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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]

#171

Post by kodablah »

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…

> Distributed storage of immutable content-addressable blobs is not that hard of a problem.

To do so equitably without the ability to be gamed is quite difficult. BitTorrent is quite game-able so we end up with closed communities and private trackers. To handwave these adversarial concerns away is unhelpful. Implement a s/kademlia DHT with all of the security conventions in latter papers and it becomes clear how hard it is to do safely. I am confident IPFS's DHT could be quite easily harmed (most are implemented around hash bucket closeness) if it were valuable enough to do so.

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

#172

Post by ringaroundthetx »

otoburb wrote: post #167
ringaroundthetx wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most token sales are like this. There is no difference from the equity markets in this regard, except its WAY more liquid, WAY faster route to liquidity, AND there is no dilution. Sorry private equity, step to the left. Sorry egalitarian peons, take what you can get.

>> AND there is no dilution. There's no dilution unless token stewards (usually structured as non-profit foundations) decide to increase the overall supply of tokens.

If they kept a treasury then they can add supply to the market which wasn't already in the trading float. The contracts themselves typically don't allow for more units to be created, unlike shares.

Contracts can be structured that way, like Numeraire's.

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

#173

Post by notheguyouthink »

detaro wrote: post #169
notheguyouthink wrote: post #168

I'm so lost, there are so many conversations here talking about IPFS compared to things like Dropbox and S3. Why? To me, IPFS aims to solve a completely different problem. IPFS does not exist because we don't have means to host and distribute files - that is a problem solved by a hundred different entities. IPFS, as advertised in many mediums (video/etc), is a platform to distribute data from a local-first P2P medium…

Filecoin is trying to solve (paying for) file hosting through IPFS. Many of the existing projects around IPFS are "host X, but on IPFS".

Sure, but these comments that I refer to are discussing on IPFS, not Filecoin directly, and as such seem bizarrely misguided to me.

Saying IPFS is a useless tool because we already have Dropbox and S3 is completely missing the mark. Not only is IPFS not intended to solve "hosting" as a "problem" (in my eyes, at least), but IPFS goals do not even overlap with S3/Dropbox.

Saying IPFS is about hosting because many people use it for that is like saying BitTorrent is for porn because many people use it for that.

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

#174

Post by hobofan »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #5

Filecoin is one of the ones I'd stay far away from. VCs got in before anyone else with special preferences, which taints the whole project. There are alternatives which don't come with the VC problem attached to them.

So what is your opinion on Ethereum, given the knowledge that one of its co-founders was awarded a Thiel Fellowship?

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #114

I think the top comment for this should be about Filecoin, instead of just another uninformed comments about Bitcoin that we see here every day. That said, one thing most people don't talk about is: I think most people think IPFS is disruptive, but I think IPFS itself is susceptible to disruption. The main reason why IPFS is useful is because there's not an easy way to do NAT traversal therefore it's super hard for p…

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by hobofan »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #25
j_s wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your recommended alternative? Is there any unusual involvement beyond participation as a user that you should probably disclose?

Sia is more legitimate. I don't own any Siacoin or Filecoin, but I would hold Siacoin if it was supported by the Ledger hardware wallet.

https://sia.tech/funding2016/ ? How is this any different? I realize that this doesn't concern an ICO, but still there is plenty of VC involvement to "taint" the project.

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

#177

Post by qubex »

loceng wrote: post #69
qubex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you say, except the idea that it is zero-sum. It is very nonzero-sum insofar as the bulk of the purported value of the system derived from revaluation and windfall: much of the $158 billion market cap of bitcoin derives not from outright transactions at market value (and thus conversion of assets from one form to another with face-value liquidity) but from revaluation of coins purchased at low…

Should we say instead that it has benefit all sellers, no benefit simply for holding? That misappropriation or mischaracterization will of course comfort everyone holding - until everyone tries to liquidate too quickly or investor money runs out. The scary part is that because it is global and decentralized, it could take a long time for investor money to run out - allowing enough time for manipulation through market…

As an economist, I am much more comfortable with that statement

It is somewhat a worse situation than you describe, as though bitcoin is legal tender nowhere, it is assuming many of the features of a component of broad money supply (somewhere in the neighbourhood of M3 or thereabouts, so it can self-perpetuate for a long time indeed).

Also, as a consequence of its construction and finite supply of bitcoins, it does not allow elastic creation of money (no lending, only coining) when the need arises, so it has all the components of a catastrophic liquidity crisis: no underlying value, shallow capitalisation, no ability to adjust supply in the short term, fixed long term amount, and speculation run riot. This could be terrible.

I’m fairly sure blockchain technology will eventually be appropriated by central banks and governments and integrated into the financial system (”biteuro”?) but until the , I’m staying away from it.

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

#178

Post by hobofan »

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #134
hobofan wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess because it's by the IPFS developers And is intended to run on an IPFS network. After reading the replies to this comment, I started looking into Sia, and wanted to try it out, but it seems that I first have to buy some Sia before even being able to become a host (!), which is an instant turnoff. At the same time, I am already able to try out IPFS and have been able to develop apps using it for quite some ti…

If you just want enough siacoin to become a host I can probably send some over. I already have some and haven't gotten around to hosting yet.

Thanks for the offer, but from what I've read over the last hours I'm not really too eager to try it out anymore.

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

#180

Post by synctext »

iamnotnicola wrote: post #148
synctext wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Tribler dev here. awesome to see everybody here.. Do Sia and Filecoin take into account the "oversupply problem"? Filecoin devs nicely explain their sybil-attack strategy with growing your identity. However, how can you earn credits if nobody likes you and you happen to have a low-performance node? Is this a real problem or are we missing something? For details, see our journal article on a macroeconomic sharing…

Hey, great question! (i am filecoin/ipfs/etc employee) I am going to give some definitions (please chip in case of my misunderstanding) - “nobody likes you”: reputation is not central to Filecoin, so I guess you cannot be “not liked”. Whether you are trusted or not, the clients will pay you only if you have provided a proof of having offered a service. Note: Filecoin has pseudonyms, if for some reasons your address i…

Fascinating in-depth answer. thnx!

> clients will pay you only if you have provided a proof of having offered a service.

Sounds like a good approach. You need to make trade-offs in your design for storage providers I believe. You can bias clients to deal with and pay reliable plus fast providers. That means slow peers have less chance to earn coins. Or take a performance hit and use fairness as a guiding principle. Then slow or new users get selected with increased probability. True?

> you could try to store and serve “rare” files

Has your team done work on 'investment functions' to select which "rare" files to store? You want to be paid, so what is incentive compatible? For a few years our phd/master students have been struggling to get a high-performance algorithm: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/issues/1842#issuecomment-...

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