Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by graeme 1866 days ago
Stocks confer ownership of a company. If Apple remained the same, but everyone went insane and started selling Apple Stocks for $0.0000000000000000000000001 and people refused to buy, I would buy every one and then collect the dividends.

Whereas if everyone sold crypto for $0.00000000000000000000001 and people refused to buy, you would gain nothing by buying them all. You can only make money in crypto if people buy it at a higher price.
1 comments
kemonocode 1866 days ago
Except many stocks do not, in fact, pay dividends. Amazon doesn't and it's one of the most highly valued companies in the world. Meanwhile, just as a lot of crypto does not pay dividends I could make use of DeFi platforms to get it on the crypto I do own, or simply get Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies, then you can see the staking process as paying dividends of a kind.

I get your hatred towards crypto, but you're cherry picking. If all money is BS and made up then good ol' stocks have good company with crypto in hell.

link
johnbcoughlin 1866 days ago
Hopefully everyone can see that there is a difference between being a 75% shareholder of Amazon, and being a 75% shareholder of dogecoin, in terms of the real assets that allows you to bring to bear. Regardless of which one is paying dividends.
link
Retric 1866 days ago
Proof of stake crypto doesn’t pay a dividend. Stock splits where you hold more shares but total number of shares double are effectively a null transaction. It’s only the underlying value that matters not the number of tokens.

All companies either die or eventually pay dividends in one form or another. So, just because Amazon or whatnot has yet to pay a dividend doesn’t mean it will never pay one. People judge the probability of future dividends not just the pattern of past dividends because companies can fail, but they can also grow. Handing back money in the growth phase is considered an inefficient use of funds.

link
graeme 1865 days ago
Amazon had net income of $21 billion on 2020. Were you the sole shareholder you would be entitled to collect that if you chose. Currently amazon reinvests to grow but that doesn’t mean profits aren’t there.

Meanwhile if you owned all of bitcoin and wanted to keep the current hash rate you’d have to pay in about $20 billion a year, maybe more.

From a cashflow perspective, one is certainly better than the other to own, even if you are barred from selling.

link