13 ms·

Cryptocurrency Startup School

125 points by yarapavan 7y ago

Cakez0r 7y ago
They are referring to blockchains, not cryptography.
Dude2029 7y ago
"Free" because the product is you!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bernardlunn 7y ago
What is it about HN people and negativity about Crypto? Want a killer app? Just look at Bitcoin. Want to find people who use Bitcoin? Move out of your world and visit countries with failing currencies.
- fcolas 7y ago
  +1
- Nursie 7y ago
  > Move out of your world and visit countries with failing currencies. None of whom use or would actually benefit from buying into your cryptocurrency of choice.
- donkeyd 7y ago
  Can you give me a couple of concrete examples? Especially large scale usage that actually impacts the value of Bitcoin? I currently see value in it only as an investment for people with FOMO. I visited Haiti and over there, people just use their phones to pay each other through their telecom provider, or they use USD. None of them use Bitcoin, they're not even aware it's a thing.
  - tastroder 7y ago
    They're likely talking about Venezuela, BTC usage by some shops and charities there made quite a bit of media this year, turning it into a popular meme for the cryptocurrency narrative that isn't otherwise backed by the real world.
  - stale2002 7y ago
    Sending censorship resistant transactions. Crypto transactions are generally censored much less often than things like bank or credit card transactions.
    - donkeyd 7y ago
      So you mean mostly illegal stuff. Yeah, I can see a market there!
      - stale2002 7y ago
        No, I mean things that get censored. For example, go try and start an adult services internet company. You will quickly find that very few banks will be willing to allow you to open an account. Even though adult services isn't something that is illegal in the US. Also, go back to 2011, and try to donate money to WikiLeaks. Even though WikiLeaks was not charged with any crimes, and has not been convicted on anything to this day, you will find that all the major credit card companies would refuse to process your transactions. They were not charged with any crimes. And yet, your transactions would be censored anyway. So no, this does not have anything to do with illegal behavior. Lots of financial transactions get censored all the time, regardless of any crimes being committed.
- democracy 7y ago
  Oh please. As a former citizen of a country where the name of a local currency was used for jokes only, I can assure you - noone in their right mind would exchange the local awful shit currency for any of the existing cryptocurrencies. People would rather buy 5 fridges and three tv-screens or euro/dollars (and there is always black market in the toughest of the toughest dictatorships out there) anytime. When I was reading Mr. Antonopoulos about giving advice to his mother in Greece to invest in Bitcoin I was laughing like crazy (2018, bitcoin falling fast and steady). There are two great lies (dreams??) crypto shills: 1) replacement of the 3rd world country dying currencies and 2) 3rd world country unbanked people desperately waiting for someone to "bank" them.
rolltiide 7y ago
I like to see more formal-ish education in this space. Right now the distributed ledger and digital asset education is either extremely technical documents OR youtubers glossing over everything. A lot of the grifters aren't speaking a common tongue and it unnecessarily increases the transaction cost of coordinating expertise.
cpheimbach 7y ago
Lesson 1: Don't do it.
svrtknst 7y ago
Seems interesting, and I'll probably check it out. Been looking (albeit not very hard) for a neat entry into the blockchain field, this might be it. Doubtless there are other excellent resources, this timed it pretty well for me. My biggest gripe so far is that I had to turn off the contnet blocking in Firefox for the e-mail field to show up...
gcatalfamo 7y ago
I'd rather have one on ML startups
chx 7y ago
Well, crypto is a scam and you better be on the side which gets rich from it. Already in 2015 Washington Post summed it up: > - Hey, do you want to hear about the future? It's a digital currency called Bitcoin that lets you spend or move your money online without paying any fees. > - Sounds great. How does it do that? > - Well, Bitcoin saves you money by making transactions irreversible. > - So ... if I get scammed, I got scammed? There's nothing I can do about it? > - Yes. > - Okay, but is it at least easy to use? > - The thing is, I don't actually use it. I just hoard it. I'm waiting for some greater fools to push up the price by using theirs. > - Oh. > - Yeah. So you should buy some Bitcoins and use yours. Preston Byrne's great post two years later https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ suggested to call it a Nakamoto scheme, drawing parallels to chain distribution schemes: > As used herein a “chain distributor scheme” is a sales device whereby a person, upon condition that he make an investment, is granted a license or right to solicit or recruit for profit or economic gain one or more additional persons who are also granted such license or right upon condition of making an investment and may further perpetuate the chain of persons who are granted such license or right upon such condition. What is amazing in this new kind of scam is the lack of central scammers and certain actors can easily exploit the culpability of ordinary people. That's what this is, setting up various vehicles to separate fools from their money, and, of course, having a stake in the operation which does the separation. By all means this should be illegal and eventually it will be. Already Facebook's Libra attempt was met by a very stern no by financial regulators in various European countries. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cryptocurrency-france-german/france-and-germany-agree-to-block-facebooks-libra-idUSKCN1VY1XU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cryptocurrency-f...
egloo 7y ago
A startup school for a singular technical solution that has now gone years without any demonstrable killer app and which faces immense scaling and regulatory hurdles seems like putting the cart well before the horse here. I very much doubt that the key roadblock to realizing the crypto dream has been the lack of availability of a startup school around it.
- rapsey 7y ago
