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The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

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Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#371

Post by Levitz »

rodiger wrote: post #107
marcan_42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd because if you have a car, someone else doesn't have a car, and the car has intrinsic usefulness. Having the car in your name isn't valuable in and of itself; it's valuable because it allows you to claim the car as your own, and the car is useful and can only be moved, not copied. Having a JPEG as your own isn't valuable, because JPEGs can be infinitely copied at zero cost. The title for the artwork doesn…

It's more about the token than the JPEG. Gated experiences, communities, in-game items, in-game art, etc is the driving force. And for digitally-native art, there's never been a better way to sell/trade it while preserving provenance. People are betting on the fact that we'll spend more and more of our time in digital spaces, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad bet.

So the driving force for the decentralized piece of tech is centralized tech?

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#372

Post by BoorishBears »

gonehome wrote: post #303
BoorishBears wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the most important part of the quip... But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses The dismissiveness is often a signal, that was his point. BTC has grown too far to be compared to Columbus setting out anyways, it's reached widespread access and accessibility, there are public companies devoted to it's access, BTC ETFs, etc. We've reached the…

I wasn't missing it - that part is implied by the meat of the bit I quoted. The point is to keep in mind that just because people are laughing doesn't mean you're a genius, but people do also mock people doing great things. Elon Musk is another easy example, look at the HN dismissal of Tesla and SpaceX over the years - even in the face of obvious massive success. You basically have to dismiss the naysayers and evalua…

> You basically have to dismiss the naysayers and evaluate things for yourself.

... why? Any point of view, pro or against, should be evaluated for substance.

Telsa naysayers were going on about things like "the quality sucks" "Promising FSD today is incredibly stupid", etc... well they were right? Quality has been varying depending on which part of the car you look like in a very "one step forward two steps back" way, FSD hardware did end up changing and the FSD beta is a farce, etc.

The only naysayers to dismiss are people who can't justify their position, but the same also goes for people who support something without being able to justify it. The problem isn't "naysaying", it's not saying anything at all.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#373

Post by arcticbull »

gonehome wrote: post #368
arcticbull wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a real possibility here that you're way overconfident and wrong and this overconfidence will blind you from a lot of interesting stuff that's going on. I'm always open to that possibility, and I spend a lot of time learning about blockchain technology. And I've spent the last 10 years working in fintech. Of the commenters here, I probably have more context than most on both. > Yeah - that's because that's i…

The bitcoin whitepaper came out in 2009, Ethereum was 2015, a lot of the interesting stuff has been within the last two years. You may be right in the end, but people with exposure to the industry at risk of disruption are often bad at recognizing it. See Ballmer at Microsoft mocking the iPhone, Blockbuster failing to adapt to Netflix, Borders failing to adapt to Kindle/Amazon etc. That knowledge can provide context…

> You may be right in the end, but people with exposure to the industry at risk of disruption are often bad at recognizing it. See Ballmer at Microsoft mocking the iPhone, Blockbuster failing to adapt to Netflix, Borders failing to adapt to Kindle/Amazon etc.

That's a lovely narrative except I work in fintechs exposed to crypto.

> ... That knowledge can provide context for accuracy, but it can also mislead or bias you against something that's changing rapidly.

And as I said I spend a lot of time researching so that I can have informed discussions.

> At a real cost. The web comparison would be decentralized underlying protocols vs. the centralized applications on top of them. "Web3" may allow a way to fix the things that lead to centralization at the application layer with UX that actually works.

The real cost of PoW blockchain is the electricity consumption and e-waste production of a country, and the cost of all blockchains is a system absolutely rife with corruption and scams.

You're just describing APIs, which we've had forever.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#374

Post by Paradigma11 »

_xnmw wrote: post #349
Paradigma11 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is an open protocol for financial services/transactions running on decentralised hardware. Thats pretty cool and useful. Naturally the first thing that happened was that all the scammers and get rich idiots moved in like with any powerful new technology. It will surely take some time to get the real world usage up and the portion of moon boys/scammers down but it will happen nevertheless.

> Crypto is an open protocol for financial services/transactions running on decentralised hardware. Except it's not. "Open" and "decentralized" are the false promises of crypto. The entire crypto market is dominated by centralized exchanges, criminal enterprises like Tether and Binance.

How is it not open when anybody can interact with it and look at the source code, state of the chain and smart contracts? The chain is decentralized as no company is hosting the servers and can pull a google on short notice. But sure, many chains have serious problems with centralization of assets, control by a single person group..... This things, in combination with regulation, have to work itself out and the situation will most likely be completely different in 5-10 years.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#375

Post by TigeriusKirk »

gonehome wrote: post #362
arcticbull wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this true? I thought there was a complex system of clearing houses, record updates, etc. a lot of which is done manually? Am I wrong? Blockchain is a database. Records at a bank are a database. There's no reason you can't just execute a SQL transaction to deduct from one and increment the other haha. That's not the slow part. That's why every one of the systems I mentioned supports real-time 24/7 transfers: SEPA…

I really try to resist being drawn into flame bait. > "Remember the golden rule of blockchain: except in the case of regulatory arbitrage, grift and crime, if you think a blockchain is a better solution to a problem than any classical solution - you either don't know enough about crypto or you don't know enough about the problem." There's a real possibility here that you're way overconfident and wrong and this overco…

>There's a real possibility here that you're way overconfident and wrong and this overconfidence will blind you from a lot of interesting stuff that's going on.

