7 ms·

The article mentions at least 2 million Ethereum, which is certainly liquid enough to be a couple orders of magnitude above $10 million.

Retric 3y ago
There’s a fair amount of liquidity, but trying to withdraw 1 billion in Eth is going to impact it’s valuation.
- latchkey 3y ago
  ETH has a $223b market cap, so 1b is .45%.
  - delusional 3y ago
    No? It's not?
    - latchkey 3y ago
      https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/
      - School-Cotton 3y ago
        Regardless, 1 billion is not 4% of 223 billion. You’re off by a factor of ten.
        latchkey 3y ago
        fixed... =)
  - colecut 3y ago
    0.45%
    - latchkey 3y ago
      damn maths. thanks!
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    Market cap is not market depth, you can't withdraw $223B from a speculative asset with a $223B market cap. Just look at SafeMoon lol. Market cap isn't a bank account. It's determined at the margin by the last transaction price multiplied by the number of units outstanding. Bringing it up in this context is just misleading.
- everfree 3y ago
  Ethereum's daily trading volume is $7 billion, so it's likely that $1 billion would hardly affect its valuation.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    Now subtract out the wash trading. I'm not saying it would or wouldn't affect the valuation, I'm saying that the top-line volume is a known fiction. Remember when "Coinbase Employee A" traded some 99% of the entire global LTC volume between two bots at Coinbase? Sure it's old news, but that's the most reputable exchange. [1, 2] Much of the crypto market is a digital Potemkin village designed to make you feel like you're not nearly as alone as you are. [1] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8369-21 https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8369-21 [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/ipo-coinbase-pays-cftc-6-5-million-false-reporting-wash-trading/ https://news.bitcoin.com/ipo-coinbase-pays-cftc-6-5-million-...
    - ChainOfFools 3y ago
      Potemkin as an adjective is such a useful tool when talking about the crypto scene. here's a post from when I used it extensively I guess about 8 years ago, in the same vein. Unfortunately as part of the cold war argot it seems to just draw blank stares from a lot of people under 35 or so. <https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3hrum5/degenerate_gambler_mircea_popescu_muses_about_how/cua5phi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3hrum5/degenerate...> "Potemkin exchange, Potemkin conversation, it's Potemkins all the way down. Like a matrioshka doll each layer deeper is identical to the one before, but smaller and less articulately defined. "
      - arcticbull 3y ago
        I wish I could take credit for the term, but I'm also a huge fan of 'Sierpinski scheme'. Also, what on God's green flat earth was that article about? The one you were responding to, lol. I mean the late Mircea Popescu was a real piece of work, but, just, wow.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  Even on Uniswap, swapping 10,000 ETH ($18.5M) has just 0.9% slippage. There is pretty decent liquidity for ETH and BTC at least, both on and off-chain.
  - Retric 3y ago
    If that’s what people where liquidating then it’s not problem, but 10,000 ETH and 2,000,000 ETH are just wildly different numbers here.
- barnbuilder 3y ago
  How many things are there on earth that you can suddenly sell $1 billion worth of, and not lower its price? I never hear this criticism of any other assets even though it applies to virtually all of them.
delusional 3y ago
If we're both running our own ponzi scheme and you give me $1 worth IOUs to your ponzi scheme, before later readjusting your ponzi scheme to be worth 1000x what it was previously. I would on paper have $1000 of your money, since that's what my IOU in your ponzi scheme is now "worth". If my ponzi scheme then folds before yours, you could claim that I've defrauded you for $1000, but I'd argue I haven't defrauded you in any real sense, in fact you tried to defraud me, and I just so happened to fail at defrauding my customers first. Maybe Ethereum is "liquid" enough to absorb that withdrawal (Madoff was plenty liquid until he wasn't), that doesn't mean there's actually any real value.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Lots of stuff has value, until it doesn't. Tulips, beanie-babies, or pet rocks come to mind. Doesn't mean it's a scam necessarily, could just be a fad -- irrational, but with no fraudulent intent behind it.
  - chx 3y ago
    oh bitcoin, ethereum and any such crypto"currency" (even the name is chosen to evoke certain emotions) is pretty solidly established to be scams. Read https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon... or if that's too long then consider how any of these crypto"currencies" with transaction fees are negative sum games and such they are scams (and no, stocks, gold and cash are not such).
    - x-complexity 3y ago
      > https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... > https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon... Points 3, 4, & 5 apply similarly to any investments made in commodities (gold, silver, copper). A direct source of revenue for those commodities themselves is not provided: There are no dividends being paid out just because I hold 1 kg of gold in a safe. Instead, the people that want to use that gold for other purposes is what provides revenue. Point 1 & 2 can similarly be demanded from commodities as well. The only difference being is that the public market is where I can cash out my 1kg of gold to. > *By that definition, gold too is a ponzi.* No, gold clearly fails to satisfy that definition on two counts. > First, few if any gold investors have expectations of profits. They generally invest in gold as a hedge -- a "store of value" -- that they hope will retain its value in case other assets go sour. There is no difference between the expectation of profits & stores of value: They're facets of the same diamond - Value. The pursuit of one is a masked notion of the other & vice versa - Expectations of profit are a consequence of wanting to retain & accumulate resources against the eroding forces of inflation & entropy in general, & a desire for stores of value is of similar expectation that the overall value grows faster than the eroding forces themselves. > Second, as a commodity, gold HAS a source of revenue besides the investors; namely, the purchases by consumers like jewelers and industry, who take gold out of the market (2/3 of the production) for uses other than re-sale. When one buys 1 oz of gold, one gets a chip of a metal that one can sell to those consumers, and thus obtain some money that does not come from other investors. Again, as stated above, the gold itself doesn't have inherent value: It's value comes from what can be done with it after being transformed/used for something else. Similarly, digital services have already been shown to be commodifiable via AWS' EC2 Spot Instances & their fluctuating prices as demand changes. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/pricing/ The consequence of this logic is that in the long term, such compute can eventually be accessed by *anyone* from *anyone* willing to sell it via public markets. HOWEVER, such a public market was not yet feasible due to the possibility of such computations not actually being done & fraudulently being reported as such. The stopgap between that future is what we have now: Centralized companies selling compute under trust-based assumptions that do currently work, but that present significant problems related to control over said compute. The technology was not there yet, but it's being launched now. EVM-based & Turing-complete VMs in general will generally be made more verifiable with the rollout & integrations of ZK (0-knowledge) proving systems into said VMs. When such computations can be verified to have been genuinely computed within 1/2^n (n >= 64) of an error rate, the addition of a public market to make such compute sellable to people that want said compute is the next logical step, to which Ethereum, its L2 solutions (zkSync, Polygon zkEVM, Optimism, Arbitrum, etc.), & all Lx (x > 2) markets that will come in the future, have already & will provide.
nullc 3y ago
Many of the the more scammy coins engaged in salting the tipjar either by taking investments and then reinvesting them back into the coin in a loop or by making deals to immediately pay back out the investment at close. (see also Charles Hoskinson's big ethereum payout when he left) This lets them claim truly astronomical levels of participation to better sucker people in to participating... but it turns into a liability when the SEC prosecution comes a knocking.

