Coinbase acquires Earn.com • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#31

Post by loourr » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

manuelflara wrote: post #26

loourr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can believe it. I think A16Z is also an investor in Coinbase. Definitely seems like some insider dealing. Especially considering Earn.com seems like a very immature (bordering on useless) product. Also another example of a startup having more money then they know what to do with and not returning it to shareholders.

Insider trading only applies to publicly traded companies.

I said insider dealing. I just meant that it's an indication of sketchiness.

And I'm not actually sure that's true (though I did before googling it just now):

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e24dc4ab-2a77...

https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersinsiderhtm.html

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#32

Post by crabasa » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

btctemp97 wrote: post #18

crabasa wrote: post #12

This is too bad. I remember learning about 21.co (later earn.com) and being excited about the idea of using a pricing mechanism to eliminate spam and increase the quality of my inbox. This core idea is a big part of what I'm working on right now [1]. One thing that 21.co never really figured out was a killer use case, or how to best connect buyers with highly-targeted sellers in this "attention" marketplace. It just…

Actually, the one-to-one emails were only a small part of their business model. Earn has become popular among crypto companies for doing paid mass email campaigns. If you are on the site as a user it's obvious. You get a lot of paid messages if you sign up for the right lists. Not sure if it will scale, but interesting use of crypto. This is kind of a silly site, but it's one of the few articles I can find on the top…

You're completely right, but what a waste.

Instead of solving the spam problem and giving marketing/sales/recruiting people better tools, they just incentivized people to sign-up for mailing lists that they probably didn't care about.

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#33

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #25

jMyles wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did this become religion on HN? Interesting things in crypto-blockchain tech, today: * Origin * NuCypher (disclaimer: I'm on this team) * Loki * New version of web3.py / other python tooling becoming mature * Trustless Quorums * Distributed validation I can go on and on. But I just don't see how anybody can think that these are uninteresting times for this tech.

I’ve checked NuCypher’s homepage and I find a bit strange to have that much emphasis on the blockchain on your homepage and at the same time only 5 occurrences of the word "blockchain" in your 21-pages whitepaper. Am I missing something?

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#34

Post by woah » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #11

shp0ngle wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing interesting coming out of cryptocurrency space other than ICO spam

How did this become religion on HN? Interesting things in crypto-blockchain tech, today: * Origin * NuCypher (disclaimer: I'm on this team) * Loki * New version of web3.py / other python tooling becoming mature * Trustless Quorums * Distributed validation I can go on and on. But I just don't see how anybody can think that these are uninteresting times for this tech.

It's what's known as a mid-brow dismissal. The average HN commenter feels a gratifying sensation of intelligence when they point out that "a blockchain is just a database". They can feel that they are debunking a con with their razor-like intelligence, like Neo, escaping from the matrix.

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#35

Post by dzink » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

At first they were 21.co and they invited developers, startup CEOS and investors under the premise of much larger per-response rewards ($100 for investors, $20 for CEOs, etc). Since then, they've been sending mostly $1-$2 spam from Tokens and ICOs. The payment is in Bitcoin, so cashing out also takes a big chunk of the earnings. Coinbase sounds like a nice landing spot for a team that likely dreamt bigger than that.

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#36

Post by arisAlexis » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

I launched veropost.com a while before earn.com pivoted. Didn't get much love, I hope now people can see the value proposition.

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#37

Post by loceng » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

So I'm copying and pasting part of someone's comment I saw on mobile - which has since been flagged and removed for including their referral URL - because I wanted to reply to it.

They said: "I've earned around 0.0060 BTC so far (~$50), mostly through airdrop offers -- without taking into account the airdropped crypto itself."

What I wanted to reply was, no, you earned ~$50 if you sold it off immediately, however otherwise you earned "~$50" MINUS whatever "profit" earlier adopters earned, the wealth unreasonably/unnecessarily reallocated weighted toward the earlier adopters; e.g. that could be $50 minus $30 because you're paying for/legitimizing/realizing/covering the difference of their purchase price and their sale price. They know of course they can't dump it, however they don't care if the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme takes 10-20+ years to allow them to realize $100s of billions, or even potentially trillions of dollars, worth of "profit."

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#38

Post by arisAlexis » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

crabasa wrote: post #12

This is too bad. I remember learning about 21.co (later earn.com) and being excited about the idea of using a pricing mechanism to eliminate spam and increase the quality of my inbox. This core idea is a big part of what I'm working on right now [1]. One thing that 21.co never really figured out was a killer use case, or how to best connect buyers with highly-targeted sellers in this "attention" marketplace. It just…

Check out veropost.com too :)

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#39

Post by loceng » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

perseusprime11 wrote: post #28

I am now seriously worried about Coinbase after this baseless acquisition.

It's not baseless -- they want to help perpetuate the ecosystem and use cases for people to get utility in acquiring any incentivized crypto-assets. The same utility described on Earn.com however is possible by paying people fiat currency, instead of paying someone something then making them have vested interest in it maintaining a certain value or increasing its value (at the cost of society).

Re: Coinbase acquires Earn.com

#40

Post by philip1209 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

ttul wrote: post #15

LAMike wrote: post #7

21.co, now named Earn.com raised 100M dollars, but the rumor is A16Z used that money to directly buy BTC for their VC fund without making too much noise. Coinbase didn't buy them for 100M, but the VC's at A16Z might be sitting on a billion dollars if they invested in BTC when 21.co was started. Anyone else hear about this rumor?

I guess as a private fund, that’s between them and their LPs...

Unrelated to this - I've heard that many VC funds were going through their legal paperwork with a fine-tooth comb to see if they were allowed to invest LP money directly into crypto or ICOs. Some were not permitted, and it definitely demonstrated how some of these funds lack the flexibility to pursue opportunities that do not pattern-match classic VC investments of the last few decades.