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

#311

Post by dang » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

smallgovt wrote: post #307

smallgovt wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting this is the top voted comment when it isn't really substantive to the article's subject matter.

Haha, OK, I'm doubling down on upvote fraud here. Someone is clearly artificially upvoting sibling replies to my parent comment to displace it. My parent comment received 14 upvotes and was ranked as the top response for the 4 hours after posting it. Then, in the span of one hour, every other comment reply received enough upvotes to displace my parent comment. Even, "Thank you for sharing this". Is there a way to cal…

I appreciate your concern for the integrity of HN—the fact that the community here feels so strongly about that is one of the best and most community-like things about it. However. If you read the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), you'll notice that:

(1) commenting on voting on comments is off topic;

(2) insinuating astroturfing is not ok;

(3) you should email us instead: hn@ycombinator.com.

Re #1: a moderator correctly marked your comment off topic. That lowers its rank. Re #2: I looked at the upvotes. There's no trace of abuse that I can see. People are far, far too quick to assume manipulation when the truth is simply that large subsets of the community like different things. That's why we have that guideline.

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

#312

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

thinkmassive wrote: post #306

arcticbull wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that depends, is the internet worse than writing letters? Because bitcoin is worse than money. The reality is that for the rest of the world bitcoin is missing the initial distribution problem. Nobody in Venezuela has bitcoin. How are they going to get it? If they can trade with other countries, they would just get USD and be better off. If not, then net, it's zero sum. That's really all there is to it. Even af…

You might have a point if that were true, but it’s not... https://twitter.com/btcven Edit: ...and LN transactions are essentially instantaneous and free. Also you can’t program cash without a middleman.

Nothing about the twitter account refutes what I'm saying about Venezuela. There's a certain quantity of BTC there already, and it's not nearly enough to replace all the money down there. They can't mine any because any big clusters of compute get nationalized [1], [2] and rewards are going down. That means they can either trade with outsiders, and in that case, doing so for USD they'd be 5X better off over the last two years. Or they trade with each other, in which case, it remains zero sum. Unless they are somehow more efficient at mining BTC than the Chinese who control more than 51% of the hashpower?

Nothing in that twitter account refutes that in Venezuela the minimum wage is $6.70USD per MONTH [3] so a single transaction fee is nearly a WEEK of wages. And that's up from $2.20 per MONTH so a single transaction fee was THREE WEEKS of wages.

LN transactions are "instantaneous and free" once you open a channel ($1.50) and lock in your balance, then close out your channel ($1.50). Again, two weeks wages.

Bitcoin is not a solution to the problems of Venezuela. Changing the government is. They're totally disconnected.

[1] https://bitcoinist.com/venezuela-now-requires-bitcoin-miners...

[2] https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/05/31/officials-in-venezuela-be...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-wage/v...

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

#313

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #309

arcticbull wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are payment processors that cater to that market. They charge large fees (up to 20%) for card transactions, though that's actually due to the crazy-high chargeback risk. People's spouses tend to discover their subscriptions, then they declare it wasn't them, their card was stolen, and a chargeback follows.

Indeed, that's my point. If you do business in one of these controversial areas, then you will quickly find that you are being charged extremely high costs and/or kicked off of their network.

They're not extremely high, they're the cost of doing business.

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

#314

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

alphast0rm wrote: post #308

arcticbull wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more that did and stopped than do. And to your own point of the ones that do, the vast majority do so via intermediary like bitpay because they dont want BTC they just want money. The trajectory of acceptance has a negative slope. Even Overstock doesn't accept BTC on mobile according to their help page. Further, since you've got to foot the transaction fee (~$1.50) instead of the merchant and the merchant h…

> Nobody takes BTC in exchange for goods and services, absolutely nobody. I was simply trying to show that your original statement was hyperbole, as there are clearly notable retailers that do. Also as a consumer, I don't see why your point about intermediaries is relevant (barring the marginal price difference between them). If you are planning on purchasing something from a business you don't really care if they ar…

My point about intermediaries is that you are paying more to use Bitcoin than I am to use my credit card, and getting a lot less for it.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.30. I get a 2% rebate, so I paid $10.09, and for that $0.09 I get a one-month interest free loan, chargeback abilities and numerous warranties.

COGS: $10.00, retail after CC markup: $10.30. You have to buy the $10.30 from an exchange for $10.51 (assuming 2% fee). You then pay another $1.26 for the BTC transaction and get back nothing, for a total of $12.07. That means your total fees paid are 23X the total fees I paid. No chargebacks, no warranties, no loan, 23X higher fees. Then, you have to report your cost basis to the IRS and can't do your taxes easily. That makes your payment method inferior for any normal, legal purchase. That's one of the reasons buyers don't want it. Sellers don't want it because it exposes them to enormous FOREX risk.

