The most mind-boggling thing about the crypto market is the valuations for abandoned projects. There have been plenty of teams that have stopped putting out any updates shortly after the ICO, yet their tokens are still trading at decent multipliers over the buy-in price. I can understand the bubbliness of the coins that show promise, but the fact that the exit scams aren't being decimated in the market is really troubling me.
Back in the dot-com days there was a fish processing company called Zapata that decided to become an Internet portal. As their stock soared, Zapata tried to buy Excite.com for $1.6 billion in stock but didn't succeed.
Zapata finally pulled the plug in January 2001:
"The news of Zap's demise marks the end of an era. The Internet business was so heady back in 1998, when the portal-wanna-be first came on the scene, that people scoffed only slightly at the news that an animal by-products company was taking on Yahoo! in the battle for those formerly coveted viewers."
We're probably nearing the point where the Zapatas of this crypto-token boom start using their inflated valuations to try to acquire more traditional tech companies.
>We're probably nearing the point where the Zapatas of this crypto-token boom start using their inflated valuations to try to acquire more traditional tech companies.
The crypto co's aren't going to try to acquire companies, first b/c most traditional companies have no product of interest to a decentralized platform, and second b/c most crypto's are set up as non-profit foundations.
What they will be doing soon is raiding top traditional tech companies for their best engineering talent with promises of new tech to work on and great wealth.
Heh heh. I worked for a company that rebranded itself as "b2b" back when that was the buzzword. We didn't get a 24x pop, but I was amazed at the extent to which our little company was suddenly worth so much more even though our product and operations remained exactly the same.
Saw the same countless times during Internet 1.0. In one case, a small uninspiring Florida bank said they were starting a website. Stock went from 8 to 92 in a day. It's called a bubble folks. Study history lest you get permanently burned when it explodes.
But to "just" outlast the wave, you actually need a sound business plan with margins that can survive an industry crisis. Most players are not even close to that and are living at the mercy of their investors.
Reminds me of the scene in The Big Short when the pole dancets each "owned" multiple homes and the guys came back to the office and exclaiming, "Yep! It's a bubble!"
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As it so happens, I just created a brand new company. We have no idea what we're going to do, or how we're going to monetize it. But we're definitely going to use blockchain technology. If you are having any doubts, we are willing to provide a brand new coin linked to our company in lieu of stock to assuage any concerns you may have about securing your investment. Who's ready to throw money at us? /sarcasm
Here's some background of the promoter.
Venkat Meenavalli is the CEO of the Longfin.
Here's the brief background for you to understand.
- Promoted another listed company North Gate Technology in India, name changed to Green Fire Agri Commodities touched a price of Rs.1587 in 2007 and now it trades at Rs.0.59
- Promoter of Ziddu.com owned by Meridian (Singapore based company owned 95% by Venkat) was a file sharing website (see internet archives) and was paying people to host content. Most of it was just pirated content like megaupload and rapidshare
- Promoted Stampede Capital which is part of the transaction in LongFin in India listed at Rs. 33 currently trades at Rs.7.5 and Usha Meenavalli (promoter group) has been selling 100k+ of shares every month since January 2016, supposedly to fund the listing of the company in Singapore.
As a reminder, there are no financials of this company LONGFIN, no regulatory details on shares outstanding, and no direct evidence of a business model that makes any money. Currently under investigation for insider trading.
> On November 25, 1998, during the dot com bubble, the stock price soared from $3 per share to $38.94 on November 27, 1998 and an intra-day high of $47.00 on November 30, 1998 after the company announced an updated website. Two weeks later, the share price was back down to $10. By 2000, the share price had returned to $3.[7][8] Those days included suspenseful times for day traders, such as when the stock moved up 6 points in 13 minutes.[7] During this time, insiders sold hundreds of thousands of shares.[7]
“Longfin corp, a leading global FinTech company, announces the acquisition of Ziddu.com, a Blockchain-empowered solutions provider that offers Microfinance Lending against Collateralized Warehouse Receipts in the form of Ziddu Coins"
Could you expand on your thoughts for Trump trying to bring everything back home? Genuinely curious what your thoughts are and not from a political stand point :) Thanks.
It gets him votes, part of the "make 'merica great again" propaganda. In other news, he and his relatives will continue to outsource where ever they can.
The tax bill ironically appears to encourage outsourcing by any company big enough to do it by making the minimum corporate rate 10 percent (theoretically to encourage Apple to bring billions home) in certain circumstances and letting companies average their income/taxes over all offshore affiliates.
http://theweek.com/articles/743632/gop-tax-bills-biggest-boo...
