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Background: I am personally a long-term value investor (a la Sir Templeton or Buffet †), but annually breakfast with a retired "numbers guy" (who's currently bu
by ProllyInfamous 2y ago
Background: I am personally a long-term value investor (a la Sir Templeton or Buffet †), but annually breakfast with a retired "numbers guy" (who's currently building his short-term trading strategy). For decades he worked finance for among the largest accounting firms in the world...
Since 2016, our mutual friend and I have been adamently suggesting he look into "this bitcoin thing" — his response was typically [disinterested].
At a recent breakfast, it was explained how "talking with ChatGPT finally convinced [him] that you guys have been correct about Bitcoin all along."
When asked "what did ChatGPT explain to you that we two humans could not?!"
His response was simply "I never got embarrassed asking the computer any finance questions, even stupid/simple ones; I've always been the finance guy with answers so I forgot how to be humble in unexplored topics."
Pretty damn humbling, indeed; now if only he had listened back in 2016 =D
†: "Time in the market beats timING the market."
- ipython 2y agoI would be curious to hear what information it (ChatGPT) provided that changed his mind?
- DowagerDave 2y agoit sounds like it's more the non-human / non-embarrassing setup than the actual results. The same way I swear at tools or yell at clouds.
- fwip 2y agoAnother datapoint that shows that LLMs will simply repeat what everyone is saying and happily give the exact wrong answer.
- snapcaster 2y agoCan't have been trained on hackernews then, this is the most anti-crypto space I'm aware of besides /r/buttcoin. i'm also softly anti crypto so not criticizing, just pointing out you're literally in an environment where the opinion you're talking about gets eviscerated every time so it can't be what "everyone is saying"
- svara 2y agoHN just loves novelty, once crypto made mainstream news HN fell out of love. The pattern has applied to Tesla/Musk, cryptocurrency, language models and probably much more I'm not aware of.
- passwordoops 2y agoI agree about the love of novelty, but two of your examples (Tesla/Musk, LLMs) are also falling out of favor in mainstream news. Especially Elon since Twitter. LLMs too (or at least the hype surrounding them as AGI) have seen mainstream panning of late, in parallel to mainstream outlets
- rafaelmn 2y agoI don't think it's about novelty - heck people here will praise Unix and C regularly. It's more that crypto initially had potential, at this point it's been tried and failed to deliver - at least from the value perspective of people here.
- staplers 2y agoat this point it's been tried and failed to deliver A trillion dollars of value suggests otherwise.
- BoorishBears 2y agoImagine if dollar bills appreciated in value thousands of times over by hiding them under your pillow.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoSome people do more than just imagine =P I turn 40 this year, and somehow have managed to entirely not touch my meager HODLings since 2018... it's the only reason I still earn USD (i.e. to not cash out any bitcoin). I'm not rich, yet... but it's been a WILD. fucking. ride. (even just so far). Personally, I cashed out my entire 401(k) in 2016 and invested half of it into Bitcoin... which helps to not spend anything, viewing it as "my retirement, hit-or-miss..!"
- chant4747 2y ago> now if only he had listened back in 2016 =D So your investments could be used to screw other people out of their money who are similarly financially illiterate/insecure? It’s kind of crazy to me that there are somehow still staunch cryptocurrency proponents out there who have somehow ignored all the negative press it has received.
- snapcaster 2y agoEven if you're very conventionally minded, it shouldn't be that crazy to you that not everyone adopts dominant media narratives
- christianqchung 2y agoBy dominant media narratives you mean a self evident train of scams and security incidents? There's no conspiracy or undue effort to make crypto look bad, that happened in a decentralized manner.
- snapcaster 2y agoYou were the one that brought up the media (nobody said conspiracy?)
- christianqchung 2y agoMedia narratives and conspiracies are often used interchangeably, I can't read your mind so I included both. Also in your original comment you brought up the media, it's right there, so...
- snapcaster 2y agodude the comment i responded to is from you saying "cryptocurrency proponents out there who have somehow ignored all the negative press it has received."
- dorkwood 2y ago> His response was simply "I never got embarrassed asking the computer any finance questions, even stupid/simple ones; I've always been the finance guy with answers so I forgot how to be humble in unexplored topics." I think I'm the opposite. My feeling is that anything I type into ChatGPT gets stored in a database, ready to be leaked at some future date, or read by prying eyes without my knowledge. I'm more careful about what I type into it than what I say out loud in front of my friends. Or maybe I'm just paranoid?
- theanti9 2y agohttps://rabbitu.de/articles/security-disclosure-1 https://rabbitu.de/articles/security-disclosure-1 Doesn't it count as paranoia if it already happened?
- malcolmgreaves 2y agoWow! Great disclosure! I find it hard to read though, since the text doesn't properly capitalize the start of sentences. Messes up with the natural language parser I have in my head :)
- TeMPOraL 2y agoExcept it doesn't; that's not OpenAI, that's some random get-rich-quick startup built on top of OpenAI API. Never trust those.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoThat's true, although the pain of giving up privacy is less sharp than the pain of social embarrassment. Sorta like not wearing a helmet on a motorcycle. Or not using condoms. Or not getting vaccinated.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoOn my newest Toyota, they finally made it so you cannot disable the seatbelt chime. As a decades-long seatbelt-FORGETTER (I'm not anti-seatbelt, literally forgot!), not being able to change the vehicle's behavior actually led to a change in mine [I always "buckle up" before even unparking]..!
- kjkjadksj 2y agoTime in the markets beats timing the market if you actually have capital to throw around to gleam a decent 5% yearly return. If you don't have much capital, you have to time the market like hell to build up your capital to a level where 5% yoy actually is a decent amount of money.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- huijzer 2y ago5% is decent? The index made about 10% on average, Peter Lynch about 30%, and Buffett in the ‘60s was at 40-50%.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoIf timing the market works at a small scale, why stop? If it worked, wouldn't everyone do it?
- wongarsu 2y agoYour risk tolerance changes. If you are living on $4000/month and have $500 to invest, you may as well bet those $500 on black. If you have a sizable investment that you hope will pay for your retirement you might want to go for the solid 10% yoy. Similarly if you manage other people's money they might be unhappy with you making 50/50 bets with that money. It's the same logic that causes people to buy lottery tickets. Winning big in the lottery is unlikely, but getting rich by saving two lottery tickets worth of money each month is impossible. The risky strategy with the worse expected outcome is the only one that leads to your goal.