Why crypto is rising so fast when its not creating value?

- Excessive Liquidity: There's money sloshing around the global economy looking for a place to go.

- Crypto Marketability: It's become very easy for people to buy and sell cryptocurrency.

- Speculation: Regardless of what problems cryptocurrencies pretend to solve, their actual value so far has only been as a speculative investment. Like traditional equities, cryptocurrency is benefiting from the highly speculative market we live in right now and the FOMO of investors trying to make a quick return.

The situation that you're seeing with cryptocurrency has historical precedent with investment bubbles involving other technologies that were perceived to be "world changing". The bicycle mania [1] of the late 19th century and the dotcom bubble [2] of the late 20th century being notable examples.

1: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/revisiting-the-great-british...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

I think Crypto is a bunch of things to a bunch of people. Some see it as a fun way to make a quick buck, some see it as an alternative to gold in a time with unusual inflation of the dollar.

I see it as the future of the web. There's a lot of energy coming around the concept of Decentralized Apps. or Web 3.0, today we have web 2.0 with large centralized websites ran by huge tech monopolies. Regardless of your political affiliation, you probably dislike them. Though the exact reason you hate this is probably different.

Web 3.0 offers us a way out... and crypto is one of the critical underlying infrastrcuture components. A lot of people see things this way, and are trying to get in early on it. Chances are the markets will crash before the majority of people understand what web 3.0 is. But while the market is down, a lot of cool stuff is going to be built, and when more people start to discover it again, the market will shoot back up. This cycle happens every time we make progress. Of course, the markets are pretty amateurish right now so we also tend to overshoot it, leading to huge bull markets and big crashes.

Because we currently live in a world with: 1. A high-liquidity environment for VC firms 2. A high-liquidity environment for retail investors 3. Unprecedentedly easy, fun and addictive speculation tools

Once the crypto bubble took off thanks to this unprecedented bull market, it also attracts many smart engineers, businesspeople and entrepreneurs who jump into the gold rush hoping to sell picks & shovels.

There's one more aspect here. I've coined the term "Bloated MVP" [1] from years of watching startups that lack a coherent value prop, and don't know who their first user will be, and never get any traction whatsoever, but nevertheless manage to raise $millions and suck up smart people's time and energy. I've also spent years founding such companies myself. The reason people work on bloated MVPs is because they don't realize that an idealized abstract vision is very different from a value prop.

So to summarize: The crypto space is a massive ecosystem-level bloated MVP, intermingled with the biggest liquidity bubble of all time, and unprecedented speculation opportunities

[1] https://bloatedmvp.com

We’re in a hyperinflationary period. Loans are extremely inexpensive, cash is cheap. I suspect the majority of influx in crypto is due to an abundance of fiat.

With that said, there’s quite a lot going for Ethereum and defi as a sector. Major tech players like Google are funding many web3 startups. Facebook is fully embracing the “metaverse,” whatever the f** that is.

Tesla is trading at some ridiculous multiple of earnings for the same reasons. Yes, there’s likely much future value in Tesla and web3. But the rapid recent growth is mostly indicative of the fed money machine going brrr.

Highly recommend episode #231 of Lex Fridman talking to Alex Gladstein - it's a long but interesting discussion on human rights, democracy, totalitarianism, and how money fits into the picture. Alex describes BTC as a trojan horse, a "number go up" technology that attracts buyers by being the best performing asset (certainly a tautology, it keeps performing well because it's been performing well) - once it becomes the currency du jour of dictators, those very dictators that instituted it as currency may find that they've lost control of their citizens, since they can more easily exfiltrate their wealth. (my answer to your question is, people value money that is not controlled by their government, and also serious Fear-Of-Missing-Out)

Don't come counter-arguing to me tho, I'm not the Chief Strategy Officer of the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein is, he makes the argument better than I.

