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> I know of at least two really prominent cryptocurrency ICOs that are in this boat. Which two are you talking about?

nostrademons 8y ago
EOS and Tron. There are probably others. I went to a couple cryptocurrency meetups recently that were sponsored by a startup, 6 months old, which had offices in 3 cities, 2 different product lines, and was launching a venture capital fund. To me, that's a red flag that they have too much money and no idea how to deploy it.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  Off topic, but is there anything interesting going on in the cryptocurrency space? I stopped following circa 2015 after seeing Bitcoin/blockchain co-opted by a bunch of hucksters for a bunch of get-rich-quick schemes (including internal projects at more than a few major technology companies). I've heard stirrings about a few "stablecoin" project with more solid economic underpinnings, but am skeptical anyone can come up with a better design than the USD, EUR, or CHF for keeping a currency pegged to a broad basket of goods. I ask because you're clearly not a crypto shill and it's hard to find unbiased opinions on cryptocurrencies these days.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the cryptocurrency space, but it's all fairly high-risk/speculative stuff. Off the top of my head, there's: Fixing the transaction delays & scalability problems of Bitcoin (Nano, Iota). Fixing web advertising (Brave/BAT). Decentralized prediction markets (Augur). Tokenizing real estate (lots of startups). Decentralized stablecoins (DAI). DApp platforms (Ethereum, EOS, bunch of others now) and infrastructure built to solve problems with those platforms (Loom Network, Cardstack). It remains to be seen how much of this will be profitable or even get any significant user adoption. I'm thinking back to the dot-com boom, though. The WWW started, fundamentally, as a communication technology, and it had its biggest impact as a communication technology. But in between, there was a 5-year period (1995-2000) when everybody was trying to get rich off dot-coms, usually by applying them to existing profitable markets that it was completely unsuited to. And then there was a further 2 year period (2001-2003) where nobody was getting rich off anything, companies were going bankrupt left and right, but people were figuring out what the web was actually good for. Once they did, the resulting companies changed the world far more than Tim Berners-Lee could've imagined. Cryptocurrencies are fundamentally financial products, and I bet that their ultimate use will end up replacing much of the financial industry. We just had 4 years of hobbyist development (2009-2013) followed by 5 years of everybody trying to get rich off them (2013-2018) by either building platforms or applying them to existing industries, much of which they're ill-suited for. A lot of people have recently lost their shirt. I don't know whether this means we're in the "let's figure out what they're actually good for" phase, or whether they'll be a further, even bigger bubble. It's likely that cryptocurrencies will take longer to penetrate the mass market than the WWW did, because communications (by its nature) spreads virally, while finance is the underpinning for the entire rest of the economy. But I don't think cryptocurrencies are a fad that'll die out, at this point...there are too many people experimenting with them and too many people desperate for an alternative to the mainstream financial system.
    - roymurdock 8y ago
      Appreciate you taking the time to share these thoughts, especially as I don't have any biz experience from the dot com bubble times, so it's interesting to get that perspective. I see cryptocurrencies as an offshoot of people misunderstanding what a blockchain can/can't do, and those seeking to profit from this misunderstanding. I see the blockchain as a new way to structure data, e.g. a new type of database. It can be used to create a ledger/method of exchange within a financial system, but to me the underlying technology is not financial in nature, it's just a new way to structure and store data. The way the blockchain is implemented in Bitcoin is ideal for a decentralized financial system, but to me it is much less efficient than a system relying on a trusted 3rd party for accounting/balancing ledgers. This is the fundamental tradeoff - efficiency/trust. Among myself/my friends, I don't see anyone desperate for an alternative to the mainstream system, I actually see good progress in fintech companies such as Venmo/TransferWise/Monzo etc. that are getting bought up by the bigger banks/payments providers. But if I was trying to move more money across stricter borders, I could see the desire for new financial products/systems (legality aside). I'll check back in with you in a year to see what's up ;)
  - brian-armstrong 8y ago
    You might want to check out https://twitter.com/buttcoin https://twitter.com/buttcoin which aggregates a lot of good cryptocurrency news
  - st1ck 8y ago
    It depends on your definition of "interesting". Lightning Network, atomic swaps, sidechains (like Blockstream Elements, Liquid), confidential transactions, bulletproofs, MimbleWimble, Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work etc. are all interesting tech innovations and have nothing to do with get-rich-quick.

