Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#131

Post by enraged_camel » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #116

steveBK123 wrote: post #19

I find crypto super interesting and have dipped my toes in with some small real money just to force myself to try out different products. That said, so far, almost 10 years in, there really are not a lot of real world use cases. Sure there are glorified POCs of things that could potentially lead in the direction of real world use cases. But most of these products/tokens are just extremely meta. Tokens you get paid/pa…

Unfortunately this comment, which has nothing to do with the article linked, has been voted to the top. HN seems to take every article having anything to do crypto as an opportunity to share their unrelated and repetitive opinions about how crypto is bad. Why not just flag the article instead to get it off the front page? That would at least be less boring.

I agree, but this doesn't happen with just crypto. Some people post meta commentary about a submission's topic — often without reading the article itself. Then, others who also don't want to read the article read that meta commentary instead, and upvote it.

I don't know the root cause exactly, but it is a pretty annoying trend.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#132

Post by Lordarminius » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #59

steveBK123 wrote: post #19

I find crypto super interesting and have dipped my toes in with some small real money just to force myself to try out different products. That said, so far, almost 10 years in, there really are not a lot of real world use cases. Sure there are glorified POCs of things that could potentially lead in the direction of real world use cases. But most of these products/tokens are just extremely meta. Tokens you get paid/pa…

> there really are not a lot of real world use cases. It's effectively just one. To make illegal transactions. That's a long list of things: drugs, hiding wealth, evading currency controls, extortion, and so on. Otherwise, existing currency and transfer mechanisms are more or less available and convenient.

I can't believe intelligent people still hold this view.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#133

Post by loceng » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

mech422 wrote: post #129

loceng wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory capture is still a possible problem on the other end of the spectrum that needs to be countered with effort.

so we should expend the effort to fix the issues with the existing system.. But we should just throw out new systems like crypto because they still have issues that need "to be countered with effort" ? I'm not claiming any system is perfect, but it seems odd to shrug at the issues in one system and demonize another system for having issues...

You injecting a straw man argument doesn't help.

We need to fix the existing system, yes, and it requires real work - real relationship building, real trust networks of competent critical thinkers - a meritocracy, hierarchy of competent to form and be strengthened; regulatory capture is a multi-industry, multi-institutional issue.

Certain issues inherently to Bitcoin's issues are unavoidable pitfall and not fixable. The issues with government are fixable, and arguably the US government, democracy and capitalism has been highly successful for getting innovation to where it is today. Next step is making sure people/businesses are paying their fair share into the system and then redistributing a UBI to the largest segment or largest cog in the machinery - consumers, so then the machine has the fuel to run.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#134

Post by mech422 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

DogOfTheGaps wrote: post #125

mech422 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you have USD (you might not be a US citizen, exchange rates, yada yada), assuming you have a credit card, etc. etc. Proof of payment is basically instant, is globally accessible and I don't have to jump thru the 'verified by visa' bullshit. Also, no spending limits - I've ordered equipment from newegg and payed for next day delivery, only to have the equipment show up late because my visa 'helpfully' twigged…

Assuming you have USD I was assuming US persons doing a transaction in the US. If you are in another country, there will be other retailers that offer services in your currency. Also NewEgg supports transactions in many currencies. you might not be a US citizen Citizenship is not relevant to purchasing items for online retailers. assuming you have a credit card Debit cards can be used just as easily. Fewer protection…

you spend a lot of time and verbage to try and justify the issues with the existing system. You want to appeal to authority ("99% of people..." and "I'm pretty sure..") Not to mention trying to claim since you never had any issues, no one else should...

and in the end, you walk it back to "Crypto might be right for you". Which is what I've been saying all along. I don't claim crypto is right for everyone/everything. Just that there may be times when it is right for somepeople/somethings.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#135

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

intuitionist wrote: post #86

wyck wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This opinion is really common, I used to have it but what changed my mind was realizing there are not really any "real world" use cases. I look at crypto as actual money, with the same definition: "money is a verifiable record that is generally accepted". Money in of itself does not have any "real world" use cases, money is money. Money facilitates economic velocity and growth in the same way crypto does, except cryp…

Money classically has three use cases: a unit of account (I have X dollars in my bank account, Y dollars in my 401(k), etc.); a medium of exchange (I trade my labor for dollars and trade those dollars for rent, food, etc.); and a store of value (I save up for a house, car, engagement ring in dollars because I expect them to be fairly stable). Nobody in the real economy uses crypto as a unit of account. Most tokens ar…

