5 ms·

Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. People have such a hatred for cryp

Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. But…have people actually looked around? Airbnb stock is down 80% in the last 6 months. Netflix, Twilio, DoorDash, and many many other companies have taken a similar beating. Bitcoin has actually done much better then most of the tech stocks, especially if you look at a 2 year chart. Amazing to see all this gravedancing when the crypto crash isn’t a crypto crash at all but a speculative asset crash and most of our jobs fall into that category. Another funny dynamic is many pro-crypto subreddits hate NFTs but similarly we’re seeing gravedancing over monkey JPEGs even though the bored apes have held up better then many “serious” crypto projects. My point is that people want confirmation bias for their narrative. And they are overjoyed to celebrate crypto crashing to extent it confirms their narrative it’s a big Ponzi scam that was due for a crash. But they seem less eager to be intellectually honest and work in the rest of what’s going on into that narrative. If bitcoin falling 60% proves it was a scam what does Airbnb falling 80% say about Airbnb. And I know your answer will be they have a business model with cash flow. But these are all “a priori” assumptions. The crash is viewed in a different lens based not on evidence but on what we believe to be true beforehand. Tech bros celebrating the death of crypto bros are knee deep in the icey waters of the Titanic sinking celebrating the guy whose shoulder deep as they both continue to sink, but due to preconceived notions refuse to realize they’re all about to drown from the same iceberg crash.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
The difference, as always, is leverage. I don’t think there is as much leverage built on top of Airbnb stock as there is on Bitcoin. Airbnb crashing 80% didn’t take any funds out of business.
Deletionk 4y ago
It's different and connected: Different because shares still give you a part of a real business and equal because it showed that money was too cheap. I'm not anti crypto just because, I have plenty of good reasons. And no real cryptobro was able to convince me with good argument s otherwise. Of course the share prices General looked weird that's why I didn't invest last time I wanted to.
rr808 4y ago
airbnb is crazy expensive still. Still market cap of $60bil, 4x Expedia. For a booking website? smdh
loeg 4y ago
Actually, anti-crypto sentiment is good and pro-crypto sentiment isn’t. “Both-sidesing” this is nonsense.
- cowtools 4y ago
  are cryptocurrency supporters "literally hitler" now?
  - loeg 4y ago
    This is not responsive to my comment.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      You're stating that there is a non-negotiable right and wrong, and that cryptocurrency is in-defensively wrong (e.g. "Literally Hitler"). I ask you to justify your position then.
      - antifa 4y ago
        > are cryptocurrency supporters "literally hitler" now? If you really wanted to see someone argue that position nobody-but-you brought up, here you go: https://youtu.be/XpH3O6mnZvw https://youtu.be/XpH3O6mnZvw
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  I hate crypto with passion, from the beginning, but intellectually I am still on the fence. It might be as bad, shallow and devoid of value as any other Ponzi scheme of Tulip Mania, and this is sentiment I have about it, but this is not proof. What if the haters are too biased to see the real value of the so-called "blockchain"? Only History will tell.
  - loeg 4y ago
    > Only History will tell. We've had more than ten years of crypto/blockchain history already. We don't need more time to tell -- we have many years of it already being awful. History is already telling us.
cowtools 4y ago
> Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. I think it's reasonably skeptical. There is a balance here. > People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. I like crypto and even I am rooting for the crash. There is simply too much hype and investment in useless projects, it distracts from the actually useful crypto projects, and is generally bad for the development of cryptocurrency as a whole
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  What do you think is the most useful crypto project?
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Right now it is probably monero. It does one thing (anonymous transactions) and does it alright. But I think we will see increased adoption of less decentralized and anonymous systems like GNU Taler or Nano for micropayments, which are generally lower-risk and hinge more on per-transaction fees. I think that is the "real" use-case of cryptocurrency besides buying drugs on the DN- to serve as an micropayment/spam-prevention system and an alternative to advertisement-based funding for websites. Output obfuscation is a really useful feature, but it comes at a pretty great cost of bandwidth. I think this area will continue to improve in the future.
stephc_int13 4y ago
I absolutely fall in the category of crypto haters, for technical, political and moral reasons, and I can't help but feel some joy and excitement when I see it crashing. Of course I am aware of my strong bias, I don't think I will ever be neutral on this subject, but it does not matter as this bias is only affecting my personal decisions. Is it even possible to build a neutral judgment on this thing?
- sshine 4y ago
  The point I derive from this is: Cryptocurrency hate will distract you from seeing the bigger picture and dealing with it. Celebrating that bad things burn when good things burn for the same reason (economic downturn) seems like it’s either uninformed or a coping strategy.
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    It's the scapegoating impulse, which is extremely strong right now. We know there are many things going wrong, but our way of addressing them is a total crapshoot. And it's easier to illustrate an enemy to fight against and a preexisting concept to defend than to do anything new, so there's always a lot of support for that.
kareemsabri 4y ago
Airbnb is down 58% from its 52-week high. I'm not sure the point you're making though. Even if high-flying stocks went down 99% that's not a defense of crypto per se. "Stocks go down" isn't a redemption of the crypto narrative. That said, if you did want to use tech stocks as a comparison, Bitcoin is the flagship asset of crypto, and meant to be the most stable (deflationary etc.) so more akin to Apple. Apple is essentially flat over the past year.
