Starting a crypto project • Hacker News Board

Re: Starting a crypto project

#261

Post by vmception » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

knorker wrote: post #252

vmception wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets focus on securities laws because as I said tax is solved and not that hard. I’m not talking about tax fraud so lets focus instead of being all over the place: So basically crypto projects dont mind securities laws, they do mind that the securities laws have lots of unnecessary contigencies added to them that makes it impossible to couple with utility. If a crypto token actually was a registered security, then no…

Tax is not even remotely solved, thanks to anonymity on these currencies. How can tax be solved if tax fraud is not solved? > they do mind that the securities laws have lots of unnecessary contigencies added to them Specifically what? What laws have what aspects, and more importantly why were they put in place, and why should they not apply to cryptocurrencies (but to other things?). You're talking as if laws sprung…

The paragraph about broker dealer requirements is about that

A requirement which did not spring from nature but has no usefulness for fungible consumer products and simply hasn’t been revisited

Without clarity from regulators it is impossible to simultaneously comply with FTC consumer regulations and SEC investor regulations as they are incompatible regulatory regimes which alter how things are marketed, promoted, traded and accounted for.

And actually complying with SEC regulations means there is no where to trade it. There is a joke amongst securities attorneys about the Howey Test which is the premier securities framework from the Supreme Court “if Howey wanted to comply and register properly as a security how would he? Well he couldn't because they’re fucking oranges”. And that reality exists for digital assets today, yet the market is there and the risk:reward is extremely favorable.

But what you might be missing from trying to nitpick specific regulations: The SEC will never ever ever fulfill its mission from Congress of protecting crypto asset investors by sanctioning crypto asset issuers, it will only hurt the investors in the current reality. Whatever it does in the equities space is not applicable here as the SEC's arbitrary adversarial actions provide the opposite of confidence in the crypto market and facilitating capital formation. It understands that part too which is a contributing factor for why its actions are limited pending modern direction from the legislative branch, and its prudent that you understand that as well.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#262

Post by yunusabd » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #72

I personally have experienced NFT cartels first hand and would love to expose it. From pay to play propositions by a “NFT artist” that’s sold millions in NFTs for an invite to an invite only NFT marketplace, promises of $x/month in sales, to a prolific “NFT collector” on Twitter confirming being part of the whole scam by retweeting me upon request of the artist to verify the authenticity of it all. From what I gather…

I've been thinking about this, there are so many crazy/interesting stories in the crypto sphere that you could fill volumes upon volumes. I wish they were reported more, hope someone picks you up on your offer.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#263

Post by yunusabd » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

asdev wrote: post #257

yunusabd wrote: post #255

Most of the comments here seem to revolve around "traditional" crytocurrencies that are more or less copycats of Bitcoin with no real value-add. I think what most people don't realize is how much crypto has changed since 2017, mainly through Ethereum and the concept of smart contracts. The idea of running (immutable) functions on a decentralized network combined with transaction of value has so many interesting appli…

unless your platform is better than shopify or your fees are 90% less, I don't see how you can compete

90% is a lot, but we do plan on having lower fees.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#264

Post by austin_king » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

noxer wrote: post #61

Here is a free tip if you want to do it anyway. DON'T CREATE ANOTHER F**ING TOKEN! Build you product on an existing reliable fast and cheap blockchain that fits your needs. Focus on the product not the price of tokens on said DLT. You dont need a token. No, really you dont. Your tokens only use case is likely to transfer value and guess which token can do this better than yours? All of them! Simply because they alrea…

> Here are some companies that did/do this: coil.com gatehub.net forte.io

^ This is a bit silly of a counterexample given that these 3 companies are all able to exist from the significant XRP investments from Ripple.

> You dont need a token. No, really you dont. Your tokens only use case is likely to transfer value

That's rather untrue. Token use cases have proliferated through the advent of DeFi (decentralized finance). This would be a more accurate take during the 2017 ICO bubble but the space has matured a great deal. There are valid use cases now such as governance, fee sharing, derivatives, etc.

> But you get the point, every DLT that actually works in a useful way should have people building on top - if not its probably garbage tech)

This communicates OP's lack of familiarity with the crypto space. A vast majority of the tokens launched today are launched on top of the Ethereum blockchain. They're not trying to create better tokens for the transfer of value, they're trying to create tokens to help manage decentralized financial services. They're not even DLTs, they're smart contract applications.

It's rather easy to mock the crypto space and have an oversimplified perspective like this, most people will nod along. However, it's a bit sad to see people on a forum like this make such charged statements oversimplifying the work of others as "garbage tech."

