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Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

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Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#121

Post by jomkr »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #118
thisisit wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is funny. While cryptocurrency gets most of the brickbats around here on HN, I think Deep Learning is also in the same boat. Executives want to apply Deep Learning to everything and anything they can get their hands on. The results most of the time are underwhelming and could be had with a much simpler set of tools. Just wondering how long before Deep Learning goes into trough of disillusionment.

On the job I have to constantly shoot down big data / data mining / intelligent nn analysis crapware showeled to my bosses, and 99% of the time the answer is “you got NO data to speak of” One day a consultant or another yesman will be able to check in and syphon precious resources with their pipe dream and I’ll watch six figures fly out of the window while my dev team struggles debugging simulated ipads with mac mini…

We're in an industry ten years behind so we're just getting into Big Data. Obviously the issue that we can't write working normal software hasn't been addressed but we'll see how it goes. I'm actually relatively optimistic.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#122

Post by ak39 »

ramphastidae wrote: post #116
ooOOoo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Gartner, blockchain has just passed the "Peak of Inflated Expectations". Next phase is "Trough of Disillusionnment". http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/top-trends-in-the-...

Very interesting chart.

Indeed. Google "Gartner Hype Cycle" followed by the year to get a sense of the evolution of the different hype cycles.

I still remember my manager getting very excited about XBRL in 2007.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#123

Post by kondro »

pfisch wrote: post #86
kondro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you realise the product of your mining belongs to your company given its their electricity you’re using (compared to the computers just suspending).

I'm the owner.

Fair enough then! :-)

Surprised it’s cost effective to mine with commodity desktops and retail power though. ;-)

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#124

Post by jacobush »

thesumofall wrote: post #120
ballenf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

The sceptics in the shipping industry are plenty as well, though. And it has been awfully quite around that pilot. Many wonder if the real challenge is really trust or not just incompatible data formats and plenty of non-digitized data...

Back in 2000 I was on a team of eight, digitising a freight system. (Handling about 50% IIRC of all foreign air freight to and from Sweden.)

For a "parcel" of goods, I counted 17 paper copies of the same shipping form, being sent to and fro. Back then IATA also used a custom text field format instead of a standard XML format I think they use now.

So while this was a long time ago, I too expect shipping to be fraught with lots of weird edge cases.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#125

Post by TwelveNights »

ballenf wrote: post #65
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #43

> Johnson said that the company had made several venture investments in bitcoin-related businesses and that the company was looking at applications of blockchain technologies alongside several leading universities. Every crypto article makes the same vague claims about the potential of non-specific blockchain technology. I'm surprised there was no mention of replacing Visa in this one as well.

I got removed from a project because I was raining on everyone's blockchain fantasy. Later they begrudgingly admitted that blockchain wasn't going to solve the hard interoperability problem we were facing (bog standard need to pull & analyze data from multiple incompatible data stores held by multiple independent parties). I can forgive all the business guys for that thinking given articles like these, but the tech g…

In the long run, countries which have fast tech adoption and strong logistic infrastructure will probably be the ones that will advance the field the fastest. It's exciting technology, but I so far don't see a lot of people using it in a practical way. We may be seeing China as the forerunner of blockchain technology, since there's immediate business advantages for their (enormous) manufacturing and logistics setup.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#126

Post by gnaritas »

mrb wrote: post #76
partiallypro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare total market capitalization of equity markets to Bitcoin. I doubt you could liquidate millions of dollars of bitcoin in a day and not make the market plummet. You can do that in the last 30 minutes of the stock trading day with no very little price fluctuation. There are equities that are up triple digits, including Nvidia...who is realistically the biggest winner in crypto mining.

« I doubt you could liquidate millions of dollars of bitcoin in a day and not make the market plummet. » Wrong. 1.5+ BILLION dollars' worth of bitcoins are sold and bought in aggregate daily on 100+ exchanges: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

That's a very very small amount, real currency markets do trillions a day, bitcoin is the size of a large company. He's totally right, that's a small liquid market when compared to the real markets. If you tried to dump 10 million in bitcoin all at once, there's a good chance you're going to crash the market; 10 million wouldn't even move the price in the EURUSD.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#127

Post by woodman »

thephyber wrote: post #101
kobeya wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think they aren't? Mining is a multi billion dollar industry.

I think co-opting suggests attacks on the consensus mechanisms or figuring out how to exploit Satoshi's abandoned wallets.

Such a move would instantly make bitcoin worthless - it would be more profitable for the attackers to put the computing power to mining. The only kind of party that would pose such a risk would not be interested in direct profitability: states.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#128

Post by cm2187 »

bartread wrote: post #83
slyfocks wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being a voice of reason in a domain that has increasingly become overrun by frauds and zealots. As someone who has been involved in blockchain research since 2011, it’s sad to see a promising technology (in limited use cases) turn into a buzzword thrown around by the many speculators and scam artists peddling vaporware and pumping crypto prices.

Yup: it's the Big Data hype train of 2013/2014 re-liveried and stopping soon at a station near you.

Taking over the VR hype train on the way, passing by the wreck of the 3D TV hype train, and competing with the AI hype train.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#129

Post by lstyls »

knocte wrote: post #107
lstyls wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Name" is maybe not quite right, "Satoshi Nakomoto" is the creator's pseudonym. The actual author of the bitcoin whitepaper is unknown and the subject of much speculation. I'm sure OP knows this, I'm just being pedantic.

Strictly speaking, it's not known if the name is a pseudonym either. There are people in the world that have that name and they haven't denied being the creator.

If it is said author's name, why have they not publicly claimed to be this Satoshi? Name one such individual who has credibly been considered to have invented bitcoin.

Re: Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrencies

#130

Post by joosters »

mrb wrote: post #55
proofofstake wrote: post #30

ROI of creating an investment portfolio 1 year ago, and selling today: - All Bitcoin: ~500% - Mix of top market: ~2800% - All Strat: ~13500% Meanwhile, stock investors call 12% a good year.

Yup. Few people realize Bitcoin has been literally the best performing investment in human history. One dollar invested in March 2010 is worth $1+ million today. 1,000,000× returns. But the downside of performing so well is that it is too easy to get distracted by the price and disregard the radical improvements that Bitcoin brings over legacy financial systems...

What? Practically every day, someone wins $millions from a $1 lottery ticket somewhere in the world. That's the same or better returns...
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