7 ms·

This is just insane. No code yet, closed to investors with at least 250k income or 1M in the bank (Per SEC rules), coins given to friends before investors could

This is just insane. No code yet, closed to investors with at least 250k income or 1M in the bank (Per SEC rules), coins given to friends before investors could get in on it. And what do you need this much money for?

gritzko 9y ago
It's the new economy, man. It's perpetual growth on the blockchain. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169613
product50 9y ago
Protocol Labs is a Y-Combinator company with investors such as Naval and USV. They have already built out IPFS -- a popular decentralized file sharing protocol. If there is any team you want to bet on making decentralized storage possible, Protocol Labs is on the top of that list.
- VMG 9y ago
  > They have already built out IPFS -- a popular decentralized file sharing protocol. How popular? Who uses it?
  - mungoid 9y ago
    I don't know much about it but they have 8.5k stars on github so it seems fairly popular.
    - samastur 9y ago
      I star everything I find interesting so I may find it later, but in reality I did this maybe a handful of times which makes my stars ~99% meaningless. Not saying everyone does this, but I doubt my behaviour is rare and I wouldn't read too much into github stars as they are too cheap to create. Look for actual use.
      - hobofan 9y ago
        Yup, can confirm. The most stared project I helped create has +5k stars from hitting the HN frontpage a few times, and there are very few actual users (by now probably none). IPFS has compared to that much healthier growth, and for the number of stars they have a pretty decent userbase from what I can gather.
  - nannal 9y ago
    I use it, I pin files in exchange for bitcoin, like filecoin only without the vapourware. My biggest client at the minute is dtube.video but there are audio "clones" and document based clones in development that I'm aware of too.
  - alwillis 9y ago
    The Filecoin Primer states that over 5 billion files are stored on IPFS, with over 500 GB per day flowing through the HTTP-to-IPFS gateway: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWimYyZHzChb35EYojGduWHBdhf9SD5NHqf8MjZ4n3Qrr/Filecoin-Primer.7-25.pdf https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWimYyZHzChb35EYojGduWHBdhf9SD5NHqf8Mj... Especially for a new a fairly new protocol, I'd say IPFS is popular.
    - wils1245 9y ago
      500 GB a day doesn't sound like the kind of adoption that justifies a market worth hundreds of millions of dollars though.
      - alwillis 9y ago
        That's not what the ICO was about; with IPFS and Filecoin, a very lucrative, decentralized storage market is likely on its way. Instead of proof of work mining that burns tons of electricity, storing and distributing files will become a new kind of useful mining. That's a big deal.
- simias 9y ago
  IPFS is cool tech but "popular" might be overselling it a bit. Furthermore it's still unclear why they would ever need more than a quarter billion dollar to build their products when they managed to build IPFS with a tiny fraction of that. I'm not saying they're necessarily dishonest but it shows that the current ICO system is rather broken. Instead of slowly building up investments in rounds as your technology proves itself ICOs incentivize you to raise ridiculous amounts of money right at the start.
  - unkown-unknowns 9y ago
    Popular when seen in relation to other options for decentralized storage perhaps. It might be a small group at the moment but they can still be large in a small space.
- sschueller 9y ago
  How much money was needed to create IPFS? There seems to be zero interest in creating something new and open like bitcoin but instead make as much money as possible.
- davidgerard 9y ago
  It's literally only "popular" as a buzzword. Functionally it's basically BitTorrent with magnet links. Also, it's not actually finished or production quality yet.
jboggan 9y ago
This isn't going to end well.
bsaul 9y ago
Whenever irrational or weird things like this happen, i always tell myself that maybe people aren't stupid, maybe i just miss a crucial piece of information. For example, who are the poeple lending that much money ? Why are they doing it ? Is this whole thing some kind of money laundering or tax evading scheme ? Is it related to central banks having 0% interest rates, etc.. You only know what happens after some time, but you always end up knowing.
- jboggan 9y ago
  I see parallels to the 1810s in America where an explosion of banks needed virtually nothing to get chartered and issue unlimited amounts of their own currency. That went great, until it didn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819
  - baybal2 9y ago
    I have a similar feeling. Banking explosion of mid nineties Russia. My mom was a de-facto CTO of a bank back then. What got her that job was the simple fact that she was the only person that bank found competent enough to just code basic things in C, Fox Pro and Basic (back then, those were virtually unknown in Russia. The only popular "Western" programming language was Pascal). Back then, solely founding a bank to 'jump on the bandwagon' earlier than others was seen as something much much more important than to have that bank functioning properly. Now, none of those first wave banks remain prominent. Out of roughly 2000, only 20 function today.
    - r00tn00b 9y ago
      Sorry disagree.... C and Fox Pro were known and used in Russia at least end of 80s when I started to look.for gigs. Pascal I used last time at 1990 as my first contract as a student. Then switched to C. Then added Ada. Clipper/FoxPro/dbase were de facto tools to develop any db backed apps beginning of 90s. When I came to one of the major banks in 1994 and said I'm using oracle they stumbled and said "we are not there yet... dbase ... sorry" lol
  - 9y ago
jules 9y ago
They are probably betting on the low probability event that this becomes THE crypto currency. I can buy a hard drive with more space than I ever need for 40 dollars. A storage service could get it cheaper, so I doubt that they are betting on cheaper file storage aspect of this. That is just a way to get the value of their currency off the ground. That may also be why they need so much money: to initially guarantee an exchange rate to other currencies.
slowburn 9y ago
https://icostats.com/roi-since-ico https://icostats.com/roi-since-ico This is why people are putting as much money as they can. The total crypto market cap is 160B, which is basically nothing. There are now future Apple, Google and Microsoft stocks in crypto traded for pennies. In the investor groups I am in totally anonymous strangers are pooling multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars for ICO funds, all based on trust. The idea is to send as much money as possible as a single transaction with insanely high transaction fees to get ahead of everyone else before the hard cap is reached. If you have some amount of money you don't mind losing just buy some BTC, ETH, LTC, NEO, GAS, OMG, PAY, XMR, BAT, LSK, ARK and forget about them for a few years. November will be a good time to buy in because the uncertainty about the BTC hard fork will make people exit to fiat. Thank me later. As for Filecoin - their ICO cap is unreasonable, this is too much money, as soon as their tokens hit the markets the price will drop to nothing.
- bitcoinmoney 9y ago
  Honest question: So the tokens would be used to operate on the "filecoin blockchain" as a fee to store files. A.) Why would I be interested in buying that if I don't want to store a file in a decentralized system. B.) Why would I want to buy it if it will cost 1000$/coin to operate in their blockhain? Is this just purely speculation?
  - tylersmith 9y ago
    The huge valuation is almost surely just speculation. I believe it has value in many uses cases but as you point out with point "A" not most use cases. For "B", the coins are highly divisible and the costs of usage will be driven the market. You probably won't need $1k to use the network, the same way you don't need ~$4500 to use Bitcoin. We're building OpenBazaar on top of IPFS to distribute user's stores. But that relies on people visiting and seeding each others stores. With Filecoin, vendors will be able to pay other users to seed with reliability. Disclosure: We work closely with Protocol Labs but I do not own any Filecoin and don't plan to until it can used for applications like ours.
- bearjaws 9y ago
hanklazard 9y ago
Not sure about the Filecoin element, but IPFS has an alpha that you can download and install. I got it up and running with no issues.
CloudYeller 9y ago
Ironic how the decentralized economy is increasing social inequality more than ever before. "Fight the power man!" yeah, ok, more like "shift the power to just me and my 17 friends-- we're cool, I promise!"

