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Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

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Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#231

Post by sulam »

wolfgke wrote: post #203
madeofpalk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solve an actual, real life problem. All I see are Long Island Ice Tea Blockchain Corp. and Walmat saying that they're using blockchain to help their supply chain (whatever that means). The reality is is that Blockchain is no longer new. Compare it to iPhone - they both roughly came out at the same time, yet we're still having the same conversations - "What problem does Blockchain solve" - while the iPhone found its p…

> The reality is is that Blockchain is no longer new. Compare it to iPhone - they both roughly came out at the same time, yet we're still having the same conversations - "What problem does Blockchain solve" - while the iPhone found its place in the market. I still do not understand what kind of problem the iPhone solves (seriously!), while I can imagine quite well what kind of problem Bitcoin attempted to solve when…

> I still do not understand what kind of problem the iPhone solves

Did you try smart phones before the iPhone? It solves the problem they promised to solve but it actually delivered.

High fidelity web browsing in your pocket is probably the biggest one, but there are more.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#232

Post by spunker540 »

wpietri wrote: post #224
spunker540 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about “I want to buy a house without needing a bank as the middle man” or “I want to transact online without needing a credit card company intermediary taking fees” or “I want to cheaply send money to my family across the globe” or “I want to diversify with an asset that is truly global and not easily printable by some central government” or “my country’s currency is inflating like crazy and there arent enough us…

So all of these are basically Bitcoin. Bitcoin's been going for a decade with minimal use for any of those things. That suggests none of them are significant user needs for most people. (Or, at least, Bitcoin is a terrible match for any need that does exist.) Some of those aren't real needs. E.g., "without needing a bank" is not a real problem. The "diversify with an asset that is truly global" is similarly an ideolo…

Just how in the 90s there was a lot of things that people could do on the internet but didn’t due to the immaturity of the ecosystem so it is with bitcoin today. Back in 1995 you could order most things online but it wasn’t easy or convenient or trustworthy and most people didnt do it despite the availability.

The lightning network is just getting started which (once mainstream) is going to dramatically lower fees and transaction speeds for a ton of bitcoin use cases.

And even if some of the most compelling use cases are niche- (collapsing economies, illegal activities) those alone will keep the currency value afloat and if eventually it matures and offers lower fees than credit card companies and developing nations where many people don’t have bank accounts can leap frog our legacy payment systems then I think the tech will be here to stay.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#234

Post by jsutton »

rlucas wrote: post #101
Jonovono wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's too hard to find potential problems it can solve, but it's not necessarily needed to solve it. 1. Imagine you use FB. Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain (encrypted). The problem we have now is if a new social network comes along if you create an account you lose all of your previous data (which may or may not be what you want). This would let you easily bring in an…

What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"?? It doesn't mean actually, "store thousands of messages, posts, and photos literally 'on' the blockchain" because that would get ridiculously unwieldy. So maybe it means, "store pointers to the above-mentioned data within a blockchain," which makes for a plausible organizing principle but doesn't a…

Depends on how much censorship protection you want. Journalism of dangerous topics? Store it on a decentralized solution like IPFS, Swarm, Sia. Just want to store ownership records and transactions related to that data? Use AWS and store the pointer.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#235

Post by jsutton »

slg wrote: post #89
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally fair point. It's especially great for the investment world -- especially VC, which only needs one billion-dollar exit to make a return. So this makes sense!

Which basically sums up my problem with it. It is sad that the primary angle anyone looks at this from is as an investor or even a VC. That results in lots of wasted time, money, and specifically for most blockchain businesses wasted carbon ouput.

Why is this sad? It's just like the startup boom we had in tech, and while most flamed out, we were left with many that changed the world (for better or worse).

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#236

Post by krrrh »

jancsika wrote: post #152
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

I'm not sure you've framed the problem and solution correctly, but here is one obvious societal problem solved by Bitcoin: How does Scihub receive funding to support the service it provides? If you tried to fund it using Paypal, Visa/Mastercard, etc., it's quite likely that those payment systems would have already blocked the payments from reaching the service providers. Because it is substantially more difficult to…

It’s an interesting debate whether facilitating illegal (but society-enabling and productive) projects like sci-hub and the drug parts of silkroad will have been worth facilitating illegal (but society-harming) projects such as ransomware, assassination, money laundering, etc.

