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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#261

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Liron wrote: post #250

Here's patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1459682519360491523 I was shocked to see A16z recently investing $150M in Axie Infinity and doubling down on their justification of play-to-earn as a coherent concept, as if it's not fundamentally a pyramid scheme. It's lowered my expectation of what passes for thought leadership in our industry.

Thought leadership smeadership.

A16z's goal is to make money, lots of it. Shouldn't confuse its purpose by giving it other goals.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#262

Post by dcolkitt »

z3rgl1ng wrote: post #220
baxtr wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any difference why anyone would invest in the stock market? Of course people asset prices to inflate. Isn’t that the whole point of investing in anything?

Actually, originally no; stocks paid dividends.

Ethereum also pays dividends in the form of staking rewards.

About 7% today, and most likely going to 10%+ post-merge. That makes the yield on Ethereum significantly higher than the majority of stocks in developed markets.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#263

Post by lotsofpulp »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #260

The thing I really like about this article is that, at least in my mind, it really helped me clarify what I think of as "Bullshit Jobs". It's not so much "do you consider your job useless", but it's more along the lines of "Is your job set up to fulfill tasks that were, generally, arbitrarily designed by some gatekeeper?" A great example of this is tax departments at large companies that look for tax avoidance strate…

> On one hand, these strategies can save companies many millions of dollars, but on the other, they really produce nothing of value and are just a product of the complexities of a (human designed) tax system

Businesses that spend less money on taxes can spend more money on expenses, such as payroll and higher quality materials and land, or it can allow them to sell products/services at a lower price, providing a competitive advantage.

But they are a product of a human designed tax system, which may or may not be bullshit. There is no single clear, correct way to implement taxes.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#264

Post by scotty79 »

Such games are online games where other players are part of the game challenge. Some players want to play those game so much that they are willing to spend insane amounts of money on this game. But if the only users of the game were those players the game wouldn't be as fun for them. So the game needs to incentivise players that that don't want to play it that much or at all.

Most of the games manage this by offering free version of the game to anyone willing to play. It's not as good as the version paid consumers get but it's something.

The game mentioned in the article went the step further, not only does it offer some entertainment for people for free, but pays them out of profits gained from the paying players.

So basically gamers that earn money in that game provide meaningful service for paying players by working as opponents for them that enhace their entertainment. It's less bulshity job than many real ones.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#266

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

58x14 wrote: post #32

In the late 2000s, as a teenager, I was gifted a Runescape account. This account had level 80+ woodcutting, allowing one to chop magic trees - which would produce the most expensive lumber in the game. It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this skill level, we're talking several hundred hours minimum. At some point I had realized that there were different sketchy websites that would buy and sell the in…

how did you find btc via rs?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#268

Post by robryan »

tfang17 wrote: post #213

Axie is built on Ethereum, meaning in-game assets (NFTs) are technically transferrable off-platform. Vitalik (creator of Ethereum) attributed one of his reasons for creating Ethereum to Blizzard taking away one of his in-game items in World of Warcraft in 2010: "I was born in 1994 in Russia and moved to Canada in 2000, where I went to school. I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard r…

No gameplay balancing by design sounds terrible. Release one bad overpowered item or spell and the game is forever ruined.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#269

Post by gitfan86 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #130
gitfan86 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what people don't seem to understand about BitCoin. It is cashflow negative, Money has to keep coming in to keep the price up due to paying miners. It is totally fine if you think BTC is better than the USD or Gold for whatever reason. But Bitcoin is still cashflow negative. You have to keep pumping money into it to keep up its value. Where is that money going to come from? Is it coming from Tether? Is it com…

I must admit I don't understand why it is "cashflow negative". I'm not invested in any crypto, but I have thought about it, and my casual thoughts have come to the opposite conclusion. The higher the price of a cryptocurrency, the greater the interest in mining and investing. It seems like a positive feedback loop to me. Why is it not?

Imagine if you had the option of buying a piece of gold or a piece of land with good irrigation and good soil. You can plant vegetables on the land and sell those vegetables for other people to eat. Therefor your investment is generating profit and "cashflow". Gold on the other hand just sits there, and you may want to keep it in a safe at a bank and the bank will charge you a fee for storage making it negative cashflow.

The price of gold or land or BTC can go UP or Down, but that depends on market demand of that asset. The nice thing about owning the farm is that even if the value of land goes down you can still sell your vegetables or eat them to stay alive.

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