Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 312 posts

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#241

Post by jhoechtl »

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…

> Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity.

It's often generating an artificial need where no need has been before.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#242

Post by jhoechtl »

TrevorAustin wrote: post #70

Speaking as a longtime skeptic, A16Z has actually produced the single clearest answer I've seen to that question: blockchains may be good for bootstrapping new network effects by giving early participants in a network (in a Metcalfe's Law sense of network) an incentive to participate. Pure utility tokens can be like call options on the eventual value of the network if it gets off the ground. It's a novel way of solvi…

For those merely wanting to earn money from blockchain it is an instrument to convert electrical energy into money. All the other attached bells and whistles are a by-product.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#243

Post by elyobo »

madeofpalk wrote: post #162
elyobo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd have to argue that real estate has existed for much, much longer than a few decades :D I'm a pretty big sceptic on all of this crypto BS, but the ownership of real estate assets seems like a pretty archaic system of not easily inspected pieces of paper. Having a public, provable system for recording this information (and possibly other related info, e.g. liens) seems like it would be of some use. The syst…

THIS PROBLEM DOES NOT NEED BLOCKCHAIN TO BE SOLVED

Sure, and I'm not saying that it does, but it may also be one possible solution. Not necessarily the best but probably better than what we currently have.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#244

Post by elyobo »

w4 wrote: post #117
elyobo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd have to argue that real estate has existed for much, much longer than a few decades :D I'm a pretty big sceptic on all of this crypto BS, but the ownership of real estate assets seems like a pretty archaic system of not easily inspected pieces of paper. Having a public, provable system for recording this information (and possibly other related info, e.g. liens) seems like it would be of some use. The syst…

> the ownership of real estate assets seems like a pretty archaic system of not easily inspected pieces of paper. Having a public, provable system for recording this information (and possibly other related info, e.g. liens) seems like it would be of some use. The system we have works, but it could work better. This already exists in many states. It's a political problem (whether or not to use of tax money to pay for…

I'm not in the states, I'm in Australia. The records here exist but AFAIK cost money to retrieve and are scattered, generally you end up paying a moderate amount (say $1k - $2k) for a conveyancer to look up all the relevant records before purchasing and spot any problems for you.

Arguably you'd want the conveyancer anyway to go through the legal concerns, and clearly "blockchain" solutions are not the only possible solutions - simply digitising them and making them available and sensibly organised would be fine.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#245

Post by koonsolo »

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…

What problem did email solve?

1. I can send a letter to anyone, because anyone has an address. Not everyone has an email address. Plus I can add small physical things, and it's more personal with handwriting and a little perfume ;).

2. If I need quick communication, I just call them.

A lot of arguments that are anti-blockchain and anti-cryptocurrency (based on other tech besides blockchain) can be used in the same way with email.

I can give you pretty convincing arguments why email will fail because we already have traditional snail mail (which can do a lot more), and phone (which is faster and more direct).

Fact is that cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and other blockchain applications live 100% on the internet, which means it's faster, cheaper, simpler, global (= not tied to countries and specific companies)

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#246

Post by marklgr »

koonsolo wrote: post #245
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…

What problem did email solve? 1. I can send a letter to anyone, because anyone has an address. Not everyone has an email address. Plus I can add small physical things, and it's more personal with handwriting and a little perfume ;). 2. If I need quick communication, I just call them. A lot of arguments that are anti-blockchain and anti-cryptocurrency (based on other tech besides blockchain) can be used in the same wa…

Emails are cheap, quick and asynchronous (contrary to phone), there's a log of the conversation which can be forwarded if need be, and you can attach data to it (document, video etc.).

You can sort your mailbox according to your needs, which gains time and save space compared to, say, hanging folders.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#247

Post by hanniabu »

Max_aaa wrote: post #197
narrator wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing I've seen blockchains used for, besides currency, is as an integration platform for a non-centralized supply chain. There's really no money in it, since there aren't any gatekeepers, but that's sort of the point. The idea is that the farmer picks his carrots, puts them in a box and sends them off to the carrot juice guy. When he does this he puts a upc code on the side of the carrot box and then puts t…

How is this being solved by a block-chain? You still need to trust all the people in the production line (Farmer, Juicer, Seller and not to mention that transportation guys) that brought the bottle of juice to market to actually record things correctly into the used block-chain. The trust required in the data entry "Link/Step" basically results in the use of a block-chain to be pointless, as trust is already a requir…

There are various projects developing solutions for hardware and sensor integration

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#248

Post by spanktosh1 »

TrevorAustin wrote: post #70

Speaking as a longtime skeptic, A16Z has actually produced the single clearest answer I've seen to that question: blockchains may be good for bootstrapping new network effects by giving early participants in a network (in a Metcalfe's Law sense of network) an incentive to participate. Pure utility tokens can be like call options on the eventual value of the network if it gets off the ground. It's a novel way of solvi…

SpankChain - it's porn on the blockchain, check it out - beta.spankchain.com.

If you accept the premise that blockchains are coordination platforms, because they dramatically reduce the cost of making credible commitments to future cooperation, then you should accept that the most disruptive opportunities will require unprecedented levels of coordination - coordination at a scale that most people think is impossible or infeasibly expensive, but that those who have mastered cryptoeconomics know is now feasible.

Imagine the differences in coordination potential of two societies where only one has mastered time, and you start to get a sense of why this technology is so powerful.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#249

Post by torpfactory »

bsparker wrote: post #92
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…

I believe the actual problem this solves, the "killer application," is already out there.

Murder for hire?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#250

Post by TJSomething »

wpietri wrote: post #219
sjeohp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I would like to pay/donate to an organization even though no major credit card will let me."

Thanks. That's a plausible hypothetical. Could you name an organization like that? One that you are eager to donate to? How many people would like to donate to it? What's the total payment volume per year? The only organization I can think of that might be in that category is Wikileaks. But they take both credit cards and Paypal, so they don't qualify. Maybe Hamas or Al Qaeda? Except that those are illegal to donate…

I once backed crowdfunded hardware before crowdfunding services like Kickstarter were really a thing and they couldn't really get their credit card provider to accept the risk, so I had to use an international wire transfer for it. I guess cryptocurrency would be decent for that.

That really just boils down to cryptocurrency being good for business models that are so new that they sound really risky. I'm not really sure that enabling such models is really a net good to society.

Post reply on HN