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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 go

by graeme 6y 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 6y 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.
- graeme 6y ago
  And if someone else bids more, is that the only money that goes to Noora? i.e. PG’s bid is voided
  - kemonocode 6y ago
    Yes, only the winning bid would go to Noora. However, there would be a record of any other bidders' intent. With a bit more of creativity/effort, someone could have created a smart contract for keeping track of all the donations and only releasing them once they reach a certain threshold, then giving a token back representing a "life saved" to donors if they truly wanted, but I get capitalizing on NFTs' hype right now.
    - lalaland1125 5y ago
      Most charities already give you pdf certificates recording how many lives you saved with your donation. What's the point in having an NFT instead of just a pdf?
      - a1369209993 5y ago
        > What's the point in having an NFT > > > it's riding the hype of NFTs more than anything. The point is hype-based advertising. As people have been repeatedly pointing out all over the thread.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  > riding the hype of NFTs more than Good on them for doing that. Their mission is to save as many lives as they can and if riding a hype train lets them do that, then the overall outcome is still very positive. The environmental externality is bad but trivial compared to the benefit of lives saved if this auction goes through.
brown9-2 6y ago
> I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. What is there to explain? People who are invested in cryptocurrencies are hyping the equivalent of digital trading cards because it has the downstream effect of increasing the hype on cryptocurrency.
- graeme 6y ago
  I don’t know what there is to explain, but I’m always open to the possibility that I’ve missed something. Ethereum, in particular, is at least capable of interesting things. That doesn’t mean it will change the world. But I’m always interested in hearing from intelligent people who differ on why they think it will.
  - bob33212 6y ago
    I appreciate this as I'm also trying to keep an open mind and understand what this means for the future. So far there are only two arguments that I understand: 1. Libertarianism: The world will be better if we remove the government and other 3rd parties from interfering in transactions between individuals. 2. Decentralization of Money (Crypto), like the decentralization of information (The internet) will unlock technologies and opportunities that we cannot appreciate now. Those are logical arguments, but I'm still missing the "so what" answer. How does the lack of government oversight change my life? My next bank account may be decentralized, so what? Does that mean I get better service? Lower Fees? I understand that plenty of people were unimpressed with the internet when it first came out, but I was not one of those people. I got it and was online in 1995, I bought GOOG in 2005, and TSLA in 2014. So I'm not your typical technological naysayer. Maybe Bitcoin isn't just an accidental Ponzi scheme, but as far as I can tell that is what it will be when we look back in 10 years.
    - 52-6F-62 5y ago
      Some degree of it has to just be the grown resentment of established banking. So this is a view of a certain cohort of sentiment, not necessarily exclusive to cryptocurrencies and all that. These days a bank account will cost you money. Any savings account available to most people offers interest rates at or below inflation, if they're not 0% and charge fees (making those ones functionally offering negative interest). Even more glaring is being charged fees for not having a high enough balance in your account. When you're young and poor and you look to a bank to help you grow out of that state, and you're offered the above, you can understand why it would appear the game is just plain broken. And that's just talking private bank accounts, not the larger economic sphere. To me, it's no wonder that people are trying out different things, even if they don't work. It's better than just accepting the thing that's already not working for you.
yumraj 6y ago
Perhaps he wrote the essay so that other people will find out about it and out bid him for the NFT. You get press for being the good guy and don’t have to spend a dime. What a great thing to be able to achieve.
- graeme 5y ago
  That’s possible. Assuming he donates the $2.6 million regardless, this could be a high risk, high reward campaign. So while saying “please donate” might get say $100,000-$1,000,000 more, even a single bid from a other investor/founder who wanted bragging rights for beating PG will dwarf that. If so it presents an interesting mechanism to elicit donations in rich social circles.
jollybean 5y ago
NFTs will effectively do nothing in this case. People are 'enthused' because they have a lottery ticket that could go to the moon and are want others in on the action. The charity is trying to hop on the bandwagon of 'money appearing out of nowhere'. We are clearly headed into a fairly inflationary situation, I'm curious as to how we will look at this time 20 or 40 years into the future.
yrral 5y ago
People have been able to raise non-insignificant amounts of money selling NFTs for charities. Snowden - Freedom of Press Foundation 5.4m https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388548/edward-snowden-nft-freedom-of-the-press-stay-free https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388548/edward-snowden-n... pplpleasr - Stand with Asians 550k https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99615/uniswap-v3-nft-sold-dao-half-million-dollars https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99615/uniswap-v3-nft-sol...
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  How is this different or better than normal donations? If anything, isn't it worse due to the NFT overhead?
  - hiq 5y ago
    If you go from 5% to 10% overhead but collect 10 times as much because of the hype you still end up with more money.
    - prtkgpt 5y ago
      Exactly, same goes for when you donate with the 1-1 matching. Your X amount is 2x now, and 10% of 2x is stil 1.5x more of just X.
  - JeremyNT 5y ago
    It's "better" in the sense that they can piggyback on the hype train for all things cryptocurrency related. Some crypto/NFT millionaire who would normally never donate might well well be coaxed into donating once they see that "NFT" or "blockchain" is attached to the prospect.
noelsusman 5y ago
I mostly agree, but I don't think a PG post about him donating to Noora would make the front page of HN. In this case the NFT is providing value by bringing eyeballs due to how much hype NFTs have. I know I wouldn't have clicked through his post if he was just donating a bunch of money to them.
- a4isms 5y ago
  If that’s the only reason this is interesting, we’re talking about digital fashion. It’s isomorphic to a celebrity endorsing a product. “Is this person an expert in using this product? No? But it’s selling like hotcakes because this person is a celebrity, and people find them interesting almost solely because other people find them interesting.” So taking a donation and wrapping it in an NFT feels like taking a product and getting a celebrity to endorse it. The NFT itself really adds nothing to the idea of donating to this charity.
tim333 5y ago
>If so, what does the NFT do? My take - it's like a prize result. If you run some race there's a big incentive to be the #1 winner even if there's no prize money or trophy. It's just the general agreement that Joe Bloggs was the winner of the whatever race. Still people dedicate their lives towards achieving such things. Likewise with PGs NFT someone will be able to say I was the winner of that auction and the world will agree and it is something that will be with you forever.

by graeme 6y ago

lynx234 6y 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.

graeme 6y ago
And if someone else bids more, is that the only money that goes to Noora? i.e. PG’s bid is voided
- kemonocode 6y ago
  Yes, only the winning bid would go to Noora. However, there would be a record of any other bidders' intent. With a bit more of creativity/effort, someone could have created a smart contract for keeping track of all the donations and only releasing them once they reach a certain threshold, then giving a token back representing a "life saved" to donors if they truly wanted, but I get capitalizing on NFTs' hype right now.
  - lalaland1125 5y ago
    Most charities already give you pdf certificates recording how many lives you saved with your donation. What's the point in having an NFT instead of just a pdf?
    - a1369209993 5y ago
      > What's the point in having an NFT > > > it's riding the hype of NFTs more than anything. The point is hype-based advertising. As people have been repeatedly pointing out all over the thread.
fighterpilot 5y ago
> riding the hype of NFTs more than Good on them for doing that. Their mission is to save as many lives as they can and if riding a hype train lets them do that, then the overall outcome is still very positive. The environmental externality is bad but trivial compared to the benefit of lives saved if this auction goes through.

brown9-2 6y ago

> I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. What is there to explain? People who are invested in cryptocurrencies are hyping the equivalent of digital trading cards because it has the downstream effect of increasing the hype on cryptocurrency.

