How on earth does Solana crypto coin have a 70bn valuation?

[lkn]

10 hours ago, Neeranam said:

Lol dude, there's a whole thread about Defi killing the traditional banking system.

With zero examples of any customers actually moving from banks to DeFi.

 

Do you know what disruption is?

 

For example, email disrupted snail mail, Netflix disrupted physical video rentals, iTunes/Spotify (or Napster) disrupted CD sales, Amazon disrupted bookstores and mom & pop stores, iPhone disrupted the entire field of feature phones, Uber (to some degree) disrupted taxis, all of this enabled by the internet, and I could come up with many more examples, but I can’t think of a single thing that blockchain has disrupted, can you?

 

11 hours ago, Neeranam said:

I really can't understand why you wouldn't invest at little of your portfolio in crypto. 

Let's say you just put in $1000 into DOT and SOL. I can guarantee you will double your money in a matter of weeks

How about I lend you $1,000 and in a few weeks, you give me $2,000 back?

[lkn]

19 hours ago, mjnaus said:

I could again try and explain how ETH is a productive asset

You just have to point me to the cashflow being generated when holding ETH, but there is none, because it is not a productive asset. Honestly, I feel like I have to explain to people why 2 + 2 ≠ 5.

[1FinickyOne]

On 11/4/2021 at 2:03 AM, sezze said:

but you can also lose everything in a minute .

and these things trade 24 hours - - how many minutes in a day? who can stay awake that long...

 

"and where do the children play - - aay ay..." - Cat Stevens

[mjnaus]

47 minutes ago, lkn said:

You just have to point me to the cashflow being generated when holding ETH, but there is none, because it is not a productive asset. Honestly, I feel like I have to explain to people why 2 + 2 ≠ 5.

Ok. So with all the "research" you have done and "knowledge" you have acquired, you have somehow completely missed the fact that you're able to stake your ETH and earn 5-6% without doing much of anything? Combined with a yield farming position, I am earning around 8% at the moment on my ETH.

 

Alright bud; let's see some mental gymnastics. Can't wait to see how you'll be spinning this one. 

[fdsa]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

You just have to point me to the cashflow being generated when holding ETH, but there is none,

you are wrong, I told about the cashflow in ETH already: Ethereum is a platform to create Ponzi schemes, and given the amount of fools and greedy smart-asses is infinite, there will always be a constant cash flow into the Ethereum network (and its collegues such as BSC, SOL, etc)

 

just check this: https://www.dextools.io/app/

and this: https://poocoin.app/

also google for "n*ggerbonk" and estimate the amount of fools and free money in the world.

we have such examples even here on Thaivisa: https://aseannow.com/topic/1237248-altcoins-and-tokens-to-keep-an-eye-on/

- that guy seriously "invested" in a meme tokens (not even a real cryptocurrencies!), and there are literally hundreds of millions of such guys with spare moneys.

 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2021 by fdsa

[mjnaus]

9 hours ago, lkn said:

How on Earth do you know the wealth of crypto opponents? My background is in computer science which means a lot of my friends are also computer scientists, which is a pretty well paid field, and all of them think blockchain is stupid. Most of them though just ignore it. As I have said before, pretty much the entire field of actual computer science ignore it, I am only aware of a single University with a “blockchain research department”, and it’s just one guy and reason has to do with getting funding (so cue the buzzwords).

That's just hilarious. "They all think it's stupid", yeah? ???? Stupid crypto, stupid!

 

As yourself, I also come from a CS background. I have yet to meet the first engineer that would call any emerging tech field "stupid". But I guess you and I move in different circles. 

 

And the entire CS field is ignoring the space, eh? You sure about that? It's statements like this that, honestly, just make you sound completely ridiculous and make it hard for me to take anything you say seriously. You only know of one university with a blockchain program? Perhaps you should look beyond the local community college world and broaden your horizon a bit:

1. University Of Singapore

2. University of California Berkeley

3. University of Zurich

4. MIT

5. HK Polytechnic University

6. RMIT

7. UCL

8. Stanford

9. Oxford

10. Delf University of Technology

 

All of the above teach courses on the subject and run research programs related to blockchain tech and crypto currencies. Love to see how you'll be spinning this one. I am sure you'll come up with something fun ????

 

Now, here's a challenge for you: find me any technical university in the top 20 institutes in the world that does not run a blockchain program. 

Edited November 8, 2021 by mjnaus

[Pravda]

Square soft (is that still their name) is creating next final fantasy game on Blockchain. 

 

I think comparing Blockchain with internet is a bit wrong.

