This seems logical from first principles. What hard evidence do we have to confirm this is the case?
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    > hard evidence Most people in the business are smart. And smart people generally don't line up to be explicit about manipulating the market and committing possible crimes when it can come back to bite them. Luckily, despite his best attempts to remove many copies of this video from the Internet, we have Jim Cramer on deck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfixbq_u0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfixbq_u0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkqzRs95Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkqzRs95Sc Also, as a general rule, it just pays to understand the following: > With few exceptions, the entire media is shit and barely understands the topics they cover. It is easy for smart people to manipulate them. > Access journalism is widely practiced. > There's literally millions/billions/trillions of dollars at stake. In this environment, it's close to a complete metaphysical certainty that media manipulation to profit occurs.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  They aren’t called market makers for no reason, but it’s also not as simple as you make it out to be. They can have impact on the trend however the market can only be controlled to an extent. When the shit hits the fan everyone loses money the problem is that the bailout tends to be rather selective. And there is no easy way out of this cycle either. It’s easy to say just don’t bail them out but you are also bailing millions of people who stand to completely lose their life savings, pensions and jobs and so the cycle repeats. If we want to dissuade unadulterated greed we first need to find a solution of how to effectively finance those who are no longer economically productive.
siphor 4y ago
I still can’t believe how much money VCs have pumped into this crap, legitimizing it. Sequoia and a16z effectively force LPs to put money in it. Even with a tinfoil hat I can’t figure out their endgame, is it really just to make money off of greater fools?
- bgitarts 4y ago
  Endgame is decentralizing the internet and perhaps non-internet protocols. Even if the probability of a decentralized social network working is small, the upside in the case it does work is so large that it's worth the bet ie: 100% downside vs 10,000%+ upside. If only 1 out of 100 such bets works out they break even. If 2 they have a profitable fund, 3+ they have knocked it out of the park.
  - Tsiklon 4y ago
    I don't believe the VCs have such lofty or noble goals as decentralising the internet. If it were possible I believe they'd want to corner the emerging market as it grows. But I think you're right that the upside is so attractive given how little they need to invest to realise significant gains.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >Endgame is decentralizing the internet and perhaps non-internet protocols. The internet was always decentralized. That's literally the entire point of TCP/IP. The web, however, is indeed being centralized; and crypto is at the forefront of that. For all the talk of "democratizing finance", the reality is that all of these web3 proponents have no interest in anything beyond enriching themselves by reinventing the existing centralized banking system minus all that pesky regulation.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  - 4y ago
funstuff007 4y ago
article subtitle: The crash should have been a humbling moment for the industry. Instead, companies are doubling down. And then I saw no mention the sine qua non of that, when in late May a16z announce its 4th crypto fund at $4.5B. Man, would I kill for that list of LPs. They have deep, deep pockets and you can sell them anything. https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/andreessen-horowitz-raises-45-billion-fourth-crypto-fund-2022-05-25/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/andreessen-horowitz-r...
- DennisP 4y ago
  Everybody says "buy low sell high," and almost everybody thinks investors are crazy when they actually buy low.
  - funstuff007 4y ago
    very true, I guess my assumption is they are buying when the jig is up, not when asset prices are cheaper.
endorphine 4y ago
https://archive.ph/bpyIC https://archive.ph/bpyIC
pacarvalho 4y ago
I believe the title of this article to be misleading. Companies ARE acting like it. Coinbase, after all, did reduce its headcount in order to reduce their burn rate to be able to withstand the market turbulence. More importantly, the current market turmoil extends way past just crypto. Many investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds, startups, commodities, etc have experience elevated volatility recently. That is normal. The market does not monotonically move up forever. Also, do not take the above statement to mean I endorse crypto as an investment. I believe crypto is akin to unregulated startup investing (at least for most higher risk startups you need to be accredited which is a way to acknowledge risk). When investing in a new crypto you are IMO investing in the idea and team making it. The company! Not on a line-chart on your broker's screen. If the project turns out (in the long run) to have widespread adoption you would hope its value would go up. For instance, consider the Chia (XCH) project. It currently has a market cap of $165M. Therefore, if I were buying Chia at the moment I would think about the following: Do I believe that this company/idea can be worth more in the future? Is it a fair valuation for this startup/company?
funstuff007 4y ago
money quote: “Do you know even one person who has a problem withdrawing from Celsius?” he tweeted. Just over 24 hours later, the company put a freeze on all withdrawals, locking customers out of their accounts. (The freeze remains in place almost two weeks later.)
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Think what we’re seeing is really a market correction. Crypto took off, and everyone was investing in it, even if they didn’t know what it was. Companies like Coinbase made it very easy to do. What I think we’re seeing is all of those viral investors, so to speak, jumping ship. It’s still worth something, so someone out there thinks it has value. If it has value, then it’s worth pursuing.
_8j50 4y ago
Is crypto correcting or crashing? Because I profited a bit when I bought btc right under $20k a week later it seems to be rebounding. My speculation is people want it to fall so they can buy low like I did. The panic just isn't there, yes it has and will go down dramatically but the people that buy crypto still have expendible liquidity. This is crypto being naturally unstable, it isn't an index fund you expect to remain stable. Investing aside illicit use of crypto alone will ensure significant cashflow in my opinion. It isn't just speculative investors that are in the game. As an investment, it has a lot if vaue similar to derivatives, inherent value is not as significant as consumer/investor demand.
DennisP 4y ago
ETH has crashed from $4800 to $1200. That's a pretty terrible crash unless you consider that the current price is still a roughly 10X gain from March 2020. Volatility works both ways and the press often doesn't consider that, especially in bear markets. The reason companies are still involved is because they do consider it.
- throwk8s 4y ago
  Anyone who wants to experience volatility can start wagering money in a casino though. If volatility was the objective then investment companies could more easily find it in coin flips, instead of capitalizing new ventures.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    In a casino you know the odds are against you. In crypto so far, the long-term trend has been up, so the odds have been in favor of anyone holding long-term.
kragen 4y ago
Bitcoin is ridiculously volatile—this is the third time it's lost 70% of its value—but it's still more than twice US$10k. That was its low price in May 02020, the first year of the pandemic, which was its all-time high in June 02019. Maybe it'll go to US$10k or US$5k again. I don't share Gottsegen's confidence that the numbers "will almost certainly go up again". They certainly could, but there's no fundamental reason they must. It would be great if we could, as Gottsegen says, shake the fraudsters out of the ecosystem—and I'd add the gamblers, too—leaving only the people who are using it as a currency, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Certainly if the numbers go up again they'll be back.
- andirk 4y ago
  I hear your idea of weeding the fraudsters and gamblers out, but democracy of money aka bitcoin (kind of) is all inclusive (kind of). It just needs checks and balances so it doesn't get gamed. If you took all the gamblers, fraudsters, manipulators, bad actors, evil horrible people out of US stonks, it would also be better, more reliable, more useful, more honest.
  - kragen 4y ago
    It would be more honest, but the spreads would be a lot wider. Also you'd be structurally denying those evil horrible people the ability to save money in the asset class with the highest returns over a normal working lifetime, which is probably a disproportionate level of punishment for gambling.
    - hnfong 4y ago
      When the only operations you can do is place buy and sell orders at a certain price, I'd say it's really hard to be evil even if you wanted to.
mayowaxcvi 4y ago
As long as crypto investors don’t ask to be bailed out by the government, I am fine with almost all the scammy behaviour.
mumblemumble 4y ago
I doubt that crypto is really dead, just that tough times are coming. And fortune favors the bold, especially in a culture like that of the crypto community. I would guess that the leaders of these companies are making an educated guess that that forging ahead won't guarantee that they can survive the coming winter, but going to ground will guarantee non-survival.

