Cryptocurrencies Come to Campus

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/technology/cryptocurrencies-come-to-campus.html

by montrose • 8 years ago

46 49 8 years ago

IntronExon2• 8 years ago

Sorry!

dang• 8 years ago

On HN, it doesn't count as a dupe until the story has had significant attention. Please see the bit about reposts in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

We have this policy to allow good stories multiple cracks at the bat. What gets noticed on /newest is too random otherwise, and the goal is to help the best stories get noticed.

Also, the convention on HN is to link to previous submissions of an article only when they had an interesting discussion. Otherwise users click on the link, find no there there, and get ornery.

IntronExon2• 8 years ago

Sorry about that, I’ll reread that link and avoid this in future.

devereaux3• 8 years ago

I would like to know more about these students interest for crypto.

Previously, most teens and young adults didn't care about the stock market and trading. It wasn't considered cool.

Now we have a generation that is hooked. They follow their investment on their cellphone, they take positions on a whim, and yet still to be reacting more logically than older investors [1].

I want to know what they are interested in, to sell them products they will like.

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/08/younger-investors-are-remain....

tzahola• 8 years ago

More logically?? Putting your money in shitcoins or outright pyramid schemes without SEC guarantees is being logical?

devereaux3• 8 years ago

Yes, it is very logical: anyone can buy a lottery ticket, but only accredited investors can invest in legitimate companies.

Looks like there's a lot of room in the middle for people who are not stupid and don't want to be left out.

nrhk• 8 years ago

The younger generations loves this because where else are you going to get 10x your money in a year. We weren't so fascinated with it pre 2013.

I think my generation being intrinsically digital find the idea of digital money and smart contracts to make hell of a lot more sense than older folks who've been working and realize the immense challenges of implementing these currencies. Naturally they find the challenges to be worth more than what Crypto can provide because they lack the need to a digitally connected physical world younger folks desire.

devereaux3• 8 years ago

Maybe I'm off, but I feel that as a desire to refuse to play a rigged game. I am "intrinsically digital" too, but just off by a few years so nobody talked about crypto at school even a year ago.

Still, it makes a hell of a lot more sense! I don't know about you, but I've noticed quite a few rigged games, and I took action on that.

For example, after my work tried one last shenanigan on me last year, I quit. I did not bother applying to another corporate job. I know I'd be paid 70 cents on the dollar and thrown a bone every now and then, so instead I just started my company. Come what may!

I don't even bother with pension stuff, because of the system dynamic. I see it as very unfair, and I would be happy to vote to bring it down -- even if it meant I would be 100% sure I would not see anything in return of the money I am forced to pay. But at least, I would not contribute an unfair situation and burden the next generations.

I wonder if the generation that daytrade crypto on their cellphone feel the same about money and banking? Maybe they believe that even if it is very far from ideal, crypto is preferable to the status quo?

justinhj2• 8 years ago

Maybe desperation? Previous generations could, depending on how far back you go, rely on a job for life, an affordable house and a pension from their employer. Take literally all of that away and add a huge student loan and maybe volatile investments start to look like the only way to get ahead.

At the very least I can image they trust older people much less then we did when I was younger. (Gen X)

gnarcoregrizz• 8 years ago

you don't have to look far on reddit or 4chan to find "boomer hate" threads, with comments about how they sold out younger generations. stocks and 5% gains are definitely not considered cool either.

interestingly, i think this crypto stuff is bringing a lot of financial literacy to people.

GVIrish2• 8 years ago

Wave any new fangled investment vehicle in front of people with insane returns and people young and old will buy in. The current generation is no different than previous generations that got swindled on whatever the bubble du jour was.

sanderjd2• 8 years ago

Ok but what I don't get: where do they get money to speculate on financial instruments? I didn't care about the stock market when I was in high school and college not because it wasn't cool, but because I had no discretionary cash.

lowdest• 8 years ago

A brilliant thing about the current state of cryptocurrency markets is that you can buy $10 at a time and the fees are a fixed small percent rather than e.g. a flat $5. GDAX has 0.25% market orders and 0% on limit orders. Trading small amounts on the traditional stock market is between impossible and pointless.

ixacto2• 8 years ago

They are interested in it due to the pretty charts and slick interface of coinbase and robinhood. Many of the young adults and teens do not understand the concept of compound interest at all. They think stock picking and market timing can actually work for them. All they see is $300 -> $10000 or something. Making 8%/yr is not nearly as interesting.

IMO Fidelity/Vanguard need to figure out a better marketing campaign. Right now it is targeted to east-coast retiring boomers.

ixacto2• 8 years ago

I have also seen that Acorns and the roboadvisors seem to be popular with the younger demographic.

sidko• 8 years ago

They are interested in it due to the pretty charts and slick interface of coinbase and robinhood You got to be kidding if you think Coinbase has a slick interface/user experience. You would need to explain why in-spite of such a terrible interface, people are flocking to Coinbase to buy Bitcoin/Ethereum. In fact, so much so that Coinbase was the top app on the App Store for a day [1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/08/coinbase-was-top-of-us-apple...

Many of the young adults and teens do not understand the concept of compound interest at all

I'll need a source for that. It doesn't seem like humans in general are wired to really grasp the power of compound interest (or exponential functions for that matter), so if you're claiming that young adults today are less likely than average to grasp that concept, I'd need a source for that. I do not believe it to be true, but I am happy to be proven wrong.

celdon25• 8 years ago

I got into crypto trading only because I saw these kids getting into it en masse, and realizing that my competition was no longer that same formidable institutional hive mind I would expect to find elsewhere.

jondubois• 8 years ago

I think that a lot of younger people feel that corporations are already too big and there isn't much growth left in them. There aren't many other decent investment opportunities either.

