News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Limits to Blockchain Scalability by BenoitEssiambre on Sunday May 23, 2021 @07:24PM (#27259557)
-Since it is a non productive investment without dividends or interests, making a profit entails someone else making a loss. It's a zero sum game. On average no money is made.

-If you follow the herd, if you buy when people are talking it up positively, you are probably buying high and making less than average (less than zero).

-Covid 19 probably made crypto investment frothy because of unprecedented amount of government stimulus and fewer places than normal to spend money. The government benefits are going to taper over the summer so crypto prices will lose an important support, and the gradual reopening of everything will give people more places to spend their money instead of bidding up digital coins. There could be a third downward force if high inflation takes hold and central banks starts fighting it. They do this by raising interest rates which literally means banks are paying people to hold fiat or government debt instead of other assets. Gold and stocks usually have lower than normal prices during periods of high interest rates, crypto could do the same. At least stocks should have accelerating dividends with higher inflation, not so for gold and crypto.

So if you really want to buy cryptocoins, wait to see what the economic conditions look like in the fall or next year, if the economy is near done working through the above dynamics, prices could be near their lows and it should be a less terrible time to buy.

Re:The Limits to Blockchain Scalability by ec109685 on Sunday May 23, 2021 @07:43PM (#27259663)
Are you missing the utility of transacting on the blockchain in your analysis?
Re:The Limits to Blockchain Scalability by BenoitEssiambre on Sunday May 23, 2021 @07:44PM (#27259673)
You're right. It's even less than zero sum.
Re:The Limits to Blockchain Scalability by RhodoGSA on Saturday May 29, 2021 @05:53PM (#27328526)
Data oracles? DeFI? liquidity providing? Banking the unbanked? Store of Value?

Any of these mean anything to ya?