45 points by samizdis 4y ago

Well it's not the first, or last time Crypto has crashed. It seems that a lot of companies have already invested in some form of crypto related metaverse, one company even changed their name, Meta. If there is money to be made, and clearly there is, it will live on in some form - just needs to shake some of that bad reputation and sliminess along the way - or at least superficially present it as more legitimate.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Ha ha, is that a back-handed compliment? I read: "If there is money to be made, ___gambling___ will live on in some form." Or fill in the blank with any other vice.
- NoPie 4y ago
  Well, gambling is legal in many places. The US does not allow it online but many other countries do. For the same reason crypto will survive as a form of gambling in many countries even if some countries won't allow it.
  - TecoAndJix 4y ago
    Online gambling is allowed in certain US states: Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
  - ourmandave 4y ago
    It would be nice if the crypto ponzi schemes presented themselves as gambling, instead of "investing" (with 30%+ APY, lol) and hawked by celebrities. At least gambling is regulated by states.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Not debating the legality of gambling/crypto. Just pointing out that "things that make money" can be a fairly low bar.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  In fact, fill in the entire sentence after “If there is money to be made…” with any words.
amelius 4y ago
If it crashes often enough it will be banned by governments as there are also other negative side effects (e.g. it enables certain criminal activities like ransomware).
herbst 4y ago
Is there any indication that meta has any interest to use any kind of NFT standard or anything else that has to do anything with crypto meta verses?

