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Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

I just spent 12 months investigating crypto. I bought come coins, got lucky on that ENS airdrop, made a smart contract, bought an NFT, learned some Solidity, joined some Discords, listen to some podcasts, set up a miner and generally tried to learn about this area.

2 weeks ago I left all but one discord, unfollowed all Web3 specific accounts on Twitter and stopped looking at Binance etc.

My life has improved considerably. I’m sure someone is getting rich in there but I can’t work out who or how amongst the hype, pumps, grifters, scams and outright criminals.

I’m ok missing the boat if it turns out to be any more than a raft. My sanity and concentration is worth far more than whatever rubbish they are all peddling.

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Went through this same cycle back in 2017-2018 and I realized that I didn't have enough energy to keep up with all the news popping up and some seemingly spiking the price of a crypto while other news just as juicy/valuable/hype-worthy didn't seem to do the same.

I know some friends who made good money from NFTs and some crypto pumps but most have either stayed flat or lost money.

So, I'm in the same place as you, I'll put my money on less "cool" investments and continue to watch the space.

> I’m sure someone is getting rich in there but I can’t work out who or how amongst the hype, pumps, grifters, scams and outright criminals.

I think you figured out exactly who is profiting from it.

After I posted and reread it I thought “well I guess that is who’s getting rich”

Yeah you missed this bull run if you’ve only been in for 12 months. The run up in 2020 was the time to be in it. For example you could have bought SOL at sub $1 and made millions. I know so many people (literally dozens) that made that one trade and they’re now set for life.

So much of crypto is about being early to the bull run, finding the few coins that are going to outpace everything else, and just putting a few thousand into each.

Once the first big pump happens there are maybe a few other 5-10x opportunities, but certainly 2 years in everything is dried up. Exit pumps have already started and most major CT personalities are selling, regardless of what they’re saying publicly.

The good news is that you’ll have another opportunity in another 2-3 years.

If you got into crypto in 2021-22.. you already missed the boat. This is the cashing out phase.

people have been saying this since 2011. thats not to say that the speculation that is taking place in crypto isnt ridiculous and destructive, but your claim is completely unfounded

The risk reward ratio is just not there anymore. We may see $100K bitcoin, sure, but that's just 3x, you can get that buying and holding TSLA starting today. But IMHO the risk of bitcoin crashing to, say, $10K is pretty significant, especially when Russia sanctions could be used as pretext to regulate crypto to death.

Sure, but that's only looking at BTC. There's a lot of other coins still jumping a 100-1000x in this bull run, even if BTC only went up a few times. The point about it all crashing is true though, high risk-high reward (and that risk likely outweighs the reward for BTC in my opinion).

this is how you prove that you just learned about crypto last week. if you think that bitcoin was more of a sure thing and less risky relative to reward in 2011 then you have no idea what you are talking about. first of all if bitcoin crashed from 65k to 10k that wouldn't even be the worst drop bitcoin has ever seen. thats like an 85 percent drop. bitcoin has seen MULTIPLE 95+ percent drops over the course of it's life. it's harder to regulate bitcoin today than it has ever been because there are multiple fortune 500 companies and s&p companies that would be massively negatively effected by this change. bitcoin is in a less risky political position than it has ever been in before.

I've been in crypto since 2012..

Very bullish for you to think TSLA is going to be a $3T company in the near future! I'm sure it will happen at some point. Maybe it will due to inflation hah.

But on average the market takes very roughly 7 years (probably more) to double your money. So you are talking about a ~10 year time frame.

Realize TSLA is not an EV company.

Who knows at this stage but I’m not smart enough to work it out that’s for sure

we haven't build economies on crypto yet. I think we are in buy-and-wait-for-price-up phase. Once we use crypto for utility, we will be in different phase.

> buy-and-wait-for-price-up phase

This is what I did 2-4 years ago... then it started going down by a lot so I cashed out. I actually did lose. Not THAT much, thankfully.

Can it not compete with, say, gold, a lump of metal that does nothing and is not able to be sent over the internet?

Because if it can, then crypto market cap is 5-10x undervalued.

Respect for actually getting into the thick of things and trying it out. I hope some of the hype can die down without totally killing the momentum.

Thanks, I made a legit concerted effort and just could make it stick. Maybe I’ll look stupid in the future but from where I am now with the information I have I’m ok with that.

Cool. Any thoughts on the article you're commenting on?

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