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This isn't even close to what will be the all time high. I know HN has a significant aversion to cryptocurrency (which absolutely befuddles me for the foundatio

This isn't even close to what will be the all time high. I know HN has a significant aversion to cryptocurrency (which absolutely befuddles me for the foundational societal concepts it modernizes) but love it or hate it if you think this is close to the peak you've been in a cave the last decade. *Edit: speaking about crypto as a whole not specifically doge coin. BTC and ETH first to market with digital solutions to antiquated economic problems. But I'm not joking when I say the cut of Musk's jib puts a significant non-zero chance that he announces Doge will be the official martian currency. PT Barnum or not, I wouldn't completely discard the idea.

Crye 5y ago
I don't know if we're there yet or not, but I remember last peak I started to here about crypto in my non crypto media feeds, aka comedy podcasts. I just saw my disc golf feeds talk about crypto. I think that's a strong signal.
- entropic88 5y ago
  Last peak was pretty much 100% retail investors like your disc golf gang. The amount of institutional investment this round offer legitimacy and absolute scale of potential that can't be overlooked by anyone that's been paying attention. Honestly, for the amount of forward thinking technologists that call this nook of the internet home, there is a ridiculous blind spot for cryptocurrency. It's actually ridiculous to me that such forward thinkers could be such luddites. Will it take another decade before you realize we're there - or if not yet, where this is going?
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    I have been around in the crypto space for a significant amount of time (think $700 BTC) and have started two startups which use blockchain tech to a significant degree. But I am very disappointed in BTC and ETH. BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and we haven’t seen the explosion of uses-cases I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets). There’s a ton of froth and solutionism in this space, which is OK, but it also understandably puts off a lot of people who see it as a scam-ridden wasteland. That’s to say nothing of the Tether black swan to come.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets) For ETH to trade real-world assets it needs everything else that the real world already provides: laws, courts, verification systems. Hell, it actually needs that even for digital systems.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        Correct. Blockchain is only able to extend its guarantees to concepts wholly encapsulated by the blockchain. That's the reason only "currencies" have been successful thus far. The boundary between the blockchain and the real world is not a surmountable one - not with the guarantees of the blockchain anyways. And once you get rid of the guarantees it's just a slow, inefficient database. This is why, try as people might (in over a decade) they have yet to achieve literally anything that isn't a currency with it.
        kruxigt 5y ago
        This is a very good point! The first thing that crypto will succeed with is thus probably a store of value (Bitcoin seems to be going there) and the second is as a currency (we will see which one/ones will take this role). For contracts connected to things off the blockchain...that probably has no real solution yet.
        acjohnson55 5y ago
        I think this is not quite true. You can represent real world events and data with oracles. This is being now through Chainlink for things like security price data. Of course, it's probably not so simple to keep oracles in sync with increasingly niche real world data.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        > You can represent real world events and data with oracles. You can represent them, but that's about it. For Ethereum contracts to be enforceable in the real world (and even in the digital world) you need significantly more than just representation.
  - lottin 5y ago
    What makes you think a forward thinking person should be supporting bitcoin? The ideology behind bitcoin is anything but forward thinking.
  - grey-area 5y ago
    Either you are wrong, or lots of people here are wrong. Which do you think it is?
    - entropic88 5y ago
      If I've been wrong since 2010 then I don't care and don't want to be 'right'
  - deschutes 5y ago
    Crypto is a grift that grew into a scam economy. That's why it's unpopular on this site.
dmitriid 5y ago
> which absolutely befuddles me for the foundational societal concepts it modernizes There are literally no fundamental societal aspects that cryptocurrencies modernize. Unless you call speculation "not modern".
- pineaux 5y ago
  I disagree with you. Some coins like tezos and cardano or a similar coin will be a creative destructive force for many institutions. They allow for truly decentralized authority. Think passports without an issuing country. Think money without a central bank. They are building the systems to be all the things that Taleb laments in Bitcoin.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > Some coins like tezos and cardano or a similar coin will be a creative destructive force for many institutions. They allow for truly decentralized authority. Think passports without an issuing country. Think money without a central bank. These are all just words that amount to nothing but marketing. To be all that these coins need to painstakingly re-create all the institutions that make passports, money etc. possible: laws, courts, trust systems, enforcement etc. There's literally nothing in the "fundamental societal concepts" that they modernise.
    - emteycz 5y ago
      I remember thinking thoroughly about stuff like this in 2009 as I was very interested in political and economical philosophy back then - and back then the core idea of Bitcoin - a token that can be sent to anyone, semi-anonymously, completely out of governmental control - would be laughed out of the room, a silly theory pondered by Austrian school economists. That is a fundamental societal concept it introduced and tested at large, and fundamental development of the society.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > a token that can be sent to anyone, semi-anonymously, completely out of governmental control - would be laughed out of the room, a silly theory You realize that this a) doesn't constitute a fundamental societal concept and that b) sending secrets outside of government control isn't even a novel idea? > and fundamental development of the society. There's still nothing new or fundamental introduced by cryptocurrencies, and they rely on existing concepts old as time to even function outside their bubble.
Closi 5y ago
> This isn't even close to what will be the all time high. The problem is nobody can tell where the top is, and there IS a top, these things don't grow forever (you can't have infinite growth and it becoming infinitely valuable). Now there are multiple things that might happen when growth stops: * 1) The price stabilises and bitcoin/crypto becomes a major standard currency, which people want to use and spend. This certainly isn't going to happen for btc due to transfer fees, but could feasibly happen to a different coin. I think this is unlikely because there are several factors that actually stop crypto being an ideal currency (e.g. non-reversibility in case of fraud or dispute resolution). * 2) The price stabilises and everybody keeps their money in crypto because it is a store of value. Personally I find this unlikely as I think most bitcoin 'investors' actually want to see their money increase in value rather than the value stay static. * 3) The price stabilises and crypto doesn’t manage to become a standard currency which is easy to use everywhere - and although initially people hold their money in bitcoin to see if there is another rise, when it doesn't come people start to withdraw funds to realise their gains (if bitcoin isn't growing what's the point holding it?). As people sell bitcoin the value drops and never goes back to it's high. As more people exit the bubble is burst. I personally think number 3 is by far the most likely outcome, however it's impossible to tell where the top is. I think the most sensible approach is to acknowledge it’s likely a bubble, and if you invest funds to acknowledge you are effectively making a gamble that the bubble won’t pop yet (and you are confident that you will realise when to sell before the rest of the market does and not hodl all the way down like we saw with gme).
enlyth 5y ago
Does Musk have authority over a whole planet or is this just more mindless celebrity worship?
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  > Does Musk have authority over a whole planet Of course not. Anyone is free to make a settlement on Mars and choose their own currency.
alohahacker 5y ago
"I know HN has a significant aversion to cryptocurrency (which absolutely befuddles me for the foundational societal concepts it modernizes)" I can't for the life of me figure out why HN keeps hating on bitcoin for the past 10 years since ive been following this site has but has been pretty much spot on about every other tech related subject. It initially discouraged me back in the early days but once you GET it, you realize its one of the biggest technological breakthroughs in the history of mankind. I think with bitcoin you simply can't read about it but actually get your hands dirty and fully use it to really understand the potential it is going to have.

