[rococode]

No, not at all like the stock market, which has real mechanisms for getting real cash paid by real consumers in real life for real products into the hands of stockholders.

Do people speculate on it more than they probably should? Sure. But at the heart of the stock market is a system of "I just sold a physical thing for $1000, and since you own the stock you get $0.00001 of that". At the heart of crypto is "my computer did some math, so... money".

[mumbisChungo]

At the heart of crypto is the desire for decentralized banking infrastructure and currency, which has non-zero cost to operate and thus requires some degree of compensation for operating the network or protocol.

Just like in the equities market, speculation and gambling dominates market values of these things to varying degrees (to a comical extent in growth tech recently, for example).

[lmm]

> At the heart of crypto is the desire for decentralized banking infrastructure and currency, which has non-zero cost to operate and thus requires some degree of compensation for operating the network or protocol.

But where's the value being delivered by that "decentralized banking infrastructure and currency"? Actual usefulness of crypto for genuinely decentralised (i.e. L1) transactions has been going down not up (fees are higher than ever, fewer and fewer stores allow direct payment with cryptocurrency...).

[liber8]

How do you view public companies that have never paid a dividend and never intend to do so?

[ericbarrett]

Many companies which don't pay dividends still do periodic share buybacks. Investors like this because dividends are taxed at distribution.

[cuteboy19]

Can you give an example

[saveferris]

https://www.barrons.com/articles/meta-jpmorgan-stock-price-r...

It happens every day....

[cuteboy19]

Buybacks are mathematically equivalent to dividend