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Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

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Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#191

Post by MomoXenosaga »

dheera wrote: post #99
humaniania wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use cases of blockchain maybe. What part of that requires a separate "crypto currency"? Not any legal ones that I can think of.

If you think legal is good, and you agree with the law, congratulations, you live in a developed country with a mature law system, AND you are probably at least middle class or higher in that society. There are a lot of people in the world for which the law itself is unethical.

Well yes the developed world has a tendency to go after terrorists and criminals who use crypto.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#192

Post by loceng »

mech422 wrote: post #137
loceng wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just one method of collecting more tax money and it's happening:

"Biden Wants to Hire 87,000 Additional IRS Agents to Go After Wealthy Tax Dodgers" - https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nibk03/biden_want...

"Biden's $80 billion plan to beef up IRS audits may target wealthy small business owners" - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/05/bidens-80-billion-plan-to-be...

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#193

Post by jeffshek »

crazygringo wrote: post #188
xur17 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venmo isn't instant in the same way that USDC is though. When a USDC transaction settles, I know the money is mine, when a venmo transfer settles, or an ach transfer settles, there is an opportunity for the money to be clawed back for quite a bit of time [0]. We can argue if this is a good or a bad feature, but it does mean that the transfer really isn't instant as I don't have guarantees behind the money being mine.…

Venmo is instant. Clawbacks are an entirely different matter. And while yes, the absence of clawbacks means your money is then "yours", it also means that if you're hacked or defrauded, there's no way to recover funds because it's now "theirs". For people who aren't engaged in illegal activity, the ability for banks and courts to retrieve illegally (or even accidentally) transferred funds is widely seen as a feature.…

Venmo isn't instant. Send yourself more than 15k. If that goes through, try to send it back.

Sure, the row in the database is instant though.

I agree it is a feature for a bank to be able to undo mistakes. The problem happens when a bank commits the mistakes and refuses to acknowledge it.

This is akin to all of us submitting to google and gmail, its great unless our account gets flagged by an algorithm by mistake. No mistake, i would be screwed.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#194

Post by ashtonkem »

xwolfi wrote: post #163
ashtonkem wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m extremely bearish on Crypto, but I don’t think this is a fair criticism of it. If someone manages to break the crypto underpinning say, Bitcoin, then the crash in Bitcoin prices would be the least of our problems as a society. The sudden, catastrophic collapse of all online commerce would probably be a bigger problem, as would the immediate halting of electronic interbank communication.

I mean we survived before online commerce, I remember it vividly even. Can bitcoin survive without crypto ? There was even a time, believe it or not, where electricity didn't exist and people/society still kinda worked... When classical crypto is reverse (when, not if), then we'll simply have all our past secrets revealed. What you want is gradual increase in complexity so that the decyphered past only impact dead pe…

There is a big, big difference between “we survived before online commerce” and “you’re going back to a pre 1990s economy tomorrow”.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#195

Post by gcatalfamo »

Lordarminius wrote: post #132
treis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I can’t believe intelligent people don’t see crypto for the ponzi scheme that it is

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#196

Post by capitol_ »

xwolfi wrote: post #90
treis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dislike crypto too, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt: it's also presented/sold as a sort of easy stock, pure of anything other than an inflation prevention. It's as electronic as a stock, as purely abstract as a piece of gold, as resistant to inflation (theoretically) as anything having an intrinsic value that won't depend on currency. Ofc, criminal transactions are also supposed to be eased but you kno…

I would say it's quite wrong to think of crypto as some sort of stock.

Stocks are ultimately anchored in a company, and it's ability to pay dividends to it's owners. The historical average of the value creation for S&P 500 for dividends are about 40% so it's not an amount that can be disregarded.

Since crypto doesn't have any similar mechanism, and all of the value is instead tied to what other persons want to buy it for, I argue that it's better to compare it to an online casino rather than an stock market. That would be more fair for those that are new to investing.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#197

Post by arcticbull »

jeffshek wrote: post #193
crazygringo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venmo is instant. Clawbacks are an entirely different matter. And while yes, the absence of clawbacks means your money is then "yours", it also means that if you're hacked or defrauded, there's no way to recover funds because it's now "theirs". For people who aren't engaged in illegal activity, the ability for banks and courts to retrieve illegally (or even accidentally) transferred funds is widely seen as a feature.…

Venmo isn't instant. Send yourself more than 15k. If that goes through, try to send it back. Sure, the row in the database is instant though. I agree it is a feature for a bank to be able to undo mistakes. The problem happens when a bank commits the mistakes and refuses to acknowledge it. This is akin to all of us submitting to google and gmail, its great unless our account gets flagged by an algorithm by mistake. No…

It's exactly as instant as Strike.

Further, both will be totally instant vis-a-vis your actual bank account in a few years as RTP rolls out. No crypto needed. [1] I'm led to believe the delays in implementation were ensuring small community banks had a risk model.

> This is akin to all of us submitting to google and gmail, its great unless our account gets flagged by an algorithm by mistake. No mistake, i would be screwed.

Have you met typos?

[1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#198

Post by shoto_io »

vmception wrote: post #171
shoto_io wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> - discounted and preferential liquidity? Private Equity (PE) investors, of which Venture Capital (VC) firms are a subset, typically buy stakes in organizations that are different and better than what anyone else is able to own. Founders and employees in startups typically get common stock, VC firms typically get preferred stock, a completely separate class of shares that has more privileges than common stock. Even…

Wow. That’s a lot of deep insight. Thanks for sharing!

Ad point 1): didn’t that change a bit over the last 1-2 years? I have heard from founders that they have increasingly the upper hand due to the massive capital inflow. This had also led to the fact that founders can now cash out much earlier than let’s say 5-10 years ago, through so called secondaries (?).

Ad point 3) I thought a fund first raises x dollars and then starts investing? There is no more joining in after that, until the next funds starts?

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#199

Post by arcticbull »

doggosphere wrote: post #118
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…

Ironically, the only times I've wired money internationally was so I could deposit fiat to a crypto exchange. Canada to Japan, Canada to Poland. Each time it takes more than 2 weeks to arrive or be accessible in my account. Whenever I "wire" crypto, it shows up in my account and is accessible in hours.

This is due to AML/KYC. The only reason you can do that with crypto is it's got the safety off.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#200

Post by arcticbull »

mech422 wrote: post #108
slg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of cryptocurrencies are backed by real world assets? Who ensures that this backing is actually baked into the cryptocurrency and isn't just some marketing speak? For example there is Tether which claimed to be backed by USD. "[I]t turns out that the stablecoin that used to say it was 100 per cent backed by cash reserves is in fact . . . 2.9 per cent backed by cash reserves".[1] [1] - https://www.ft.co…

And Theranos claimed to have working machines... Risk is risk - in stock, crypto, or life in general.

That's a false equivalence. Literally every share of a business is supposed to be backed by a business. Zero coins entitle the bearer to any right or interest whatsoever. Even those stable coins don't give you any claim on the backing instruments. Certainly not in Tether town. Says so right in their T&Cs.
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