Is there a legitimate reason why ICO-backed projects seem to need so much money before even making a working prototype? Don't startups normally have to have a basic product to show off before they get investors?
Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
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Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is a solution to unstable currencies in the same way that gasoline is a fire extinguisher. People in Venezuela that want to actually eat are using USD.
they cannot send or receive usd from abroad. they can do it with bitcoin. you get now the value proposition of a global currency that is not government controlled?
If crypto, being "not controlled by a central authority", solves inflation, surely it would already have replaced the default currency in Venezuela by now?
"Authorities have .. permitted trading of bitcoin in Venezuela, though they have heavily fined and detained people who use computers to earn bitcoins by auditing online cryptocurrency transactions. Such “mining” operations use immense amounts of electricity, which is heavily subsidised in Venezuela — meaning the state essentially winds up paying for the process."
"few businesses openly advertise that they accept cryptocurrency out of concern they will be extorted. It’s still difficult to make many purchases in Venezuela with bitcoin"
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/venezuelans-seeing...
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer, and to a more limited extent, for dapps like Augur. Soooo, buying drugs and illegal gambling? Sure, I'll give you that one. My argument rephrased: "Because cryptocurrency investors have repeatedly made claims that don't pan out, we can be reasonably skeptical and concerned about their energy consumption until they actually fix it or at the very least provide peer-r…
> Soooo, buying drugs and illegal gambling? Sure, I'll give you that one. Yes, although also remittance payments, and some usage in places with unstable currencies like Venezuela. Hard to gauge how much, though. > My argument rephrased: "Because cryptocurrency investors have repeatedly made claims that don't pan out, we can be reasonably skeptical and concerned about their energy consumption until they actually fix i…
Let’s say I am in Venenzuela and I have some bitcoin. Now what do I do with it? Can I pay my rent with it? Buy food? Of course not. It isn’t solving any problem a USD account isn’t solving. Converting Bitcoin into anything actually usable is the problem.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, I used to be skeptical about accredited investor requirments. Turns out, they're super necessary! This is one area I keep going back and forth on in my head. On one hand, obviously scams are bad, and the fact that people are throwing their life savings into some of these companies is awful. That said, I am not sure it should be up to Governments to decide who can and can’t invest in early stage startup…
You have to beware of overreaction to the bad investment. Generally folks are not savvy investors. Just look at the large number of small investors in the stock markets. When greed takes hold or FOMO does and lots of people lose money it will lead to an overreaction against investors wanting to put money in companies. This will lead to VC/angel investment drying up which in turn will curb startups. Remember we live i…
Very very true. A lot of people make extremely poor decisions with their money. Perhaps there could be a threshold then? Like you are allowed to invest x% of your income/savings? I don’t really know the answer.
I think the cup example may actually be more to prevent restaurants/cafes from lawsuits vs. to actually protect their customers from burns. I suppose it could be a combination of the two though.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You aren't trusting an exchange when you send a transaction on the blockchain. This is true, but exchanges have become the de facto on/off ramp for cryptos. If I want to acquire bitcoin without mining, how am I going to do it other than buying from a centralized entity? Edit: As I post this I remembered that Paradex, a decentralized exchange for ERC20 tokens built on 0x, was recently acquired by Coinbase[1], the la…
> This is true, but exchanges have become the de facto on/off ramp for cryptos. If I want to acquire bitcoin without mining, how am I going to do it other than buying from a centralized entity? Sure, that's true. But once you own them, they're yours to do with as you please. You can also buy them from someone peer to peer if you really want to onramp in a 'decentralized' way.
> You can also buy them from someone peer to peer if you really want to onramp in a 'decentralized' way.
This makes it seem like you can onramp via an exchange and still maintain all the benefits of decentralization. If I don't onramp in a decentralized way then there will also be a centralized entity with tremendous power.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#256I'm so surprised that smart contracts aren't being used to release the funds over some set of time, with the ability for community to vote to block it if they feel team has stalled. Nobody needs $20 or $50m on day 1.
I'm not surprised. ICO investors are crazy and ignorant. If they thought straight, they wouldn't invest at all.
Crazy but make a ton on deals from pre-sale.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
they cannot send or receive usd from abroad. they can do it with bitcoin. you get now the value proposition of a global currency that is not government controlled?
aris is technically correct. They are not legally allowed to bring a ton of USD into the country (if they're even well enough off to do so). And legally, they have to do so at government-mandated exchange rates (which no one does, because everyone buys/sells on the black market). Surely people are using USD where possible. But likely, they're HODLing their USDs (against the rapidly inflating Bolivares) wherever possi…
> aris is technically correct.
No,“can” and “are legally allowed to” don't, technically, mean the same thing.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#258Are there any ICOs which resulted in a successful product? Please exclude crypto-exchanges like Binance.
Brave Browser / Basic attention Token is very successful although in it's early days But Brendan Eich, the founder of the project, is much more experienced then any random ICO project founder in this space I'm not sure he will succeed where Flattr failed, but we'll see ! Check out how many websites are already Brave/BAT publishers: https://batgrowth.com/publishers Vice - freeCodeCamp - BitTorrent - xhamster - The Gua…
Indeed. I am curious to see how brave turns out. Right now I don't use it as it feels too bulky and I don't want to mess with bookmark exports - who knows maybe that will change.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How long do we have to wait to find a valid use case for blockchains? It's been 10 years now and we're still asking the same question. Here are some use cases that I think are potentially legit: - Value transfer - Prediction markets - Asset trading/custody (not just cryptoassets, I mean, potentially real estate, equities, etc. can be tokenized) - Venture capital that is more transparent and open (the ICO space is o…
Eventually people are going to realize that (1) all of these can essentially require transparency + encryption (i.e. git + signatures), not the whole blockchain, (2) hence can be had without the huge energy losses (that come from many nodes (re-)computing the same result over and over, and (3) centralisation is a feature most people want, because it helps resolve conflicts (à la Vitalik's centralised resolution of th…
> all of these can essentially require transparency + encryption (i.e. git + signatures), not the whole blockchain,
That's just empirically not true. You need to timestamp transactions in a BFT way for all those examples. No way around it.
> hence can be had without the huge energy losses (that come from many nodes (re-)computing the same result over and over, and
You can get this with Proof of Stake. But you do need a BFT timestamping mechanism.
> centralisation is a feature most people want, because it helps resolve conflicts (à la Vitalik's centralised resolution of the DAO conflict).
Citation needed. Centralization has upsides and downsides. It will take time to figure out how to do decentralization well.
Re: Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How long do we have to wait to find a valid use case for blockchains? It's been 10 years now and we're still asking the same question. Here are some use cases that I think are potentially legit: - Value transfer - Prediction markets - Asset trading/custody (not just cryptoassets, I mean, potentially real estate, equities, etc. can be tokenized) - Venture capital that is more transparent and open (the ICO space is o…
all of this makes sense to be but what happens when someone hacks your grandmas cellphone then they own her house title and she cant open the front door? I guess you could have a 3rd party that has to verify everything ( government ) but then you are basically back to just doing it with a paper deed at the courthouse.
These are open questions. And it may be that blockchain will be an underlying infrastructure that is mostly used by large, centralized entities to settle between each other. But if that's the equilibrium into which we settle, individuals will still have the option to control their own assets in a true sense, even if most people choose not to.