In the current economic environment, saving doesn't make much sense. You have to work hard for 40 years just to buy a decent house. Corporations like Apple have a market cap approaching 1 trillion dollars. Existing shareholders are hoarding all the wealth and they get compound returns on it. The NASDAQ is a cesspool of well-to-dos who do nothing except collect dividends.

At least the cryptocurrency crowd is young and they work hard. They have more time ahead of them to turn the ecosystem into something useful for society. It's definitely a very long term investment.

tzhenghao• 8 years ago

I think a lot has to do with FOMO and their egos. Kids these days are constantly chasing what's new and trendy. Everybody wants to cash in on the 10, 20, 30 or 50x return. They want to tell their friends how much they made, and how "well" they are actually doing in life (when all they have is tokens/coins that may be worth nothing). You see this in social media, and this isn't that different from it.

GVIrish2• 8 years ago

FOMO is not exclusive to young adults or teenagers. I would wager FOMO is probably one of the most powerful basic human impulses. It's why people ran out and bought houses they couldn't afford in the housing bubble, it's why it's difficult for gamblers to walk away from the table when they're up, and it's also why people have a hard time withdrawing their money from the market when a correction is near. It's also behind every ponzi scheme. No one wants to give up those enticing gains that they see other people getting.

Fear of missing out is at that powerful nexus of envy and greed that short circuits rational thought.

will_brown4• 8 years ago

and yet still to be reacting more logically than older investors

Bitcoin to me is like a stock for a company that has zero revenue, no product, no service...really the only thing it has going for it is that the stock is easily transferable, but otherwise the stock seems to be hyped because it is limited (which is true of every every stock/corporate capitalization certainly that doesn’t make them The new gold).

The mere fact it is coveted at all for being finite or “digital gold” is completely illogical.

kneel3• 8 years ago

Cryptocurrencies are a new asset class, it doesn't really make sense to compare them to other assets.

Right now it's mostly used for drugs and money laundering, things which most people aren't interested in.

Eventually there will be a use case for bitcoin that will make a lot more sense than fiat, until then people will continue to be puzzled with cryptocurrencies.

zanny• 8 years ago

Its valuable because of how much money people have put into it. All the ASICs, from the development to patterning to everyone who bought them and all those who pay money to keep them running to mine blocks all constitute an immense amount of capital and time investment in bitcoin that gives others confidence nobody is going to abandon it overnight.

In many ways its more reliable than regular stocks - governments can break businesses up, change the law to make the business less favorable, the company can be bought out, the behavior of a few specific individuals involved can usually wildly swing the consensus valuation, etc.

What I've learned through these years of cryptohype is that it doesn't matter what I think, because I'm not the one throwing billions of dollars at it. People believe bitcoin will make them rich, and thus bitcoins price has gone up absurdly high considering its adoption and usage for its originally stated purpose. Of course, stated and intended purposes can be quite different - I honestly think bitcoin is working out exactly as it was designed and has been architected to do. Its not supposed to change the world and usher in an era of transparent and seamless exchange between all humans anywhere, its just meant to be a pyramid scheme. It has succeeded wildly at that.

Now I don't want to leave bitcoin off in isolation - in practice its just like almost any tech company. You rapidly gain market without a business model or revenue stream, accrue an insanely large userbase, IPO or get bought out, and then either the shareholders or buyer realize there is no way to actually profit off what you did. But it doesn't matter, you ran off wealthy - the same can be said of the bitcoin whales of today. It doesn't matter if bitcoin itself ever actually functions as a currency because everyone in the insider club is already rich.

roymurdock• 8 years ago

Studied and bought bitcoin as part of my senior college thesis in 2014/2015. It had some traction among Econ students, but almost none among biz students at the time. Now I’m talking to biz school friends who are finishing undergrad in 2018 who are thinking of setting up ant miner rigs on campus. It’s not about economic or financial theory anymore it’s about taking that $10k saved from birthdays and bar mitzvahs and trying to maximize return while having something fun to learn and talk about in the process. Its a more fun and younger version of the stock market that has less barriers to entry and higher potential upside.

woah• 8 years ago

Those are some pretty lucrative birthdays

Animats• 8 years ago

Name three ICOs that actually got their claimed product out the door and in use. Filecoin [1] raised $200 million last summer. But the actual storage of files hasn't been implemented.

This is not going to end well.

[1] https://filecoin.io/blog/

wyldfire• 8 years ago

Please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes tons of ICOs are pure junk and unfortunately so are many coins. But there are several innovative and useful cryptocoins out there.

Unfortunately no one is content with a 30% per annum gain so they all decide that they need to invest in scam ICOs that are brand new.

CryptoPunk• 8 years ago

The same people who are lambasting token sales now are going to be accusing the token sale model of being unfair in favor of early buyers, when one of these tokens becomes a phenomenal success.

dna_polymerase• 8 years ago

Ethereum.

More recently close to no project reached their goal. Yet if we consider the 2017 ICO "batch" we should give them some more time.

charlesdm4• 8 years ago

Ethereum. Funfair is also looking good.

nwah1• 8 years ago

Ethereum is not an ICO, it is a cryptocurrency and a platform, and it hosts approximately zero useful software services.

Nobody is eagerly awaiting new features of some blockchain app they use, which makes their life better in any way. They are looking at the price charts.

Cryptocurrencies Come to Campus

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