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An NFT That Saves Lives

paulgraham.com

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Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#171

Post by dvt »

tomhoward wrote: post #87
dvt wrote: post #60

Seeing pg peddle NFTs after a16z did it just a few weeks ago is kind of depressing. I guess Silicon Valley VCs must be really stinging about missing out on Bitcoin a few years ago. Not to mention that disguising what's essentially a money-making scheme as a benevolent donation is morally murky at best.

Giant assumption that Silicon Valley VCs missed out on Bitcoin. YC invested in Coinbase in 2012. Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures invested in 2013. You don't think their partners bought at least a bit of Bitcoin then as well?

> You don't think their partners bought at least a bit of Bitcoin then as well?

I have no way of knowing but I'd wager probably not; VCs invest in highly-speculative moonshot ideas all the time. Back then, crypto was mostly naïve zealotry. And these days, it's mostly greed. It seems people forgot BitTorrent circa 1999-2003 -- it's history literally repeating itself.

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#172

Post by bob33212 »

_9omd wrote: post #166
bob33212 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate this as I'm also trying to keep an open mind and understand what this means for the future. So far there are only two arguments that I understand: 1. Libertarianism: The world will be better if we remove the government and other 3rd parties from interfering in transactions between individuals. 2. Decentralization of Money (Crypto), like the decentralization of information (The internet) will unlock techn…

I think the problem is you're looking at cryptocurrency with the wrong perspective, so you're missing the fundamental ways it can rewrite the entire world of finance. I imagine you're looking at this from a consumer perspective, and you trust your bank, have a stable government fiat currency to use, and a credit card to make easy transactions with, so you have little use for cryptocurrency. Yet with the internet you…

You are right, I am in country where there are enforceable laws and regulations. Maybe some developing countries can skip some of the legal and regulatory infrastructure and use software to solve those problems, similarly to how those countries skipped the wired telephone infrastructure and went directly to cell phones.

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#173

Post by sharkjacobs »

If Paul Graham had donated $2.5 million dollars to Noora and written a brief article about it, he probably could have convinced some percentage of his readers to also donate to Noora

As is, there's a chance that someone will bid more than $2.5 million for this NFT, but the delta between Paul's bid and the winning bid will have to be greater than the sum of other non-winner take all donations for this to be a more effective way to raise money

On the other hand, if this wasn't an NFT, Paul probably wouldn't have put up $2.5 million and written an article about it at all, so I guess Noora's already better at this than I am

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#174

Post by fighterpilot »

rpearl wrote: post #76
eloff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environmental harm of a single ethereum transaction is very low. Lower than a fundraising dinner. Please take your nitpicking elsewhere. They're literally aiming at saving thousands of lives and the comments are all focused on how bad NFTs are. Give me a break, talk about missing the point.

Because doing this as an NFT is utterly nonsensical. The NFT is involved for absolutely no reason. The only results of involving an NFT are (1) legitimizing a ridiculous scam and (2) causing extra environmental damage alongside the donation. Just donate the money, using a fraction of the carbon cost, and if you want to generate hype, do a match. What a waste of time and energy.

> Because doing this as an NFT is utterly nonsensical. The NFT is involved for absolutely no reason.

It's not nonsensical from the perspective of their mission if it increases the amount of money that they're able to raise.

> What a waste of time and energy.

They're emitting ~90 kilograms of CO2 to save 2000 lives, which is a good trade-off if they wouldn't have been able to raise that much through traditional channels.

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#175

Post by dandanua »

Actually, I'm glad that this happened.

Now everyone can see the essence of NFT scams.

Basically, he made an investment asset from a donation, with an ability to gain more later.

How this can be called a donation, if you are going to make more money from a single fact of it, FOR YOURSELF?

Hypocrisy maxed out.

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#176

Post by graeme »

_9omd wrote: post #166
bob33212 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate this as I'm also trying to keep an open mind and understand what this means for the future. So far there are only two arguments that I understand: 1. Libertarianism: The world will be better if we remove the government and other 3rd parties from interfering in transactions between individuals. 2. Decentralization of Money (Crypto), like the decentralization of information (The internet) will unlock techn…

I think the problem is you're looking at cryptocurrency with the wrong perspective, so you're missing the fundamental ways it can rewrite the entire world of finance. I imagine you're looking at this from a consumer perspective, and you trust your bank, have a stable government fiat currency to use, and a credit card to make easy transactions with, so you have little use for cryptocurrency. Yet with the internet you…

Chainlink sounds interesting. But how can you be sure about the data and the link?

Insurers have sizeable fraud departments. If a system is unreversible and exists in a place without enforceable contracts, wouldn’t that allow for a large gaming opportunity?

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#177

Post by blurbleblurble »

dang wrote: post #141
blurbleblurble wrote: post #92

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=26975955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918270 " Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My bad, the stakes are high. I'll work to cool it next time.

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#178

Post by fighterpilot »

lynx234 wrote: post #63
graeme wrote: post #49

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…

> One part I’m unclear on: if someone outbids him, do only they get the token and pg pays nothing, or do both pay and are the contributions etched into the NFT? No, only the person who wins the bid gets the token. I typically defend the tech behind NFTs but this just seems like it's riding the hype of NFTs more than anything.

> riding the hype of NFTs more than

Good on them for doing that. Their mission is to save as many lives as they can and if riding a hype train lets them do that, then the overall outcome is still very positive. The environmental externality is bad but trivial compared to the benefit of lives saved if this auction goes through.

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#179

Post by fighterpilot »

libra1 wrote: post #151

While the calculation of $1,235 to save a life is very good, donating blood is arguably the most efficient way to save a life since it is free.

Is there an under-supply of blood in rich countries to the point where people are dying as a result? If 1 regular donor stopped donating, how many additional people will die?

Re: An NFT That Saves Lives

#180

Post by bosswipe »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #161
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #6

Has Mr. Graham done an honest calculation of how many lives will be lost to the environmental impacts of NFTs if they become mainstream?

Why in HN of all places do people constantly have years-old takes on crypto? Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake. Most other chains use some form of proof-of-stake. It's not like these projects are unaware of your criticisms, nor have they stood still since you stopped paying attention in 2017.

Why in HN of all places? Because engineers are more resistant to bullshit hype. Proof-of-stake has not been proven at a large distributed scale.
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