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Edit: Deleting this comment because way too many people attacking me who have clearly never actually used any decentralized app. Good luck to you all!

by spaceman_2020 4y ago

chinathrow 4y ago
> Edit: Deleting this comment because way too many people attacking me who have clearly never actually used any decentralized app. Wow, that was unexpected. Taking criticism for boasting about gaining money in a gamble (you said luck was involved) and then weaseling out....
Lionga 4y ago
I gamble in the lottery and won! You just need to gamble a bit more to also win the lottery. Never give up!
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I have no illusions that it was skill. It was largely luck. But 2021 was a time when the casino was giving away money for free. NOT gambling was the wrong move. Sitting on a high horse did nothing for anyone, except maybe bask in the schadenfreude when the thing invariably collapses. Meanwhile lots of people, including me, made life changing money.
  - chinathrow 4y ago
    > Meanwhile lots of people, including me, made life changing money. This is so backward. Meanwhile lots of people, not including you, lost a lot of money.
  - JohnAaronNelson 4y ago
    You said you have “mid five figures left” so less than 100k. Is that life changing? Or more like “I got a new Audi” or “I was able to reno my kitchen”. Also how much time did you spend on it? Sounds like you went deep down the rabbit hole.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      I also said I cashed out 70% of my 500k. So close to 350k
    - inkcapmushroom 4y ago
      Even ignoring the ~350k they said they cashed out on, 50k would be absolutely life-changing for me, and the majority of people in the world. No idea why you have to imply it couldn't be for this individual.
  - low_tech_love 4y ago
    I have no doubt there was skill involved. And of course you should invest if the casino is giving away money for free. I have no doubt it was great for you, so kudos (no sarcasm; I wish I was you). But the whole point is: is it right to call it a “market” or an “economy” or an “ecosystem” or whatever when it’s really just a get-out-while-you-can game? How many of those who are privy to all those technical terms you mentioned are actually going to be able to cash out a significant amount of money? I t’s just kinda depressing for me to think that there are so many people overanalyzing a fantasy football world league of fantasy coins.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Honestly, I'm more bullish about this industry than before. So much of this awfulness unfolding right now is from centralized, opaque entities - precisely what this industry was meant to destroy. The trouble is that these centralized entities came about when the tech itself was too nascent and there were no decentralized alternatives. So they had too much power and money. And now that they're crashing and burning, the decentralized alternatives can have their moment in the sun. For instance, there's a dApp for leverage trading called GMX.io. Since it's decentralized, all of its assets and liabilities and treasury balances can be transparently seen by anyone. It offers most things that any large brokerage would offer, and has been functioning without a hiccup throughout the entire clownshow. When I started out in November 2020, the decentralized economy was tiny and there were few dApps. Since then, there's been an explosion in the number of dApps powering everything from payments to digital asset market places to in-game asset trading. Paying for a digital subscription with a web3 wallet is a better experience than anything in traditional finance. Of course there's a lot of fluff - that was inevitable given the wild excesses we saw in 2021 - but the pieces are in place to form the foundation of the entire digital economy. I will be very, very surprised if you're still using your credit card to pay for things online in 2027.
      - low_tech_love 4y ago
        I’m sure there is a lot of great theoretically sound stuff out there, but be honest: were you using any of them when you actually made your money? Or were you just playing the same old game but with a new uniform? The problem is not the tech itself, it’s the way it is sold.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Did you at least buy a house with your winnings? that's what i've always wondered... when people make hundreds of thousands, do they go buy/pay off a house?
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Of course. First thing I did
  - jcpham2 4y ago
    Same here until I realized the tax disadvantages of no mortgage. As soon as rates bottomed woohoo let’s get another mortgage, I’ll keep my cash this time.
chinathrow 4y ago
> So really, for me at least, it was a net positive. I am sure you're aware that your $$ come from somewhere. Net positive for them? Not so much.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  You are aware that this is true for every trade, right? If you sold NFLX at 600, there was also someone buying it at 600.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Which might have been a speculator, or it might have been Netflix doing a buyback with money from their subscription revenue - people paying to watch movies, concrete real-world value. As far as I can see there's no real equivalent for cryptocurrency - some crypto orgs notionally have revenues, but they always come from speculators or other crypto orgs (and, sure, maybe some drug dealers or capital control evaders, but that's a tiny fraction of the funding). Money goes into the crypto system and nothing of value comes out.
