undefined | Better HN

0 points19965y ago0 comments

> You tell me "it's not about riches" then say I should invest for a speculative 50x-100x return. I don't think it's dangerous, I think it's dumb. I think gambling on it paid off, and gamblers think that's proof they were smart

Gambling can be smart, when the expected value is greater than the cost of the ticket - or when ticket price itself is insignificant, like the 10 coins as suggested in 2010.

That's what I meant with my suggestion to waste $500 - you won't miss them much, and even if it won't make you rich, it will have clear upsides for you, like a new car. And I'm sure it's a safe bet for someone reading HN.

But apparently, you are extremely risk averse. I think that's another defining features of a lot of the geeks here.

This is the only way I can frame that, as I just don't understand a refusal to take such a simple action.

If it's not too much to ask, can you better explain me your reasons? Is $500 a large amount of money for your budget? Or is it more about the risks of regrets of taking an action that's greater that then risk of of regret of not-taking an action?

> I never got the "hacker" spirit of "eat ramen, build a startup, sell it for billions".

Exactly what I thought! The hacker spirit is a taste for risk and fun, as understanding things allows you gain more control of your destiny ; it's a bit like "work hard play hard", along with a hefty disdain of the mainstream.

> In twelve years, nobody has come up with a killer app, or even a mildly compelling app

I see fully self managed payment and saving as game changing, you don't. We have very different takes, maybe due to our different preferences: personally, I don't want to ever depend on a payment provider that I don't fully control. "be your own bank" is the killer app for me.

> For someone gloating about being superior and retired, you still end up in the same HN thread as me, with a massive chip on your shoulder and an inferiority complex.

Superior? Gloating? No, I only find it sad.

Because as you correctly noticed, I feel I can't relate to the other hackers anymore. I still help a few projects, and share interesting nuggets, but I feel like I'm in another world now, due to a profound difference in values and understanding. (I seriously wonder about the $500 - which is why I asked you)

After the 50x happens in about 30x years, you may not remember this conversation but I will remember how yet again I was unable to make someone take a clear beneficial action.

It's like a reverse Chicken Little syndrome forcing me to watch as other hackers pass opportunities.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

jodrellblank5y ago· 1 in thread

> "If it's not too much to ask, can you better explain me your reasons? Is $500 a large amount of money for your budget?"

BitCoin has no associations in my mind except distasteful scams, hustle and the seedier side of life. The feeling is that you're trying to convince me to buy into Amway or an MLM scheme or a holiday time share. It wouldn't just be "wasting $500" it would be "being scammed". Wasting $500 would be mildly annoying, being scammed while watching it happen and thinking "this is a scam" and still going along with it would be infuriating.

I could spare it. If I lost it, the loss would not inconvenience me. But you are acting as if BitCoin is doing something new here - I can already hold some high-risk/high-return investments, and they are some that I think have a chance of increasing in value for reasons that I understand at least at a high level. For one example, Segway had a very understandable business model: invent and patent a new vehicle, make and sell it. The risk was that nobody would buy, and they didn't. By comparison, I don't understand at any level why BitCoin's price is what it is, and have no confidence it won't collapse suddenly and completely instead of going up. I don't know what it would take to make the price go 50x higher to get any feeling if that's likely or unlikely. I don't know why it would happen to Bitcoin specifically instead of Litecoin, Namecoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, xRipple, Nxt, Monero, Stellar, Ethereum, etc. Buying a cheap speculative thing and losing it is one thing, throwing away money on an idea I think is supid and overpriced and then losing it, is another.

> "After the 50x happens in about 30x years"

Did you notice that several stocks went up >50x this year alone? Stocks related to speculative COVID-19 vaccines, for example Novacyt went up from £0.14p in January to peak at £11.94 in October - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NCYT.L?p=NCYT.L&.tsrc=fin-sr... - that's 85x in 12 months, still ~60x after the pullback from the peak. As a speculative high-risk gamble, 50x in 30 years is not all that compelling.

Are you beating yourself up for not investing in NCYT? Somewhere, on some market around the world, some stock is jumping large multiples every year, or quarter, or month - and missing out doesn't affect you at all. Instead of chasing those, you're chasing something with much less substance, and longer term outlook, why? Is it because you have no information better than anyone else to pick a 'winning stock'? Why do you think you have with BitCoin? Especially if you can't even convince your own kind - techno-geeks?

Worse than all this, if I make a bet with an established regulated gambling company, or visit a casino, or buy penny stocks from a regulated share trading company, or buy some Tesla CFDs, I have some idea what I'm getting and some trust that they will be basically honest - they might fiddle the prices a little, but if I sell up and request money, I'll get some money, and if they go under, the UK government's financial regulation may cover some of my losses (not gambling or investment losses, but company mismanagement or fraud).

