Starting a crypto project • Hacker News Board

Re: Starting a crypto project

#21

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

mkohlmyr wrote: post #3

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Can confirm. I’m friends with a group of very smart distributed systems engineers who were excited to launch an actually useful crypto project that gets talked about here from time to time. As much as they’re excited about the technology itself, very few people are actually interested in using it. Instead, their business seems to revolve around the value of the utility tokens for their project. Few people are buying…

> Investors only care about getting more press releases out so they can pump up the price of their discounted tokens, which have a shortened lockup period relative to something like stocks. It’s almost like a pump-and-dump scheme for investors. "almost" If even useful services are being abused for speculation, it's time to realise the entire space is fundamentally broken. We've already seen massive fraud in the space…

Is price speculation considered abuse?

Re: Starting a crypto project

#22

Post by tnzm » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

berkes wrote: post #13

mkohlmyr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Investors only care about getting more press releases out so they can pump up the price of their discounted tokens, which have a shortened lockup period relative to something like stocks. It’s almost like a pump-and-dump scheme for investors. "almost" If even useful services are being abused for speculation, it's time to realise the entire space is fundamentally broken. We've already seen massive fraud in the space…

How is this any different from the "web tech" space at large? Where investors will push towards "data-hoarding", privacy-invasion, dark patterns and/or addictiveness or other psychological "abuse", more often than not?

That's why it's the investment space that needs disruption - which is why crypto is met with so much pushback on HN. A year ago, crypto-related stories made front page much less often, if at all.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#23

Post by viraptor » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #7

Always treat every single crypto project as a scam. It is one of the safest bets you can make. Everyone involved is a scammer, every exchange is untrustworthy, and nobody can be trusted. If you're trying to start an honest project in this space, you really need to ask yourself why you would put yourself in a situation where you are the only honest person in a room full of scammers.

That's an emotional response going the other way. Why not just think of the project itself as if the blockchain side of it never existed? Is there a real product, is there a visible progress, is the time investment happening in the development rather than empty announcements?

Re: Starting a crypto project

#24

Post by ignoramous » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

pattusk wrote: post #5

> 16. And my personal pet peeve is that, by and large, most of crypto actually does want Bitcoin to die. Perhaps not in a "I want Bitcoin to go to zero", but in a, "Bitcoin doesn't do anything and so I want its value to be rightly distributed to my project, which has real utility". This is the most frustrating thing about crypto and has been since at least 2016. Most of the projects with the highest market cap in the…

> Most of the projects with the highest market cap in the space either don't do anything, don't plan on doing anything and don't have any purpose.

The second most valued crypto-currency is Ethereum. And the entire ecosystem around it does plan on doing a lot of things, starting with decentralised finance.

There are also efforts to layer a network on top of Bitcoin in a bid to counter-act Ethereum. And competing networks like Diem (Facebook, Spotify, Uber...), CENTRE (Coinbase / Circle...), Stellar (Stripe...) that aim to replace the current payments infrastructure.

Then there are cross-chains like Polkadot, Cosmos, Polygon et al that try to make all of these disparate blockchains inter-programmable.

Agree that pump and dump schemes seem like the norm, but that's like saying Internet has no utility and is crap because there's porn, spam, and malware all around.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#25

Post by henvic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

pfisch wrote: post #12

henvic wrote: post #4

Society is losing the opportunity to create a lot of wealth because people are investing in silly proof-of-work (or: energy/resource wasting) ideas. It's awful, and I guess we're only going to see this over once Bitcoin is surpassed by Dogecoin (I'm sure this will happen), and then Dogecoin gets surpassed by any other stupid shitcoin out there. The idea of cryptocurrency is interesting, but the idea of having no back…

You realize doge coin is still worth less than 10% of btc by marketcap? Not sure I would count on that prediction. I mean is gme going to surpass apple?

10% over something that is pure speculation and has no value whatsoever seems like really high. If anything, this just makes me feel confident about my prediction.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#26

Post by henvic » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

spottybanana wrote: post #15

henvic wrote: post #4

Society is losing the opportunity to create a lot of wealth because people are investing in silly proof-of-work (or: energy/resource wasting) ideas. It's awful, and I guess we're only going to see this over once Bitcoin is surpassed by Dogecoin (I'm sure this will happen), and then Dogecoin gets surpassed by any other stupid shitcoin out there. The idea of cryptocurrency is interesting, but the idea of having no back…

> It's awful, and I guess we're only going to see this over once Bitcoin is surpassed by Dogecoin (I'm sure this will happen), and then Dogecoin gets surpassed by any other stupid shitcoin out there. Just pointing out that both Doge and BTC are proof of work and consume energy in similar style with the mining process.

Yes, like most if not all current cryptos: it's either stupid energy waste or fraud.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#27

Post by user-the-name » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #23

user-the-name wrote: post #7

Always treat every single crypto project as a scam. It is one of the safest bets you can make. Everyone involved is a scammer, every exchange is untrustworthy, and nobody can be trusted. If you're trying to start an honest project in this space, you really need to ask yourself why you would put yourself in a situation where you are the only honest person in a room full of scammers.

That's an emotional response going the other way. Why not just think of the project itself as if the blockchain side of it never existed? Is there a real product, is there a visible progress, is the time investment happening in the development rather than empty announcements?

"Why not blind yourself to relevant context" is not a really a great way to make good decisions.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#28

Post by user-the-name » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

berkes wrote: post #14

user-the-name wrote: post #7

Always treat every single crypto project as a scam. It is one of the safest bets you can make. Everyone involved is a scammer, every exchange is untrustworthy, and nobody can be trusted. If you're trying to start an honest project in this space, you really need to ask yourself why you would put yourself in a situation where you are the only honest person in a room full of scammers.

> If you're trying to start an honest project in this space, you really need to ask yourself why you would put yourself in a situation where you are the only honest person in a room full of scammers. This is one reason why I pulled the plug on my startup in the sphere. In the best case you're disadvantaged by all the scammers and liers: they can make promises, cut corners, rip investors where you are being careful, c…

Exactly.

Plus, you run the risk of either getting exploited yourself by the scammers, or feeling the pressure to act more dishonestly to keep up.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#29

Post by emmap21 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

From user experience, I personally don't see a strong benefit of crypto. It always looks like a Ponzi Scheme to me. When early users are people driven by greed than productivity, it is a HUGE problem.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#30

Post by viraptor » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

user-the-name wrote: post #27

viraptor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an emotional response going the other way. Why not just think of the project itself as if the blockchain side of it never existed? Is there a real product, is there a visible progress, is the time investment happening in the development rather than empty announcements?

"Why not blind yourself to relevant context" is not a really a great way to make good decisions.

There has to be a better way to address this because "Why not blind yourself to relevant context" cuts both ways. You said "Always treat every single crypto project as a scam." - but if you ignore all blockchain ideas and still see a healthy and useful product, but ignore it as a scam - that's also blinding yourself to context.