Hacker News Reader

Comment by wj | Hacker News Reader

I don’t even understand why FTT existed?

I also don’t understand why there are competing cryptocurrencies? Without governments and borders, shouldn’t one standard currency be enough? (Technical challenges aside)

View on HN

Some people think it's good to trade some of bitcoin's security for extra features, or at least, think that enough people will feel that way in the future to make these tokens good investments today.

Those people look particularly silly on days like this.

>I also don’t understand why there are competing cryptocurrencies?

A lot of these "competing cryptocurrencies" are just financial instruments, kind of like you could have stock in a company, but you can also trade options and futures of the same underlying stock.

> A lot of these "competing cryptocurrencies" are just financial instruments, kind of like you could have stock in a company, but you can also trade options and futures of the same underlying stock.

No they weren't. This comparison has no relation to reality.

Crypto-currencies have no underlying. A crypto-currency is like a bunch of imaginary confetti. Why is every crypto organisation is issuing its own brand of confetti? It's a legitimate question. It's exactly the same confetti.

It’s not even real confetti, it’s digital copies.

Of course they do it because they can manufacture something that people will pay for out of nothing, and then can use that for other things that get them real value.

One third of FTX fees were used to buy and burn FTT tokens. This is nearly the same as stock buybacks, and makes it a security, i.e. an instrument that derives its value from the success of a business.

Buying your own imaginary confetti doesn't magically turn your confetti into a stock or into a financial derivative. A stock confers ownership of the firm that issued the stock. These tokens don't confer ownership of anything, and therefore are not like stocks.

Stocks and derivatives are not the only types of securities. I don't really see what you're getting at here.

For most people, the only important part of what you call "ownership" are the cash benefits (buybacks, dividends, and acquisitions). You can see this from the small price difference between GOOG and GOOGL.

Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Why are there multiple racecar teams? If there is a standard set of rules, why can't there be a standard car that hits the maximum ideal speed around a track, and a standard racer to do it? Or even just automate it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com