Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour • Hacker News Board

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#351

Post by Zarath » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

gritzko wrote: post #220

joeblau wrote: post #12

I listened to this YC podcast[1] twice with Juan Benet. Listening to Juan talk about a lot of historical information and the correlations he drew was fascinating. When he tried to explain the need for Filecoin to Dalton, I just didn't hear it. Dalton kept asking him over and over what the point was and he kept giving non-answers (at least in my opinion which doesn't mean much to be honest). I understand the goal of t…

Well, at least a storage-backed crypto currency can offer some intrinsic value. That's much less stupid than burning electricity purposelessly. On the technical side, I find it doable. Unless they actually try to implement it "on the blockchain". Given blockchain transaction rates, by the time you'll download your porn, you will not need it anymore. Of course we can ask, how big is the market for cold storage? On the…

Electricity is already burned purposelessly. It's called heat.

In the future you will see that the only profitable miners are ones who can "sell" their heat, i.e. using it for greenhouses or other applications.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#352

Post by Zarath » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 1:09 AM UTC

matthewbauer wrote: post #290

elmar wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The euro/USD exchange rate has varied between roughly 1 and 1.6 over the past 10 years. This low range variation is only possible because of government monetary intervention that doesn't exist on CryptoCurrency.

I don't think that's true in this case. EUR/USD is a floating exchange rate.

It is true to an extent, this is why central banks inflate, perform liquidity swaps, etc.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#353

Post by Zarath » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 1:19 AM UTC

fpgaminer wrote: post #242

runeks wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that, if you enter this space, you’ll be competing with existing miners, some of which are quite large. Some have over 10% network hashrate, which means they’re earning 12.5BTC×$3500/BTC=$43,750 every two hours . That’s half a million dollars per day, or $15m per month, and I assume most of it is being channeled back into optimizing their already fairly optimized ASIC chips. And you’ll be starting f…

Yes, that's the point. To compete against them directly. Get enough funding to override their advantage. > And you’ll be starting from scratch. I haven't built a mining ASIC (yet), but I built the first open source code for mining FPGAs. I wouldn't be starting from scratch. It'll take a little bit of re-architecture to update that code to multi-core designs (the FPGAs were single core, fully unrolled loops), but that…

Don't forget AsicBoost!!!

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#354

Post by Zarath » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 1:21 AM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #72

For most storage, one needs it to be local to compute or easy to put behind a CDN - e.i. in a datacenter or on a very fast network that is connected to the datacenters. If not, you are cut out from the main commercial storage market. What is left is: - People who want to store stuff that is can not be legally stored on existing networks, such as illegal drug or porn stuff. - People who need secure stuff stored in a d…

Say my desktop is always running and always connected to the network. Now I can rent out my extra storage space. Considering I am incurring almost no additional cost to rent out this space, the price is extremely elastic and will therefore be lower than the cost of a service like S3.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#355

Post by genon » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 1:46 AM UTC

coderzach wrote: post #323

genon wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this just sounded like a zinger to you when you wrote it, but "the Internet" is a prime example of anything but a solution in search of a problem.

What big problem did the early internet solve? Sending messages between universities? Why not just use a phone?

ARPANET/the Internet was developed to facilitate communication, remote access and data sharing between different computer systems. Are you sticking with "Why not just use a phone?".

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#356

Post by int_19h » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 3:13 AM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #76

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your post I went and looked up that question/answer portion, and I think the back and forth is illuminating in it's lack of either communication or actual capability: TL;DR: It's a solution in search of a problem, like so much good, early technology. Dalton Caldwell [31:07] – What is the burning, and it’s okay if it’s not consumers, but what is the thing that, with Filecoin, that is gonna make, whether it’s…

Is it me or is the elephant in the room like "get paid to put pirated movies, games, music, software on the network" Obviously, no one is going to admit it because then your network is tainted but every file sharing outfit ultimately ends up do pirated. I've been mining lbry and it seems lot more ahead of these others. https://lbry.io/