- sshine 4y ago
  > "Stocks go down" isn't a redemption of the crypto narrative. It’s not, but “reality catching up on speculative, excessive growth” isn’t purely a cryptocurrency thing; they’re just so much a symptom of everyone wanting in on that tech stonks that only VCs could afford. It’s funny how “the Uber of X” was an admirable description, considering that whole economic model is being questioned right now. Perhaps it just wasn’t the case that Uber was the Uber of Uber.
  - kareemsabri 4y ago
    There are two (at least) events playing out right now. The first is an asset bubble being pricked by cheap capital being removed from the market due to the fed raising interest rates after a decade or so of monetary policy that forced people to seek out yield wherever they could. That event is playing out in both crypto and stocks, which is what people seem to be pointing at to say the assets are the same. The second is the collapse of a bunch of crypto schemes (yield farming, leveraged funds, black box firms etc.). These two things are fundamentally different. Focusing on the first one only since that's what crypto adherents seem to defend with the "it's just like tech stocks" claim (putting aside that crypto was supposed to be different than stocks, and deflationary), what I haven't seen them explain is how "excessive growth" would even be defined in a crypto asset. In stocks, I can point to a price-to-earnings ratio or a price-to-sales ratio to describe how a business is trading far beyond a value that even has hopes of being realized. In Bitcoin, or even worse some shitcoin used for nothing at all, what can I use to distinguish between "excessive" growth and appropriate growth? There is a critique that can be made of the stock market that it is essentially a speculative game largely divorced from the underlying business fundamentals, and that crypto assets are just a pure form of speculative capital chasing returns. I don't think that's really true though, because stocks do seem to show significant correlation to the underlying business performance. That's why Apple is flat YoY while Airbnb is down 60%.
grumpitron 4y ago
From what I can see, ABNB stock closed at 91.41 on Friday, and the 52 week high was 212.58. That comes out to the stock being down 57% by my calculations, but could be I’m missing something. Still down a lot, but not quite 80%.
woodruffw 4y ago
> They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. This doesn't accurately reflect the source of my opprobrium, or many other commenters here. I don't particularly care about whether cryptocurrencies make people stinking rich. I care that they're terrible for the planet, morally and civically corrosive, and have hurt people that I care about (in the forms of scams, lies, and false advertising around returns). As far as I concerned, many (but not all) of these critiques apply to the last 15 years of startups as well. The proximate causes might be slightly different (adtech and cheap VC money), but the outcomes are very similar. So you won't find me dancing on one grave and sobbing over the other. I'll be practicing my Hopak[1] instead. [1]: https://www.britannica.com/art/hopak https://www.britannica.com/art/hopak
blablabla123 4y ago
Yeah being purely positive or negative isn't any good. Although BTC shouldn't be benchmarked with Airbnb but with USD/EUR... Bitcoin itself isn't a scam, in fact it has (or had) really ambitious goals. But the dynamics in the last years are quite scammy because not many things are bought with BTC. Maybe PoS will bring something new
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Well, those of us who work on problems that need solutions and products that solve those real problems, we don’t need to worry. We’re just enjoying our popcorn watching the show. I have however reliably found that the HN crowd has rarely been emotional in arguments regarding crypto. For some reason, the anti-crypto arguments being thrown around here have been very convincing, and the pro-crypto arguments less so. But no one here has “silenced” anyone, it’s a public forum. However, if I were in crypto, I would be extremely worried that one of the biggest tech communities, with “hacker” in the name isn’t really on board with crypto.
dehrmann 4y ago
> 2 year chart That's a horrible timeframe to look at because you're really just looking at the covid economy. The 20% drop in the S&P 500 is the meaningful number for the broader economy.
vesinisa 4y ago
> Bitcoin has actually done much better then most of the tech stocks, especially if you look at a 2 year chart. Only if you look at the 2-year chart (or longer). That includes the tail end of the Tether-fueled market manipulation drive, and at longer scales the entire speculative boom. Anyway, why are you so concerned about people being "anti-crypto"? You seem to think that everyone makes value judgements based only on how well something performs financially. That might be relevant if you are an investor. But I am sure there will be more services like AirBnB if it fails, as the concept is sound. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand have certainly enjoyed their time in limelight for a while already, but have failed to deliver any meaningful mass market products (if you discount investing - which is indeed exactly akin to buying AirBnB stock without ever going on a holiday.)
kkielhofner 4y ago