Re: Starting a crypto project

#265

Post by arcticbull » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

jaggs wrote: post #193

arcticbull wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you think there are tons of people out there who would rather not annoy their visitors with ads? No, I don't. I mean I think they would if it didn't cost them anything but I firmly believe when given the decision between being vaguely annoyed by ads vs. ponying up the cash, they'll do the former substantially all the time. Nick Szabo has a great paper on it. [1] Trust me when I say this is almost certainly th…

Cough...Patreon.

Exactly my point :) that’s not micropayments that’s full on payments and you subscribe monthly!

Re: Starting a crypto project

#266

Post by arcticbull » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #218

noxer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you didn't get the bigger picture. Its not for streaming a movie is for everything on the web. Why would you pay 50 for Netflix if you can just consume content wherever you want for 50 bucks instead. They can still offer you a flat rate if they want. The option to pay what you use doesn't take the option to pay upfront or whatever away. There is no doubt they will lure you into using the same service somehow…

This conversation is odd. Someone says there are no real world use cases. Someone else says yes there is and poses one. Former person points out that in fact that example just makes their point for them. The counter is well there has to be some use case because there are theoretically an infinite number of them. We just have to find one from that set. This example right here. It presumes that content creators will ha…

Sorry for the confusion what I meant was this is achievable today, but instead people opt to avoid micropayments and instead want to watch ads + get the content free, or pay for an all you can eat model. Everyone’s thought about micropayments. For decades. They’ve tried it many times. There’s no technological reason today that micropayments couldn’t be adopted overnight. They reason they aren’t is because people don’t want them.

There’s a mass grave of micropayments startups, and I bet you anything it’s not because they couldn’t figure out how to debit and credit fractions of a unit.

People don’t want to continuously make judgements about whether they’re getting good value for money in their content - especially their entertainment content.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#267

Post by notJim » Thu, May 06, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

arberx wrote: post #251

notJim wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO these things are basically driven by speculation as well. From what I can tell, they mainly provide liquidity for financial institutions. Financial institutions are interested in crypto so that they can make money trading it. IMO there is very little actual utility here.

Very actual real utility here? What's utility to you? Is buying a in-game COD skin utility? Or how about roblox bucks? How about the trillion dollar derivatives market? All those things easily disrupted by DeFi.

I think it's a fair question, but these are not great examples, IMO.

COD skins and Roblox bucks can only be produced and sold by one company, so I don't see why you would need a decentralized protocol for them. CS:GO doesn't use DeFi, and apparently the market was active enough to be used almost entirely for money laundering.

For other financial markets, I can definitely see more of a case to be made, but it remains to be seen whether that will actually take off. From what I've seen, the crypto markets right now are primarily dealing in crypto, as I said.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#268

Post by arcticbull » Thu, May 06, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

tjs8rj wrote: post #225

arcticbull wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not that, there's not a single blockchain based solution that achieves better results than a classical solution. Not a single one. Never has been. Not in 14 years. I'm open to one showing up! But, well, it hasn't. And that's because there's a huge fundamental cost to trustlessness, decentralization and permissionlessness that substantially no project actually benefits from.

I’m jaded with the crypto-scammery too, but isn’t lower fees with 24/7 instant transactions the selling point? (For low fees think Binance not Coinbase).

That doesn’t require the blockchain. The US is moving from ACH to RTP, which is 24/7 instant approximately free transfers between bank accounts. [1] My understanding is the reason it took so long was small banks wanted to figure out a risk management model.

[1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

Re: Starting a crypto project

#269

Post by sneak » Thu, May 06, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

Luker88 wrote: post #91

As someone interested in all of cryptography, I cringe every single time when we call blockchain "crypto". Sure, there's cryptography in it. But you don't call a mail or http server "crypto". There's similar tech in git, we don't call it "crypto", we call it VCS. Calling this "crypto" is just trying to add a mystic aura for stuff people don't understand, to further muddy the waters. We have a word for this technology…

"crypto" means hidden/concealed, if we're going to go there. I sometimes use the term "cryptoracist" but I had to stop because most people don't know what κρυπτός means.

Re: Starting a crypto project

#270

Post by gverrilla » Thu, May 06, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #84

sktrdie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you create a system where it's literally impossible to redistribute wealth. If majority of tokens in a crypto system are controlled under priv-keys owned by a small % of the population we'll literally lock ourselves under the control of those people. Scary thing is that we won't even be able to vote ourselves out of the potential mess because the private keys are mathematically secured. Capitalism is going to…

Yes, it literally becomes the invisible hand that controlls the freemarket but it no longer free and no longer a market if nobody can get in. Ultimately the value we all get is exchange with eachother at a fair and stable price. The cryptospace could potentially solve this problem when the initial gold rush does some damage. In a way the attention is not bad because more people understand what it is, study it, become…

The way I see it the obvious route is Free, but it will take a while still.