gritzko 9y ago

It's the new economy, man. It's perpetual growth on the blockchain. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169613

product50 9y ago

Protocol Labs is a Y-Combinator company with investors such as Naval and USV. They have already built out IPFS -- a popular decentralized file sharing protocol. If there is any team you want to bet on making decentralized storage possible, Protocol Labs is on the top of that list.

VMG 9y ago
> They have already built out IPFS -- a popular decentralized file sharing protocol. How popular? Who uses it?
- mungoid 9y ago
  I don't know much about it but they have 8.5k stars on github so it seems fairly popular.
  - samastur 9y ago
    I star everything I find interesting so I may find it later, but in reality I did this maybe a handful of times which makes my stars ~99% meaningless. Not saying everyone does this, but I doubt my behaviour is rare and I wouldn't read too much into github stars as they are too cheap to create. Look for actual use.
    - hobofan 9y ago
      Yup, can confirm. The most stared project I helped create has +5k stars from hitting the HN frontpage a few times, and there are very few actual users (by now probably none). IPFS has compared to that much healthier growth, and for the number of stars they have a pretty decent userbase from what I can gather.
- nannal 9y ago
  I use it, I pin files in exchange for bitcoin, like filecoin only without the vapourware. My biggest client at the minute is dtube.video but there are audio "clones" and document based clones in development that I'm aware of too.
- alwillis 9y ago
  The Filecoin Primer states that over 5 billion files are stored on IPFS, with over 500 GB per day flowing through the HTTP-to-IPFS gateway: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWimYyZHzChb35EYojGduWHBdhf9SD5NHqf8MjZ4n3Qrr/Filecoin-Primer.7-25.pdf https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWimYyZHzChb35EYojGduWHBdhf9SD5NHqf8Mj... Especially for a new a fairly new protocol, I'd say IPFS is popular.
  - wils1245 9y ago
    500 GB a day doesn't sound like the kind of adoption that justifies a market worth hundreds of millions of dollars though.
    - alwillis 9y ago
      That's not what the ICO was about; with IPFS and Filecoin, a very lucrative, decentralized storage market is likely on its way. Instead of proof of work mining that burns tons of electricity, storing and distributing files will become a new kind of useful mining. That's a big deal.
simias 9y ago
IPFS is cool tech but "popular" might be overselling it a bit. Furthermore it's still unclear why they would ever need more than a quarter billion dollar to build their products when they managed to build IPFS with a tiny fraction of that. I'm not saying they're necessarily dishonest but it shows that the current ICO system is rather broken. Instead of slowly building up investments in rounds as your technology proves itself ICOs incentivize you to raise ridiculous amounts of money right at the start.
- unkown-unknowns 9y ago
  Popular when seen in relation to other options for decentralized storage perhaps. It might be a small group at the moment but they can still be large in a small space.
sschueller 9y ago
How much money was needed to create IPFS? There seems to be zero interest in creating something new and open like bitcoin but instead make as much money as possible.
davidgerard 9y ago
It's literally only "popular" as a buzzword. Functionally it's basically BitTorrent with magnet links. Also, it's not actually finished or production quality yet.