Crye 5y ago

I don't know if we're there yet or not, but I remember last peak I started to here about crypto in my non crypto media feeds, aka comedy podcasts. I just saw my disc golf feeds talk about crypto. I think that's a strong signal.

entropic88 5y ago
Last peak was pretty much 100% retail investors like your disc golf gang. The amount of institutional investment this round offer legitimacy and absolute scale of potential that can't be overlooked by anyone that's been paying attention. Honestly, for the amount of forward thinking technologists that call this nook of the internet home, there is a ridiculous blind spot for cryptocurrency. It's actually ridiculous to me that such forward thinkers could be such luddites. Will it take another decade before you realize we're there - or if not yet, where this is going?
- sebmellen 5y ago
  I have been around in the crypto space for a significant amount of time (think $700 BTC) and have started two startups which use blockchain tech to a significant degree. But I am very disappointed in BTC and ETH. BTC did not become “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and we haven’t seen the explosion of uses-cases I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets). There’s a ton of froth and solutionism in this space, which is OK, but it also understandably puts off a lot of people who see it as a scam-ridden wasteland. That’s to say nothing of the Tether black swan to come.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > I hoped to see from ETH (like tokenization and trading of real-world assets) For ETH to trade real-world assets it needs everything else that the real world already provides: laws, courts, verification systems. Hell, it actually needs that even for digital systems.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Correct. Blockchain is only able to extend its guarantees to concepts wholly encapsulated by the blockchain. That's the reason only "currencies" have been successful thus far. The boundary between the blockchain and the real world is not a surmountable one - not with the guarantees of the blockchain anyways. And once you get rid of the guarantees it's just a slow, inefficient database. This is why, try as people might (in over a decade) they have yet to achieve literally anything that isn't a currency with it.
      - kruxigt 5y ago
        This is a very good point! The first thing that crypto will succeed with is thus probably a store of value (Bitcoin seems to be going there) and the second is as a currency (we will see which one/ones will take this role). For contracts connected to things off the blockchain...that probably has no real solution yet.
      - acjohnson55 5y ago
        I think this is not quite true. You can represent real world events and data with oracles. This is being now through Chainlink for things like security price data. Of course, it's probably not so simple to keep oracles in sync with increasingly niche real world data.
        dmitriid 5y ago
        > You can represent real world events and data with oracles. You can represent them, but that's about it. For Ethereum contracts to be enforceable in the real world (and even in the digital world) you need significantly more than just representation.
- lottin 5y ago
  What makes you think a forward thinking person should be supporting bitcoin? The ideology behind bitcoin is anything but forward thinking.
- grey-area 5y ago
  Either you are wrong, or lots of people here are wrong. Which do you think it is?
  - entropic88 5y ago
    If I've been wrong since 2010 then I don't care and don't want to be 'right'
- deschutes 5y ago
  Crypto is a grift that grew into a scam economy. That's why it's unpopular on this site.

