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Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

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544 points josh2600 | 5 comments | 06 Apr 21 16:23 UTC | HN request time: 1.713s | source
1. runeks ◴[07 Apr 21 06:43 UTC] No.26721223[source]▶
> MobileCoin only began trading as an actual currency with real value in December of last year—until then, it was running as a valueless "testnet"—and its 250 million coins, at around $69 each, are currently worth almost $17 billion dollars in total.

No. This is simply not true. You don't arrive at the value of a set of "things" by multiplying the best price for a single "thing" by the number of "things" you want to sell. That's not how the world works.

If I sell you a printout of a drawing for $1, printing out a trillion copies of this drawing does not make me a trillionaire.

> For now it's listed for sale on just one cryptocurrency exchange, FTX [...]

Great. So let's see what the actual value of this token is, by looking at the order books of the markets on the FTX exchange where this token is traded. There are two markets:

1. MOB/USD: https://ftx.com/trade/MOB/USD

2. MOB/USDT: https://ftx.com/trade/MOB/USDT

The most liquid market appears to be the MOB/USD market, so I will focus on this.

The MOB/USD order book tells us that, if you wanted to sell as much MOB you could while pushing up the sell price by at most 10% (from 61.15 to 67.27), you would end up earning $2.5MM USD.

If you consumed all sell orders (that are displayed on the site) the sell price would be pushed up to 73 USD per MOB (a 20% increase) and you would earn a total of 3.75MM USD.

Now, compare this figure to the alleged value of this token (17 billion USD). The actual value -- let's be generous and say 10MM USD -- turns out to be just ~0.06% of the claimed value of $17 billion USD.

replies(1): >>26723568 #
2. robjan ◴[07 Apr 21 11:59 UTC] No.26723568[source]▶
That's the same with any stock, currency or crypto though. If you want to sell the whole market cap then it's worthless.
replies(1): >>26725290 #
3. runeks ◴[07 Apr 21 14:17 UTC] No.26725290[source]▶
No, it’s not the same with stocks. With stocks, as a majority holder, you can make the minority an offer that everyone is forced to accept if a majority of the minority accepts it. This is why market cap is relevant to the stock market, but not e.g. the forex or commodity market.
replies(1): >>26725598 #
4. robjan ◴[07 Apr 21 14:41 UTC] No.26725598{3}[source]▶
What I was saying was if everyone wants to sell and nobody wants to buy, the value is zero. This is true of all markets. The market cap is always determined by the last matched order, not the total that you can sell the whole market for.
replies(1): >>26727502 #
5. runeks ◴[07 Apr 21 16:50 UTC] No.26727502{4}[source]▶
I agree. And therefore market cap is useless as a measure of value, which is what I'm critiquing.