With BitCoin, the most famous exchange was Magic The Gathering Online Exchange (MtGOX) which got hacked, had its bitcoins stolen, then CEO(!) Mark Karpeles joined in the fun and stole a million dollars of bitcoin for himself, then another three million, then maybe they got hacked again, then they went bankrupt. Other exchanges have had lots of people able to buy bitcoin, then when they try to sell the exchange gives them the runaround and won't pay any money:

Googling "bitcoin won't let me withdraw", I see "Kraken won't let me withdraw...", "Bittrex won't let me withdraw...", "Binance won't let me withdraw...", "withdrawals disabled on Bitpanda", "my coin is frozen at Paxful they won't let me withdraw it", "WTF IS GOING ON WITH GEMINI NOT LETTING ME WITHDRAW", "Polonius still won't let me withdraw my funds".

Presumably some exchanges are secure and trustworthy, but importantly I won't find out until either they lose my coins, lose my coins and don't notice and don't tell me, or I try to sell out for a large chunk of money and can't, and it's too late and I have little legal recourse since they're quite unregulated or not in the same country, etc.

> "even if it won't make you rich, it will have clear upsides for you, like a new car"

I am in the lucky living bracket where I have enough money for daily life, and some rainy day savings. Ungrateful though it may sound, $25k wouldn't make any difference to my daily life, it would go in a saving account and change nothing short term; I sure wouldn't spend it on a new car just because I had it. The financial amounts that would make a big difference are: a free house (pay off mortgage / buy a property outright), or instant retirement and freedom from work forever. Stable low-risk long-term investments with regular contributions have a reasonable chance of getting me to retirement money by retirement age, which is useful, though unexciting. Risky short term investments that stand a small chance of high return - I already have as many of those as I can stand, and am aware of a few more that could soak up the $500 if that's what I wanted to do with it, that I have more confidence in, and less disgust for, than BTC.

> "personally, I don't want to ever depend on a payment provider that I don't fully control. "be your own bank" is the killer app for me.

Why? What does that gain you? And what about the obvious objection that you don't fully control BitCoin? Do you mean you don't trust savings in US Dollars? There's other currencies and other asset classes - precious metals, real estate, that can't be inflated away as easily by central policies. At least growing your own food keeps you alive whether or not anyone else values it, money only has value as an exchange with other people who value it similarly, and more people value dollars than bitcoins. "Be your own bank" is uninteresting to me like "be your own home owner's association" where you get to vote with yourself on your own bye-laws about how to keep the value of your property by forbidding yourself from painting it orange, which you didn't want to do anyway. Without all the people in the same area agreeing to the same rules for collective value increase, "do it yourself" can't really do anything.

> "Exactly what I thought! The hacker spirit is a taste for risk and fun, as understanding things allows you gain more control of your destiny ; it's a bit like "work hard play hard", along with a hefty disdain of the mainstream."

The hacker spirit I respect is Fabrice Bellard writing a JavaScript virtual machine emulator comprehensive and fast enough to boot a Linux VM in a browser[1] or Matthias Wandel's Pantorouter[2], John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, or Tom Stanton's flywheel trebuchet[3], Paul Lutus' works, or even things like early SpaceX. It's an engineering inventiveness, building something new or modifying something for an unexpected use, a techno-engineering-playfulness for its own sake, nothing to do with money. The "hacker spirit" of today seems more like growth hacking your Wordpress blog with SEO while you arrange some poor people on an outsourcing site to drop-ship nutritional supplements in your name so you can spend your free time writing a TEDx talk about how you attended a weekend hackathon and got a sneakerbot running on a Raspberry Pi so it can scalp limited edition sneakers and sell them on eBay at a huge markup. It's a greasy, used-car salesman, self-aggrandizing world, it's focused on self-gain, riches, exploiting systems in ways like lootboxes and dark patterns to increase customer retention with borderline-addiction mechanisms. Hacking is at best orthogonal to making money, and at worst corrupted by the influence of money. And to me it's not about disrupting the incumbents; SpaceX wanted to go to Mars, they didn't set out to "do whatever spacey thing made the most money" or "put ULA out of business", if those happen it's a side effect of inventing ways to build cheap reusable rockets on their way past that to a loftier goal.

A world with BitCoin and a world without BitCoin ... really what difference will it make?

> "After the 50x happens in about 30x years, you may not remember this conversation but I will remember how yet again I was unable to make someone take a clear beneficial action."

and what? Are you sad for me that I didn't buy Apple or Amazon stock in 1999? Are you upset that I didn't invest in Segway (assuiming that was an option)? That I didn't buy BeOS? I don't remember the VA Linux IPO, but would you have encouraged me to invest in that? Facebook's IPO?

Isn't there supposed to be more to life and more to people than how much money they have or how much they want to participate in various markets?

I think Dr Burns TEAMS Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is probably a world changing thing, I've spent many hours listening to his podcasts and think it has the potential to upturn mental health treatment; but there's nothing to invest in and it's a 1:1 therapist/client thing, it won't be web scale or built with AI, and it will likely be sidelined and ignored by mainstream therapists who want repeat custom, can't deal with facing their failings, or get kickbacks from drug companies.