I think crypto space has managed to create a class of unregulated financial instruments and markets - I feel like I'm watching what would happen if the stock market was not regulated at all. If I were Wall Street trader, I think this is really fascinating - sufficient amount to be interesting (billions of dollars at play) and regulators are yet to make sense of what's going on.

FYI, there are less than 5000 publicly traded companies in the US but more than 6000 cryptocurrencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...

Cryptocurrency is backed by the same thing as any other currency: popularity and consumer confidence. Whether such sentiments are "warranted" or "deserved" is a subjective matter, but that is irrelevant to determining its economic influence - enough people have invested in it for network effects to all but guarantee its continued relevance.

Because it's a pyramid scheme that is powered by hype. It just so happens that the exponential requirements for the number of participants has grown to the point where you'll start to see ppl talking about it more and more and in everyday conversations.

Crypto at its best is a use case and driver of investment in decentralized databases.

However, that leads to the question of whether we need decentralized databases. Networked computing tends to lead to centralization of services, if not at a single node then in a collection of nodes each of which is the best at what they do. Google is for search, Amazon is for e-commerce, etc.

Given the tendency towards natural monopolies, do decentralized databases make sense? They are slower and more duplicative than centralized databases.

Decentralized databases shine when a multiplicity of providers reduces the power of each node. In the parlance of monopoly, the node operators of a decentralized database are price-takers not price-setters.

Decentralized databases make economic sense when the operational costs associated with them are offset by the lower prices on offer compared to a monopolistic price-setter.

However, the tech monopolies currently offer their services free or at cost, with all the efficiencies that come with scale. I don't think we need decentralized databases now.

Still I think it's something good to have in your back pocket if the state of monopolistic software gets worse. I see the crypto market as crowd-funding R&D for something that may be needed in the future.

Speculation of meme coins has dominated the news recently but there are some amazing coins with real utility. Ethereum tends to get viewed negatively because it can become so insanely expensive to do anything on the chain but in reality that means that the market is willing to pay for those transactions to occur which suggests that there is some real utility to the ecosystem that has real world value.

Valuations going up even when value is not being generated by a company is happening across the board; not just crypto.

Speculation.

It’s the new form of gambling.

As a non-techie and a member of a minority class, I am going to say that the reason crypto is rising so fast is: ACCESS.

We can finally gain access to banking services desperately needed rather than some arbitrary check box designed to keep us from making progress and improving our communities and the lives of those around us.

Let's say as an example, that I need $1M to fix some buildings I own. But my personal credit is crappy, I'm BROWN and a Woman. In the regular financial markets, I would either get turned down flat or my rates would be so high that there wouldn't be any point to my borrowing the money. But in the DeFi World, I might find an investor willing to negotiate better terms with me. That back and forth and the possibility of that back and forth is important. Before, there was just a closed door. Now, there might be a window open or a huge truck bay left wide.

If I decide to create a product, now I can guarantee that my audience is not filled with trolls or dangerous people who are hiding in my email list under false pretenses. I can sell them access to my way of thinking and be assured that I am delivering the value where I intended. That is VALUABLE.

I could list tons of reason why CRYPTO Is valuable, but in looking at all the answers already here I can tell that none of you really seem all that interested in the 80/20 problem. Currently, 80% of financial services goes to 20% of the marketplace (in general terms). That 20% don't actually need more services. The bulk of us who might can't get reasonable help on any terms. Projects like this that make it possible only have one trajectory: UP.

Unfortunately we are seeing a lot of hype and dubious projects, we're in an asset bubble with intense FOMO. I try to ignore that and think about the promise of crypto.

As compared to equities. Remember, equities took decades before the academic frameworks were established. _Gentlemen own bonds_ was the wisdom, all the Wall Street traders were the Brooklyn street kids, not he Ivy bankers. Present value sums up all future cash flows and gives it a price today - this is very misunderstood, you find reporters saying 'and they're not even making any money!' but we're valuing the total funds made in the total lifetime, discounted to today (I sometimes think if they'd called it financial relativity or finance-time it would have been cooler). I find it useful to try to think about where the comparison object was at this point in its development.