  - twoWhlsGud 4y ago
    There's a big diff in the case of NFLX - the speculation gains are not what the market is for (from a social good standpoint) - they're a side effect of having a market for raising capital for doing useful things (where useful gets defined in a decentralized way by their customers). I mean congrats on winning the lottery, but let's be clear on why crypto mostly has been making us poorer overall.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Outside of the outright scams and meme coins, the speculative value of most cryptocurrencies stems from the same belief that if (or once) the revenue levers are turned on, they will generate a lot of usage and revenue. Ethereum is valued at $x,xxx per token because of the belief that more and more dApps will launch on it and everyone who uses them will have to buy Ethereum. Uniswap's UNI is valued at $x per token because of the belief that once there is regulatory clarity, UNI holders will get a % of the revenue generated by Uniswap (currently over $100M/year). These are basically startups with tokens. Some of them will go bust. Some of them will take years to monetize. Some will be profitable within a year.
RC_ITR 4y ago
I mean to play Devil's Advocate, many people have the same opinion on MLM's (e.g., "you just have to really understand the leggings market and how to run a business, all these new people who got burnt thought they could get rich quick without working" etc.) because the nature of Ponzi Schemes is that the early investors often do cash out. In fact, the reason Madoff got so large was b/c he was one of the few who convinced most early investors not to cash out. Implying that smart money is 'being early to the Ponzi Scheme' is certainly an outlook on life, IDK if it's a particularly good one though.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  That's true for most non-dividend paying stocks though, isn't it? The price can only go up if other people buy too since holding the stock itself doesn't generate any income. Would you call Peloton's VC backers "ponzi schemers"?
  - pfisherman 4y ago
    You forgot about stock buybacks. Which have a similar effect as dividends with favorable tax treatment.
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      I mean, that's not how stock buybacks work. First, stock buybacks are not tax exempt. If a firm earns $100 in profits and buys back $50 of shares, it still pays the corporate taxes on $100, not on $50. Unlike paying interest, corporations don't get to write off money spent on stock buybacks. So it doesn't affect their tax situation. Second, for the investors in the company, the total aggregate amount of taxes is paid whether the investors are holding 10 stocks and get $1 per stock in dividends, or if they are holding 5 stocks and get $2 per stock in dividends. The number of shares outstanding does not raise or lower the ultimate value of the dividend stream, nor the tax obligation applied to the dividend stream. What if a company never pays any dividends and just buys back stock? Then it's value is just the terminal liquidation value, and each time investors sell stock back to the company, that is a taxable event for them, probably taxed at the long term rate which is the same as the dividend tax rate, up until the company winds down, in which case the rest is taxed at the long term rate. The set of taxable events is the same as if the company had paid dividends, but the difference is that investors self-select as to who realizes the gain and who doesn't. Really this is the difference when companies buy back stock -- some shareholders don't want to take any gains, while others do. The total gains are the same, and the total paid to the government is the same, and the time it's paid to the government is the same, but investors can sort themselves into those who want to to take the gain and those who don't. You get to decide when you want to take the gain, and this optionality has value for you. It's as if you could signal to the management -- don't pay out a dividend, re-invest the money that you would have paid out this quarter so that I'll get more later. That's basically what is going on for the individual investor, but for the government, they still get their quarterly taxes paid just in terms of capital gains by those who sell their shares.
traeregan 4y ago
> I entered the market > I managed to cash out > I avoided all centralized exchanges > Almost all my trades were on decentralized exchanges Only the entry and the exit trades were on centralized exchanges then right? Are there any examples of safe and legal decentralized fiat on/off-ramps? I've heard of "Bitcoin ATMs" (I suppose that would count as centralized though), and I've read stories of people getting into trouble for using P2P services like "Local Bitcoin". It all seems a bit sketchy.
low_tech_love 4y ago
Think about it: if the HN crowd has never used any dapp, what does that say about the rest of the world? I mean, this is the place where people think rsync should replace Dropbox.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I have no idea whether this thing sees any large scale adoption or not, but I'm just disappointed in the sheer proud ignorance of HN when it comes to crypto.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    Life is too short to waste on the kind of people crypto attracts. I'd rather die dirt poor in a ditch than spend a minute in a room with libertarians.

