7 ms·

SBF Is Headed to Prison but FTX Will Haunt the Crypto Community for Years

42 points by ourmandave 3y ago

black_13 3y ago
[dead]
justapassenger 3y ago
It’s like complaining that putting Al Capone to prison haunted mob community for years.
- kodapoda 3y ago
  The somewhat important difference here is that participation in crypto is voluntary (outside of e.g. extortion). The industry critically relies on reputation, media hype, regulations, etc. FTX collapse and this trial had and will continue having a catastrophic effect on all of the above. Hard to predict whether crypto/web3 will recover. Saying that, I thought ICO scam would be the end of it, and then soon after NFTs happened...
  - poisonborz 3y ago
    If it has any worth (and I mean the banking angle of blockchains), it will recover with regulation/technology X, which is the good burden of making all of FTX's misdeeds impossible. If this arguably massive effort is not taken by key players, then all those resources are better spent elsewhere.
    - kodapoda 3y ago
      The only future for that I can think of is state or large institution owned stablecoins. But that is so far removed from absolutely everything crypto and web3 promised, I wouldn't even put that in the same category. No public ledger, not decentralized, not an alternative to banking, etc. I still don't understand the difference between having $10 in PayPal vs having 10$ in PYUSD.
      - justapassenger 3y ago
        It’s much easier for the owner of PYUSD to inflate their assets and be insolvent without customers knowing about it. That’s it.
snickerbockers 3y ago
This is the biggest crypto exchange scandal since the last crypto exchange scandal.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Still waiting for my Mt Gox payout, lol.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    It is still amazing that Tether didn’t collapse yet.
    - kodapoda 3y ago
      Especially considering the revelations from the SBF trial about FTXs relationship with Tether. I remember someone saying that Tether has incredibly strong ties to the underworld (criminal and political), and that's what keep it afloat. They also said if Tether collapses this might lead to a recession (aka "too big to fail").
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      5% interest on $100B can fill one hell of a balance sheet hole, hella fast.
shopvaccer 3y ago
> for a time, FTX was considered the most trusted exchange in crypto. citation needed
- Ridj48dhsnsh 3y ago
  Yeah.. I remember hearing from some other big HFT firms who wouldn't touch FTX (yet were active on other crypto exchanges). They didn't elaborate on why, but we had our own concerns about their preferential treatment of Alameda's orders.
- pstrateman 3y ago
  Yeah really, nobody I know trusted FTX at all.
- n2d4 3y ago
  Not sure what kind of citation you're looking for, but just search for HN threads mentioning FTX before the collapse, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31738029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31738029 I can't recount how many times I've read something along the lines of "FTX is more trustable/better insured/less risky" on HN. And I don't even blame anyone, because the fake numbers did look impressive. Built by people with a trading background and backed by famous VCs. It was also the largest exchange by volume for a while. They had enough money to rescue all the "illiquid" (read: scam) projects. And of course, effective altruism. I never significantly invested in crypto but I would've bought the lie, too. Knowing what we know now of course it seems like an obvious fraud, and admittedly there are skeptics on any FTX thread (but so were there about any crypto exchange), but the comments who actually foresaw what happened (instead of just referring to a single SBF interview) did either not get traction or are partly even greyed out. And if you ask people now, you have selection bias. Everyone who was even just a tiny bit distrusting will blow it out of proportion, and those who always believed it was legitimate will stay silent. > It’s been pretty interesting watching YC backed Coinbase get absolutely crushed by FTX, which has a higher % of crypto trading volume despite having less than 10% of the headcount. [...] FTX was founded by traders which is valuable when the ultimate purpose of the crypto industry is to separate uninformed people from their money. > FTX is interested in being a real business. I think a lot of people the past several years have failed to try to become a real sustainable business, and instead have been pawns in Benchmark's and Tiger Global's schemes to flip companies into the S&P or into a F500 acquisition. > FTX people clearly know a lot more about market making and how exchanges work. Makes coinbase look like amateurs.
swayvil 3y ago
What's the message here. And who's it aimed at?
- notfed 3y ago
  The message I got from this is that news websites are morphing into content-less, bottom-feeding ad sinkholes that exploit the fact the majority of readers don't read more than one paragraph before engaging in a discussion based solely on the title of the article.
  - swayvil 3y ago
    People would rather talk to each other than read an article? (as for me, yes, definitely) The article gives us something to talk about? If it's the talking that matters then the specifics of what we're talking about probably doesn't matter so much. Doesn't even have to be real. A kind of smalltalk.
    - notfed 3y ago
      To clarify, I agree. I wasn't being sarcastic in my post. But, I don't like this style of article. It's a kind of internet forum parasite. I really would rather we just post the title, have a discussion about that, and not have to burn my eyes like this.
paulpauper 3y ago
the community will simply move to new exchanges and future scams
CPLX 3y ago
If there’s anything but a completely marginal and fringe crypto community in a few years to “haunt” I’ll be astonished.