 

I started selling on Amazon basically since inception when it was still called amazon auctions. The company was bleeding money for a decade before it made any profit. I still remember thinking only idiot would buy shares in this sinking hole. Meanwhile I kept selling on a platform, getting stressed with customers instead of simply investing $1000 in the early days. I would have had so much more money instead basically working for this stinking company. I actually hate them so much and this is the reason I invested in internet computer. I see potential 

[Heng]

20 hours ago, Neeranam said:

Oh, he has to keep arguing to somehow justify that his decision to NOT buy crypto was correct, which of course it wasn't. 

I missed buying Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Apple but don't criticize or are jealous of those that caught that boat. 

 

It is odd that some people are so concerned (almost fanatically) about the financial affairs of others in one particular section of the market.    

[JeffersLos]

On 11/6/2021 at 6:13 PM, lkn said:

Let’s say I did buy BTC last year sub-$10k, what can I do with these coins, other than sell at a profit to another investor?

Yeah, only being able to multiply your money 10 fold in a year is a real bummer, if only there were others things to do with them.

[GrandPapillon]

1 hour ago, fdsa said:

you are wrong, I told about the cashflow in ETH already: Ethereum is a platform to create Ponzi schemes, and given the amount of fools and greedy smart-asses is infinite, there will always be a constant cash flow into the Ethereum network (and its collegues such as BSC, SOL, etc)

 

I think what he meant cash flow in "fundamental" terms, not in the "ponzi" form ????

[fdsa]

3 hours ago, GrandPapillon said:

I think what he meant cash flow in "fundamental" terms, not in the "ponzi" form ????

in "fundamental" terms there is a huge demand in money laundering (especially in rich but corrupt countries such as Russia) and anonymous purchases of special goods and services. I think this market share is not less than 10% of all cryptocurrency transactions (other 90% transactions are various "NFT's", tokens and other ponzis)

I believe in a few years I will sell my bitcoins to some Russian deputy for $200k each.

Edited November 8, 2021 by fdsa

[GrandPapillon]

11 minutes ago, fdsa said:

in "fundamental" terms there is a huge demand in money laundering (especially in rich but corrupt countries such as Russia) and anonymous purchases of special goods and services. I think this market share is not less than 10% of all cryptocurrency transactions (other 90% transactions are various "NFT's", tokens and other ponzis)

I believe in a few years I will sell my bitcoins to some Russian deputy for $200k each.

that's not how "fundamental" cash flow works for a financial instrument, what you are describing is how a "tax" or a transaction "fee" would work using a tech or a service or a platform. In theory, gamers currency do that already, without the heavy computations of cryptos. The heavy computations is all BS to justify the existence of cryptos, above all when it's not secure and wasteful in terms of resources.

 

But yes there is definitely an underlying value for cryptos to "clean" dirty money. But an alternative tech could do the same. You could invent some kind of messaging system with an encrypted payload, and that would be good enough ????

Edited November 8, 2021 by GrandPapillon

[mjnaus]

10 minutes ago, fdsa said:

in "fundamental" terms there is a huge demand in money laundering (especially in rich but corrupt countries such as Russia) and anonymous purchases of special goods and services. I think this market share is not less than 10% of all cryptocurrency transactions (other 90% transactions are various "NFT's", tokens and other ponzis)

I believe in a few years I will sell my bitcoins to some Russian deputy for $200k each.

That’s nice if it weren’t for the simple fact that crypto’s like Bitcoin and Ethereum are total <deleted> when it comes to money laundering. Virtually every single on/off ramp (ie exchanges) have KYC and AML measures in place. Hell, even Binance caved and implemented KYC for most of their customer base. So with transparent on/off ramps combined with the fact that once on-chain, every single transaction is transparent and traceable, main crypto’s like Bitcoin and Ethereum make for pretty <deleted>ty money laundering mechanics.

[fdsa]

3 minutes ago, mjnaus said:

irtually every single on/off ramp (ie exchanges) have KYC and AML measures in place.

nope, I could get millions in cash in Moscow without any questions asked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-03/bitcoin-money-laundering-happening-in-moscow-s-vostok-tower-experts-say

 

[mjnaus]

22 minutes ago, fdsa said:

nope, I could get millions in cash in Moscow without any questions asked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-03/bitcoin-money-laundering-happening-in-moscow-s-vostok-tower-experts-say

I never said it does not happen. Of course it does. But it's not systemic by any means. Cash is still king in the money laundering game. 