I don’t support the grave dancing. Especially because it sometimes involves real graves - people have certainly died (typically suicide) from this crypto downturn. I think celebrating this “crash” is primarily driven by the cryptocurrency community being so insufferably obnoxious to promote their self-serving agenda (“Have fun staying poor”). There’s a natural desire to celebrate the downfall of a community that has been exhibiting such a condescending superiority complex during this run. I suspect that suicide rates, other wider societal effects, etc are higher with cryptocurrency because (in addition to other factors) it becomes the entire identity to most people in the space - hence the obnoxious Thanksgiving crypto bro archetype. For these people the crypto crash is more deeply felt because I’m sure for many of them it’s about much more than the financials. They take it really personally to the point where it can strike to the core of who they are. This is especially dangerous given other than constantly hawking their favorite coin they are handing a significant portion of their well-being to a market they have absolutely no control over. Scary. They also tend to be risk seeking to the point of desperate/reckless, inexperienced, easily influenced, generally unsophisticated, etc. It’s the shoeshine boy giving stock tips. I also think that due to the volatility it likely attracts legitimate gambling addicts at a much higher rate (and the resulting jump in suicides and shattered lives). I can’t recall it being common to post suicide hotline numbers on various forums, etc when a stock goes down 80%… If I’m doing any grave dancing at all it’s due to the most obnoxious of them just finally shutting up about crypto. It gets old so quickly. I have a contact on LinkedIn who is a high level executive at a crypto company you’ve heard of. His activity on LinkedIn is the most childish, obnoxious, and often times offensive I’ve ever seen from a professional in a professional setting. It blows my mind this is how he conducts himself in public on a professional social media platform. His conduct along with activity, stories, interviews of other major figures (think SBF-types) adds yet another data point on just how far blockchain is from real relevance to the general public. I keep thinking - if an executive at that level from a bank or any non-crypto related financial anything made these posts they would be fired more or less instantly. This guy was promoted to his current position a few months ago. He went from at least one absolutely ridiculous FOMO/if you don’t buy in you’re a moron/have fun staying poor post daily to first disappearing for a week (likely managing fallout) to now occasionally posting some lighthearted saying maybe once a week or so. Humble pie. Even though I essentially can’t stand this person (and many like them on Twitter) I find their personalities and activity to be a really interesting observation into the space.
winternett 4y ago
Crypto was foisted on us so hard in the past 2 years that people are celebrating it's downfall because it means not being insulted by the marketing of it all. It was vapor, it was a scam that created desperation in many people during some of the most troubling times we've had in history. I had to work extra hard to try and convince family members to not sink their hard earned savings into it, and worried that the hype train would affect many I knew when it actually did crash, during one of the worst economic periods in recent history... It did crash hard, despite how many promises were made. NFTs also were proven to be insecure. Web 3.0 was based on totally fraudulent claims by opportunistic people... That is why people are celebrating the current peril it is in, and also why no one accountable ever really wants to step up and own the failure of it all.
davidgerard 4y ago
It turns out that some things are just bad, and pretending there's a false balance is just being half-way to scam town.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rvz 4y ago
Well said. I'm actually laughing at both the extreme delusional anti-crypto folks and the extreme pro-crypto folks since they will both be disappointed with their vision(s) of either all of them being destroyed or all projects succeeding. Not all these projects will survive, 90% of crypto projects will die, just like the 90% of these startups failing and the fact that we are seeing the many projects and startups getting wiped out in this crash, like the dotcom crash we will see the projects that have utility continue to survive this crash. Like in the replies to your comment, many of the angry anti-crypto folk continue to fall into the absolutism trap and the only absolute that exists: is none. Just look at the free software-foundation, after 37 years of fighting the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc of trying to get rid of all non-free software, it has completely failed and the tech bros have hijacked the point of open-source. It has gotten so bad in that realisation that there are now tech bros that are branded as 'traitors' in this noble conquest of ridding all non-free software. Now the tech-bros are screaming at destroying all crypto-projects towards the crypto-bros. Destroying 'all of them' doesn't seem to be going well for them and they are no better than the crypto maximalists in aiming for this goal.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  When startups fail, VCs lose a bunch of investor money. When crypto products fail, a bunch of retail investors/users lured by Super Bowl ads lose (sometimes) all their savings. The difference is stark. Having 90% of crypto projects fail is going to leave a trail of human misery.
lamontcg 4y ago
We still haven't seen a month of negative employment numbers yet. The fed rate is still under 2%, it was 2.41% in March of 2019, there's still room to continue to take the punchbowl away. Gas prices are still high and inflation is still pretty much on a tear. It took a bit of a pause but $110/bbl oil is still quite high. This is not even a recession yet. At the same time though the fed tacking on 50 and 75 bp rate hikes and talking about how they want to puncture the housing market sounds like we're definitely going to have one. And I don't think that is just all talk since we've seen actual increases in real labor costs, unionization and a large overhang of jobs, along with worker sentiment towards job hopping and zero job loyalty. So I very much think we're only at the start here. The Fed is going to continue to jack up rates until something(s) in the real economy significantly pops. And Zuckerberg and Musk have been talking tough-economy talk and they're likely bellweathers for what the CEO/billionaire class is thinking. I don't think we've seen the crypto crash yet. When (not if) Coinbase pops then I think we'll be in the middle of it.
rsynnott 4y ago
> They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. No, I was annoyed that people were being scammed. The bulk of this crypto advertising was aimed at selling extremely dubious products to normal people who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. If another crypto ad is never placed, the world will be a better place.
aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
We have a winner.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

