Love the interactive bank interest rate checker on your homepage. It's always nice to see some interactivity that's relevant to the product, as opposed to floating d3 visualusations that have nothing to do what's actually on the page and serve to use up my battery.
Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
231–240 of 309 posts
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#232This is an awesome idea, and I intend to try it out. I am a mathematician, and at the same time I can't resist the temptation to purchase the occasional lottery ticket. What most people miss about the lottery is that there can be utility to variance - the opposite of ennui. Have you guys read The Lottery in Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery_in_Babylon
Is it worth buying his "Ficciones" compilation ? I have heard about the Story "Funes the Memorious", which is also included, and have been Interested in reading it since. Altough I still have 2 or 3 more books to read.
Yes, definitely worth it. There are some great stories in that collection:
- The Garden of Forking Paths - Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote - The Lottery in Babylon - The Library of Babel - Funes the Memorious - The Secret Miracle - Three Versions of Judas - Death and the Compass
You will not regret it. :)
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it worth buying his "Ficciones" compilation ? I have heard about the Story "Funes the Memorious", which is also included, and have been Interested in reading it since. Altough I still have 2 or 3 more books to read.
Yes, definitely worth it. There are some great stories in that collection: - The Garden of Forking Paths - Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote - The Lottery in Babylon - The Library of Babel - Funes the Memorious - The Secret Miracle - Three Versions of Judas - Death and the Compass You will not regret it. :)
Thank you :) I almost bought it on impulse, and I think I'm going to order it today.
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#234Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#235This looks really neat :) But I do wonder how well the Premium Bond (PB) idea will work when not backed by the state (NS&I, who issue PBs in the UK, is backed by the treasury). I would personally worry that my deposit will just be used for prizes in a Ponzi scheme situation. Another thought is that while it is true that in the UK a large number of the population have PBs, these are usually bought by their parents whe…
Having the backing of the government like with Premium Bonds is huge. Both for marketing and for trust. Building trust is definitely a challenge for us as a new company. Funds with Yotta are FDIC insured up to $250,000, which helps, and we communicate that to users, but people still need to trust us fundamentally. We looked into Premium Bonds and also found that a lot of Premium Bond ownership comes from older genera…
I like the concept, but what you are offering isn't really comparable to Premium Bonds in the UK. The prizes in Premium Bonds are guaranteed every month. It's a raffle where every £1 deposited gives you a unique Bond ID. This is totally different from a lottery where the prizes are not guaranteed to be awarded for every draw.
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#236Does it work worldwide?
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#237This seems like a very cool way to tap into the dopamine reward system to encourage positive behavior (saving more money). For people who don't have savings and have a very high rate of temporal discounting and high impulsivity, this could be a huge deal. Looking forward to seeing how this continues to develop.
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the interest rate side, the 0.20% is the base rate. If you win no prizes, you get that. Prizes comprise the bulk of the value from Yotta. Your total return is prizes + the base rate. On the insurance side, there are specialty insurance companies that do this kind of thing, similar to hole in one prizes or half court shot prizes at sporting events. We pay them a mark-up on expected value. Since the risk they're tak…
Why bother insuring yourselves then? Just to cover yourselves incase you get "unlucky"? Couldn't you structure the contest so that you know you'd payout $X per week and not need insurance?
I guess people eventually could win twice in a short span if they're unlucky and they'd be out of money
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#239Nobody should be "saving" anything beyond ~twice the month income amount. People should invest the rest instead. Putting money on hold means getting the whole idea of money wrong. Money is not a value itself, it's a productivity measurement unit.
Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m highly skeptical of jackpot generation, as there has been multiple high profile examples of corruption in this process. Yotta would have to insure me this is fair before I consider saving with them, but to be fair I’m probably not their target market as high earner that already has established savings practices.
Thanks for this feedback. What could we do that would give you comfort in the number drawing process? We definitely want to address this concern, so your feedback here would be great.
It is possible to perform "trustable" random number drawing by combining values from multiple third parties such that if any of them are fair, then the results are fair, with everyone publically able to verify the combining step.
That means all the third parties would have to be corrupt to corrupt the results. So if you can pick a diverse set of third parties such that everyone is likely to trust at least one of them, that will raise overall trust.
But you can do better than that.
You can also have people provide their own random input. In that case they will certainly trust themselves, and therefore can trust the results if they can verify the combination step.
And you can draw input from public sources that people can check for themselves, and have confidence is effectively random, in the sense that nobody can control the values. For example public blockchain hashes (as part of a combining scheme, not by themselves).
These sorts of schemes would give people absolute assurance that the drawn numbers are fair and uncorruptible, and they aren't difficult to implement.
(PM me if you'd like to discuss further. Email in profile.)