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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

#211

Post by arcticbull »

xur17 wrote: post #182
ganafagol wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still no value over a trusted third party, keeping all this in a central database. These games you are talking about just agree on this third party and that's it. And they already do that. The third party is states backing traditional banking systems.

> There is still no value over a trusted third party, keeping all this in a central database. These games you are talking about just agree on this third party and that's it. There is value - with a trusted third party, you are "trusting" that the third party will stick around, won't block you, and won't arbitrarily change the rules on you.

And who hosts those assets? How does this not apply to them?

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#213

Post by arcticbull »

sintaxi wrote: post #103
intuitionist wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Epic want to build Fortnite dollars as a slow distributed ledger instead of keeping it centralized? And why would they want to let you redeem for dollars?

There is no reason the purchase of a purple bazooka in a video game needs to be confirmed by thousands of nodes so someone like Epic would keep the crypto centralized and therefore fast. They wouldn't need to "let you redeem the bazooka for dollars" since there will be people who want the bazooka and would be willing to purchase it from you. Epic would then have the power to mint new bazooka's in order to raise funds…

Centralized crypto is functionally identical to a MySQL store.

re: SEC scrutiny, have you met Robux?

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#214

Post by tim333 »

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.

You've missed speculation and gambling. Not to say it's a great use case but it's the biggest. Most people buy them because the number goes up, not to buy drugs etc. Which is perhaps a bad idea but not actually illegal.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#215

Post by mech422 »

arcticbull wrote: post #200
mech422 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The key word there is 'supposed'...

Theranos, B. Madoff, and others seemed to feel that was just a suggestion :-P

Also, businesses are not required to buy their stock back from you, so they are not 'backed' any more then crypto is.

If a company goes broke, and you hold common stock - you get nothing

edit:s/there/their/

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#216

Post by sanderjd »

lottin wrote: post #189
sanderjd wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is possible to write in provisions for some actor or set of actors to seize assets in a smart contract. This doesn't seem common either because of immaturity or just culture, but I don't think it is impossible.

No, that's not it. An actor must be able to seize assets from another actor, under certain circumstances. That can't be done with smart contracts because of the security model of blockchains.

It can if it is written into the contract. I suspect pretty much all contracts will have provisions for this in the future.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#217

Post by mech422 »

meepmorp wrote: post #207
mech422 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It's reasonable to ask just how useful It's totally reasonable to ask how useful something is for you. However, other people might have other answers to that question. For instance, if existing solutions suited everyone - why are zelle and venmo so popular? Hell, I zelle money between MY OWN accounts at different banks just cause its faster, cheaper and easier then the alternative ACH/Wire transfers. Edit: Hmm - if…

My focus was payments (newegg was the original example), and I was comparing credit cards to crypto. But let me ask: why use zelle to move money between accounts? Why not crypto? Or let's say you're sending money to a friend to split a check or something; would you use crypto vs any of the other "cash" transfer mechanisms? I don't think that existing financial systems can't and shouldn't be replaced with something be…

Fair enough...

My bank/brokerage doesn't take crypto. So Zelle is the next best thing given how slow and expensive wiretransfer/ACH is. (Wasn't wire transfer supposed to be 'fast', it generally seems slower then ACH?). And yes, I do use crypto to send 'cash' to friends.

I do agree wholeheartedly with your statement crypto isn't ready 'for the masses' yet. For one thing, no coin can handle anywhere near the transactions Visa can. But I don't see that as a reason to vilify it, shut it down, or pretend that only criminals use it.

In HN vernacular, I see crypto's as 'startups' - some will pan out, the vast majority won't. Hopefully, each generation of coin will improve on the ones before it.

as for "just not for me" - I'm only putting beer money in. I think most of us that have been in it for a while are in that position. Certainly none of us are out mortgaging our houses. Being skeptical of the hype is a good thing. Maybe in a few years/generations crypto will be in a place that's more useful to you :-)

edit: formating s/any/and/

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#218

Post by marvindanig »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #195
Lordarminius wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So a consumer startup by a 20yo founder with no experience, business model or an iota of revenue is a ponzi scheme too?

Edit: Wait! It is so and Bay Area has been selling this pyramid scheme for years. lol.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#219

Post by hanklazard »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #98
hanklazard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the FDIC (although not everyone banks in the US) part but “speed” is not an area where traditional banks beat the right crypto solutions. My wife and I just had a major fiasco trying to transfer mortgage payments from one major bank to another. Our credit score was damaged severely. I’ll spare you the details but the diagnosis was eventually determined to be “not enough time for clearance” as in I need to h…

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…

No, I'm not being disingenuous. I'm telling you that it can take a number of days (4 if a weekend is involved) for retail transfers between American bank accounts to clear. I'm very aware that this is a matter of updating a simple database record--that's why it's so frustrating and why many people are bypassing this system entirely with stablecoins.

Re: Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists

#220

Post by hanklazard »

crazygringo wrote: post #119
hanklazard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the FDIC (although not everyone banks in the US) part but “speed” is not an area where traditional banks beat the right crypto solutions. My wife and I just had a major fiasco trying to transfer mortgage payments from one major bank to another. Our credit score was damaged severely. I’ll spare you the details but the diagnosis was eventually determined to be “not enough time for clearance” as in I need to h…

Cash is instant. Venmo is instant. You can pay for goods with a credit card and know it was approved instantly. In the very rare case you need to make a domestic wire transfer, yes it's currently slow, but that's not a technological problem, it's a political/institutional one. Plenty of countries have instant bank transfers as well. AND -- instant bank transfers should be coming to the US in 2023, when FedACH is supp…

I'm not arguing that crypto is necessary. I'm telling you that I can use it to settle a transaction in the US right now in minutes that currently takes days to settle through bank transfer. I'm glad to hear that instant bank transfers are coming and I'll use that tech happily when / if it arrives.
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