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Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

bennettftomlin.com

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Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#141

Post by aeturnum »

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?

One of the biggest disappointments to me about where we are with crypto is how the arc of the space supports the conventional wisdom about financial systems in general.

There was this idea, back at the start, that crypto would bring a new era of low-fee finex (especially for people in countries suffering under exploitative currency manipulation). The dream was that you'd be able to freely and cheaply transfer digital currencies and avoid the hardship of happening to live in a country that's experiencing high inflation. However, it seems like every time a crypto currency gets enough support and utilization that it might really be an alternative to the local currency, that popularization also pushes up transaction costs or exchange rates above the fiat finex rates. So we get the world we have now where all the big currencies have high costs and aren't even practical for transactions in the wealthy world, much less the developing world.

To me, it really feels like a repeat of the system that crypto folks critique: the banks. They too are uninterested in providing low-fee transactions, despite their energy costs per tx being far, far lower. The general idea is that they are greedy (and obviously banks are) but I'm very sad that crypto hasn't produced many real world examples to demonstrate that the banks are obviously greedy in this way.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#142

Post by DogOfTheGaps »

OliverGilan wrote: post #136
DogOfTheGaps wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does crypto have to be more beneficial than credit cards to count as a real world use case?

Because if you want people to switch from credit/debit/paypal to crypto, the idea is that it needs to offer some tangible benefit.

There are people in the US who cannot get a credit card easily.

Yes. Debit or Paypal can be used then. The only clear benefit I see from crypto are people who are completely unable to get ANY bank account. But still with crypto, you need a way to purchase it. Not easy without a bank account, but possible if you can find a way to buy it with cash.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#143

Post by valec »

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…

monero is the only one that's actually worth a damn as a...y'know, currency, except because it's inflationary nobody talks about it because it's harder to make a profit.

it's actually private, has fast and cheap transactions and is pretty stable. only problem imo is that it's POW (and mined on the cpu which means it makes crypto mining malware more common)

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#144

Post by DogOfTheGaps »

mech422 wrote: post #134
DogOfTheGaps wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Fraud detection is a feature, not an issue. Default spending limits on debit cards are a feature, not an issue. It's a very good idea that debit cards have default maximum spends, as long as it is simple to raise them permanently.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#145

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

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…

> It doesn't feel like we are any closer to normal people using it for normal real world transactions/finance.

Crypto was always just a way for nerds to legally get rich quick. (When before that opportunity was limited to various finance types.)

Whether that's good or bad is up to you. (It's not like the various non-digital "financial instruments" we've had for a long time before crypto were doing much good for normal real world transactions.)

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#146

Post by Aunche »

borrowcheckfml wrote: post #29
slg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except those "exotic derivatives, structured products, etc" do have real investments at the heart of them. What is at the heart of those "DeFi" investments? It seems to mostly be criminal and criminal-like behavior (this includes transferring money in ways the local government doesn't approve of which can admittedly be great if the local government is oppressive).

I think it's arguable what real investments are. How "real" is the stock price of Gamestop? Aren't most prices just driven by imaginary narratives? Investors rarely care about dividends. There are also DeFi projects that are based what you call "real investments" such as stablecoins, synthetic assets for stocks and commodities, etc. When the backing/staking mechanism for these works as intended, they are just as real…

The difference is that GameStop actually has a way to receive cash outside of an investor. They're a real business with revenue. GameStop is using the inflated valuation to raise money to pay off debt and expand its business. While it's unlikely, it's possible that they will eventually make enough profit to justify it's valuation.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#147

Post by shoto_io »

vmception wrote: post #48

The author has faith in their ability to make money He has no faith in seeing their presence as validation in the project That’s an accurate view and he shouldn’t limit that to crypto VCs, its the same in other venture capital. Crypto just helped lower the distortion field, while non-crypto VCs just still have better marketing unbeknownst to him They all get discounted and preferential liquidity if they’re any good a…

I think that’s a very good comment.

I don’t understand all parts of it though.

What do you mean by

- discounted and preferential liquidity?

- perpetual block?

- the entire last sentence?

I’d love to get a deeper understanding

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#148

Post by ac29 »

ineedasername wrote: post #58
borrowcheckfml wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it like this. Various tokens give you certain types of exposures with different risk profiles. Yields are so high because of the risk. This really isn't so different from the centralized financial system where we have built complex structures (exotic derivatives, structured products, etc) to give you certain types of exposures. The difference is that DeFi is globally accessible and permissionless. Even if…

I don't think you're wrong conceptually. But in practical terms: 1) the traditional options with varying risk profiles are mostly legitimate. The ratio of scam to authentic project is much higher in crypto. Or if not "scam", products where the creators (as pointed out in this article) might be perfectly happy if the product turned out to be successful, but mostly don't care because they make their money up front: rew…

I agree with most of this, but: "SEC has stepped in pretty heavily to classify most crypto as securities" is pretty much not true. The SEC has been pretty heavy handed with ICO's, but most cryptocurrencies are not currently regulated as securities. If they were, all existent US based exchanges would be illegal.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#149

Post by [deleted] »

imagineerschool wrote: post #117
short_sells_poo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you being purposely disingenuous here? Perhaps crypto is an improvement over some archaic US banking standards but in the UK transactions will clear basically immediately and cost nothing. A money transfer is asymptotically just updating a couple of database records in a transaction. Execution speed is a technical problem, and one that is not solved efficiently by cryptos. Finally, most western countries offer an…

They are being serious. Crypto financial services are a huge step forward in environments with broken banking systems. The US is one such place. You're living in comfort and wealth in a civilized nation with modern regulated banks, so your perspective is narrow.

[deleted]

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#150

Post by mech422 »

aeturnum wrote: post #141
DogOfTheGaps wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One of the biggest disappointments to me about where we are with crypto is how the arc of the space supports the conventional wisdom about financial systems in general. There was this idea, back at the start, that crypto would bring a new era of low-fee finex (especially for people in countries suffering under exploitative currency manipulation). The dream was that you'd be able to freely and cheaply transfer digital…

Yeah - both Bitcoin and Ethereum have issues with transfer prices. I'm getting a lil worried about Cardano/ADA as well, as it appears its a 1 ADA fee for transfer.

There is also the problem of transaction volume. No coin can currently handle anything close to the number of transactions the visa network can.

Sadly, as much as I hate how its being pumped, that was one thing doge got right - cheap and fast. And for years the price was stable. This made it really nice for transfers between exchanges.

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