I think giving up sugar would be clearly beneficial, I can't make myself do it.

Life goes on.

[1] https://bellard.org/jslinux/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVT5i4nhIGs

1996OP5y ago

> being scammed while watching it happen and thinking "this is a scam" and still going along with it would be infuriating.

Thanks, I understand much better: it's a fear of the risk of partaking into something you may disapprove if it doesn't become what I think it will become.

What BTC spot price would it take for this fear to go away? Will you always have this fear? Even in say 20 years from now?

> By comparison, I don't understand at any level why BitCoin's price is what it is, and have no confidence it won't collapse suddenly and completely instead of going up.

I understand even better- the fear comes from a lack of deeper understanding. Most people on HN know little about economic and finance: I laughed a lot when reading the reactions to the recent cash flow article!!

Even then, you are right, Bitcoin is not a very clear cut case - it has risks, like everything.

> Buying a cheap speculative thing and losing it is one thing, throwing away money on an idea I think is stupid and overpriced and then losing it, is another.

Except the "stupid" part, I get it know. I would suggest you study economics, if you are interested. It's a great way to have strong bases, on which finance will be a great addition later!

It won't make crypto seem perfect - quite the opposite. After you learn macro, you will see the danger of a pure crypto world where no currency would be a competitor. But you will also learn the difference between normative and descriptive economics, and you will see it can (and likely will) happen, due to game theory.

> Are you beating yourself up for not investing in NCYT?

No, I have more than enough. I don't bother with investment anymore.

> Somewhere, on some market around the world, some stock is jumping large multiples every year, or quarter, or month - and missing out doesn't affect you at all

It's a fun thing for some people, but not for me. Now I'm more interested in pure technology - not in playing the same game again and again, only in some slightly different markets.

> Other exchanges have had lots of people able to buy bitcoin, then when they try to sell the exchange gives them the runaround and won't pay any money:

Yes, lots of shady people. Regardless of what you do, please, NEVER leave any money, crypto or otherwise, on an exchange. Keep everything at home.

> The financial amounts that would make a big difference are: a free house (pay off mortgage / buy a property outright), or instant retirement and freedom from work forever

Sorry, can't do. I don't like giving bad advice. And it would be irresponsible for me to suggest you any course of action without knowing how much you can tolerate losing.

> a few more that could soak up the $500 if that's what I wanted to do with it, that I have more confidence in, and less disgust for, than BTC.

It's interesting how you have "disgust", just like you said "stupid" before.

It seems to me it's not just risk and lack of knowledge, but something else too.

So I still don't understand you :)

> precious metals, real estate, that can't be inflated away as easily by central policies

Actually, one executive order to ban gold (which you can't hide as well as crypto), a few change of laws to cull NIMBY, and they can (and will) be inflated away whenever the government wants.

> What does that gain you? And what about the obvious objection that you don't fully control BitCoin?

Network effect make it stable and large. And the control I have on the very small part I still have is enough to protect me from most risks of inflation.

For the rest, real estate (etc) ensure I won't ever be middle class let alone poor, barring WW3-like scenarios (even then, I may have diversified enough to take it)

> The hacker spirit I respect is Fabrice Bellard writing a JavaScript virtual machine emulator

We have similar tastes then!

> The "hacker spirit" of today seems more like growth hacking your Wordpress blog with SEO while you arrange some poor people on an outsourcing site to drop-ship nutritional supplements in your name so you can spend your free time writing a TEDx talk about how you attended a weekend hackathon and got a sneakerbot running on a Raspberry Pi so it can scalp limited edition sneakers and sell them on eBay at a huge markup.

I agree, I find most of HN very distasteful. There are a lot of posers, and very few doers in about everything - and even more on new things like crypto.

> Are you sad for me that I didn't buy Apple or Amazon stock

Yes, if I had told you about it, I would be, especially for Amazon as I saw the opportunity and talked to a few people. Apple, no, it was far from clear cut.

> Isn't there supposed to be more to life and more to people than how much money they have or how much they want to participate in various markets?

There is, but you can't do that until you have fixed the money problem. Freedom brings creativity. You have to be in post-scarcity, and while some people like Bellard can, lots of people are just too tied to their job or the necessity of life. Even worse, if you give them money, they use it to hurt themselves. It's as if money couldn't help people unless they earned it through their work.

> I think giving up sugar would be clearly beneficial, I can't make myself do it.

Thanks for taking the time to say that- it makes me realize I may harbor too much guilt from now being in a different situation than most people here.

You may have some negative feelings about crypto. Have a look at the cool things. It may change your mind- or not? For me, now it's just fun to play with.

Thanks again for your time and the respectful conversion. It's very enlightening to me. Let's keep in touch?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse