16 ms·

An NFT That Saves Lives

138 points by prtkgpt 5y ago

spamalot159 5y ago
Seems like even PG is succumbing to the hype of NFTs. I don't understand how this will be any better than just doing a donation drive and it could possibly be worse for the planet.
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- klyrs 5y ago
  This is generally the problem with idolizing people. PG is a human. Humans do stupid stuff.
  - dandanua 5y ago
    Why do you think it's stupid? He is legitimizing blockchains with the hope that the price will grow (infinitely) and he will be at the top of this human pyramid. Ah, and what about saved lives? Pyramid supporters don't give a sh*t about lower levels of the pyramid. That's the main point of building it.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Sure, I should have said that humans fail to live up to the lofty standards that people expect of their idols. But "people are stupid" rolls off the toungue, as it were
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sneak 5y ago
I'm not sure from this blog post what this company has to do with NFTs, or how these NFTs are intended to generate revenue for this organization, or why the tokens being sold can't be fungible, or what they're for. (Aside: The HTTPs Everywhere extension takes a bit of an issue with pg's 199x-vintage website. :)
- detaro 5y ago
  Seems fairly clearly just jumping on the bandwagon. Clearly people right now spend lots of money on NFTs for whatever reasons, so sell one and get money the buyer probably wouldn't have donated otherwise.
  - prtkgpt 5y ago
    I believe, this is a great example to raise funds with the NFT models. Crypto to save human life.
    - psswrd12345 5y ago
      This + the NFTs will make for truly excellent virtue signaling.
kthejoker2 5y ago
Leveraging manias for social good sounds appropriately disruptive .. Is there a way to short NFTs? I wish I could proactively sell people's regret to them.
- smabie 5y ago
  Sure you can short some NFTs.
- throwawaytemp27 5y ago
  As Matt Levine would say, the way to do that is to mint and sell your own NFT. That way you are on the opposite side of the trade as the bulls who you believe are wrong.
  - yorwba 5y ago
    If you mint an NFT and fail to sell it, you'll lose the minting fee. You'd do better to hold off on minting it until it has already been sold. And to actually sell some, you need to market them as something that people would want (like "saving lives") or, if you're short on ideas, crowdsource that task. At which point you're basically running an NFT platform. And you'll make more money the longer the NFT craze runs, which isn't really opposite to the bulls... The proper way to bet on NFTs being passé soon is probably to invest in something that's not an NFT.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Shorting low-liquidity assets is a very bad idea. If you short an NFT with only 1 token, you effectively just owe whoever holds it an infinite amount of money.
fallat 5y ago
I don't think anyone understands that this is purely a "fun" thing to raise money. Yes, it's exactly like a donation drive.
- spamalot159 5y ago
  Except for that it uses technology that harms the environment. I don't think this trend is "fun" compared to a normal donation drive when it has these negative side effects.
  - casi18 5y ago
    "We plan to make a significant carbon offset to mitigate the environmental impact of this NFT. Within one week of the closing of this auction we will update this page with details of the steps we took." Every action we take has tradeoffs. Everyone acts hoping that they can bring more good to the world than bad. Thats not to say we shouldn't be critical of decisions people make, but the moral panic around nfts is overblown imo. There are solutions being worked on [1] and the upside to addressing coordination problems[2] is huge. Or, as the saying goes, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" [1]https://our.status.im/ethereum-is-green/ https://our.status.im/ethereum-is-green/ [2]https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
    - klmadfejno 5y ago
      > Everyone acts hoping that they can bring more good to the world than bad. Not so sure about that one
    - eloff 5y ago
      > Everyone acts hoping that they can bring more good to the world than bad. I want to live in that world. Those are some seriously potent rose colored glasses you've got going on there. I think it's true that many people think and act that way, but I don't know what percentage of people are basically good like that.
    - Can_Not 5y ago
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
Has Mr. Graham done an honest calculation of how many lives will be lost to the environmental impacts of NFTs if they become mainstream?
- Diederich 5y ago
  Is Ethereum anything like bitcoin in terms of power utilization/environmental impact?
  - psswrd12345 5y ago
    Today, Ethereum uses about 1/6 energy consumption of bitcoin, while providing much more utility. But will change later this year as it transitions to proof-of-stake, at which point Ethereum's energy consumption will be negligible. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blockchain-cryptocurrency-energy-use#:~:text=Rauchs%20says%20that%20it%20is,one%20sixth%20of%20Bitcoin's%20expenditure https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blockchain-cryptocurrency-en....
- mannykannot 5y ago
  I don't think Mr. Graham is under any moral obligation to consider this issue unless it remotely plausible that NFTs issued for charitable purposes (or just NFTs, period) will "go mainstream" to the extent that they have any noticable environmental impact.
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- knowaveragejoe 5y ago
  Why in HN of all places do people constantly have years-old takes on crypto? Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake. Most other chains use some form of proof-of-stake. It's not like these projects are unaware of your criticisms, nor have they stood still since you stopped paying attention in 2017.
  - 5y ago
anotha1 5y ago
This NFT will be great for Noora Health. And maybe even N more organizations. Then, as happened many times in the past, similar organizations will start optimizing the wrong metric and their actions will slowly diverge from their mission.
casi18 5y ago
I imagine @pleasrdao might be bidding on this. A nice example of what global settlement layers and co-ordination tools can be (and should be) used for.
fwip 5y ago
Just put up a donation link, please.
- marris 5y ago
  https://www.noorahealth.org/donate https://www.noorahealth.org/donate
advisedwang 5y ago
Is the donation still tax-deductible if you do it through a NFT?
- motohagiography 5y ago
  I've suspected that the point of NFTs is to transfer cryptocurrency into an asset with a different volatility proifle without "realizing gains," or even use them as loss makers to offset capital gains, so indirectly, maybe?
- 8note 5y ago
  Are purchases from charities tax deductible? I thought it was only donations
  - gowld 5y ago
    The amountyou pay in excess of the market value, is deductible as a donation. This is how charity auctions of commodities work. What's the market value of the NFT? Who knows?
    - criddell 5y ago
      The market value is whatever somebody is willing to pay. If PG will pay $2.6 million for the NFT, that's its market value.
psswrd12345 5y ago
Amazing how short sighted HN is when it comes to NFTs. Blindly accepting the "bad for climate" tripe and showing utter ignorance to the upcoming transition away from energy guzzling proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake world. Sad to see this community act so willfully ignorant to all things crypto.
- McGlockenshire 5y ago
  > upcoming transition away from Read: Not here yet, so still doing the whole energy guzzling proof-of-work thing. NFTs are a dumb fad that's likely to die out before the always-around-the-corner move away from PoW.
endisneigh 5y ago
I don't get it. A non-profit is inherently a centralized entity. What's the point of using a blockchain in this scenario?
- psswrd12345 5y ago
  Verifiable donations, fully transparent reporting/auditing, no restrictions on who can donate, NFTs tied to donations that can be used for virtue signaling online, etc.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    A blockchain isn't necessary for any of these things, though.