  They are probably desperate to prevent all their investments in the crypto sector to fizzle out. A scenario more likely by the day.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    As computers branched out from the math discipline very quickly there was also a need for formal education that only focused on computers. Without a shared advanced level of understanding it made collaboration all the more difficult, and people’s investments in the space all the more impossible. It is a time tested strategy. It doesn't matter if it doesn't pan out, it is just as good if they all synthesize the idea that this is not economical for anyone and conclude not to pursue this technology anymore. The body of work will still be a worthwhile experiment. But now imagine if they did increase the utility of this technology.
- ackbar03 7y ago
  Agreed, this one's a head scratcher
  - tempsy 7y ago
    Why is it a head scratcher? They’ve made some of the bigger bets in crypto and have a dedicated crypto team, so they have every incentive to invest in training or teaching the next gen of crypto founders.
- forgingahead 7y ago
  Perhaps you're right, but so what? If they're funding it, and folks are interested in trying it out, what's the worst that can happen? Best case some new innovation comes out, worse case they end up back where they started. Journey and not the destination and all that.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lawnchair_larry 7y ago
What does A16Z know about cryptography?
- fasicle 7y ago
  They have been talking about it and investing in crypto companies for a while. https://a16z.com/crypto/ https://a16z.com/crypto/
  - donkeyd 7y ago
    I think 'blockchain' would've been a much better name for this page. Then again, their target market might be people who have heard 'crypto' on the news, not people who know what blockchain is.
- shp0ngle 7y ago
  "crypto" means "blockchain".
- buboard 7y ago
  i can only assume they employ some cryptographers among their ranks. they invested in coinbase and other cryptocoin companies
- Noughmad 7y ago
  The word "crypto" is not about cryptography. It's about useless digital currencies.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
boffinism 7y ago
Crypto... Graphy? Currency? Coccus?
- jchallis 7y ago
  A Cryptococcus school would be worth something. Not enough tech innovation in opportunistic infections!
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    Aren’t all infections opportunistic and disruptive? Aren’t all VCs opportunistic and disruptive? Edit: Maybe we need Crypto Capitalism
- simias 7y ago
  It wasn't clear to me either at first but it's cryptocurrency, quite disappointingly I might add.
- donkeyd 7y ago
  Good question, using this abbreviation for everything that starts with 'crypto' is just dumb. On Wikipedia, the crypto page is enormous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto
- OJFord 7y ago
  Pretty cryptic, a crypto title indeed.
- dang 7y ago
  We put the currency in cryptocurrency above.
dnprock 7y ago
Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these. - How do we make Bitcoin/crypto easier for normal people to use? I think a decent solution so far is the CashApp. But it's only useful for stacking sats. - How do we make cryptocurrency usable for transactions? Bitcoin volatility makes transaction really hard. I think the answer is new experimentations and tweaks to Bitcoin monetary policy. I outline the problem in this article. https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to-the-world.html https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to...
- breck 7y ago
  > create a digital currency that people can use. I 100% agree. I love the core ideas, but it's not really useable yet beyond a few (important) use cases. I think the problem is trust. I first got in Bitcoin at $6 and Ethereum at $10. I got out way too early to retire (hence why I bought the domain sellnothing.com, to remind myself of an important lesson), but I got out because I realized the system was too complex and I didn't understand it all, and so felt like the sucker at the poker table. Our Tree Notation I believe is the solution to making a crypto currency people could trust. You could build a Tree Language for a blockchain that is: 0 syntax. 0 unnecessary complexity. 100% of the capability. No BS. It would look something like this: transaction id lerledsfa334 receiver abc432 sender fslkm324 amount 2.22 The key advantage of Tree Notation is countable complexity. You could build a system that is very easy to audit and the community could easily reject any unnecessary complexity, which I think is where corruption goes to hide--in unnecessary complexity. I've got my hands full with Tree Notation applications in medical research and data science, but I really hope someone applies it to the digital currency space, and I'd be happy to assist time permitting. https://treenotation.org https://treenotation.org or breck@treenotation.org
  - thefounder 7y ago
    Wtf are you talking about? Digital currencies don't "work" because they are volatile not because they lack a Tree Notation strategy. They have become an speculative investment/gambling rather than a method of payment.
lbacaj 7y ago
As an engineer in love with Crypto I figured I would try to build something with it so I put a little side project together, something easy and simple a way you could earn cashback in the form of crypto for shopping online. I went ahead did the integrations with the major affiliate networks, built the whole backend, built the infrastructure for the crypto side. Including creating temporary wallets that people could chose to move their crypto off of etc, ultimately it would cost something like 5 dollars to issue someone 5 dollars. It might be different now but basically most folks pushing the technology have never actually tried to do anything with it. I came to realize that this whole thing is only useful for one or two use cases maximum. It's terrible for micro transactions, terrible for any sort of scale, and while we all love the idea of it this is like trying to do the iPhone in the 1980's... we are at least 20-30 years a way from something useful.
- throw03172019 7y ago
  Are you interested in selling your code?
- easymovet 7y ago
  Lolli does this by only paying out when you accrue enough, and possibly uses the lightning network for payout which makes micro transactions of bitcoin much cheaper. Pei, does this as well.
kerkeslager 7y ago
The greatest success of Bitcoin is that no one has yet succeeded in turning it into a rent-seeking platform.

