Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 312 posts

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#261

Post by simonebrunozzi »

spunker540 wrote: post #204
wpietri wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, those aren't real problems either. Problems are experienced by humans. Humans willing to pay money for solutions. Actual problems are things like "I want to buy this candy bar," or "I want to fly to New York in August and I need to pay for the ticket." Those are problems Bitcoin, as "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash" [1], was intended to solve. It didn't. As far as I can tell, the main problems bl…

How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” or “I want to transact online without needing a credit card company intermediary taking fees” or “I want to cheaply send money to my family across the globe” or “I want to diversify with an asset that is truly global and not easily printable by some central government” or “my country’s currency is inflating like crazy and there arent enough us…

> How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man”

We are building this, using a Blockchain. No, there's no bullshit. Actually, we already did, few days ago (sold a property (a small lot of land) in California for ~$7.5k, paid in ETH): https://etherscan.io/address/0x190d022d7e4913fee5533cfdba79f...

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#262

Post by awad »

xmly wrote: post #260

Blockchain technology itself is not that novel. All the technologies it used have already been there for a while, even the PoW. But after reading all the arguments and discussions, my opinion is that blockchain simply reflects the human's desire for a more transparent, secure and fair IT systems. Current IT systems work, just it is not transparent, so people do not know whether it is doing as it claims. Since there a…

In real world terms...I am currently in the process of closing on a property transaction. And, while it does take some time, I haven't seen anything during the process that was immediately made better by what 'blockchain' proponents purport to be better alternatives.

To be clear, there are certainly inefficiencies I have witnessed. I am just not clear as to how a blockchain solution, however you define it, helps.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#263

Post by meh2frdf »

blotter_paper wrote: post #237
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

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…

>> I would love to know which societal problems can be reduced to a distributed trust problem. That would convince me that I'm wrong about blockchain technology. I feel like Namecoin, the first Bitcoin fork, is ready to replace our current DNS system. The transaction fee for registering domains is comparable to current prices, and it gets us out of this horrible situation where we trust companies and governments not…

So what would that transition look like, how would you phase the roll out? Practically how would this work and would the result be worth the effort to each individual involved or would it be a utopian ideal for ‘the greater good’?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#264

Post by dmix »

madeofpalk wrote: post #208
spunker540 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” or “I want to transact online without needing a credit card company intermediary taking fees” or “I want to cheaply send money to my family across the globe” or “I want to diversify with an asset that is truly global and not easily printable by some central government” or “my country’s currency is inflating like crazy and there arent enough us…

You have the cash to buy a house without a bank? Go ahead. You don't need blockchain for that. Online transactions without fees? Bitcoin still has fees. I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain.

> I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain.

Really? I live in Canada and bill US customers for 6yrs and I've yet to find a solution for this that isnt awful. It's either slow, not practical for large amounts, very expensive, or requires tons of paperwork and special bank accounts not easily attained.

So by all means please share your solution for this. It'd be a massive industry if you found one...

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#265

Post by nostrademons »

wpietri wrote: post #132
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, those aren't real problems either. Problems are experienced by humans. Humans willing to pay money for solutions. Actual problems are things like "I want to buy this candy bar," or "I want to fly to New York in August and I need to pay for the ticket." Those are problems Bitcoin, as "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash" [1], was intended to solve. It didn't. As far as I can tell, the main problems bl…

"Other people have money and I don't, so I'm going to redefine money as that which I have, and then I will have money and other people won't."

I thought it was ridiculous too when I first heard about it, and then I realized that "other people have money and I don't" is perhaps the strongest motivation in history. The American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all stemmed from that, as did WW2 and the Holocaust, as did the conquest of the Americas, as did the settlement of the American West.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#266

Post by Jommi »

madeofpalk wrote: post #208
spunker540 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” or “I want to transact online without needing a credit card company intermediary taking fees” or “I want to cheaply send money to my family across the globe” or “I want to diversify with an asset that is truly global and not easily printable by some central government” or “my country’s currency is inflating like crazy and there arent enough us…

You have the cash to buy a house without a bank? Go ahead. You don't need blockchain for that. Online transactions without fees? Bitcoin still has fees. I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain.

Which service do you use? What are the fees? Between what countries?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#267

Post by Jommi »

cornholio wrote: post #106
TrevorAustin wrote: post #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 solvi…

Except the early adopters don't need to actually participate in the network, just acquire and hoard tokens. There's almost no connection between the profits and the actual advocacy, resources and risks required for the network to succed. So the incentive structure is quite different from, say, the stock market or even a kickstarter. It's more like a tradeable Ponzi with strong incentives to overpromise and overhype i…

Your final comment doesn't really work out.

