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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]

#191

Post by okket »

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…

> we could replace it for less than $500

27 Terabytes of spinning rust with NAS hardware for $500? Not yet.

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

#192

Post by fapjacks »

tfha wrote: post #113
dheera wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 MU…

If you think doing traditional fundraising is bad, you should try doing an ICO. Easily 5x worse.

Can you shed some light on this? How are you involved with fundraising via ICO? And how is it so much worse? If anything, I would guess it would be loads easier than traditional fundraising, because so many people seem willing to park their cryptocurrency in various ICOs with pretty much zero due diligence or justification other than it exists.

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

#193

Post by kodablah »

cmars wrote: post #188
kodablah wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which means, if there's a new type of technology that lets people do just that--set up their own server anywhere and make it accessible via HTTP--then I don't see why we really need IPFS I have a ton to say here, but I'll keep it to a few point. Tor onion services solve the setup-your-own-server issues, it's just not super easy yet. IPFS is needed regardless, because there is a need to distribute things when your m…

> Tor onion services solve the setup-your-own-server issues, it's just not super easy yet. Lately I've been trying to make this easier. I developed ormesh ( https://github.com/cmars/ormesh ) in an attempt to simplify setting up hidden services for private use. I think both Tor and IPFS are both awesome and useful decentralization projects, they just have different use cases & characteristics. AIUI IPFS lacks fine-gra…

Saw this on /r/golang (I was the one asking why the full Tor browser). I have considered similar [0]. A simple service (or portable exe) that has Tor statically linked and lets you reach/manage a machine from anywhere (think webmin-like web console on onion service) would have real value. Of course it can be authenticated and have the option to open direct connection (webrtc?) if you need fast media playing or direct download.

0 - https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/54

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

#194

Post by brndnmtthws »

hobofan wrote: post #176
brndnmtthws wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sia didn't do an ICO. Every coin has been mined, with no premine (although I assume the developers mined the first few blocks at least). The investors could have mined too, if they wanted, along with anyone else. This seems more egalitarian to me.

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

#195

Post by notahacker »

api wrote: post #50
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…

Bikeshedding this some more because HN is for bikeshedding... I am toying around with the wacky heresy that Karl Marx (not Lenin) was right. Capitalism will evolve into socialism. It would be a form of socialism we haven't seen yet and that would have been technologically impossible in the past. Capitalism's role is to develop the technology, wealth, and infrastructure to enable it... as Marx said. Tech titans, start…

I'm trying to see how small numbers of bourgeois nerds running energy intensive get-rich-quick schemes - often with the help of billionaire backers - resembles the Marxian concept of the proleteriat fighting to gain the full benefit of their day's labour and struggling tbh...

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

#196

Post by api »

kodablah wrote: post #170
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…

> Which means, if there's a new type of technology that lets people do just that--set up their own server anywhere and make it accessible via HTTP--then I don't see why we really need IPFS I have a ton to say here, but I'll keep it to a few point. Tor onion services solve the setup-your-own-server issues, it's just not super easy yet. IPFS is needed regardless, because there is a need to distribute things when your m…

Weird to see Tor as a connectivity solution. I guess if you really don't care about performance.

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

#197

Post by kodablah »

api wrote: post #196
kodablah wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which means, if there's a new type of technology that lets people do just that--set up their own server anywhere and make it accessible via HTTP--then I don't see why we really need IPFS I have a ton to say here, but I'll keep it to a few point. Tor onion services solve the setup-your-own-server issues, it's just not super easy yet. IPFS is needed regardless, because there is a need to distribute things when your m…

Weird to see Tor as a connectivity solution. I guess if you really don't care about performance.

At the least it's a good NAT buster for signalling. May be able to piggy back a direct connection off of it (using it for just STUN-like reasons) but of course the increased performance of a direct connection comes at the cost of anonymity.

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

#198

Post by brndnmtthws »

hobofan wrote: post #174
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?

There wasn't any Ethereum ICO. Every ETH was mined.

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

#199

Post by chriswarbo »

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…

> if there's a new type of technology that lets people do just that--set up their own server anywhere and make it accessible via HTTP--then I don't see why we really need IPFS

> In my opinion, the reason IPFS is so hot nowadays is because it's riding the DApps wave where people want to build Ethereum apps with IPFS as a file storage.

Whilst I enjoy reading and learning about dapps, blockchains, etc. they seem very niche at this point: it can be argued whether or not bitcoin is "mainstream" (many have heard of it, but how many have or use it, compared to e.g. bank accounts), but ethereum is even more niche in comparison; using dapps is presumably rather niche even in the ethereum world, compared to those simply speculating on ether or making pump-and-dump ICOs; those building dapps would be even more niche; those building dapps with IPFS for distributed file storage would be a niche part of that.

I don't think this is what's driving IPFS.

However, I do come across many potential uses of IPFS every day.

Whenever I see a broken link, especially for some old informational site or tarball or whatever, and Googling for an alternative link just brings up more and more of the same broken link, it makes me wish IPFS were around (most recent example: http://easyldap.exofire.net/files/installer/easyldap-install... )

Likewise, whenever I find myself writing a URL into a file, e.g. a source tarball for a Linux package, I want to use an IPFS hash instead (IPFS is hopefully coming to Nix at some point https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/859 ).

In the latter case, I could add these files to IPFS myself, but I'd probably be the only one using it, and I'm usually less reliable than those canonical HTTP URLs, so those hashes would likely disappear sooner than the HTTP ones.

I have high hopes for IPFS. At one point I thought magnet URLs might solve this. I was pleased when kio-magnet allowed KDE to browse Web sites via magnet links, but even the blog post announcing that seems to be no more :( https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ew0y4/kiomagnet_what...

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

#200

Post by derefr »

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…

Most people don't want their own server. Consider the person whose only computer is a phone. (That's, for example, most people in Japan; most people in the West under 15; etc.) Do they want to serve documents from their phone? No, because their phone doesn't have an always-on high-upload-bandwidth internet connection!

Only certain computers make good servers. It's more likely that everyone will get an automatic slice of a good server somewhere (i.e. the ISP-hosted "cloudlets" concept—your phone can launch edge-hosted VMs as if they were threads) than that people will suddenly, after all this time, start wanting to host things directly on their crap low-availability hardware.

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