    - casi18 5y ago
      It works very well for all of them though.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        A PDF of my Watsi donation and credit card statement is just as good without any blockchain Rube Goldberg mechanizations. By all means, digitally sign the PDF [1] if you want to be fancy and hip, but you don't need a blockchain, nor is it going to tell you if the healthcare donated towards was actually delivered. If the argument is, "It's on the blockchain for trust purposes!" my retort is, "Do you not trust the nonprofit? And if you don't, why are you giving them money?" Please, do donate to non profits that align with your philanthropy interests, but don't get caught up in hype. [1] https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/certificate-based-signatures.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/certificate-based-sign...
        capableweb 5y ago
        Watsi seems to offer donations via credit cards and Paypal, neither which I think supports $2.4 Mil donations, but I'm unsure, never tried it myself. Watsi overall don't seem to fit the "no restrictions on who can donate" part either, as they are an American non-profit (subject to US laws, including embargoes).
nrmitchi 5y ago
I'm not sure why this is an NFT other than trying to capitalize on the current craze. NFT or not, a charity should still "issue a public report tracking how this specific tranche of money is spent, and estimating the number of lives saved as a result". Having decent reporting on how efficient your charity is feels like it should be basic table-stakes in order to raise more money in the future. Is this really any different than a charity asking for donations? Edit: asking for one very large charitable donation.
- babyshake 5y ago
  It would make more sense to sell this as an NFT if it were paired with a thematically related artwork. A wealthy buyer would be able to display the NFT in their home and brag about all the lives they saved when they bought it.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    Yes. Good idea, and one I hope yet another decent charity uses. And frankly its waaaay more PR friendly than 'a report on our spending effectiveness'.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    How do you display an NFT? Isn’t it literally just a hex code, with actual asset hosted somewhere else, which is publicly accessible by everyone? I’m serious. Isn’t that all it is? A pointer to some other resource, without access control at all? At least when I bought a beanie baby, I got beanie baby. NFTs always felt like paying money, then printing up the first picture of a beanie baby from a Google image search, and then trying to convince yourself that had the only one.
    - babyshake 5y ago
      Agreed. If you don't acquire the rights to the contents of the NFT when you buy it, it's not very clear what you are buying. If you do acquire the rights (including cash flow) then buying an NFT has very real meaning.
jtsiskin 5y ago
There is 1 bidder, paulg1
lolsal 5y ago
Isn't this just a receipt? like when I donate shirts to goodwill?
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Yes. Except this way you get to pretend your receipt for money given away (ostensibly out of the kindness of your heart) has magically become an “asset”.
purerandomness 5y ago
This is peak absurdism. Why not simply donate the money? How is this better than a Kickstarter? How many lives could pg have saved by donating the billable time it took him to write this post? It gets even better, from the NFT article: > • What about the environmental costs? > We plan to make a significant carbon offset to mitigate the environmental impact of this NFT. Within one week of the closing of this auction we will update this page with details of the steps we took. pg giveth, pg taketh. If you agree that carbon emissions kill, you'd basically donate for a good cause through an absurdly convoluted money laundering scheme called NFT, and cause massive environmental harm on the other side of the planet, killing even more people, again. I might even draw several trolley problem comics, but the fact this is from pg himself makes me question his sanity and everything he's ever written. It's the same feeling of betrayal like when Signal turned around and decided to implement a payment token after several of us went ahead and invested time to convert family members away from WhatsApp. Profit over reason. Pyramid schemes disguised as benevolent startups saving lives. Startup culture needs a reboot.
- bszupnick 5y ago
  > This is peak absurdism. Why not simply donate the money? How is this better than a Kickstarter? This reminds me of the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS. Does pouring a bucket of ice water over one's head cure ALS? Obviously not. Did creating a trend that went viral help take strides towards curing ALS? Yeah! According to Wikipedia[1] this meme brought $220 million to ALS research. So I'm not sure you can simply say "why not donate the money instead of buying NFTs" since NFTs are what people are interested in now! Maybe this is an instance of meeting your customer where they're at. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Bucket_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Bucket_Challenge
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Dumping a bucket of ice water over your head doesn’t cause severe environmental damage. This does. Also, everyone likes weird videos of bad things happening to people. NFTs don’t have widespread public interest, nor do they have an viral sharing feature. Videos do.
graeme 5y ago
I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I’m unclear on: if someone outbids him, do only they get the token and pg pays nothing, or do both pay and are the contributions etched into the NFT? > But the higher the price of this NFT goes, the more lives will be saved. What a sentence to be able to write. Noora sounds like a good charity but what is different here from simply saying “the more people donate to Noora, the more lives will be saved” Since Noora knows their ROI they should be able to calculate lives saved from a donation whether it is a normal donation or an NFT purchase. If so, what does the NFT do? Many smart people I follow, who are ordinarily good explainers, are inordinately enthused about crypto. And yet on this single topic none of them have produced any public writing explaining the reasons for their enthusiasm. It is maddening. There may well be something there. But if there is it ought, in principle, to be explainable. ———- I should also note you can’t take this and say “NFTs contributed $2.6 million”. You have to consider opportunity costs. The closest alternative to this post would be PG writing exactly the same essay except stating “I donated $2.6 million to Noora and you should too!” with a donate now button. This post hit the HN frontpage, so surely many would have donated. Whereas nobody has donated other than PG. Measured against this alternative, the NFT vs a normal funding mechanism has plausibly cost lives. Not to mention the money that Noora will take out of its funds to do a carbon offset. Perhaps I am misunderstanding how this works, but if I have understood it properly and PG would have done an essay either way this might have cost lives.
- lynx234 5y ago
  > One part I’m unclear on: if someone outbids him, do only they get the token and pg pays nothing, or do both pay and are the contributions etched into the NFT? No, only the person who wins the bid gets the token. I typically defend the tech behind NFTs but this just seems like it's riding the hype of NFTs more than anything.
  - 5y ago
eternauta3k 5y ago
If the ~$1000 per life figure is accurate, the GiveWell[1] guys will be all over this. [1] http://givewell.org http://givewell.org
- timlod 5y ago
  One thing when considering effective giving is that cost-effectiveness does not scale linearly with the investment - this figure may well be accurate for the investments they've received, but that doesn't mean that additional investments will be effective to the same degree. For example, in this case, educating mothers about how to take care of their babies will be very effective until most of the population is educated - from that point on, there may only need to be ongoing low investment to keep that level of education. In general, effective giving would try to keep highly-effective charities well-funded, but not have them store excess investments - if not all of the donations can be "activated", the charity becomes less effective per dollar.
