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Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

61–70 of 312 posts

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#61
More and more traditional money will flow into Crypto, not because Crypto is the answer for everything, but people just want to bet on the something that might in some form change everything in the future.

I really get surprised by the boolean arguments whether blockchain is of any use arguments on HN. I mean there's so much activity, money, talent in Crypto since last year. Goldman Sachs CEO said actually in the nicest way that Crypto is not gonna be the future [0]. I wonder why we can't have arguments like this instead of behaving like a know-it-all.

[0]- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-06-19/goldman-s-b...

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a CRM-focused blockchain might place the business logic for managing customer relations and sales on-chain and enable competing clients to build on the protocol Why.. would you need to put those on a blockchain across a bunch of disparate consumers? In theory isn't my business logic fairly, you know, secret sauce? Blockchain is vaguely "A spreadsheet everyone gets a copy of." There are some cases where that can be…

Traditionally, yes. But in the same way that Windows OS logic is Microsoft's secret sauce and yet thriving companies build products and services around Linux...so too will business-logic be open sourced and compete directly with existing SaaS players. Just because you use blockchain to power the engine and business logic of your application, does not mean you also have to use it to store data. Data can be stored anyw…

Maybe I'm too stupid, but you sound like a salesman trying to pull a fast one using fancy language... "incentivize domain experts"? Come on!

Let's see, a 3rd party can benefit from SaaS by offering interesting add-ons, for example a web-based photo editor that works with Google's cloud storage of your photos. A domain expert could offer add-ons to enhance your SaaS-hosted business data, but the blockchain needs to be there because... why exactly?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#63

I totally agree with A16Z here. Blockchain skepticism is not hard to find on HN and beyond. First, the ecosystem is vast and evolving quickly. If you've "tuned out" by dismissing blockchain, then don't be surprised when your industry gets disrupted in 5-10 years. I think we'll begin to see business logic open-sourced on the blockchain. For example, existing SaaS model incentivizes closed-source, centrally managed rep…

> a CRM-focused blockchain might place the business logic for managing customer relations and sales on-chain and enable competing clients to build on the protocol Why.. would you need to put those on a blockchain across a bunch of disparate consumers? In theory isn't my business logic fairly, you know, secret sauce? Blockchain is vaguely "A spreadsheet everyone gets a copy of." There are some cases where that can be…

> there are no takebacksies if somebody say, publishes illegal content.

Or when privacy is breached (examples: right to forget, GDPR).

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's distributed trust. That's the problem it solves. It's incredibly cool technology. That solves a specific problem. That's still not it. "Distributed Trust" isn't a problem, its a trait. What actual problem is solved by distributed trust?

You're right, I pointed to the solution instead of the problem. I'm still an engineer at heart, it seems! What should I have said instead? Centralization of data? Unreliability of single-points-of-failure?

It provides distributed trust for the class of problems wherein you have multiple competitive parties trying to achieve consensus on a sequence of transactions (or contracts, if you will).

I believe a massive number of social and societal problems are solved by distributed trust models in the same ways free market economies generally lead to more equality and democracy leads to more freedoms.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#65
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One good reason is that money doesn’t buy you connections, but an a16z investment does. Another is because ICOs typically turn your currency into a security at least temporarily so you might as well play that game properly. A third one is that, rather than the reputation that comes with an ICO, you’re instead getting the reputational baggage of being a16z alumni.

> One good reason is that money doesn’t buy you connections Time for a crypto LinkedIn?

BlockedIn

Especially if it works.

More seriously, it's cool that keybase solved the identity problem. It's traditionally been a very hard thing to know for a fact that you're speaking with a certain individual, unless they were compromised.

They also have an encrypted github now, which functions very well. And one of the only realtime chat messaging systems where you can open private chats with whoever you want, if you know their name.

Point: I think Keybase might increasingly take over the role that github currently fills. It's hard to imagine now, but people underestimate the effect of 10 years. And keybase seems to suddenly have a lot of assets that are very appealing, especially from a crypto standpoint.

If I were trying to topple governments with code, most of my work would be encrypted on keybase, and my comms (what little there would be) would be via signal. But my identities would be proven via keybase.

One smart move for gitlab might be to create some kind of realtime messaging system for programmers, similar to the niche that slack communities currently fill. Slack never seemed to embrace the community model -- you have to use hacks just to host a slack community, and then you don't get search for more than 10k messages, which vanish quickly. Discord has been eating Slack's lunch from a technical and user count standpoint (though perhaps not profit). Gitlab could compete by rolling out what slack should have been: an open community-oriented comms service with tools programmers love, plus a place to host your code. Discord doesn't have that, and keybase doesn't have very good support for teams yet.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#66

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

> It's distributed trust. That's the problem it solves. It's incredibly cool technology. That solves a specific problem. That's still not it. "Distributed Trust" isn't a problem, its a trait. What actual problem is solved by distributed trust?

> "Distributed Trust" isn't a problem, its a trait

I like how you phrased it. It tickled the Rustacean in me.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#67

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

The only one I've seen that might go somewhere is filecoin.

However, I think people are underestimating how the market for ""enterprise private blockchain"" will play out. The same organisations that spent money on X509 PKI non-solutions will pay millions for blockchain. At this level, nobody likes talking about the problem solved. It's solutions all the way, especially enterprise solutions.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#69
As we currently stand the tradeoffs for Blockchain based companies make no sense in the business world. The author's conceit is that Blockchain based businesses trade scalability for "trust" and that new business opportunities will be unlocked due to this capability. The problem with this idea is that trust is currently not a limiting factor for most businesses. Centralized services are trustworthy enough for the majority of consumers and are far cheaper to run at scale.

Every single blockchain based business idea I've heard of would be better suited as a centralized service. It is my strong belief that a16z will lose their shirt on this fund.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#70
Speaking as a longtime skeptic, A16Z has actually produced the single clearest answer I've seen to that question: blockchains may be good for bootstrapping new network effects by giving early participants in a network (in a Metcalfe's Law sense of network) an incentive to participate. Pure utility tokens can be like call options on the eventual value of the network if it gets off the ground. It's a novel way of solving a collective action problem.

https://a16z.com/2017/12/08/summit-crypto-alex-rampell/

Kind of like Kickstarter or Groupon, at least in their original incarnations?

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