Early stage investments are not available to most. You must be an accredited investor - i.e. already have a certain amount of wealth, you must be connected - this favors certain schools or ethnographic groups. With tokens, you now have access. You can actually participate early along with everyone else. You can join the Discord, participate, and see it through all its stages. This is tremendously powerful, scary, and transformational.

Cryptocurrencies have the dollar figure, but the real value I'm seeing is in the organization and management structures. You are seeing transparency and participation that just isn't how business is usually done, or maybe ever was. If you join the KLIMA Discord, pop into their #policy channel, they are literally having open C-level board strategy discussions you can participate in.[0]

Tokens now are being used for governance and ownership. This is the DAO concept again, which functions something like stockholders getting a vote on certain things, but in crypto it is being pushed further to have 'only' that group run everything. The other strange thing is, to get these tokens, often you have to be a member or customer. There is employee ownership, and customer ownership. Which is unusual and valuable.

[0] https://docs.klimadao.finance/klima.fi-manifesto

The average uninformed retail investor is obviously going to be drawn to investments which are seemingly obvious, making their friends rich and which have low barriers to entry.

What will eventually happen is that the market will run out of greater fools and the obviousness of Crypto as an investment in the future of finance will be brought into question.

At this point the userbase of Crypto will shift from speculators to genuine users and its real value will be better understood as individuals and companies focus on useful products and services rather than pumping meme coins to uninformed investors.

This imo is a classic bubble. I've been saying this for years though and will likely continue saying it for a few more years yet. But I have little doubt that in the long-term that what we're seeing in the Crypto space is unsustainable.

The comment in this thread are powered by ignorance. Study the history of monetary systems going back around 690 years to present. Fiat currencies eventually fail due to government hubris. Bitcoin's algorithmic cap on units addresses that. Alt-coins are more transactional and many are more like businesses. BTC is going to continue to grow. Some tiny fraction of the alt-coin market will thrive and potentially have even larger market caps than BTC. These coins are getting traction for different reasons but BTC is an asset with staying power that provides a means for hedging against devaluing fiat currencies. Altcoins are going to take margin away from financial services entities by empowering transactions that won't require intermediaries. I think that crypto currencies are an innovation with many positive attributes.

Crypto has a bunch of narratives around it that are compelling to different groups of people - it should be digital gold, or it will replace centralized applications, or it is a way to bring about a libertarian future, or it'll make transactions cheaper/more accessible, or it'll get you rich quick. They contradict each other, but that's okay because no single person believes all of them. People can hold whichever narrative they want to. Some of them might be true! I don't know.

The other side of this is that certain crypto markets are highly liquid, and liquidity is sticky. Sure, they're subject to high volatility and intense drawdowns, but being a focus of trading is something that lingers a long time. Most traders don't care about fundamentals. This is just another place to speculate to them (that's not a value judgement on my part), and the best places to speculate are places with lots of other participants.

I know that basically boils down to "it's popular because it's popular," but I do think it's self-reinforcing or self-sustaining. Narratives drove money into crypto and to this high point, but I think these reflexive dynamics are also keeping it elevated

Some of the value cryptocurrencies create may be that they have become an opportunity for working class people to get exposure to risk, leverage, arbitrage, volatility, and privacy that only very wealthy people had access to previously. Would be an explanation consistent with the Varian Rule. It's the poor(er) persons FX trading, which provides liquidity and price discovery.

What does cryptocurrency move from one place to another? Risk, arguably, and it does it faster, cheaper, farther, and more verifiably than cash. That's probably the most amazing service since the Medici's brought modern banking to the world.

Personally, I think it's just speculative group-think. Makes me think of tulips.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Because shares can be diluted and it’s not easy to filter for companies with shareholder-friendly undilutable shares. Most cryptocurrencies are not dilutable.

