521–530 of 544 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% loss > 25% equity drawdown Obviously you know that, just somewhat of a silly observation to make that he "lost less" when he actually lost 100% of his investment (barring recovery in bankruptcy court)
A self selected fund that risks 10% of the wealth on BlockFi cannot and did not lose 100%.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What? Why are we the problem? This may just be me because I from CA and was inspired to work in tech as kid in the 90s and saw the drastic and detrimental culture changes that have come over the years/decades: many of you keep attributing these scamming events to us when in reality you FAANG/SV/VC insider types likely went to school or worked with them and turned a blind eye to this very obvious behavior that bred…
May want to add Do Kwon (Stanford) and 3AC (Columbia) to further solidify your case.
But it's more fun when other's help drive the point further for me!
I would also include conbase (not a typo) ties to Goldman Sacs and YC, but unless you've seen its horrible descent over the years you wont know why they should be included.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Just being perfectly honest here, I think your position has been shown to be logically inconsistent in multiple ways.
1. We started this discussion by talking about whether or not investment in BlockFi represented a destruction of capital. You said it didn't because money invested is not capital. You then later admitted that there are definitions of capital that include money. I would consider this an uncharitable reading of the initial point regarding investment in BlockFi. If there is a valid definition of the word "capital" in which the original point is true, that it is charitable to assume that was the intended definition.
2. You agree that burning money in your bank account would make you less wealthy, but somehow disagree that you cannot consider this destroying your wealth. That's inconsistent.
3. The "car IOU" analogy has an obvious flaw in that burning it does not reduce your wealth as was the case in the burning money example. Despite this absolutely crucial difference, you maintain it is somehow valid without an explanation of the difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re conflating the money supply with money. The inherent value of the money supply is constant. That’s why you could halve it uniformly without impacting much. But that also necessarily means that each unit of currency does in fact have value. So if you invest it in scams, you can call that destroying wealth. Also worth nothing that we’re not really talking about money. We’re talking about equity in companies with…
> But that also necessarily means that each unit of currency does in fact have value. I don't dispute that. But the value of each unit can be complicated. > So if you invest it in scams, you can call that destroying wealth. Colloquially I might say that, but the wealth isn't actually destroyed, it went to the scammers.
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.
Poker isn't particularly luck-based, especially if you play a large number of hands, as eventually everyone sees the same cards on average.
Also, poker doesn't have legacy admissions - the people that win at poker consistently always deserve their status.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But that also necessarily means that each unit of currency does in fact have value. I don't dispute that. But the value of each unit can be complicated. > So if you invest it in scams, you can call that destroying wealth. Colloquially I might say that, but the wealth isn't actually destroyed, it went to the scammers.
I think there was an implication that the wealth belonged to the investors in BlockFi. Their wealth was destroyed in a very real way.
The fact was destroyed. The assets were not destroyed; they went to other people.
Capital doesn't have a double meaning like that. Capital is the latter. Capital was not destroyed here.
Somehow these guys peaked at about 900 employees, according to linkedin ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockfi ) They've raised about a billion dollars of VC - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blockfi-inc/investor... (note, CB lists $1.4b, of which 400M is debt from FTX, which I imagine they never got) Unbelievable the amount of destruction of value here... it's just total carnage.
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…
Isn’t true for 80% of white collar industries?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
May want to add Do Kwon (Stanford) and 3AC (Columbia) to further solidify your case.
> May want to add Do Kwon (Stanford) and 3AC (Columbia) to further solidify your case. But it's more fun when other's help drive the point further for me! I would also include conbase (not a typo) ties to Goldman Sacs and YC, but unless you've seen its horrible descent over the years you wont know why they should be included.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes there are dozens of decentralized protocols that claim to offer high yield. but few can really sustain that in reality. safer to not chase such high yield.
My understanding of the "high yield" options don't pay out in stable coins. At best, they are vulnerable to impermanent loss and worse the smart contracts get outsmarted with all the coins gone. Staking crypto has lockin periods, whereas blockfi had no lockin period. Can you share an example of a decentralized protocol that offers high yield in a stable coin with less risk than blockfi offered?
Theres another new one on polygon that gives 12% but it will likely drop soon as people discover it: https://app.balancer.fi/#/polygon/pool/0x48e6b98ef6329f8f0a3...
That's about the best you can get in this bear market.
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…