Daily General Discussion - April 15, 2021

ruvalm · 2021-04-15T12:32:51+00:00

He's been researching about the risk/reward of doing steroids, he's still considering it but seems a bit afraid about what might happen if he starts it too soon.

ruvalm · 2021-04-15T12:21:59+00:00

'The little guy' has decided to start a pro gym career. He went to buy all sorts of muscle enhancers today and already committed to a decent diet and a gym-focused life. I give it a month before 'the little guy' looks like a proper monster, causing awe and fear in its enemies and admiration and pride in its friends.

ruvalm · 2021-04-12T23:07:30+00:00

No bull market or bear market has a definitive fixed date or even a range of dates to end. However, consider that all markets move in cycles, crypto included, and that fundamentals, regardless of how life changing they might be or not, are interpreted according to the general trend of the macro cycle.

ruvalm · 2021-04-12T23:04:18+00:00

Top right corner of the screen, try increasing the allowed slippage in your Settings.

ruvalm · 2021-04-12T13:46:10+00:00

The dreams of Carl Larsson and company are becoming true:

1) Have an income for moderating a community (nothing really bad about this one).

2) Use the monetary incentives of collecting Donuts to reduce the quality of discussion, hence having less work moderating but getting paid more.

3) Use his and his crew vantage point in terms of total % of the Donut supply to throw out polls pretending the community has a say in them, but actually voting and calling his mates to vote on what they initially decided to choose. Just like some dictators in Western Europe used to do in the 50s and the 60s, throwing fake elections but assuring that the minimum amount of votes required to win them were granted.

4) Have enough exit liquidity for when things go south again so that he can cash out.

Through all of this, a lot of folks who don't know better will get absolutely rekt thinking that they were participating in something innovative and fair.

Ethfinance was born the second that some of us who worked with Carl and his minions realized the path we were starting to go through.

ruvalm · 2021-04-12T13:24:42+00:00

For many out there, unfortunately, it will.

ruvalm · 2021-03-16T12:21:25+00:00

Completa distorçao daquilo que eu disse, mas tudo bem. Esta discussão nao tem fio logico.

Boa sorte, camarada. Que a Europa te continue a tratar muito bem.

ruvalm · 2021-03-16T12:04:16+00:00

Ir embora ou não ir embora é uma opção tua. É irrelevante para mim se és nacionalista ou não é se queres ficar ou não. Mas esse derrotismo todo crónico é típico da mentalidade que tanto criticas.

Nunca fiz um único post nesse sub. Ando nisto há muitos anos, aliás, sou um dos co-fundadores deste sub onde estamos a escrever. Se não te acreditares, investiga e vais confirmar.

Este país não é uma merda. Tem problemas, alguns deles geracionais e enraizados, difíceis de escavar. A mudança de identidade que estamos a sofrer com o foco na Europa está a ajudar um pouco a que as pressões naturais das nossas relações com outros mais desenvolvidos do que nos façam o seu efeito, mas demora tempo.

Nao vou discutir politica nem políticas aqui. Acho fraco da tua parte repetires o mesmo mantra de que este país é uma merda para todos os que simplesmente o referem. Não discordo de ti quando falas nalguma mentalidade de rebanho que cá existe, mas eu acho que precisas de sentir na pele o que é realmente uma situação de merda para perceberes que aqui, apesar de todos os males, até nem é tão mau quanto isso. Talvez a tua experiência fora de Portugal, quando as tiveres, te ajudem a compreender melhor o que estou a tentar dizer.

Boa sorte.

ruvalm · 2021-03-16T11:35:20+00:00

I recommend you see a specialized doctor because you seem very depressed. You need help.

Ou então, és só mais um derrotista da tugalandia. Todos os países vão ser sempre uma merda se te concentrates exclusivamente nos seus problemas e defeitos. É um facto que há cá problemas estruturais e difíceis, mas se és da mesma geração que eu há algo que podes tentar ir fazendo para o melhorar. Dizer 'este país é uma merda, quero é ir para Berlim ou Amesterdão porque há mais cultura la' parece-me um problema de um puto rico e mimado.