Yeah, by over-promising and hyping you could raise the price of your coin, but it doesn't mean your volume will rise as much. You cant just liquidate everything at once and get anything as close as what a simple Q * P calculation would do for you.

So that's why you work on your network, create value in it. Then later on the line, you become obscenely rich as your token's liquidity is good enough to live with forever.

That's what people calling Ponzi/scam are missing. The short-term profits are nothing compared to the LIFECHANGING profits of being the founder of a network protocol.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#268

Post by 7ero »

dsco wrote: post #110
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

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…

I think you're doing blockchain and human ingenuity a disservice by framing the question that way. Many corporations haven't revolved around "solving a problem", but instead making existing solutions more efficient. There were people letting out apartments before AirBnb, and there were taxi cars before Uber - yet we feel that these companies are making our lives easier. Also your question is very much centered around…

Venezuelans mining bitcoin isn't a good way to solve their inflation issues, because bitcoin has lost its value much faster than the the Venezuelan Bolivar has lost value, at least the bolivar is significantly less volatile than bitcoin. That doesn't mean bitcoin can't be stable though.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#269

Post by Jommi »

Max_aaa wrote: post #197
narrator wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing I've seen blockchains used for, besides currency, is as an integration platform for a non-centralized supply chain. There's really no money in it, since there aren't any gatekeepers, but that's sort of the point. The idea is that the farmer picks his carrots, puts them in a box and sends them off to the carrot juice guy. When he does this he puts a upc code on the side of the carrot box and then puts t…

How is this being solved by a block-chain? You still need to trust all the people in the production line (Farmer, Juicer, Seller and not to mention that transportation guys) that brought the bottle of juice to market to actually record things correctly into the used block-chain. The trust required in the data entry "Link/Step" basically results in the use of a block-chain to be pointless, as trust is already a requir…

You're right, but that isn't the problem being solved. That problem would be present in a centralized solution as well.

This solution allows the same benefit of having a MONOPOLIZED SOLUTION for tracking supply chain, without the negatives of Monopoly taking monopoly profits.

Do you get it now?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#270

Post by nhaehnle »

wolfgke wrote: post #203
madeofpalk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solve an actual, real life problem. All I see are Long Island Ice Tea Blockchain Corp. and Walmat saying that they're using blockchain to help their supply chain (whatever that means). The reality is is that Blockchain is no longer new. Compare it to iPhone - they both roughly came out at the same time, yet we're still having the same conversations - "What problem does Blockchain solve" - while the iPhone found its p…

> The reality is is that Blockchain is no longer new. Compare it to iPhone - they both roughly came out at the same time, yet we're still having the same conversations - "What problem does Blockchain solve" - while the iPhone found its place in the market. I still do not understand what kind of problem the iPhone solves (seriously!), while I can imagine quite well what kind of problem Bitcoin attempted to solve when…

> "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".

This kind of motivation has arguably always been about people misunderstanding economics. In this particular quote: government bailouts are not a function of the exact mechanisms of the currency, but of whether you elect politicians that want to keep banks in check or not. Even if everybody used Bitcoin, a certain type of politician would still be tempted to do bank bailouts.

> - has a limit on maximum amount of currency that can exist (so it is free of inflation)

And this is actually an anti-feature.

It should be obvious that relative prices need to be able to adjust in order for markets to function well, and if you look at economic history without ideological blinders, it becomes clear that there are many important markets in which absolute prices move up more easily than they move down, notably but not only wages and salaries.[0]

Having a modest amount of inflation means that the absolute price that you as a seller can earn must increase if you want your relative price to be stable - a kind of economic Red Queen hypothesis. This makes it easier for relative prices to adjust downwards, which is good for the functioning of markets.

The economics behind Bitcoin has always been a bad idea.

[0] There are good reasons for this. In order to improve your financial position, you have to reduce your monetary outflows or increase your monetary incomes. The amount of effort you spend is proportional to the number of contracts you negotiate, not to the value of those contracts. So if you have many monetary outflows, but comparatively fewer (but larger) monetary incomes, then you'll rationally focus your efforts on increasing those incomes (or fighting against decreases of those incomes). Almost every household, and many companies, are in the position of having fewer incomes than outflows, so they all have an incentive to fight relatively harder against price decreases on their income. Which has the net effect that absolute prices move upwards more easily than they move downwards.

Post reply on HN