Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 344 posts

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#161

Post by retcon »

gingerlime wrote: post #73
arcticbull wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is. The thought process for VCs investing in crypto is simple: they get a huge discount on the tokens in the raise that they can turn around and dump on retail a few months later for huge returns. Instead of waiting 10+ years for a traditional exit, they can get liquidity in a few months. As Chamath admitted on the podcast, even when they're on a vesting schedule the…

That’s my understanding as well after listening to Crypto Critics and Griftonomics podcasts. Highly recommend both although so much stuff is way over my head. I wish there was a beginner’s version :)

I'd like to recommend a shelf of great to read erudite and intelligible financial history and financial social history and technicality, from which you'd recognize the simulacra, but it wouldn't help very much because this crypto game strips out everything fundamental economic and human from their imaginary systems and leaves solely a caricature of a carcass.

I'm despondent about the overall crypto situation, please forgive me for my cynicism, because I'm genuinely concerned about how many times people can exclaim the king is naked the cupboard is bare the promises aren't merely empty but never had meaning, and yet the socialized penny just won't drop.

This FT article [0] goes some way to describing how vulnerable young and low income people are to false investment scheming. What's needed (very rapidly) is to reveal the full extent of behavioural and technical engineering used in exploitation, instead of blaming the phenomenon on concocted reductio ad infortunium.

[0] Financial Times article "Generation Moonshot": https://archive.ph/3d4DW

Edit,: added for clarity, "...from which...the simulacra.."; corrected "onto" as "on" and thereafter revised with clearer unchanged meaning the rest of final sentence. (and Ed2 sp ip.); E3 people instead of folk ,(mobile sorry) E4 added, "scheming" after "false investment" for clarity.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#162

Post by HWR_14 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #130
guelo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By timing the market on a coin hype cycle?

Pretty much - no “long term” passive investment in crypto. Its a casino, but one with extremely good odds for players if you time it right.

As I understand it, either you're good at timing the market or you got lucky. If you got lucky, there's no reason to be so cocky. If you are good at timing the market why aren't you making a fortune on Wall Street?

(Unless you are making a fortune on Wall Street)

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#163

Post by nobody9999 »

ackbar03 wrote: post #14
pg_bot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single one of these web3 companies is going bust. They could all be built without tokens or a blockchain if they wanted to. There are only two things propping up the entire crypto economy, VC funding and fraud. Once the VC money leaves the ecosystem the dominoes will fall.

Yet some VCs are still plowing into web3. There was an article today about how Moellis was getting into Web3 companies. I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is. I tend to be in the camp that web3 is just a bunch of hot air seeing how cryptos been around for quite a while now with few use cases, but I also give benefit of the doubt there could be something there given the nature of tech.

>Yet some VCs are still plowing into web3. There was an article today about how Moellis was getting into Web3 companies. I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is.

I'd hazard a guess that it's something along the lines of "throw shit against the wall and see if anything sticks," or less cynically "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes."

Isn't that pretty much the modus operandi of VCs? Invest in a bunch of speculative ventures and hopefully make all of it (and much, much more) back if/when one or more becomes profitable?

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#164

Post by dboreham »

davidguetta wrote: post #105
pembrook wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait...what? You’re complaining about VCs pushing vapor while simultaneously admitting you participated in pumping “ponzi-like” schemes on regular people? You do realize those 7 figure returns you made were a direct wealth transfer from later-stage victims of the ponzi to you? I’m astonished you’re claiming moral superiority over VCs while sitting on wealth you took from thousands of poor people in places like Vietna…

Early investors were excited by the technology, not the promise of quick gains and speculation, like VC nowadays.. that probably where his "superiori moral", provided he meant it that way which I doubt, are. A lot of people think crypto are plain useless but that is just wrong in practice. They are de facto actual "currency", which is already a lot especially for people in third world countries whose national currenc…

Unrelated, but: love your music.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#167

Post by [deleted] »

davidguetta wrote: post #105
pembrook wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait...what? You’re complaining about VCs pushing vapor while simultaneously admitting you participated in pumping “ponzi-like” schemes on regular people? You do realize those 7 figure returns you made were a direct wealth transfer from later-stage victims of the ponzi to you? I’m astonished you’re claiming moral superiority over VCs while sitting on wealth you took from thousands of poor people in places like Vietna…

Early investors were excited by the technology, not the promise of quick gains and speculation, like VC nowadays.. that probably where his "superiori moral", provided he meant it that way which I doubt, are. A lot of people think crypto are plain useless but that is just wrong in practice. They are de facto actual "currency", which is already a lot especially for people in third world countries whose national currenc…

[deleted]

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#168

Post by HWR_14 »

davidguetta wrote: post #105
pembrook wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait...what? You’re complaining about VCs pushing vapor while simultaneously admitting you participated in pumping “ponzi-like” schemes on regular people? You do realize those 7 figure returns you made were a direct wealth transfer from later-stage victims of the ponzi to you? I’m astonished you’re claiming moral superiority over VCs while sitting on wealth you took from thousands of poor people in places like Vietna…

Early investors were excited by the technology, not the promise of quick gains and speculation, like VC nowadays.. that probably where his "superiori moral", provided he meant it that way which I doubt, are. A lot of people think crypto are plain useless but that is just wrong in practice. They are de facto actual "currency", which is already a lot especially for people in third world countries whose national currenc…

The case I heard for buying into ETH from people when it was starting had nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with having already missed the BTC rocketship

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#169

Post by risyachka »

pg_bot wrote: post #11
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #5

Look into SoRare’s volume. They raised over $500m. Volume is now lower than it was way back in 2020. The crypto down rounds are going to be hilarious. Note to investors: if you’re investing in crypto projects, carefully consider the ponzinomics and the vesting schedule. You want your unlocks to happen in the middle of the bullrun when exit liquidity is ample. And also remember that whatever you might think of as “nor…

Every single one of these web3 companies is going bust. They could all be built without tokens or a blockchain if they wanted to. There are only two things propping up the entire crypto economy, VC funding and fraud. Once the VC money leaves the ecosystem the dominoes will fall.

>> They could all be built without tokens or a blockchain if they wanted to

Sure, and all web2.0 tech can be built without AWS or docker. But in many cases, they give you a powerful advantage.

Same with blockchain. What now is happening in web3.0 is not that different from the dot com bubble. But it busted, and then a ton of new profitable companies appeared.

Blockchain tech will for sure have many legit use cases, same with tokens and tokenomics.

Will most of the current crypto companies go bust? Probably.

Does this mean that blockchain and tokens are crap? No.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#170

Post by epups »

risyachka wrote: post #169
pg_bot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single one of these web3 companies is going bust. They could all be built without tokens or a blockchain if they wanted to. There are only two things propping up the entire crypto economy, VC funding and fraud. Once the VC money leaves the ecosystem the dominoes will fall.

>> They could all be built without tokens or a blockchain if they wanted to Sure, and all web2.0 tech can be built without AWS or docker. But in many cases, they give you a powerful advantage. Same with blockchain. What now is happening in web3.0 is not that different from the dot com bubble. But it busted, and then a ton of new profitable companies appeared. Blockchain tech will for sure have many legit use cases, s…

Hopium, the ultimate crypto currency
Post reply on HN