- skybrian 5y ago
  I'm on a poor Internet connection and can't read the page but a search indicates that GiveWell is aware of Noora: https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/charity-science-exit-grant-july-2019 https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/charity-... It would be interesting to read about how it compares to GiveWell's recommended charities.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I used to run the tech side for a couple of UK-based aid organisations (just out of college - basically database management and home brewed campaign work.) We had terrible marketing response once we left a core base of existing donors - getting new donors in the door for a non-profit was (at least for us) a constant challenge. However, once some external event (sadly some horrific disaster) occurred we would see a spike in willing donors. So this looks like a non-horrific external event - something that might make (at 2 million dollars very rich) rich donors dig deep and contribute. Great - taking money from the wealthy and putting it to good use is a perfect use of anyone's time and effort, I hope they raise twice what they expect. Whatever you think of NFTs, I don't care - take advantage of any opportunity to increase your donor base - its tough enough out there :-)
- glitchc 5y ago
  Has your past employer perchance switched from a "give what you can" to a subscription "pay X per month" model? The latter has proven to be remarkably unpopular with the public.
  - criddell 5y ago
    I'm only doing anonymous donations these days. Too many places do not respect your request to not be contacted in the future.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      We donated to the EDF once; the sheer volume of junk mail they and their data broker sent us enraged us so much that we’ve sworn off ever giving them money again.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    This was the best part of 30 years ago - they are still all in existence but I cannot comment on their detailed fundraising techniques :-(
dvt 5y ago
Seeing pg peddle NFTs after a16z did it just a few weeks ago is kind of depressing. I guess Silicon Valley VCs must be really stinging about missing out on Bitcoin a few years ago. Not to mention that disguising what's essentially a money-making scheme as a benevolent donation is morally murky at best.
- tomhoward 5y ago
  Giant assumption that Silicon Valley VCs missed out on Bitcoin. YC invested in Coinbase in 2012. Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures invested in 2013. You don't think their partners bought at least a bit of Bitcoin then as well?
  - dvt 5y ago
    > You don't think their partners bought at least a bit of Bitcoin then as well? I have no way of knowing but I'd wager probably not; VCs invest in highly-speculative moonshot ideas all the time. Back then, crypto was mostly naïve zealotry. And these days, it's mostly greed. It seems people forgot BitTorrent circa 1999-2003 -- it's history literally repeating itself.
    - tomhoward 5y ago
      Marc Andreessen was publicly speaking of Bitcoin as an important technology in 2014 [1]. He sounded like a true believer then, not a moonshot speculator. I remember Sam Altman (then YC president) tweeting about him and other YC partners trading Bitcoin in about 2014 too. And I heard of Peter Thiel having big Bitcoin investments several years ago. It’s not so true that VC’s “invest in highly-speculative moonshot ideas”. YC does as their business model is to bet on a huge pool to catch the outliers. But traditional VCs have to defend their investments to LPs so have to be more prudent. Any VC investing in Bitcoin companies in 2013 was doing so because they personally believed Bitcoin had huge potential. [1] https://www.econtalk.org/marc-andreessen-on-venture-capital-and-the-digital-future/ https://www.econtalk.org/marc-andreessen-on-venture-capital-...
- casi18 5y ago
hamhamed 5y ago
I'm not sure why everyone is tripping here. He's about to save some fucking lives and you suddenly care about the enviroment for sending a mere 100 ETH? Even if we are to look at the big picture, don't tell me you believe PG will be the sole reason everyone is going to pick up NFT donations now? It was going to happen regardless.
- teraflop 5y ago
  It's great that PG is donating to a good cause, and anyone who donates that much money is welcome to brag about it, but that doesn't make the explanation any less baffling. Imagine a very slight modification of this scenario: > I'm going to donate millions of dollars to a life-saving charity, and in return they're going to manufacture and ship me a barrel of low-grade hazardous waste. Anyone who likes is welcome to try and outbid me for the barrel in order to raise even more money. Of course, I'll pay a bit extra to build a vault to safely store the barrel and minimize the risk of leakage into the environment. Afterward, we can calculate how many ounces of toxic chemicals it took to save each human life. > Isn't it great how technology can help make a difference in people's lives? I'm looking forward to seeing what barrels of toxic waste can help us accomplish in the future. EDIT: > Oh, by the way, this has nothing to do with the fact that I have a lot of money invested in a company that makes and transports barrels.
  - not1ofU 5y ago
    I'm planning on donating 100k packets of chewing gum to starving children.
TedShiller 5y ago
awesome, this is great, a good way to show off NFT's
joelthelion 5y ago
This is no better than uploading a PDF report on the NGO's website. An NFT does not bring any additional guarantees, adds a ton of complexity and most definitely doesn't save lives.
macawfish 5y ago
It's weird seeing a website that so vehemently defends artificial speculation in housing markets get so worked up about digital raffle tickets
- dang 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26975955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26975955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918270 "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - macawfish 5y ago
    My bad, the stakes are high. I'll work to cool it next time.
    - dang 5y ago
      It's an internet forum. The stakes are not that high.
      - macawfish 5y ago
        I mean with the housing stuff and the economics. A lot of people in my life are stressed lately about housing. So I have strong feelings about it.
        dang 5y ago
        Ah, I see. Yes indeed. I hope the stress eases soon.
mplewis 5y ago
Great, now pg is deep into the Ponzi scheme.
lucasnortj 5y ago
NFTs are idiotic, an NFT in the service of a worthy goal is no less pointless nor idiotic
ASpaceCowboi 5y ago
Maybe i'm just an idiot, but this: >For this NFT, they're going to issue a public report tracking how this specific tranche of money is spent, and estimating the number of lives saved as a result. In my opinion, that is vital. Many donations to non-profits are used for many various reasons (some justifiable, some definitely NOT). This actually allows tracking on that money. So isn't this a good thing? People can easily manipulate stats on documents without having to worry about someone else double checking the work. With the ability to track the NFT's currency transactions is good, no?
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > People can easily manipulate stats on documents without having to worry about someone else double checking the work. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding how this all works. How is the “report” that will be issued any different from a regular document? Just because it will be an NFT doesn’t mean it will be more accurate does it? Someone will still write whatever they want on the document itself and there’s no mechanism that will make this document more accurate than any other document.
mxwsn 5y ago
