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Visa Buys CryptoPunk #7610

132 points by superphil0 5y ago

hanklazard 5y ago
I find their explanation so strange… they are adding it to their “collection of historic commerce artifacts”? Do they run a financial network or a museum? If I were a shareholder, I would not be happy with this move.
- dubcanada 5y ago
  It's $150,000~ that is not even a error on Visa's accounting budget.
  - hanklazard 5y ago
    Yeah I’m just saying out of principle it seems like a ridiculous move.
    - romille 5y ago
      It’s called brand marketing. Here we are talking about it.
      - jrootabega 5y ago
        Yeah, it's marketing now. And later, it will be used/loaned for seemingly academic articles/exhibits about commerce and crypto sponsored by Visa.
      - onion2k 5y ago
        It could be seen as legitimizing crypto as money, which represents an existential threat to VISA's entire business model.
      - watermelon0 5y ago
        Who is their target market exactly? IME (at least in Europe) you get either Visa or Mastercard depending on what your bank uses, and I don't think there are any differences.
        criddell 5y ago
        Two tweets down, they posted: > Curious about NFTs and how to integrate them in your brand strategy? And then there's a link taking you to a page called: > NTFs: Engaging Today’s Fans in Crypto and Commerce
    - herodoturtle 5y ago
      In that case you'd be horrified to learn what some large listed companies spend on their historical museums.
- leppr 5y ago
  It's a marketing move that cost them $150k and will get them talked about, featured in many publications, and seen as "hip".
  - prestigious 5y ago
    You mean it’s an investment of 150k that will likely be worth 1M by the end of the year, AND makes them seem hip.
- JacobDotVI 5y ago
  >Deutsche Bank Will Sell Off 200 Modern Works From Its Corporate Collection to Pivot Its Focus to Contemporary Art >The bank, which says it wants to buy more "up-and-coming talents," bought several works at Frieze London. https://news.artnet.com/market/sale-deutsche-bank-1914074 https://news.artnet.com/market/sale-deutsche-bank-1914074
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  Lots of companies seem to spend money on non-business related things, so there seem to be some provisions for that in the usual shareholder agreements? Many art exhibitions seem to be sponsored by financial institutions, for example.
  - johnmaguire 5y ago
    It's a form of marketing/advertising.
- moolcool 5y ago
  I think it's pretty common for major companies to have an archive of industry milestones (like the Honda Collection Hall). Plus what they paid for this NFT is probably cheap for the PR they get in return, positioning them as a hip crypto player instead of a stogy old payment processing company.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  This is outrageously common; Fidelity owns ~12,000 pieces of artwork, for example. They have curation and management staff too.
- csomar 5y ago
  If it pumps their stock, why would shareholder be not happy about it.
Waspdotmk 5y ago
Awesome move from a marketing stand point… not communicated properly but still they look trendy
- blantonl 5y ago
  The fact we're talking about it here makes me think it's been communicated just fine.
superphil0 5y ago
Here another link explaining more: https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2021/08/18/nfts-mark-a-1629328216374.html https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2021/08/18/nft...
gokhan 5y ago
Somewhere, a CryptoKitties owner is crying. Andy Warhol's Marilyn artwork isn't anything interesting for me, but it's clearly represents a point in art history. I can't value NFT's as long as they're digital only, non-fungibility does not create value all by itself IMO, but I understand the historical aspects of a CryptoPunk. So Visa is the first to do it in corporate world and that's a thing, but anyone following won't get the historical mention, Visa gets that.
- garbagetime 5y ago
  It seems strange to state in one paragraph both that (a) art can have value simply because it represents a point in art history and that (b) NFTs can't hold value as long as they're digital-only. Because, there's nothing about being digital-only which makes it so that they cannot represent a point in art history.
  - gokhan 5y ago
    Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home? How much would you pay for the original? What is "original" in this case? Which ship of Theseus is the original one? I don't say, as art, some NFTs are not pretty. I just say they don't represent the same value (for me) as some people think. A CryptoPunk does not have a physical representation, so the one you and I see on our screens are both the same, the original one. I can already see the original whenever I want by just visiting Visa's tweet. A CryptoPunk, especially the one Visa bought, clearly is history. But that does not apply to other NFTs, others are ordinary JPEGs.
