PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#81

Post by rawtxapp » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

yks wrote: post #75

rawtxapp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who have counter-narrative to the Bitcoin propaganda aren't financially incentivized to be negative about it They are incentivized to be negative about it, because whether you like it or not, not buying into it has real opportunity costs. If it ends up becoming the global currency, then you'd be left behind.

You will be left behind just like all the unborn billions of people. Bitcoin version of the future is catastrophic at worst, with all the unnecessary energy consumption, or inconsequential at best, cause it won't matter much for the future people how their wealthy elite got into that position.

While they may be unborn, their parents and grand-parents aren't. As long as there's a carbon tax on the energy consumption (for everybody, not a single industry) and energy comes from increasingly green sources, I don't see any problem with it, I don't expect us to be burning coal for energy in 30+ years from now.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#82

Post by matthewmacleod » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #11

nikanj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Board says we need to invest in crypto. This is crypto."

Are you implying that a company that processes hundreds of billions of dollars in transaction volume is thinking of acquiring this company for the hype alone?

Sometimes I have the same thought—people know what they are doing and wouldn't just fork out money on the basis of hype—and then I remember that similar stuff seems to happen quite often. Even relatively recent examples – Yahoo! and Tumblr, eBay and Skype, News Corp and Myspace, even Google and Nest.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#83

Post by distribot » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

I've recently been reading a bit about the history of Israel and the prolific tech industry there. Funny enough the founders are Israeli (company was in NYC), and one of them had a leadership role in the Talpiot program--something akin to the Navy seals for science and technology in the IDF.

Really remarkable country, seemingly overflowing with human capital. A population smaller than New Jersey but so much innovation and startups.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#84

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #38

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency isn’t going away, but it’s dishonest to pretend that it’s not without major problems such as the energy consumption issues. The popular narrative has also become almost indistinguishable from a pump scheme, where we’re all supposed to buy and home (never sell) until we’re all rich. If cryptocurrency becomes commonplace, it likely won’t look anything like our current crypto infrastructure. The problem i…

I can name 10 other uses of energy that could be categorized as "wasteful" which is completely subjective. From large homes with the AC cranked, to rendering of pointless video on youtube and social apps, to destination aeroplane travel, idle electronics, etc. BTC for many is a way to stop central banks from eroding their lifetime savings which they paid for with their physical labor and time. Thats not a waste of en…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#85

Post by freeone3000 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #21

freeone3000 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a bad strategy? We've seen billion dollar IPOs on hype alone. In 2021, it might even be the winning strategy.

> We've seen billion dollar IPOs on hype alone. Can you give some examples? I would expect a company of this magnitude to have done a proper research before paying out half a billion dollars for an acquisition that's not based on hype alone.

Instagram. C3.ai. Uber. Heck, Tesla. Curv has the advantage of actually being profitable.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#86

Post by rawtxapp » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #78

seibelj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto has been around for 12 years and has gone from zero to well over $1 trillion mcap. I doubt it will go back to zero.

Every time I hear about a cryptocurrency's "market cap" I think of https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-... . > 37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1.

Except for the fact that Bitcoin's current 24hr trading volume is in the billions.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#87

Post by lawn » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

xur17 wrote: post #56

ahelwer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. BTC might have a future as a store of value like gold,…

> Okay, so it isn't 3 tx/sec. It's a bit more than that. Not an order of magnitude more, or two orders of magnitude, or the five orders of magnitude more to have the throughput required for everyone on earth to be able to transact once per day, say to buy lunch. > You talk about BTC as a settlement layer. A settlement layer for what? The lightning network? Laughable. Personal opinion: I think the part you are missing…

> Personal opinion: I think the part you are missing here is that lots of transactions shouldn't be occurring on the base layer.

What you're really saying is that you don't think BTC should help banking the unbanked (because they often live in poor countries where their weekly salary is your cup of coffee).

> Why is it "laughable" for the lightning network to use BTC as a settlement layer?

It's laughable because people will just use another crypto, so they don't have to pay the +2 large and expensive BTC on-chain fees.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#88

Post by tgraves83 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #68

tgraves83 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you are using an appeal from authority citing your distributed systems background, could you provide some actual detail of the "obvious deficiencies" of the lightning network?

Neglecting the DS component, it just requires a lot of weird behavior like parking money in channels in order to send/receive money, nodes having to be online in order to receive transactions, etc. Why go to all this trouble to build a second layer when you can just use a different protocol? It's the sort of thing that makes sense only if you're completely wedded to BTC.

As a systems person you don't see any benefit to having different layers? Currently you are getting to watch the issues of shoving everything into layer 1 play out on Ethereum. Bitcoin isn't just a distributed system, it's value is derived from being a decentralized one.

Almost every technical aspect of Bitcoin that people like to claim makes it "old technology" or inefficient were purposefully chosen trade offs with decentralization. It's obvious that a single centralized database would beat every cryptocurrency on transactions per second.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#89

Post by 177tcca » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #48

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming other wastes of electricity doesn’t make them all okay. Multiple wrongs don’t make them all write. The narrative about central banks eroding life savings is greatly exaggerated by people who want us all to buy Bitcoin. Inflation raises the price of assets in general (virtually the definition of inflation), meaning virtually any non-cash investment will be buoyed by inflation. The idea that Bitcoin is the only…

Shaming electricity usage is just ass backwards. Future humans will take more electricity without question especially as AI ramps up (massive rendering). The key is to transform all energy to cater to that need. Neither one of us will determine what people use as a hedge, the market will.

It's directly connected to lots of power usage today being from coal.

Re: PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

#90

Post by G3rn0ti » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #45

seibelj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto has been around for 12 years and has gone from zero to well over $1 trillion mcap. I doubt it will go back to zero.

It's all artificial value. If the actual money people paid was destroyed/transferred into Bitcoin instead of just transferred to whomever you bought it from, then the value would be real - but it's not.

> it’s all artificial value

The distinction between artificial and natural i.e. intrinsic value is completely arbitrary if you think it through. Where do you think comes the value of dollar bills from?

Of course, why things have value originates in their utility. But everybody has a different idea of utility. You don’t think Bitcoin is useful but others have a different value. That’s why they are investing despite the risk. Since Bitcoin’s market cap is nearing the $1T mark quite a lot of people seem to agree in its utility...

BTW: You might want to google “subjective theory of value” and “regression theorem” to get a better understanding of what’s going on. Spoiler alert: The concepts are fundamental to economic theory and have nothing to do with Cryptos.