aarreedd 3y ago
The comment section on any crypto related post is so predictable. Everyone who loves seeing bad news about crypto really just wishes they bought in early.
- recursive 3y ago
  That's really not it. I never bought in. I wouldn't mind some free money, but I have no regrets in never touching it. Even though there were some winners, it's still too risky for my taste. I'm not into gambling, or even investing for that matter, if there's a difference. But I definitely got burned out on crypto stuff. I'm glad to have more bandwidth to hear about other stuff this year.
  - aarreedd 3y ago
    When there is a post about crypto do you comment silly things like how there is zero utility and it's all a scam? I think not. In which case my comment isn't about you. I agree the crypto hype was ridiculous and annoying. But reading the comments here you can tell some people get glee from seeing bad news about crypto.
    - _svoh 3y ago
      I get glee seeing scammers taking Ls for sure.
- jchw 3y ago
  > Everyone who loves seeing bad news about crypto really just wishes they bought in early. I have no idea why I feel so compelled to reply, but surely you realize there are people who wouldn't have wanted to follow that path? I'm not really a fan of cryptocurrency "investing". Sure, with the way things went, it would've been a huge quality of life boost, but it's just not that important. Life continued. Instead, I could've won the lottery. Could've invested in Tesla in 2019. Do I sit here bitterly regretting that I hadn't? Nope. I know some people who did pretty well off cryptocurrency and I'm happy for them, but I chose not to play. Of course, my assessment at the time was that it wouldn't go anywhere value-wise; that was wrong, and I blame that at least in part due to the famous John Maynard Keynes quote. ("The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent") In another timeline I could've also gone bust on it, or worse, it could've become illegal somehow. That said, I actually don't hate cryptocurrency in spirit, I just do not like the path that it has gone. I wanted an alternative to PayPal and credit card processors that is harder to censor, especially as PayPal and credit card processors repeatedly shy away from hacking tools (Think Flipper Zero, emulators, etc.) and anything related to sex. And I think some of the technology is neat; Monero is really cool in theory. Unstoppable swap and related tech will always be interesting even if they attract unscrupulous actors. But a lot of the work for cryptocurrencies feels like it goes to the dumbest fucking stuff. Like, it'd be nice if there was better solutions for subscription payments. Also, consider the following: let's say I wanted to set up a site that accepts crypto currency payments. I can obviously just put a wallet ID somewhere on the page, but if I want to automate payment processing, I need a way to tie transactions back. It'd also be ideal if the server-side components could be very low-trust so that they can generate wallet addresses and verify payments, but not spend from the wallets. I think this is even technically possible with Monero, but it seems pretty hard and as far as I can tell there are no good off-the-shelf tools for this (Please correct me if I'm wrong, I am certainly interested.) Instead it seems like the defacto answer is integrating some service that does it for you, like Coinbase, which I fully understand why you'd do that if you were adding cryptocurrency payments in addition to Stripe and Paypal or whatever, but to me, this goes against the spirit of cryptocurrency. So when I see the latest Mt Gox or FTX news, yeah, I am totally feeling zero sympathy for the hodlers, because I viewed cryptocurrency as a potential solution to a serious problem, not as a way to get rich quickly, and I think it's kind of upsetting that this deep in that seems to be its primary legacy still.
EMM_386 3y ago
Hmm ... "web3". The article mentions it multiple times, FTX apparently having affted its philosophy, upset its fans, abused its supporters and has people questioning the product. I have questions too ... like, is this even a thing at all, has it ever been? I must be missing something, I'm just not sure what. From what I can tell, it's crypto/blockhain revolutionizing the web somehow, which I know I am not seeing. I don't think it's DeFi, or maybe that is part of it too because ... that's crypto. What is the "product" that is now reportedly being questioned? It seems like it's a buzzword. Since I first saw it, I have kept seeing it. The word, nothing else. If that's the case, then I don't see its philosophy, fans, supporters, and product being affected by events at FTX at all. Because those aren't really things either? I'm not sure if it matters enough that I should even be spending time asking about it.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Web3/crypto is populated by two types: charlatans and marks. The marks are upset because SBF’s conviction casts doubt on their convictions. Nobody wants to believe they’re a fool. The charlatans are upset because SBF broke rule one of a con: don’t get caught and ruin it for the rest.
- dartos 3y ago
  The idea, as far as I can tell, was for web3 to be truly distributed. That is, there is no single point of failure for any website and no single entity totally controls any site. Over time as the decentralization bend of crypto faded, so did the meaning of web3. Eventually it devolved to meaning a site using a crypto wallet for purchases and identity. At least that’s been my understanding as someone following fairly closely
  - kodapoda 3y ago
    I think the on-chain products like games are also considered part of web3. Some game developers attempted to store game and user state on chain. As far as I know, these are mostly gambling-type games where the actual gameplay is almost non-existent, and the only attraction (beyond the obvious gambling/crypto) is "the community", "future potential", etc.
