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Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

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Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#271

Post by danwills »

mrtksn wrote: post #249
shoto_io wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook acquired Instagram for 1bn. Ridiculous by today's standards.

I remember the jokes about how FB purchased a photo filter app and how easy it was to make photo effects. Sometimes it feels like techies not always get what is valuable and what is not as much.

I want to share my recent fractal renderings, that I think are valuable, here's a fun example:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AT9bcRZygdcCiMs5TvRXK50iik5...

Despite it being where-everyone presumably-is I do not want to use Instagram, so I am not sure what's best to do.. is there a good-enough 'open'/decentralised alternative now?

Maybe a simple rss feed would do it?

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#272

Post by fauigerzigerk »

andruby wrote: post #260
fungizid wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The steep increase at the end mostly does not reflect a change in economic fundamentals but rather banks relabeling savings accounts as transaction accounts in response to regulatory changes. If you look at M2 instead of M1, the increase disappears. More info: https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/05/savings-are-now-more... (Edit: Updated link to a more recent blog post)

Still a huge jump in M2 in Feb 2020: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2NS

Yes, but this 32% increase was not initially new money in anyone's pocket. The Fed simply replaced some treasuries and other debt on banks' balance sheets with reserves, which don't have to be backed by equity.

This gave banks more wiggle room to sit out the pandemic without reducing lending at the exact wrong time.

So the Fed has done its job on the way down. Now they just have to do their job on the way up as well, or this money will eventually end up as new money in someone's pocket (via new loans) and potentially create inflation.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#273

Post by bluecalm »

jl6 wrote: post #209
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes money is all a joke right now. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

Can someone explain why x4’ing the money supply hasn’t ÷4’d the value of the dollar? Yet?

Imagine everyone gets 1000 USD loan, freshly printed USD from the government. Money supply just increased by 300billion (assuming it's for US citizens). Does it mean inflation follows? Probably not because people know they have to pay the money back. The price of assets people really need/want or those that are undervalued is going to go up though.

I believe the situation is the same with stocks. They were criminally undervalued for decades (imo still are somewhat undervalued) so additional money supply causes the prices to increase (it's profitable to buy into great opportunity and pay back cheap loan later) but it's only because the assets were very cheap. If they weren't it wouldn't make sense to buy them no matter how much money is around (as you need to pay it back).

What may cause inflation though are programs when you just hand money to people (not as loans but as handouts) as then you just diluted everyone's else money.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#274

Post by bufferoverflow »

danwills wrote: post #271
mrtksn wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the jokes about how FB purchased a photo filter app and how easy it was to make photo effects. Sometimes it feels like techies not always get what is valuable and what is not as much.

I want to share my recent fractal renderings, that I think are valuable, here's a fun example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AT9bcRZygdcCiMs5TvRXK50iik5... Despite it being where-everyone presumably-is I do not want to use Instagram, so I am not sure what's best to do.. is there a good-enough 'open'/decentralised alternative now? Maybe a simple rss feed would do it?

Imgur.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#275

Post by pjerem »

Khaine wrote: post #132

In Australia millennials, are allergic to credit cards. Credit card usage in that demographic is really low. Instead they prefer BNPL services as a credit mechanism. Banks have also responded and offer credit cards that don’t act like normal credit cards[1] [1] https://www.commbank.com.au/credit-cards/commbank-neo.html

Maybe I’m wrong but I have the feeling that credit cards as a norm is really just an American thing. In Europe where I live, I know nobody who buys anything with a credit card or barely if there is a 0% rate promotion. Credit cards do exists here but they are the card some shop gave you for whatever reason that you’d better never use.

What is interesting is that we use the term « credit card » to speak about our debit cards so I needed a long time to acknowledge that in America, Credit cards really meant that you paid your coffee with a real credit and not with your money.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#276

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

shell0x wrote: post #93
ttam wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, Klarna, a Swedish-founded company, is pretty big in the BNPL market according to https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-buy-now-pay-later-wave... "In Sweden, home to BNPL provider Klarna, installments accounted for 23% of e-commerce transactions last year."

Sorry, I should have said Germany instead of Europe since the European market is pretty diverse. The German word for debt is schuld(Schulden) , which has the same meaning as guilt and is associated with something bad.

As an Australian living in Germany I've got to point out that finances in Germany are just as dysfunctional as Australia. Just in completely opposing ways. Both are a burden on sustainable growth and development.

For some examples of Germany's issues it's worth looking at the weak state of retail banking (Deutsche Bank / Commerzbank proposed merger), and the financial scandals.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#277

Post by cheschire »

healsjnr1 wrote: post #259
hnick wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance, points, cashback, chargebacks. It's also a one month interest free float of your funds if you pay in full each month, meaning you earn some interest. I know some debit cards are getting closer to credit cards in these areas but at least when I first got one, they were just plastic cash. You spend it you lose it, the bank won't support you with clawing it back.

Points for most people are a zero sum or losing game. I worked for a points loyalty program, and the customer always pays. The bank knows their market well, they know the redemption rate of points for different demographics and they set the annual fees on points earning cards appropriately. For a small number of very diligent points hack customers, the bank loses money on this and the customer wins. For a larger prop…

It’s so painless on the Apple Card. Automatic x% back into an Apple Cash account depending on the specifics of the purchase (phone vs card, Apple store vs other store).

When you pay off the card, it can automatically debit the Apple Cash account first. Basically all my purchases are 1% cheaper on that card than my other ones. Sure, spending $9,900 instead of $10,000 doesn’t sound like much, but it’s painless free money.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#278

Post by shoto_io »

danwills wrote: post #271
mrtksn wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the jokes about how FB purchased a photo filter app and how easy it was to make photo effects. Sometimes it feels like techies not always get what is valuable and what is not as much.

I want to share my recent fractal renderings, that I think are valuable, here's a fun example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AT9bcRZygdcCiMs5TvRXK50iik5... Despite it being where-everyone presumably-is I do not want to use Instagram, so I am not sure what's best to do.. is there a good-enough 'open'/decentralised alternative now? Maybe a simple rss feed would do it?

What's the reason you don't want to use Instagram?

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#279

Post by jeeeb »

nsonha wrote: post #229
jeeeb wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not overly familiar with US salaries but it looks to me like you’re comparing net salary for a high paid job in Sydney, to gross salary for a FAANG role in SF. Presumably they have to pay taxes and have a high cost of living as well :) I don’t know how accurate it is but the 2020 SO developer survey puts the median salary for an engineering manager in the US at $152k and an SRE at $140K. In my experience that’s m…

200k is like a low base for FAANG, and there are other great companies that pays well not just them. It is a good salary in America but not that impresive, as you can get that by just being an individual contributor. On the other hand, AUD300k is a C-level salary here in Australia and way past the start of top tax bracket (AUD180k) SO numbers are way off comparing to levels'. They're heavily skewed toward the low end…

I dunno looking at the SO developer survey most respondents were reporting 5+ years experience.

Out of interest I had a look at roles advertised on indeed.com in Atlanta and SF for SREs and data scientists. Estimated ranges seemed to match SO survey results reasonably well.

Maybe both just have bad data.

I don’t doubt that there’s some great tech salaries on offer in the US but I do suspect the massive salaries reported here aren’t necessarily representative. Nor of course is 250k/year in Australia.

Re: Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

#280

Post by papito »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #47

Every time I see one of these announcements, the valuations go up and up and up and up. I remember not long ago being wowed by a 1B acquisition. That was called a unicorn because of how incredible it was. And now we're at 29B. Is this just because money is all a joke?

Dogecoin is literally a joke, and is promoted by some billionaires, who are allegedly smart.
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