Yes, it's hyperbolic, however the fraction of businesses accepting BTC is already practically zero and falling, it's not unfair to round it to zero. Otherwise we would just be happy with Overstock.com gift cards as a medium of foreign exchange. After a 2% cash back rebate on a credit card their cost is negative.

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

#315

Post by hopler » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #244

blfr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

decentralized finance has a place in the present and future of our planet There is no guarantee that decentralized anything has a place in the future. So far the trends have been depressingly centralizing, whether it's government, finance, manufacturing, or even our great hope, the Internet.

The costs of centralization is starting to seep into people’s day to day life though. People tend not to act to abstract threats but rather tangible issues. Tech people have been warning about this forever because they have a strong grasp of the consequences and they also better understand what we have (or had) with the internet and other parts of the economy and politics. I’m starting to see far more ‘regular’ peopl…

It's not a tech thing. "Small/big government" / hegemony / balance of power is an age old debate.

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

#316

Post by beaner » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

kurtisc wrote: post #299

beaner wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true. The only thing you can do with 50% of the hashpower is determine the most recent block. And it still has to be a legitimate block. You can't undo history very far. And to the extent that you can, transactions either go through as intended or get reversed, and the owners keep their money. Money doesn't get redirected. Any blockchain going through repeated attack would be pointless to use anyway…

It would be possible to fork to create a higher limit with that hashpower. It would also be possible to have 51% without making it publicly known. But nobody needs to bother with that when they can just double spend.

A fork can be made with any amount of hash power, it doesn't need to be the majority. A fork happening doesn't mean it will be followed, or even contentious.

51% attacks do not allow double spending on the blockchain. If a block is overwritten the attacker may choose to change the destination of their own transactions for that block, but the previous spends are undone. This is why merchants wait for multiple confirmations. Typically 6, which would require a 98% attack to undo.

At this point it'd take a nation-state to produce that much of bitcoin's hashpower, if it's even still possible.

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

#317

Post by hopler » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

sdfsdfsdfsdf3 wrote: post #129

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…

This is the Vitalik jump request. All the miners immediately ask how high. Centralized in a Slack channel.

That's democratic consensus. It's not centralized. You can fork if you want.

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

#318

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #313

stale2002 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, that's my point. If you do business in one of these controversial areas, then you will quickly find that you are being charged extremely high costs and/or kicked off of their network.

They're not extremely high, they're the cost of doing business.

And the world would be a much better place if it was harder to impose higher costs of doing business on controversial, but legal businesses.

Which is why I support solutions that undermine attempts by a couple monopolies to impose larger costs on legal, but controversial businesses.

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

#319

Post by thinkmassive » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #312

thinkmassive wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have a point if that were true, but it’s not... https://twitter.com/btcven Edit: ...and LN transactions are essentially instantaneous and free. Also you can’t program cash without a middleman.

Nothing about the twitter account refutes what I'm saying about Venezuela. There's a certain quantity of BTC there already, and it's not nearly enough to replace all the money down there. They can't mine any because any big clusters of compute get nationalized [1], [2] and rewards are going down. That means they can either trade with outsiders, and in that case, doing so for USD they'd be 5X better off over the last…

You claimed "Nobody in Venezuela has bitcoin." I provided evidence of a group making a difference in Venezuela using Bitcoin, so it does refute your previous statement.

I pity someone who is so offended by a simple technology.

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

#320

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

thinkmassive wrote: post #319

arcticbull wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about the twitter account refutes what I'm saying about Venezuela. There's a certain quantity of BTC there already, and it's not nearly enough to replace all the money down there. They can't mine any because any big clusters of compute get nationalized [1], [2] and rewards are going down. That means they can either trade with outsiders, and in that case, doing so for USD they'd be 5X better off over the last…

You claimed "Nobody in Venezuela has bitcoin." I provided evidence of a group making a difference in Venezuela using Bitcoin, so it does refute your previous statement. I pity someone who is so offended by a simple technology.

Again, if they can trade with foreigners, they're better off with real currencies. I'm not offended, I'm exasperated. Bitcoin has been a solution in search of a problem for a decade, and each time it stumbles on an idea it's proven not to be effective and it's off to the next goalposts. This time it's Venezuela for some reason. They have real problems, and they need real solutions, not magic internet beans. If they really wanted to help the Venezuelans they'd do it using the best system, not their system -- this helps them, and hey, if the Venezuelans are better off for it, I guess that's fine too.