    - prestigious 5y ago
      Should check out the currency by Damien hirst. He made a “real” piece of art and a correspondent nft. One of which has to be destroyed at a certain time. I believe most will destroy the physical version. https://www.heni.com/ https://www.heni.com/
    - garbagetime 5y ago
      >Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home? How much would you pay for the original? What is "original" in this case? Which ship of Theseus is the original one? I am certain that if there was a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa, the original would retain most of its value. I don't really understand why this is the case, but I do understand that it is the case.
Traster 5y ago
Well, congratulations to those NFT scammers, it finally paid off. They got their Whale. The entire game of pumping up NFTs to try and pass them off as a useful tool that'll see widespread adoption has finally paid out. This is a small sum of money for Visa to throw away, but this creates a fantastic permission structure for unsophisticated investors to throw away their life savings on a set of worthless e-certificates. Time for me to start minting NFTs to represent ownership of plots of land on Alpha-Centauri.
- garbagetime 5y ago
  Would you mind explaining your comment a bit more? NFT "scammers" have made a lot of money recently, and this purchase doesn't at first glance seem such a great moment.
  - Traster 5y ago
    NFTs are worhtless. They don't solve a problem, in fact they create a problem. They're like any other form of verified ownership except that you can't do all the things you want to do, like allowing established 3rd parties to protect the integrity of the market. So how do you make money from NFTs? You trick other people into thinking there's value in NFTs. That is literally the only use- trick someone into paying you for something that's worthless. Now they have a new string to their bow - if Visa say NFTs are legitimate, then they must be valuable right! Better hand my savings over to that scammer for that amazing mediocre peice of digital art. Never mind the fact that $150k is nothing to Visa.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Bitcoin crossed 50k (again), US senators are debating cryptocurrency regulation as part of historical legislation, and major global companies like Visa are making moves in the space. Is it possible the HN decade-long dismissal of crypto and blockchain has been totally wrong? Or is HN just a tiny minority of people who are simply smarter and wiser than the US government, Fortune 100 corporations, and hundreds of millions of people who own crypto?
  - 5y ago
lottin 5y ago
Very disappointing to see a supposedly serious corporation giving legitimacy to such a blatant scam.
- moate 5y ago
  There's a point for me, difficult to define but obvious when seen, where a scam/project becomes SO obviously a scam that I no long feel bad about it. Like "nigerian princes" always felt this way to me. If some idiot wants to blow their money on this sort of thing (and IDK why brands are exempt from being run by idiots) that's their problem, and not something I'm going to waste mental energy on beyond a post like this.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Very disappointing to see a supposedly serious corporation giving legitimacy to such a blatant scam. This is marketing, and marketing can be one of the less legitimate corporate endeavours (being in most cases literal manipulative propaganda). Serious corporations don't really care what negative externalities they cause, just as long as they don't have to pay for them. They've bought a little cred with whoever they wanted to impress (be that the crypto kids, or olds painfully trying to be hip).
numair 5y ago
As someone who has spent a lot of time (15 years? Maybe more?) looking at “next gen” / mobile electronic payments, I find it amusing that the crypto crowd looks at Visa and MasterCard as the ultimate form of endorsement and embrace. Visa has the highest profit margin of any company among the largest 100 companies in the world — 49%, which is a significant leap over #2 (which might be MasterCard, at 41% — I forget if there’s anyone between them). When these guys give you a high five and want in on the game, you’re probably making the electronic payments landscape less efficient, not more.
- celticninja 5y ago
