Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized • Hacker News Board

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#331

Post by chrisco255 » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 5:17 AM UTC

Azeralthefallen wrote: post #318

chrisco255 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy things via the internet. USB stick (or whatever, paper wallet even) is just cold storage for the private keys of ETH, QTUM, BTC, wallet, etc.

But can't i do the same thing from wherever i am and have it delivered? Or have it mailed as a gift? Even with the situation in Venezuela, Fedex/DHL still ship there. Furthermore how does that allow you to pay for food, water, utilities, or even fuel for your car?

Do what? Order things with paper money or are you talking about some VISA/MC-backed debit/credit card? Where do you sign up for a USD-based bank account in Venezuela? How do you pass KYC checks? You got a family member or friend who lives in the States you can trust to escrow that for you?

Shipping Fedex/DHL in Venezuela isn't nearly as reliable as shipping in the United States. Nor is it cheap.

Energy and gas are super cheap in Venezuela (38 cents a gallon). I'm not sure where you're going with your argument there.

You can hold crypto as a hedge against the Bolivares, convert to fiat as needed, just like any other fungible asset.

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#332

Post by psergeant » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 5:18 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #98

hudon wrote: post #23

You can see the state (volume, # daily users) of some of these promised "dapps" here: https://dappradar.com . It is indeed a barren wasteland. And when a new popular ICO comes along, the Ethereum network struggles and fees skyrocket. It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning: you could at least send messages and files across the netw…

> It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. > Now, all we see is rampant fraud and a complete d…

> But more to the point, blockchains are useful now

For about 1/20 of the applications they are suggested for, best I can tell.

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#333

Post by avhwl » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 5:28 AM UTC

cslarson wrote: post #152

ashishb wrote: post #44

Are there any ICOs which resulted in a successful product? Please exclude crypto-exchanges like Binance.

Golem is live. Augur is going live today. MakerDAO has a very interesting stablecoin called Dai that's live. Status' mobile app is now mainnet by default. DigixDAO is live. And many more in testnet phases. But don't let reality mess with the cynical perception that the hn crowd wants to portray!

Both Augur [0] and MakerDAO [1] have centralized points of failure that would allow the owners of the contracts that define the tokens to halt transfers, withdraw funds, or in the case of MakerDAO, mint tokens out of thin air.

[0] https://etherscan.io/address/0x9f8f72aa9304c8b593d555f12ef65... (Line 453) [1] https://github.com/AugurProject/augur-core/search?q=onlyInBa...

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#334

Post by airstrike » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #169

ENGNR wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Securities deregulation. On the one hand, investors deserve protections. On the other, has the regulation gone too far by design, locking out the middle class it used to serve so well. Why do companies wait until most of the value is already realized before they IPO these days Crypto could be Uber for securities, ignoring the regulator and using technology to self regulate, or by operating out of countries with light…

This is a fallacy. Generally regulations tend to protect consumers or vulnerable groups from harm. The recent global trend towards deregulation and austerity moves in the opposite direction of social democratic movements in Germany, Scandinavian countries and much of the EU. The end result being more of a wild west free for all that results in something more like the Gilded Age of the 19th century than a well-optimiz…

> But it was really yet another tactic to keep the most lucrative forms of trading in the hands of wealthy/institutional investors and leave the masses in the slow lane of trading with their own money.

This is entirely subjective and it actually also happens to be wrong.

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#335

Post by darawk » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:13 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #311

darawk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if we put "beginning" as in "before it was even called the Internet"? Indeed, ARPANET, which came online in 1969, saw fast growth in the United States in the 70s. Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck. People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer, and to a more limited extent, for dapps like Augur. You seem to be criticizing the delta between the lofty hopes for it and it's actual usage. T…

> People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer What's your evidence for this? Even major Bitcoin advocates say it's no longer useful as a payment system: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of us…

> What's your evidence for this?

I've used it for that. People use it on darknet markets for value transfer. I have seen many people claim to use it in Venezuela, though I can't confirm that (one of them posted in this thread [1]).

> Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of users, has 100x that volume and is growing rapidly. [2]

That's no longer true. The lightning network increases that to effectively infinite TPS. The infrastructure of nodes isn't that great yet, but it is now possible in principle for Bitcoin to scale to an essentially arbitrary throughput.

> So I'm entirely skeptical that it's better for any significant market than even legacy money transfer methods, let alone trying to compete with newer tech.

That's a fair skepticism. Though not due to slowness/throughput, as that problem is solved. And not due to environmental concerns, because that problem will be solved (in Ethereum, not Bitcoin). The legitimate objections to cryptos I see are:

1. It's not clear that decentralization, uncensorability, and irrevocability are really properties that people need. provides a value anyone really need.

2. Deflationary assets are subject to boom/bust cycles that can be toxic to modern economies. Crypto assets tend to be deflationary, and as such may not, over the longer term, serve effectively as global currencies.

