Live data from Hacker News

Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

techcrunch.com

101–110 of 145 posts

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by "control the miners" — they're building this on OmiseGo, which isn't mineable. All of the substantial ICOs require some level of KYC/AML registration for direct public sales and pre-sales. Tokens later become available to everyone else through independent exchanges, which happens quickly these days.

Where did you see that they are building on OmiseGo?

It will be an eth token like OMG until they launch their 'main chain and 2^92 sidechains' LOL! good luck with that

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#102
post #86
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, considering the fact that the Bandcamp app lets you buy music digitally via PayPal. Am I missing some important difference between the two?

I just downloaded Bandcamp for iOS and under Digital Album I see "Not available for purchase on this device" along with links to purchase the physical vinyl or CD.

Hm, you’re right. I didn’t notice it but the album I tried it was “digital download + limited edition print”... mea culpa.

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#103
post #13
post #6

I fail to see why this is valuable in any way. Why would this raise even a million, let alone half a billion?

Blockchain, VR, Bitcoin, AI are the buzzwords that bring you $$$. Businesses will throw money at you just for using AI/ML, blockchain, even if these use cases can be solved with a few if/else or fuzzy logic or distributed NoSQL database.

No kidding, this also works in large organizations when teams/departments want to increase their budget. Create a project using some buzzword tech, or say you will integrate it in an existing project, and the people with their fingers on the money trigger are much easier to convince. Even if it makes no sense or adds no real value, it can gain you significant budget room to make other changes you want or need to do, and the higher ups get to brag about how they are implementing blockchains everywhere..

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by "control the miners" — they're building this on OmiseGo, which isn't mineable. All of the substantial ICOs require some level of KYC/AML registration for direct public sales and pre-sales. Tokens later become available to everyone else through independent exchanges, which happens quickly these days.

Where did you see that they are building on OmiseGo?

speculation at this point IMO https://www.reddit.com/r/omise_go/comments/7oif3j/telegram_i...

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#105
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this, by a respected cryptographer who, however, also is the author of Signal: https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/

Any less biased source?

Moxie might have his own horse in the race, but his analysis of cryptosystems should not be questioned. His philosophy is around humans being able to access strong encryption. I believe he ultimately doesn't care what you use, as long as your communications are secure.

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#106
post #30

What's the value of the in-app currency being a cryptocurrency (putting aside hype/pr), vs calling it a virtual currency, a Mysql database with a API on top? Dropping to a technical level, if the miners are all run by Telegram, then I think it's just a pointless overhead over Mysql. On the other hand, if anybody can run miners, I don't comprehend what value that adds, what it means.

no one would be able to write a smart contract on top of your cryptocurrency if it is not on the same blockchain or follow certain standards cryptocurrency exchanges expect to have in a tradable digital asset.

For example in Solidity a language that targets the Ethereum Virtual Machine. You can have constructor parameters in your contracts like addressOfTokenUsedAsReward, then you provide the smart contract address ex "0x12dgsdg..." of the token you built. These contracts unlike your mysql database are immutable and the code can't be changed, even if there is a vulnerability in it.

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#107
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only holds true for PoW systems

How is PoS safe from this?

With PoW, you'd need to pay for enough hardware and electricity to rival half of the hash rate of the entire network. With PoS, you'd need to pay enough to own half of the coins. Both are prohibitively expensive. PoS also discourages you from such an attack as you'd be destroying the value of the coins you own.

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#108
post #66
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like if the US Government ceases to exist we'll still have all these dollar bills.

Or if the world stopped to exist we also wouldn't need any currency. You know where I'm going. The default risk of Telegram cannot even be compared to that of the US.

I honestly don't know where you're going with that argument.

My point was that if the central bank behind a currency goes away so does all of its utility, even if the currency is still physically or digitally there.

No one said anything about default. You can't default on a currency that isn't backed by anything.

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#109
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only holds true for PoW systems

How is PoS safe from this?

With PoW, assuming you can use the same hardware to mine different coins, then you just point your BTC mining rig onto MinorCoin, you get 51% of the hashing power and then you can double spend and let's say crash the value of the coin.

Once that is done, you can move your mining rigs onto the next MinorCoin, or you can put them back to mining BTC without you having lost any value except for the opportunity cost when you weren't mining BTC.

With PoS, you need to buy up 51% of the coins in order to make the attack. As you buy more and more coins, the price will rise, so you will spend more money than you expect to get to 51%. Then, once you're there, you do some double spend attacks and destroy the value of the network. Now, all that money you pumped into it is gone. That is the key difference between PoS and PoW in this scenario.

Re: Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

#110
post #30

What's the value of the in-app currency being a cryptocurrency (putting aside hype/pr), vs calling it a virtual currency, a Mysql database with a API on top? Dropping to a technical level, if the miners are all run by Telegram, then I think it's just a pointless overhead over Mysql. On the other hand, if anybody can run miners, I don't comprehend what value that adds, what it means.

I see this same thing happening at some corporations now trying to create blockchain as a service. If one corporation, or just a few, are the only ones participating in the chain then why not just use traditional DBs?..

I believe it's partly evidence-based stock ramping [1].

[1] Not sure that's the appropriate term.

Post reply on HN