A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC • Hacker News Board

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#171

Post by floodyberry- » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #50

Skepticism might be warranted, but it should be noted by now that decentralized finance has a place in the present and future of our planet and it's not going away. I strongly encourage technologists to keep an open mind and do in depth research into the space. Yes, 2017 was over-hyped. The tech was not mature then, and while it has matured some since then, there's still quite a ways to go. Bitcoin Lightning network…

How, exactly, does Bitcoin (and other shitcoins) being nominally 'decentralized', and whose main use after 10 years is still speculation and scams, relate to nazis and right wing trolls occasionally get kicked off twitter?

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#172

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #165

Semaphor wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferring money from one continent to another.

Calculate the full chain of costs then come back here with how it compares to Transferwise or other methods

Well… Cost:

a) BTC-BTC Transfer: Only BTC transfer fee. Beats TransferWise by a large Margin.

b) BTC-USD: Depends on many variables, including if the receiving country taxes BTC to fiat. Considering how expensive transferwise is, it's probably a wash.

Speed depends on if GP literally meant Cash. If so, BTC is obviously far faster and easier as you still need to get you cash into your bank account. Otherwise… Transferwise takes a few hours, BTC 10-20 minutes I think?

Privacy: The Banks and TW know who sent how much to whom. With BTC everyone knows that A sent X to B, but not necessarily who A and B are. As this transaction is public forever, I'd probably prefer TW from a privacy perspective, this of course changes with something like Monero.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#173

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

mruts wrote: post #170

PhilippGille wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micropayments on the web without users having to create an account. For example paying a few cents for reading a news article, without an account on the news site and without the high fees for a payment processor. (Via Lightning Network) Example news site: https://yalls.org Example browser extension for great UX: https://github.com/wbobeirne/joule-extension Or even nanopayments for single API calls, between the brows…

Seeing how slow and expensive both BTC and ETH are, micropayments aren’t really viable, tbh. The mining and gas fees for BTC and ETH respectively are going to be higher than the cut a payment processor would take. The one advantage that you might be alluding to is that bitcoins are divisible into satoshi’s, which are much more granular than cents.

While I don't agree that crypto is currently generally usable for micropayments, I'm not sure the current ~$0.045/transfer fee for ETH is really more than a payment processor would take.

And that's if you want really fast confirmations.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#174

Post by kenneth » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:28 AM UTC

jakequist wrote: post #65

tl;dr - A16Z is reclassifying themselves as an "investment advisor", which will allow them to make riskier bets (crypto, real estate, etc). They'll still invest in startups like any other VC firm.

I feel like there's some misunderstanding of what these terms are. All VCs are investment advisors (either Exempt Reporting Advisors or Registered Investment Advisor depending on assets under management and investment types).

The article is vague in what it actually means, but it sounds to me like A16Z is going through the process of giving up its VC exemption to the Investment Advisers Act and registering as a RIA. It could also mean they're registering as a broker-dealer and getting its relevant employees licensed as such (e.g. Series 65)

Source: I run a VC firm.

Here is some more info: https://www.strictlybusinesslawblog.com/2018/05/31/the-ventu...

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#175

Post by PhilippGille » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:28 AM UTC

mruts wrote: post #170

PhilippGille wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micropayments on the web without users having to create an account. For example paying a few cents for reading a news article, without an account on the news site and without the high fees for a payment processor. (Via Lightning Network) Example news site: https://yalls.org Example browser extension for great UX: https://github.com/wbobeirne/joule-extension Or even nanopayments for single API calls, between the brows…

Seeing how slow and expensive both BTC and ETH are, micropayments aren’t really viable, tbh. The mining and gas fees for BTC and ETH respectively are going to be higher than the cut a payment processor would take. The one advantage that you might be alluding to is that bitcoins are divisible into satoshi’s, which are much more granular than cents.