Good read on greater money printing: https://blog.ftx.com/blog/the-everything-bubble/

"In the US alone the Fed has bought $4 trillion of bonds in the past 18 months, while the US government is spending $875M per hour in 2021.

This is driving people further out the risk curve, and as we’ve said in the past, “QE Infinity turned your savings account into your checking account, the bond market into your savings account, the equity market into the bond market, the venture market into the equity market, while given rise to the crypto market as the new venture market.”"

Just because it's a value you don't recognize doesn't mean there is no value. Speculation is useful and valuable to a lot of people.

I like crypto a lot to transfer money on my own terms

edit: in reply to rhizome below: yeah, I bought drugs, money, goods, etc... But I also lost money when the US Gov messed with BTC-e [1]... I hope that Biden doesn't get too stupid with his regulations.

(Hacker News didn't allow me to reply to a reply to my own comment: https://i.imgur.com/rd8qH08.png)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC-e

I wonder how fast the financial system rose compared to the general economy.

There IS value — not being the currency that people are transferring out of due to ]reasons[

Crypto is capitalist's wet dream come true.

Capitalist 1.0: Money --> idea --> build org --> employ people --> make products (shiny new plastic toy, ends in landfill after 3 months) --> deal with marketing, fake reviews, selling, shipping, returns, logistics, customer service, cash flow, loans, HR department, compliance, legal and liabilities, rules and regulations, competitors --> profit

Enlightened Capitalist: Money (spent on electricity) --> profit

Crypto short-circuits all of this. Soon, everyone will switch to making crypto. We'll all be billionaires, but nobody makes stuff anymore. Why waste electricity on making stuff (and dealing with the 100 dimensions of a real business) when you can just make profit!

Recently I saw it observed that the average Fiat currency last 27 years.

Hacker News (HN) is actively hostile to the idea of cryptocurrency. I doubt you'll get a measured opinion, one way or the other.

Stacker News (SN) is a place that is at least attempting to have these conversations, though they swing the other way and are actively pro-cryptocurrency, even if the main focus is on Bitcoin and Lightning [0].

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Let me try to actually answer your question.

* Cryptocurrency is creating value

Cryptocurrency offers the possibility of digital money outside of government control. This allows for a variety of transactions that are difficult otherwise.

For countries that have locked out other currencies or whose banking system is crumbling, remittances through Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies offer the possibility of sending cash, even considering the high barrier to entry, the high friction etc. etc. (take it with a grain of salt, but here's an article [1]).

There was been at least one instance where a news organization drew the ire of a government, had their funds frozen and were able to function through the use of Bitcoin [2].

Sex workers now have an option to accept currency with less fear of backlash.

Substances criminalized by local governments are available for purchase with Bitcoin.

To all those that will respond "cryptocurrency is only good for illegal activity", my response is that's precisely why cryptocurrency is needed. For countries with a developed banking system, the need is not so pressing. For places where it's effectively criminal to be poor, then by definition, offering independent financial instruments is illegal.

* Cryptocurrency is being more widely adopted and legitimized

El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender [3].

Other countries are expressing interest in adopting Bitcoin [4].

* Bitcoin is working out technical difficulties that will allow it to meet demand

This is the "Lightning Network" [5].

On-chain bitcoin transactions will only allow 3 transactions per second. For comparison, Visa provides around 1700.

The "Lightning Network" and associated protocol is "off-chain", settling back and forth transactions and only commiting a final transaction on-chain.

The analogy is like a bar tab. You go to the bar, give them your credit card and maybe the bar reserves $100 on your card. You buy some beer, you buy your friends some wine, you order some food, maybe your buddy orders you a beer. At the end, you settle up with the bar, with the only reported number being the sum total of all the smaller transactions.

---

So, to me, this answers your fundamental question. Bitcoin creates value by meeting a demand, is being adopted and legitimized in its adoption and is working out scaling details. If Bitcoin were a startup, this would be where "the market pulls product out of the startup" phase.

