On the bright side

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What’s the difference between shares of a stock versus coins of blockchain? The shares of stock represent a claim on a set of cash flows coming in to the company. As a shareholder you have a set of rights, which can include everything from participating in dividends from those cashflows to voting for directors to seeing the books when the company shares financial information.

As a coinholder, you don’t have anything other than a bet on that coin’s blockchain growing in utility and importance. You’re betting on the usefulness of that coin and the continued development of an ecosystem around it – programmers, apps, devs, buyers, sellers, investors. If they show up and maintain their enthusiasm for the project, there’s something there. If not, there’s nothing. There are no cashflows (I know about staking, don’t look up my contact info to explain anything to me, I read novels not emails). There is no coin management team beholden to you. There are no legal protections. The Delaware courts will not hear your arguments. You bought a non-productive commodity with the expectation that others would continue to buy it after you, at higher prices, hopefully. You have no claim on anything.

Scarcity won’t save you. Scarcity doesn’t matter if no one else wants it. I lost an eyelash today and caught it in my hand. It’s one of one. Start the bidding at $600,000…

No?

You can lose all your money in a stock too. If a business doesn’t work out, well, business is hard. 

The fraud coins are crashing this week. They’re getting hit like the major coins, only much, much harder. Which is as it should be. If you threw a few thousand dollars at some of these things along with the millions of others who’ve done the same, so what. No big deal. You can hold it for a comeback or take the small loss. The coins might become worthless. No value.

On the bright side, you get to keep the experience. That has some value.

Don’t act shocked. There’s a shortage of GMC Yukons and a shortage of lumber and a shortage of Burger King workers and a shortage of microchips and a shortage of all sorts of stuff. The fact that we ran out of Village Idiots shouldn’t surprise anyone.