  >I find it amusing that the crypto crowd looks at Visa and MasterCard as the ultimate form of endorsement They don't. It's the non crypto crowd who do that. The crypto crowd look at them as the dinosaurs that need replacing, as the gatekeepers who can decide who can and cannot have access to online payments. For someone who has spent a lot of time looking at next gen payment options you seem to have missed the woods for the trees.
totetsu 5y ago
I feel like I'm living in the joke timeline looking at that price.. here I am still fretting over csgo gun skins.. and this sprite with literally nothing interesting about it is trading for over 100000 bucks...
wc- 5y ago
There's a lot of back and forth about the general idea of NFT's, why would visa do this, the usual HN pros and cons of crypto, etc, in this thread. To the software devs on HN that might scroll past this, before you close this tab because of all the crypto stuff when you want to read about coding, hang on a sec! There are some really really cool new user experiences being unlocked with so-called "web3" tech. Micro transactions, wallets embedded in your browser, these technologies offer so much potential for things far beyond a punk NFT or cryptokitty. Any front-end dev I talk to in person I urge to get in contact with some of these communities and try out a consulting project or two, so I'll urge the same here. The pay rates right now are outrageous and you will get to try out some tech that might end up being useless or might end up being the next major comms layer, exciting times! edit, adding some links here: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/learning-tools/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/learning-tools/ https://ethereum.org/en/community/ https://ethereum.org/en/community/ https://ethereum.org/en/learn/ https://ethereum.org/en/learn/ https://api3.org/ https://api3.org/ https://forum.w3f.community/ https://forum.w3f.community/ some of the above are ethereum specific, but there are always new communities popping up and out of ethereum. for example, Avalanche is ramping up their dev community funding right now with over $170m committed to the ecosystem. https://www.avax.network/developers https://www.avax.network/developers https://www.avax-projects.com/ https://www.avax-projects.com/
- victor106 5y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. Any tips on how or where to find these communities?
  - basch 5y ago
    https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer is a good article for this crowd. Besides Avalanche and ethereum, look at Cardano and Solana which are both having their moment (along with Avalanche) the last couple weeks.
- capiki 5y ago
  Any pointers to projects doing/enabling microtransactions in crypto?
randomhodler84 5y ago
Remember, Visa are the jerks that stop your girlfriend from selling pictures of her butthole on OnlyFans. NFTs are worthless ephemeralia.
ffggvv 5y ago
not even kidding going to dump all my visa stock. was heavily invested in it too. sad
carlosdp 5y ago
It's wild to me the top comments on HN are still "crypto has no actual use case," despite the literal billions of actual dollars ($) being transacted every day through projects like Uniswap, Axie Inifinity (a video game), and the plethora of DeFi apps and NFT projects out there. Despite the massive UX problems that still exist. It's willful ignorance at this point. Like, I get it, I was a crypto skeptic for a good while, I still think Bitcoin on its own is massively over-valued and doesn't actually accomplish it's original stated goals. But we're way past Bitcoin at this point, the evolution has been neck-breaking in speed. At this point, it's pretty obvious what problems it solves if you actually take an hour to earnestly learn about what's in the space (especially outside of finance). If your best take on it is "it's all a scam", I highly encourage you to crack open some blog articles and actually explore some projects before writing off what I'm 100% confident at this point is the future of the internet.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Please enlighten us: provide resources I am sure the HN community will be open to actual proof - not marketing material please Note: The fact that this comment was downvoted says something
  - TimJRobinson 5y ago
    Best resources I found for understanding Decentralized Finance (Which I think is the most interesting thing in decentralization right now, from a tech perspective) Finematics on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/finematics https://www.youtube.com/c/finematics Bankless Podcast - http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ Modern Finance (by Kevin Rose, also covers NFT's a lot) - https://modern.finance/ https://modern.finance/
