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HN is a highly concentrated community of future-focused computing experts. You're right that it is also bearish about blockchain. Which is more likely? A) Tha

by smt88 5y ago

HN is a highly concentrated community of future-focused computing experts. You're right that it is also bearish about blockchain. Which is more likely? A) That thousands of progress-minded professional technologists are all wrong and ignorant, as you've suggested above... Or... B) That you are wrong, and there are people with huge financial incentives to pump up crypto platforms by misleading people about their capabilities I'll ask you the same question I've been asking for 5 years without getting a good response: What is a real pain that a dApp can solve better today than non-blockchain software? Uber drivers auctioning their time is not one of them, because Uber drivers do want a benefit that's only possible with centralization: vetting/banning of passengers.

tuesdayrain 5y ago
>HN is a highly concentrated community of future-focused computing experts. Cryptocurrency is a perfect example of how computing experts can also have little to no understanding of finance and economics :). HN has been bearish on cryptocurrency for years, meanwhile the industry is continuously expanding into the territory of trillions of dollars.
- sprafa 5y ago
  Pretty much. It's amazing to me that so many developers are en masse choosing to not get rich in the biggest opportunity for startups in the last decade or more.
chrisco255 5y ago
HN has had many bad consensus calls on a lot of successful ideas. One of the most famous examples is Dropbox, when the original founder posted his idea here 13 years ago or so and people just didn't get it or get what value add there was there. And he was heavily criticized. Ultimately, you gotta take the peanut gallery with a grain of salt. And use the criticism as fuel for innovation. HN's take on crypto will be one of the most comical examples in a few years. Decentralized finance alone is already a 100 billion plus dollar industry and growing at 5-10x a year.
- sprafa 5y ago
  yep pretty much. I'm saddened by this, and I wonder how many people are accepting of HN take and not DYOR enough to realise there's real opportunity there. I mean there are kids becoming mil/billionaires on blockchain dApps overnight, building real value. But HN is dead set on ignoring them.
  - smt88 5y ago
    > I mean there are kids becoming mil/billionaires on blockchain dApps overnight Which dApps? How many users are there? And why can't that dApp be built on traditional stacks? > building real value Haven't seen any of this yet. I've seen speculation on coins, and then there are many layers of financial products built on top. The application space is essentially non-existent as a use-case.
    - sprafa 5y ago
      Getting a loan on DeFi is a real use case.
    - chrisco255 5y ago
      https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/ This site shows the top DeFi protocols and their locked value in their smart contracts. It's hardly exhaustive but just visiting and researching the top 10 or 15 will be instructive for you. Axie Infinity the game has hundreds of thousands of users and growing like crazy. Tens of millions at least own some cryptocurrency. Ethereum has more than 1 million active wallet addresses and it's growing on an exponential curve. https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/07/21824042/number-of-active-ethereum-wallets-now-surpasses-bitcoin-data-shows https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/07/218240... You probably haven't seen it because you are following HN and mainstream news and expect to be informed on it through their filter. The main success stories I would point out are Uniswap, Sushi, Aave, Compound, Maker, Synthetix, Liquity, OpenSea, Rarible, Sandbox, Decentraland, Aavegotchi, Audius, Matcha, Zapper, and more than I can list to be honest. It's a bit like trying to explain all the interesting use cases of the internet to an early dot com skeptic.
billytetrud 5y ago
Any intelligent person must be forced to admit that a person is often wrong, and groups of people are often spectacularly wrong. You missed option C, that thousands of smart but loud technology professionals speaking outside their area of expertise are wrong, thousands more are right, and it's not as obvious as you're making it out to be.
mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
> Uber drivers auctioning their time is not one of them, because Uber drivers do want a benefit that's only possible with centralization: vetting/banning of passengers. I'm nearly certain that there are quite a lot of drivers out there who would be willing to forgo this if it meant taking home the huge share of their revenue that's currently going to Uber.
- smt88 5y ago
  > I'm nearly certain that there are quite a lot of drivers out there who would be willing to forgo this if it meant taking home the huge share of their revenue that's currently going to Uber. I wholeheartedly disagree. It's not even easy to get a female driver in certain places because they're afraid of riders. And most women would never use a service where the drivers aren't identified, background-checked, and banned upon their first incidence of assault. But if you're right, where is decentralized Uber? Or decentralized Twitter? Or literally decentralized anything? All we have right now is tokens.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  Is Uber extracting revenue right now? I thought their business model to this point largely relied on stock appreciation with value extraction from that happening in the form of lower costs to users compared to normal taxis, not more revenue per ride to Uber. The bigger issue is it's not clear drivers going on the blockchain is even legal. Uber and Lyft provide some minimal vetting and certification. Prior to them, drivers directly owned their own taxi businesses, but needed medallions, which also involved regulatory compliance. Uber and Lyft could get away with operating in legal gray areas because of huge legal departments funded by VCs and stock holders. Can individual drivers do that or will cities just hammer them?
  - mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
    Yes, Uber takes a cut of rides, and that is where most of their revenue comes from. They do lose money on some rides (primarily short ones) and it's not a flat percentage per ride or a rate that hasn't shifted over time, but they are definitely taking a solid chunk on average. I may be misremembering, but I think I heard The Rideshare Guy say it's been around 28% as of late. It used to be a flat 20% years ago but the model has gotten a lot more complex. > Can individual drivers do that or will cities just hammer them? This is a good question. Personally, I think it's a risk that many drivers would be willing to take and that enforcing this sort of law on a per driver basis would prove extremely difficult.
gremlinsinc 5y ago
why couldn't a blockchain have built in identity (through verifiers) to ensure 1 account per identity, and a voting system? Is there something about voting that wouldn't allow vote records to be public? System could automatically just ban anyone who gets below a 2 from 3 separate drivers, or something else ... there's ways... it's not a hard problem to solve...

