141–150 of 213 posts
It's weird seeing a website that so vehemently defends artificial speculation in housing markets get so worked up about digital raffle tickets
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918270
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
This is peak absurdism. Why not simply donate the money? How is this better than a Kickstarter? How many lives could pg have saved by donating the billable time it took him to write this post? It gets even better, from the NFT article: > • What about the environmental costs? > We plan to make a significant carbon offset to mitigate the environmental impact of this NFT. Within one week of the closing of this auction w…
So this is less efficient than a normal donation of the same amount, since we've now introduced a secondary overhead in that you need to waste a portion of the money combating the environmental cost.
Feels a little weird to praise the charity for having the lowest cost-per-life number that you've ever seen, and then to breathlessly announce that you're making that number worse.
Is the cost of the carbon offset going to be lower than the cost would be to commission a very nice, unique physical plaque or trophy that could be actually displayed by the donor?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A PDF of my Watsi donation and credit card statement is just as good without any blockchain Rube Goldberg mechanizations. By all means, digitally sign the PDF [1] if you want to be fancy and hip, but you don't need a blockchain, nor is it going to tell you if the healthcare donated towards was actually delivered. If the argument is, "It's on the blockchain for trust purposes!" my retort is, "Do you not trust the nonp…
Watsi seems to offer donations via credit cards and Paypal, neither which I think supports $2.4 Mil donations, but I'm unsure, never tried it myself. Watsi overall don't seem to fit the "no restrictions on who can donate" part either, as they are an American non-profit (subject to US laws, including embargoes).
If I was going to donate a substantial sum to Watsi, I would wire it to them and have the wire receipt as proof of money transmittal.
I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I…
Snowden - Freedom of Press Foundation 5.4m https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388548/edward-snowden-n...
pplpleasr - Stand with Asians 550k https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99615/uniswap-v3-nft-sol...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not sure why this is an NFT That's what I've said about every existing NFT.
Ever seen a programmer creating programs in Brainfuck? I don't think I'll never understand Brainfuck, but I do have some understanding of why you'd wanna write a program in it. Ever seen these abstract paintings that go for millions of dollars? How dare they? I don't understand anything of it, it's weird as fuck, but it doesn't really hurt anybody more than anything else so why care? I feel like NFTs fall into a simi…
same with the abstract art. someone did it, it happened, people appreciated. but they knew that's all about it. no artist telling us to do it.
And nft isn't even comparable, it's just become another term for cypto coin. Two years ago this would an ICO. coin to save lifes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would make more sense to sell this as an NFT if it were paired with a thematically related artwork. A wealthy buyer would be able to display the NFT in their home and brag about all the lives they saved when they bought it.
How do you display an NFT? Isn’t it literally just a hex code, with actual asset hosted somewhere else, which is publicly accessible by everyone? I’m serious. Isn’t that all it is? A pointer to some other resource, without access control at all? At least when I bought a beanie baby, I got beanie baby. NFTs always felt like paying money, then printing up the first picture of a beanie baby from a Google image search, a…
I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I…
Perhaps he wrote the essay so that other people will find out about it and out bid him for the NFT. You get press for being the good guy and don’t have to spend a dime. What a great thing to be able to achieve.
So while saying “please donate” might get say $100,000-$1,000,000 more, even a single bid from a other investor/founder who wanted bragging rights for beating PG will dwarf that.
If so it presents an interesting mechanism to elicit donations in rich social circles.
I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I…
People have been able to raise non-insignificant amounts of money selling NFTs for charities. Snowden - Freedom of Press Foundation 5.4m https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388548/edward-snowden-n... pplpleasr - Stand with Asians 550k https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99615/uniswap-v3-nft-sol...
I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if someone else bids more, is that the only money that goes to Noora? i.e. PG’s bid is voided
Yes, only the winning bid would go to Noora. However, there would be a record of any other bidders' intent. With a bit more of creativity/effort, someone could have created a smart contract for keeping track of all the donations and only releasing them once they reach a certain threshold, then giving a token back representing a "life saved" to donors if they truly wanted, but I get capitalizing on NFTs' hype right no…