I agree that just the fact that it is an IEO doesn't absolutely guarantee that it's not a scam. Even those on big exchanges such as Binance could turn out to be a scam - I know it's not that likely, as the exchange is effectively staking its reputation on the project, but still, in crypto we seem to never be more than 24 hours away from a new controversy. I fully expect some scammy IEO to fool a big exchange at some point.

No, it's not good to buy.

First is will be a stablecoin so there is no chance of it increasing in value.

Second I strongly believe the purpose of the coin is so that Facebook can get hold of your purchasing data and use it to profile you and also sell on the data to third parties. I started a discussion about that here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5147740

I think the key point is that any responsible system of government needs to have checks and balances built in.
The worst excesses of communism/socialism were where it descended into a system where the man is charge is effectively a god. Stalin, etc... and what we see right now in North Korea.

Capitalism is fine so long as the companies aren't allowed free rein over everything. Their purpose is to gain profit, especially for shareholders. Unrestrained, they are vampires, and they will bleed everything dry. Strong capitalism is a system where the government is also strong, and acts as a brake on inequality and greed. The US and the UK I think are failing because they allow business to rule without any real checks on their power.

The problem in the last couple of decades especially is that companies have got too powerful. The incessant lobbying is bad, but worse is the revolving door we see so often between the higher echelons of government and those of business, where top government officials create business-friendly legislation, and then move straight out of politics and into corporate directorships.

I've been troubled by the recent announcement of Facebook's coin, the purpose of which I believe is to gather data on our purchasing habits to then use as yet another source for behavioural analytics and the lucrative behavioural futures market (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5147740). This has led me on to thoughts about how society and value systems are being modified by the big tech firms.

Take Mark Z***erburg's infamous "move fast and break things" motto. The point here is to move fast not just to stay ahead of competitors, but to stay ahead of legislation. Google Earth is another example. No-one gave Google permission to effectively create a worldwide CCTV system, but crucially there was nothing to stop them from doing so. Google, FB et al are deliberately moving into virgin territory and claiming it for themselves. With no-one else there, no governments or regulatory bodies to stop them, they look around at these vast new landscapes, and plant their own flag. These companies, in moving ahead of the law, get to define the new normal. And then they try to deny they are doing this by saying it is inevitable anyway - the march of technology, which no-one can stop or should want to stop. It goes far beyond data harvesting; these companies are now the driving force in determining what the society of the future will look like, and how we will be encouraged to think (privacy=bad, sharing=good, etc.).

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I correct or am I just being paranoid?

It's definitely possible at some time, and more than this I think it is very likely.
The big question is when. I think people are a bit cautious after the huge bear market we've had, so there may be profit-taking from any bull run which will limit its effects. So maybe in a couple of bulls' time, but I don''t think it will happen soon.
But then what do I know? Crypto is very unpredictable.

It can be difficult to disentangle emotions from crypto decisions. One way to minimise emotion when making trades is to set yourself clear entry and exit points, and then stick to them. Equally if a trade starts going the wrong way, you should have set yourself a 'get out' point in advance, rather than just blindly holding on and hoping that the price trend will reverse.

Another good strategy is to look at the trend charts over a long period of time. It is easy to get caught up in the hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute price variations, and we can forget that these are part of a longer term pattern playing out over months and years. Zoom out to get perspective.

My thought is that wherever there is money, there will be scams and criminal activity.

The anonymity (or relative anonymity) of Bitcoin and other cryptos does create money-laundering possibilities along with extortion etc., and the lawless 'wild-west' nature of crypto does present criminals with further opportunities, whether it's KYC scams, ICO scams or anything else.

So in this sense any incoming regulation, although it has its down-sides, can also be a good thing as it will help to protect consumers from criminals, at least to an extent.

But the basic problem isn't crypto, it's the lack of legislation. Governments are notoriously slow-moving, and technology is notoriously fast-moving... this is what causes the problem.

