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BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

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Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#471

Post by CSMastermind »

germinalphrase wrote: post #456
herval wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I once heard that a well-known gig economy company would open up new cities by giving employees essentially-unlimited credit cards That's pretty documented in the history of Uber :-)

Can anyone recommend a reasonably accurate history of Uber?

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber is the most well-known tell-all book. I think they also made a TV miniseries based on the book but I haven't watched it yet.

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination is mostly a summary of the headlines involving the company rather than a tell-all but it's accurate enough if you want to familiarize yourself with the subject.

I don't believe anyone has written a book about the technology team specifically which is sad because they actually made some really great technology, especially in the monitoring space, and I would love to hear the story of how that came to be.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#473

Post by slaw »

Art9681 wrote: post #468
SilasX wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comment continues to presume that there is a specific correct value or range of values No, I was replying to a comment that was attempting to justify ~7000 as a reasonable figure for what Twitter’s app needs to do. Don’t take my word for it! Read the thread history if you don’t believe me!

Its very simple if you think about it. Can you think of other web services with the scale and popularity comparable to Twitter that run on much lower headcounts? Go ahead and make a Twitter clone this weekend. There are plenty of tutorials. Then let's assume you go viral and now your little service needs to scale. Then the email and issues start to come in. Now you have to balance fixing bugs and tending to customer…

Telegram has similar size user base, more functionality but less ads business. Last time I read there were 150 employees.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#474

Post by lawn »

stickfigure wrote: post #420
lawn wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what the perfect block size is, but quadrupling down on on block size and turning down all alternatives is not a good long term plan. BTC's 1 MB (or a bit more with segwit accounting) is just hopelessly obsolote, we could easily handle multiples without any issue whatsoever, and it would require a massive increase there after to reach the state of "one or two nodes". Further, BCH isn't "turning down al…

BCH's block size is also hopelessly obsolete. You simply cannot fix the system by making the blocksize bigger, so BCH is a pointless exercise.

It's not pointless, it's necessary although not sufficient on its own.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#475

Post by throwaway1777 »

eastbound wrote: post #376
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be largely what is going on. I think also, there are a few startup ideas considered to be "the future", and VCs are basically just choosing which horse they will bet on for that idea. So they pick through different founders chasing that market, and invest. Then all the other VCs pile in on those chosen horses, regardless of the due diligence. As a naive and younger outsider I always thought these people…

> I think also, there are a few startup ideas considered to be "the future" This. I’m getting annoyed with my jQuery/Spring app with ~million of revenue that I can’t get sexy for employees nor for funding; sometimes I want to throw away ethics and say we’re building “a blockchain of solar-powered AI european-central-bank ledgers”. It would be so much easier. Nah, we’re just storied field data in 7 tables, and custome…

99% of the time when someone can’t hire the problem isn’t the tech or the product-space, it’s that they aren’t paying enough. If you pay me a million per year I will build boring crud apps and web integrations for you all day.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#476

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

unboxingelf wrote: post #315

I feel sorry for the retail investors caught up in yet another crypto scam. Let me try to articulate my view of what’s actually going on with these seemingly endless scams, in hopes of saving future retail investors some pain: Prominent venture capital firms like A16Z, Sequoia, etc have discovered a new get rich quick scheme: they raise a fund and invest it in a some shitcoin like FTX, SOL, etc. the shitcoin founders…

This is it. I have not heard this most important argument so clearly and powerfully made before.

The VCs need to be thoroughly investigated. It is clear.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#477

Post by c0m »

varunprasad wrote: post #339
alasdair_ wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Only 1 of the BlockFi founders (Flori) has an ivy league degree (from Cornell). Zac is a moron who made his wealth playing poker and through a scam loans startup (Zibby). It's much, much harder to make millions at the poker table than it is to get a degree from an Ivy. There have been 141 people that have made over a million in 2022 from poker ( https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/ranking/7339/2 ) and that doesn't coun…

It's also much harder to make millions from the lottery than it is to get a degree from an Ivy. There might be a few hundred winning the lottery every year. So I'm not really sure what information the statistic that there are about 140 Poker millionaires in a year vs 75k Ivy grads conveys.

If you have an open mind, I encourage you to look in to poker theory. It's far deeper than you appear to think, requiring a competent understanding of statistics, good mental maths, and an ability to perform under pressure. There's a reason many consistently successful modern poker players have some math pedigree. Many pro players go on to work at trading firms, Jesse Martin and Vanessa Selbst come to mind.

If you do truly think it's no different to the lottery, I'm interested in your explanation as to why these people (a) come from the background they do (a high schooler with decent maths can tell you why the lottery is -EV) and (b) go on to the careers they go on to.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#478

Post by ummonk »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #245
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds. So they decided to just start hiring everyone they could from paypal, to move into "blockchain payments". They paid huge sums. The directors there had no experience ever managing huge teams of people. It was a giant mess of unqualified people funded by cheap capital…

> They've raised about a billion dollars of VC - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blockfi-inc/investor ... > talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds So was SBF (MIT) and raised from Sequoia and Blackrok and his GF was a Stanford'ite with a Math degree and is responsible for the largest loss of funds f…

> Maybe now the rest of you vocal sideliners can finally see that is the case and that most of you are part of the problem more than most of us who have built startuprs using this tech without any of those things and did it the hard way outside of the VC/SV Ivy League World.

What? Why are we the problem?

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#479

Post by lottin »

halpmeh wrote: post #448
lottin wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. Let's say I take a piece of paper and write: "I will give the bearer of this piece of paper my car." Do I have created a new car? No. The piece of paper is still a piece of paper, and there aren't any more cars in the economy than there were before. And likewise, if I proceed to destroy the piece of paper no cars will be destroyed in the process.

Have you created value by writing on the piece of paper? No. But if the entire world agrees that your piece of paper has value, then you would lose wealth by giving away the piece of paper and the person you gave it to would gain wealth by receiving it. When we talked about burning money you said: "[burning your money], however, rather screw with being able to get some of those resources allocated to you." If you bur…

Because this only happens once the IOU has been put in circulation. In my example, the paper money I created was not put in circulation, consequently no redistribution effect took place. The analogy is solid and appropriate.

Re: BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

#480

Post by ummonk »

slaw wrote: post #473
Art9681 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its very simple if you think about it. Can you think of other web services with the scale and popularity comparable to Twitter that run on much lower headcounts? Go ahead and make a Twitter clone this weekend. There are plenty of tutorials. Then let's assume you go viral and now your little service needs to scale. Then the email and issues start to come in. Now you have to balance fixing bugs and tending to customer…

Telegram has similar size user base, more functionality but less ads business. Last time I read there were 150 employees.

Telegram doesn't have "more functionality". It's significantly less performant and it doesn't have any global search or sophisticated recommendations system. It's also pretty lightly moderated.
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