  - basch 5y ago
    an example of an interesting article from today https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer the fourth picture down (the TPS Chart) probably has every current relevant name on it, from a current size and momentum perspective. binance smart chain, cardano, solana, avalanche, polkadot are all locked in a battle to dethrone ethereum. Now its a question of what wins, the incumbent, the fastest mover, the most advanced tech, the shiniest, the most colorful, the coolest name, the loudest. If/when multiple survive in the long run, which niche do they each occupy.
fleddr 5y ago
I think the NFT skepticism is understandable. All attention seems be going out to a very low amount of questionable art going around for a few 100K or even millions. Browse actual NFT sites and you'll notice there's zero bids on the typical NFT. Clearly, it's not really working as a new market model. Yet. Further, not really securing copyrights to the art itself I consider a design flaw. Without it, your ownership is make-belief. All of that said, I'd still advocate to zoom out a little and keep an open mind to the idea. The way I see it, these are some of the first experiments in applying digital scarcity to the creative space. This first version being admittedly terrible. Fast forward a few years and it may very well have evolved into something more sustainable and normalized. The reason I would hope for that to happen is that it may slash some very powerful gatekeepers. When you're a photographer, right now you may need to license your work to Getty images, for pennies, them fully dictating the terms. When you're a small musician, you need to get on Spotify, them fully dictating the terms. In theory, and hopefully in practice, next-gen NFTs can provide an alternative, a more fair market-based approach not depending on middlemen. Or at least less so. The other advantage comes from digital property being programmable. For example, when minting an NFT, you can indicate there to be 5 copies, and you want 10% of any future resale of the piece. You can't do that in any practical way using old school copyrights. Digital property is superior in that sense. And there's the potential of cross pollination. Say a popular game commits to supporting NFTs. And in this war game your tank has a unique skin, that nobody else has. Instead of the game maker deciding on all skins, anybody can make them and sell them. That would be another gate keeper slashed, and power returned to the community. Just this silly idea alone could create an enormous new market. There would be many more such new markets if/when NFTs become interoperable, instead of isolated. We really need to leave behind this thought that when it's digital, it's worthless. Our lives are digital now. In the future, you have a digital wallet on your phone containing lots of items. Your money. Digital creative works. Maybe tokens from your favorite football club. Who knows? Last, I find it really ironic how on an article like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28274026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28274026 ...consensus is that it's a very bad thing that 5 companies own all of the digital landscape. Uniform agreement. Whilst at the same time, rejecting anything "crypto". Crypto is the only technology and movement that I can think of to have a chance at breaking down oversized gate keepers. Half of hackernews is complaining about big tech: tracking, lack of free speech, milking users, oversized power, creators that can't monetize, killing competition by acquiring small players, hording patents, the list goes on. Can or will crypto fix all of this? No. Probably not even close. But it's the best chance we got. I'd like my downvotes now, please, am going to mint it.
bokohut 5y ago
The grand picture here is what many fail to see. The Starbucks proven payments model staging "unearned income" is what will continue to transpire as the payments world continues the devest control from the larger entities which will have no choice but to interface and interact with the changing tide. For those in the know we are seeing an explosion in demand of companies wanting to own and control the payments process as with so many middlemen in the fray everyone is being "fee'd to death". The card brands are becoming more and more like toll road operators which dictate who can use the roads all the while cutting off their own noses and therefore pushing adoption to the very thing that will challenge their superiority, the OnlyFans Mastercard impact on crypto for example. Exciting times in FinTech for sure as this window in time resonates with me just as the build up to the dotcom bubble was a blast too!

