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

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

#211

Helium isn't your typical crypto company. Their vision is actually very lofty - build a distributed low data wireless network completely independent of phone providers and cable companies. And pay the people who own nodes a percentage of the $ earned thru the traffic flow of their node. The payment just uses crypto because the ecosystem is a nice fit. Everybody knows what miners are and that they make money. The prob…

The community-run-hotspot model is 100% wrong for this because IoT nodes for sensing things like earthquakes and climate are more widely spread out than people who want to run hotspots.

The #1 model to make it work is ride on top of the cellular network which already offers wide (but not that wide) coverage. The #2 model is to have a plan and do the engineering to figure out where you need to put up towers. Even then it is really hard to get universal coverage.

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

#212
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If "web2" hadn't shut off its own users from any semblance of ownership in the platforms What are you talking about?

Do you have any say whatsoever how your data and content are used by, say, Facebook? Or what kind of content is allowed/disallowed?

> Do you have any say whatsoever how your data and content are used by, say, Facebook?

You're describing DRM. It doesn't exist for blockchain either - famously I can copy/paste NFTs all day long. And it's not clear whether most NFTs even provide any copyrights for the content they link to so you still don't even "own" the content in the legal sense.

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

#213
The conventional wisdom suggests that governments should not be in the business of 'picking winners' when it comes to subsidizing industries.

Private funds can do whatever they want I suppose, but I wonder if there's a term for VCs that spend government-scale funds on things that look like long-term losers. Crypto and 'web3' are just the latest examples of this, and they're coming after a decade of equally uninspiring ideas like social networks, food delivery, Uber, Airbnb and WeWork.

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

#214

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…

GameStop NFT did $2M the first day. Maybe everyone just doesn't know where the volume is? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32238127

GameStop is a meme. It isn't the whole market.

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

#215

Helium isn't your typical crypto company. Their vision is actually very lofty - build a distributed low data wireless network completely independent of phone providers and cable companies. And pay the people who own nodes a percentage of the $ earned thru the traffic flow of their node. The payment just uses crypto because the ecosystem is a nice fit. Everybody knows what miners are and that they make money. The prob…

> build a distributed low data wireless network completely independent of phone providers and cable companies. Don't the people buying the LoRa gateways just connect them their router, which is being provided bandwidth by phone and cable companies? Or alternately LTE, which is also being run by phone companies?

Indeed.

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

#216

Helium isn't your typical crypto company. Their vision is actually very lofty - build a distributed low data wireless network completely independent of phone providers and cable companies. And pay the people who own nodes a percentage of the $ earned thru the traffic flow of their node. The payment just uses crypto because the ecosystem is a nice fit. Everybody knows what miners are and that they make money. The prob…

isn't this roughly the business model of "Pied Piper" from Silicon Valley the tv show?

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

#217

Helium isn't your typical crypto company. Their vision is actually very lofty - build a distributed low data wireless network completely independent of phone providers and cable companies. And pay the people who own nodes a percentage of the $ earned thru the traffic flow of their node. The payment just uses crypto because the ecosystem is a nice fit. Everybody knows what miners are and that they make money. The prob…

>Personally, I think the government should subsidize something like this to allow it to get off the ground. Earthquake data, climate data, traffic data, etc. Essentially public use. Literally the exact opposite of what web3 is. You're arguing for a _public good_, but web3's entire premise only makes sense when the opposite happens: everything is privatized, everything is monetized. THIS is the world that web3 makers…

Web3 folks spend a lot of time and effort on public goods, it's one of Vitalik's core visions for the direction of crypto as a whole.

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

#218
post #213

The conventional wisdom suggests that governments should not be in the business of 'picking winners' when it comes to subsidizing industries. Private funds can do whatever they want I suppose, but I wonder if there's a term for VCs that spend government-scale funds on things that look like long-term losers. Crypto and 'web3' are just the latest examples of this, and they're coming after a decade of equally uninspirin…

It is called the effects of holding interest rates at 0% and constant QE. Too much money looking for returns with no way to get them.

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

#219
post #213

The conventional wisdom suggests that governments should not be in the business of 'picking winners' when it comes to subsidizing industries. Private funds can do whatever they want I suppose, but I wonder if there's a term for VCs that spend government-scale funds on things that look like long-term losers. Crypto and 'web3' are just the latest examples of this, and they're coming after a decade of equally uninspirin…

Deregulation is like flat power structures. Ultimately it just means that you don't know who the new regulators are. I can't help but wonder the difference between valuing the ideas of unfettered capitalism and the realities.

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

#220
post #213

The conventional wisdom suggests that governments should not be in the business of 'picking winners' when it comes to subsidizing industries. Private funds can do whatever they want I suppose, but I wonder if there's a term for VCs that spend government-scale funds on things that look like long-term losers. Crypto and 'web3' are just the latest examples of this, and they're coming after a decade of equally uninspirin…

Government scale funds are about 1,000x this amount. For example the US "defense" spending for 2022 is 778 Billion - billion with a B.

And defense spending is less than 10% of overall government spending in the US when you include state and local spending.

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