This suggests that crypto investing/daytrading is entirely random, which is a ridiculous thing to say.

Further, explain to me how sport bets have greater odds of success? If you want the upside of crypto in sport bets, you'd have to place your bets on the absolute worst odds, as only those pay out a high upside. Meanwhile, in crypto during a bullrun you can buy any garbage coin and it will go up.

1) You’re assuming sports betting is completely random, then assuming I’m comparing this completely random thing to your supposedly not random thing.

2) Cryptocurrency is 13 years old, give or take. The idea that there’s a predictable cycle of bull runs and bear markets based on such a short timeframe is nothing more than hype and fantasy.

3) They’re all speculative tokens, so I’m not sure which ones you think are garbage or not garbage.

PG wrote an essay quite a while back about filtering out solutions in search of problems, which would include almost all of the cryptocurrency sphere (e.g. Web3), but I’m not sure what else there is outside of money trees.

Running out of reply nesting, so replying here to your other reply. First, appreciate the toning down, few would do that.

I'm not a very deep crypto expert, but I can share some thoughts on cycles.

Most of crypto has no cycle at all, as in...most are shitcoins. They die in a single cycle, as a short pump and dump. However, after their death new ones pop up when a new uptrend arrives. And then die again. These tokens lack "fundamentals", favorable attributes beyond speculation.

Simply put, BTC dictates the pace of the entire crypto market, whether you believe in cycles or not. Every other token moves in extreme correlation with BTC price action. You can easily verify this claim by putting the charts side by side. They synchronize down to the second, which indicates algorithmic trading.

Bitcoin's "cycles" supposedly are based on its once-every-4-years halving of block rewards, making supply increasingly scarce, against an exponentially increasing demand (which long term is true, despite short term selling). In turn, a 4 year cycle is cut up into a bull and bear part.

This theory has been true-ish for 3 cycles, whether a sound theory or just by accident. But the model is kind of breaking in this current cycle. Some cope with this by calling it "cycle lengthening".

The way I see it, crypto's entire existence has aligned with a period of funny money. Lots of cheap capital available for high-risk bets. So indeed you might as well theorize it has been a single super cycle.

For shitcoins this theory doesn't matter, they get taken out every "small" cycle in any case. It only matters for BTC and ETH. I'm convinced BTC will easily survive but it might stay down for a long time, years even, not aligning with the usual cycle, if it ever existed.

1) I didn't say sports betting is random. I said that if you want a 10x - 100x upside in sports betting, you'd have to place your money on the player almost surely to lose. As in, 99 people betting against that player versus just you. Those odds are not comparable to crypto.

2) I agree. Cycles are unlikely to continue forever. Doesn't mean there can't be still some to come. Time will tell.

3) There's tokens with actual utility, but most have none.

There's no need to go into some kind of anti-crypto mode. I wasn't selling crypto. I was explaining the dynamics behind it being asymmetrical.

I appreciate that, sorry if I got.. er.. pitchforky.

Coming back to (2) - what I mean is that it's unclear to me if there's ever been a bear or bull cycle in that market in reality. It's such a short span of time that you could still, even now, be in the tulipmania phase of a speculative frenzy that hasn't yet run it's course (and I'd argue that is the case for a bunch of reasons).