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PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

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Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#131

Post by pcthrowaway »

xur17 wrote: post #56
ahelwer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. BTC might have a future as a store of value like gold,…

> Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. > You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. Personal opinion: I think the part you are missing…

Why are we even talking about first-gen cryptos like bitcoin in regards to transaction processing. There's a whole ecosystem of 2nd and 3rd gen cryptos which address these issues and more (the environmental impact is the biggest issue posed by bitcoin in my opinion)

They're perhaps not on the general public radar yet, but Ethereum and Cardano both have a greater market cap than bitcoin had 4 years ago, and Cardano currently addresses lots of the other issues people talk about.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#132

Post by mikosty »

trident5000 wrote: post #101
177tcca wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's directly connected to lots of power usage today being from coal.

So is all that crap you buy from China that you dont need which is manufactured using dirty power. BTC is mostly renewables and will transition completely as it becomes cheaper.

>BTC is mostly renewables

Source for this?

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#133

Post by piplikoc »

ahelwer wrote: post #41
ceilingcorner wrote: post #25

I have no interest in cryptocurrencies and I don’t own a single cent in any of them. But the continual barrage of hostile comments in every single HN article looks mostly like groupthink to me. Clearly cryptocurrency will continue to play a growing role in the future. Denying this seems simply delusional.

I think it's an interesting example of people being too close to something, technically, to really see its totality. I'm a distributed systems person so I basically blew off Bitcoin two bubble-cycles ago because of the 3 tx/sec issue and the obvious deficiencies of the proposed lightning network workaround. I also took an in-depth look at a cryptocurrency with a supposed better protocol (Nano) and was very unimpresse…

What do you think about Cardano/ADA? I am not an expert in the space, but to me it seems that they have a lot of research behind their blockchain and they solved the energy consumption problem with a proof of stake system, and their fees are pretty cheap compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#134

Post by yunohn »

rawtxapp wrote: post #57
ahelwer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. BTC might have a future as a store of value like gold,…

> The lightning network? Laughable. Why is it laughable? The whole world doesn't need every little transaction to be permanently recorded on the public blockchain.

Isn’t that the “advantage” purported by blockchain currencies?

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#135

Post by ahelwer »

piplikoc wrote: post #133
ahelwer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an interesting example of people being too close to something, technically, to really see its totality. I'm a distributed systems person so I basically blew off Bitcoin two bubble-cycles ago because of the 3 tx/sec issue and the obvious deficiencies of the proposed lightning network workaround. I also took an in-depth look at a cryptocurrency with a supposed better protocol (Nano) and was very unimpresse…

What do you think about Cardano/ADA? I am not an expert in the space, but to me it seems that they have a lot of research behind their blockchain and they solved the energy consumption problem with a proof of stake system, and their fees are pretty cheap compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Haven't looked into it. I don't really find proof-of-stake very interesting at a technical level, though. I don't know what all that "research" could be about if they are just going with proof-of-stake.

Edit: taking a peek, their proof-of-stake algorithm (called ouroboros) claims to have some formal security proof employing game theory. That would be interesting to look into as I am not familiar with that technique.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#136

Post by jyu »

wj wrote: post #29
jyu wrote: post #16

Remember that there are people behind these decisions and they are largely rational actors. Someone at PayPal is getting a big promotion and bonus from pushing this deal. If crypto goes nowhere and they shut down this project, then it can be rationalized as "getting in too early" or some other "unforeseen externality" that happened, totally out of their control. But the promotion and risk taking executive will have s…

I hadn't heard about the performance reviews and when I just Googled I saw results about her implementing performance reviews at Yahoo. Curious if you have more background on that?

For middle managers and above, lack of promotion for several consecutive years at a company with as many growth opportunities as Google speaks loudly.

I never worked there and was interested in her story so I dug a lot around that time and found bad reviews that have long suffered from link rot.

"But then, suddenly, her peers were promoted past her. Responsibility for the look and feel of Google’s entire suite of consumer-facing products, including the Google home page, was taken away from her. She was moved to a less important product: Google Maps. She was removed from a council of executives that met with Google’s CEO. To industry insiders, this sudden change was a demotion for Mayer." - The Unofficial Marissa Mayer Biography published in Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-biography-2013...

The specific criticisms from former coworkers begins around the middle of that long article.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#137

Post by bidirectional »

jyu wrote: post #16

Remember that there are people behind these decisions and they are largely rational actors. Someone at PayPal is getting a big promotion and bonus from pushing this deal. If crypto goes nowhere and they shut down this project, then it can be rationalized as "getting in too early" or some other "unforeseen externality" that happened, totally out of their control. But the promotion and risk taking executive will have s…

> Or Bill Ackmann crying on CNBC while financially positioned for the exact opposite.

No, he was positioned in exactly the way he said he was. He went on CNBC to warn about the dangers of the coronavirus, having already expressed this view in the market. It's his job as a hedge fund manager to do so.

Also, he won big on the credit default swap trade while losing massively as the market plummeted, the individual trade was massively profitable, but in aggregate it was just a hedge against the downturn.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#138

Post by xur17 »

grey-area wrote: post #125
xur17 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. > You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. Personal opinion: I think the part you are missing…

It should be expensive for a transaction like that to occur It should not. Current systems manage it fine, because they don't use an insane model which tries to distribute every transaction to everyone, a model you're saying Bitcoin should move away from, at which point, why does Bitcoin exist? I think it's perfectly reasonable to have second and third layer networks that sit on top of Bitcoin acting as transaction n…

> It should not. Current systems manage it fine, because they don't use an insane model which tries to distribute every transaction to everyone, a model you're saying Bitcoin should move away from, at which point, why does Bitcoin exist?

I think you missed my entire point.. I am saying that Bitcoin layer 1 should be a settlement layer for other "less distributed" state systems that sit on top of it.

> I don't really need a globally distributed ledger and all the problems that brings.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how to solve this.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#139

Post by jeanniesarah »

ahelwer wrote: post #135
piplikoc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about Cardano/ADA? I am not an expert in the space, but to me it seems that they have a lot of research behind their blockchain and they solved the energy consumption problem with a proof of stake system, and their fees are pretty cheap compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Haven't looked into it. I don't really find proof-of-stake very interesting at a technical level, though. I don't know what all that "research" could be about if they are just going with proof-of-stake. Edit: taking a peek, their proof-of-stake algorithm (called ouroboros) claims to have some formal security proof employing game theory. That would be interesting to look into as I am not familiar with that technique.

Have you looked into Hedera Hashgraph?

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#140

Post by ahelwer »

jeanniesarah wrote: post #139
ahelwer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't looked into it. I don't really find proof-of-stake very interesting at a technical level, though. I don't know what all that "research" could be about if they are just going with proof-of-stake. Edit: taking a peek, their proof-of-stake algorithm (called ouroboros) claims to have some formal security proof employing game theory. That would be interesting to look into as I am not familiar with that technique.

Have you looked into Hedera Hashgraph?

Looks like their consensus algorithm is proprietary: https://docs.hedera.com/guides/core-concepts/hashgraph-conse...
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