The difference, as always, is leverage. I don’t think there is as much leverage built on top of Airbnb stock as there is on Bitcoin. Airbnb crashing 80% didn’t take any funds out of business.

Deletionk 4y ago

It's different and connected: Different because shares still give you a part of a real business and equal because it showed that money was too cheap. I'm not anti crypto just because, I have plenty of good reasons. And no real cryptobro was able to convince me with good argument s otherwise. Of course the share prices General looked weird that's why I didn't invest last time I wanted to.

rr808 4y ago

airbnb is crazy expensive still. Still market cap of $60bil, 4x Expedia. For a booking website? smdh

loeg 4y ago

Actually, anti-crypto sentiment is good and pro-crypto sentiment isn’t. “Both-sidesing” this is nonsense.

cowtools 4y ago
are cryptocurrency supporters "literally hitler" now?
- loeg 4y ago
  This is not responsive to my comment.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    You're stating that there is a non-negotiable right and wrong, and that cryptocurrency is in-defensively wrong (e.g. "Literally Hitler"). I ask you to justify your position then.
    - antifa 4y ago
      > are cryptocurrency supporters "literally hitler" now? If you really wanted to see someone argue that position nobody-but-you brought up, here you go: https://youtu.be/XpH3O6mnZvw https://youtu.be/XpH3O6mnZvw
stephc_int13 4y ago
I hate crypto with passion, from the beginning, but intellectually I am still on the fence. It might be as bad, shallow and devoid of value as any other Ponzi scheme of Tulip Mania, and this is sentiment I have about it, but this is not proof. What if the haters are too biased to see the real value of the so-called "blockchain"? Only History will tell.
- loeg 4y ago
  > Only History will tell. We've had more than ten years of crypto/blockchain history already. We don't need more time to tell -- we have many years of it already being awful. History is already telling us.