If the society is collectively willing to pay for storage mostly to host pirated content, that tells you a lot about what the real (rather than publicly expressed) social consensus is wrt piracy.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#357

Post by int_19h » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 3:16 AM UTC

okabat wrote: post #272

stale2002 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about all the extra space on all the harddrives in the world that isn't being used. For example, when you buy a new computer, with a 500 GB drive, 400GB of it isn't going to be used for a while. Hard drives may be cheap, s3 may be cheap, but that extra 400 GB of hard disk space? That space is literally FREE. Hard disk space is weird, because there is so much completely unused space out there, that would be lite…

You pay the operational burden of keeping your computer networked 24/7, and likely receive cents in exchange.

How many people already keep their computer on and working 24/7 (or close enough) in practice, though?

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#358

Post by lizardhunter » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 3:19 AM UTC

dahdum wrote: post #307

Animats wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is how much of that volume is the same money going back and forth. Taking sizable amounts of money out of the system is different. See 2010 flash crash".[1] There may be less real liquidity than transaction volume indicates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

The majority of the global volume is crypto-crypto, so I agree it's a valid concern, but the volume of fiat trades has gone way up over the past several months. For example, Coinbase added 1 million accounts in June - the vast majority by necessity are putting fiat in vs cashing out. One flash crash happened on the ETH-USD pair on GDAX like a month ago, when a large dump triggered cascading margin calls. Bitcoin has…

The volume on many exchanges are fake. It's pumped up using bots buying and selling among each other. Large dumping tends to go through dark pools or OTC. The real volumes are much lower.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#359

Post by dfinch » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 3:27 AM UTC

api wrote: post #185

joeblau wrote: post #12

I listened to this YC podcast[1] twice with Juan Benet. Listening to Juan talk about a lot of historical information and the correlations he drew was fascinating. When he tried to explain the need for Filecoin to Dalton, I just didn't hear it. Dalton kept asking him over and over what the point was and he kept giving non-answers (at least in my opinion which doesn't mean much to be honest). I understand the goal of t…

There's a bunch of projects trying to solve the distributed mass storage problem. I am not convinced this problem exists. (1) Hard drives are dirt f'ing cheap. Buying more than one and putting them at different locations (home and office etc.) is not hard. Storage is still experiencing a Moore's Law type geometric increase in density so this is going to get easier not harder in the future. (2) Cloud storage is cheap…

I buy your arguments. However, I am curious (primarily as a thought experiment): what would happen if Filecoin was able to solve (3) - (8)? By opening up the barriers to entry and creating a perfectly competitive marketplace, economics says that the price of storage would then equal the marginal cost of providing that storage (i.e., electricity, networking, and amortized hardware cost). Presumably that's lower than what Amazon and others charge.

Would love to see a theoretical analysis of Filecoin's impact on the storage market, presuming that it can build the foundations for competing in that market.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#360

Post by coryfklein » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 3:43 AM UTC

simias wrote: post #112

sktrdie wrote: post #77

What's important to note about ICOs is not necessarily whether the idea is actually practical and that it will work. What matters right now is whether the idea can stir our intellect and get the crowds excited. This is because behind the idea there's a new token which value is completely driven by the excitement of the crowds (it's pure speculation). If I invest N amount of money in a token which gets people excited,…

>If our future economies will be driven by these tokens, we might think back at this period of time, looking at perhaps the people who will be the %1 of the future. I get your point but please don't feed this "fear of missing out" that I'm sure many are feeling (myself included, to a certain extent). Some people are going to invest money they can't afford to lose. Maybe they'll be the next 1%ers. Or maybe they're jus…

You don't have to bet the barn for heaven's sake. $800 in bitcoin 5 years ago makes you a millionaire today. Most software engineers are going to be just fine making one or two gambles on that order, and if it means they get more involved in new tech and have fun all the while I think it's a great idea.