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Cryptocurrency Startup School

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101–110 of 160 posts

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#101
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them. There is no such thing as a 'fake' bitcoin transaction. What you are thinking of is fake trading volume on exchanges. Those are very different things.

No, I’m saying that the fake trading volume sets the price which then determines the number of bitcoin sent in the real transactions. Since nothing is priced in BTC the exchange rate defines the quantities transacted.

>fake trading volume sets the price which then determines the number of bitcoin sent in the real transactions.

How is the price dictating the number of transactions?

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#102
post #57

What is it about HN people and negativity about Crypto? Want a killer app? Just look at Bitcoin. Want to find people who use Bitcoin? Move out of your world and visit countries with failing currencies.

Can you give me a couple of concrete examples? Especially large scale usage that actually impacts the value of Bitcoin? I currently see value in it only as an investment for people with FOMO. I visited Haiti and over there, people just use their phones to pay each other through their telecom provider, or they use USD. None of them use Bitcoin, they're not even aware it's a thing.

Sending censorship resistant transactions. Crypto transactions are generally censored much less often than things like bank or credit card transactions.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#103
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one ever said the space is not interesting. It's just goes against human nature and how the world operates. The difference between a failed idea and a successful one is very often simply timing. Things that were complete nonsense in the dot com bubble are billion dollar businesses now. The crypto space is not for this time (imo).

> It's just goes against human nature and how the world operates. Is that actually true? Or just true for a certain subset of humans? Human nature isn't actually fixed and immutable. Each generation redefines the world with culture, practices, and institutions that seem totally natural given the environment they grew up in. I remember my mom insisting that I wear a suit to every interviewer and send thank-you notes t…

> Is that actually true? Or just true for a certain subset of humans?

The strengths of cryptocurrencies are also exactly why they are unnatural and undesired for most people in the real world.

Who do you turn to when you get scammed, hacked or robbed when it results in lost crypto funds? No one. Everything is final with no recourse. No mistakes are permitted. People are not robots, software is not foolproof and people who write it are not perfect.

Ruthless peer to peer with no central authority or possibility of appeal is not how the world operates and it is not what people are comfortable with. Anyone who is comfortable with it is a short sighted fool.

> When I talk to people who graduated college after 2013, the vast majority of them believe that crypto & DeFi are right, natural, and will inevitably take over the global financial system.

Young people are dreamers and they have a whole lot of energy to pursue dreams. They take inspiration from other successful dreamers who have made it with a lot of hard work and tenacity. They take inspiration from ideas of the past that have revolutionized the world.

What they don't think about is the 90+% of people who have also worked their ass off in pursuit of their dreams or the world changing ideas that showed promise, but went nowhere. That is because those ideas are soon forgotten and the people never made it out of obscurity.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#104
post #94

As an engineer in love with Crypto I figured I would try to build something with it so I put a little side project together, something easy and simple a way you could earn cashback in the form of crypto for shopping online. I went ahead did the integrations with the major affiliate networks, built the whole backend, built the infrastructure for the crypto side. Including creating temporary wallets that people could c…

Are you interested in selling your code?

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#105
post #99
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them. There is no such thing as a 'fake' bitcoin transaction. What you are thinking of is fake trading volume on exchanges. Those are very different things.

It's baffling to me seeing the progression of anti-blockchain people. They keep insisting that it's all a joke, and yet every single day the level of adoption keeps on increasing. I feel like I'm watching the internet be born again.

Sadly it’s the opposite of a joke. 1 bitcoin transaction is 607kWh (or 288kgCO2 and 85g of ewaste). And the more efficient technology gets the less efficient bitcoin gets. Patently absurd.

95% of volume is fraudulent, and decentralized and trustless means that’s an intentional, irrevocable part of the system. Being able to circumvent international sanctions and pay terrorists is a feature. North Korea has been accumulating a large stockpile. More than 50% of hash power is concentrated in 3 mining pools in the PRC.

