If you see the bitcoin charts, price has gone up a lot in the last few years but volume has tanked. Do I read this right that now crypto is basically a smaller market where a bunch of whales scam a ever dwindling but never completely disappearing flow of fools and marks?
I think a lot of the volume on spot BTC has gone to ETFs, DATs, perps, WBTC, and other derivatives, when a few years ago spot was really the only option. Hard to track total volumes now.
I'm seeing a 2% decline in Bitcoin prices over a year, and up 410% over 5 years. Tumbles if you're day-trading. It gets old hearing this regularly over the past 10 years.
For those that don’t know, the point of the bitcoin holding strategy of MSTR is that they sell convertible notes to buy bitcoin, which is essentially a put against the US dollar (they’re making a profit from the US dollar losing value over time due to inflation, assuming bitcoin rises against it). The convertible notes can be purchased by institutional investors that aren’t allowed to buy bitcoin directly as indirect bitcoin exposure because the notes can be converted into MSTR shares
If a company’s crypto holdings are worth more than its market cap wouldn’t that mean I should buy the stock as its enterprise value is higher than its current market cap? Unless of course it’s saddled with debt which this article alludes to but doesn’t explain since most of the purchases seem to be for share buy backs?
You would need a mechanism to extract that value- i.e. the ability to strip the company apart for parts. Buying a non-controlling portion of shares doesn't give you that ability.
Indeed. The decision-making apparatus is sometimes so starkly separated from the stakeholders that there's no reason to believe that the balance sheet and the stock price are likely to be correlated at all in the future. If the company doesn't pay dividends, and can't be sold off for its assets, then what is the function of equity?
I find Wall St. baffling for all the usual reasons, but this one is too rarely discussed.
> If a company’s crypto holdings are worth more than its market cap wouldn’t that mean I should buy the stock as its enterprise value is higher than its current market cap?
Well, one question to ask is if the company can actually cash out their crypto holdings at the current market price? If they have substantial holdings of thinly-traded crypto, the answer is usually "lol".
Faith in the company matters too. You can't compel them to sell, and if you think the company is going to slowly drive itself into the ground, you probably don't want to give them your $$$. There are quite a few companies that traded below their book value for that reason. IIRC, Kodak is a current example. Want to bet on that?
If you see them returning value to shareholders in the short term, perhaps. But some of these DATs are giving their leadership massive pay packages (up to $400M[1]) so IMO they will sit on their treasuries as long as possible paying themselves huge salaries to... hold Crypto.
There was some HN article a month back about how all types of gambling: sports gambling, prediction markets, etc. are becoming more popular. All of this presumably downstream from a felt perception of economic malaise and nihilistic sense of resignation.
There are good books on this effect, like Freakonomics and especially The Psychology of Money. After reading them I understood how people could gamble even though most know it's a net negative outcome; it's psychological, not rational.
Consider the example of a person who has been trapped by a malevolent aggressor in some sort of detention they find miserable. The de facto prison that they live in is surrounded by barbed wire fences, snipers, and angry dogs.
They're considering whether or not they should try to run through those perils. A clever, urbane economist comes up to them and tries to explain to them about cost-benefit analysis, wants to talk to them about the expected value of their decision, and the chances of death and all of that, how to make a rational decision.
That person is a fucking idiot. Because, from the perspective of the person making the actual decision, it's a binary outcome: accept a life of unending misery or do something, anything, to improve it.
There is nothing at all irrational about running into almost certain death when imprisoned unjustly. And there's nothing irrational about extremely risky behavior when your current life is miserable and there aren't enough levers to pull to get out of it by other means.
For the most part, the kind of people who write those books find themselves very popular and well-supported by the kinds of people who build those prisons.
Funny you say that in your last paragraph because your example is essentially exactly the type of analogy the authors make too, so you're agreeing with them. Maybe you should read the books first before speculating on their contents and writers.
Some of it is that, but much of it has a much simpler answer.
