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Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

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Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#61

Post by wmf »

ivalm wrote: post #47
csomar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years is enough for a newer generation to rise and make money. Those in the 15-25 right are quite adapt with Crypto. They'll be the next investors. Granted, if they are wise they won't put all of their liquid there. But if the 30-60 of the current world put a little in crypto; its' market value will fly out of the sky.

But why would they put money into crypto? There is some reason to use crypto as a currency (anonymous transactions), but there is no particular reason to use it as a store of value (hard to comply with anti-money-laundering regulation, hard to protect from fraud, hard to pass through audit, etc)

Because there's a chance it will go up 10x and no other asset will.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#62

Post by southerndrift »

strgrd wrote: post #3

"I am still quite bullish that a basked of cryptocurrencies will be worth in the trillions within the next 10 years. The primary short term driver for crypto value with be the generational replacement of gold as a store-of-value for a specific subset of the population. The longer term drivers of crypto value will be new forms of programable money and on-chain securities." What subset of the population is going to rep…

Some days ago:

We can confirm that there was a successful 51% attack on Ethereum Classic [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18849961

The value of crypto currencies is strongly linked to the available processing power that can be rented for a short amount of time. An attack must never be profitable. So the value of cryptocurrencies cannot grow arbitrarily. Just Bitcoin is quite secure because you cannot easily rent the specialized hardware.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#63

Post by brandall10 »

nostrademons wrote: post #31
sf_rob wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that most people buy gold as a safe-haven investment, so in this case its floor and/or non-correlation would be very important.

So your logic is that "people buy gold because other people believe it's a safe investment"? That same logic applies to crypto - if people stop believing that gold is a good investment and start believing that crypto is a good investment, gold will cease to be a good investment and crypto will become a good investment. I think gfodor is asking something more along the lines with "What can you do with gold that you ca…

Ignore the utility of gold, I feel that just muddies the waters.

The volatility of crypto makes it a terrible store of value. While people may use it as such, it is primarily a speculative asset.

OTOH, gold has historical precedent assuring its stability. So while that could suddenly change, its going to take a fairly sizable event to shift the perception. Like a nuclear holocaust or something.

If there's any generational shift in this thinking it's purely naivety.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#64

Post by UncleMeat »

wmf wrote: post #61
ivalm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would they put money into crypto? There is some reason to use crypto as a currency (anonymous transactions), but there is no particular reason to use it as a store of value (hard to comply with anti-money-laundering regulation, hard to protect from fraud, hard to pass through audit, etc)

Because there's a chance it will go up 10x and no other asset will.

There's a chance that lottery tickets go up 1,000,000x. There's a chance that vintage NES controllers go up 100x. There is a chance that baseball cards go up 100x.

Literally all things have a an arbitrary growth ceiling.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#65

Post by kazen44 »

avip wrote: post #51
tehjoker wrote: post #29

Ah defense. It's just common sense that we should pour money into the military. We're just out to make money, there's definitely not an entire political viewpoint entangled in this "market opportunity". Those crazy radicals that are against killing pointlessly for imperial gains don't understand the real world. In the real world, we need the military to make the world safe for capital. WW1 was a smashing success, as…

Nothing in history had prevented more bloodshed than restricted use of force [citation needed?]. In contrast, entities that refuse to use methods of violence (UN, I'm looking at you), consistently fail in peacemaking.

how would the UN use violence? it's not what the UN is for? the UN is basically a meeting room for world leaders to do diplomacy, otherwise we would end up with far more not needed conflict thanks to the severing of diplomatic relations. (just look at how world war 1 originally started for example).

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#66

Post by kazen44 »

wbl wrote: post #48
mattnewton wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s still far more uses than if people think a particular coin has lost its value. When thinking about a store of value for loss-averse people, the intrinsically useful, always-been-valuable mineral I can hold in my hand seems like a psychological winner over numbers in a blockchain that require an industrial society with the blockchain to keep churning. My take was that people were speculating in bitcoin to get r…

Iron is much more useful. It also requires more energy to extract.

iron is far more abundant though.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#67

Post by andai »

ABCLAW wrote: post #55
r00fus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone is going to do it You could use that excuse for almost anything morally repugnant.

Sure, but when it comes to power, you can't wish away its existence. Someone will have it. So how do you best mitigate the bad effects it can have? Do you let an entity which does not align with your interests have it? Or do you maintain it and work to iteratively improve your exercise of it? The effect of wishing away power instead of grappling with it and bending it to justice is one of the central reason why many…

Non US Citizen here (haven't even visited yet), and pretty anti-military. But out of available options, I would definitely prefer the USA have the military upper hand.

I suppose that means, I could do my part to keep it that way, by investing in US defense contractors. (Have been looking for investment opportunities.) Something to think about.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#68

Post by ABCLAW »

hackathonguy wrote: post #20

I'd love to hear more about perceived opportunities in legal tech. For some reason, the legal industry seems very averse to change, but I'm sure that's not always going to be the case. (Lawyer here).

I've consulted for companies trying to get a good go to market plan for the legal sector.

The sector is bonkers and the incentives are terrible. Most tech adoption is in the low-margin high-volume sectors, where 'good enough' products are dominant. Superior execution in this segment could lead to big wins. In the low-volume high-margin sector, many firms have proprietary workflows/inhouse staff dealing with their KM needs.

That said, there's a few cute 'novel' approaches in new generation TAR and AI assisted [Insert mass document type sorting/classifying/digesting]. Beyond that I think the big developments aren't going to be in the area of 'can technology do something fundamentally new'. They'll be enabling tools to allow new business models. Think 'data-science consulting, reporting and expert witness testimony for legal discovery databases'.

I also think that overall, professional development tools are underdeveloped, but young lawyers are undercapitalized and the core value bottleneck in low-volume work is the client intake pipeline, not getting good people to do the work.

Edit: Added a missing word.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#69

Post by ivalm »

wmf wrote: post #61
ivalm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would they put money into crypto? There is some reason to use crypto as a currency (anonymous transactions), but there is no particular reason to use it as a store of value (hard to comply with anti-money-laundering regulation, hard to protect from fraud, hard to pass through audit, etc)

Because there's a chance it will go up 10x and no other asset will.

Sorry if I didnt understand sarcasm, but in case you are serious, "speculation" is not the same as "store of value." Whether crypto is a good speculation target is a difficult question, but most do not sell crypto as a "speculation target" as its primary attribute. It is also unlikely that something whose primary attribute is speculation can have a positive roi long term.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#70

Post by sdinsn »

tehjoker wrote: post #29

Ah defense. It's just common sense that we should pour money into the military. We're just out to make money, there's definitely not an entire political viewpoint entangled in this "market opportunity". Those crazy radicals that are against killing pointlessly for imperial gains don't understand the real world. In the real world, we need the military to make the world safe for capital. WW1 was a smashing success, as…

That's a pretty narrow view you've got there. Hell, there are plenty of non-profit defense companies too.
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