The latest NFT craze is primarily for one-of-a-kind items. I'd rather see an org like Noora Health sell unlimited NFTs. What's exciting is the capability for decentralized apps to interact with NFTs. For example, other ethereum-based games are able to detect and interact with cryptokitty NFTs without the permission of the cryptokitty designer. As a blockchain token proof of donating to charity, you can imagine apps that encourage more donations by recognizing donaters in special ways to help build social capital.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Automatic membership to services based on total amount of donations to any charity on the blockchain could be a cool thing. Like, 'to stream this movie, you must have donated $100 to any charity within the last 24 hours'.
throwaway_isms 5y ago
Back when YC experimented with application through the community, or "Apply YC:", I deployed a YCCoin on Ethereum and applied. Basically decentralized Karma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226688 There was one comment "why would I use this?" Rightly or wrongly it seems that is still the question everyone has for NFTs. At the same time in 2017 I had simultaneously built out redditco.in, igco.in, and facebookco.in. If you follow NFTs you might be familiar with the Tweet NFTs and Jack's first tweet getting a multimillion dollar bid, right as that was occurring I got a cease and desist/trademark infringement letter from FB. In a responsive letter I encouraged FB to allow me to auction Zuckerberg's first FB post as an NFT along side Jack's Tweet and with that I would gladly transfer them the domain names. It sounds dumb at best, tinfoil conspiracy at worst, but that is exactly when the bids on Jack's Tweet and all the media surrounding it stopped, and I never got a reply to my response to the TM infringement letter. From there the NFT rabbit hole only got deeper as I began receiving quid pro quos, or pay to play requests for invitations to join an "exclusive" NFT marketplace, even getting a retweet from one of the anonymous NFT collectors on Twitter that has spent millions on NFTs as proof the quid pro quo requests were legit. The Twitter account I was using literally had 1 follower, but was being retweeted by an anonymous NFT collector spending millions (I think even bought one of Grimes' NFTs for about $750K). I will say this for pg's essay, this NFT, and bid...at least pg and company did not create an anonymous or fake persona or personality and pg openly placed the initial bid. However, unless this results in so much backlash no one wants to touch it, my guess is consistent with the entire NFT space, the ultimate bid for this NFT will end up being some anonymous NFT collector with a record of spending millions "collecting" NFTs.
deleted 5y ago
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cwkoss 5y ago
Will PG be committing tax fraud when he writes off this 'donation'? He is receiving in exchange a token when notionally has the same value as his 'donation'. Being able to resell a 'donation' to someone else to recover part of the cost seems weird and like it could confuse tax treatment.
jollybean 5y ago
NFT, much like most Crypto doesn't 'do' anything here. It's not a financial instrument that creates value. 'Private Corporations' enable people to group capital together to make useful stuff, that wouldn't happen otherwise. 'Public Exchanges' allow more transparency and broader classes of investors to participate in markets. Investment Banks 'make markets' for financial instruments so companies can trade things like risk, among other things. There's a lot of net value creation going on there even when it's fuzzy. If NFTs can encourage people to give to a charity, that's great, but of course that shouldn't be necessary. Crypto that can't effectively be used as currency is not a value creator, at least not until they are exchanged as such. This is frothy, bubble-ish kind of stuff that in my life I have seen implode twice, this time 'it may be different' in that it may not crash, but the value creation still isn't there. We should probably strive to do better than moving around deck chairs, even if it's with fancy math or AI.
libra1 5y ago
While the calculation of $1,235 to save a life is very good, donating blood is arguably the most efficient way to save a life since it is free.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  Is there an under-supply of blood in rich countries to the point where people are dying as a result? If 1 regular donor stopped donating, how many additional people will die?
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    There's lack of supply of some rare blood types[1]. Also relevant to point out, if you go donating blood don't just go after some disaster hits. It's a common occurrence that tons of people show up for blood donations after some tragedy hits but blood can only be stored a limited amount of time and it tends to be wasted. If you want to donate, go regularly. [1]https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/the-donor-magazine-summer-2017/a-very-special-blood-type/ https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/the-donor-magazin...
jellicle 5y ago
Charity = good Cryptoscams = bad Want to contribute money? Write a check. Don't sully charitable operations by trying to glue a cryptoscam onto them. It seems rude to flag a link to paulgraham.com on Hacker News, but I'm going to do it anyway. Down with cryptoscams, even ones promoted by Graham.
miguelmota 5y ago
This is interesting but a gofundme or regular fundraising event could achieve the same thing, without paying high miner fees too.
marris 5y ago
The NFT here seems to be a publicity stunt to both raise money directly from the auction and also to raise awareness about the charity. I had never heard of this charity before this stunt, and I probably would not have heard of them without it. It certainly seems plausible that "using an NFT" here is a net good, even if there is some carbon cost. You could argue against the stunt, but it requires more work that just stating "carbon costs." You'd have to check whether valueOfSavedLife * moneyRaised / 1235 + carbonCost < 0. And it looks like the auction is structured so that moneyRaised will be at least 2.5M, so the carbonCost would need to be pretty negative to make the sum negative. What is carbonCost?
serd 5y ago
Can PG sell it later for more?
aogaili 5y ago
While I never understood the value of most NFTs yet. I'm still not sure if I'm too smart and too stupid. But either way, Donation NFT sounds better than the Fart NFT I read about the other day. But I'm still not sure what the NFT is for and how exactly it will save any life..People seem lost in abstractions and fictional stories..
sharkjacobs 5y ago
If Paul Graham had donated $2.5 million dollars to Noora and written a brief article about it, he probably could have convinced some percentage of his readers to also donate to Noora As is, there's a chance that someone will bid more than $2.5 million for this NFT, but the delta between Paul's bid and the winning bid will have to be greater than the sum of other non-winner take all donations for this to be a more effective way to raise money On the other hand, if this wasn't an NFT, Paul probably wouldn't have put up $2.5 million and written an article about it at all, so I guess Noora's already better at this than I am
dandanua 5y ago
Actually, I'm glad that this happened. Now everyone can see the essence of NFT scams. Basically, he made an investment asset from a donation, with an ability to gain more later. How this can be called a donation, if you are going to make more money from a single fact of it, FOR YOURSELF? Hypocrisy maxed out.
svarog-run 5y ago
These days HN commentor = hate computer science
geckoav 5y ago
Setting aside the environmental responsibility offset that Noora is planning to embark on, I still don't see why this is a viable strategy for an NGO raising funds for on ground impact. Noora operates in a country with strict financial regulation for foreign donations, but still allows funding to come in full (no tax for the NGO). In this case, assuming that the purchase is getting "cashed" out outside India, wouldn't there be quite a bit lost in fees and taxes? Another thought that comes to mind is strategy in holding crypto assets by a non-profit - if an asset appreciates, is it profiting and subject to taxes when converted to fiat? If so, is it better to convert immediately, or take the risk in holding crypto for a chance at improving the value of the donation? If you're holding (closest equivalent I can think of for nonprofits in Inida is generating returns on an FD made on the corpus), is the donation really doing anything?