People will disagree about what goes in the categories of illegal-good and illegal-bad.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#237

Post by blotter_paper »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

>> I would love to know which societal problems can be reduced to a distributed trust problem. That would convince me that I'm wrong about blockchain technology.

I feel like Namecoin, the first Bitcoin fork, is ready to replace our current DNS system. The transaction fee for registering domains is comparable to current prices, and it gets us out of this horrible situation where we trust companies and governments not to abuse their power and sign new certificates (this is not just a theoretical issue). The problem of associating signing keys with domains is about as basic as you can get with distributed trust systems.

Are you unconvinced by this use case?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#238

Post by jsutton »

madeofpalk wrote: post #55
kirbypineapple wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue there's value beyond distributed trust: smart contracts (though you could argue that this is merely an application built upon the concept of distributed trust), the tokenization of physical assets (think real estate, oil and gas exploration/drilling/royalties, etc.), and more generally the ability for money to become a "product". These are all domains that blockchain is enabling, though it remains to be…

Again, what problems are being solved? Real estate, oil and gas exploration/drilling/royalties are all things that have existed without problem for many decades. Saying "real estate, but with blockchain" doesn't actually say what problem you're solving.

> Real estate, oil and gas exploration/drilling/royalties are all things that have existed without problem for many decades.

Really? I find that unbelievable. Ever try to procure data on real estate? It's almost impossible unless you're willing to cough up large sums of money. Seems to me that an open platform of real estate data would attract innovation and create value. Maybe something blockchain can solve?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#239

Post by jsutton »

simias wrote: post #125
vthallam wrote: post #61

More and more traditional money will flow into Crypto, not because Crypto is the answer for everything, but people just want to bet on the something that might in some form change everything in the future. I really get surprised by the boolean arguments whether blockchain is of any use arguments on HN. I mean there's so much activity, money, talent in Crypto since last year. Goldman Sachs CEO said actually in the nic…

I come from the other side of the argument: since there's so much money poured into cryptocurrencies, so many talents spending their days working on it, huge companies like Goldman Sachs saying that it's the future then what's taking so long? I'm not even asking for a killer app at this point, just for a compelling argument of what the future of a blockchain-powered world will look like. I don't think I'm a "know-it-…

> what's taking so long

This technology is combining software, hardware, game theory, monetary incentives. It's going to take a long time, and it hasn't even been 10 years.

Picture years from now, and the big buzzword trifecta of blockchain, AI, and IoT are relatively matured.

Can you really not see the potential in combining autonomous organizations making decisions on the output of AI that learns from data sourced through billions of IoT devices around the world?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#240

Post by dperfect »

mgummelt wrote: post #215
dperfect wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin was indeed designed to avoid the need for trust: "What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party." [1] To your point, in a broad sense the Bitcoin network relies on an inherent kind of "trust" that a certain set of economic assumptions and cryptographi…

I'm not equating government trust and blockchain trust in the strict sense. I'm saying they're both forms of trust. You're saying trust isn't a feature of the blockchain, seemingly based on the fact that users no longer have to trust central authorities. But the only reason this is possible is because users can trust the blockchain instead. So how is trust not a feature?

Trust isn't a feature in the way a16z describes:

"Blockchain computers are new types of computers where the unique capability is trust between users, developers, and the platform itself."

So yes, maybe blockchains require a certain level of trust in the technology (and decentralization) to be useful, but they certainly don't give rise to trust between users or developers. I know that's not what you were claiming - I'm just pointing out that blockchain tech doesn't magically create trust between strangers (nor is that its intention). Still, it does allow transactions to happen between untrusted parties as long as both of those parties have a basic level of confidence - or trust as you say - in the assumptions built into the blockchain.

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