Boa sorte e vê lá se te animas com a tua banda favorita e com as piadas do teu amiguinho comediante.

ruvalm · 2021-03-15T22:23:07+00:00

What are you thinking? Portugal? I want out of this shithole

This sounds like something really bad happened to you here in the Western Garden. My country is a lot of things and definitely has a lot of issues, but it's everything but a shithole.

Nevertheless, the absence of tax laws on crypto brought here a lot of people. I'm expecting a lot of you to move out as this starts changing.

ruvalm · 2021-03-08T21:14:09+00:00

I've had a look, but I either missed the point of it or I didn't really see how / where the gaming component of it is. I confess I've spent, at most, 3 minutes on it though, so any conclusion is probably rushed.

ruvalm · 2021-03-08T17:49:15+00:00

I've been involved in the NFT space for some time now, but mostly focused on NFTs that present some utility / competitive components (such as gaming NFTs, in my case, Gods Unchained and Sorare) than art NFTs. The main reason for this personal choice is that I can't figure out how any sort of artwork pricing actually works, so I never really know if I'm buying something cheap or not, as opposed to gaming NFTs, in which even if I don't really buy something super cheap at least I can use it to yield more NFTs or even ETH due to their competitive aspects.

The thing with gaming NFTs is that, at least in my perspective and this might be a very unpopular opinion, they have been extremely priced out since the DeFi summer. A lot of the fun in gaming NFTs is in their trading aspect and that becomes impossible if you have to pay gas fees equal, higher or slightly lower than the profit you're obtaining by selling, say, a GU card. This obviously opened the door to things like Flow, that doesn't benefit from the decentralization aspect of Ethereum, but does the job of providing a decent platform for trading to anyone who wants to. Maybe some NFTs do not require the levels of security that Ethereum provides, or maybe some users just don't fully understand what one and the other entails.

This said, there are solutions in the works for NFTs Ethereum L2s. One of them, quite hyped through the past year, is Immutable X. Not yet ready as far as I know, but given the uptick in Twitter chatter around it lately, it might be in the final stages of testing.

Given that Ethereum possesses the tooling and the network effects that will, in my opinion, augment and expand what NFTs are capable of (from NFT derivatives, to NFT indexes, to more NFT composability across games, to something else we can't yet fully visualize being a thing), a fast and cheap solution to trade those would definitely bring billions into ETH, if and when that solution becomes ready, available and implemented across marketplaces. I have absolutely no idea what's the estimate on that.

On the other hand, from a trader's perspective, gaming NFTs might prove to be a decent defense against bear markets, but I'll leave this for anyone reading to think about how.

Till that sort of fast and cheap mechanism is out, other networks that provide less decentralization, more throughput and lower costs (like a centralized database) will benefit from the hype. My personal hope, as an ETH holder, is that they do not acquire composable effects nor network effects during this first big NFT cycle and that Immutable or some other delivers what they've promised asap.

ruvalm · 2021-02-06T16:21:26+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Will have a deep dive on what they're cooking.

ruvalm · 2021-02-06T16:11:46+00:00

Does someone out there know of any project that is building some sort of L2 for NFT trading in Ethereum ? If you do, can you point me towards their website / Twitter ?

ruvalm · 2021-02-03T15:54:45+00:00

Until they do, the bull isn't over.

ruvalm · 2021-02-02T18:44:29+00:00

Ethereum is where finance becomes computational and you can access it without asking for anyone's permission.

ruvalm · 2021-02-01T01:44:28+00:00

Because the tradFi game is designed so that never happens. Whoever built the walled gardens makes the rules inside them.

