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Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

blog.bancor.network

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Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#81

Post by dmix »

laktek wrote: post #58
dmix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best book for explaining your product idea is "Made to Stick" [1]. It has a great process for breaking your idea down in the most concrete terms and has some useful tools such as analogy to a similar product ("like dropbox for x"). The cliche adage here is that "if you can't explain your product in one or two sentences then I'm not interested". This is why the "Hollywood pitch" developed organically because peopl…

So simplest way to explain Bancor is to call them a Bank? Has reserves, liquidates over the counter & centralized control (for better or worse).

The analogy to banks is helpful but products should:

A) explain what problem they are solving (what pain point they address)

B) have an obvious target user.

In this case: Why do I need a bank when using Ethereum? Is it a bank in the context of retail bank consumers as a storage/transfer mechanism or a bank for businesses? If I'm a business building a decentralized service building on top of Ethereum can I use Bancor to address a set of particular problems that are common among decentralized services?

There's more to this than choosing a generic analogy.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#83

Post by marcosdumay »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
marcosdumay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "at the same time" is the important piece. It means there's an speculator in the middle that will guess a price it can buy to sell later and make some money out of the transaction.

> an [ sic ] speculator in the middle that will guess a price it can buy to sell later and make some money out of the transaction That's called market making [1]. The money made is the spread [2]. People have been doing this for centuries. [1] https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersmktmakerhtm.html [2] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketmakerspread.asp

The person that guess a price anticipating the market valuation is called speculator. This same person may have other names because of related or unrelated actions, but they are speculators.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#84

Post by simias »

opportune wrote: post #48
EternalData wrote: post #41

You would get absolutely slaughtered in a public market setting if this happened -- I love the idea of ICOs giving non-accredited investors the ability to invest in risky ventures, but you have to wonder about the diligence layer that comes with it, especially as organizations like Bancor do not have nearly the legal requirements for transparency.

Meh, I say let the fools spend their money however they want. Soon they'll understand why there are restrictions on investing in areas like this

If they live in a civilized country and they end up going bankrupt it's the state welfare system that's going to have to pay to fix up that mess. Meanwhile the scammers will be busy swimming in money.

I know that it isn't very popular in the cryptocurrency world but I really don't think all regulations are absolutely evil. Unfortunately I think some of them are going to figure it out the hard way.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#85

Post by wpietri »

thisisit wrote: post #39

If there was a bad response to a critic, this will be it. While Sirer's post was a bit terse, this response doesn't earn brownie points by going the same route. First, they start off as many "responses" in crypto currency seem to start that is - saying this is all FUD and the critic should stop spreading FUD. They also take the Trump route, not a great choice of words - "fake news". Where I lost them was when they eq…

> As Sirer put it, smoothing prices is a bad idea. If something is volatile it is because the market deems it to be so. Going against the market is not good.

Yeah, as somebody who used to work for market makers, the Bancor notion of markets struck me as... I guess "utopian" is the kindest word I can come up with.

The reason we as market makers got a special deal was that the market wanted us to provide liquidity, which sometimes can smooth prices a bit. But we personally didn't give a fuck about that. We were there to make money while avoiding getting crushed by market movements.

That was honestly a grim mindset, and I'm glad I don't do that anymore. But I appreciate the way a lot of individually self-serving actions can sometimes balance out to something socially useful. To make that work, though, I think requires you to be extraordinarily cynical. From what I've seen, utopians get eaten alive.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#86

Post by wpietri »

brohee wrote: post #50

> Every buy and sell order is an (arguably superior) source of knowledge as to what is happening in the real world. If they replaced (arguably superior) with (real if possibly flawed) I might be tempted to take them seriously. But this belief in perfectly efficient market is hilarious, especially in the face of all the people getting rich out of market inefficiencies...

Definitely.

I think of markets as a technology. You have problem X, you can solve it with a market structured with A, B, and C. So it's really weird to me the extent to which markets have become a religion. In some quarters, a fundamentalist one.

I have similar concerns with Bitcoin. The technology is really neat. But it doesn't have users so much as it has adherent, devotees, and apostles.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#87

Post by tylersmith »

laktek wrote: post #58
dmix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best book for explaining your product idea is "Made to Stick" [1]. It has a great process for breaking your idea down in the most concrete terms and has some useful tools such as analogy to a similar product ("like dropbox for x"). The cliche adage here is that "if you can't explain your product in one or two sentences then I'm not interested". This is why the "Hollywood pitch" developed organically because peopl…

So simplest way to explain Bancor is to call them a Bank? Has reserves, liquidates over the counter & centralized control (for better or worse).

How do you think it came to be called Bancor? It's a smart contract banker.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#88

Post by tylersmith »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #29

Disclaimer: I'm not well-versed in these things. Maybe I'm totally misreading the situation. Their response to the "BNT is pointless" thing seems to say that BNT has a point because... they made the service require it. I still don't understand why , apart from the founders wanting something to sell to investors. My understanding is that the main things one looks for in a reserve currency are liquidity in the internat…

If you are missing something it's because it wasn't present.

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#89

Post by Outrageous »

What is wrong with the Bancor team defending themselves from unjustified, and close to vulgar, criticism? They gave very clear arguments, and you try to turn it into an emotional fight.

As a professor you should use exclusively rational arguments, and under NO circumstances emotional manipulation. It seems you've been paid enough to do the opposite. Shame on you!

Re: Official Response to “Bancor Is Flawed”

#90

Post by thisisit »

root_axis wrote: post #69
thisisit wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed but the same could be said about VC money and unicorns like Uber, Snap Inc. etc. It will be laughable if say Uber's CEO equates bashing of Uber's tech or business model as a threat to all unicorns. One of the bigger problems I see with these ICOs is they that they don't offer much in terms of business viability other than maybe "cool" tech. I have been thinking of a purely profit focused contract(coin) on top…

> but the same could be said about VC money and unicorns like Uber, Snap The same cannot be said about VC money going to unicorns. Those companies provide in-demand services that people use and enjoy, even if the business model is tenuous, there is clear value created by the services. Not true of ICOs which create no value.

My bad. My phrasing should've been better. I am not implying anything on the value side of ICO vs VC backed real world companies.

I am just pointing out that - No company is an island. Criticizing one doesn't implicate the whole industry as the Bancor guys try to portray.

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