Advertising and availability. Sports gambling was limited to Vegas a decade ago, now you can lose thousands of dollars while fiddling with your phone on your toilet.
If every corner store and gas station had a heroin vending machine, you'd probably see a lot more opiate addicts, too, regardless of how well the economy is doing. And doubtlessly, their owners would screech to the skies at any attempt to curb that shit.
Look back in history and you'll find that easy money policies, credit bubbles, and economic chaos caused by inflation fuel all kinds of vices and resentment.
More info on "Strategy", the company, which is supposedly the world's largest public Bitcoin holder.[1] "According to its most recent X post, the firm has raised $11.9 billion through common equity, $6.9 billion in preferred equity, and $2 billion in convertible debt."
The equity part includes listed stocks: STRF, STRC, STRE, STRK, and STRD. Those are on the NASDAQ, not crypto exchanges. Here's a long discussion of Strategy's strategy.[2]
They're leveraged, but the financing for the leverage is not from crypto markets, and has more strength behind it. The whole thing will come unglued if there's a prolonged drop in the price of Bitcoin, but they can ride through medium-length down periods.
Strategy's various stocks have dropped more than the price of Bitcoin.
This is unsurprising. Maxis won't care, because in theory they don't care about the price. The only people complaining about this are those who bought at the top and made unsound financial decisions.
If you couldn't tell the majority of crypto influencers were foreigners before Twitter/X disclosed their location, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm just disappointed in crypto. It was supposed to be internet currency, but became another meme stock instead. Maybe someday we'll be able to reboot it the right way so it can actually provide something of real value.
I just want out. I don't know how to put this but at the deepest level what's happening right now is making me sick. So many people below the poverty line barely making it by and then you have this stuff and Wallstreet Bets. Michael Saylor tops them all. Decadent and depraved. S&P at all time records and SNAP benefits not being renewed. I hate it here.
> So many people below the poverty line barely making it by and then you have this stuff and Wallstreet Bets.
I agree the juxtaposition demonstrates how callous our society is - but would you agree that these are two entirely independent things, though? (i.e. we could have eliminated poverty while still having irrationally overpriced BTC; or maybe in the future when BTC's value eventually reverts back to 2 pizzas we will still have poverty and destitution.
I don't think it's independent. I think part of the reason for the rise of gambling in all its forms of late is a certain nihilism/despair among the younger generation (one that's not really unjustified; the median under-30 citizen now has no reasonable hope of ever owning a home anywhere where they could earn enough to support themselves, much less a family, for example).
In theory that would be great, but that isn't what is happening, it's getting progressively more debauched year after year. I'm not saying Stalinism or nothing, but I don't see the people with power doing anything beyond helping out the already wealthy. It's grotesque.
There's a subreddit called exactly that, r/iwantout. Turns out the grass is not actually greener on the other side, because, for many people, wherever you go, there you are, as the saying goes.
I don't expect it to be better, it's just soul crushing to see this happen in the place I grew up. Soul destroying. It's such a let down on a whole society scale. Maybe I would be less emotionally attached to what is going on somewhere else. This all just makes me feel like vomiting.
It can be equally soul destroying once you move there too. I know it can feel hopeless currently but for most people the solution isn't to move to a new place but to actually fix the issues they're having at home, as it's often more personal than governmental, unless you're in some active warzone.
It was. Governments either fell behind on crypto or were in on it. [1][2] The laws for the physical equivalents were applied in the early 19th century. It is repeating all over again.
I think there's a real concern that giving governments (particularly imperialist governments with the ability to project massive force both domestically and in foreign affairs) the power to criminalize voluntary economic activity tends to entrench wealth and power rather than to lubricate mobility.
Moreover, while the government can have a fairly significant impact on Wall St., ForEx, and on interest rates and worldwide financial markets (though in each of these cases, it seems that despite perhaps well-intentioned regulations, the norms and fraud, abuse, and predatory instruments), there are even worst second-order effects when huge governments attempt to meddle in areas where they can exert relatively little control, as exemplified by drug prohibition for example.