giaour 4y ago

> at least in 2008 we weren’t subjected to a barrage of defensive Twitter antics from the bankers asleep at the wheel. We were subjected to similar rhetoric from Enron execs as that house of cards crumbled[0]. Refusing to face reality in the face of financial calamity is the only rational choice when you are involved in a confidence scam, so we shouldn't be surprised at the Crypto community's recent behavior. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/business/enron-s-many-strands-ex-chairman-s-finances-lay-sold-shares-for-100-million.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/business/enron-s-many-str...

jacknews 4y ago

"The prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two most popular coins, have tumbled more than 70 percent from pandemic highs; the NFT market has cratered; and optimism is in short supply. Everywhere you look, the dominoes are falling: One prominent firm, Three Arrows Capital, is reportedly approaching collapse, while other companies are desperately seeking bailouts to stay afloat." As the article indirectly acknowledges, this sounds just like 2008. I didn't see the banks all pack up their tables and go home then. In fact they were collectively bailed out by government. That is, each and every one of us, indirectly. edit: I certainly don't think crypto should be bailed.

Finnucane 4y ago
some banks were bailed out. Many hundreds of banks went bust.
NoPie 4y ago
Interesting that many people expect that crypto which was hailed as independent of any government now needs to be bailed out by the government. Why would banks even care about crypto except for transaction fees they can collect?
- LewisVerstappen 4y ago
  Literally no one is expecting Crypto to be bailed out by the US gov.
  - dogma1138 4y ago
    https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4050676/bank-england-bailout-systemically-stablecoins-case-collapse https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4050676/bank-england-b... It would be just a matter of time until other governments consider this too.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      That's just for stablecoins backed by off-chain assets.

superkuh 4y ago

Actual cryptocurrency does exist and has very little to do with these modern scams (ie, stablecoins, nfts, or anything else centrally controlled). It hasn't been possible to grow a cryptocurrency up from the vulnerable grassroots state since massive public attention and "investors" got involved ~2015. Pretty much every "crypto" project after that date has just been a normal financial scam dressed up in "crypto" clothing. And these "news" companies, and all the "investors" can't tell the difference, which is the point, I guess. I really hope this is the end of people "investing" in currencies but I doubt it. So the ignorant "investor" opinion that drove speculation up now drives it down... but it has zero impact on me actually using the bitcoin blockchain to pay for things.

msoad 4y ago
I honestly don’t think actual cryptocurrency’s exist. I was very excited when bitcoin came out in 2008 or so but soon after I thought this is not really useful as a currency
- shaky-carrousel 4y ago
  It's globally used for cheap international money transfers. I use litecoin for that.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    Litecoin also has some privacy features now too — MWEB (mimblewimble extension blocks) that aggregates all MW tx into a single blob, and hides the amounts transacted. Check it out if you haven’t seen it, it would be good for the network to expand the volume of the anonymity set.
    - shaky-carrousel 4y ago
      I didn't know, I'll check it out, thanks!
- voldacar 4y ago

0des 4y ago

Posting cryptoasset focused articles on HN is such a weird thing. Do you expect level headed unbiased commentary or are you trying to reaffirm some internally held biases? HN's response is not variable with regards to crypto, it's predictable, but in a world where you can't buy anything with karma, what is the point? Be more interesting than that.

ethanbond 4y ago
It’s possible to still have fruitful conversations with a completely negative valence. And it’s not even completely negative. There’s always people making comments like these ones, of the form “woe is me, everyone is unfair to my favorite scam!”
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  My fav scam is TCP/IP. I can’t believe they made every computer on earth speak it and in general accept traffic from anyone else on the planet! Without permission! Haha it’ll never work.
  - ntoskrnl 4y ago
    TCP/IP is used for ransomware. I hope regulators save us from these criminals!
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      AES, the criminal math. Every day countless innocent bytes are diffused and confused JUST because someone might be watching. Where will the madness end!
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Not even clear to me what parallel you’re trying to draw, even under a generous interpretation.
    - 4y ago

ntoskrnl 4y ago

Crypto has given back its money-printer-fueled gains since 2020. Tech stocks have done the same. Why should one set of companies should be more worried than the other? The market gives, the market takes away.