cowtools 4y ago

> Hacker News has gotten overwhelmingly anti-crypto to an extent it’s as bad an echo chamber as many pro-crypto echo chambers. I think it's reasonably skeptical. There is a balance here. > People have such a hatred for crypto they are overjoyed to celebrate a crypto crash. They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. I like crypto and even I am rooting for the crash. There is simply too much hype and investment in useless projects, it distracts from the actually useful crypto projects, and is generally bad for the development of cryptocurrency as a whole

kareemsabri 4y ago
What do you think is the most useful crypto project?
- cowtools 4y ago
  Right now it is probably monero. It does one thing (anonymous transactions) and does it alright. But I think we will see increased adoption of less decentralized and anonymous systems like GNU Taler or Nano for micropayments, which are generally lower-risk and hinge more on per-transaction fees. I think that is the "real" use-case of cryptocurrency besides buying drugs on the DN- to serve as an micropayment/spam-prevention system and an alternative to advertisement-based funding for websites. Output obfuscation is a really useful feature, but it comes at a pretty great cost of bandwidth. I think this area will continue to improve in the future.

stephc_int13 4y ago

I absolutely fall in the category of crypto haters, for technical, political and moral reasons, and I can't help but feel some joy and excitement when I see it crashing. Of course I am aware of my strong bias, I don't think I will ever be neutral on this subject, but it does not matter as this bias is only affecting my personal decisions. Is it even possible to build a neutral judgment on this thing?

sshine 4y ago
The point I derive from this is: Cryptocurrency hate will distract you from seeing the bigger picture and dealing with it. Celebrating that bad things burn when good things burn for the same reason (economic downturn) seems like it’s either uninformed or a coping strategy.
- syntheweave 4y ago
  It's the scapegoating impulse, which is extremely strong right now. We know there are many things going wrong, but our way of addressing them is a total crapshoot. And it's easier to illustrate an enemy to fight against and a preexisting concept to defend than to do anything new, so there's always a lot of support for that.

kareemsabri 4y ago

Airbnb is down 58% from its 52-week high. I'm not sure the point you're making though. Even if high-flying stocks went down 99% that's not a defense of crypto per se. "Stocks go down" isn't a redemption of the crypto narrative. That said, if you did want to use tech stocks as a comparison, Bitcoin is the flagship asset of crypto, and meant to be the most stable (deflationary etc.) so more akin to Apple. Apple is essentially flat over the past year.

sshine 4y ago
> "Stocks go down" isn't a redemption of the crypto narrative. It’s not, but “reality catching up on speculative, excessive growth” isn’t purely a cryptocurrency thing; they’re just so much a symptom of everyone wanting in on that tech stonks that only VCs could afford. It’s funny how “the Uber of X” was an admirable description, considering that whole economic model is being questioned right now. Perhaps it just wasn’t the case that Uber was the Uber of Uber.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  There are two (at least) events playing out right now. The first is an asset bubble being pricked by cheap capital being removed from the market due to the fed raising interest rates after a decade or so of monetary policy that forced people to seek out yield wherever they could. That event is playing out in both crypto and stocks, which is what people seem to be pointing at to say the assets are the same. The second is the collapse of a bunch of crypto schemes (yield farming, leveraged funds, black box firms etc.). These two things are fundamentally different. Focusing on the first one only since that's what crypto adherents seem to defend with the "it's just like tech stocks" claim (putting aside that crypto was supposed to be different than stocks, and deflationary), what I haven't seen them explain is how "excessive growth" would even be defined in a crypto asset. In stocks, I can point to a price-to-earnings ratio or a price-to-sales ratio to describe how a business is trading far beyond a value that even has hopes of being realized. In Bitcoin, or even worse some shitcoin used for nothing at all, what can I use to distinguish between "excessive" growth and appropriate growth? There is a critique that can be made of the stock market that it is essentially a speculative game largely divorced from the underlying business fundamentals, and that crypto assets are just a pure form of speculative capital chasing returns. I don't think that's really true though, because stocks do seem to show significant correlation to the underlying business performance. That's why Apple is flat YoY while Airbnb is down 60%.