How many articles have you read where people incredulously dismiss Twitter for being frivolous and not making money? How about Facebook? If Bitcoin were a startup, I imagine the narrative would take a much different tenor.

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There is a possibility that Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies could fizzle and die or that what the naysayers are espousing is correct in that they're ponzi schemes/MLMs or some other scam [6] [7] [8] [9] [10].

My opinion is very much no. I'm old enough to remember email, the beginning of the world wide web, the subsequent dot-com crash, Napster, cell phone adoption, etc. etc. Bitcoin provides a novel technology that solves a fundamental problem in multiple different ways.

Bitcoin has the possibility of providing banking to the unbanked. It also provides a way for a global financial system to bootstrap itself without centralized control. From a consumer level, Bitcoin and its associated Lightning network, open a real possibility of micro transactions that wasn't possible before.

I'm a little incredulous as the amount of vitriol directed at Bitcoin from this community and others in the technology sphere. The only conclusion I can come up with is that to people with a stable banking system, the value proposition of Bitcoin in its nascent form isn't really understood. A more cynical conclusion is that the sentiment is a result of an astroturf campaign from actors invested in Bitcoin's demise.

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As a final remark, Bitcoin is growing at 10x about every 4 years (around 20% APR). This means that, if the growth remains at this level, we'll see a $1M per Bitcoin valuation by 2025-2026.

At $1M per Bitcoin, this would put the amount of Bitcoin at 10%+ of the worlds current wealth the world [11].

This provides a falsifiable test of whether Bitcoin has actual utility, with a concrete time bound.

If Bitcoin represents 10% of the worlds wealth and if a substantial portion of Bitcoin isn't being used in day-to-day transactions, this would point, to me, that Bitcoin is a bubble or being propped up in some way.

On the other hand, if Bitcoin represents 10% of the worlds wealth and is being used in everyday transactions, either being adopted by a few large countries or many small ones, then this would point to Bitcoin being used for its intended purpose, as a currency.

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[0] https://stacker.news

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/09/crypto-remittances-are-a-l...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2019/04/26/how-bitco...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/world/americas/bitcoin-el...

[4] https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/bitcoin/politicians-from-th...

[5] https://lightning.network/

[6] https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon...

[7] https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1395684302201966592

[8] https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1394938539989741573

[9] https://twitter.com/zachcoelius/status/1393646959517261826

[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/opinion/cryptocurrency-bi...

[11] https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/g...

> when it's not creating value

It's a SWAAS (store of wealth as a service).

because it has "risk" and "real" return possibility. Unlike stock market where boombers finance and exits their IPO to consumers. VCs get 1000x consumers maybe few times or less. Does that make sense?

No gambling gives you possiblity to do 1000x but crypto does and for so many times over the years. To anyone that says ponzi, what do you think Financial system with fiat money is? Does anyone even here mention how boombers and very rich families get 100m or many times bigger loans with stocks for very very low interes rates? why are they allowed to and what are they risking, exactly? is there even a risk?

They're not rising, the dollar is falling.

Because it's clear from anybody who knows the details about it that crypto is the basis for the next-generation of the financial system.

Here's a specific example about the value crypto can create. 20x higher savings rate on a US dollar deposit.

My CapitalOne savings account pays 0.4%; you can open an account with ZeFi today and get 7% - 20 times more - with the same ACH in/out you're used to.[0] If you go full crypto and stay on-chain, you can find the USDC coin - a 1:1 stable coin - paying interest above 12% at many DEXes[1]. The USDC coin is like a mutual fund, it has extremely liquid high quality holdings, is audited, and is exchangeable 1:1 for actual US Dollars at any time [2].

Even better, some of these options let you keep control of your assets (non-custodial).

Because of this, it's inherently obvious to me that the US banks will be completely disrupted by crypto; in a good way for us consumers.

[0] 7% return with ACH https://www.zefi.io/invite/abzqg (Note, this is a referral link) [1] 12% return on USDC https://solend.fi/dashboard [2] about USDC https://www.circle.com/en/usdc