125 points by yarapavan 7y ago

Cakez0r 7y ago

They are referring to blockchains, not cryptography.

Dude2029 7y ago

"Free" because the product is you!

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bernardlunn 7y ago

What is it about HN people and negativity about Crypto? Want a killer app? Just look at Bitcoin. Want to find people who use Bitcoin? Move out of your world and visit countries with failing currencies.

fcolas 7y ago
+1
Nursie 7y ago
> Move out of your world and visit countries with failing currencies. None of whom use or would actually benefit from buying into your cryptocurrency of choice.
donkeyd 7y ago
Can you give me a couple of concrete examples? Especially large scale usage that actually impacts the value of Bitcoin? I currently see value in it only as an investment for people with FOMO. I visited Haiti and over there, people just use their phones to pay each other through their telecom provider, or they use USD. None of them use Bitcoin, they're not even aware it's a thing.
- tastroder 7y ago
  They're likely talking about Venezuela, BTC usage by some shops and charities there made quite a bit of media this year, turning it into a popular meme for the cryptocurrency narrative that isn't otherwise backed by the real world.
- stale2002 7y ago
  Sending censorship resistant transactions. Crypto transactions are generally censored much less often than things like bank or credit card transactions.
  - donkeyd 7y ago
    So you mean mostly illegal stuff. Yeah, I can see a market there!
    - stale2002 7y ago
      No, I mean things that get censored. For example, go try and start an adult services internet company. You will quickly find that very few banks will be willing to allow you to open an account. Even though adult services isn't something that is illegal in the US. Also, go back to 2011, and try to donate money to WikiLeaks. Even though WikiLeaks was not charged with any crimes, and has not been convicted on anything to this day, you will find that all the major credit card companies would refuse to process your transactions. They were not charged with any crimes. And yet, your transactions would be censored anyway. So no, this does not have anything to do with illegal behavior. Lots of financial transactions get censored all the time, regardless of any crimes being committed.
democracy 7y ago
Oh please. As a former citizen of a country where the name of a local currency was used for jokes only, I can assure you - noone in their right mind would exchange the local awful shit currency for any of the existing cryptocurrencies. People would rather buy 5 fridges and three tv-screens or euro/dollars (and there is always black market in the toughest of the toughest dictatorships out there) anytime. When I was reading Mr. Antonopoulos about giving advice to his mother in Greece to invest in Bitcoin I was laughing like crazy (2018, bitcoin falling fast and steady). There are two great lies (dreams??) crypto shills: 1) replacement of the 3rd world country dying currencies and 2) 3rd world country unbanked people desperately waiting for someone to "bank" them.