Retric 3y ago

There’s a fair amount of liquidity, but trying to withdraw 1 billion in Eth is going to impact it’s valuation.

latchkey 3y ago
ETH has a $223b market cap, so 1b is .45%.
- delusional 3y ago
  No? It's not?
  - latchkey 3y ago
    https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      Regardless, 1 billion is not 4% of 223 billion. You’re off by a factor of ten.
      - latchkey 3y ago
        fixed... =)
- colecut 3y ago
  0.45%
  - latchkey 3y ago
    damn maths. thanks!
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Market cap is not market depth, you can't withdraw $223B from a speculative asset with a $223B market cap. Just look at SafeMoon lol. Market cap isn't a bank account. It's determined at the margin by the last transaction price multiplied by the number of units outstanding. Bringing it up in this context is just misleading.
everfree 3y ago
Ethereum's daily trading volume is $7 billion, so it's likely that $1 billion would hardly affect its valuation.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Now subtract out the wash trading. I'm not saying it would or wouldn't affect the valuation, I'm saying that the top-line volume is a known fiction. Remember when "Coinbase Employee A" traded some 99% of the entire global LTC volume between two bots at Coinbase? Sure it's old news, but that's the most reputable exchange. [1, 2] Much of the crypto market is a digital Potemkin village designed to make you feel like you're not nearly as alone as you are. [1] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8369-21 https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8369-21 [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/ipo-coinbase-pays-cftc-6-5-million-false-reporting-wash-trading/ https://news.bitcoin.com/ipo-coinbase-pays-cftc-6-5-million-...
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    Potemkin as an adjective is such a useful tool when talking about the crypto scene. here's a post from when I used it extensively I guess about 8 years ago, in the same vein. Unfortunately as part of the cold war argot it seems to just draw blank stares from a lot of people under 35 or so. <https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3hrum5/degenerate_gambler_mircea_popescu_muses_about_how/cua5phi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3hrum5/degenerate...> "Potemkin exchange, Potemkin conversation, it's Potemkins all the way down. Like a matrioshka doll each layer deeper is identical to the one before, but smaller and less articulately defined. "
    - arcticbull 3y ago
      I wish I could take credit for the term, but I'm also a huge fan of 'Sierpinski scheme'. Also, what on God's green flat earth was that article about? The one you were responding to, lol. I mean the late Mircea Popescu was a real piece of work, but, just, wow.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Even on Uniswap, swapping 10,000 ETH ($18.5M) has just 0.9% slippage. There is pretty decent liquidity for ETH and BTC at least, both on and off-chain.
- Retric 3y ago
  If that’s what people where liquidating then it’s not problem, but 10,000 ETH and 2,000,000 ETH are just wildly different numbers here.
barnbuilder 3y ago
How many things are there on earth that you can suddenly sell $1 billion worth of, and not lower its price? I never hear this criticism of any other assets even though it applies to virtually all of them.