throwaway5959 3y ago
Just cash out your crypto and move on. There are so many assets out there. Assets that now generate yield, in excess of inflation, with effectively no risk. Diversify away from crypto, use large institutions and you'll never have to worry about getting rug-pulled or any of the myriad other ways to lose your money in crypto again.
notfed 3y ago
> ...the most trusted exchange in crypto... > ...tenets of the web3 philosophy... I usually try to keep a neutral tone, but I'm going to make an exception: What did I just click on, and why? Just, I mean, I don't even see a news article here. I just see a doomscroll of bottom-feeding ads, and there's literally one paragraph of The-Onion-like satire sprinkled with word-diarrhea vaguely related to the title.
monero-xmr 3y ago
Bitcoin has been rallying lately, as well as the wider sector. Q3 2023 investment was over $2 billion. I have friends who are newly minted millionaires this year from their investments and crypto companies. HN hive mind doesn’t like crypto. There is still enormous innovation here. BTC will certainly break its all time high after the upcoming halving, and the same know-nothings here will say its true value is zero. Nothing ever changes
photonbeam 3y ago
Honest question, are people still buying crypto at all?
- notfed 3y ago
  Honest answer: You can check by googling "Bitcoin graph". When it goes up, people are buying. The answer is...yes.
  - simonw 3y ago
    Or the graph goes up due to market manipulation. How much do you trust Tether?
- ulfw 3y ago
  I lost $20,000 on that shit with various scams (e.g. Terra Luna etc). Never will I tough crypto again and I warn everyone who is potentially falling for the bullshit that is 'web3'. Blockchain technologies are like Elon's Full Self Driving or hyperloop. Always coming in the future, never actually here. But money is gone already.
  - timbit42 3y ago
    People should never invest in things they don't understand.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      There are at least 400 of the S&P 500 companies that I don’t meaningfully understand what they do, how exactly they make money, what their defensible moats are, etc. I still invest in S&P 500 ETFs and believe that to be prudent.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> This turn of events has to be a bit of a bummer for the droves of anarcho-libertarians who thought platforms like SBF’s might one day usher in an age of decentralized and anonymized exchange that cut government out of the picture completely. Yeah, and when I was a kid I once closed my eyes and wished for TWO ponies! The quote above sums up the nonsense of "web 3" (excuse me while I gag a bit) perfectly. The idea that you can somehow set up systems that are free and independent of government and society show how completely unserious these "anarcho-libertarians" are.
codezero 3y ago
I work in a crypto adjacent business (we provide decoded data from EVM blockchains) and this has had pretty much zero effect on our business (specifically: we continue to get new business with customers that are building their own businesses with real customers and interesting use cases). It's such an emerging market, there's plenty of opportunity for real businesses to exist and thrive. The Internet in the 90s was filled with scammers and bad actors, eventually ecommerce took hold and the Internet achieved a scale where we stopped really thinking about the primary source: spam. The same might be true for crypto/web3, or it could just stop being relevant like Quora or StackOverflow became in the face of LLMs. It's pretty fun to see it all play out though.
- ackbar03 3y ago
  what are these "real customers and interesting use cases" exactly? I'm genuinely curious
  - codezero 3y ago
    In emerging markets, real customers are the ones that pay their bills regularly and actively hire/grow their business, and interesting use cases are subjective, I don't expect to win anyone over by explaining them. You can go dig into EVM businesses and make your own conclusions. Or you can search previous comments I've made on HN and see if you agree or not. I'm a crypto skeptic and joined a company in the space because former coworkers founded it, I can't say that it will work but I've been in emerging tech since the 90s and I'm excited about what may come in the blockchain space now that I've been working in it for ~ a year. What kind of tech gets you excited? Maybe I can find a customer of mine and draw a line back to what you think is interesting/cool, but, don't expect me to take a shot in the dark and make you suddenly a believer :) I should also add: I've worked at quite a few startups that I was excited about that ended up to be complete failures, so I don't blame you if you know better. Good for you for always being on the profitable and successful side of emerging tech!
    - ackbar03 3y ago
      Whoa nelly! Like I said, I was just genuinely curious
superkuh 3y ago
Traditional finance like these off-chain markets have always been heavily corrupt. It's a shame that people only hear about the traditional finance markets at the edge of cryptocurrency space (where it touches normal finance) and never about anything that actually happens on a blockchain.
throwaway128128 3y ago
It's funny that Bitcoiners are saying that Bitcoin isn't crypto. The term is so toxic that they've disowned it... even though Bitcoin is literally the original crypto!
- timbit42 3y ago
  Bitcoin maximalists prefer to disassociate themselves from alternative cryptocurrencies (aka. alt-coins), all of which they consider to be inferior and unnecessary. Technically, the 'crypto' in cryptocurrency refers to cryptography, which is a technology cryptocurrencies utilize. People who want to ban 'crypto' really mean they want to ban cryptocurrencies, not cryptography.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Actual Title: FTX Is Sharing Customer Data With the FBI
eugenedolores 3y ago
[dead]
GreMacLeod 3y ago
[dead]