It's not obvious what banning crypto speculation might have - it will surely make crypto (and speculative crypto instruments) more valuable in some markets due to the smuggling risk - is that likely to be assistive to whomever you're trying to help?
> real concern that giving governments...the power to criminalize voluntary economic activity tends to entrench wealth and power rather than to lubricate mobility
Uh, sure. But this isn't a real political phenomenon. When concerns arise around power and wealth entrenchment, the solution has never been to reduce the state's power to regulate the economy.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” — Adam Smith
> When concerns arise around power and wealth entrenchment, the solution has never been to reduce the state's power to regulate the economy.
I'm not sure why you believe that. For example, The fall of the Soviet Union - in some ways the most significant economic restructuring of the 20th century - was precisely that.
I mean this less about crypto directly and more about the current state of the economy and society. The K economy with the top living in over the top decadence while below it's living day to day, barely getting by for a huge number of people. Bitcoin hoarders are just the most glaring symbol of that.
If you see the bitcoin charts, price has gone up a lot in the last few years but volume has tanked. Do I read this right that now crypto is basically a smaller market where a bunch of whales scam a ever dwindling but never completely disappearing flow of fools and marks?
I think a lot of the volume on spot BTC has gone to ETFs, DATs, perps, WBTC, and other derivatives, when a few years ago spot was really the only option. Hard to track total volumes now.
Volume appears pretty normal to me. Where do you get the idea that it’s tanked?
Volume has been on a steady downward trend since 2018. https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/5y?c=e&r=week&t=b
Volume != value. Less trading can be a sign of more holding
Less trading is the sign of an illiquid market, which can mean pricing becomes volatile and eventually meaningless.
But people are “holding” nothing more than a line on a spreadsheet. The only true value a cryptocurrency has is in enabling transactions.
If that’s not what it’s doing, then it will eventually have no value.
I'm seeing a 2% decline in Bitcoin prices over a year, and up 410% over 5 years. Tumbles if you're day-trading. It gets old hearing this regularly over the past 10 years.
Related: https://bitcoindeaths.com/
You didn't read the article. It talks about the tumbling of share prices of digital asset treasury companies.
For those that don’t know, the point of the bitcoin holding strategy of MSTR is that they sell convertible notes to buy bitcoin, which is essentially a put against the US dollar (they’re making a profit from the US dollar losing value over time due to inflation, assuming bitcoin rises against it). The convertible notes can be purchased by institutional investors that aren’t allowed to buy bitcoin directly as indirect bitcoin exposure because the notes can be converted into MSTR shares
If a company’s crypto holdings are worth more than its market cap wouldn’t that mean I should buy the stock as its enterprise value is higher than its current market cap? Unless of course it’s saddled with debt which this article alludes to but doesn’t explain since most of the purchases seem to be for share buy backs?
You would need a mechanism to extract that value- i.e. the ability to strip the company apart for parts. Buying a non-controlling portion of shares doesn't give you that ability.
Indeed. The decision-making apparatus is sometimes so starkly separated from the stakeholders that there's no reason to believe that the balance sheet and the stock price are likely to be correlated at all in the future. If the company doesn't pay dividends, and can't be sold off for its assets, then what is the function of equity?
I find Wall St. baffling for all the usual reasons, but this one is too rarely discussed.
So time for someone to do a big LBO?
> If a company’s crypto holdings are worth more than its market cap wouldn’t that mean I should buy the stock as its enterprise value is higher than its current market cap?
Well, one question to ask is if the company can actually cash out their crypto holdings at the current market price? If they have substantial holdings of thinly-traded crypto, the answer is usually "lol".
Faith in the company matters too. You can't compel them to sell, and if you think the company is going to slowly drive itself into the ground, you probably don't want to give them your $$$. There are quite a few companies that traded below their book value for that reason. IIRC, Kodak is a current example. Want to bet on that?