[GrandPapillon]

3 hours ago, mjnaus said:

That’s nice if it weren’t for the simple fact that crypto’s like Bitcoin and Ethereum are total <deleted> when it comes to money laundering. Virtually every single on/off ramp (ie exchanges) have KYC and AML measures in place. Hell, even Binance caved and implemented KYC for most of their customer base. So with transparent on/off ramps combined with the fact that once on-chain, every single transaction is transparent and traceable, main crypto’s like Bitcoin and Ethereum make for pretty <deleted>ty money laundering mechanics.

there are forums now when you can trade cryptos "off the book", for cash, OTC like, with a significant discount

 

and how serious is KYC on those crypto exchanges? sounds like it's done by amateurs,

 

miners are also another issue, since criminal money could finance the ops to "produce" clean cryptos and then upload the produced hash keys to an exchange and do a "lawful" transaction to get some cash in USD ????

Edited November 8, 2021 by GrandPapillon

[lkn]

7 minutes ago, GrandPapillon said:

and how serious is KYC on those crypto exchanges? sounds like it's done by amateurs,

Oh, it is very serious, though in the sense that KYC only comes up when too many people wants to withdraw their funds at the same time, suddenly there are all sorts of obstacles they never saw when they deposited ????

 

Normally I think KYC (“origin of funds”) comes up when you deposit, not when you withdraw. But I guess it could be CFT.

[lkn]

7 hours ago, mjnaus said:

That's just hilarious. "They all think it's stupid", yeah? ???? Stupid crypto, stupid!

Stupid for the reasons I have previously said (many times). Current cost of transaction $55, when sending an email, it is effectively free. Cap on number of transactions per second is less than a dozen, when I can send effectively unlimited number of emails. Revealing the full graph of interactions to third parties, which most would prefer to keep private, and which is not the case for e.g. email. Needing to wait a certain amount of time before a transaction is considered trustful (this depends on the “value” of the transaction, how large and diverse the mining pool is, and who would have an interest in censoring or reversing the transaction), constantly growing blockchain size, with entire chain required to be stored on any device that wants to independently verify a transaction received (e.g. a mobile phone), etc. — yes, we are many that find all this a silly waste of time, because centralized/custodial will always be more efficient (if you don’t understand that, then I do not believe you have a background in CS), and as our society in the developed world are built on laws, contracts, liability, and insurance, there really is no reason for not using a central authority unless you operate in a legal grey area.

7 hours ago, mjnaus said:

And the entire CS field is ignoring the space, eh?

That is not what I said. I said that *I* only knew about one university having a research group. I should of course have googled this, although technically my statement was not incorrect, and how many research groups I know doesn’t change the arguments I have put forth, furthermore, it was in response to your claim that “crypto opponents either have no money to invest”, which of course is a bit of a troll that I shouldn’t have fed, because it distracts from the real arguments.

 

That said, I appreciate you taking the list of gathering a list, I only did a first scan, a lot of it seemed to be about selling online courses and doing consulting, but a few on the list actually did have research papers, for example I found this one that says blockchain can’t be used for supply chains.. Not that this comes as any surprise for people who have just a bit of understanding of the real world, but at least now we can remove that use-case from future fairy tale scenarios of disruption.

[mjnaus]

5 minutes ago, lkn said:

Oh, it is very serious, though in the sense that KYC only comes up when too many people wants to withdraw their funds at the same time, suddenly there are all sorts of obstacles they never saw when they deposited ????

 

Normally I think KYC (“origin of funds”) comes up when you deposit, not when you withdraw. But I guess it could be CFT.

Says the religiously anti-crypto fanatic who’s never bought or sold crypto in his life….

[lkn]

3 minutes ago, mjnaus said:

Says the religiously anti-crypto fanatic who’s never bought or sold crypto in his life….

Seen lots of people complain about it in r/binance. Yes, should be taken with a grain of salt, but so should your statement that all crypto on/off-ramps does KYC/AML.

[lkn]

8 hours ago, mjnaus said:

Ok. So with all the "research" you have done and "knowledge" you have acquired, you have somehow completely missed the fact that you're able to stake your ETH and earn 5-6% without doing much of anything?

Others have already replied, but you obviously do not understand what a productive asset is or what is meant by an asset’s cash flow.

 

But I admit, my research and knowledge has not prepared me to discuss the disruption of banking and financial investments with people who lack such basic understanding of fundamentals. Your statement about the chain being secure because it has never been successfully attacked also shows a complete ignorance about how the market works toward extracting every single source of revenue, so if it ever gets profitable, someone will exploit it, as I mentioned, George Soros spent about ten billion pounds on shorting the British Pound, so your $2.5M/hour price tag on attacking the Ethereum blockchain for one hour (which should be enough to profit from the exploit) is what keeps people away? This is in an ecosystem where Tether has printed $70 billion dollars worth of USDT, so $2.5M is nothing!