EOS and Tron. There are probably others. I went to a couple cryptocurrency meetups recently that were sponsored by a startup, 6 months old, which had offices in 3 cities, 2 different product lines, and was launching a venture capital fund. To me, that's a red flag that they have too much money and no idea how to deploy it.

roymurdock 8y ago
Off topic, but is there anything interesting going on in the cryptocurrency space? I stopped following circa 2015 after seeing Bitcoin/blockchain co-opted by a bunch of hucksters for a bunch of get-rich-quick schemes (including internal projects at more than a few major technology companies). I've heard stirrings about a few "stablecoin" project with more solid economic underpinnings, but am skeptical anyone can come up with a better design than the USD, EUR, or CHF for keeping a currency pegged to a broad basket of goods. I ask because you're clearly not a crypto shill and it's hard to find unbiased opinions on cryptocurrencies these days.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the cryptocurrency space, but it's all fairly high-risk/speculative stuff. Off the top of my head, there's: Fixing the transaction delays & scalability problems of Bitcoin (Nano, Iota). Fixing web advertising (Brave/BAT). Decentralized prediction markets (Augur). Tokenizing real estate (lots of startups). Decentralized stablecoins (DAI). DApp platforms (Ethereum, EOS, bunch of others now) and infrastructure built to solve problems with those platforms (Loom Network, Cardstack). It remains to be seen how much of this will be profitable or even get any significant user adoption. I'm thinking back to the dot-com boom, though. The WWW started, fundamentally, as a communication technology, and it had its biggest impact as a communication technology. But in between, there was a 5-year period (1995-2000) when everybody was trying to get rich off dot-coms, usually by applying them to existing profitable markets that it was completely unsuited to. And then there was a further 2 year period (2001-2003) where nobody was getting rich off anything, companies were going bankrupt left and right, but people were figuring out what the web was actually good for. Once they did, the resulting companies changed the world far more than Tim Berners-Lee could've imagined. Cryptocurrencies are fundamentally financial products, and I bet that their ultimate use will end up replacing much of the financial industry. We just had 4 years of hobbyist development (2009-2013) followed by 5 years of everybody trying to get rich off them (2013-2018) by either building platforms or applying them to existing industries, much of which they're ill-suited for. A lot of people have recently lost their shirt. I don't know whether this means we're in the "let's figure out what they're actually good for" phase, or whether they'll be a further, even bigger bubble. It's likely that cryptocurrencies will take longer to penetrate the mass market than the WWW did, because communications (by its nature) spreads virally, while finance is the underpinning for the entire rest of the economy. But I don't think cryptocurrencies are a fad that'll die out, at this point...there are too many people experimenting with them and too many people desperate for an alternative to the mainstream financial system.
  - roymurdock 8y ago
    Appreciate you taking the time to share these thoughts, especially as I don't have any biz experience from the dot com bubble times, so it's interesting to get that perspective. I see cryptocurrencies as an offshoot of people misunderstanding what a blockchain can/can't do, and those seeking to profit from this misunderstanding. I see the blockchain as a new way to structure data, e.g. a new type of database. It can be used to create a ledger/method of exchange within a financial system, but to me the underlying technology is not financial in nature, it's just a new way to structure and store data. The way the blockchain is implemented in Bitcoin is ideal for a decentralized financial system, but to me it is much less efficient than a system relying on a trusted 3rd party for accounting/balancing ledgers. This is the fundamental tradeoff - efficiency/trust. Among myself/my friends, I don't see anyone desperate for an alternative to the mainstream system, I actually see good progress in fintech companies such as Venmo/TransferWise/Monzo etc. that are getting bought up by the bigger banks/payments providers. But if I was trying to move more money across stricter borders, I could see the desire for new financial products/systems (legality aside). I'll check back in with you in a year to see what's up ;)
- brian-armstrong 8y ago
  You might want to check out https://twitter.com/buttcoin https://twitter.com/buttcoin which aggregates a lot of good cryptocurrency news
- st1ck 8y ago
  It depends on your definition of "interesting". Lightning Network, atomic swaps, sidechains (like Blockstream Elements, Liquid), confidential transactions, bulletproofs, MimbleWimble, Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work etc. are all interesting tech innovations and have nothing to do with get-rich-quick.