Edit: Deleting this comment because way too many people attacking me who have clearly never actually used any decentralized app. Good luck to you all!

chinathrow 4y ago

> Edit: Deleting this comment because way too many people attacking me who have clearly never actually used any decentralized app. Wow, that was unexpected. Taking criticism for boasting about gaining money in a gamble (you said luck was involved) and then weaseling out....

Lionga 4y ago

I gamble in the lottery and won! You just need to gamble a bit more to also win the lottery. Never give up!

spaceman_2020 4y ago
I have no illusions that it was skill. It was largely luck. But 2021 was a time when the casino was giving away money for free. NOT gambling was the wrong move. Sitting on a high horse did nothing for anyone, except maybe bask in the schadenfreude when the thing invariably collapses. Meanwhile lots of people, including me, made life changing money.
- chinathrow 4y ago
  > Meanwhile lots of people, including me, made life changing money. This is so backward. Meanwhile lots of people, not including you, lost a lot of money.
- JohnAaronNelson 4y ago
  You said you have “mid five figures left” so less than 100k. Is that life changing? Or more like “I got a new Audi” or “I was able to reno my kitchen”. Also how much time did you spend on it? Sounds like you went deep down the rabbit hole.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    I also said I cashed out 70% of my 500k. So close to 350k
  - inkcapmushroom 4y ago
    Even ignoring the ~350k they said they cashed out on, 50k would be absolutely life-changing for me, and the majority of people in the world. No idea why you have to imply it couldn't be for this individual.
- low_tech_love 4y ago
  I have no doubt there was skill involved. And of course you should invest if the casino is giving away money for free. I have no doubt it was great for you, so kudos (no sarcasm; I wish I was you). But the whole point is: is it right to call it a “market” or an “economy” or an “ecosystem” or whatever when it’s really just a get-out-while-you-can game? How many of those who are privy to all those technical terms you mentioned are actually going to be able to cash out a significant amount of money? I t’s just kinda depressing for me to think that there are so many people overanalyzing a fantasy football world league of fantasy coins.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Honestly, I'm more bullish about this industry than before. So much of this awfulness unfolding right now is from centralized, opaque entities - precisely what this industry was meant to destroy. The trouble is that these centralized entities came about when the tech itself was too nascent and there were no decentralized alternatives. So they had too much power and money. And now that they're crashing and burning, the decentralized alternatives can have their moment in the sun. For instance, there's a dApp for leverage trading called GMX.io. Since it's decentralized, all of its assets and liabilities and treasury balances can be transparently seen by anyone. It offers most things that any large brokerage would offer, and has been functioning without a hiccup throughout the entire clownshow. When I started out in November 2020, the decentralized economy was tiny and there were few dApps. Since then, there's been an explosion in the number of dApps powering everything from payments to digital asset market places to in-game asset trading. Paying for a digital subscription with a web3 wallet is a better experience than anything in traditional finance. Of course there's a lot of fluff - that was inevitable given the wild excesses we saw in 2021 - but the pieces are in place to form the foundation of the entire digital economy. I will be very, very surprised if you're still using your credit card to pay for things online in 2027.
    - low_tech_love 4y ago
      I’m sure there is a lot of great theoretically sound stuff out there, but be honest: were you using any of them when you actually made your money? Or were you just playing the same old game but with a new uniform? The problem is not the tech itself, it’s the way it is sold.

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

Did you at least buy a house with your winnings? that's what i've always wondered... when people make hundreds of thousands, do they go buy/pay off a house?

spaceman_2020 4y ago
Of course. First thing I did
- jcpham2 4y ago
  Same here until I realized the tax disadvantages of no mortgage. As soon as rates bottomed woohoo let’s get another mortgage, I’ll keep my cash this time.