rolltiide 7y ago

I like to see more formal-ish education in this space. Right now the distributed ledger and digital asset education is either extremely technical documents OR youtubers glossing over everything. A lot of the grifters aren't speaking a common tongue and it unnecessarily increases the transaction cost of coordinating expertise.

cpheimbach 7y ago

Lesson 1: Don't do it.

svrtknst 7y ago

Seems interesting, and I'll probably check it out. Been looking (albeit not very hard) for a neat entry into the blockchain field, this might be it. Doubtless there are other excellent resources, this timed it pretty well for me. My biggest gripe so far is that I had to turn off the contnet blocking in Firefox for the e-mail field to show up...

gcatalfamo 7y ago

I'd rather have one on ML startups

chx 7y ago

Well, crypto is a scam and you better be on the side which gets rich from it. Already in 2015 Washington Post summed it up: > - Hey, do you want to hear about the future? It's a digital currency called Bitcoin that lets you spend or move your money online without paying any fees. > - Sounds great. How does it do that? > - Well, Bitcoin saves you money by making transactions irreversible. > - So ... if I get scammed, I got scammed? There's nothing I can do about it? > - Yes. > - Okay, but is it at least easy to use? > - The thing is, I don't actually use it. I just hoard it. I'm waiting for some greater fools to push up the price by using theirs. > - Oh. > - Yeah. So you should buy some Bitcoins and use yours. Preston Byrne's great post two years later https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ suggested to call it a Nakamoto scheme, drawing parallels to chain distribution schemes: > As used herein a “chain distributor scheme” is a sales device whereby a person, upon condition that he make an investment, is granted a license or right to solicit or recruit for profit or economic gain one or more additional persons who are also granted such license or right upon condition of making an investment and may further perpetuate the chain of persons who are granted such license or right upon such condition. What is amazing in this new kind of scam is the lack of central scammers and certain actors can easily exploit the culpability of ordinary people. That's what this is, setting up various vehicles to separate fools from their money, and, of course, having a stake in the operation which does the separation. By all means this should be illegal and eventually it will be. Already Facebook's Libra attempt was met by a very stern no by financial regulators in various European countries. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cryptocurrency-france-german/france-and-germany-agree-to-block-facebooks-libra-idUSKCN1VY1XU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cryptocurrency-f...

egloo 7y ago

A startup school for a singular technical solution that has now gone years without any demonstrable killer app and which faces immense scaling and regulatory hurdles seems like putting the cart well before the horse here. I very much doubt that the key roadblock to realizing the crypto dream has been the lack of availability of a startup school around it.

rapsey 7y ago
They are probably desperate to prevent all their investments in the crypto sector to fizzle out. A scenario more likely by the day.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  As computers branched out from the math discipline very quickly there was also a need for formal education that only focused on computers. Without a shared advanced level of understanding it made collaboration all the more difficult, and people’s investments in the space all the more impossible. It is a time tested strategy. It doesn't matter if it doesn't pan out, it is just as good if they all synthesize the idea that this is not economical for anyone and conclude not to pursue this technology anymore. The body of work will still be a worthwhile experiment. But now imagine if they did increase the utility of this technology.
ackbar03 7y ago
Agreed, this one's a head scratcher
- tempsy 7y ago
  Why is it a head scratcher? They’ve made some of the bigger bets in crypto and have a dedicated crypto team, so they have every incentive to invest in training or teaching the next gen of crypto founders.
forgingahead 7y ago
Perhaps you're right, but so what? If they're funding it, and folks are interested in trying it out, what's the worst that can happen? Best case some new innovation comes out, worse case they end up back where they started. Journey and not the destination and all that.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lawnchair_larry 7y ago

