I was thinking 1200 is my buy price a while back but here we are at 1100 and I'm still waiting.

Now seems like there is plenty more room to go down. Lots still wound up into some sort of defi.

I have bought an ungodly amount recently and still find this set of circumstances attractive long term. My last bid was 1250, thinking I'll find another bid around 950.

It can easily go a lot lower. Bunch of liquidations queued up to happen. Wouldn't be surprised to wake up at $500. Either way, long term good, but not into catching falling knives right now.

The idea that you -need- intermediaries in order to function and that trustless technology can't or won't improve is like the most boomer big government non-sensical point of view ever. It's almost to the point that trying to talk or argue with you is pointless when it's coming from such a point of view of bad faith. It's also kind of scary to hold such points of view when you historically look at blockbuster/netflix or barnes&nobles vs amazon etc. Disintermediating things is a powerful force and being so absolutist in a negative fashion about it is just strange and wrong.

Are there scams in DeFi? Yes. Is there currently real utility in DeFi? Yes. Does innovation exist? Yes. Could conceivably more utility be created with time? Yes.

Everything I mentioned there is an actual fact.

Am I saying that crypto technology will displace all of fiat based legacy systems? No. Does that mean crypto technology/innovation is useless? Also no.

I trust encryption and math more than regulation, corrupted politicians/bankers and antiquated inefficient economic systems. I gain real world use cases from these systems and I can't be the only person in the world this applies to.

If demand for decentralized leverage exists and demand for decentralized asset swaps exist, then at the very least, the entire basis for your argument is wrong.

Of course crypto and trustless systems are not useless. That's not what I said. Let's not resort to reductio ad absurdum arguments. My position is there is no widespread mainstream application for it. You have to realize that proponents of DeFi like yourself represent an enthusiastic but small segment of the population. You see it as a way to rework the order of the financial industry, which it is. But most people don't think that aspect of the industry needs reworking. They don't see the utility in that for themselves compared to what is available today. Most people want trusted intermediaries for their financial transactions. Most people want rescission mechanisms. Most people want insured transactions and accountability.

Any investment thesis which relies on the world order being changed in contradiction to the interests of the established world order is investing in a lottery ticket. Surely it'll pay huge if it comes to pass but the odds of doing so are quite slim.

I don't think we need a complete new world order. Rather, it's likely things will be invented that improve the experience of users and they will begin to adopt it. Just like any useful technology. You are correct when saying there is no real use case now, the bet is that there will be real world use cases later.

Despite how negative I've been on NFTs, it is an improvement. Sports cards are quite dumb too, it's just buying a picture of an athlete on a piece of cardboard. However, sports cards can be forged and degrade over time, NFT is a version of it that proves origin and authentication cannot be forged and will always stay in mint condition. So, despite it replacing something I wasn't interested in, adaptations over time in other areas will lead to meaningfully better experiences and adoption.

Imagine a world where everyone owned their social security # via NFT. Identities could no longer be stolen. I believe proof of ownership in areas like this or house deeds, car titles etc aren't get rich quick schemes but provide quality of life improvements and require being built on existing technology as NFTs in current form provide a proof of concept.

ETH currently has a market cap of $142B, even after the recent drop. ETH's value proposition is its technology. Justifying a $142B valuation requires a significant adoption of that technology, perhaps not a new world order but something very significant.

That's likely the difference in our opinion. I'm less focused on the adoption it has now and have an optimistic bias of what it will be. If I'm wrong and adoption stagnates or declines, I'll pay for it. If it slowly becomes integrated into people's lives over the next decade, I'll be rewarded. This isn't a bet on Apple in it's current state where we more or less know their trajectory for the next 10 years. It's a bet on thesis with both far more upside and downside.

Right, we're both speaking to its future potential adoption. Like how an equity is priced on its projected discounted future earnings.

We differ on ETH's prospects. Regardless, I hope I'm wrong and you make a fortune on your investment.

Thanks man. It wouldn't be a market if there weren't valid points on both sides. People that I consider brilliant are on both sides here, so it really will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Scary position to hold still.

You're projecting the current state of affairs off into the future. Could you be right? Perhaps, I don't know. But I think you are being way too absolutist about this, especially when there's asymmetric returns for being correct.

I'm not a DeFi enthusiast to be clear. I've used it a tiny bit but not a lot. I'm personally more of an efficiency maximalist. And part of efficiency is hating big government / big corporate structures for how inefficient/slow/corrupt they are.

And this is the pathway that I see (that perhaps you don't or we disagree on?) to more mainstream adoption. More innovation / development is one of the pathways, more time in the marketplace / awareness by society and very importantly lowered costs. If you can cut out all the legacy bullshit and provide a service at say a 90% discount relative to the corporate banking world (total airball example, please don't take that too literally), people will have an extremely high incentive to use such services even if they ordinarily don't want to.

800 seems very likely.

stETH-ETH slowly inching back towards parity

Well said, I fully share your opinion. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have entered our world tightly. Like mobile communication or the Internet, you could even say that the emergence of cryptocurrencies is a consequence of the emergence of the global Internet.

Except mobile and internet solved real-world problems at scale. Disintermediation only solves problems for those trying to make money from disintermediation - it's more expensive for end users, scales less, requires more power, slows transactions, and removes the right of rescission and a trusted, insured third party.

lol pocket_zeros replying to the bot

The merger now scheduled for the week of September 19th, 2022.

O/U for actually being complete by EOY? 50%?

Check polymarket

It will be done before eoy imo.

https://polymarket.com/market-group/ethereum-merge-pos

Seems like the market likes it!

Yep, this merger's effects on supply are going to be very bullish on ETH for years. People will look back at 900-1.5k eth months before the merger and regret not heavily allocating.

Ya this is kind of a great risk/reward spot.

You have $100 bil+ of USDC and USDT on the sidelines. Market cap of ETH is under $200 bil.

ETH was down about 80% off it's ATH's and it's possible it's about to cut it's issuance by 90% if everything goes as planned.

Has multibagger written all over it.

Cutting issuance has shown to be one of the biggest catalysts in crypto bull runs and this is going to be a BIG cut.

If ETH price keeps front running the merge it'll be more a sell the news event than anything else. BTC halvings generally take 6 months to start seeing an effect on price and the global macro problems aren't resolving themselves anytime soon. If you're looking to trade I think a pre-merge sell around $2200-2500 and look to rebuy in Feb-Mar 2023 would be your best bet. The merge won't immediately fix any issues relating to scaling or gas cost.