138 points by prtkgpt 5y ago

Seems like even PG is succumbing to the hype of NFTs. I don't understand how this will be any better than just doing a donation drive and it could possibly be worse for the planet.

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klyrs 5y ago
This is generally the problem with idolizing people. PG is a human. Humans do stupid stuff.
- dandanua 5y ago
  Why do you think it's stupid? He is legitimizing blockchains with the hope that the price will grow (infinitely) and he will be at the top of this human pyramid. Ah, and what about saved lives? Pyramid supporters don't give a sh*t about lower levels of the pyramid. That's the main point of building it.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Sure, I should have said that humans fail to live up to the lofty standards that people expect of their idols. But "people are stupid" rolls off the toungue, as it were

deleted 5y ago

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sneak 5y ago

I'm not sure from this blog post what this company has to do with NFTs, or how these NFTs are intended to generate revenue for this organization, or why the tokens being sold can't be fungible, or what they're for. (Aside: The HTTPs Everywhere extension takes a bit of an issue with pg's 199x-vintage website. :)

detaro 5y ago
Seems fairly clearly just jumping on the bandwagon. Clearly people right now spend lots of money on NFTs for whatever reasons, so sell one and get money the buyer probably wouldn't have donated otherwise.
- prtkgpt 5y ago
  I believe, this is a great example to raise funds with the NFT models. Crypto to save human life.
  - psswrd12345 5y ago
    This + the NFTs will make for truly excellent virtue signaling.

kthejoker2 5y ago

Leveraging manias for social good sounds appropriately disruptive .. Is there a way to short NFTs? I wish I could proactively sell people's regret to them.

smabie 5y ago
Sure you can short some NFTs.
throwawaytemp27 5y ago
As Matt Levine would say, the way to do that is to mint and sell your own NFT. That way you are on the opposite side of the trade as the bulls who you believe are wrong.
- yorwba 5y ago
  If you mint an NFT and fail to sell it, you'll lose the minting fee. You'd do better to hold off on minting it until it has already been sold. And to actually sell some, you need to market them as something that people would want (like "saving lives") or, if you're short on ideas, crowdsource that task. At which point you're basically running an NFT platform. And you'll make more money the longer the NFT craze runs, which isn't really opposite to the bulls... The proper way to bet on NFTs being passé soon is probably to invest in something that's not an NFT.
cwkoss 5y ago
Shorting low-liquidity assets is a very bad idea. If you short an NFT with only 1 token, you effectively just owe whoever holds it an infinite amount of money.

fallat 5y ago

I don't think anyone understands that this is purely a "fun" thing to raise money. Yes, it's exactly like a donation drive.

spamalot159 5y ago
Except for that it uses technology that harms the environment. I don't think this trend is "fun" compared to a normal donation drive when it has these negative side effects.
- casi18 5y ago
  "We plan to make a significant carbon offset to mitigate the environmental impact of this NFT. Within one week of the closing of this auction we will update this page with details of the steps we took." Every action we take has tradeoffs. Everyone acts hoping that they can bring more good to the world than bad. Thats not to say we shouldn't be critical of decisions people make, but the moral panic around nfts is overblown imo. There are solutions being worked on [1] and the upside to addressing coordination problems[2] is huge. Or, as the saying goes, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" [1]https://our.status.im/ethereum-is-green/ https://our.status.im/ethereum-is-green/ [2]https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  - klmadfejno 5y ago
    > Everyone acts hoping that they can bring more good to the world than bad. Not so sure about that one
  - eloff 5y ago
    > Everyone acts hoping that they can bring more good to the world than bad. I want to live in that world. Those are some seriously potent rose colored glasses you've got going on there. I think it's true that many people think and act that way, but I don't know what percentage of people are basically good like that.
  - Can_Not 5y ago

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

Has Mr. Graham done an honest calculation of how many lives will be lost to the environmental impacts of NFTs if they become mainstream?

Diederich 5y ago
Is Ethereum anything like bitcoin in terms of power utilization/environmental impact?
- psswrd12345 5y ago
  Today, Ethereum uses about 1/6 energy consumption of bitcoin, while providing much more utility. But will change later this year as it transitions to proof-of-stake, at which point Ethereum's energy consumption will be negligible. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blockchain-cryptocurrency-energy-use#:~:text=Rauchs%20says%20that%20it%20is,one%20sixth%20of%20Bitcoin's%20expenditure https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blockchain-cryptocurrency-en....
mannykannot 5y ago
I don't think Mr. Graham is under any moral obligation to consider this issue unless it remotely plausible that NFTs issued for charitable purposes (or just NFTs, period) will "go mainstream" to the extent that they have any noticable environmental impact.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
knowaveragejoe 5y ago
Why in HN of all places do people constantly have years-old takes on crypto? Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake. Most other chains use some form of proof-of-stake. It's not like these projects are unaware of your criticisms, nor have they stood still since you stopped paying attention in 2017.
- 5y ago

anotha1 5y ago

This NFT will be great for Noora Health. And maybe even N more organizations. Then, as happened many times in the past, similar organizations will start optimizing the wrong metric and their actions will slowly diverge from their mission.

casi18 5y ago

I imagine @pleasrdao might be bidding on this. A nice example of what global settlement layers and co-ordination tools can be (and should be) used for.

fwip 5y ago

Just put up a donation link, please.

marris 5y ago
https://www.noorahealth.org/donate https://www.noorahealth.org/donate

advisedwang 5y ago

Is the donation still tax-deductible if you do it through a NFT?

motohagiography 5y ago
I've suspected that the point of NFTs is to transfer cryptocurrency into an asset with a different volatility proifle without "realizing gains," or even use them as loss makers to offset capital gains, so indirectly, maybe?
8note 5y ago
Are purchases from charities tax deductible? I thought it was only donations
- gowld 5y ago
  The amountyou pay in excess of the market value, is deductible as a donation. This is how charity auctions of commodities work. What's the market value of the NFT? Who knows?
  - criddell 5y ago
    The market value is whatever somebody is willing to pay. If PG will pay $2.6 million for the NFT, that's its market value.

psswrd12345 5y ago

Amazing how short sighted HN is when it comes to NFTs. Blindly accepting the "bad for climate" tripe and showing utter ignorance to the upcoming transition away from energy guzzling proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake world. Sad to see this community act so willfully ignorant to all things crypto.

