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544 points josh2600 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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Geee ◴[] No.26715348[source]
There are 250 million units of mobilecoin, and majority of them are owned by the founders. Only 37.5 million have been distributed. With current price ($65), they're worth $14B already. This makes the project a scam and impossible for it to work as a reliable money that holds value. Bitcoin had no pre-mine and has been fairly distributed from the start.
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CynicusRex ◴[] No.26717384[source]
No “pre-mine” doesn't mean fairly distributed. Bitcoin is a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme as well. Early adopters mine or buy large proportions at negligible prices while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large prices.
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anonporridge ◴[] No.26717496[source]
By this definition, every company stock is a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme.

In fact, company stock is WAY worse, because the majority of people are legally prohibited from investing in private companies unless they're an accredited investor (already rich). So, only rich people (other than founders and early employees) are allowed to buy in at super low prices before handing off the bag to the public.

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PragmaticPulp ◴[] No.26717629[source]
This is incorrect. Stock represents actual ownership of a scarce resource (a company). That company would have value whether or not it was explicitly sold as a stock. The value doesn’t come from the stock.

Cryptocurrency removes the underlying asset and simply sells shares of artificial scarcity. It’s only as valuable as what people decide to trade it at, because it doesn’t represent ownership of anything other than itself.

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doggosphere ◴[] No.26717864[source]
Stock represents actual ownership of a scarce resource (a company).

Is there a limit to how many shares a company can issue? No, a board can technically issue shares unto infinity. There is no guarantee of scarcity, no guarantee they will not raise more money.

That company would have value whether or not it was explicitly sold as a stock. The value doesn’t come from the stock.

So when a company has no profit but a high valuation, is this the market correctly discounting future predicted cashflows and giving a company fair value, or is it some sort of scam? Ex: Is NKLA actually a $5.2b electric vehicle company? How about the spade of Chinese IPOs that ended up being vaporware?

Cryptocurrency removes the underlying asset and simply sells shares of artificial scarcity.

The scarcity isn't artificial. It's mathematically provable, open source and auditable. If you think you can manufacture "fake" btc on the blockchain, feel free to try. If you think you can successfully fork and create a whole new chain, you're also welcome to try.

It’s only as valuable as what people decide to trade it at, because it doesn’t represent ownership of anything other than itself.

This is actually factual for anything in existence. A piece of bread. A $100m painting. You're starting to figure out what peculiar creatures humans are.

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cwhiz ◴[] No.26723535[source]
The scarcity is technically real, but practically pointless.

Every Bitcoin represents 100,000,000 tradable assets. If there are 30,000,000 Bitcoin in circulation that means there are 100,000,000x30,000,000 individual assets available to hold and trade. Do the math, and then realize that we’ll arrive at the heat death of the universe before Bitcoin is ever actually scarce.

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1. doggosphere ◴[] No.26726034[source]
Scarcity is about the rate of supply meeting demand. In most commodities, as demand increases, suppliers will move to increase supply to meet that demand. Even with gold (of which the earth has some unknown finite supply), the rate of which it is mined and extracted will increase as market price increases.

Bitcoin has a fixed supply, Bitcoin's daily rate of creation cannot be increased or decreased unless everyone agrees to it.