delusional 3y ago

If we're both running our own ponzi scheme and you give me $1 worth IOUs to your ponzi scheme, before later readjusting your ponzi scheme to be worth 1000x what it was previously. I would on paper have $1000 of your money, since that's what my IOU in your ponzi scheme is now "worth". If my ponzi scheme then folds before yours, you could claim that I've defrauded you for $1000, but I'd argue I haven't defrauded you in any real sense, in fact you tried to defraud me, and I just so happened to fail at defrauding my customers first. Maybe Ethereum is "liquid" enough to absorb that withdrawal (Madoff was plenty liquid until he wasn't), that doesn't mean there's actually any real value.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Lots of stuff has value, until it doesn't. Tulips, beanie-babies, or pet rocks come to mind. Doesn't mean it's a scam necessarily, could just be a fad -- irrational, but with no fraudulent intent behind it.
- chx 3y ago
  oh bitcoin, ethereum and any such crypto"currency" (even the name is chosen to evoke certain emotions) is pretty solidly established to be scams. Read https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon... or if that's too long then consider how any of these crypto"currencies" with transaction fees are negative sum games and such they are scams (and no, stocks, gold and cash are not such).
  - x-complexity 3y ago
    > https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... > https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon... Points 3, 4, & 5 apply similarly to any investments made in commodities (gold, silver, copper). A direct source of revenue for those commodities themselves is not provided: There are no dividends being paid out just because I hold 1 kg of gold in a safe. Instead, the people that want to use that gold for other purposes is what provides revenue. Point 1 & 2 can similarly be demanded from commodities as well. The only difference being is that the public market is where I can cash out my 1kg of gold to. > *By that definition, gold too is a ponzi.* No, gold clearly fails to satisfy that definition on two counts. > First, few if any gold investors have expectations of profits. They generally invest in gold as a hedge -- a "store of value" -- that they hope will retain its value in case other assets go sour. There is no difference between the expectation of profits & stores of value: They're facets of the same diamond - Value. The pursuit of one is a masked notion of the other & vice versa - Expectations of profit are a consequence of wanting to retain & accumulate resources against the eroding forces of inflation & entropy in general, & a desire for stores of value is of similar expectation that the overall value grows faster than the eroding forces themselves. > Second, as a commodity, gold HAS a source of revenue besides the investors; namely, the purchases by consumers like jewelers and industry, who take gold out of the market (2/3 of the production) for uses other than re-sale. When one buys 1 oz of gold, one gets a chip of a metal that one can sell to those consumers, and thus obtain some money that does not come from other investors. Again, as stated above, the gold itself doesn't have inherent value: It's value comes from what can be done with it after being transformed/used for something else. Similarly, digital services have already been shown to be commodifiable via AWS' EC2 Spot Instances & their fluctuating prices as demand changes. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/pricing/ The consequence of this logic is that in the long term, such compute can eventually be accessed by *anyone* from *anyone* willing to sell it via public markets. HOWEVER, such a public market was not yet feasible due to the possibility of such computations not actually being done & fraudulently being reported as such. The stopgap between that future is what we have now: Centralized companies selling compute under trust-based assumptions that do currently work, but that present significant problems related to control over said compute. The technology was not there yet, but it's being launched now. EVM-based & Turing-complete VMs in general will generally be made more verifiable with the rollout & integrations of ZK (0-knowledge) proving systems into said VMs. When such computations can be verified to have been genuinely computed within 1/2^n (n >= 64) of an error rate, the addition of a public market to make such compute sellable to people that want said compute is the next logical step, to which Ethereum, its L2 solutions (zkSync, Polygon zkEVM, Optimism, Arbitrum, etc.), & all Lx (x > 2) markets that will come in the future, have already & will provide.

nullc 3y ago

Many of the the more scammy coins engaged in salting the tipjar either by taking investments and then reinvesting them back into the coin in a loop or by making deals to immediately pay back out the investment at close. (see also Charles Hoskinson's big ethereum payout when he left) This lets them claim truly astronomical levels of participation to better sucker people in to participating... but it turns into a liability when the SEC prosecution comes a knocking.