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“You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

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Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#41

Post by bluedevil2k »

Rastonbury wrote: post #22

I've lost respect for VCs that peddles web3 hard, just add sheen to random coins and get a sizable % of the float, easy money. In the past VC used to fund companies that created valuable products (mostly), this contrasts against hedge funds or HFTs who make money off arbitrage, legitimate imo but are characterised as vultures by some. Retirees sharing altcoins tips in WhatsApp groups is going to be that scene in the…

I can beat that scene in Big Short. I was recently at Petra (in Jordan) and hired a tour guide. He told me he grew up in the caves of Petra before the government forcefully moved them out and put them in a small poor town next to it. Providing tours was how he supported his wife and 4 kids. About 30 mins into the tour he asked me if I wanted to see his crypto portfolio and showed me on his phone about 10 coins I had never heard of before.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#42

Post by thebean11 »

b112 wrote: post #39
jack_pp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment about the gold rush aspects of crypto right now because they're pretty obvious but regarding the PoW algorithm of Monero, I think that's its fatal flaw long term. Any coin that doesn't have a huge moat of ASIC miners backing it up is vulnerable to attack. You can't attack bitcoin without coordinating existing miners but any coin that can be mined with general CPUs could be attacked by govts or corps w…

Any government with large stockpiles of unused, general compute resources, could snap its fingers, and make large stockpiles of any compute resources appear. The 'buy military gear' police budget of any medium sized US city, could be diverted for one year, and probably buy any specific compute resource you cite. This just isn't a defense against governmental or corporate attack. It's not even defense against a bored…

How long do you think it would take a government to develop ASICs that compete with what’s on the market, and build enough of them for an attack (would need to be >50 of the power of all existing ASICs!)?

How much do you think it would cost?

I think you massively underestimate what’s involved there..general compute resources are just not going to help.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#43

Post by exit »

babyshake wrote: post #33
yeetaccount4 wrote: post #29

Moxie Marlinspike had a good take on this, specifically about NFTs being a blockchain with a web link to the “asset”. Whoever controls the server (or DNS) controls the “asset”. If I was to seriously entertain the notion of NFTs I’d at least want my token to be a hash of the “asset” in question (or hashes, computed with differing algos, in case of collisions). Anything else is a non starter. We’re one hilarious hack a…

I might be wrong but I believe if the NFT metadata links to a protocol like IPFS and the NFT contract does not allow the metadata URL to be updated, it is not possible for the link or linked content to be altered.

"NFT" by itself doesn't tell you enough to know how the metadata is constrained. NFTs pointing to regular URLs are just particular examples of terrible usage.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#44

Post by andutu »

jack_pp wrote: post #30
andutu wrote: post #25

Anything I talk about below is not financial advice. Full disclosure: My crypto holdings consist of around 1 ETH and $5 worth of BTC on Coinbase. Anyone remember Monero? A POW crypto using state of the art cryptography such as ring signatures and Bulletproofs to guarantee private, secure transactions? It's secure enough that almost half of all dark web transactions are done using it despite its market cap being a fra…

I won't comment about the gold rush aspects of crypto right now because they're pretty obvious but regarding the PoW algorithm of Monero, I think that's its fatal flaw long term. Any coin that doesn't have a huge moat of ASIC miners backing it up is vulnerable to attack. You can't attack bitcoin without coordinating existing miners but any coin that can be mined with general CPUs could be attacked by govts or corps w…

That's true, but then again usually the miners using ASICs do so in large warehouses that draw lots of power and are part of large mining pools (some of which are publicly traded I believe) i.e it's easy to target a large portion of mining capacity with certain POW coins.

On the flip side, RandomX optimizing for general CPUs does mean that it can be easier for certain actors to launch a 51% attack on the network. However, it also means the network is more robust in a way. IMO it's a marginally better situation.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#45

Post by smokey_circles »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #19
tata71 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't keep standing by as this continues to be parroted here. You see the same machinations by some percentage of bad actors to take advantage of regulation not existing yet in any and every industry , from fruit, to paper manufacturing. Yes, in many cases Coinbase doesn't list coins they don't like, and rushes to list ones it does. This just further highlights the important of knowing, to every depth possible, who…

The comment is about the financial industry. And it's right. What happens in the fruit industry isn't relevant. The financial industry is heavily regulated (many say for good reason), and much of crypto seems to be created to avoid this regulation, or to claim that the thing created isn't subject to regulation.

Crypto is just a fancy distributed linked list and people get tied up over it for no reason (gross oversimplification, I know).

The issue is the lack of regulation in the intersection of fiat/traditional finance.