McGlockenshire 5y ago
> upcoming transition away from Read: Not here yet, so still doing the whole energy guzzling proof-of-work thing. NFTs are a dumb fad that's likely to die out before the always-around-the-corner move away from PoW.

endisneigh 5y ago

I don't get it. A non-profit is inherently a centralized entity. What's the point of using a blockchain in this scenario?

psswrd12345 5y ago
Verifiable donations, fully transparent reporting/auditing, no restrictions on who can donate, NFTs tied to donations that can be used for virtue signaling online, etc.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  A blockchain isn't necessary for any of these things, though.
  - casi18 5y ago
    It works very well for all of them though.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      A PDF of my Watsi donation and credit card statement is just as good without any blockchain Rube Goldberg mechanizations. By all means, digitally sign the PDF [1] if you want to be fancy and hip, but you don't need a blockchain, nor is it going to tell you if the healthcare donated towards was actually delivered. If the argument is, "It's on the blockchain for trust purposes!" my retort is, "Do you not trust the nonprofit? And if you don't, why are you giving them money?" Please, do donate to non profits that align with your philanthropy interests, but don't get caught up in hype. [1] https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/certificate-based-signatures.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/certificate-based-sign...
      - capableweb 5y ago
        Watsi seems to offer donations via credit cards and Paypal, neither which I think supports $2.4 Mil donations, but I'm unsure, never tried it myself. Watsi overall don't seem to fit the "no restrictions on who can donate" part either, as they are an American non-profit (subject to US laws, including embargoes).

nrmitchi 5y ago

I'm not sure why this is an NFT other than trying to capitalize on the current craze. NFT or not, a charity should still "issue a public report tracking how this specific tranche of money is spent, and estimating the number of lives saved as a result". Having decent reporting on how efficient your charity is feels like it should be basic table-stakes in order to raise more money in the future. Is this really any different than a charity asking for donations? Edit: asking for one very large charitable donation.

babyshake 5y ago
It would make more sense to sell this as an NFT if it were paired with a thematically related artwork. A wealthy buyer would be able to display the NFT in their home and brag about all the lives they saved when they bought it.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  Yes. Good idea, and one I hope yet another decent charity uses. And frankly its waaaay more PR friendly than 'a report on our spending effectiveness'.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  How do you display an NFT? Isn’t it literally just a hex code, with actual asset hosted somewhere else, which is publicly accessible by everyone? I’m serious. Isn’t that all it is? A pointer to some other resource, without access control at all? At least when I bought a beanie baby, I got beanie baby. NFTs always felt like paying money, then printing up the first picture of a beanie baby from a Google image search, and then trying to convince yourself that had the only one.
  - babyshake 5y ago
    Agreed. If you don't acquire the rights to the contents of the NFT when you buy it, it's not very clear what you are buying. If you do acquire the rights (including cash flow) then buying an NFT has very real meaning.

jtsiskin 5y ago

There is 1 bidder, paulg1

lolsal 5y ago

Isn't this just a receipt? like when I donate shirts to goodwill?

elliekelly 5y ago
Yes. Except this way you get to pretend your receipt for money given away (ostensibly out of the kindness of your heart) has magically become an “asset”.

purerandomness 5y ago

This is peak absurdism. Why not simply donate the money? How is this better than a Kickstarter? How many lives could pg have saved by donating the billable time it took him to write this post? It gets even better, from the NFT article: > • What about the environmental costs? > We plan to make a significant carbon offset to mitigate the environmental impact of this NFT. Within one week of the closing of this auction we will update this page with details of the steps we took. pg giveth, pg taketh. If you agree that carbon emissions kill, you'd basically donate for a good cause through an absurdly convoluted money laundering scheme called NFT, and cause massive environmental harm on the other side of the planet, killing even more people, again. I might even draw several trolley problem comics, but the fact this is from pg himself makes me question his sanity and everything he's ever written. It's the same feeling of betrayal like when Signal turned around and decided to implement a payment token after several of us went ahead and invested time to convert family members away from WhatsApp. Profit over reason. Pyramid schemes disguised as benevolent startups saving lives. Startup culture needs a reboot.

bszupnick 5y ago
> This is peak absurdism. Why not simply donate the money? How is this better than a Kickstarter? This reminds me of the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS. Does pouring a bucket of ice water over one's head cure ALS? Obviously not. Did creating a trend that went viral help take strides towards curing ALS? Yeah! According to Wikipedia[1] this meme brought $220 million to ALS research. So I'm not sure you can simply say "why not donate the money instead of buying NFTs" since NFTs are what people are interested in now! Maybe this is an instance of meeting your customer where they're at. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Bucket_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Bucket_Challenge
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  Dumping a bucket of ice water over your head doesn’t cause severe environmental damage. This does. Also, everyone likes weird videos of bad things happening to people. NFTs don’t have widespread public interest, nor do they have an viral sharing feature. Videos do.

graeme 5y ago

I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I’m unclear on: if someone outbids him, do only they get the token and pg pays nothing, or do both pay and are the contributions etched into the NFT? > But the higher the price of this NFT goes, the more lives will be saved. What a sentence to be able to write. Noora sounds like a good charity but what is different here from simply saying “the more people donate to Noora, the more lives will be saved” Since Noora knows their ROI they should be able to calculate lives saved from a donation whether it is a normal donation or an NFT purchase. If so, what does the NFT do? Many smart people I follow, who are ordinarily good explainers, are inordinately enthused about crypto. And yet on this single topic none of them have produced any public writing explaining the reasons for their enthusiasm. It is maddening. There may well be something there. But if there is it ought, in principle, to be explainable. ———- I should also note you can’t take this and say “NFTs contributed $2.6 million”. You have to consider opportunity costs. The closest alternative to this post would be PG writing exactly the same essay except stating “I donated $2.6 million to Noora and you should too!” with a donate now button. This post hit the HN frontpage, so surely many would have donated. Whereas nobody has donated other than PG. Measured against this alternative, the NFT vs a normal funding mechanism has plausibly cost lives. Not to mention the money that Noora will take out of its funds to do a carbon offset. Perhaps I am misunderstanding how this works, but if I have understood it properly and PG would have done an essay either way this might have cost lives.

lynx234 5y ago
> One part I’m unclear on: if someone outbids him, do only they get the token and pg pays nothing, or do both pay and are the contributions etched into the NFT? No, only the person who wins the bid gets the token. I typically defend the tech behind NFTs but this just seems like it's riding the hype of NFTs more than anything.
- 5y ago

eternauta3k 5y ago

If the ~$1000 per life figure is accurate, the GiveWell[1] guys will be all over this. [1] http://givewell.org http://givewell.org

timlod 5y ago
One thing when considering effective giving is that cost-effectiveness does not scale linearly with the investment - this figure may well be accurate for the investments they've received, but that doesn't mean that additional investments will be effective to the same degree. For example, in this case, educating mothers about how to take care of their babies will be very effective until most of the population is educated - from that point on, there may only need to be ongoing low investment to keep that level of education. In general, effective giving would try to keep highly-effective charities well-funded, but not have them store excess investments - if not all of the donations can be "activated", the charity becomes less effective per dollar.
skybrian 5y ago
I'm on a poor Internet connection and can't read the page but a search indicates that GiveWell is aware of Noora: https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/charity-science-exit-grant-july-2019 https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/charity-... It would be interesting to read about how it compares to GiveWell's recommended charities.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