I'm tempted to start keeping track of how many hundreds of negative comments about crypto HN generates each day, every day. It doesn't really come across as confidence to me.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#376

Post by shiohime »

physicsguy wrote: post #190
ebiester wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art is a really weird market in general. The problem with NFT is that people are buying it as an investment rather than a work of art with its own merit of which appreciation might be one benefit. There's likely no museum backstop for most NFTs. (By which I mean that rich people buy art, sell it amongst themselves/have inflated art appraisals to raise the price, and donate to museums and claim as a tax writeoff.) See…

> NFT as a concept will live I think we just need to wait until the first NFTs start disappearing because of the servers hosting the images shutting down. The actual images aren't stored in the blockchain, it's just a URL.

you clearly have no idea how projects like arweave actually work.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#377

Post by gonehome »

BoorishBears wrote: post #372
gonehome wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't missing it - that part is implied by the meat of the bit I quoted. The point is to keep in mind that just because people are laughing doesn't mean you're a genius, but people do also mock people doing great things. Elon Musk is another easy example, look at the HN dismissal of Tesla and SpaceX over the years - even in the face of obvious massive success. You basically have to dismiss the naysayers and evalua…

> You basically have to dismiss the naysayers and evaluate things for yourself. ... why? Any point of view, pro or against, should be evaluated for substance. Telsa naysayers were going on about things like "the quality sucks" "Promising FSD today is incredibly stupid", etc... well they were right? Quality has been varying depending on which part of the car you look like in a very "one step forward two steps back" wa…

There were Tesla naysayers saying EVs wouldn't work, that the model3 would never ship, that Elon was a 'fraud', etc. etc. - a lot of that is forgotten now, but it was rampant and constant and completely wrong.

I'd argue the problem is often overconfidence everywhere mixed with people who don't know what they're talking about.

I agree that stuff needs to be evaluated for substance, I just think there tends to be a pretty extreme status-quo bias by default so a naysayer is more likely to be wrong because of that.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#378

Post by shiohime »

gonehome wrote: post #87
ebiester wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art is a really weird market in general. The problem with NFT is that people are buying it as an investment rather than a work of art with its own merit of which appreciation might be one benefit. There's likely no museum backstop for most NFTs. (By which I mean that rich people buy art, sell it amongst themselves/have inflated art appraisals to raise the price, and donate to museums and claim as a tax writeoff.) See…

I think the art is the wrong thing to focus on. The more novel piece is a ticket to community membership and a way to align incentives within that community. It can take the form of art, but doesn't really have to. That said, yeah regular art markets don't really make sense wrt value either.

This is what drives me to explore the NFT space - proof of ownership is a powerful concept. I'm creating a generative art project that leverages both art and proof of ownership to grant access to specific services, it's pretty neat and a really fun space to explore.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#379

Post by giantrobot »

rodiger wrote: post #323
giantrobot wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gated experiences, communities, in-game items, in-game art, etc is the driving force. And for digitally-native art, there's never been a better way to sell/trade it while preserving provenance. It's a bunch of unnecessary synthetic scarcity. What the fuck is good about that? Why do you want to sign on to a model where you're going to be nickel and dimed for everything you see? As a consumer why do you want to pay f…

> What the fuck is good about that? I think it's more an economic incentive for digital creators who have historically been nickel and dimed every step of the way trying to monetize their work. > As a consumer why do you want to pay for things that have zero marginal cost? The value for a consumer is less about paying and more about earning (which sounds dystopic to some, but is very exciting imo). And beyond that, l…

> The value for a consumer is less about paying and more about earning (which sounds dystopic to some, but is very exciting imo). And beyond that, layered experiences mean you could get an item / art / skin / etc and carry it through disparate digital worlds. One could imagine a world where no longer are you playing one game with one set of items, but are instead able to carry your stuff into multiple experiences.

This comes up all the time and is laughably naïve. What possible reason would Epic have to let you transfer a skin or player model to their game if you didn't pay them for it? Game DLC is already broken and consumer hostile. Assuming blockchains and NFTs will do anything to improve it is absurd.

> Here I'm referring to digital experiences like concerts, parties, tours, AMAs, etc. where there is some set of rules to obtain the entry pass (in NFT form).

An NFT has no utility here. Where's the secondary market of suckers wanting to buy an NFT for a thing they didn't experience? If there's no suckers further down the pyramid there's no point in an NFT. It's just an event ticket.

> If people could altruistically create high-quality content and earn a living that way I'd agree with you.

This is the core problem. You're positing a world where every system for some reason cares about things on some blockchain. You're trying to treat an entry on a blockchain like real physical ownership. All this does is port inequality and inequity to a virtual space where it does not naturally exist. Scarcity is not a sine qua non of virtual spaces.

That's just a recipe for a hypercapitalist exploitive hellscape. Join the metaverse! You'll be just as poor as in real life! Join the fun!

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#380

Post by shiohime »

notahacker wrote: post #280
asdfsd234234444 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that even mean? You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. You can produce counterfeits of most "real world" items that are indistinguishable.

> You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. I can't, but will happily pay anyone that can considerably more than the Ethereum gas fees involved in minting an NFT copy of something.

Ethereum fees are crazy but other chains have thriving NFT marketplaces where transactions cost a fraction of a cent.
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