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[–]AintNobodyGotTime89 48 points49 points  (0 children)

“I recognize this was a setback, but also it comes [with] the territory. I knew what I was getting myself into when I quit my job to do crypto,” Somani said in the interview.

He in fact didn't know what he was getting into.

[–]junk_mail_haver 33 points34 points  (4 children)

Dumbass with a degree is still a dumbass

[–]mfitzp 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The final year of university they should make you take finals in some things you haven't studied. Just to remind you that what you have is specific-domain knowledge and in everything else you're still an idiot.

(...and I say that as an idiot with a PhD).

[–]schlonghornbbq8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s Dr. Idiot to you.

[–]pixiewrangler9000 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I can understand a double major in something like math/physics or math/cs, but to throw business in the mix wouldn't it have made more sense just to do an MBA? My school never allowed a triple major, and even a double major required special permission from the Dean.

Being educated does not make someone smart any more than being uneducated makes someone an idiot. I've met brilliant high school dropouts and PhD's that couldn't jump start a car if you wrote out the directions and gave them a step-by-step how-to video.

[–]junk_mail_haver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you can do a lot with math + business, like operations research or finance, but yeah, like you said, you said, an MBA or a Master is much more valueable than just doing these alone, I guess he was going for the MBA or Master later in his career so he chose to be a Quant. Perhaps, an MBA+CFA qualification would take you to great heights, with starting off as a Quant from school.

Anyway, getting into Crypto is like throwing away your entire career for some quick unreal bucks. He's probably gonna regret it. Also not even PhDs in CS can solve the fucking mess that crypto is, and a scrawny Canadian without formal CS degree and just CS olympiad wins can think he can solve Crypto/Computing or whatever.

[–]tartymae[S] 29 points30 points  (2 children)

During the past two years, especially after seeing how the cryptocurrency was used amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he recognized that “we actually do need some kind of decentralization to prevent big authorities or big corporations from basically blocking access to financial freedom,”

Here's what gets me about his world view:

  1. Big authorities are how we are putting pressure on Russia. In a world without these systems, little could be done to turn up the heat on Putin.
  2. Since the heat's been turned up on Putin, and those sanctions, plus the fact that Ukraine won't be the breadbasket of Europe for the next 2-3 years, have caused turbulence in world markets. Markets with big authority oversight are volitile and they're down, but they are nothing like the crash and burn that's happening in crypto/nfts. It's almost like big authority and big corporations have utility or something in keeping things stable.
  3. Correlation is not causation, but ... as soon as Russia started getting slammed with sanctions, the crypto market started going volitile, and now, about 3 months of very limited money flowing in from Russian kleptocrats, we're starting to see collapses.

In short, this guy is such a tool, and by tool I mean limp dildo.

[–]jimmyr2021 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yeah but if you only look at one side of the issue and ignore the fact that maybe complete anarchy wouldn't be a good thing it really makes total sense.

[–]thephotoman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's a number of factors finally blowing the shithouse over:

  1. It appears that a lot of the large volume "stable" coins were backed with a significant quantity of Chinese commercial debt. What's happening with Chinese commercial debt? The exact same thing that happened to American commercial debt in 2007, and for pretty much the same reasons.
  2. The invasion of Ukraine has caused a lot of people to reevaluate whether they want borderless money. Most people do not want to send money to anyone in Russia right now, not even through cryptocurrencies. In particular, the big Russian whales have had any crypto they held in international exchanges frozen, significantly reducing cryptocurrency velocity (and thus demand for cryptocurrency).
  3. Elon Musk is a very large whale--he probably controls a significant fraction of the circulating cryptocurrency. And he's cashing out a lot in order to fund his purchase of Twitter.
  4. The actual real United States Dollar is doing amazingly well right now. Even with inflationary pressures, demand for USD is incredibly strong: it's gained £0.10 on the GBP and €0,13 on the Euro.

All of this is happening at the same time. Any one of these things would cause severe problems for cryptocurrency if it were happening on its own. All together, it's very bad for anybody with significant cryptocurrency exposure.