jboggan 9y ago

This isn't going to end well.

bsaul 9y ago

Whenever irrational or weird things like this happen, i always tell myself that maybe people aren't stupid, maybe i just miss a crucial piece of information. For example, who are the poeple lending that much money ? Why are they doing it ? Is this whole thing some kind of money laundering or tax evading scheme ? Is it related to central banks having 0% interest rates, etc.. You only know what happens after some time, but you always end up knowing.

jboggan 9y ago
I see parallels to the 1810s in America where an explosion of banks needed virtually nothing to get chartered and issue unlimited amounts of their own currency. That went great, until it didn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819
- baybal2 9y ago
  I have a similar feeling. Banking explosion of mid nineties Russia. My mom was a de-facto CTO of a bank back then. What got her that job was the simple fact that she was the only person that bank found competent enough to just code basic things in C, Fox Pro and Basic (back then, those were virtually unknown in Russia. The only popular "Western" programming language was Pascal). Back then, solely founding a bank to 'jump on the bandwagon' earlier than others was seen as something much much more important than to have that bank functioning properly. Now, none of those first wave banks remain prominent. Out of roughly 2000, only 20 function today.
  - r00tn00b 9y ago
    Sorry disagree.... C and Fox Pro were known and used in Russia at least end of 80s when I started to look.for gigs. Pascal I used last time at 1990 as my first contract as a student. Then switched to C. Then added Ada. Clipper/FoxPro/dbase were de facto tools to develop any db backed apps beginning of 90s. When I came to one of the major banks in 1994 and said I'm using oracle they stumbled and said "we are not there yet... dbase ... sorry" lol
- 9y ago

jules 9y ago

They are probably betting on the low probability event that this becomes THE crypto currency. I can buy a hard drive with more space than I ever need for 40 dollars. A storage service could get it cheaper, so I doubt that they are betting on cheaper file storage aspect of this. That is just a way to get the value of their currency off the ground. That may also be why they need so much money: to initially guarantee an exchange rate to other currencies.

slowburn 9y ago

https://icostats.com/roi-since-ico https://icostats.com/roi-since-ico This is why people are putting as much money as they can. The total crypto market cap is 160B, which is basically nothing. There are now future Apple, Google and Microsoft stocks in crypto traded for pennies. In the investor groups I am in totally anonymous strangers are pooling multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars for ICO funds, all based on trust. The idea is to send as much money as possible as a single transaction with insanely high transaction fees to get ahead of everyone else before the hard cap is reached. If you have some amount of money you don't mind losing just buy some BTC, ETH, LTC, NEO, GAS, OMG, PAY, XMR, BAT, LSK, ARK and forget about them for a few years. November will be a good time to buy in because the uncertainty about the BTC hard fork will make people exit to fiat. Thank me later. As for Filecoin - their ICO cap is unreasonable, this is too much money, as soon as their tokens hit the markets the price will drop to nothing.

bitcoinmoney 9y ago
Honest question: So the tokens would be used to operate on the "filecoin blockchain" as a fee to store files. A.) Why would I be interested in buying that if I don't want to store a file in a decentralized system. B.) Why would I want to buy it if it will cost 1000$/coin to operate in their blockhain? Is this just purely speculation?
- tylersmith 9y ago
  The huge valuation is almost surely just speculation. I believe it has value in many uses cases but as you point out with point "A" not most use cases. For "B", the coins are highly divisible and the costs of usage will be driven the market. You probably won't need $1k to use the network, the same way you don't need ~$4500 to use Bitcoin. We're building OpenBazaar on top of IPFS to distribute user's stores. But that relies on people visiting and seeding each others stores. With Filecoin, vendors will be able to pay other users to seed with reliability. Disclosure: We work closely with Protocol Labs but I do not own any Filecoin and don't plan to until it can used for applications like ours.
bearjaws 9y ago

hanklazard 9y ago

Not sure about the Filecoin element, but IPFS has an alpha that you can download and install. I got it up and running with no issues.

CloudYeller 9y ago

Ironic how the decentralized economy is increasing social inequality more than ever before. "Fight the power man!" yeah, ok, more like "shift the power to just me and my 17 friends-- we're cool, I promise!"