giaour 4y ago
The market for Tesla cars is still red hot, though. I would be extremely worried about Tesla if there were no factories and dealers, just stock and hype. If hype is your only asset, it's hard to see how you recover from a crash.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Hype seems to be the one infinitely renewable resource.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    So too are AdWords.
- DennisP 4y ago
  This is not crypto's first crash, and won't be its last. From early 2018, ETH dropped 94%. The current price is about fifteen times higher than it was at the bottom of the 2018 bear market. So either you can recover when hype is your only asset, or hype isn't crypto's only asset.
TaupeRanger 4y ago
Crypto companies are tech stocks. But even so, crypto itself has actually given up LESS than the typical high growth tech stock. The pre-pandemic price of BTC was around 9-10k. It's still double that right now. Meanwhile, companies like Teladoc and Shopify have fallen BELOW their pre pandemic levels, and newly IPO'd companies like Palantir, Robinhood, etc. are floundering down to new lows every other week.
- 4y ago

logicalmonster 4y ago

Without commenting specifically on crypto, I’d say that any kind of financial speculation is a cut-throat endeavor and taking any media reports at face value is foolish without doing your own research and using your gut. Big players FUD the assets they want to buy cheaply, and hype up the bags they want to get rid of. This has been going on online even before crypto was invented.

abrichr 4y ago
This seems logical from first principles. What hard evidence do we have to confirm this is the case?
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > hard evidence Most people in the business are smart. And smart people generally don't line up to be explicit about manipulating the market and committing possible crimes when it can come back to bite them. Luckily, despite his best attempts to remove many copies of this video from the Internet, we have Jim Cramer on deck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfixbq_u0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfixbq_u0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkqzRs95Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkqzRs95Sc Also, as a general rule, it just pays to understand the following: > With few exceptions, the entire media is shit and barely understands the topics they cover. It is easy for smart people to manipulate them. > Access journalism is widely practiced. > There's literally millions/billions/trillions of dollars at stake. In this environment, it's close to a complete metaphysical certainty that media manipulation to profit occurs.
dogma1138 4y ago
They aren’t called market makers for no reason, but it’s also not as simple as you make it out to be. They can have impact on the trend however the market can only be controlled to an extent. When the shit hits the fan everyone loses money the problem is that the bailout tends to be rather selective. And there is no easy way out of this cycle either. It’s easy to say just don’t bail them out but you are also bailing millions of people who stand to completely lose their life savings, pensions and jobs and so the cycle repeats. If we want to dissuade unadulterated greed we first need to find a solution of how to effectively finance those who are no longer economically productive.

siphor 4y ago

I still can’t believe how much money VCs have pumped into this crap, legitimizing it. Sequoia and a16z effectively force LPs to put money in it. Even with a tinfoil hat I can’t figure out their endgame, is it really just to make money off of greater fools?

bgitarts 4y ago
Endgame is decentralizing the internet and perhaps non-internet protocols. Even if the probability of a decentralized social network working is small, the upside in the case it does work is so large that it's worth the bet ie: 100% downside vs 10,000%+ upside. If only 1 out of 100 such bets works out they break even. If 2 they have a profitable fund, 3+ they have knocked it out of the park.
- Tsiklon 4y ago
  I don't believe the VCs have such lofty or noble goals as decentralising the internet. If it were possible I believe they'd want to corner the emerging market as it grows. But I think you're right that the upside is so attractive given how little they need to invest to realise significant gains.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >Endgame is decentralizing the internet and perhaps non-internet protocols. The internet was always decentralized. That's literally the entire point of TCP/IP. The web, however, is indeed being centralized; and crypto is at the forefront of that. For all the talk of "democratizing finance", the reality is that all of these web3 proponents have no interest in anything beyond enriching themselves by reinventing the existing centralized banking system minus all that pesky regulation.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
- 4y ago

funstuff007 4y ago

article subtitle: The crash should have been a humbling moment for the industry. Instead, companies are doubling down. And then I saw no mention the sine qua non of that, when in late May a16z announce its 4th crypto fund at $4.5B. Man, would I kill for that list of LPs. They have deep, deep pockets and you can sell them anything. https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/andreessen-horowitz-raises-45-billion-fourth-crypto-fund-2022-05-25/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/andreessen-horowitz-r...