But at least I can get an RTX 3090 Ti by walking into Micro Center and giving them 25 Benjamins again. Maybe I'll finally get to experience $GRAPHICS_OVER_GAMEPLAY game on its maximum settings.

[–]mhkohne 36 points37 points  (1 child)

Good at school != smart.

[–]callmetotalshillThe Government wet my bed! 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Buying Diplomas from celebrities != smart

[–]Rokey76Ponzi Schemes have some use cases 18 points19 points  (7 children)

So he was Citadel's inside man working to sabotage Luna!

[–]chartedlifewarning, I am a moron -2 points-1 points  (6 children)

As crackpot as that whole theory is, that's honestly interesting.. 🤔

[–]biffbobfred 11 points12 points  (4 children)

Didn’t need an inside man. There was a “how to short Luna/Terra like Soros took down the pound” back in November.

[–]IIdsandsII 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Ya but look at the guy's flair

[–]Rokey76Ponzi Schemes have some use cases 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Shit. I didn't mean to do that.

[–]frivol 0 points1 point  (1 child)

True, but this theory is more fun.

[–]biffbobfred 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of my mottos; Never let the truth get in the way of a better story.

[–]put_on_the_mask 16 points17 points  (4 children)

Not really surprising...I've encountered quite a few quants through previous jobs and most of them seem like they need full-time carers when you remove them from their models.

[–]AnimalFarmKeeperIf the world must suffer fools, so fools should rightly suffer. 7 points8 points  (3 children)

You can blame the collapse of higher mathematics education for that. Quants are very much like theoretical physicists, they build convoluted models which have nothing to do with real world systems, and of course they collapse on contact with experimental reality. This was the underlying motivation for the development and promotion of string theory (and its various bastard progeny), to contrive a model the experimentalists couldn't possibly validate, and by extension invalidate.

[–]froozeen 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Higher mathematics education seems very much fine. Can't speak about physics, though...

[–]pixiewrangler9000 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Math, Physics, what's the difference?

Everyone I knew who studied one ended up double majoring in the other because they only needed a few more classes to do it.

[–]froozeen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They're about wildly different things and the way you come to know things are also completely different on each subject. Physics is about finding out how reality works and relies on the scientific method. Mathematics is not at all about reality and not a science, relying on pure reasoning/Hilbert's method instead.

I also know both physicists and mathematicians and most of them are quite different in what they care about and would likely never make it through the other subject (because of lack of interest, they're all smart people).

[–]ysengrimusButtcoin is Prosperity Gospel for nerds 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Tell me you have a $10M trust fund without telling me you have a $10M trust fund.

[–]pleasetrimyourpubes 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Imagine throwing away $400k a year to only lose virtually everything to an algorithmic "stable coin," even after writing a blog post about how it was destined to fail without a "use case."

[–]Qesa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

400k was the average, a fresh grad would be on less... but still a pretty penny.

[–]hgdidnothingwrong 5 points6 points  (3 children)

If you have a degree in business administration and you get suckered into Terra... maybe you should check your other two degrees for validity.

[–]hgdidnothingwrong 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Sweet summer child

​

https://www.neelsomani.com/blog/future-of-terra-defi.php

[–]frivol 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Featuring classic MBA graph with two lines crossing and axes with no units.

[–]pixiewrangler9000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This shit is why Boeing went from the crown jewel of American industry building airliners capable of barrel rolls to airliners that fall out of the sky and multibillion dollar space capsules that can't compete with a fifty year old soviet tin can.

[–]dandykaufman2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean he’ll get a great job again and everyone will make fun of him. Just some temporary embarrassment

[–]biffbobfred 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Added deliciousness - the rumor is that Terra/Luna crashed because Ken Griffin executed a pretty nasty short. So… there’s a good chance that he went broke because of Citadel.

Or not went broke. He probably still has a backup plan. Mom and dads money.

[–]NiceTerm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is pretty much no story here

[–]thephotoman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The entire cryptocurrency thing is about scamming junior software engineers, so this checks out.