grumpitron 4y ago

From what I can see, ABNB stock closed at 91.41 on Friday, and the 52 week high was 212.58. That comes out to the stock being down 57% by my calculations, but could be I’m missing something. Still down a lot, but not quite 80%.

woodruffw 4y ago

> They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. This doesn't accurately reflect the source of my opprobrium, or many other commenters here. I don't particularly care about whether cryptocurrencies make people stinking rich. I care that they're terrible for the planet, morally and civically corrosive, and have hurt people that I care about (in the forms of scams, lies, and false advertising around returns). As far as I concerned, many (but not all) of these critiques apply to the last 15 years of startups as well. The proximate causes might be slightly different (adtech and cheap VC money), but the outcomes are very similar. So you won't find me dancing on one grave and sobbing over the other. I'll be practicing my Hopak[1] instead. [1]: https://www.britannica.com/art/hopak https://www.britannica.com/art/hopak

blablabla123 4y ago

Yeah being purely positive or negative isn't any good. Although BTC shouldn't be benchmarked with Airbnb but with USD/EUR... Bitcoin itself isn't a scam, in fact it has (or had) really ambitious goals. But the dynamics in the last years are quite scammy because not many things are bought with BTC. Maybe PoS will bring something new

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

Well, those of us who work on problems that need solutions and products that solve those real problems, we don’t need to worry. We’re just enjoying our popcorn watching the show. I have however reliably found that the HN crowd has rarely been emotional in arguments regarding crypto. For some reason, the anti-crypto arguments being thrown around here have been very convincing, and the pro-crypto arguments less so. But no one here has “silenced” anyone, it’s a public forum. However, if I were in crypto, I would be extremely worried that one of the biggest tech communities, with “hacker” in the name isn’t really on board with crypto.

dehrmann 4y ago

> 2 year chart That's a horrible timeframe to look at because you're really just looking at the covid economy. The 20% drop in the S&P 500 is the meaningful number for the broader economy.

vesinisa 4y ago

> Bitcoin has actually done much better then most of the tech stocks, especially if you look at a 2 year chart. Only if you look at the 2-year chart (or longer). That includes the tail end of the Tether-fueled market manipulation drive, and at longer scales the entire speculative boom. Anyway, why are you so concerned about people being "anti-crypto"? You seem to think that everyone makes value judgements based only on how well something performs financially. That might be relevant if you are an investor. But I am sure there will be more services like AirBnB if it fails, as the concept is sound. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand have certainly enjoyed their time in limelight for a while already, but have failed to deliver any meaningful mass market products (if you discount investing - which is indeed exactly akin to buying AirBnB stock without ever going on a holiday.)

kkielhofner 4y ago

I don’t support the grave dancing. Especially because it sometimes involves real graves - people have certainly died (typically suicide) from this crypto downturn. I think celebrating this “crash” is primarily driven by the cryptocurrency community being so insufferably obnoxious to promote their self-serving agenda (“Have fun staying poor”). There’s a natural desire to celebrate the downfall of a community that has been exhibiting such a condescending superiority complex during this run. I suspect that suicide rates, other wider societal effects, etc are higher with cryptocurrency because (in addition to other factors) it becomes the entire identity to most people in the space - hence the obnoxious Thanksgiving crypto bro archetype. For these people the crypto crash is more deeply felt because I’m sure for many of them it’s about much more than the financials. They take it really personally to the point where it can strike to the core of who they are. This is especially dangerous given other than constantly hawking their favorite coin they are handing a significant portion of their well-being to a market they have absolutely no control over. Scary. They also tend to be risk seeking to the point of desperate/reckless, inexperienced, easily influenced, generally unsophisticated, etc. It’s the shoeshine boy giving stock tips. I also think that due to the volatility it likely attracts legitimate gambling addicts at a much higher rate (and the resulting jump in suicides and shattered lives). I can’t recall it being common to post suicide hotline numbers on various forums, etc when a stock goes down 80%… If I’m doing any grave dancing at all it’s due to the most obnoxious of them just finally shutting up about crypto. It gets old so quickly. I have a contact on LinkedIn who is a high level executive at a crypto company you’ve heard of. His activity on LinkedIn is the most childish, obnoxious, and often times offensive I’ve ever seen from a professional in a professional setting. It blows my mind this is how he conducts himself in public on a professional social media platform. His conduct along with activity, stories, interviews of other major figures (think SBF-types) adds yet another data point on just how far blockchain is from real relevance to the general public. I keep thinking - if an executive at that level from a bank or any non-crypto related financial anything made these posts they would be fired more or less instantly. This guy was promoted to his current position a few months ago. He went from at least one absolutely ridiculous FOMO/if you don’t buy in you’re a moron/have fun staying poor post daily to first disappearing for a week (likely managing fallout) to now occasionally posting some lighthearted saying maybe once a week or so. Humble pie. Even though I essentially can’t stand this person (and many like them on Twitter) I find their personalities and activity to be a really interesting observation into the space.

