[smt88]

"A lot of assets in this category are now worth $0" is not a "bear market". It's a hard crash and proof that skeptics' years of criticisms -- including that cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value and are vulnerable to being worth $0 at any moment -- were correct all along.

[okwubodu]

Useless assets going to zero is business as usual in the field. It happened last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

[immigrantheart]

Um..bitcoin is still $29k, not 0, and so many other cryptos still have value noted in USD out there.

Sure, criticism schimisicm. Proof is in the pudding.

[smt88]

> Proof is in the pudding.

That's exactly what I said. The pudding was a crash. It proved that cryptocurrencies are speculative assets without intrinsic value and that they aren't a hedge against any other speculative assets or fiat currency (in contrast to, for example, gold).

[zer01]

Netflix is also down 66% YTD, Tesla down 41% while BTC is down 37% over the same span.

Clearly Tesla and Netflix were speculative assets without intrinsic value too by that logic.

[smt88]

The overvaluation of tech stocks was absolutely speculative.

[immigrantheart]

Crash is relative? And the proof in the pudding is Bitcoin has value of $29k.

[devoutsalsa]

Just because some cryptos goes to zero doesn’t mean all crypto has zero value.

[smt88]

> Just because some cryptos goes to zero doesn’t mean all crypto has zero value.

That's true. Crypto has zero value because it has no utility. It's like a Pokemon card: it only has value if people have assigned value to it. You can't make anything with it, and it doesn't give you any legal right to a future cash flow (like a stock or a promissory note does).

Let me predict your response: "The same is true of fiat!"

Yes, true. Fiat currency can also drop to $0 in value, of course. But no one is pretending otherwise, and fiat currency is heavily manipulated by central banks to avoid large peaks and valleys (which works in some countries and not in others).

The problem with crypto is not that it's imaginary money. It's that its supporters pretend otherwise.

[rvz]

> That's true. Crypto has zero value because it has no utility.

So is that why Stripe, Moneygram, Skiff, Namecheap, TransferGo, Porkbun, FIDE World Chess, etc are still using cryptocurrencies or blockchain? Maybe they chose the ones that are useful and ignored the low effort scam tokens?

I don't think very absolute statements work well these days.

[pontifier]

Pokemon cards at least have some nostalgic value. You could even burn one to release a small amount of stored chemical energy.

[PretzelPirate]

> You can't make anything with it

There are blockchains that exist to provide utility by enabling execution of decentralized applications. Not all blockchains are focused on just payments. You may think that decentralized applications don’t provide utility, but that would be a personal view, not an objective fact.

[smt88]

"dApps" or whatever they're called are a ghost town. None currently exist that are truly decentralized or have a value greater than traditional applications.

Decentralization is also possible and functions better with tokens (e.g. Bittorrent).

[zer01]

There’s a pretty clear logical contradiction in claiming definitively that no protocols are actually decentralized or work better than their centralized counterparts in crypto world while also signaling that you’re so unfamiliar with it that you barely know what a dApp is.

[smt88]

I know what a dApp is and have built one on Ethereum. I don't know what the new fad for describing the benefit of crypto is.

People only talk about DeFi now, and dApps may have rebranded as Web3.

[adra]

There's very little value arguing with true believers. When they're finally broke and pushed into the next scheme to rob their money away, they'll finally admit that they knew it was bogus all along and that their involvement was just for the lolz. These people are not worth your time.

[smabie]

I mean any asset is vulnerable to being worth $0 at any moment. For example your previously valuable house could actually be worthless due to a structural defect or a previously valuable company could be worth nothing due to massive fraud.

Moreover total crypto market cap still high 12 figures so I fail to see how that proves your point?

[smt88]

> I mean any asset is vulnerable to being worth $0 at any moment.

Absolutely, totally wrong. Let's look at some of the most common assets.

- Houses:

> your previously valuable house could actually be worthless due to a structural defect

Wrong. If you buy a new house, you likely have a builder's warranty. If you buy an existing house, you get an inspection. Unless the house is very inexpensive and the inspector is totally incompetent, you're not going to find something that costs more to fix than the house itself cost you.

But even if you did and the house could no longer be occupied, you'd still be able to sell the land and salvage building materials from the house.

Your house can't suddenly be worth $0 because of the collapse of a speculative market. You can be underwater, but if the house can be lived in or the land can be used, it has value.

- Cars: Can be sold for parts or scrap.

- Stocks: Legally entitle you to profits of a company, which is only worth $0 if the company has been involved in major fraud or you bought the stock of a company that was insolvent already. Definitely possible, but easy to avoid. Microsoft is not suddenly going to blow up, for example.

- Govt bonds: Possible to become valueless, but usually backed up by something in a developed country (like bankruptcy laws). If a credit-worthy country like the US has bonds that suddenly become worthless, society is probably otherwise collapsing and you have other problems.

- Gold/silver/diamonds: Can't become valueless because they have industrial uses.

- Index funds: Would, again, require a societal collapse to lose all their value.

[PretzelPirate]

> Stocks: Legally entitle you to profits of a company

If I own Meta stock, how do I get my share of their profits? They don’t pay dividends.

[rvz]

Let alone owning stocks from SPAC companies. They also don't pay dividends either.

[smt88]

If Meta is liquidated, you are owed money (depending on where you are in line).

[PretzelPirate]

So you aren’t entitled to the profits of the company, you’re entitled to some percentage of the value of their assets, assuming they don’t run out before you get paid.

That doesn’t provide any real justification for stocks having value.