I don't think anyone should act hateful to anyone else. However, seeing that specific bubble deflate though, and a return to, I don't know, sanity, is a welcome change. It's just a shame that so many people have to suffer though as a part of that process.
It’s also, quite frankly, the market reallocating economic decision making power. After a decade of beanstalk economics, it’s reassuring to see the system at least attempting to correct itself.
I have no sympathy for the people losing money. For the young people who invested precious years into what increasingly looks like an economically useless skill set, I feel badly. That said, those who picked up technical or sales chops can likely pivot to a position above the median American’s wages.
People with crypto coins needs other people to be willing to buy them at higher price just slightly later. They keep exploiting fomo for their own gain. I don't think this is moral and a bit of karma is always welcomed.
This isn't necessarily true. A lot of people have held crypto since you could purchase it for single digit American dollars because they believe in the fundamental tenants of crypto - permissionless world financial exchange where the levers and dials of the economic systems are not controlled by world governments.
Cuyrrently (and at a few points in the past) it's a little hard because the value of crypto is fluctuating so wildly but a lot of early adopters have continuously been using and advocating adoption of crypto for a decade now.
It is probably true that 99.9% of people with crypto use it as a speculative investment. The remaining 0.1% true crypto idealist may exist, but I have never met one. So it makes the previous statement very much mostly true.
This type of disingenuous argument is why some of us rejoice at the crypto meltdown.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. The problem is that many (most? the vast majority?) of the ways to make money with crypto are basically pyramid scheme-type scams.
You are wrong. No value can be added to crypto except through fiat deposit. Publicly traded companies create value by their activity. For example, if I own a share of AT&T, the value of that share goes up if AT&T runs a successful marketing campaign to get new users to sign up.
Not quite! Shares of AT&T go up because people spend fiat on buying them. The activity makes it a more attractive buy, but unless the company buys back it’s own shares they don’t go up when they make money. It’s not magic, it’s a market like anything else.
Note: AT&T is a dividend share, so it has yield. Cryptocurrencies generally don’t, they are more like tech stocks. Amazon shares don’t go up when Amazon makes money (unless they spend earnings on stock), or the market buys more Amazon stock.
That's not the full story. A company's share price drops when it pays a dividend - because it now has less money. So when a company makes money its share price does go up.
SharePrice = CompanyValue / NumberOfShares
Now it's true that trading activity can affect the share price too, for example a short squeeze. But this is due to market taking advantage of a desperate buyer rather than anything to do with the company's performance as such.
I think it is the full story.
Company performance is the driver, but it doesn’t set the price. It not right to say it’s irrelevant, it is, but the most important thing is what the market is willing to pay.
The dividend price drops occurs only because the market believe this and reduces the price of their orders. It’s driven by the market responding to the loss of cash, the fact the cash was spent cannot impact share price unless there is buying and selling. The company doesn’t set the share price except for IPO.
It is compounded by Dividend Reinvestment Programs, where the dividends end up buying more stock.
Additionally, I think your equation is wrong.
Company Value = assets - liabilities.
Market cap = n shares * price.
Market cap != company value.
Big tech stock is very similar to cryptocurrency. It’s all about the greater fool who will buy it from you.
Shares have dividends and represent a share of ownership of the underlying book value. The book value of a bitcoin is $0. Shares also come with a vote.
> Just because they told you to have fun staying poor on the way up?
I mean, yes? The level of hubris so many crypto bros exhibited was truly incredible. And if that weren't enough the negative externalities (the truly shockingly wasteful nature of proof-of-work mining, the diversion and scalping of GPUs) should make anyone glad that the bubble burst.
Because you’d have to be a real dumbass to actually put your life savings in crypto.
When I first bought crypto, I put in just enough that if I were to lose it all, it would mean one vacation less and a fewer more meals at home for a few months.
The returns are absurd enough that a $10k investment can be life changing. Anything beyond that is just greed and stupidity.
>Because you’d have to be a real dumbass to actually put your life savings in crypto.
Not all the scams are that obvious. Once a company has a lot of money, it is assumed they have some stability. Celebrity endorsements don't hurt either. There were even stadiums named for the stuff. And Stablegains said in large print that the investments were diversified while the small print said they were putting everything into Luna and would diversify later.
$10k can’t even buy a car. I don’t know where you are in this crazy world but where I but $10k isn’t life changing, it’s more like a month of fancy dinners.
I work everyday too. But not having debt and enough cash cushion to do nothing for years gives you a sense of freedom and confidence that can help you make life changing decisions.
Maybe because crypto is burning enormous amounts of fossil fuels at a time when humans are literally destroying the biosphere and for 90% of people involved their motivation is speculation and greed (get rich) not technology or real world applications.
Always sad to see, but these people actively perpetuated falsehoods about things like regulation. Go look at a celsius thread on reddit when NY said it must cease operations in NY.
>Just because they told you to have fun staying poor on the way up?
Yes. Frankly these people need to have a check to their egos.
Mocking people who just want a return on an investment but don't understand what cryptocurrencies are and falling prey to arseholes (correctly) assuming they are a Greater Fool is definitely in bad taste.
But the people who went "Line goes up, stay poor, I am very smart" despite the warnings they were engaged in a scam... yeah, I have no sympathy for them. They're the get rich quick, fuck you I got mine libertarians who deserve to be taken down a peg or two.
If they banked their future on libertarian magic beans fueled by wasting a mid-sized country worth of power e-waste, and each time you mentioned the obvious flaws in their half-baked schemes they made fun of you, implying that you're 'not going to make it' and telling you to have 'fun staying poor' -- yep, a little. In the abstract of course.
When this crypto thing turned into a ponzi scheme, it was already guaranteed that many people would lose everything. We can only hope it collapses earlier so there are fewer victims.
Bitcoin's original goals and a ponzi scheme both require collective belief in a fiction, but they are distinct fictions.
Bitcoin requires its users collectively believe it has value and others will accept it for some value - this is necessary in order for mining to be profitable thus hashing power be dedicated to protect the blockchain.
A ponzi scheme requires that more people will be buying in at increasingly higher prices.
Notice the former does not assume anything about constantly rising prices. The original vision of Bitcoin actually works better if the price itself remains stable (not rising).
I don’t mind seeing some of the pyramid schemes and such revealed for what they are.
I like to think everything plays out and for a while more people don’t risk and loses their money and maybe some bad guys go to jail even.