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Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized

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

#351

Post by Animats »

wpietri wrote: post #310
jacobush wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML quietly dropped? If blockchains are dropped in the same manner, it will be around forever and ever. It will outlive Cobol.

Fair point. I haven't seen any new use it in years, and it's down to 12% of its peak interest: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=x... (Or less, perhaps, in that I suspect the peak was earlier.) But yes, I'm sure it's in plenty of Y2K-ish enterprise systems, spreading like kudzu.

There are many widely used data formats, such as OpenDocument files, that are XML underneath, often packaged up as .zip files. Much engineering data, such as KiCAD printed circuit board layout info, is in XML. COLLADA, for 3D animation and robotics, is XML. Open Street Map is XML. If you need to represent a large, complex tree-structured data object portably, XML is still usually the way to go.

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

#352

Post by jonhendry18 »

solotronics wrote: post #342
danans wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond curiosity, what practical purpose would such a tool serve vs other methods of verifying assets?

by signing with a keypair you could prove to anyone online you owned something. to list a house or get a loan or mortgage you could use this. a really neat case for this would be lost items. if each cellphone had its IMEI and your keypair associated you could prove you owned something lost. or if found someone could look you up to return it. you could buy a game or software once and never have to worry about a serial…

So how many copies of this enormous blockchain would there be in the world?

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

#353

Post by jonhendry18 »

klenwell wrote: post #290
madeofpalk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) How long do we have to wait to find a valid use case for blockchains? It's been 10 years now and we're still asking the same question.

Transcript of text exchange with my sister just yesterday: SISTER: Any interest in learning blockchain development? I'm getting into that world and will need someone reliable. Plus, I'll be able to expose you to projects and get you consulting gigs. I know you have your new job and all it's demands. Timing prob isn't good but figured I'd check in anyway. ME: No thanks. I know the blockchain technologically is a thing…

What's the advantage, re: opioids, over a simple database?

What's a cancer patient going to do when they lose their crypto-opioid wallet password?

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

#354

Post by stuntkite »

protonimitate wrote: post #41
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 Exactly why so much wealth was created by the Internet boom. The wealth came from utility that already existed, just needed to be harnessed to its fullest potential. ICO scams are based on generating wealth first and hoping that utility follows at some undetermined time in the future. It's…

I ran a 13TH mine of KNC Neptunes and Jupiters in 2014. I failed up from a deal where I designed boards for Avalon ASICs, set up the production pipeline, then the chips got stolen by the Chinese government (as far as I can tell), and my chip broker paid me back in BTC when it was at about $12. Then it shot up... $200... $300... I REALLY wanted to run a mine and I got in through a friend early on the Neptunes. They were late and gave us a bunch of Jupiters they had already mined to death. Eventually our Neptunes showed up. I got the office in my little rental house wired up with some 220 breakers and turned my tiny house into a space heater. I had to insulate the windows in this front office that got the August setting sun. I literally had to let my neighbors in for a tour so they knew I wasn't growing weed. They were not really convinced I wasn't doing anything illegal. When the sun hit, I had to put misters on my 2TON window AC unit so the room wouldn't heat soak. That was in addition to the 2TON that already fed the house.

I couldn't get people to sign mine share contracts with me to support the operating costs, I ended up spending most of it on my power bill, food, and my therapist (that sounds like it's a joke, but it's not). At the time my tiny run-of-the-mill software consultancy barely kept it's head above water. This thing actually put me deeply in the red. Texas summers. heh.

All the people I offered those mine shares to have called me this year thinking I was on to something! I wasn't on to something, I lucked into a situation and did something with computers that I liked. I didn't hold shit. I regret nothing. After the 2014 crash, everyone was saying "I told you so!" and I had some bills to pay. Jokes on them, I had a blast.

I really love what blockchain can do for consensus. I love that ETH can be used for address resolution outside of DNS. I love what is happening with IPFS. There is so much growing out of this that is good.

A partner in my mine got me on a call a year and a half ago with a friend of his from Bloomberg. The call was (from my perspective) supposed to be about my AR GIS platform. It turned out the dude was specifically a crypto journalist and had a stake in a Puerto Rico "Crypto Hedge Fund". Whatever that is. To his surprise, I had no opinions on hot coins!