I used to run the tech side for a couple of UK-based aid organisations (just out of college - basically database management and home brewed campaign work.) We had terrible marketing response once we left a core base of existing donors - getting new donors in the door for a non-profit was (at least for us) a constant challenge. However, once some external event (sadly some horrific disaster) occurred we would see a spike in willing donors. So this looks like a non-horrific external event - something that might make (at 2 million dollars very rich) rich donors dig deep and contribute. Great - taking money from the wealthy and putting it to good use is a perfect use of anyone's time and effort, I hope they raise twice what they expect. Whatever you think of NFTs, I don't care - take advantage of any opportunity to increase your donor base - its tough enough out there :-)

glitchc 5y ago
Has your past employer perchance switched from a "give what you can" to a subscription "pay X per month" model? The latter has proven to be remarkably unpopular with the public.
- criddell 5y ago
  I'm only doing anonymous donations these days. Too many places do not respect your request to not be contacted in the future.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    We donated to the EDF once; the sheer volume of junk mail they and their data broker sent us enraged us so much that we’ve sworn off ever giving them money again.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  This was the best part of 30 years ago - they are still all in existence but I cannot comment on their detailed fundraising techniques :-(

dvt 5y ago

Seeing pg peddle NFTs after a16z did it just a few weeks ago is kind of depressing. I guess Silicon Valley VCs must be really stinging about missing out on Bitcoin a few years ago. Not to mention that disguising what's essentially a money-making scheme as a benevolent donation is morally murky at best.

tomhoward 5y ago
Giant assumption that Silicon Valley VCs missed out on Bitcoin. YC invested in Coinbase in 2012. Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures invested in 2013. You don't think their partners bought at least a bit of Bitcoin then as well?
- dvt 5y ago
  > You don't think their partners bought at least a bit of Bitcoin then as well? I have no way of knowing but I'd wager probably not; VCs invest in highly-speculative moonshot ideas all the time. Back then, crypto was mostly naïve zealotry. And these days, it's mostly greed. It seems people forgot BitTorrent circa 1999-2003 -- it's history literally repeating itself.
  - tomhoward 5y ago
    Marc Andreessen was publicly speaking of Bitcoin as an important technology in 2014 [1]. He sounded like a true believer then, not a moonshot speculator. I remember Sam Altman (then YC president) tweeting about him and other YC partners trading Bitcoin in about 2014 too. And I heard of Peter Thiel having big Bitcoin investments several years ago. It’s not so true that VC’s “invest in highly-speculative moonshot ideas”. YC does as their business model is to bet on a huge pool to catch the outliers. But traditional VCs have to defend their investments to LPs so have to be more prudent. Any VC investing in Bitcoin companies in 2013 was doing so because they personally believed Bitcoin had huge potential. [1] https://www.econtalk.org/marc-andreessen-on-venture-capital-and-the-digital-future/ https://www.econtalk.org/marc-andreessen-on-venture-capital-...
casi18 5y ago

hamhamed 5y ago

I'm not sure why everyone is tripping here. He's about to save some fucking lives and you suddenly care about the enviroment for sending a mere 100 ETH? Even if we are to look at the big picture, don't tell me you believe PG will be the sole reason everyone is going to pick up NFT donations now? It was going to happen regardless.

teraflop 5y ago
It's great that PG is donating to a good cause, and anyone who donates that much money is welcome to brag about it, but that doesn't make the explanation any less baffling. Imagine a very slight modification of this scenario: > I'm going to donate millions of dollars to a life-saving charity, and in return they're going to manufacture and ship me a barrel of low-grade hazardous waste. Anyone who likes is welcome to try and outbid me for the barrel in order to raise even more money. Of course, I'll pay a bit extra to build a vault to safely store the barrel and minimize the risk of leakage into the environment. Afterward, we can calculate how many ounces of toxic chemicals it took to save each human life. > Isn't it great how technology can help make a difference in people's lives? I'm looking forward to seeing what barrels of toxic waste can help us accomplish in the future. EDIT: > Oh, by the way, this has nothing to do with the fact that I have a lot of money invested in a company that makes and transports barrels.
- not1ofU 5y ago
  I'm planning on donating 100k packets of chewing gum to starving children.

TedShiller 5y ago

awesome, this is great, a good way to show off NFT's

joelthelion 5y ago

This is no better than uploading a PDF report on the NGO's website. An NFT does not bring any additional guarantees, adds a ton of complexity and most definitely doesn't save lives.

macawfish 5y ago

It's weird seeing a website that so vehemently defends artificial speculation in housing markets get so worked up about digital raffle tickets

dang 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26975955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26975955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918270 "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- macawfish 5y ago
  My bad, the stakes are high. I'll work to cool it next time.
  - dang 5y ago
    It's an internet forum. The stakes are not that high.
    - macawfish 5y ago
      I mean with the housing stuff and the economics. A lot of people in my life are stressed lately about housing. So I have strong feelings about it.
      - dang 5y ago
        Ah, I see. Yes indeed. I hope the stress eases soon.

mplewis 5y ago

Great, now pg is deep into the Ponzi scheme.

lucasnortj 5y ago

NFTs are idiotic, an NFT in the service of a worthy goal is no less pointless nor idiotic

ASpaceCowboi 5y ago

Maybe i'm just an idiot, but this: >For this NFT, they're going to issue a public report tracking how this specific tranche of money is spent, and estimating the number of lives saved as a result. In my opinion, that is vital. Many donations to non-profits are used for many various reasons (some justifiable, some definitely NOT). This actually allows tracking on that money. So isn't this a good thing? People can easily manipulate stats on documents without having to worry about someone else double checking the work. With the ability to track the NFT's currency transactions is good, no?

elliekelly 5y ago
> People can easily manipulate stats on documents without having to worry about someone else double checking the work. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding how this all works. How is the “report” that will be issued any different from a regular document? Just because it will be an NFT doesn’t mean it will be more accurate does it? Someone will still write whatever they want on the document itself and there’s no mechanism that will make this document more accurate than any other document.

mxwsn 5y ago

The latest NFT craze is primarily for one-of-a-kind items. I'd rather see an org like Noora Health sell unlimited NFTs. What's exciting is the capability for decentralized apps to interact with NFTs. For example, other ethereum-based games are able to detect and interact with cryptokitty NFTs without the permission of the cryptokitty designer. As a blockchain token proof of donating to charity, you can imagine apps that encourage more donations by recognizing donaters in special ways to help build social capital.