EVERY time there's been a gap like this, it's it's exploited.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#46

Post by Rastonbury »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #41
Rastonbury wrote: post #22

I've lost respect for VCs that peddles web3 hard, just add sheen to random coins and get a sizable % of the float, easy money. In the past VC used to fund companies that created valuable products (mostly), this contrasts against hedge funds or HFTs who make money off arbitrage, legitimate imo but are characterised as vultures by some. Retirees sharing altcoins tips in WhatsApp groups is going to be that scene in the…

I can beat that scene in Big Short. I was recently at Petra (in Jordan) and hired a tour guide. He told me he grew up in the caves of Petra before the government forcefully moved them out and put them in a small poor town next to it. Providing tours was how he supported his wife and 4 kids. About 30 mins into the tour he asked me if I wanted to see his crypto portfolio and showed me on his phone about 10 coins I had…

Good story. Another one is how my friend's dad pokes fun at his BTC and ETH portfolio gains because he's in a private discord and has had the privilege of buying an NFT for 5 digits than is supposedly worth a few hundred K because there are listing on opensea for that much

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#47

Post by [deleted] »

saurik wrote: post #32
andutu wrote: post #25

Anything I talk about below is not financial advice. Full disclosure: My crypto holdings consist of around 1 ETH and $5 worth of BTC on Coinbase. Anyone remember Monero? A POW crypto using state of the art cryptography such as ring signatures and Bulletproofs to guarantee private, secure transactions? It's secure enough that almost half of all dark web transactions are done using it despite its market cap being a fra…

> True, Monero doesn't have smart contract support... This is way more central to why people aren't building on it than you seem to give credit to: people simply can't build on it... I mean, even Bitcoin is programmable (which is how people have been able to build stuff like Lightning and bridges to contract side chains like rsk). Not being programmable--which sadly is kind of a trade-off for their core premise of be…

[deleted]

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#48

Post by andutu »

saurik wrote: post #32
andutu wrote: post #25

Anything I talk about below is not financial advice. Full disclosure: My crypto holdings consist of around 1 ETH and $5 worth of BTC on Coinbase. Anyone remember Monero? A POW crypto using state of the art cryptography such as ring signatures and Bulletproofs to guarantee private, secure transactions? It's secure enough that almost half of all dark web transactions are done using it despite its market cap being a fra…

> True, Monero doesn't have smart contract support... This is way more central to why people aren't building on it than you seem to give credit to: people simply can't build on it... I mean, even Bitcoin is programmable (which is how people have been able to build stuff like Lightning and bridges to contract side chains like rsk). Not being programmable--which sadly is kind of a trade-off for their core premise of be…

I probably am massively understating it yes, but I see no reason why an ecosystem around Monero can't flourish that enables sort-of smart contract capabilities. But like you said, it would take a huge amount of effort to enable smart contracts on Monero while not compromising privacy guarantees.

It does seem to be a tradeoff. Solana has smart contract support with low fees, but its network is very centralized compared to other ones and even went down twice. Despite being relatively young, they have flashy PR events in Lisbon and high profile VS backers to hype it up, but again so far most applications built on Solana go back to some form of tokenomics/financial engineering and NFTs.

Writing smart contracts is getting easier and easier with the barrier of entry being how much you're willing to spend on gas really. Hopefully they start expanding into more interesting apps.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#49

Post by vmception »

andutu wrote: post #25

Anything I talk about below is not financial advice. Full disclosure: My crypto holdings consist of around 1 ETH and $5 worth of BTC on Coinbase. Anyone remember Monero? A POW crypto using state of the art cryptography such as ring signatures and Bulletproofs to guarantee private, secure transactions? It's secure enough that almost half of all dark web transactions are done using it despite its market cap being a fra…

Monero is also probably big enough with a $4bn marketcap. It is liquid enough for the problem it solves for people.

Some use it as a payment conduit, some use it as a store of value, both of those particular private-by-default use cases are solved in other ecosystems good enough, for now.

There is $500mm in Tornado Cash at the moment

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#50

Post by ipaddr »

grey-area wrote: post #12
tata71 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't keep standing by as this continues to be parroted here. You see the same machinations by some percentage of bad actors to take advantage of regulation not existing yet in any and every industry , from fruit, to paper manufacturing. Yes, in many cases Coinbase doesn't list coins they don't like, and rushes to list ones it does. This just further highlights the important of knowing, to every depth possible, who…

Many industries, including the fruit and financial industries, are regulated to try to prevent this sort of abuse. The parent is merely pointing out that, absent regulation, abuse and corruption are inevitable.

And regulation creates burden for 3rd party actors who were not part of the abuse so they are forced to cryto.
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