5 ms·
Count me skeptical about of some of these 'self-made' billionaires. Pinduoduo for example, as with many Chinese companies, has been accused of falsifying revenu
by cromwellian 8y ago
Count me skeptical about of some of these 'self-made' billionaires. Pinduoduo for example, as with many Chinese companies, has been accused of falsifying revenues to pump stock prices. Yes, this stuff happens in the US as well (we all remember Enron and Theranos), but to what extent, are the statements of these companies transparent and well-audited, and regulated by government differs by region.
And Bitmain? Is it tech wealth creation to sell pick-axes to desperate miners looking for a gold rush? This looks to me like instead, a zero-sum trade, wherein someone got rich, and everyone else was left holding the bag for a device that would be worthless in a few months.
Of all of those on the list, DJI looks like the most legit, self-made success story, producing a very high quality, Apple-like experience in innovative drone devices, devices now used extensively by the film industry.
- sanxiyn 8y agoBitmain absolutely is an amazing tech company. You may want to read 2018 retrospective at Bitmain blog: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/bitmain-following-a-busy-2018-what-can-we-expect-in-2019/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/bitmain-following-a-busy-2018-wh...
- cromwellian 8y agoThe tech can be amazing, but the business itself can still be essentially, a kind of a ponzi scam. The vast majority of people cannot make money from an Antminer S15 unless they're able to steal electricity or get it super cheap. At current predicted hash rates, power consumption, and BTC prices, these miners are a wash, or net negative. (https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-s15-28th https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-s15-2...) That makes them a scam. Even if they were profitable, it would likely be temporary, meaning you'd have to buy a whole new suite of even faster HW as soon as everyone else buys them. That's why I view this as selling pick-axes to unsuspecting and gullible farmers who sold their worldly possessions for the great gold rushes of the 1800s. The people selling the mining equivalent knew the vast majority of them would never earn anything. The best most amazing technologically advanced pick-axes in the world can still be a disrespectful business model.
- samatman 8y agoThis is not what a scam is. An Antminer isn't a license to print money. It's a device for hashing blocks. This is like calling Sony a scam because they sell video cameras to aspiring YouTube stars who never make money out of their aspirations. It matters, because there are plenty of scams out there, where people exchange money in good faith and receive a substandard good, or nothing at all, in return. If Bitmain does that, provide evidence. If it doesn't, stop making libelous statements about them. You may not like their product. I would never buy it. But it isn't a scam.
- cromwellian 8y agoAnd what legitimate business or personal need does hashing blocks satisfy? A camera is useful even if you don't use it to produce a Youtube video. The average person buying a camera isn't seeking to make money off of it by photographic profession or vlogging. However, the vast majority of people purchasing ASIC miners think they're going to make money from them. Another example: GPUs, some people bought em for mining, but independent of mining they accelerate games and digital content creation, and lots of other useful computation.
- hndamien 8y agoThey provide network security in exchange for money.
- cromwellian 8y agoThe people who own most of the hashing power (esp those in China) aren't interested in network security, they're interested purely in money. It's the true believers who think cryptocurrencies are going to save the world from centralized banks who are getting scammed.
- alkibiades 8y agonot to mentioned they are government-sanctioned/backed oligarchs.
- forkLding 8y agoYeah but so is Ford (https://qz.com/1262815/fords-move-to-stop-making-cars-was-enabled-by-american-protectionism/ https://qz.com/1262815/fords-move-to-stop-making-cars-was-en...) and GM ($49.5 Billion US govt. bailout), they would have been crushed by the Japanese and European auto companies a long time ago but nobody cares, it's the winners that matter in the world so saying govt. sanctioned is pretty random chance of probability, I wish I was a govt. sanctioned company person in China but that is never gonna happen.
- baybal2 8y agoBy the way, China is the one and only foreign market where GM ever managed to sell their bad cars.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoYou mean SAIC-GM (51% SAIC, 49% GM JV of course). Buick is considered a decent brand in China. American brands are more competitive with Japanese brands in China due a fluke: as all of them are made in human labor intensive factories (vs. using more robots), the quality of Japanese designed cars has gone way down to the point that Toyota and Honda aren't thought of as being very good cars like they are in the states.
- baybal2 8y agoI say it's not much different from what it is in states: Old Rich People Drive Buicks.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoYoung rich people might drive Buicks in China. My 40ish boss had a Buick luxury minivan that they don't even make in the states.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoXiaomi is another one, their build quality is good and they make a whole bunch of actually useful non "tech" things like escooters, air filters, vaccuums. I don't know if they're shady with finances or data collection though
- tehlike 8y agoI cant imagine xiaomis finances being balloon. I think it currently sits at 28b$ and makes it super cheap. Same goes with jd.