[mjnaus]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

Seen lots of people complain about it in r/binance. Yes, should be taken with a grain of salt, but so should your statement that all crypto on/off-ramps does KYC/AML.

I never said “all”, did I? 

[lkn]

39 minutes ago, mjnaus said:

I never said “all”, did I? 

You said “virtually every single”, but I wasn’t actually holding you to “all”, on the contrary, I said the statement should be taken with a grain of salt, i.e. *not* holding you to it.

 

But I will be more careful next time I paraphrase your statements, as you seem more concerned about grammar than fundamentals ????

[mjnaus]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

Others have already replied, but you obviously do not understand what a productive asset is or what is meant by an asset’s cash flow.

 

But I admit, my research and knowledge has not prepared me to discuss the disruption of banking and financial investments with people who lack such basic understanding of fundamentals. Your statement about the chain being secure because it has never been successfully attacked also shows a complete ignorance about how the market works toward extracting every single source of revenue, so if it ever gets profitable, someone will exploit it, as I mentioned, George Soros spent about ten billion pounds on shorting the British Pound, so your $2.5M/hour price tag on attacking the Ethereum blockchain for one hour (which should be enough to profit from the exploit) is what keeps people away? This is in an ecosystem where Tether has printed $70 billion dollars worth of USDT, so $2.5M is nothing!

Ah shoot! Does that mean I now have to live without your “sage counsel”? Sure gonna miss our little chats ????

 

Now, oh wise one, please explain me how in the following example, ETH is not a productive asset: stETH (tokens representing a share of ETH in the Beacon chain staking contact) deployed into a DeFi protocol is generating an APY of 8%. This APY is automatically converted into stable coins deposited into my company’s wallet monthly. So the staked ETH is generating 0,66% of monthly cashflow without affecting the principle. 
 

Can’t wait for your explantation on how, somehow, that 8% APY (0.66% monthly) that lands in my company’s wallet isn’t cashflow generated by our staked ETH. Let’s hear it bud ????

[mjnaus]

1 hour ago, mjnaus said:

Your statement about the chain being secure because it has never been successfully attacked also shows a complete ignorance about how the market works toward extracting every single source of revenue, so if it ever gets profitable, someone will exploit it, as I mentioned, George Soros spent about ten billion pounds on shorting the British Pound, so your $2.5M/hour price tag on attacking the Ethereum blockchain for one hour (which should be enough to profit from the exploit) is what keeps people away? This is in an ecosystem where Tether has printed $70 billion dollars worth of USDT, so $2.5M is nothing!

 

No, that is obviously NOT what keeps people away. The $2.5mil/hour I referred to is the cost of sustaining a 51% percent attack per hour, however this only refers to maintaining the needed hashrate. This does NOT include the capital requirements for building the infrastructure needed to perform the attack. 

 

Honestly, I am surprised you do not know/understand this stuff. And I actually don't mean that as an insult. You claim you have researched blockchains above and beyond; yet you do not understand the basics of how the largest chains secure themselves. The economic security budgets and models for both Bitcoin and Ethereum are well-known in the public domain, have been discussed for years and come down to basic math. They also have been scrutinized by people way smarter then me, and yes, you. Estimates put the value of the economic fence around Bitcoin at ~$7.5bil (based on roughly 150 million terahash per second, costed at $50 to manufacture and deploy 1 terrahash per second). For Ethereum, the math is roughly the same, depending on the current hashrate. Once the merge to PoS happens, the situation becomes different where a 51% attack would require half of the ETH locked in the staking contract on the Beacon chain (currently 6.5mil ETH, so the math comes to 3.25mil * $4k), so somewhere around the $13bil mark. Those numbers are current; when PoS goes life the expectations come to around 10mil ETH staked, putting the fence at roughly $20bil, depending on the price of ETH. 

 

Even with the above numbers, in theory, such an attack is still possible. Yet, extremely unlikely as is empirically evident. This does not take into account the fall-out of such an attack. Even if the attack is succesfull from a technical point of view, the ramifications could be such that the "haul" becomes worthless pretty quickly. Assuming PoW, it's not unlikely that the now longest chain (the result of the 51%) will be discarded by the miners not participating in the attack which will continue mining the shorter chain. If the community agrees the shorter chain is now the true chain, the haul of the 51% attack would now loose most if not all of it's value. 

