[sek]

If it is a medium of exchange, all the attention never made a lot of sense.

The use cases are niche; that's the thing. Venezuelans who avoid inflation and ordering illegal drugs are not a trillion-dollar business. All the legal/regulated areas mean competing with existing financial infrastructure, which is low margin and incredibly competitive.

So if you see the space as a whole, it never had the potential market to begin with to justify those valuations. It was fuelled by low-interest rates, speculators, and venture capital. It was, in retrospect, simply a bubble, and some people feared missing out after some became insanely rich with it.

Historically speaking it was nothing special: Tulips, new economy, real estate and now it was crypo.

When you are in it, invested people always tell you why it is different this time. The underlying economics stay the same; value creation is usually incremental and hard.

[automatic6131]

>It was, in retrospect, simply a bubble

It was clearly this since 2016, imho

[hedora]

Since day one, honestly. Otherwise most people here would have stuck $100 in to BTC at $10.

[Melting_Harps]

> Otherwise most people here would have stuck $100 in to BTC at $10.

Bwahahaha!

You guys really need some humility, you'd think the stock market and by extension your collective portfolios, but particularly tech growth stocks losing +60% (including FAANGS) would do it, but until you guys get rolled into the mass tech layoffs and get a taste of what living precariously due to extermal economic crisis' is like will you understand what a self-serving bubble you've all been living in. The level of self-delusion isn't just cringe, it's honestly the cruel self serving narcissism that explains the 'how and why' the Valley looks like the cesspool that it does: financial inequality, mass poverty, rampant substance abuse and poor mental health are all the costs of entry so we tech titans can make billions of go-no where apps like Doordash burning VC money. But we get to tell ourselves we're above everyone else because we're rewarded with foosball and free snacks in our workplace.

With that said, a market correction was necessary and admittedly my timing was off (I felt a 50% correction was about right in early May, I felt it was the bottom), and we needed to clear out the mess just like the ICO craze; this is just next wave of mal-investment being cleared seen in a healthy market and if you want to know the truth: it's in bear markets that this is when the tech gets built--lots of exciting things are being built in layer 2, as well as continuing to reduce the network's energy use on fossil fuels. These yield farms were the biggest scams and we told people that NYKNYC for a reason.

But, you wouldn't know that because you've apparently convinced yourself that your clairvoyance has imbued you with a divine vision of some sort... seriously, stop drinking the kool-aid guys, it's why the satire in Silicon Valley (series) hit so close to home.

[ineedasername]

You describe the current entrenched system with such horror which… well, a bit one sided but not complete wrong either.

The only problem is that it’s displacement by a market resembling the crypto one currently in collapse would be worse in every single way.

Just take investment portfolio loss that you mention: a tech heavy portfolio that lost 60% this year, if the investor is long anyway, may recover a bit or completely by the time they need to cash out. I’m far ahead of any temporary losses over the decades.

In contrast, even a portfolio long on crypto is still irrevocably (mostly or completely) gone if it was held at the FTX exchange.

Turns out “too big to fail” may actually be a bit of a bug and a feature, while crypto has, for the foreseeable future, demonstrated it’s simply not worth saving. Considering the contagion FTX will have, it should be concerning that Binance might simply not have been stable enough itself to step in. It should concern anyone with holdings with Binance that they made such a big deal about stepping in and then backed out, possibly just could handle it on top of their own shaky foundation.

Maybe some current coins should have a future but the entire ecosystem surrounding them is rotten and needs to be torn down, the ground salted, and then filled with people less blinded by hype and shiny tech and more understanding of how a financial system interfaces with a real world economy and, the masses of people live in it every single day.

[Melting_Harps]

> You describe the current entrenched system with such horror which… well, a bit one sided but not complete wrong either.

Because one should, how we went from the 90s Cypherpunk culture taking over SV to this is abysmal situation is stark and it can be attributed to this vile outlook on 'the other' who in their view didn't work hard enough to get to the right university, learn o code and get the right degree to paper signal mega corps or time the many financial crisis that makes their economic outlook as bleak as it is--especially for millennials and gen z who were sold a lie about what university would entail and have so much unpayable debt regardless of the outcome.

> Just take investment portfolio loss that you mention: a tech heavy portfolio that lost 60% this year, if the investor is long anyway, may recover a bit or completely by the time they need to cash out. I’m far ahead of any temporary losses over the decades.

First, it's +60%, netflix is still the loss leader in FAANG and hit a low of -72% from it's ATH in the early summer; there is nothing good to say about META either or the rest. Since other than Apple, who really should suffer more from perpetual zero covid policy uncertainty in Schenzen, should also be hurting by now since the Chips being made in the US will likely require higher end costs for their devices, but some how isn't...proving that the stock market can stay irrational longer than one individual can stay solvent.

> In contrast, even a portfolio long on crypto is still irrevocably (mostly or completely) gone if it was held at the FTX exchange.