I was specifically talking about the Lightning Network, a second layer that facilitates Bitcoin's smart contract capabilities to enable off-chain payments via so called payment channels. There's no mining involved during transactions in the channel - only for opening and closing a channel, making the transactions almost instant. Thanks to proper routing you can reach most of the peers even with a single channel. It even adds some privacy because it uses onion routing, and the payments are not less secure because each off-chain transaction can be used as valid on-chain transaction should either party wish to do so, closing the channel.

There's much more to it, many smart people have put a lot of thought into LN, so I recommend reading the whitepaper and other documentation about it.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#176

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

chx wrote: post #158

quickthrower2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there to believe or not believe in? It is what it is. Bitcoin is a perfectly functional means of financial exchange, and has use cases that beat regular cash, and other use case where it sucks compared to cash.

> and has use cases that beat regular cash, Tell me.

Censorship resistant electronic, financial transactions.

The evidence shows that it is much easier to censor a credit card payment, or bank transaction, than it is to censor a crypto transaction.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#177

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #127

chrisco255 wrote: post #50

Skepticism might be warranted, but it should be noted by now that decentralized finance has a place in the present and future of our planet and it's not going away. I strongly encourage technologists to keep an open mind and do in depth research into the space. Yes, 2017 was over-hyped. The tech was not mature then, and while it has matured some since then, there's still quite a ways to go. Bitcoin Lightning network…

>We've seen our internet rights to speech and expression violated by companies imposing their values on their user base. >Bitcoin et al. are a very real promise that the future of banking and finance and money will be decentralized. Which as far as I'm concerned, is about freedom as much as speech is. You don't have any freedom if you have to beg VISA or PayPal for permission to spend your money. The moral high groun…

> we would see similar sized investments in open and decentralized platforms focused on free speech

This is already a mostly solved problem. There are lots and lots of places on the internet, when I can engage in speech and it won't be censored.

Yes, the big platforms might censor you, but there are still lots and lots of small platforms that won't or can't.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#178

Post by lifeisstillgood » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #124

cjslep wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethereum has successfully navigated core upgrades and has a clear path to scalability. And for all this technical progress there's still the human problem that the core team/individuals decided exploiting vulnerable contracts' and hard forking the failed DAO were morally right ideas. As long as those team members are involved then the truth is that no one in the Ethereum ecosystem can escape the Spectre of their wi…

They've historically proven to be operating as simply a different centralized body of power that isn't a government issuing fiat. I can imagine at least a couple of scenarios where it might be in the interests of (some?) investors to spruik such a thing. There’s a lot of power being generated by, and flowing within and between, various organisations throughout the world. It’s probably possible to tap in to that a gat…

>>> There’s a lot of power being generated by, and flowing within and between, various organisations throughout the world.

Could you clarify? Do you mean flowing as in transactions between major banks or major manufacturers? Or something less obvious?

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#179

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:34 AM UTC

zby wrote: post #137

beaner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think this is a problem. Others, a feature. At least now we have the ability to see what happens.

You can have decentralized money without crypto - just use gold parity - but somehow no country uses it now. Maybe they are all corrupt - but maybe it is just not good way to manage the economy.

> just use gold parity - but somehow no country uses it now.

Thats fine. If you don't like deflationary currencies, then feel free to not use them.

Other people disagree, though, and are preferring deflationary currencies.

Everyone can get what they want.

Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC

#180

Post by navigatesol » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:36 AM UTC

ar7hur wrote: post #49

a16z ("our" partner was Chris Dixon) led our seed round at Wit.ai. Working with them on a day-to-day basis was an incredible experience. They never asked for anything, but were always ready to jump in instantly when we needed anything from sales intros to offices in Palo Alto. When we got an offer from Facebook we founders wanted to accept it. They initially disagreed with us, but once we confirmed our decision they…

>They never asked for anything, but were always ready to jump in instantly when we needed anything from sales intros to offices in Palo Alto. When we got an offer from Facebook we founders wanted to accept it. They initially disagreed with us, but once we confirmed our decision they supported us 100% in the negotiation process. That's what I call class.

As an outsider, I'm curious as to how bad the VC situation is in SV that doing your job is called out as exceptional. How common are the "Russ Hanneman's"?