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Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

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Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#81

Post by shepardrtc »

api wrote: post #75
shepardrtc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sia team has really impressed me with their approach. They're the type of devs that keep quiet and just get the work done. No hype, no grandiose promises, just hard work and solving hard problems. I think that in the end they'll be the ones that come out ahead when it comes to decentralized storage.

You're making me want to actually try Sia for real stuff.

I like them because they're really trying to solve the problems around decentralized storage. Storage will be a very valuable resource for a long time to come, so anyone who can make it cheap and make it work well will have solved a valuable problem. Take a look at the companies that have invested money in them (Google is one), and you'll see that they have strong interest in what the team is doing. And I'm not talking about millions, but more like normal investment money to fund hiring of people. Here's an article about them:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/08/07/sia/sUZ0p3EE...

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#82

Post by jacquesm »

dumbfounder wrote: post #51
pavlov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad news is that Diamond was able to correlate to status, a strong (if subjective) value that is part of humanity since always. BTC only appeal is its value as money ... Startup idea: Bitcoin wedding rings. A beautiful gold ring with a private key engraved on the inside. Give your loved one the gift of BTC! Your commitment to each other, eternalized on the global blockchain. Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but the…

I had this idea a few weeks ago. I think it would sell, but how do you tie the ring to the bitcoin effectively?

Engrave the key on the inside of the ring.

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#83

Post by [deleted] »

throwawayico wrote: post #49
whyrusleeping wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, ipfs dev here. The amount of work being done on ipfs has been increasing continually. Work on filecoin is not detracting from ipfs development, and we are bringing on more people for ipfs, libp2p and filecoin.

That doesn't discount the fact you are involved in yet another ICO. Cryptocurency integration and identity within IPFS could have been done without a new coin. I know you know this, yet you choose to do it anyway. That means we should question your intentions, across all your projects. And, just for the record, a cryptocurrency fund raise is simply selling access to given private/public key pairs which contain values…

[deleted]

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#84

Post by nemo1618 »

shepardrtc wrote: post #18
rightos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see many of Filecoins promises realized already in alternatives like Sia or Storj, but Filecoin still takes the hype, despite not having anything released, let alone anything superior... I guess because it's by the IPFS developers and had a big flashy ICO?

The Sia team has really impressed me with their approach. They're the type of devs that keep quiet and just get the work done. No hype, no grandiose promises, just hard work and solving hard problems. I think that in the end they'll be the ones that come out ahead when it comes to decentralized storage.

Hey, Sia core dev here.

From the beginning, we've prided ourselves writing code instead of pushing PR pieces and designing flashy websites. So I'm glad that you (and others) picked up on those values. By keeping our heads down, we've built the only truly distributed and decentralized marketplace for storage, and we did it with a team and a budget far smaller than our competitors.

Thanks for your support -- posts like this motivate me more than almost anything else.

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#85

Post by jacquesm »

api wrote: post #64
eco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox feels like the wrong thing to compare it to. IPFS isn't really for storing files privately. Public S3 buckets would be closer. I don't have any numbers to say if it's overvalued based on how much public cloud storage there is (I wouldn't be surprised if it were though).

Storage costs are hyper-deflationary. We have a NAS on a desk with 27 terabytes of storage and it cost under $1000 (with drives) and consumes about 40 watts of power. Ten years ago this would have cost closer to $5000-$10000 and consumed hundreds of watts of power. We bought it about a year and a half ago and already we could replace it for less than $500. The idea of distributed storage at the edge is interesting bu…

Sorry to see this downvoted, if this were reddit there'd be some reddit gold right here.

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#86

Post by dheera »

whyrusleeping wrote: post #43
jstanley wrote: post #2

Filecoin is a huge disappointment to me. IPFS is fantastic technology, but the main developers getting sidetracked with yet another scammy ICO is the last thing we need.

Hey, ipfs dev here. The amount of work being done on ipfs has been increasing continually. Work on filecoin is not detracting from ipfs development, and we are bringing on more people for ipfs, libp2p and filecoin.

Just a thought here, but perhaps the ICO wasted them less time than months of meetings trying to raise funds with angels and VCs.

You could say Filecoin is a distraction, but in trying to raise seed money, 50 VCs arranging 100 meetings, 5 verbally committing to you a measly $1M each and negotiate over investment terms while you try to live on ramen, and then 3 out of the 5 backing out in the process, is arguably a MUCH bigger distraction to getting any real work done. It also causes a lot of actual brain rot when you spend that much consecutive time away from tech.