- sanxiyn 8y agoXiaomi doesn't really make air filters and vacuums, they are made by their partners. Xiaomi is providing retail service to those partners. Xiaomi also provides partners other services, like pooling purchases to lower price and pooling loans to lower rate. One financial analysis of Xiaomi I read (it's in Korean, I couldn't find anything in English) is that it is in part a lending company funded by float from manufacturing partners. Xiaomi has a personal loan product which grew by 100x in two years to ~1 billion. Liquidity comes from delay between retail sale to partner payment.
- baybal2 8y agoTo begin with, money in China are super duper cheap to begin with. I guess, even "super duper cheap" was not enough for Xiaomi
- trimbo 8y ago> devices now used extensively by the film industry. It's not a big enough industry to support their valuation. Many companies have developed clever equipment for the film industry over the decades[1] and none has been valued at $15bn for it[2]. As an example: Panavision sold for $622M last year. They really need to (edit: continue to) be selling to consumers. That said, I agree completely about their quality and success. [1] - Check out some cool stuff here: https://camerarevolution.com/ https://camerarevolution.com/ [2] - Kodak might have been, once upon a time, but I can't find a breakdown of their motion picture revenue so it's hard to say.
- cromwellian 8y agoYes, DJI literally shocked me when I bought the Mavic. They completely bust the stereotype that China is bad at design and innovation, e.g. "Designed in California, Assembled in China". Everything from the build quality, to the packaging, documentation, software, even customer support has impressed me. They're like the canary in the coal mine, a wakeup signal for the Silicon Valley that thinks they're still on top because design and innovation happens here, and China is only for lower-on-the-supply chain stuff. If companies like DJI replicate, and China gets a few dozen Samsungs and Sonys, which become global brands and symbols of high quality instead of regional brands, one of the shining sectors of the US will have been caught with its pants down by misjudging their competition yet again.
- tehlike 8y agoI feel same for xiaomi.
- psnatch 8y agoTheir hardware, sure. Software, not so much. Mi Home is an abomination.
- ShorsHammer 8y agoMIUI OS seems to be liked by some, personally think it's terrible. That said, they are one of the few phone companies left that allow consumers to unlock the bootloader, along with offering some stock android models with zero bloatware and monthly security updates. Samsungs are worthless now if you can't install Lineage on them.
- baybal2 8y agoYou are right, I'd say that true "big deal" companies don't "surface" in China. For example, the near monopolist laptop and phone hinge manufacturer RKX did not have a website up until relatively recently. The same is true for the biggest slip rings manufacturer in China Jinpat - was virtually unheard of even among engineers in China. Everybody only knew them as the no name slip ring maker, but few knew that they control almost all the market for microminiature slip rings, and high performance ones. The tech big players in China are actual tech companies, not websites.
- frozenport 8y agoDJI stole tech from horizon hobby, classic Chinese partnership scam.
- iamaelephant 8y agoEven the legit examples are bullshit, I hate the term self-made (b|m)illionaire because almost all of them came from some kind of privilege that enabled it, and lucky circumstances that precipitate their rise. Take these Atlassian blokes who like to tell the story of starting a company on $20k of credit card debt and a dream to make a living wage without working for someone else. That story doesn't mention they came from rich white families who got them into prestigious high schools and gave them all kinds of networking advantages. It doesn't mention that unlike most of us they could take their $20k debt risk because they already had charmed lives with fallback options that most of us don't have. Self made wealth is almost always a product of an entire community.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- keiferski 8y agoThis sort of attitude is really nonsensical. It's the sort of extremism that seems to say: you're only self-made if you grew up in a cave, made your own clothes from animals that you yourself hunted, taught yourself language and built your business while working 80 hours a week as a [worst-job-here]. In other words: a dangerous level of holier-than-thou self-righteousness. The reality is that wealth and "privilege" are a scale: no matter who you are in the world, there are both people above and below you, in terms of advantages.
- gambiting 8y ago>>you're only self-made is you grew up in a cave, made your own clothes from animals that you yourself hunted, and built your business while working 80 hours a week as a [worst-job-here]. Even then someone would say that it was still done from a position of privilege because you had a place to sleep, animals to hunt, and how dare you say you are self made - you at least had a job unlike many people in this fine country! To me, "self-made" means being able to take the opportunities within the environment that you live in and make the best out of them. Yes, that usually means that you get some opportunities that other people don't get - but equally, there are opportunities that you don't get either. You can be a "self-made" white son of a billionaire. Or a "self-made" immigrant of colour. Alternatively, we can stop using the term "self-made" entirely and pretend that it doesn't exist. That's also a solution.