dmitriid 5y ago

> which absolutely befuddles me for the foundational societal concepts it modernizes There are literally no fundamental societal aspects that cryptocurrencies modernize. Unless you call speculation "not modern".

pineaux 5y ago
I disagree with you. Some coins like tezos and cardano or a similar coin will be a creative destructive force for many institutions. They allow for truly decentralized authority. Think passports without an issuing country. Think money without a central bank. They are building the systems to be all the things that Taleb laments in Bitcoin.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Some coins like tezos and cardano or a similar coin will be a creative destructive force for many institutions. They allow for truly decentralized authority. Think passports without an issuing country. Think money without a central bank. These are all just words that amount to nothing but marketing. To be all that these coins need to painstakingly re-create all the institutions that make passports, money etc. possible: laws, courts, trust systems, enforcement etc. There's literally nothing in the "fundamental societal concepts" that they modernise.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    I remember thinking thoroughly about stuff like this in 2009 as I was very interested in political and economical philosophy back then - and back then the core idea of Bitcoin - a token that can be sent to anyone, semi-anonymously, completely out of governmental control - would be laughed out of the room, a silly theory pondered by Austrian school economists. That is a fundamental societal concept it introduced and tested at large, and fundamental development of the society.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > a token that can be sent to anyone, semi-anonymously, completely out of governmental control - would be laughed out of the room, a silly theory You realize that this a) doesn't constitute a fundamental societal concept and that b) sending secrets outside of government control isn't even a novel idea? > and fundamental development of the society. There's still nothing new or fundamental introduced by cryptocurrencies, and they rely on existing concepts old as time to even function outside their bubble.

Closi 5y ago

> This isn't even close to what will be the all time high. The problem is nobody can tell where the top is, and there IS a top, these things don't grow forever (you can't have infinite growth and it becoming infinitely valuable). Now there are multiple things that might happen when growth stops: * 1) The price stabilises and bitcoin/crypto becomes a major standard currency, which people want to use and spend. This certainly isn't going to happen for btc due to transfer fees, but could feasibly happen to a different coin. I think this is unlikely because there are several factors that actually stop crypto being an ideal currency (e.g. non-reversibility in case of fraud or dispute resolution). * 2) The price stabilises and everybody keeps their money in crypto because it is a store of value. Personally I find this unlikely as I think most bitcoin 'investors' actually want to see their money increase in value rather than the value stay static. * 3) The price stabilises and crypto doesn’t manage to become a standard currency which is easy to use everywhere - and although initially people hold their money in bitcoin to see if there is another rise, when it doesn't come people start to withdraw funds to realise their gains (if bitcoin isn't growing what's the point holding it?). As people sell bitcoin the value drops and never goes back to it's high. As more people exit the bubble is burst. I personally think number 3 is by far the most likely outcome, however it's impossible to tell where the top is. I think the most sensible approach is to acknowledge it’s likely a bubble, and if you invest funds to acknowledge you are effectively making a gamble that the bubble won’t pop yet (and you are confident that you will realise when to sell before the rest of the market does and not hodl all the way down like we saw with gme).

enlyth 5y ago

Does Musk have authority over a whole planet or is this just more mindless celebrity worship?

read_if_gay_ 5y ago
> Does Musk have authority over a whole planet Of course not. Anyone is free to make a settlement on Mars and choose their own currency.

alohahacker 5y ago

"I know HN has a significant aversion to cryptocurrency (which absolutely befuddles me for the foundational societal concepts it modernizes)" I can't for the life of me figure out why HN keeps hating on bitcoin for the past 10 years since ive been following this site has but has been pretty much spot on about every other tech related subject. It initially discouraged me back in the early days but once you GET it, you realize its one of the biggest technological breakthroughs in the history of mankind. I think with bitcoin you simply can't read about it but actually get your hands dirty and fully use it to really understand the potential it is going to have.