DennisP 4y ago
Everybody says "buy low sell high," and almost everybody thinks investors are crazy when they actually buy low.
- funstuff007 4y ago
  very true, I guess my assumption is they are buying when the jig is up, not when asset prices are cheaper.

endorphine 4y ago

https://archive.ph/bpyIC https://archive.ph/bpyIC

pacarvalho 4y ago

I believe the title of this article to be misleading. Companies ARE acting like it. Coinbase, after all, did reduce its headcount in order to reduce their burn rate to be able to withstand the market turbulence. More importantly, the current market turmoil extends way past just crypto. Many investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds, startups, commodities, etc have experience elevated volatility recently. That is normal. The market does not monotonically move up forever. Also, do not take the above statement to mean I endorse crypto as an investment. I believe crypto is akin to unregulated startup investing (at least for most higher risk startups you need to be accredited which is a way to acknowledge risk). When investing in a new crypto you are IMO investing in the idea and team making it. The company! Not on a line-chart on your broker's screen. If the project turns out (in the long run) to have widespread adoption you would hope its value would go up. For instance, consider the Chia (XCH) project. It currently has a market cap of $165M. Therefore, if I were buying Chia at the moment I would think about the following: Do I believe that this company/idea can be worth more in the future? Is it a fair valuation for this startup/company?

funstuff007 4y ago

money quote: “Do you know even one person who has a problem withdrawing from Celsius?” he tweeted. Just over 24 hours later, the company put a freeze on all withdrawals, locking customers out of their accounts. (The freeze remains in place almost two weeks later.)

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Think what we’re seeing is really a market correction. Crypto took off, and everyone was investing in it, even if they didn’t know what it was. Companies like Coinbase made it very easy to do. What I think we’re seeing is all of those viral investors, so to speak, jumping ship. It’s still worth something, so someone out there thinks it has value. If it has value, then it’s worth pursuing.

_8j50 4y ago

Is crypto correcting or crashing? Because I profited a bit when I bought btc right under $20k a week later it seems to be rebounding. My speculation is people want it to fall so they can buy low like I did. The panic just isn't there, yes it has and will go down dramatically but the people that buy crypto still have expendible liquidity. This is crypto being naturally unstable, it isn't an index fund you expect to remain stable. Investing aside illicit use of crypto alone will ensure significant cashflow in my opinion. It isn't just speculative investors that are in the game. As an investment, it has a lot if vaue similar to derivatives, inherent value is not as significant as consumer/investor demand.

DennisP 4y ago

ETH has crashed from $4800 to $1200. That's a pretty terrible crash unless you consider that the current price is still a roughly 10X gain from March 2020. Volatility works both ways and the press often doesn't consider that, especially in bear markets. The reason companies are still involved is because they do consider it.

throwk8s 4y ago
Anyone who wants to experience volatility can start wagering money in a casino though. If volatility was the objective then investment companies could more easily find it in coin flips, instead of capitalizing new ventures.
- DennisP 4y ago
  In a casino you know the odds are against you. In crypto so far, the long-term trend has been up, so the odds have been in favor of anyone holding long-term.

kragen 4y ago

Bitcoin is ridiculously volatile—this is the third time it's lost 70% of its value—but it's still more than twice US$10k. That was its low price in May 02020, the first year of the pandemic, which was its all-time high in June 02019. Maybe it'll go to US$10k or US$5k again. I don't share Gottsegen's confidence that the numbers "will almost certainly go up again". They certainly could, but there's no fundamental reason they must. It would be great if we could, as Gottsegen says, shake the fraudsters out of the ecosystem—and I'd add the gamblers, too—leaving only the people who are using it as a currency, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Certainly if the numbers go up again they'll be back.

andirk 4y ago
I hear your idea of weeding the fraudsters and gamblers out, but democracy of money aka bitcoin (kind of) is all inclusive (kind of). It just needs checks and balances so it doesn't get gamed. If you took all the gamblers, fraudsters, manipulators, bad actors, evil horrible people out of US stonks, it would also be better, more reliable, more useful, more honest.
- kragen 4y ago
  It would be more honest, but the spreads would be a lot wider. Also you'd be structurally denying those evil horrible people the ability to save money in the asset class with the highest returns over a normal working lifetime, which is probably a disproportionate level of punishment for gambling.
  - hnfong 4y ago
    When the only operations you can do is place buy and sell orders at a certain price, I'd say it's really hard to be evil even if you wanted to.

mayowaxcvi 4y ago

As long as crypto investors don’t ask to be bailed out by the government, I am fine with almost all the scammy behaviour.

mumblemumble 4y ago

I doubt that crypto is really dead, just that tough times are coming. And fortune favors the bold, especially in a culture like that of the crypto community. I would guess that the leaders of these companies are making an educated guess that that forging ahead won't guarantee that they can survive the coming winter, but going to ground will guarantee non-survival.