42 points by ourmandave 3y ago

black_13 3y ago

[dead]

justapassenger 3y ago

It’s like complaining that putting Al Capone to prison haunted mob community for years.

kodapoda 3y ago
The somewhat important difference here is that participation in crypto is voluntary (outside of e.g. extortion). The industry critically relies on reputation, media hype, regulations, etc. FTX collapse and this trial had and will continue having a catastrophic effect on all of the above. Hard to predict whether crypto/web3 will recover. Saying that, I thought ICO scam would be the end of it, and then soon after NFTs happened...
- poisonborz 3y ago
  If it has any worth (and I mean the banking angle of blockchains), it will recover with regulation/technology X, which is the good burden of making all of FTX's misdeeds impossible. If this arguably massive effort is not taken by key players, then all those resources are better spent elsewhere.
  - kodapoda 3y ago
    The only future for that I can think of is state or large institution owned stablecoins. But that is so far removed from absolutely everything crypto and web3 promised, I wouldn't even put that in the same category. No public ledger, not decentralized, not an alternative to banking, etc. I still don't understand the difference between having $10 in PayPal vs having 10$ in PYUSD.
    - justapassenger 3y ago
      It’s much easier for the owner of PYUSD to inflate their assets and be insolvent without customers knowing about it. That’s it.

snickerbockers 3y ago

This is the biggest crypto exchange scandal since the last crypto exchange scandal.

jjoonathan 3y ago
Still waiting for my Mt Gox payout, lol.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  It is still amazing that Tether didn’t collapse yet.
  - kodapoda 3y ago
    Especially considering the revelations from the SBF trial about FTXs relationship with Tether. I remember someone saying that Tether has incredibly strong ties to the underworld (criminal and political), and that's what keep it afloat. They also said if Tether collapses this might lead to a recession (aka "too big to fail").
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    5% interest on $100B can fill one hell of a balance sheet hole, hella fast.

shopvaccer 3y ago

> for a time, FTX was considered the most trusted exchange in crypto. citation needed