The thing is, if the thread title is 'big news for

• tomorrow', then this means that the news is already out there - or at least the fact that there will be big news on a specific date. So this tends to mean that any price increase has already been baked in. What you tend to see is a price increase on the speculation that there may be news coming, and then either nothing or a mini-dump at the time of the actual announcement itself. Generalising obviously, but that's how it often works.

There is also the fact that IEO's have become massively over-hyped, especially the Binance ones. It's like the ICO-fever of a couple of years ago all over again. Certainly there are a lot of good IEO's and ICO's, but there is also the stuff that is not really worth it. So the key is always do plenty of research prior to jumping in. Don't just FOMO your way into some unknown new coin.

(tl;dr the problem is people, not bitcoin.)

Any system of value will have people who exploit it or bend the rules, once that value becomes sufficient to be worth their while. This problem is due to human nature (at least some humans), and is independent of the type of value system.

So the question really is: is bitcoin less susceptible to fraud than fiat? The answer I think is yes, because of its decentralised nature. It does of course depend to an extent on your definition of fraud. If you think (as I do) that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by fraud and incompetence on the part of banks and governments, then bitcoin is less susceptible to that.

 

Thanks everyone, a good discussion and some interesting opinions!

I think it's inevitable that Facebook, Google et al will continue to extract our data for behavioural analytics, and that Facebook coin is a step on this path towards the end state of being able to predict (and influence) all of our decisions. It may in future become almost impossible to avoid this stuff, particularly with Android phones, but being aware of the issue does at least give us a tiny bit of control.

Most price rallies start with BTC increasing more than alts, and then end with alts increasing more than BTC... so I would say the best place for your money in preparation for a bull run is BTC, and then move it to good alts once BTC growth slows down.

I agree there's no point in focusing on what you did wrong and getting stressed about it... but at the same time it is important to recognise where you went wrong and to learn from those mistakes. It is in making mistakes and learning from them that we improve our decision-making for the future.

This thread shows how much can change in 18 months. Back when the OP started this thread, ETH was at its peak, and looked like it would never drop back below $1,000 again... and now today we are in the mid-$200s, and $2,000 looks impossibly far away.
I would say though that I think ETH will be very likely to hit $2,000 in the future, just not the near future.

No, BNB can't replace ETH. I think there might be some confusion if ETH is just regarded as an ICO platform - there is a separate question of whether IEOs on exchanges such as Binance might come to be bigger than ICOs on ETH.

But really ETH is much more than an ICO platform, it is an entire smart contract system. There is no way that BNB can replace that.

I don't think ETH will go to zero. It is still the dominant smart contract platform, and is still some way ahead of its competitors. Smart contracts I think will be huge in the future, and ETH is well-placed to lead the way.

I think we are still in the early stages. BTC has increased significantly, as have some major alts. It make take some time to filter down to lower cap alts... and even then they won't all go up.
Basically I think so long as you hold good alts, and BTC and top alts continue to rise, then it's just a matter of time before lower alts reflect similar increases.

The signature spaces are bigger and more prominent for higher ranks, but also the fact that they've been here longer does give their opinions more weight really. If a load of Legendary members were backing a project, and a load of Newbie ranked members were backing a different project, I'd definitely look at the Legendary one first.


Agreed. I have been struggling to get merit as well. I did make a post in the Economy section recently which got me a couple of merit, so it might be worth looking outside the altcoin section. But it's by no means easy. I would expect I'd need to start maybe 100 really good new threads in order to progress up to Senior. For lower ranks obviously the merit required is less, so comparatively less onerous a task.

NEO 3.0 could be big, and I expect some of the recent price rise is in anticipation of that release, although it is some way away.
NEO certainly suffered a lot in the bear market, and I expect it will recover quite strongly over the next few months. but top 10 in market cap might be too much of a stretch.

I was concerned at the time, but not concerned now after a few months of big rises. In retrospect, the recovery seems inevitable - but it didn't seem so at the time. One thing that helps to get perspective I think is to look at the all-time price charts, but on log scale rather than linear, as this highlights the repeating pattern more clearly.