by smt88 5y ago

tuesdayrain 5y ago

>HN is a highly concentrated community of future-focused computing experts. Cryptocurrency is a perfect example of how computing experts can also have little to no understanding of finance and economics :). HN has been bearish on cryptocurrency for years, meanwhile the industry is continuously expanding into the territory of trillions of dollars.

sprafa 5y ago
Pretty much. It's amazing to me that so many developers are en masse choosing to not get rich in the biggest opportunity for startups in the last decade or more.

chrisco255 5y ago

HN has had many bad consensus calls on a lot of successful ideas. One of the most famous examples is Dropbox, when the original founder posted his idea here 13 years ago or so and people just didn't get it or get what value add there was there. And he was heavily criticized. Ultimately, you gotta take the peanut gallery with a grain of salt. And use the criticism as fuel for innovation. HN's take on crypto will be one of the most comical examples in a few years. Decentralized finance alone is already a 100 billion plus dollar industry and growing at 5-10x a year.

sprafa 5y ago
yep pretty much. I'm saddened by this, and I wonder how many people are accepting of HN take and not DYOR enough to realise there's real opportunity there. I mean there are kids becoming mil/billionaires on blockchain dApps overnight, building real value. But HN is dead set on ignoring them.
- smt88 5y ago
  > I mean there are kids becoming mil/billionaires on blockchain dApps overnight Which dApps? How many users are there? And why can't that dApp be built on traditional stacks? > building real value Haven't seen any of this yet. I've seen speculation on coins, and then there are many layers of financial products built on top. The application space is essentially non-existent as a use-case.
  - sprafa 5y ago
    Getting a loan on DeFi is a real use case.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/ This site shows the top DeFi protocols and their locked value in their smart contracts. It's hardly exhaustive but just visiting and researching the top 10 or 15 will be instructive for you. Axie Infinity the game has hundreds of thousands of users and growing like crazy. Tens of millions at least own some cryptocurrency. Ethereum has more than 1 million active wallet addresses and it's growing on an exponential curve. https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/07/21824042/number-of-active-ethereum-wallets-now-surpasses-bitcoin-data-shows https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/07/218240... You probably haven't seen it because you are following HN and mainstream news and expect to be informed on it through their filter. The main success stories I would point out are Uniswap, Sushi, Aave, Compound, Maker, Synthetix, Liquity, OpenSea, Rarible, Sandbox, Decentraland, Aavegotchi, Audius, Matcha, Zapper, and more than I can list to be honest. It's a bit like trying to explain all the interesting use cases of the internet to an early dot com skeptic.

billytetrud 5y ago

Any intelligent person must be forced to admit that a person is often wrong, and groups of people are often spectacularly wrong. You missed option C, that thousands of smart but loud technology professionals speaking outside their area of expertise are wrong, thousands more are right, and it's not as obvious as you're making it out to be.

mandelbrotwurst 5y ago

> Uber drivers auctioning their time is not one of them, because Uber drivers do want a benefit that's only possible with centralization: vetting/banning of passengers. I'm nearly certain that there are quite a lot of drivers out there who would be willing to forgo this if it meant taking home the huge share of their revenue that's currently going to Uber.

smt88 5y ago
> I'm nearly certain that there are quite a lot of drivers out there who would be willing to forgo this if it meant taking home the huge share of their revenue that's currently going to Uber. I wholeheartedly disagree. It's not even easy to get a female driver in certain places because they're afraid of riders. And most women would never use a service where the drivers aren't identified, background-checked, and banned upon their first incidence of assault. But if you're right, where is decentralized Uber? Or decentralized Twitter? Or literally decentralized anything? All we have right now is tokens.
nonameiguess 5y ago
Is Uber extracting revenue right now? I thought their business model to this point largely relied on stock appreciation with value extraction from that happening in the form of lower costs to users compared to normal taxis, not more revenue per ride to Uber. The bigger issue is it's not clear drivers going on the blockchain is even legal. Uber and Lyft provide some minimal vetting and certification. Prior to them, drivers directly owned their own taxi businesses, but needed medallions, which also involved regulatory compliance. Uber and Lyft could get away with operating in legal gray areas because of huge legal departments funded by VCs and stock holders. Can individual drivers do that or will cities just hammer them?
- mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
  Yes, Uber takes a cut of rides, and that is where most of their revenue comes from. They do lose money on some rides (primarily short ones) and it's not a flat percentage per ride or a rate that hasn't shifted over time, but they are definitely taking a solid chunk on average. I may be misremembering, but I think I heard The Rideshare Guy say it's been around 28% as of late. It used to be a flat 20% years ago but the model has gotten a lot more complex. > Can individual drivers do that or will cities just hammer them? This is a good question. Personally, I think it's a risk that many drivers would be willing to take and that enforcing this sort of law on a per driver basis would prove extremely difficult.

gremlinsinc 5y ago

why couldn't a blockchain have built in identity (through verifiers) to ensure 1 account per identity, and a voting system? Is there something about voting that wouldn't allow vote records to be public? System could automatically just ban anyone who gets below a 2 from 3 separate drivers, or something else ... there's ways... it's not a hard problem to solve...