The higher the price goes the more you have to pay miners for the same job. Just maintaining the price requires $14.4M in new money each day to pay the miners. If BTC goes to $80K each you’d need $144M in new money per day to pay the miners.

And it solves no actual problems people have. Sweet joke fam. I feel like I’m watching the liberty reserve all over again.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#106
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I’m saying that the fake trading volume sets the price which then determines the number of bitcoin sent in the real transactions. Since nothing is priced in BTC the exchange rate defines the quantities transacted.

>fake trading volume sets the price which then determines the number of bitcoin sent in the real transactions. How is the price dictating the number of transactions?

That’s not what I said.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#107
post #93
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one ever said the space is not interesting. It's just goes against human nature and how the world operates. The difference between a failed idea and a successful one is very often simply timing. Things that were complete nonsense in the dot com bubble are billion dollar businesses now. The crypto space is not for this time (imo).

What you're talking about is infrastructure. How does infrastructure get built if people aren't actively building it? Yeah, these things take time, but people have to actually build out these ideas first before others in the future can build on top of them. Amazon sold books online because it's all the internet infrastructure could handle at the time. That's why MakerDAO made DAI because it's a low throughput d-appli…

> What you're talking about is infrastructure.

No I am not. A common story of wildly successful businesses is they stumbled upon a market and the makers themselves never thought it was something that has any chance of being big. Then they are surprised when people are begging them to take their money for their half-baked product.

From all the billions that went into the space. A truly demand driven business has still not appeared. That is a pretty damning result.

Crypto space is being kept alive purely from leftover money invested during the mass hysteria of those 6 months or so and sunk cost fallacy.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#108
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just goes against human nature and how the world operates. Is that actually true? Or just true for a certain subset of humans? Human nature isn't actually fixed and immutable. Each generation redefines the world with culture, practices, and institutions that seem totally natural given the environment they grew up in. I remember my mom insisting that I wear a suit to every interviewer and send thank-you notes t…

> Is that actually true? Or just true for a certain subset of humans? The strengths of cryptocurrencies are also exactly why they are unnatural and undesired for most people in the real world. Who do you turn to when you get scammed, hacked or robbed when it results in lost crypto funds? No one. Everything is final with no recourse. No mistakes are permitted. People are not robots, software is not foolproof and peopl…

There's no reason a cryptocurrency cannot be paired with judicial institutions that provide recourse for lost or stolen funds.

The innovation of cryptocurrency is simple and undeniable.

Fiat money requires armed forces to secure its supply against counterfeiters.

Cryptocurrency uses math to defeat counterfeiting.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#109
post #108
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that actually true? Or just true for a certain subset of humans? The strengths of cryptocurrencies are also exactly why they are unnatural and undesired for most people in the real world. Who do you turn to when you get scammed, hacked or robbed when it results in lost crypto funds? No one. Everything is final with no recourse. No mistakes are permitted. People are not robots, software is not foolproof and peopl…

There's no reason a cryptocurrency cannot be paired with judicial institutions that provide recourse for lost or stolen funds. The innovation of cryptocurrency is simple and undeniable. Fiat money requires armed forces to secure its supply against counterfeiters. Cryptocurrency uses math to defeat counterfeiting.

> The innovation of cryptocurrency is simple and undeniable.

Yes but does the innovation have market value? For the amount of investment, there has been no real demand for the innovation.

> Fiat money requires armed forces to secure its supply against counterfeiters.

Yes fiat money lives in the real world. This is why it is used in the real world.

> Cryptocurrency uses math to defeat counterfeiting.

Counterfeiting is a minor issue in the real world at best.

Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School

#110
Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering.

There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these.

- How do we make Bitcoin/crypto easier for normal people to use? I think a decent solution so far is the CashApp. But it's only useful for stacking sats.

- How do we make cryptocurrency usable for transactions? Bitcoin volatility makes transaction really hard. I think the answer is new experimentations and tweaks to Bitcoin monetary policy. I outline the problem in this article. https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to...

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