Sure, but that is like saying that the entire model behind investing in publicly traded companies is entirely worthless because Robinhood wouldn't let you buy Gamestop; when the culpability lies solely wit Robinhood or FTX and similair custodial exchanges in this specific case. The mantra is and always has been in the Bitcoin community that you can only own those tokens if you are in sole possession of the private keys, and the entire history of exit scams has proven why.

Evey new adoption phase has people who get into these things headlong without asking why/how they function, most get burned in the process but learn the value of monetary sovereignty in the process it's like a stupid tax of sort among those ready to take personal responsibility and it's who who ultimately benefit the most from this. Yield farming was the most blatantly criminal since ICOs and it's actually good that they're being destroyed, whether it was 3-arrows, Celsius, or now FTX.

Hell, I'm probably more critical than you as I want YC backed Coinbase to get destroyed, too because of how bad practices they have and what a net negative they have been in all but maybe the first years of their existence and have been mired with a legacy of perpetual incompetence and maliciousness.

> Turns out “too big to fail” may actually be a bit of a bug and a feature, while crypto has, for the foreseeable future, demonstrated it’s simply not worth saving. Considering the contagion FTX will have, it should be concerning that Binance might simply not have been stable enough itself to step in. It should concern anyone with holdings with Binance that they made such a big deal about stepping in and then backed out, possibly just could handle it on top of their own shaky foundation.

That's at best conjecture on your part, and I'm pretty sure you benefited from these bailouts if you feel that way, most of us didn't so maybe you can see why we hold such views. CZ is a conman, and if he says 'fundus are safu' and you believe it because you wanted to keep your funds on there for trading purposes that is YOUR fault, not anyone else's, much less the networks that still remain functional despite the increase or decrease of market volatility.

> Maybe some current coins should have a future but the entire ecosystem surrounding them is rotten and needs to be torn down, the ground salted, and then filled with people less blinded by hype and shiny tech and more understanding of how a financial system interfaces with a real world economy and, the masses of people live in it every single day.

Personally speaking, other than Bitcoin and a few privacy coins like Monero I don't see anything worth much in the crypto currency ecosystem, ETH and Vitalik have been running the same scam as FTX due to cult of personality; but that is fine if we believe in truly free-markets, experimentation in the market place of ideas is critical for innovation, which means many will fail. You make it sound like VC isn't playing the same same where 99% of all startups fail.

My main contentions is that the way most of you see FTX as a 'crypto bro' who pontificates about saving the World by yield farming, when most of us told people it's the stupidest way to get rug-pulled, is ironic because that is who most of the non-tech World views Silicon Valley. Hence the the 'making the World a better place' meme when the Valley is the utter epitome of the dystopic techonocracy that cyberpunk genre is based on: in short, FTX and SBF is a tech bro more than he ever was a valued member of the Bitcoin or any crypto currency community for that matter. Like I said, I thought he was going to end up in a CIA/FBI black-site when he got involved in lobbying politicians before I was informed of his family's connections, at which point it was clear the ilk that makes for Stanford-ites.

[ineedasername]

Thank you for an extremely thoughtful reply! I’ll be honest, I don’t have the time or attention span to go back and forth again but I also don’t think that’s necessary. You’ve given me some good things and valid reasoning to think about, and I will! So, a good discussion and exchange of ideas. Thanks!

[rufus_foreman]

I put $1000 in at $100. Good thing I didn't know it was a bubble!

Best return on an investment-related activity I've made so far in my life.

[giaour]

The market doesn't care whether you understand it. So long as you pull your money out before the bubble deflates back to or below the level at which you initially invested, you will make money. There is a risk that the bubble could just pop when the public gets cold feet, but "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" cuts both ways.

The primary problem with bubble economics is ethical, not utilitarian. Just like in a casino, every dollar you make in a bubble is a dollar someone else has lost (or will lose when they cash out too late).

[thunky]

Did you sell it?

[rufus_foreman]

Yes. When it immediately went up by 10x or so shortly after I bought it, I sold enough to get my initial "investment" back. Then sold some off and on over the years.

[Ebree]

Wait for a global ban on cash. Suddenly the only thing that will left for your finance to stay private will be crypto but some truly private (not like majority privacy coins) & decentralised one or something like this on top of Bitcoin. Everything is a bubble until it outlasts critics. People hiding their wealth before marriage are a bigger market than drugs or hedging inflation.

If BTC would be extended with only one feature - transfering users funds not touched for a year to an auto lottery pool distributing funds to Bitcoin transaction makers randomly, BTC would become the biggest casino on earth.

BTC & crypto competes with these institutions. Why do you have cheaper international transfers now? Legacy fin infrastructure is a joke. That's why cryto took off so easily.

Soon you may have a fully digital dollar/eurodollar which itself already is a global & free to use digital ledger, just with centralised issuance and link to oil & US securities.