chinathrow 4y ago

> So really, for me at least, it was a net positive. I am sure you're aware that your $$ come from somewhere. Net positive for them? Not so much.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
You are aware that this is true for every trade, right? If you sold NFLX at 600, there was also someone buying it at 600.
- lmm 4y ago
  Which might have been a speculator, or it might have been Netflix doing a buyback with money from their subscription revenue - people paying to watch movies, concrete real-world value. As far as I can see there's no real equivalent for cryptocurrency - some crypto orgs notionally have revenues, but they always come from speculators or other crypto orgs (and, sure, maybe some drug dealers or capital control evaders, but that's a tiny fraction of the funding). Money goes into the crypto system and nothing of value comes out.
- twoWhlsGud 4y ago
  There's a big diff in the case of NFLX - the speculation gains are not what the market is for (from a social good standpoint) - they're a side effect of having a market for raising capital for doing useful things (where useful gets defined in a decentralized way by their customers). I mean congrats on winning the lottery, but let's be clear on why crypto mostly has been making us poorer overall.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Outside of the outright scams and meme coins, the speculative value of most cryptocurrencies stems from the same belief that if (or once) the revenue levers are turned on, they will generate a lot of usage and revenue. Ethereum is valued at $x,xxx per token because of the belief that more and more dApps will launch on it and everyone who uses them will have to buy Ethereum. Uniswap's UNI is valued at $x per token because of the belief that once there is regulatory clarity, UNI holders will get a % of the revenue generated by Uniswap (currently over $100M/year). These are basically startups with tokens. Some of them will go bust. Some of them will take years to monetize. Some will be profitable within a year.

RC_ITR 4y ago

I mean to play Devil's Advocate, many people have the same opinion on MLM's (e.g., "you just have to really understand the leggings market and how to run a business, all these new people who got burnt thought they could get rich quick without working" etc.) because the nature of Ponzi Schemes is that the early investors often do cash out. In fact, the reason Madoff got so large was b/c he was one of the few who convinced most early investors not to cash out. Implying that smart money is 'being early to the Ponzi Scheme' is certainly an outlook on life, IDK if it's a particularly good one though.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
That's true for most non-dividend paying stocks though, isn't it? The price can only go up if other people buy too since holding the stock itself doesn't generate any income. Would you call Peloton's VC backers "ponzi schemers"?
- pfisherman 4y ago
  You forgot about stock buybacks. Which have a similar effect as dividends with favorable tax treatment.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    I mean, that's not how stock buybacks work. First, stock buybacks are not tax exempt. If a firm earns $100 in profits and buys back $50 of shares, it still pays the corporate taxes on $100, not on $50. Unlike paying interest, corporations don't get to write off money spent on stock buybacks. So it doesn't affect their tax situation. Second, for the investors in the company, the total aggregate amount of taxes is paid whether the investors are holding 10 stocks and get $1 per stock in dividends, or if they are holding 5 stocks and get $2 per stock in dividends. The number of shares outstanding does not raise or lower the ultimate value of the dividend stream, nor the tax obligation applied to the dividend stream. What if a company never pays any dividends and just buys back stock? Then it's value is just the terminal liquidation value, and each time investors sell stock back to the company, that is a taxable event for them, probably taxed at the long term rate which is the same as the dividend tax rate, up until the company winds down, in which case the rest is taxed at the long term rate. The set of taxable events is the same as if the company had paid dividends, but the difference is that investors self-select as to who realizes the gain and who doesn't. Really this is the difference when companies buy back stock -- some shareholders don't want to take any gains, while others do. The total gains are the same, and the total paid to the government is the same, and the time it's paid to the government is the same, but investors can sort themselves into those who want to to take the gain and those who don't. You get to decide when you want to take the gain, and this optionality has value for you. It's as if you could signal to the management -- don't pay out a dividend, re-invest the money that you would have paid out this quarter so that I'll get more later. That's basically what is going on for the individual investor, but for the government, they still get their quarterly taxes paid just in terms of capital gains by those who sell their shares.

traeregan 4y ago

> I entered the market > I managed to cash out > I avoided all centralized exchanges > Almost all my trades were on decentralized exchanges Only the entry and the exit trades were on centralized exchanges then right? Are there any examples of safe and legal decentralized fiat on/off-ramps? I've heard of "Bitcoin ATMs" (I suppose that would count as centralized though), and I've read stories of people getting into trouble for using P2P services like "Local Bitcoin". It all seems a bit sketchy.

low_tech_love 4y ago

Think about it: if the HN crowd has never used any dapp, what does that say about the rest of the world? I mean, this is the place where people think rsync should replace Dropbox.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
I have no idea whether this thing sees any large scale adoption or not, but I'm just disappointed in the sheer proud ignorance of HN when it comes to crypto.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  Life is too short to waste on the kind of people crypto attracts. I'd rather die dirt poor in a ditch than spend a minute in a room with libertarians.