Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 344 posts

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#91

Post by tarunmuvvala »

arcticbull wrote: post #46
ackbar03 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet some VCs are still plowing into web3. There was an article today about how Moellis was getting into Web3 companies. I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is. I tend to be in the camp that web3 is just a bunch of hot air seeing how cryptos been around for quite a while now with few use cases, but I also give benefit of the doubt there could be something there given the nature of tech.

> I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is. The thought process for VCs investing in crypto is simple: they get a huge discount on the tokens in the raise that they can turn around and dump on retail a few months later for huge returns. Instead of waiting 10+ years for a traditional exit, they can get liquidity in a few months. As Chamath admitted on the podcast, even when they're on a vesting schedule the…

I think the next set of companies will become more smarter in their vesting terms.

Just think about it, if these data point of selling claims get be bought to on-chain then I am sure people and next set of companies will not borrow some such investors.

because of this particular reason I feel DeFi will replace traditional finance first before any other form of crypto companies takes.

A recent IMF admitted that DeFi is 10x efficient than TradFi.I am sure once DeFi get a bit regulated and has better risk management principal embedded into code the system will become more efficient

I also see the recent housing crackdown and loss of money for common people playing an important role of smart contract lead world for the financial safety of the larger population. People are losing trust way faster than they are able to change systems

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#92

Post by shtopointo »

dijit wrote: post #63
shtopointo wrote: post #61

Two ways to make a name for yourself these days: * crypto * talking sh*t about crypto Crypto is at a low point right now. If you time it right, it's like reporting that investing in the stock market is bad after the '08 recession.

Seeing crypto as an investment is a problem. It relies entirely on someone else coming along later and paying more. It’s not a productive asset in any meaningful way.

> It relies entirely on someone else coming along later and paying more

Yes, just like any part of the economy. Scarcity and/or productivity is why someone pays: either something, or more for it.

If it's BTC, the theory is it will be scarce, like gold.

If it is one of the other crypto coins, it has to be productive like e.g. this app enabling sharing internet with others.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#94

Post by spaceman_2020 »

arcticbull wrote: post #46
ackbar03 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet some VCs are still plowing into web3. There was an article today about how Moellis was getting into Web3 companies. I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is. I tend to be in the camp that web3 is just a bunch of hot air seeing how cryptos been around for quite a while now with few use cases, but I also give benefit of the doubt there could be something there given the nature of tech.

> I'm genuinely curious what their thought process is. The thought process for VCs investing in crypto is simple: they get a huge discount on the tokens in the raise that they can turn around and dump on retail a few months later for huge returns. Instead of waiting 10+ years for a traditional exit, they can get liquidity in a few months. As Chamath admitted on the podcast, even when they're on a vesting schedule the…

The discounts are getting smaller and smaller as the valuations go up. A new chain, Aptos, is raising at 2B valuation. Optimism, an ETH Layer2 raised at 1B valuation. Until like last week, it had a circulating marketcap of 100m.

Lots of smaller projects are priced below VC prices. For example, CowSwap is at like 12c when private rounds were at 15c.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#95

Post by spaceman_2020 »

arcticbull wrote: post #49
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older protocols that were built in the depth of 2018-19 bear markets will survive. Many of them are also doing wonderfully well in terms of revenue. COMP, MKR, AAVE, CRV all make a ton in revenue and have a well-defined product-market fit. Crypto projects are tough to value. Their sheer global scale means that they can ramp up revenue and even profits extremely fast. StepN, a move-to-earn app reportedly made $120…

> That might not be sustainable, but what business wouldn't give an arm and a leg to make $120M profits in just one year of operation? $120M in profit-profit? Or $120M in revenues dumping tokens on retail booked as profit?

I don’t know the exact breakdown but the bulk of it was apparently in-game items.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#96

Post by BonoboIO »

docdeek wrote: post #7

Interesting - I had never heard of these guys before the most recent episode of the Planet Money podcast on NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1113115868/little-house-on-th...

It is absolutely mindblowing that nobody questions this bulls**

A house that mines crypto ... or the reality, a house with a tiny crypto miner in a corner of the house.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#97

Post by popcorncowboy »

janjongboom wrote: post #23

Reposting an analysis I did 6 months ago, where their numbers did not make any sense to me compared to any other LoRaWAN deployment; and probably impossible - bound by physics - to ever generate enough revenue to pay their gateway operators at their data cost / gateway rewards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29944979

Facts just don't matter when you're selling hope-ium. To the moooon!

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#98

Post by barnabee »

arcticbull wrote: post #50
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

web3 is going to thrive whether you like it or not. Primarily because of three reasons: - Greed. Its absurdly easy to make a ton of money very fast in crypto. As long as that's possible, money will keep pouring into the system. - Gambling. The global gambling industry is half a trillion every year. Even if you think crypto has no fundamentals and is akin to gambling, it still represents a massive market. Opening a 50…

> If "web2" hadn't shut off its own users from any semblance of ownership in the platforms, or had done more for privacy, web3 would have died in 2017. Honestly nobody cares about these things. This is just a narrative that was grafted onto Web3 after the fact.

Almost everyone I've met in crypto cares about these things.

Sure it is probably not even 1% of projects by number and there are plenty of frauds/scams (which are oviously illegal without any new laws) and even more just really terrible ideas (whatever happened to caveat emptor?), but there absolutely is a sizeable core of projects, founders, devs, and researchers that cares deeply about privacy, freedom from coprorate/government surveillance and control, open source and open protocols, and building a very different online, digital future than the one we are currently headed for.

I think that's worth the effort. Even if that might fail, and even with the collateral damage from scams and fraud (which, again, are already illegal). We accepted cars despite the deaths and injuries and pollution (which we also deal with legally and try to minimise without destroying the benefits of having cars), and they reshaped our society. I expect crypto and privacy tech. to do the same in time. It may even take as long.

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#99

Post by efitz »

I looked into getting a Helium hotspot, but when I looked at my ISP‘s terms of service, the Helium use case is explicitly forbidden (I use Frontier Internet in Florida.)

If you’re not familiar with it, what a Helium hotspot does is allow compatible IOT devices to share your Internet connection.

I suspect that allowing random third parties to use your Internet connection it’s explicitly forbidden by the terms of service of most ISPs, especially when you are being monetarily compensated/rewarded for such sharing.

Excerpt from ToS: “Customers may not retransmit the Service or make the Service available to anyone outside the premises (i.e. Wi-Fi or other methods of networking).”

Re: Helium has revenues of $6.5k/month after $365M investment from A16Z

#100

Post by muro »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #5

Look into SoRare’s volume. They raised over $500m. Volume is now lower than it was way back in 2020. The crypto down rounds are going to be hilarious. Note to investors: if you’re investing in crypto projects, carefully consider the ponzinomics and the vesting schedule. You want your unlocks to happen in the middle of the bullrun when exit liquidity is ample. And also remember that whatever you might think of as “nor…

> crypto down rounds are going to be hilarious That’s optimistic. Best case is orderly resolution and/or fire sales to Wall Street. Worst case: retail investors lose money while executives and senior employees see prosecution.

Why is worst case a bad outcome? It's all a scam and if people invest in it or propagate it, they shouldn't expect anything else.
Post reply on HN