I realize you aren't OP but I do understand the "making America great again" getting him votes by saying he's bringing back jobs. However, that's a political response that deflects from the real issues at hand.
What I am curious about is the quantitative easing we witnessed due to the 2008 Financial & Housing crisis and how that is being handled both in the economy and the governments around the world. The Fed interest rate is still at a historic low having just recently bumped to 1.5% [1]. For instance one of the view points I've heard is that Trump is trying to deregulate as much as possible in order to avoid the economy crashing. Maybe that a makes a correction from QE worse in the future. Maybe Trump is indeed just trying to siphon as much money/tax breaks as possible but I'm curious about the macro economics currently in play from different world viewpoints.
Sure. Keep in mind I'm not an expert. I also have to write some assumptions first, I apologize for the length.
There are ups and downs. The bigger the up, the uglier the down (1999 vs 2007).Money gets flooded and scooped (interest rates are as much proactive as reactive).
Inflation is aimed at 2-3% because that's what people ignore but it keeps this fable called money going for all (rich get richer, the poor get regular inflation based raises, all is happy).
Credit cycles are a thing, but can be extended by injecting money in the system (as long as nobody objects, inflation is near 3%, and interest rates are reasonable).
Bailouts work up to an extent, at some point (because I can't draw charts) the math catches up, and heavily QE will become worthless, this risking inflation or deflation. No matter the outcome, one or the other must happen, or like the Bank of Japan, the government starts buying bonds and stocks with it just to keep the pretense money are still worth something.
Based on the above (and I'm aware the story is longer and somewhat with more details) USA has a way to go for a complete endgame.
However, the money flooded so far in the system, are bigger than ever, and the next down will be probably more ugly than ever.
So, when it's ugly it's somewhat benefitial if people can get some sort of jobs.
With all the assumptions from above, and it really doesn't look like from here that Trump came with the idea (he would be boasting). He's doing what any sane central bank will do. So he's told what to do, and believes it's overall the right thing.
- Make sure outsourced jobs vanish. It will cost businesses now, but maybe if they get awesome tax cut, they won't complain.
- NAFTA will probably go away, Americans will get to do stuff that free trade did. If employment on domestic grounds is good (and not in the service industry, but factories and stuff), when it gets bad, people (or a bigger fraction of them) will have jobs, compared to if the service sector is doing great now.
- Based on the continuous QE volume, the next credit cycle will be the worst.
- If I had to guess, tech stocks will crater the worst. So all related tech visas will also go.
- He repealed Obama care, because in a recessions, most people won't have health care, but won't pay penalties. Not having it, is horible, but the population seems somewhat adjusted to the idea of not having health care ( and a revolution hasn't started over that so far, so they can do that).
Related reading: USA losing the Petro dollar. Bitcoin being worse than the tech stocks and cratering more. China bonds being risky right now. That report from IBS (October?) where they wrote that china/India are fully integrated in the world labour and main growth stopped, wages will restart going up after two decades. Upcoming Australia's housing crash (because resource export stalled, and other factors). Interest rates raising again, so other overextended housing markets will get corrected (starting with Canada, UK, Sweden).
The world economy is complex and it's all fluid all the time, but at this point, this how it looks to me.
I'm very grateful you took the time to respond especially in such great length. Don't apologize for the length this is the exactly what I was hoping for!
Sometimes it's good to get a completely different view on things as the rhetoric within the US has been quite negative towards Trump (potentially well deserved) without much discussion around the quantitative easing etc but rather just tax cuts for corporations etc.
So, since nothing backs the deflatory currency being traded as an actually appreciating asset, it will be a global loss. Mostly to the dumb money entering late to the game.
It's not about the crypto for me.It's about the technology behind them that excites me. Blockchain is definitely worth the hype in my opinion. Reading this article got me even more excited on the applications of blockchain:
I actually kind of do hope there is. In a climate of sceptics only the strongest businesses survives. When there's a bear market, I look around at what companies are still doing good and snatch some shares.
Intelligent VCs that really understand and value the tech are going to make a killing and good, sound business plans become the norm rather than the exception for crypto companies then.
Sure, the engineer in me weeps that all the cool technical progress might slow down when investor money dries up after a burst bubble, but hopefully academic institutions will pick up the slack.
Yeah, I understand, and there's lots of problems left for engineers to work on when it comes to cryptography in general, such as in embedded systems now that self driving cars and IOT devices become prime targets.
I think it's good if investors raise their eye brow sceptically and say "a cryptography company you say?" thinking about a cryptocurrency bubble, because then us engineers really have to step up our game and show rather than tell what we can do. As it is now, you just have to speak about the future rather than actually implement something at a reasonable cost today before investors go nuts, as evidenced by the subject of the OP's article.