cwkoss 5y ago
Automatic membership to services based on total amount of donations to any charity on the blockchain could be a cool thing. Like, 'to stream this movie, you must have donated $100 to any charity within the last 24 hours'.

throwaway_isms 5y ago

Back when YC experimented with application through the community, or "Apply YC:", I deployed a YCCoin on Ethereum and applied. Basically decentralized Karma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226688 There was one comment "why would I use this?" Rightly or wrongly it seems that is still the question everyone has for NFTs. At the same time in 2017 I had simultaneously built out redditco.in, igco.in, and facebookco.in. If you follow NFTs you might be familiar with the Tweet NFTs and Jack's first tweet getting a multimillion dollar bid, right as that was occurring I got a cease and desist/trademark infringement letter from FB. In a responsive letter I encouraged FB to allow me to auction Zuckerberg's first FB post as an NFT along side Jack's Tweet and with that I would gladly transfer them the domain names. It sounds dumb at best, tinfoil conspiracy at worst, but that is exactly when the bids on Jack's Tweet and all the media surrounding it stopped, and I never got a reply to my response to the TM infringement letter. From there the NFT rabbit hole only got deeper as I began receiving quid pro quos, or pay to play requests for invitations to join an "exclusive" NFT marketplace, even getting a retweet from one of the anonymous NFT collectors on Twitter that has spent millions on NFTs as proof the quid pro quo requests were legit. The Twitter account I was using literally had 1 follower, but was being retweeted by an anonymous NFT collector spending millions (I think even bought one of Grimes' NFTs for about $750K). I will say this for pg's essay, this NFT, and bid...at least pg and company did not create an anonymous or fake persona or personality and pg openly placed the initial bid. However, unless this results in so much backlash no one wants to touch it, my guess is consistent with the entire NFT space, the ultimate bid for this NFT will end up being some anonymous NFT collector with a record of spending millions "collecting" NFTs.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cwkoss 5y ago

Will PG be committing tax fraud when he writes off this 'donation'? He is receiving in exchange a token when notionally has the same value as his 'donation'. Being able to resell a 'donation' to someone else to recover part of the cost seems weird and like it could confuse tax treatment.

jollybean 5y ago

NFT, much like most Crypto doesn't 'do' anything here. It's not a financial instrument that creates value. 'Private Corporations' enable people to group capital together to make useful stuff, that wouldn't happen otherwise. 'Public Exchanges' allow more transparency and broader classes of investors to participate in markets. Investment Banks 'make markets' for financial instruments so companies can trade things like risk, among other things. There's a lot of net value creation going on there even when it's fuzzy. If NFTs can encourage people to give to a charity, that's great, but of course that shouldn't be necessary. Crypto that can't effectively be used as currency is not a value creator, at least not until they are exchanged as such. This is frothy, bubble-ish kind of stuff that in my life I have seen implode twice, this time 'it may be different' in that it may not crash, but the value creation still isn't there. We should probably strive to do better than moving around deck chairs, even if it's with fancy math or AI.

libra1 5y ago

While the calculation of $1,235 to save a life is very good, donating blood is arguably the most efficient way to save a life since it is free.

fighterpilot 5y ago
Is there an under-supply of blood in rich countries to the point where people are dying as a result? If 1 regular donor stopped donating, how many additional people will die?
- Barrin92 5y ago
  There's lack of supply of some rare blood types[1]. Also relevant to point out, if you go donating blood don't just go after some disaster hits. It's a common occurrence that tons of people show up for blood donations after some tragedy hits but blood can only be stored a limited amount of time and it tends to be wasted. If you want to donate, go regularly. [1]https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/the-donor-magazine-summer-2017/a-very-special-blood-type/ https://www.blood.co.uk/news-and-campaigns/the-donor-magazin...

jellicle 5y ago

Charity = good Cryptoscams = bad Want to contribute money? Write a check. Don't sully charitable operations by trying to glue a cryptoscam onto them. It seems rude to flag a link to paulgraham.com on Hacker News, but I'm going to do it anyway. Down with cryptoscams, even ones promoted by Graham.

miguelmota 5y ago

This is interesting but a gofundme or regular fundraising event could achieve the same thing, without paying high miner fees too.

marris 5y ago

The NFT here seems to be a publicity stunt to both raise money directly from the auction and also to raise awareness about the charity. I had never heard of this charity before this stunt, and I probably would not have heard of them without it. It certainly seems plausible that "using an NFT" here is a net good, even if there is some carbon cost. You could argue against the stunt, but it requires more work that just stating "carbon costs." You'd have to check whether valueOfSavedLife * moneyRaised / 1235 + carbonCost < 0. And it looks like the auction is structured so that moneyRaised will be at least 2.5M, so the carbonCost would need to be pretty negative to make the sum negative. What is carbonCost?

serd 5y ago

Can PG sell it later for more?

aogaili 5y ago

While I never understood the value of most NFTs yet. I'm still not sure if I'm too smart and too stupid. But either way, Donation NFT sounds better than the Fart NFT I read about the other day. But I'm still not sure what the NFT is for and how exactly it will save any life..People seem lost in abstractions and fictional stories..

sharkjacobs 5y ago

If Paul Graham had donated $2.5 million dollars to Noora and written a brief article about it, he probably could have convinced some percentage of his readers to also donate to Noora As is, there's a chance that someone will bid more than $2.5 million for this NFT, but the delta between Paul's bid and the winning bid will have to be greater than the sum of other non-winner take all donations for this to be a more effective way to raise money On the other hand, if this wasn't an NFT, Paul probably wouldn't have put up $2.5 million and written an article about it at all, so I guess Noora's already better at this than I am

dandanua 5y ago

Actually, I'm glad that this happened. Now everyone can see the essence of NFT scams. Basically, he made an investment asset from a donation, with an ability to gain more later. How this can be called a donation, if you are going to make more money from a single fact of it, FOR YOURSELF? Hypocrisy maxed out.

svarog-run 5y ago

These days HN commentor = hate computer science

geckoav 5y ago

Setting aside the environmental responsibility offset that Noora is planning to embark on, I still don't see why this is a viable strategy for an NGO raising funds for on ground impact. Noora operates in a country with strict financial regulation for foreign donations, but still allows funding to come in full (no tax for the NGO). In this case, assuming that the purchase is getting "cashed" out outside India, wouldn't there be quite a bit lost in fees and taxes? Another thought that comes to mind is strategy in holding crypto assets by a non-profit - if an asset appreciates, is it profiting and subject to taxes when converted to fiat? If so, is it better to convert immediately, or take the risk in holding crypto for a chance at improving the value of the donation? If you're holding (closest equivalent I can think of for nonprofits in Inida is generating returns on an FD made on the corpus), is the donation really doing anything?