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The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

mollywhite.net

171–180 of 331 posts

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#171
I gave the original NYT article a read when it was published and I have no idea how it could have been approved outside of the opinion section.

Really shameful to present the obviously pro crypto piece as neutral or informational and I have only two explanations:

- ancient editorial staff approved it because they really don't understand crypto or

- there's some kind of market for front page real estate

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank you

The source (etymology) of the phrase is a play on words: * "grass roots" support is an 'authentic' community response on an issue * AstroTurf® is an artificial playing surface used in some sports facilities (especially indoor ones), instead of a one made from real grass So "astroturfing" is the creation of an 'artificial community response'.

that makes sense. thank you.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#173
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup that statement is factually incorrect, many silicon valley engineers are jumping to web2 tech companies bc the pay is so damn high right now, very few engineers in crypto at the moment.

Not to mention that anytime I see extremely high pay in crypto companies I think the salary is overinflated because they are paying a large portion in tokens.

True! Eg this one at Silo Finance for a senior smart contract dev: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/Silo-Finance/Job/Senior-Solid...

Base: $300k Token-options: $450k

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#174
post #36

Until someone has built a crypto product that creates values (for the purpose of this discussion it can be a good or a service would be willing to spend USD on even if it wasn't a crypto) crypto is a negative-sum game. Any USD taken out of the system someone else has to have put in, plus whatever the miners take out. Fortunes aren't created, they are redistributed.

[deleted]

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#175
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if this comment is a usual fare of shallow dismissal or if you are aware of current applications of crypto in the wild and consider them to be useless nonetheless. One example that comes to mind is that Docusign offers a product that uses Ethereum for storing evidence of contracts in a decentralized medium. That seems like a fairly legitimate application for the technology. Another example (albeit possibl…

Those applications are not negative sum. My impression is that the total revenue for services like that is minuscule, I would be very interested if you have data showing something else.

My impression has been similar to the comment sibling to yours, that a lot of attempts at crypto-related applications were somewhat hype based. However, despite the huge amount of noise, some do seem - at least in principle - valuable.

I certainly share a certain level of cynicism towards many crypto applications, but even the likes of OpenSea currently employ people and presumably pay them actual money that they can spend on stuff, in exchange for their time and effort pushing the platform forward as a digital marketplace. That, to me, looks more like creating traditional business value than hype and pyramid schemes.

I'm ambivalent on whether I should consider NFTs "value". On the one hand, the NFT mania has generated quite a bit of commercially-oriented artistic output that likely would not have been created otherwise. But on the other hand, whether "artistic output" is valuable at all in the first place is kinda in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#176
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very demoralizing. Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better projects.

Bitcoin is as obsolete as POSIX. It's ossified, and not changing is a feature.

Not exacly posix isn't 100 times slower and 100 more expensive that other is more inconvenient standard, becouse is simply old standard, bitcoing is a product in itself not a protocol,and this product don't fulfill the need for fiat currency becouse is expensive to transact, and slow te best you can say is that is difficult to make changes but bitcoin isn't exactly the one of 10 years ago, protocol change to acomodate for more transactions and most votes are concentrated in few minority of big stakeholder, making kmposiblw to reduce comitions or change significantlythe protocol.

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#177
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very demoralizing. Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better projects.

Bitcoin is as obsolete as POSIX. It's ossified, and not changing is a feature.

Terrible POSIX, 50+ years later it's everywhere. Any project can only hope yo be as successful

Re: The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

#178
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, I enjoyed the analysis of the piece, but I disagree with their take on market cap. Amy Castor - "Yeah, market cap is a meaningless number. It assumes everyone bought at the current price and could cash out at the current price." We could just as easily apply that basic logic to any security. Amazon(AMZN) is ~3275 a share with a market cap of ~1.668T. That also assumes everyone could cash out at ~3275, but th…

> Eventually it would reach ~0 share price and effectively a 0 market cap. This is the misunderstanding breaking your argument: AMZN shares are fractional ownership of a company with assets and ongoing revenue. In the event of a business downturn, those will go down but they’re not going to zero in any plausible scenario - even bankruptcies usually return some fraction of value to shareholders. This is important to u…

> even bankruptcies usually return some fraction of value to shareholders.

The three issues with that are 1) liquidation preferences, 2) the fact that normal people can only afford to hold an infinitesimal amount of Amazon stock, and 3) (basically) only common stock is available for purchase by normal people. This means while that's technically true, unless you're, eg Jeff Blackburn, you ain't getting shit if Amazon were to close shop and return the money to investors.

Let's say you're holding 100,000 shares of AMZN. At ~$3k per share, that's some $300mm in shares, but with 508.84M shares outstanding, that's a grand total of... 0.02% stake in the company. In an unlikely fire-sale of the company and returning value to shareholders, that could still be worth something, but it's a unreassuringly small number.

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