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…
Cryptocurrency Startup School
111–120 of 160 posts
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#112Earlier 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…
The same thing has been said about self-checkouts ("Who do you turn to when you can't find an item?"), self-serve purchasing models like AdWords or AWS ("Who do you turn to when you need customer support?"), and self-employments platforms like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, etc. ("Who do you turn to when you want time off or career development?")
The actual response to all of these is "Well, I'll figure it out myself." People who use self-checkouts generally know how the aisles are laid out in their favorite supermarkets, or they just walk until they find things. People who use low-volume AdWords, AWS, or SaaS vendors turn to forums & StackOverflow when things go wrong. People who drive for Uber just stop working when they want to. Similarly, people who want to avoid getting scammed, hacked or robbed with cryptocurrency do their research on vendors; they do Google image searches on headshots of ICOs and look up founders on LinkedIn to see if they're fakes; they keep their crypto on a hardware wallet in their physical possession; they use strong passwords and 2FA that they don't re-use for any other sites; and they don't talk about their Bitcoin holdings on the Internet.
All of these developments are controversial, because you actually are losing a human interaction that some people found helpful. That hasn't stopped them from growing quickly, because they take the human (and their associated salary) out of the loop. This lets firms offer a service to groups of people that it wasn't previously able to afford it. If you wanted to buy ads for a global, targeted audience before Google, you just couldn't do it. If you wanted to host software before AWS, you went to a colo or dedicated hosting provider and put in a lot more effort than their self-serve solution. If you wanted a side-hustle before the gig economy, it generally wasn't worth the search costs of trying to get an additional job.
If you have less than $10K in deposits (which is the majority of people these days), the bank is not your friend. They try to get you on little fees for everything, and pay you effectively zero interest, and occasionally go down for maintenance when it's exceptionally inconvenient for you (aside from many of their services only being available from 9:00-4:30). When the alternative is that, then the idea of a global, decentralized system that charges a flat fee per transaction and no fee to hold your wealth gets pretty attractive.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#113Cryptocurrency 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/cryp…
I 100% agree. I love the core ideas, but it's not really useable yet beyond a few (important) use cases. I think the problem is trust. I first got in Bitcoin at $6 and Ethereum at $10. I got out way too early to retire (hence why I bought the domain sellnothing.com, to remind myself of an important lesson), but I got out because I realized the system was too complex and I didn't understand it all, and so felt like the sucker at the poker table.
Our Tree Notation I believe is the solution to making a crypto currency people could trust. You could build a Tree Language for a blockchain that is: 0 syntax. 0 unnecessary complexity. 100% of the capability. No BS. It would look something like this:
transaction
id lerledsfa334
receiver abc432
sender fslkm324
amount 2.22
The key advantage of Tree Notation is countable complexity. You could build a system that is very easy to audit and the community could easily reject any unnecessary complexity, which I think is where corruption goes to hide--in unnecessary complexity.I've got my hands full with Tree Notation applications in medical research and data science, but I really hope someone applies it to the digital currency space, and I'd be happy to assist time permitting. https://treenotation.org or breck@treenotation.org
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
...a list of new business models zero of which have shown an iota (pardon the pun) of traction in a decade. Bitcoin is worth $140 billion. What are you waiting for, before you believe it has traction?
Market cap is not worth for a currency. There’s incredibly limited liquidity in the market relative to the market cap, and even the ETF trying to list recently showed 95% of all volume in the crypto space was fake. Try and pull a few million dollars worth out and watch what happens. It did just plunge 33% on some small withdrawals, what exactly are you waiting for?
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#116Cryptocurrency 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/cryp…
The unfortunate story here is that a technically and fundamentally interesting idea has been turned into a total cesspit by the influx of money and greed before it could escape it's roots of ideological purity and adapt to the realities of human society.
The starry eyed technologists who were unfortunately not well equipped for the gnarly world of finance got replaced by financially better informed "businessmen" with shady motives or outright frauds.
In the eyes of the broader market, cryptocurrencies have been tainted by black market dealings, non-stop high profile scams, excessive volatility, lack of liquidity and near-zero useful acceptance for retail transactions. I won't even mention the large number of zero value-added ideas that offer nothing beyond what could also be done without blockchain, but just wanted along for the ride. These further diluted the already thin trust.
As much as I shudder at the idea of a Big Tech Co. launching a cryptocurrency, perhaps that'd would have been the one winning shot that the concept had about 2-3 years ago. If Googlecoin or Facebookcoin materialized before either the tech companies or the concept of cryptocurrencies turned into demons, some good could've actually materialized.
Am I too jaded here? Maybe. But after so many years and no killer concept materializing, one has to start asking questions. The other "fads" of the last decade (AI, VR/AR, EV, etc..) actually continue to deliver ever more amazing innovations, putting the stagnation of crypto into a rather stark contrast.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 accumu…
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of Blockchain's killer apps is...Bitcoin. There is no need to talk about "the crypto dream", people are using what they find useful (coinbase is currently #5 top YC company), and I personally see it inevitable that everything in banking/finance will move to a decentralized model, with smart contracts as a driving force, because of autonomy. Humans haven't really evolved much from say other Apes (or many more othe…
Centralization and trust are massive efficiencies as demonstrated by the sheer unparalleled inefficiency of proof of work chains. It blows my mind that hipsters refuse to use single-use straws and try and pay with bitcoin which yields thousands of times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as the straw. 1 bitcoin transaction is 607kWh (is 288kgCO2 and 85g of ewaste). That’s enough spent power to drive a Tesla from SF to San…
I know, right? Humanity is insane. The world is heading towards a potentially civilization ending climate disaster of its own making, and someone goes and invents an over-complicated solution to largely imagined problems that is wasteful and getting more wasteful to counter efficiency gains by design.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I personally see it inevitable that everything in banking/finance will move to a decentralized model, with smart contracts as a driving force, because of autonomy. People don't want autonomy. I don't want to be my own bank. My bank is insured, they are secure, they provide me with a ton of services, and there is an identifiable party to go to if it all goes wrong, or if liability needs to be established. This idea…
That's like saying "Open Source" won't work because I don't want to be my own maintainer. It's not about one person. You not wanting autonomy or being your own bank doesn't matter. People on coinbase aren't their own bank either.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#120Cryptocurrency 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/cryp…
> How do we make Bitcoin/crypto easier for normal people to use?
Pay people with bitcoin. This is #1. People don't have a problem figuring out even complex systems if there 's money involved (And that's a good thing)
> Bitcoin volatility makes transaction really hard.
Not sure if that's really an issue if cryptos were being used daily. They are instantly convertible to other cryptos or stablecoins, therefore the volatility would quickly go down if people used them in real life. People would exchange them for the most stable currencies only, because people don't like to see their coins devalued. We see lots of volatility today because most bitcoin big players got them by sheer luck / being there first so they treat it as casino chips; its not "a hard day's work" earnings.