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681 points Anon84 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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mozarella ◴[] No.46189252[source]
https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/31/end.html#section...

Vitalik touched upon this briefly in an other-wise long and wide-reaching essay. I think its a good treatment of the topic that the author is talking about. He categorizes the ecosystem broadly into 4 cohorts- [token holders] (which includes investors, speculators, etc.), [pragmatic users] (actual end-users who spend crypto to buy stuff), [intellectuals] (who give the vision and ideology), [builders] (of blockchains, apps, etc.) - These 4 groups come together but with different motivations and there is a gap in understanding between them. Indeed, there is even resistance against trying to reach an understanding - one which plays out in the comments section of every crypto-related post on hn. The author of this twitter-post clearly falls under [intellectual, builder] and has been disillusioned by the speculators from [token-holders]. Yet the [token-holders] are a vital component (as are the other groups) as they fund most of the development and adoption. Ultimately these 4 groups have more in common than not. The challenge going forward is to balance the occasionally conflicting needs of all the 4 groups, which includes checking the excesses of each group, while try to achieve a consensus. (Vitalik provides a nice diagram that maps out what that would look like). Crypto is an experiment in economics and economics is a science as well as a social-science. Anyone looking for a good solution must seek to understand and address the psychology of all the actors involved.

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hshdhdhj4444 ◴[] No.46190887[source]
The only buyers are criminals, sanction evaders, and probably the dumbest people in the world given that the entire crypto ecosystem is focused on one thing and one thing only. Creating the most deflationary monetary system in history.
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SirMaster ◴[] No.46192879[source]
So it was dumb of me to buy my bitcoins back when they were less than $100 a coin just in the slim chance that it completely blew up? I don't see what was dumb about a decision to put less than $1000 into 10 coins just in case. Worked out really well for me in the end and a less than $1000 gamble doesn't seem like that crazy of a gamble, at least to me.
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lxgr ◴[] No.46193847[source]
Whether you made a profit, especially just once, is indeed not indicative of the quality of your decisionmaking either way.
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SirMaster ◴[] No.46194571[source]
You don't think a $1000 gamble on this new paradigm of blockchain crypto was a sound decision? When the sum I was putting in was otherwise an insignificant sum to me.

I bought in fully knowing it could go to 0, or maybe it could be worth a ton in 10+ years. To me it seemed like the chance it would blow up was well worth the tiny risk of losing a pretty meaningless amount of money to me.

I am not even otherwise a gambler. I have never gambled at a casino or on sports or anything like that. And my stock investing is all index funds. This was the only singular "crazy gamble" I had ever made and I knew full well it was crazy. But the potential in my mind around the tech and the potential hype around it seemed to greatly outweigh the tiny risk.

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lxgr ◴[] No.46194852[source]
You had a positive outcome, but yes, despite that, I don't know if that was based on a sound decision. It's possible to vastly misjudge the expected value of a trade and still come out ahead.

> This was the only singular "crazy gamble" I had ever made and I knew full well it was crazy.

The only thing that matters is whether it's positive EV (and whether your methodology of coming up with the EV itself is sound). If you didn't have any explicit or implicit notion of the EV at the time you made it... It was probably not a sound investment decision, despite being profitable.

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SirMaster ◴[] No.46195028[source]
I mean I thought that there was a potential in blockchain tech back when I bought it. I also thought that there was also potential in the hype around blockchain to explode the value simply from hype and how humans behave alone.

At least WAY more of a chance than what I would get spending $1000 on a lottery ticket or at a casino.

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1. lxgr ◴[] No.46195113{3}[source]
Then maybe it was sound! To know for sure, you'd have to repeat the experiment a few dozen times, though ;)