I think those two points are the core of any serious objection to crypto. I believe that in the case of #1, the architectural change it would induce in our financial system is worthwhile, and consumers will feel the effects of that rather than the benefits currently stated for crypto. As for #2, it's a legitimate concern, and it may ultimately make them untenable, but we'll just have to see.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495476

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#336

Post by darawk » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:18 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #262

darawk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. > Now, all we see is rampant fraud and a complete d…

> That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. It does not. In 1995 the Internet was useful for 30m people. In 1985 it was useful for 30,000. Email was better than paper mail from the get-go. Networked file transfer was way better than mailing magtapes or CDs. Remote terminal connections were way better than driving or doing long-distance dialup. The Internet was not the wonder it is today, but from very early o…

> It does not. In 1995 the Internet was useful for 30m people. In 1985 it was useful for 30,000. Email was better than paper mail from the get-go.

You see that now. But in 1985 most people thought email was silly, if they knew about it at all. Why replace the mail? The mail is fine. It's only when you look back on it, with modern eyes, that you see how great it was.

> Not really. I ask regularly here, and so far there's approximately no commercial use case where blockchains are better than some other technology. The main exceptions being hype, fraud, speculation, and some light financial crime like money laundering and capital control evasion. If you have some examples, I'll of course read them with interest.

I stated some above. But i'll copy/paste:

  - Value transfer
  - Prediction markets
  - Asset trading/custody (not just cryptoassets, I mean, potentially real estate, equities, etc. can be tokenized)
  - Venture capital that is more transparent and open (the ICO space is obviously not there yet, but I think it can move in that direction)

Now, you may counter that existing institutions do these things just fine. But blockchains do them in a different way, with different properties. Just like email did the same thing as mail, in a different way, with different properties. For instance, decentralized exchanges exist - exchanges that don't require you to provide custody of your assets to the exchange. That is a true revolution, and it doesn't just have to be for crypto tokens. Those tokens can represent real life goods, property, etc. You can tokenize anything, in principle.

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#337

Post by darawk » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #303

darawk wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally speaking, if my things get stolen, "it was stolen by X and not Y" is not a value-adding rebuttal. It is actually counterproductive if X (e.g., a cryptocurrency thief) is harder to gain recourse against than Y (e.g. an FDIC-insured bank). That's certainly true. But the issues around people losing their coins and having their keys stolen can be solved by better UX and application security. Essentially crypt…

"Essentially crypto transmutes the problem domain, from a people problem to an application design problem." The fact that nobody understands how human institutions work is an advantage, because it prevents malicious actors from subverting them. Whenever someone figures out how institutions work, they destroy them and civilizations fall, so they evolve to be incomprehensible. So "transmuting the problem domain" seems…

We may just have to agree to disagree here. I've never been a fan of security by obscurity, though obviously it does have some use cases. I think we have the opportunity to design secure systems that do not rely on the frailties and biases of human judgment, and I think it's worth exploring.

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#338

Post by darawk » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:24 AM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #148

darawk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. > Now, all we see is rampant fraud and a complete d…

But if you think it's all a fraud, or that there is no value, then you're just not thinking very hard. Seriously: Where is the actual value of crypto currencies? I can see specific (limited) applications for the blockchain. But you assert that people (who may have thought long and hard about the utility of crypto currencies) are lazy thinkers. At the very minimum you could provide an argument instead of throwing arou…

I've provided them several times in this thread, i'll link you to one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495834

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#339

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:26 AM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #86

hudon wrote: post #23

You can see the state (volume, # daily users) of some of these promised "dapps" here: https://dappradar.com . It is indeed a barren wasteland. And when a new popular ICO comes along, the Ethereum network struggles and fees skyrocket. It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning: you could at least send messages and files across the netw…

>It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning: you could at least send messages and files across the network, which was incredibly useful to academia and the military and was orders of magnitude more efficient than any alternative. I don't think the ICO's are being compared to the Internet itself, but to the many early attempts at build…

Googling for - blockchain "like the internet was" - retrives thousands of links.

Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

#340

Post by darawk » Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 6:33 AM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #183

darawk wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but the degrees of freedom are different. The node processing your transaction cannot steal your money in crypto. It can only choose not to broadcast your transaction, and they are also in perfect competition with all the other nodes. Which means that if one node chooses not to process your tx, another will soon.

> That's true, but the degrees of freedom are different. The node processing your transaction cannot steal your money in crypto. It can only choose not to broadcast your transaction, and they are also in perfect competition with all the other nodes. Which means that if one node chooses not to process your tx, another will soon. Hence we circle back to exactly what I said in the last line of my comment: https://news.y…

You're right, sort of, but I don't think those two things are really distinct capabilities. You trust your bank, because your bank could theoretically forge a transaction to themselves of all of your money. Or just tell you that your balance is zero and refuse to give it to you.