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Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

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Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this be a nail in the coffin? Google moving into a new space, though usually unsuccessful, hasn't signaled the end of the space itself has it?

I don't think it's signalling the end of the space, just the end of the hype train. I think at best we'll see the space shrink back to reflect the value it brings to the market. Personally my bet is that it brings negative value for most of the use-cases it's being sold for and that the contraction will be large but... completely gone? I doubt it.

But how does Google getting in signal that?

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#102
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same token, BTC or other coin hitting zero is not just a question of chance. Suppose BTC had a large dip in value and a similar drop in mining. What are the odds people would focus on repeated double spend attacks for the lulz thus dropping the value to zero? I am not saying that’s likely today, but rather that it’s easy to over estimate resilience in the case of black swan events.

No need to speculate, look at the price and hash rate charts in 2017. The more recent hashrate drop was even bigger. Still no successful attacks. There's a disincentive for people with mining power to attack the network (assuming they even have enough). It makes their hardware worth less so I can't imagine anyone doing it for kicks. Agree though that something similar to what you're saying is what Bitcoin hitting $0…

Yea, I think that’s more a risk of dropping the last 1% in value rather than a significant risk to current prices.

The real issue for current owners is Crypto seems to have lost it’s grip on the popular imagination. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin What happens from here is likely a question of utility rather than speculation.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#103
post #58
post #5

Whatever is going on with the >$1trn club's ideas for cracking that next ceiling... it's all quite opaque. "Let a thousand flowers bloom" failed, but at least we had a grasp of what's going on. It was a bet on the, now known to be false idea that the web economy would have horizontal breadth. Turned out that (a) ads had a lot of death and (b) Google didn't manage to create any alternative revenue streams worth noting…

How can you honestly say the "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach failed? Google scraps a lot of products, but they still have many great products: Gmail/GSuite, Android, YouTube, GCP, Nest... Each of those is a successful tech company in their own right.

>>Each of those is a successful tech company in their own right.

I disagree. None are another revenue stream. Android/YouTube/etc pull a low of weight for the AdWords business but (a) those were acquisitions and (b) they don't have a business model "in their own right."

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really make sense. People leave for cryptocurrency projects because they’re promised a huge portion of the tokens or pre-mined coins. The idea is that they just need to make the project work well enough to hype enough people into buying the coins, at which point they can unload them at huge returns and then move on to the next crypto project to repeat the process. It doesn’t make sense that Google would keep…

I'm all for a huge premine and short vesting period, but Google is competing with Meta. Google is Web 2.0 "get off my lawn" Mecca, they ignored this space until Meta. People go there because they just caught on to the compensation packages and are going to catch on to Web3 compensation packages just as late. They already work on overly complicated stacks for useless cogs on useless products that Google shuts down ran…

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Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#105
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to speculate, look at the price and hash rate charts in 2017. The more recent hashrate drop was even bigger. Still no successful attacks. There's a disincentive for people with mining power to attack the network (assuming they even have enough). It makes their hardware worth less so I can't imagine anyone doing it for kicks. Agree though that something similar to what you're saying is what Bitcoin hitting $0…

Yea, I think that’s more a risk of dropping the last 1% in value rather than a significant risk to current prices. The real issue for current owners is Crypto seems to have lost it’s grip on the popular imagination. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin What happens from here is likely a question of utility rather than speculation.

Try "web3", "smart contract", or "NFT" though. I think there's a shift from focusing on the protocols themselves to stuff built on top.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N is for Netflix. Microsoft is hardly relevant.

2 trillion dollar company hardly relevant

By this "logic" FAANG should contain Saudi Aramco and probably Tesla: https://companiesmarketcap.com/

Instead, the name was always related to high growth + high salaries + innovative technonogy + interesting companies to be working for.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a comment to yourself without many commenters in it. /S?

It links to this course syllabus from the top algorithmic game theorist in the world: https://timroughgarden.github.io/fob21/l/l1.pdf I doubt roughgarden is excited about blockchains just because he has some tokens

Not exactly.

You mentioned that there are true believers, so i thought you referred to the commenters on the topic, since you linked to the HN topic and not the pdf associated with that topic.

Which is a bit confusing tbh :p

Definitely since you both submitted it, have the top comment on it and I don't know him.

Re: Google Creates Blockchain Unit, Hires New ‘Founding Leader’

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is almost a 2 trillion market cap company. Docusign is 20 bill. If some exec inside Google suggested building a team to "squash docusign" they'd be... silly.. and recognized as such.

Google is a 2 trillion market cap company with a lot of N billion dollar products, it's not that outlandish.

They weren't meant to be N billion dollar products.
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