Unlike the internet, the first "killer app" for this was about literally printing money. It's not a fair comparison. The real work that is happening with decentralized systems around this stuff is happening quietly. How many of you are listening to podcasts about DNS? People want to get rich quick. Sharks love to eat people that want that. It's a shame people got shucked.

Last year when people decided to give me calls about it, especially friends and family, my response was "How much do you know about cryptography? How much do you think you understand this stuff? I barely understand it. In my opinion, no one really understands what we are doing or what we are capable of with it. That doesn't make it an investment. Stick your money in an index fund."

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

#355

Post by jonhendry18 »

arisAlexis wrote: post #224
api wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main use case for block chains is quite obviously to skirt government regulation: black markets, unregulated securities and quasi-securities, etc. A secondary and related use case is to avoid the hassle and complexity of old fashioned equity and other fund raising constructs and to make easier international wire transfers. Putting ethical concerns aside: these are very large market segments. Cryptocurrencies may…

the main argument of Blockchain since its a public ledger is totally the opposite. total transparency in government, voting, public expenses etc.

It need not be a public ledger. I'd think it'd be simple enough to limit access to an intranet.

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

#356

Post by wpietri »

darawk wrote: post #335
wpietri wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

I appreciate your willingness to at least contemplate that Bitcoin might have flaws, which is better than most Bitcoin advocates.

But you share one of the habits that makes these discussions so frustrating. You substitute marginal examples and handwaves at the future when asked for clear present evidence.

The Lightning network might possibly one day increase capacity to infinite TPS. It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig...

I am saying that based on the evidence I find, despite 10 years of enormous free advertising, approximately nobody uses it today for money transfer when compared with other money transfer options. Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?

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

#357

Post by ckastner »

darawk wrote: post #336
wpietri wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

> 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.

These statements may support your argument, but they have no basis in reality.

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

#358

Post by tomp »

darawk wrote: post #282
tomp wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need to timestamp transactions No, for most things what you really need is a happens before relationship. Git does that better, since it supports multiple timelines (branches) that can be resolved (merged) cleanly if there are no conflicts (double spends).

> if there are no conflicts (double spends). What about when there are, though?

Merge doesn't happen, participants resolve the issue or raise a conflict with the central authority. Same as with Ethereum :D

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

#359

Post by marktolson »

maxencecornet wrote: post #91
ashishb wrote: post #44

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

Brave Browser / Basic attention Token is very successful although in it's early days But Brendan Eich, the founder of the project, is much more experienced then any random ICO project founder in this space I'm not sure he will succeed where Flattr failed, but we'll see ! Check out how many websites are already Brave/BAT publishers: https://batgrowth.com/publishers Vice - freeCodeCamp - BitTorrent - xhamster - The Gua…

Wait so BAT with its $250M market cap has < 600 sites in the Alexa top 1 million??? That's like 6 hundreths of a percent. That's a terrible rate of adoption considering the hype behind BAT.

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

#360

Post by wpietri »

Animats wrote: post #351
wpietri wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. I haven't seen any new use it in years, and it's down to 12% of its peak interest: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=x... (Or less, perhaps, in that I suspect the peak was earlier.) But yes, I'm sure it's in plenty of Y2K-ish enterprise systems, spreading like kudzu.

There are many widely used data formats, such as OpenDocument files, that are XML underneath, often packaged up as .zip files. Much engineering data, such as KiCAD printed circuit board layout info, is in XML. COLLADA, for 3D animation and robotics, is XML. Open Street Map is XML. If you need to represent a large, complex tree-structured data object portably, XML is still usually the way to go.

I agree that it's a decent approach for that extremely narrow use case.

My point is the extent to which that is different from the peak of XML's hype cycle, which was circa 2000. Then, XML was everywhere. E.g., eBay circa 2004 would render data internally as XML, which would get passed off to multiple Rube Goldbergian XSLT transformation layers on its way to becoming HTML. Or I did some work at a bank around then, and their internal architecture was very XML-heavy. There was no good reason for this, and from what I see JSON now dominates.

I note though that your examples were all created when XML's hype cycle was in full swing, and many have enterprise roots. I'll be interested to see if projects created today end up using XML even for the document-creation cases for which it was intended. JSON is also a way to represent large tree-structured data, and I wouldn't be shocked to see it take over most of the data sharing just because that's what everybody knows.

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