Ridj48dhsnsh 3y ago
Yeah.. I remember hearing from some other big HFT firms who wouldn't touch FTX (yet were active on other crypto exchanges). They didn't elaborate on why, but we had our own concerns about their preferential treatment of Alameda's orders.
pstrateman 3y ago
Yeah really, nobody I know trusted FTX at all.
n2d4 3y ago
Not sure what kind of citation you're looking for, but just search for HN threads mentioning FTX before the collapse, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31738029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31738029 I can't recount how many times I've read something along the lines of "FTX is more trustable/better insured/less risky" on HN. And I don't even blame anyone, because the fake numbers did look impressive. Built by people with a trading background and backed by famous VCs. It was also the largest exchange by volume for a while. They had enough money to rescue all the "illiquid" (read: scam) projects. And of course, effective altruism. I never significantly invested in crypto but I would've bought the lie, too. Knowing what we know now of course it seems like an obvious fraud, and admittedly there are skeptics on any FTX thread (but so were there about any crypto exchange), but the comments who actually foresaw what happened (instead of just referring to a single SBF interview) did either not get traction or are partly even greyed out. And if you ask people now, you have selection bias. Everyone who was even just a tiny bit distrusting will blow it out of proportion, and those who always believed it was legitimate will stay silent. > It’s been pretty interesting watching YC backed Coinbase get absolutely crushed by FTX, which has a higher % of crypto trading volume despite having less than 10% of the headcount. [...] FTX was founded by traders which is valuable when the ultimate purpose of the crypto industry is to separate uninformed people from their money. > FTX is interested in being a real business. I think a lot of people the past several years have failed to try to become a real sustainable business, and instead have been pawns in Benchmark's and Tiger Global's schemes to flip companies into the S&P or into a F500 acquisition. > FTX people clearly know a lot more about market making and how exchanges work. Makes coinbase look like amateurs.

swayvil 3y ago

What's the message here. And who's it aimed at?

notfed 3y ago
The message I got from this is that news websites are morphing into content-less, bottom-feeding ad sinkholes that exploit the fact the majority of readers don't read more than one paragraph before engaging in a discussion based solely on the title of the article.
- swayvil 3y ago
  People would rather talk to each other than read an article? (as for me, yes, definitely) The article gives us something to talk about? If it's the talking that matters then the specifics of what we're talking about probably doesn't matter so much. Doesn't even have to be real. A kind of smalltalk.
  - notfed 3y ago
    To clarify, I agree. I wasn't being sarcastic in my post. But, I don't like this style of article. It's a kind of internet forum parasite. I really would rather we just post the title, have a discussion about that, and not have to burn my eyes like this.

paulpauper 3y ago

the community will simply move to new exchanges and future scams

CPLX 3y ago

If there’s anything but a completely marginal and fringe crypto community in a few years to “haunt” I’ll be astonished.

aarreedd 3y ago

The comment section on any crypto related post is so predictable. Everyone who loves seeing bad news about crypto really just wishes they bought in early.