What does A16Z know about cryptography?

fasicle 7y ago
They have been talking about it and investing in crypto companies for a while. https://a16z.com/crypto/ https://a16z.com/crypto/
- donkeyd 7y ago
  I think 'blockchain' would've been a much better name for this page. Then again, their target market might be people who have heard 'crypto' on the news, not people who know what blockchain is.
shp0ngle 7y ago
"crypto" means "blockchain".
buboard 7y ago
i can only assume they employ some cryptographers among their ranks. they invested in coinbase and other cryptocoin companies
Noughmad 7y ago
The word "crypto" is not about cryptography. It's about useless digital currencies.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

boffinism 7y ago

Crypto... Graphy? Currency? Coccus?

jchallis 7y ago
A Cryptococcus school would be worth something. Not enough tech innovation in opportunistic infections!
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Aren’t all infections opportunistic and disruptive? Aren’t all VCs opportunistic and disruptive? Edit: Maybe we need Crypto Capitalism
simias 7y ago
It wasn't clear to me either at first but it's cryptocurrency, quite disappointingly I might add.
donkeyd 7y ago
Good question, using this abbreviation for everything that starts with 'crypto' is just dumb. On Wikipedia, the crypto page is enormous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto
OJFord 7y ago
Pretty cryptic, a crypto title indeed.
dang 7y ago
We put the currency in cryptocurrency above.

dnprock 7y ago

Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these. - How do we make Bitcoin/crypto easier for normal people to use? I think a decent solution so far is the CashApp. But it's only useful for stacking sats. - How do we make cryptocurrency usable for transactions? Bitcoin volatility makes transaction really hard. I think the answer is new experimentations and tweaks to Bitcoin monetary policy. I outline the problem in this article. https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to-the-world.html https://bitflate.org/post/2019/08/26/bitcoin-missing-link-to...

breck 7y ago
> create a digital currency that people can use. I 100% agree. I love the core ideas, but it's not really useable yet beyond a few (important) use cases. I think the problem is trust. I first got in Bitcoin at $6 and Ethereum at $10. I got out way too early to retire (hence why I bought the domain sellnothing.com, to remind myself of an important lesson), but I got out because I realized the system was too complex and I didn't understand it all, and so felt like the sucker at the poker table. Our Tree Notation I believe is the solution to making a crypto currency people could trust. You could build a Tree Language for a blockchain that is: 0 syntax. 0 unnecessary complexity. 100% of the capability. No BS. It would look something like this: transaction id lerledsfa334 receiver abc432 sender fslkm324 amount 2.22 The key advantage of Tree Notation is countable complexity. You could build a system that is very easy to audit and the community could easily reject any unnecessary complexity, which I think is where corruption goes to hide--in unnecessary complexity. I've got my hands full with Tree Notation applications in medical research and data science, but I really hope someone applies it to the digital currency space, and I'd be happy to assist time permitting. https://treenotation.org https://treenotation.org or breck@treenotation.org
- thefounder 7y ago
  Wtf are you talking about? Digital currencies don't "work" because they are volatile not because they lack a Tree Notation strategy. They have become an speculative investment/gambling rather than a method of payment.

lbacaj 7y ago

As an engineer in love with Crypto I figured I would try to build something with it so I put a little side project together, something easy and simple a way you could earn cashback in the form of crypto for shopping online. I went ahead did the integrations with the major affiliate networks, built the whole backend, built the infrastructure for the crypto side. Including creating temporary wallets that people could chose to move their crypto off of etc, ultimately it would cost something like 5 dollars to issue someone 5 dollars. It might be different now but basically most folks pushing the technology have never actually tried to do anything with it. I came to realize that this whole thing is only useful for one or two use cases maximum. It's terrible for micro transactions, terrible for any sort of scale, and while we all love the idea of it this is like trying to do the iPhone in the 1980's... we are at least 20-30 years a way from something useful.

throw03172019 7y ago
Are you interested in selling your code?
easymovet 7y ago
Lolli does this by only paying out when you accrue enough, and possibly uses the lightning network for payout which makes micro transactions of bitcoin much cheaper. Pei, does this as well.

kerkeslager 7y ago

The greatest success of Bitcoin is that no one has yet succeeded in turning it into a rent-seeking platform.