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#87

Post by lordnacho »

PetoU wrote: post #37
pavlov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad news is that Diamond was able to correlate to status, a strong (if subjective) value that is part of humanity since always. BTC only appeal is its value as money ... Startup idea: Bitcoin wedding rings. A beautiful gold ring with a private key engraved on the inside. Give your loved one the gift of BTC! Your commitment to each other, eternalized on the global blockchain. Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but the…

I think that jewelry should have a property of showing off, so hidden private key wouldn't work that well. You need to have some mechanism how to show status. And that nicety factor was driven mostly by women decorum.

Well you can easily sign stuff with your key and people can easily verify how much coin is in the account.

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#88

Post by gist »

soneca wrote: post #3

edit: Weird, I thought I was commenting on another thread, about Nobel laureates criticizing Bitcoin. I saw it on my phone, then opened HN at my notebook to comment. I misread the title and commented here, but now I can't find the correct thread (was it flagged?). I am growing this idea that Bitcoin (and any cryptocurrency that is affected by aggressive price growth) is an anti-fragile indirect multilevel marketing s…

I don't agree with the comparison between diamonds and bitcoin. The supply of diamonds is constrained (just like the supply of many luxury goods) and that ends up making a physical product (a diamond ring or jewelry or even a Porsche (yep supply is constrained on that beyond what the market would buy)) more highly sought and valuable. But in the end you are getting a physical product which you can lust over and others can admire when they see you own it. The same does not exist with bitcoin. This is not even to mention that both diamonds and Porsches have actual use even if that use can be supplied by less expensive alternatives. Even Gold has this advantage. These are not tulip mania products that got bid up either and they have generally maintained and stood the test of time with regards to both their value and their utility. (Even if the utility of a diamond ring is what the person wearing it gets in good feeling).

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#89

Post by superbrama »

keymone wrote: post #79
superbrama wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) So, a worldwide payment solution requires a spaceship, but we have first generation mainframes currently. Bitcoin is the biggest of those mainframes, uses the most energy, etc. 2) You touched upon two independent considerations. Yes, bitcoin can evolve technologically, but it’s not assured. Energy spent is based on incentive. Value stored isn’t directly correlated, that’s a result of price which results from buyer…

1) the point is, we’ve just started 2) How is it not assured that bitcoin will evolve? It evolves all the time. Are you even following the project? Energy spent correlates with incentive, incentive is based on price, price is based on demand/value. Where is demand/perceived value derived from is debatable. The rest of your message equally applies to all other endeavors where early movers have profited. Yes it’s a bub…

1) Yes, and bitcoin isn’t the only player in town.

2) It’s not assured that major breakthroughs will occur within the bitcoin ecosystem, nor that they will fold back into it.

I’m pretty familiar with bitcoin’s current technology developments. There are opinions, theories, and experiments flying around about how to build that rocket ship. Very very early and unclear.

The energy usage is not sustainable; we don’t have “decentralized logarithmically increasing clean energy sources” upon which to build bitcoin’s network to the stratospheric levels needed to achieve moonshot valuations, not without a serious innovation in technology to evolve the usage of bitcoin as a currency. Something better and more energy efficient for a trustless solution could come along.

Most everyone knows cryptocurrencies are here to stay but that’s not directly related to bitcoin, it’s price, it’s tech evolution specifically, and how it may or may not evolve into a viable currency.

Re: Is Filecoin a $257 million Ponzi scheme? [pdf]

#90

Post by igorgue »

pavlov wrote: post #14
soneca wrote: post #3

edit: Weird, I thought I was commenting on another thread, about Nobel laureates criticizing Bitcoin. I saw it on my phone, then opened HN at my notebook to comment. I misread the title and commented here, but now I can't find the correct thread (was it flagged?). I am growing this idea that Bitcoin (and any cryptocurrency that is affected by aggressive price growth) is an anti-fragile indirect multilevel marketing s…

The bad news is that Diamond was able to correlate to status, a strong (if subjective) value that is part of humanity since always. BTC only appeal is its value as money ... Startup idea: Bitcoin wedding rings. A beautiful gold ring with a private key engraved on the inside. Give your loved one the gift of BTC! Your commitment to each other, eternalized on the global blockchain. Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but the…

For Christmas, I'm giving books and I'll write a paper wallet seed in a page with some BTC in it already.
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