 

Now, you want to go back to argue the merits of L2's? Or do you need me to explain once more why true L2's can't exist without the L1? ????

[lkn]

7 minutes ago, mjnaus said:

You claim you have researched blockchains above and beyond

You have repeated something along those lines a few times now, but I don’t remember ever making such stupid claims, I did reply to @Neeranam that I have been following crypto since the beginning, initially based on interest in the concepts, but that it changed to an interest in all the scamming going on. This was in response to him telling me to look into MicroStrategy, El Salvador’s adoption, etc., basically meant to say “I am familiar with these things, and that does not change my view on the technology”.

 

I do my best not to sound arrogant, because I still keep an open mind about things and love to learn new stuff, and would never argue by claiming that I am an authority, I want others to be convinced by arguments, not just that “I know better” — of course it is a challenge to argue constructively with people who skate over essential flaws, cannot back up many of their claims, but continue to repeat them, and are not shy to throw in a few personal insults.

[lkn]

2 hours ago, mjnaus said:

Now, oh wise one, please explain me how in the following example, ETH is not a productive asset: stETH (tokens representing a share of ETH in the Beacon chain staking contact) deployed into a DeFi protocol is generating an APY of 8%.

The smart contract is the productive asset (effectively a bond), not the currency used to buy the contract/bond.

 

For example if I buy U.S. treasure bonds, these also give me a yield, but it does not make USD a productive asset, it makes the bond the productive asset, as that is the one producing the cash flow.

 

Of course this begs the question about how the 8% APY is generated, you can compare this to the U.S. issuing 8% bonds, that would initially put upward pressure on the USD, which I think is what you tried to explain in another comment, but this pressure will not last for long, unless the U.S. government is able to use the new influx of money to produce value, alternatively they can print new money to pay the interests (sounds familiar? i.e. staking rewards), but what does that do to the value of USD?

[mjnaus]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

The smart contract is the productive asset (effectively a bond), not the currency used to buy the contract/bond.

Close, but no cigar. It’s the ETH that generates the yield, not the smart contract. Have a look at this article, perhaps the author does a better job explaining (although I thought I explained it pretty clearly).

[lkn]

30 minutes ago, mjnaus said:

Close, but no cigar. It’s the ETH that generates the yield, not the smart contract. Have a look at this article, perhaps the author does a better job explaining (although I thought I explained it pretty clearly).

Good article, but I fail to see how he disagrees with my take, he says: “In staking, the incentive comes from locking up one’s tokens as a performance bond” and lists the steps as:

1. You have ETH ????
2. You deposit ETH into the staking contract ????‍????
3. You run staking software honestly ☑️
4. You earn more ETH (yay!) ????

So having ETH by itself does not give you any cashflow, just like having USD does not give you a cashflow. But locking them up in a staking contract (and running some software) gives you a yield, just like locking up my USD in a government bond (investment contract) provides me with a yield (cashflow).

 

The article even mentions price dynamics, i.e. that staking rewards (yield) will go down, as more people stake their ETH / enter the staking contract.

 

Btw: Given that we are almost on the same page regarding what a productive asset is, would you then agree that bitcoin is an unproductive asset? I know you do not like bitcoin, but indulge me. And if you do agree with this, do you then agree that BTC price increase is based on the greater fool theory?

Edited November 8, 2021 by lkn

[mjnaus]

21 minutes ago, lkn said:

So having ETH by itself does not give you any cashflow, just like having USD does not give you a cashflow. But locking them up in a staking contract (and running some software) gives you a yield, just like locking up my USD in a government bond (investment contract) provides me with a yield (cashflow).

Fine. ETH held in a wallet isn’t not a productive asset. Stake ETH is. Semantic bickering IMO, but whatever.

 

22 minutes ago, lkn said:

Btw: Given that we are almost on the same page regarding what a productive asset is, would you then agree that bitcoin is an unproductive asset? I know you do not like bitcoin, but indulge me. And if you do agree with this, do you then agree that BTC price increase is based on the greater fool theory?

Yes, definitely in agreement here; Bitcoin is not a productive asset afaik. As far as the greater fool theory goes; at it’s core it’s nothing more then market forces (supply vs demand). As long as demand is higher then supply, the price will go

up. As to wether demand is mainly driven by the hopes of selling for profit later; I definitely think it plays a large role with Bitcoin, but even more so with meme coins. With Bitcoin, there’s still a large segment of buyers who will hold no matter what, in which case greater fools theory doesn’t exactly apply.