graeme 6y ago
I don’t know what there is to explain, but I’m always open to the possibility that I’ve missed something. Ethereum, in particular, is at least capable of interesting things. That doesn’t mean it will change the world. But I’m always interested in hearing from intelligent people who differ on why they think it will.
- bob33212 6y ago
  I appreciate this as I'm also trying to keep an open mind and understand what this means for the future. So far there are only two arguments that I understand: 1. Libertarianism: The world will be better if we remove the government and other 3rd parties from interfering in transactions between individuals. 2. Decentralization of Money (Crypto), like the decentralization of information (The internet) will unlock technologies and opportunities that we cannot appreciate now. Those are logical arguments, but I'm still missing the "so what" answer. How does the lack of government oversight change my life? My next bank account may be decentralized, so what? Does that mean I get better service? Lower Fees? I understand that plenty of people were unimpressed with the internet when it first came out, but I was not one of those people. I got it and was online in 1995, I bought GOOG in 2005, and TSLA in 2014. So I'm not your typical technological naysayer. Maybe Bitcoin isn't just an accidental Ponzi scheme, but as far as I can tell that is what it will be when we look back in 10 years.
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    Some degree of it has to just be the grown resentment of established banking. So this is a view of a certain cohort of sentiment, not necessarily exclusive to cryptocurrencies and all that. These days a bank account will cost you money. Any savings account available to most people offers interest rates at or below inflation, if they're not 0% and charge fees (making those ones functionally offering negative interest). Even more glaring is being charged fees for not having a high enough balance in your account. When you're young and poor and you look to a bank to help you grow out of that state, and you're offered the above, you can understand why it would appear the game is just plain broken. And that's just talking private bank accounts, not the larger economic sphere. To me, it's no wonder that people are trying out different things, even if they don't work. It's better than just accepting the thing that's already not working for you.

yumraj 6y ago

Perhaps he wrote the essay so that other people will find out about it and out bid him for the NFT. You get press for being the good guy and don’t have to spend a dime. What a great thing to be able to achieve.

graeme 5y ago
That’s possible. Assuming he donates the $2.6 million regardless, this could be a high risk, high reward campaign. So while saying “please donate” might get say $100,000-$1,000,000 more, even a single bid from a other investor/founder who wanted bragging rights for beating PG will dwarf that. If so it presents an interesting mechanism to elicit donations in rich social circles.

jollybean 5y ago

NFTs will effectively do nothing in this case. People are 'enthused' because they have a lottery ticket that could go to the moon and are want others in on the action. The charity is trying to hop on the bandwagon of 'money appearing out of nowhere'. We are clearly headed into a fairly inflationary situation, I'm curious as to how we will look at this time 20 or 40 years into the future.

yrral 5y ago

People have been able to raise non-insignificant amounts of money selling NFTs for charities. Snowden - Freedom of Press Foundation 5.4m https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388548/edward-snowden-nft-freedom-of-the-press-stay-free https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388548/edward-snowden-n... pplpleasr - Stand with Asians 550k https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99615/uniswap-v3-nft-sold-dao-half-million-dollars https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99615/uniswap-v3-nft-sol...

lalaland1125 5y ago
How is this different or better than normal donations? If anything, isn't it worse due to the NFT overhead?
- hiq 5y ago
  If you go from 5% to 10% overhead but collect 10 times as much because of the hype you still end up with more money.
  - prtkgpt 5y ago
    Exactly, same goes for when you donate with the 1-1 matching. Your X amount is 2x now, and 10% of 2x is stil 1.5x more of just X.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  It's "better" in the sense that they can piggyback on the hype train for all things cryptocurrency related. Some crypto/NFT millionaire who would normally never donate might well well be coaxed into donating once they see that "NFT" or "blockchain" is attached to the prospect.

noelsusman 5y ago

I mostly agree, but I don't think a PG post about him donating to Noora would make the front page of HN. In this case the NFT is providing value by bringing eyeballs due to how much hype NFTs have. I know I wouldn't have clicked through his post if he was just donating a bunch of money to them.

a4isms 5y ago
If that’s the only reason this is interesting, we’re talking about digital fashion. It’s isomorphic to a celebrity endorsing a product. “Is this person an expert in using this product? No? But it’s selling like hotcakes because this person is a celebrity, and people find them interesting almost solely because other people find them interesting.” So taking a donation and wrapping it in an NFT feels like taking a product and getting a celebrity to endorse it. The NFT itself really adds nothing to the idea of donating to this charity.

tim333 5y ago

>If so, what does the NFT do? My take - it's like a prize result. If you run some race there's a big incentive to be the #1 winner even if there's no prize money or trophy. It's just the general agreement that Joe Bloggs was the winner of the whatever race. Still people dedicate their lives towards achieving such things. Likewise with PGs NFT someone will be able to say I was the winner of that auction and the world will agree and it is something that will be with you forever.