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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

#381

Post by krageon »

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…

It's useful for cross-country transfers of money, and in-country if the alternative would be very annoying (or you just happen to have some cryptocurrency around and not regular money). I do use it for that and I've found it useful. The biggest downside in my experience has not been all the abstract figures and numbers and stories floating around, but the exchanges. Turning cryptocurrencies back into regular money is very annoying and the US ones are even very shady (locking your money in, etc). It's what's keeping it inside of the fringes for me.

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

#382

Post by cubano »

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…

My personal bet is that blockchains will be like XML: a technology that was going to be The FUTURE for a while, got put into a bunch of things...

That's an outstanding analogy, one I had not considered before, but certainly XML is far less..err...includable is perhaps the word(?)... into a software project then a blockchain-based datastore and verification would be, right?

Let's just hope a XSLT-like companion to the blockchain is never developed...

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

#383

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

fairpixels wrote: post #82

That’s actually a conservative number. We [1] design UI/UX for all sorts of startups and the last year a good chunk of that was for ICO related projects. The vast majority dies somewhere during the sales period. [1] http://fairpixels.pro

Your site was taking over 10 seconds to load on mobile, I gave up waiting.

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

#384

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

drngdds wrote: post #251

Is there a legitimate reason why ICO-backed projects seem to need so much money before even making a working prototype? Don't startups normally have to have a basic product to show off before they get investors?

No. The incentives do not line up when you are making up front what you would typically when you have a successful business.

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

#385

Post by m-i-l »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81
xur17 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blockchains have been around for 10 years now and every year they cause bigger problems without actually solving any. Being able to transfer value between two parties without having to trust anyone has value. We can argue about how much value, but it's non-zero.

> without having to trust anyone has value There is a lot of trust involved in a cryptocurrency transfer. You have to trust your technical competence to securely mount your wallet. You have to trust the wallet you're sending money to is the wallet it's supposed to go to. You have to trust the person you're sending money todo what you're paying them to. You have to trust the network to maintain the value and convertib…

> There is a lot of trust involved in a cryptocurrency transfer. You have to trust your technical competence to securely mount your wallet. You have to trust the wallet you're sending money to is the wallet it's supposed to go to. You have to trust the person you're sending money todo what you're paying them to. You have to trust the network to maintain the value and convertibility of the currency you're sending and receiving.

Good point. Although I would draw a different conclusion. Your point assumes this new technology is for direct human consumption. For me decentralisation, smart contracts and "the internet of money", along with AI, will allow autonomous agents operate and interact without human intervention. That will be transformative.

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

#386

Post by na85 »

maneesh wrote: post #228
na85 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>blockchains are useful now Honest question: for what? I've yet to hear a use case where blockchains are actually solving a problem, other than "buy things on the black market".

Paying people across borders.

I can already do that with my bank.

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

#387

Post by rcxdude »

profalseidol wrote: post #297
hudon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. 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. The government subsidized it because its potential use was obvious. Email started being used in 1972, FTP in 1973. To compare these world-changing technologies that were invented and used merel…

Yet Vitalik also noted that Ethereum is not yet production ready. The roadmap is clear from the start. Proof of Stake and Sharding is in the plans. PoS has release version 0.1. Imo, the most significant work so far is proving that Smart Contracts do work, people are abusing it, but nevertheless, it works as designed. > He also said Ethereum's "code is law", until he changed his mind and forked the network due to a ha…

The decision is mostly in the users, i.e. those actually transacting with the currency. It is up to them which set of rules they wish to use when determining if a transaction has been fufilled. Miners are necessary and have some power to disrupt a smaller fork, but they only profit if they are on a chain which people are actually participating in.

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

#388

Post by cubano »

jonhendry18 wrote: post #365
aboodman wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. Exactly. The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Instead the internet was useful for messaging and putting up personal websites. All the responsible people at the time kept whining -- how is it going to make money?? Well, people kept working on it. For…

"how is it going to make money" $6.00 an hour, outside of business hours, for 300 baud access to CompuServe.

OMG...me too!

Don't forget The Source as well...man did I ring up some outrageous bills back then ugh.

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

#389

Post by majani »

gascan wrote: post #166
pembrook wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just require "adults in the room." You mean like regulators and trusted intermediaries? Due diligence conducted by independent third parties? Like the real financial system has always had? So basically, we went through this whole ICO bubble to realize that things are the way they are for a reason.

Which is funnier: tech bros innovating their way to public transit, or bitcoin folks slowly reinventing financial regulation? -- Joseph Fink, Apr 2017

cryptocurrency seems to me like a group of computer scientists learning Econ 101 from first principles but vehemently denying the conclusions.

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

#390

Post by jonhendry18 »

cubano wrote: post #388
jonhendry18 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how is it going to make money" $6.00 an hour, outside of business hours, for 300 baud access to CompuServe.

OMG...me too! Don't forget The Source as well...man did I ring up some outrageous bills back then ugh.

My parents cut my modem cable.
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