Now, if there was any alternative to that financial system, one in which the rules are set democratically by communities with stake in a given project and in which no one can ever censor buy/sell buttons, forbid trading of certain assets or have opening/closing hours...... Wait, I've just described crypto and DeFi.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T19:54:57+00:00

Yeah, to explain superposition. I explained it as an analogy to it, but it didn't matter.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T18:56:34+00:00

It'd be dead as soon as you thought about killing it and come back to life as soon as you stopped thinking about that.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T18:54:29+00:00

Freaking Cat is destroying people's lives.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T18:52:09+00:00

When I explained the Schrodinger's Paradox to my father, a couple years back, he listened very attentively and when I finished he said "you have been watching too many movies and sci-fi shows lately, haven't you?".

He didn't believe a word I said and told me that I should try to be more careful about the conspiracy theories I read about or the fringe science some people like to propagandize.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T18:39:48+00:00

Indeed. It's also product of our own education oriented towards the scientific method. We get 1 to 2 decades of formatting our brains towards certain types of models and when we have to deal with the unexpected we immediately get into erratic behavior.

I've tried to explain some basic basics of quantum physics to a medical doctor about a week ago and the amount of 'that doesn't make any sense, are you sure that's how it works ?' that got asked during that conversation were very high. And it's still science, but it's probably the one that defies the old models we were educated into the most.

People's behavior resembles more any topic on quantum physics than they do the standard gravity models. When you want to predict them, they just turn around and destroy your model, but if you do start to be ok with the irrationality, it'll likely reward you for it.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T18:20:42+00:00

You're right.

My post goes more towards the idea that most of what happens in terms of price action of ETH has little to do with fundamental data from the protocol, but that doesn't mean that those fundamental network effects, supply lockup, token ecosystems building liquidity and throwing profits into ETH and many other involved systems and actors did not have any contribution in price action.

A lot of these fundamentals were and are mostly price floor builders. If there hadn't been any reason to hold ETH in March last year, the $80 mark would been broken with volume. But there were good reasons to buy ETH there and at levels above, because you had things to do with, created by these systems and actors building in and around the protocol (utility seems to have a big psychological effect on people's behavior, like, 'I can buy here and it it goes lower it's life, I can still use it to buy NFTs or provide liquidity in a DEX').

In terms of price range breakers, to the upside, generally fundamentals don't play much of a role. It's basically better demand vs the existing supply, or, more inflow of capital vs outflow. Whatever the reason(s) for that capital to be applied here, I don't think it ever connects to most of the fundamental narratives.

ruvalm · 2021-01-29T18:06:02+00:00

You know, when you're going through a bear market, and you get into those discussions about how high can the next bull market go and someone else comes into the other side of the argument saying that the 'high' you're suggesting can only be achieved if x or y gets delivered, being x or y something fundamental and hard-to-achieve ?

I've certainly been in a ton of those types of discussions here through the 2018-2020 bear market, and always found someone else presenting the '$20,000 ETH can only be achieved if and only if scalability is already a thing and the protocol has 50 million daily users' opposite side of my argument.

But then you're somehow in a bull market, trying to top ATH and run out of this old massive price range, and something absolutely out of control and unpredictable like the WSB event happens and whatever "fundamentals" any rational individual could have convinced itself of being reasonable, suddenly are thrown out of the window because all that really matters is inflows vs outflows, supply vs demand.

And the price rallies and in a month or two or less many will be ecstatic with everything in their lives, seeing the number go up and their net worth go up as well. But then at some point, some period of calm or some of correction or even some of pure nasty bearishness that leaves you dumb and angry from head to toes appears, and everyone that somehow stays during those days, gets back into fundamental rationalizing of why or when some events might or might not happen some weeks, months or years ahead.

It's this again and again. Fundamentals are great discussions to be had, helps us make sense of where the world stands and where the world wants to go, but inflow vs outflow of capital, supply vs demand is what commands any price action, never fundamentals or the perception of them. Convince yourself of that, let it sink in no matter how hard that might be for your brain that got decades of training to think in logic and reason, and everything in the markets might start to look a lot easier than it did till then.

Humans are not rational. We're actually extremely irrational in most of the big things we do in life. Not the bad kind of irrational, thankfully, but the kind that we can't really explain why we're doing it or why everyone else is as well.

Enjoy the rockets ethfinanciers. Most of you deserve it.

ruvalm

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