If you see them returning value to shareholders in the short term, perhaps. But some of these DATs are giving their leadership massive pay packages (up to $400M[1]) so IMO they will sit on their treasuries as long as possible paying themselves huge salaries to... hold Crypto.
1. https://unchainedcrypto.com/a-musk-style-reward-anthony-pomp...
Yahoo was once valued at less than the value of its Alibaba holdings.
Businesses (or parts of) can have negative value - still worked out pretty well for the execs there.
At some point one must expect to run out of bigger fools
They're being born every minute though.
Welp: https://www.theblock.co/post/287680/younger-generations-more...
There was some HN article a month back about how all types of gambling: sports gambling, prediction markets, etc. are becoming more popular. All of this presumably downstream from a felt perception of economic malaise and nihilistic sense of resignation.
There are good books on this effect, like Freakonomics and especially The Psychology of Money. After reading them I understood how people could gamble even though most know it's a net negative outcome; it's psychological, not rational.
It's a mistake to call it irrational.
Consider the example of a person who has been trapped by a malevolent aggressor in some sort of detention they find miserable. The de facto prison that they live in is surrounded by barbed wire fences, snipers, and angry dogs.
They're considering whether or not they should try to run through those perils. A clever, urbane economist comes up to them and tries to explain to them about cost-benefit analysis, wants to talk to them about the expected value of their decision, and the chances of death and all of that, how to make a rational decision.
That person is a fucking idiot. Because, from the perspective of the person making the actual decision, it's a binary outcome: accept a life of unending misery or do something, anything, to improve it.
There is nothing at all irrational about running into almost certain death when imprisoned unjustly. And there's nothing irrational about extremely risky behavior when your current life is miserable and there aren't enough levers to pull to get out of it by other means.
For the most part, the kind of people who write those books find themselves very popular and well-supported by the kinds of people who build those prisons.
Funny you say that in your last paragraph because your example is essentially exactly the type of analogy the authors make too, so you're agreeing with them. Maybe you should read the books first before speculating on their contents and writers.
Some of it is that, but much of it has a much simpler answer.
Advertising and availability. Sports gambling was limited to Vegas a decade ago, now you can lose thousands of dollars while fiddling with your phone on your toilet.
If every corner store and gas station had a heroin vending machine, you'd probably see a lot more opiate addicts, too, regardless of how well the economy is doing. And doubtlessly, their owners would screech to the skies at any attempt to curb that shit.
There's also gambling Jr. in the form of gacha and other "surprise mechanics" that gets younger kids into the gambling pipeline.
Look back in history and you'll find that easy money policies, credit bubbles, and economic chaos caused by inflation fuel all kinds of vices and resentment.
More info on "Strategy", the company, which is supposedly the world's largest public Bitcoin holder.[1] "According to its most recent X post, the firm has raised $11.9 billion through common equity, $6.9 billion in preferred equity, and $2 billion in convertible debt."
The equity part includes listed stocks: STRF, STRC, STRE, STRK, and STRD. Those are on the NASDAQ, not crypto exchanges. Here's a long discussion of Strategy's strategy.[2] They're leveraged, but the financing for the leverage is not from crypto markets, and has more strength behind it. The whole thing will come unglued if there's a prolonged drop in the price of Bitcoin, but they can ride through medium-length down periods. Strategy's various stocks have dropped more than the price of Bitcoin.
[1] https://cryptonews.com/news/strategy-reports-21b-raised-in-2...
[2] https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/blogs/digital-assets/matthew-si...
This is unsurprising. Maxis won't care, because in theory they don't care about the price. The only people complaining about this are those who bought at the top and made unsound financial decisions.
If you couldn't tell the majority of crypto influencers were foreigners before Twitter/X disclosed their location, I don't know what to tell you.
I'm just disappointed in crypto. It was supposed to be internet currency, but became another meme stock instead. Maybe someday we'll be able to reboot it the right way so it can actually provide something of real value.
What triggered the bubble pop in this case?
