<story><title>Why I’m Cryptophobic</title><url>https://www.bvp.com/atlas/why-i-m-cryptophobic</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>benreesman</author><text>Anyone can invent quasi-financial terms to make grandiose claims. The beauty of the market is that loudmouths don’t participate in the market for long.&lt;p&gt;I’ll sell an American-style options contract to someone who thinks BTC is going anywhere near there at Black-Scholes -75. And I’ll have no trouble financing it.&lt;p&gt;You want the other side?</text></item><item><author>dmoy</author><text>You completely ignored what GP said.&lt;p&gt;The &lt;i&gt;floor&lt;/i&gt; is different from what people will sell it to you for right now.&lt;p&gt;AMZN may have a floor of $ASSETS &amp;#x2F; #SHARES (or something, I just made that up), but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean anyone will sell it to you for that right now.</text></item><item><author>benreesman</author><text>I’ll sell you that contract up to what I can finance it at.</text></item><item><author>mjburgess</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re right that BTC has a floor because there&amp;#x27;s some economy behind it. I&amp;#x27;d say in the 100USD-1000USD&amp;#x2F;coin range.</text></item><item><author>ntoskrnl</author><text>Who says BTC isn&amp;#x27;t used for payments? Many porn sites ONLY allow you to pay with crypto, including PornHub[1], and they&amp;#x27;re keeping the lights on somehow. It&amp;#x27;s being used by the Ukrainian military to pay their suppliers while the banking system is offline[2]. It&amp;#x27;s being used for remittances. I had to pay my rent with it once. Also VPNs, etc. There&amp;#x27;s far more global economic activity conducted in BTC than in gold.&lt;p&gt;It all depends where you look. In some niches, BTC is used a lot. In some niches it isn&amp;#x27;t used by anyone (hi HN!) But it&amp;#x27;s a big world out there, and if you look outside your bubble it&amp;#x27;s not hard to find people using it.&lt;p&gt;Re: the last paragraph, BTC did indeed crumple under load for a long time around ~2016, and transaction fees were very high as a result. But lightning network has appeared since then and fees are back down to reasonable levels, well under $1. Those were serious growing pains, but we made it through just fine.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31914284&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31914284&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;how-crypto-is-helping-ukraine-russia-currency-donations-transfer-infrastructure-11648065166&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;how-crypto-is-helping-ukraine-r...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>mjburgess</author><text>There needs to be some basic economics here..&lt;p&gt;Money has value because of the value of the &lt;i&gt;economic transactions&lt;/i&gt; in which its conducted.&lt;p&gt;Government-backed currencies are &lt;i&gt;forced&lt;/i&gt; to have value in the sense they &lt;i&gt;force&lt;/i&gt; people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Value&lt;/i&gt; is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a &amp;quot;liquifying&amp;quot; of that value, to make it easier to spread around. So that 1hr of my time&amp;#x2F;output can be more easily traded for 1hr of another persons. We are still &lt;i&gt;just trading output&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;For BTC (or any coin) to have any value, it needs actual economic transactions to be conducted in it. If there arent any, its value is smoke-and-mirrors; its not real. If you can&amp;#x27;t trade the market cap of bitcoin for &lt;i&gt;actual economic output&lt;/i&gt;, it isnt actual economic value.&lt;p&gt;Imagine doing that right now. Imagine BTC was actually used for any scale of economic transactions. It would collapse overnight.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>px43</author><text>Shh.. you&amp;#x27;re scaring all the people who think their computer science degree gives them exceptional insight into how money works.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I’m Cryptophobic</title><url>https://www.bvp.com/atlas/why-i-m-cryptophobic</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>benreesman</author><text>Anyone can invent quasi-financial terms to make grandiose claims. The beauty of the market is that loudmouths don’t participate in the market for long.&lt;p&gt;I’ll sell an American-style options contract to someone who thinks BTC is going anywhere near there at Black-Scholes -75. And I’ll have no trouble financing it.&lt;p&gt;You want the other side?</text></item><item><author>dmoy</author><text>You completely ignored what GP said.&lt;p&gt;The &lt;i&gt;floor&lt;/i&gt; is different from what people will sell it to you for right now.&lt;p&gt;AMZN may have a floor of $ASSETS &amp;#x2F; #SHARES (or something, I just made that up), but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean anyone will sell it to you for that right now.</text></item><item><author>benreesman</author><text>I’ll sell you that contract up to what I can finance it at.</text></item><item><author>mjburgess</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re right that BTC has a floor because there&amp;#x27;s some economy behind it. I&amp;#x27;d say in the 100USD-1000USD&amp;#x2F;coin range.</text></item><item><author>ntoskrnl</author><text>Who says BTC isn&amp;#x27;t used for payments? Many porn sites ONLY allow you to pay with crypto, including PornHub[1], and they&amp;#x27;re keeping the lights on somehow. It&amp;#x27;s being used by the Ukrainian military to pay their suppliers while the banking system is offline[2]. It&amp;#x27;s being used for remittances. I had to pay my rent with it once. Also VPNs, etc. There&amp;#x27;s far more global economic activity conducted in BTC than in gold.&lt;p&gt;It all depends where you look. In some niches, BTC is used a lot. In some niches it isn&amp;#x27;t used by anyone (hi HN!) But it&amp;#x27;s a big world out there, and if you look outside your bubble it&amp;#x27;s not hard to find people using it.&lt;p&gt;Re: the last paragraph, BTC did indeed crumple under load for a long time around ~2016, and transaction fees were very high as a result. But lightning network has appeared since then and fees are back down to reasonable levels, well under $1. Those were serious growing pains, but we made it through just fine.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31914284&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=31914284&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;how-crypto-is-helping-ukraine-russia-currency-donations-transfer-infrastructure-11648065166&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;how-crypto-is-helping-ukraine-r...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>mjburgess</author><text>There needs to be some basic economics here..&lt;p&gt;Money has value because of the value of the &lt;i&gt;economic transactions&lt;/i&gt; in which its conducted.&lt;p&gt;Government-backed currencies are &lt;i&gt;forced&lt;/i&gt; to have value in the sense they &lt;i&gt;force&lt;/i&gt; people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Value&lt;/i&gt; is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a &amp;quot;liquifying&amp;quot; of that value, to make it easier to spread around. So that 1hr of my time&amp;#x2F;output can be more easily traded for 1hr of another persons. We are still &lt;i&gt;just trading output&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;For BTC (or any coin) to have any value, it needs actual economic transactions to be conducted in it. If there arent any, its value is smoke-and-mirrors; its not real. If you can&amp;#x27;t trade the market cap of bitcoin for &lt;i&gt;actual economic output&lt;/i&gt;, it isnt actual economic value.&lt;p&gt;Imagine doing that right now. Imagine BTC was actually used for any scale of economic transactions. It would collapse overnight.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mattnewton</author><text>Not the person you are responding to, but is there somewhere reputable offering these kinds of contracts to no-name retail investors like myself? I would absolutely load up on something like 12,000 - 15,000 USD bitcoin puts depending on the time decay people are offering and how certain I could be that they would actually let me exercise them, and not freeze trading or even go belly up during the crash. I am somewhat.. skeptical I will be able to exercise them on an primarily crypto exchange like Binance that has blocked trading during freefalls before that is structurally dependent on the price of crypto to some extent.</text></comment>