> Most tokens are too volatile to be very useful as media of exchange

I wonder if this was half of the motivation behind Tesla no longer accepting Bitcoin.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#136

Post by OliverGilan » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

DogOfTheGaps wrote: post #106

mech422 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh - so lets see... NewEgg accepts(1): Doge, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin cash, etc. Telsa may or may not accept Bitcoin depending on Elon's mood. And El Salvador just made bitcoin legal tender. Yep - those are all illegal transactions. Your argument boils down to "Only criminals use Tor"... Not very useful. 1) https://kb.newegg.com/knowledge-base/using-crypto-on-newegg/

Purchasing items on NewEgg with USD is simple, easy, and very fast. If you are using a credit card, you get additional benefits and protections. Additionally, per the link you provided, there are a number of restrictions on using crypto on NewEgg. What is the benefit to using crypto vs using a credit card?

OP was talking about real world use case. Why does crypto have to be more beneficial than credit cards to count as a real world use case? There are people in the US who cannot get a credit card easily.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#137

Post by mech422 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #133

mech422 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so we should expend the effort to fix the issues with the existing system.. But we should just throw out new systems like crypto because they still have issues that need "to be countered with effort" ? I'm not claiming any system is perfect, but it seems odd to shrug at the issues in one system and demonize another system for having issues...

You injecting a straw man argument doesn't help. We need to fix the existing system, yes, and it requires real work - real relationship building, real trust networks of competent critical thinkers - a meritocracy, hierarchy of competent to form and be strengthened; regulatory capture is a multi-industry, multi-institutional issue. Certain issues inherently to Bitcoin's issues are unavoidable pitfall and not fixable.…

What strawman would that be?

BTW - I agree Bitcoin has issues (speed/cost being the 2 biggest). It was literally the first generation coin. Other coins are trying to solve those problems. Personally I like Cardano/ADA for that reason - its trying to fix some of the issues with first gen. coins.

Also, if you think you can get people/businesses to pay their fair share...I think your dreaming. I really hope you can, but I don't see it happening in the next 20 years.

I agree about consumers. Its annoying so much energy is spent talking about the 'minimum wage', when we really need people with a 'middle class wage' to drive the economy. Seems like we're more interested in keeping people at the bottom then actually increasing the numbers of people with disposable income to drive the economy.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#138

Post by leifg » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

ericbarrett wrote: post #30

leifg wrote: post #5

It’s always hilarious to me how so many crypto/blockchain startups have words like “trust” and “transparency” written all over their landing pages. In reality you have an insane amount of fraud and shadiness going in order to increase some arbitrary token value.

I’ve always considered unregulated advertising claims to be a reflection of the weakness of the product: A food with “Quality” in the brand name is almost always the low-shelf cheap version. “Comfort” in a motel means you’ll have a cheap bed and noisy, rattling air conditioning. Etc. The unbridled crypto space is chock full of these signals.

I never thought about it that way

Just went to the homepage of McDonalds and guess what their title says:

Burgers Fries & More. Quality Ingredients.

…

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#139

Post by spoonjim » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #19

I find crypto super interesting and have dipped my toes in with some small real money just to force myself to try out different products. That said, so far, almost 10 years in, there really are not a lot of real world use cases. Sure there are glorified POCs of things that could potentially lead in the direction of real world use cases. But most of these products/tokens are just extremely meta. Tokens you get paid/pa…

One real world use case I’ve seen is in sending money to basketcase countries. For example I pay a woman in Venezuela with Bitcoin and Amazon gift cards for digital content because her government would get their hands on the money otherwise.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#140

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #76

Everyone wants to talk about the future of crypto in terms of how it can be used. Not enough people are talking about the fact that a single breakthrough in computing could undo the encryption that these currencies are reliant upon, instantly driving the value to zero. This is a vulnerability that does not have an analogue in any other currencies, securities or stores of wealth. Because of that, crypto is and will be…

At least with Bitcoin, I'd worry more about systemic risks (China controls most of the miners) than risks in particular algorithms. That said, while SHA-256 has a lot of accumulated knowledge about hash functions in it and has had a lot of eyeballs on it over the years, it hasn't had such a big bounty on it, yet.