October 10 crypto liquidation bug on Binance triggered a cascading sell-off
I just want out. I don't know how to put this but at the deepest level what's happening right now is making me sick. So many people below the poverty line barely making it by and then you have this stuff and Wallstreet Bets. Michael Saylor tops them all. Decadent and depraved. S&P at all time records and SNAP benefits not being renewed. I hate it here.
> So many people below the poverty line barely making it by and then you have this stuff and Wallstreet Bets.
I agree the juxtaposition demonstrates how callous our society is - but would you agree that these are two entirely independent things, though? (i.e. we could have eliminated poverty while still having irrationally overpriced BTC; or maybe in the future when BTC's value eventually reverts back to 2 pizzas we will still have poverty and destitution.
I don't think it's independent. I think part of the reason for the rise of gambling in all its forms of late is a certain nihilism/despair among the younger generation (one that's not really unjustified; the median under-30 citizen now has no reasonable hope of ever owning a home anywhere where they could earn enough to support themselves, much less a family, for example).
In theory that would be great, but that isn't what is happening, it's getting progressively more debauched year after year. I'm not saying Stalinism or nothing, but I don't see the people with power doing anything beyond helping out the already wealthy. It's grotesque.
There's a subreddit called exactly that, r/iwantout. Turns out the grass is not actually greener on the other side, because, for many people, wherever you go, there you are, as the saying goes.
I don't expect it to be better, it's just soul crushing to see this happen in the place I grew up. Soul destroying. It's such a let down on a whole society scale. Maybe I would be less emotionally attached to what is going on somewhere else. This all just makes me feel like vomiting.
It can be equally soul destroying once you move there too. I know it can feel hopeless currently but for most people the solution isn't to move to a new place but to actually fix the issues they're having at home, as it's often more personal than governmental, unless you're in some active warzone.
There are posts there like this that make the point better than I can: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/s/g7L2i4OKyI
Be careful, the grass is greener in other countries, but not perfect. I feel sorry if you live in the U.S.
The only way out is through direct action.
Ask the dragon nicely to give up it's gold
Yeah, but it feels like shouting into the void.
The whole point of the crypto market is decentralization. So who do you want to act?
The whole point of the government is to ban harmful externalities like crypto speculation.
It was. Governments either fell behind on crypto or were in on it. [1][2] The laws for the physical equivalents were applied in the early 19th century. It is repeating all over again.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU [video][7 mins]
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_o3nZHzCwA [video][4 mins]
That’s not the point of the government.
I think there's a real concern that giving governments (particularly imperialist governments with the ability to project massive force both domestically and in foreign affairs) the power to criminalize voluntary economic activity tends to entrench wealth and power rather than to lubricate mobility.
Moreover, while the government can have a fairly significant impact on Wall St., ForEx, and on interest rates and worldwide financial markets (though in each of these cases, it seems that despite perhaps well-intentioned regulations, the norms and fraud, abuse, and predatory instruments), there are even worst second-order effects when huge governments attempt to meddle in areas where they can exert relatively little control, as exemplified by drug prohibition for example.
It's not obvious what banning crypto speculation might have - it will surely make crypto (and speculative crypto instruments) more valuable in some markets due to the smuggling risk - is that likely to be assistive to whomever you're trying to help?
> real concern that giving governments...the power to criminalize voluntary economic activity tends to entrench wealth and power rather than to lubricate mobility
Uh, sure. But this isn't a real political phenomenon. When concerns arise around power and wealth entrenchment, the solution has never been to reduce the state's power to regulate the economy.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” — Adam Smith
> When concerns arise around power and wealth entrenchment, the solution has never been to reduce the state's power to regulate the economy.
I'm not sure why you believe that. For example, The fall of the Soviet Union - in some ways the most significant economic restructuring of the 20th century - was precisely that.
Fair enough. (Granted, not well read on that event.)
I mean this less about crypto directly and more about the current state of the economy and society. The K economy with the top living in over the top decadence while below it's living day to day, barely getting by for a huge number of people. Bitcoin hoarders are just the most glaring symbol of that.
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