recursive 3y ago
That's really not it. I never bought in. I wouldn't mind some free money, but I have no regrets in never touching it. Even though there were some winners, it's still too risky for my taste. I'm not into gambling, or even investing for that matter, if there's a difference. But I definitely got burned out on crypto stuff. I'm glad to have more bandwidth to hear about other stuff this year.
- aarreedd 3y ago
  When there is a post about crypto do you comment silly things like how there is zero utility and it's all a scam? I think not. In which case my comment isn't about you. I agree the crypto hype was ridiculous and annoying. But reading the comments here you can tell some people get glee from seeing bad news about crypto.
  - _svoh 3y ago
    I get glee seeing scammers taking Ls for sure.
jchw 3y ago
> Everyone who loves seeing bad news about crypto really just wishes they bought in early. I have no idea why I feel so compelled to reply, but surely you realize there are people who wouldn't have wanted to follow that path? I'm not really a fan of cryptocurrency "investing". Sure, with the way things went, it would've been a huge quality of life boost, but it's just not that important. Life continued. Instead, I could've won the lottery. Could've invested in Tesla in 2019. Do I sit here bitterly regretting that I hadn't? Nope. I know some people who did pretty well off cryptocurrency and I'm happy for them, but I chose not to play. Of course, my assessment at the time was that it wouldn't go anywhere value-wise; that was wrong, and I blame that at least in part due to the famous John Maynard Keynes quote. ("The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent") In another timeline I could've also gone bust on it, or worse, it could've become illegal somehow. That said, I actually don't hate cryptocurrency in spirit, I just do not like the path that it has gone. I wanted an alternative to PayPal and credit card processors that is harder to censor, especially as PayPal and credit card processors repeatedly shy away from hacking tools (Think Flipper Zero, emulators, etc.) and anything related to sex. And I think some of the technology is neat; Monero is really cool in theory. Unstoppable swap and related tech will always be interesting even if they attract unscrupulous actors. But a lot of the work for cryptocurrencies feels like it goes to the dumbest fucking stuff. Like, it'd be nice if there was better solutions for subscription payments. Also, consider the following: let's say I wanted to set up a site that accepts crypto currency payments. I can obviously just put a wallet ID somewhere on the page, but if I want to automate payment processing, I need a way to tie transactions back. It'd also be ideal if the server-side components could be very low-trust so that they can generate wallet addresses and verify payments, but not spend from the wallets. I think this is even technically possible with Monero, but it seems pretty hard and as far as I can tell there are no good off-the-shelf tools for this (Please correct me if I'm wrong, I am certainly interested.) Instead it seems like the defacto answer is integrating some service that does it for you, like Coinbase, which I fully understand why you'd do that if you were adding cryptocurrency payments in addition to Stripe and Paypal or whatever, but to me, this goes against the spirit of cryptocurrency. So when I see the latest Mt Gox or FTX news, yeah, I am totally feeling zero sympathy for the hodlers, because I viewed cryptocurrency as a potential solution to a serious problem, not as a way to get rich quickly, and I think it's kind of upsetting that this deep in that seems to be its primary legacy still.

EMM_386 3y ago

Hmm ... "web3". The article mentions it multiple times, FTX apparently having affted its philosophy, upset its fans, abused its supporters and has people questioning the product. I have questions too ... like, is this even a thing at all, has it ever been? I must be missing something, I'm just not sure what. From what I can tell, it's crypto/blockhain revolutionizing the web somehow, which I know I am not seeing. I don't think it's DeFi, or maybe that is part of it too because ... that's crypto. What is the "product" that is now reportedly being questioned? It seems like it's a buzzword. Since I first saw it, I have kept seeing it. The word, nothing else. If that's the case, then I don't see its philosophy, fans, supporters, and product being affected by events at FTX at all. Because those aren't really things either? I'm not sure if it matters enough that I should even be spending time asking about it.

Waterluvian 3y ago
Web3/crypto is populated by two types: charlatans and marks. The marks are upset because SBF’s conviction casts doubt on their convictions. Nobody wants to believe they’re a fool. The charlatans are upset because SBF broke rule one of a con: don’t get caught and ruin it for the rest.
dartos 3y ago
The idea, as far as I can tell, was for web3 to be truly distributed. That is, there is no single point of failure for any website and no single entity totally controls any site. Over time as the decentralization bend of crypto faded, so did the meaning of web3. Eventually it devolved to meaning a site using a crypto wallet for purchases and identity. At least that’s been my understanding as someone following fairly closely
- kodapoda 3y ago
  I think the on-chain products like games are also considered part of web3. Some game developers attempted to store game and user state on chain. As far as I know, these are mostly gambling-type games where the actual gameplay is almost non-existent, and the only attraction (beyond the obvious gambling/crypto) is "the community", "future potential", etc.

throwaway5959 3y ago

Just cash out your crypto and move on. There are so many assets out there. Assets that now generate yield, in excess of inflation, with effectively no risk. Diversify away from crypto, use large institutions and you'll never have to worry about getting rug-pulled or any of the myriad other ways to lose your money in crypto again.

notfed 3y ago

> ...the most trusted exchange in crypto... > ...tenets of the web3 philosophy... I usually try to keep a neutral tone, but I'm going to make an exception: What did I just click on, and why? Just, I mean, I don't even see a news article here. I just see a doomscroll of bottom-feeding ads, and there's literally one paragraph of The-Onion-like satire sprinkled with word-diarrhea vaguely related to the title.