winternett 4y ago

Crypto was foisted on us so hard in the past 2 years that people are celebrating it's downfall because it means not being insulted by the marketing of it all. It was vapor, it was a scam that created desperation in many people during some of the most troubling times we've had in history. I had to work extra hard to try and convince family members to not sink their hard earned savings into it, and worried that the hype train would affect many I knew when it actually did crash, during one of the worst economic periods in recent history... It did crash hard, despite how many promises were made. NFTs also were proven to be insecure. Web 3.0 was based on totally fraudulent claims by opportunistic people... That is why people are celebrating the current peril it is in, and also why no one accountable ever really wants to step up and own the failure of it all.

davidgerard 4y ago

It turns out that some things are just bad, and pretending there's a false balance is just being half-way to scam town.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rvz 4y ago

Well said. I'm actually laughing at both the extreme delusional anti-crypto folks and the extreme pro-crypto folks since they will both be disappointed with their vision(s) of either all of them being destroyed or all projects succeeding. Not all these projects will survive, 90% of crypto projects will die, just like the 90% of these startups failing and the fact that we are seeing the many projects and startups getting wiped out in this crash, like the dotcom crash we will see the projects that have utility continue to survive this crash. Like in the replies to your comment, many of the angry anti-crypto folk continue to fall into the absolutism trap and the only absolute that exists: is none. Just look at the free software-foundation, after 37 years of fighting the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc of trying to get rid of all non-free software, it has completely failed and the tech bros have hijacked the point of open-source. It has gotten so bad in that realisation that there are now tech bros that are branded as 'traitors' in this noble conquest of ridding all non-free software. Now the tech-bros are screaming at destroying all crypto-projects towards the crypto-bros. Destroying 'all of them' doesn't seem to be going well for them and they are no better than the crypto maximalists in aiming for this goal.

AlexandrB 4y ago
When startups fail, VCs lose a bunch of investor money. When crypto products fail, a bunch of retail investors/users lured by Super Bowl ads lose (sometimes) all their savings. The difference is stark. Having 90% of crypto projects fail is going to leave a trail of human misery.

lamontcg 4y ago

We still haven't seen a month of negative employment numbers yet. The fed rate is still under 2%, it was 2.41% in March of 2019, there's still room to continue to take the punchbowl away. Gas prices are still high and inflation is still pretty much on a tear. It took a bit of a pause but $110/bbl oil is still quite high. This is not even a recession yet. At the same time though the fed tacking on 50 and 75 bp rate hikes and talking about how they want to puncture the housing market sounds like we're definitely going to have one. And I don't think that is just all talk since we've seen actual increases in real labor costs, unionization and a large overhang of jobs, along with worker sentiment towards job hopping and zero job loyalty. So I very much think we're only at the start here. The Fed is going to continue to jack up rates until something(s) in the real economy significantly pops. And Zuckerberg and Musk have been talking tough-economy talk and they're likely bellweathers for what the CEO/billionaire class is thinking. I don't think we've seen the crypto crash yet. When (not if) Coinbase pops then I think we'll be in the middle of it.

rsynnott 4y ago

> They were annoyed people they disliked were getting rich and now feel “vindicated” the bubble is popping. No, I was annoyed that people were being scammed. The bulk of this crypto advertising was aimed at selling extremely dubious products to normal people who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. If another crypto ad is never placed, the world will be a better place.

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago

We have a winner.