monero-xmr 3y ago

Bitcoin has been rallying lately, as well as the wider sector. Q3 2023 investment was over $2 billion. I have friends who are newly minted millionaires this year from their investments and crypto companies. HN hive mind doesn’t like crypto. There is still enormous innovation here. BTC will certainly break its all time high after the upcoming halving, and the same know-nothings here will say its true value is zero. Nothing ever changes

photonbeam 3y ago

Honest question, are people still buying crypto at all?

notfed 3y ago
Honest answer: You can check by googling "Bitcoin graph". When it goes up, people are buying. The answer is...yes.
- simonw 3y ago
  Or the graph goes up due to market manipulation. How much do you trust Tether?
ulfw 3y ago
I lost $20,000 on that shit with various scams (e.g. Terra Luna etc). Never will I tough crypto again and I warn everyone who is potentially falling for the bullshit that is 'web3'. Blockchain technologies are like Elon's Full Self Driving or hyperloop. Always coming in the future, never actually here. But money is gone already.
- timbit42 3y ago
  People should never invest in things they don't understand.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    There are at least 400 of the S&P 500 companies that I don’t meaningfully understand what they do, how exactly they make money, what their defensible moats are, etc. I still invest in S&P 500 ETFs and believe that to be prudent.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> This turn of events has to be a bit of a bummer for the droves of anarcho-libertarians who thought platforms like SBF’s might one day usher in an age of decentralized and anonymized exchange that cut government out of the picture completely. Yeah, and when I was a kid I once closed my eyes and wished for TWO ponies! The quote above sums up the nonsense of "web 3" (excuse me while I gag a bit) perfectly. The idea that you can somehow set up systems that are free and independent of government and society show how completely unserious these "anarcho-libertarians" are.

codezero 3y ago

I work in a crypto adjacent business (we provide decoded data from EVM blockchains) and this has had pretty much zero effect on our business (specifically: we continue to get new business with customers that are building their own businesses with real customers and interesting use cases). It's such an emerging market, there's plenty of opportunity for real businesses to exist and thrive. The Internet in the 90s was filled with scammers and bad actors, eventually ecommerce took hold and the Internet achieved a scale where we stopped really thinking about the primary source: spam. The same might be true for crypto/web3, or it could just stop being relevant like Quora or StackOverflow became in the face of LLMs. It's pretty fun to see it all play out though.

ackbar03 3y ago
what are these "real customers and interesting use cases" exactly? I'm genuinely curious
- codezero 3y ago
  In emerging markets, real customers are the ones that pay their bills regularly and actively hire/grow their business, and interesting use cases are subjective, I don't expect to win anyone over by explaining them. You can go dig into EVM businesses and make your own conclusions. Or you can search previous comments I've made on HN and see if you agree or not. I'm a crypto skeptic and joined a company in the space because former coworkers founded it, I can't say that it will work but I've been in emerging tech since the 90s and I'm excited about what may come in the blockchain space now that I've been working in it for ~ a year. What kind of tech gets you excited? Maybe I can find a customer of mine and draw a line back to what you think is interesting/cool, but, don't expect me to take a shot in the dark and make you suddenly a believer :) I should also add: I've worked at quite a few startups that I was excited about that ended up to be complete failures, so I don't blame you if you know better. Good for you for always being on the profitable and successful side of emerging tech!
  - ackbar03 3y ago
    Whoa nelly! Like I said, I was just genuinely curious

superkuh 3y ago

Traditional finance like these off-chain markets have always been heavily corrupt. It's a shame that people only hear about the traditional finance markets at the edge of cryptocurrency space (where it touches normal finance) and never about anything that actually happens on a blockchain.

throwaway128128 3y ago

It's funny that Bitcoiners are saying that Bitcoin isn't crypto. The term is so toxic that they've disowned it... even though Bitcoin is literally the original crypto!

timbit42 3y ago
Bitcoin maximalists prefer to disassociate themselves from alternative cryptocurrencies (aka. alt-coins), all of which they consider to be inferior and unnecessary. Technically, the 'crypto' in cryptocurrency refers to cryptography, which is a technology cryptocurrencies utilize. People who want to ban 'crypto' really mean they want to ban cryptocurrencies, not cryptography.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

Actual Title: FTX Is Sharing Customer Data With the FBI

eugenedolores 3y ago

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GreMacLeod 3y ago

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