132 points by superphil0 5y ago

I find their explanation so strange… they are adding it to their “collection of historic commerce artifacts”? Do they run a financial network or a museum? If I were a shareholder, I would not be happy with this move.

dubcanada 5y ago
It's $150,000~ that is not even a error on Visa's accounting budget.
- hanklazard 5y ago
  Yeah I’m just saying out of principle it seems like a ridiculous move.
  - romille 5y ago
    It’s called brand marketing. Here we are talking about it.
    - jrootabega 5y ago
      Yeah, it's marketing now. And later, it will be used/loaned for seemingly academic articles/exhibits about commerce and crypto sponsored by Visa.
    - onion2k 5y ago
      It could be seen as legitimizing crypto as money, which represents an existential threat to VISA's entire business model.
    - watermelon0 5y ago
      Who is their target market exactly? IME (at least in Europe) you get either Visa or Mastercard depending on what your bank uses, and I don't think there are any differences.
      - criddell 5y ago
        Two tweets down, they posted: > Curious about NFTs and how to integrate them in your brand strategy? And then there's a link taking you to a page called: > NTFs: Engaging Today’s Fans in Crypto and Commerce
  - herodoturtle 5y ago
    In that case you'd be horrified to learn what some large listed companies spend on their historical museums.
leppr 5y ago
It's a marketing move that cost them $150k and will get them talked about, featured in many publications, and seen as "hip".
- prestigious 5y ago
  You mean it’s an investment of 150k that will likely be worth 1M by the end of the year, AND makes them seem hip.
JacobDotVI 5y ago
>Deutsche Bank Will Sell Off 200 Modern Works From Its Corporate Collection to Pivot Its Focus to Contemporary Art >The bank, which says it wants to buy more "up-and-coming talents," bought several works at Frieze London. https://news.artnet.com/market/sale-deutsche-bank-1914074 https://news.artnet.com/market/sale-deutsche-bank-1914074
notanzaiiswear 5y ago
Lots of companies seem to spend money on non-business related things, so there seem to be some provisions for that in the usual shareholder agreements? Many art exhibitions seem to be sponsored by financial institutions, for example.
- johnmaguire 5y ago
  It's a form of marketing/advertising.
moolcool 5y ago
I think it's pretty common for major companies to have an archive of industry milestones (like the Honda Collection Hall). Plus what they paid for this NFT is probably cheap for the PR they get in return, positioning them as a hip crypto player instead of a stogy old payment processing company.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
This is outrageously common; Fidelity owns ~12,000 pieces of artwork, for example. They have curation and management staff too.
csomar 5y ago
If it pumps their stock, why would shareholder be not happy about it.

Waspdotmk 5y ago

Awesome move from a marketing stand point… not communicated properly but still they look trendy

blantonl 5y ago
The fact we're talking about it here makes me think it's been communicated just fine.

superphil0 5y ago

Here another link explaining more: https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2021/08/18/nfts-mark-a-1629328216374.html https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2021/08/18/nft...

gokhan 5y ago

Somewhere, a CryptoKitties owner is crying. Andy Warhol's Marilyn artwork isn't anything interesting for me, but it's clearly represents a point in art history. I can't value NFT's as long as they're digital only, non-fungibility does not create value all by itself IMO, but I understand the historical aspects of a CryptoPunk. So Visa is the first to do it in corporate world and that's a thing, but anyone following won't get the historical mention, Visa gets that.

garbagetime 5y ago
It seems strange to state in one paragraph both that (a) art can have value simply because it represents a point in art history and that (b) NFTs can't hold value as long as they're digital-only. Because, there's nothing about being digital-only which makes it so that they cannot represent a point in art history.
- gokhan 5y ago
  Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home? How much would you pay for the original? What is "original" in this case? Which ship of Theseus is the original one? I don't say, as art, some NFTs are not pretty. I just say they don't represent the same value (for me) as some people think. A CryptoPunk does not have a physical representation, so the one you and I see on our screens are both the same, the original one. I can already see the original whenever I want by just visiting Visa's tweet. A CryptoPunk, especially the one Visa bought, clearly is history. But that does not apply to other NFTs, others are ordinary JPEGs.
  - prestigious 5y ago
    Should check out the currency by Damien hirst. He made a “real” piece of art and a correspondent nft. One of which has to be destroyed at a certain time. I believe most will destroy the physical version. https://www.heni.com/ https://www.heni.com/
  - garbagetime 5y ago
    >Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home? How much would you pay for the original? What is "original" in this case? Which ship of Theseus is the original one? I am certain that if there was a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa, the original would retain most of its value. I don't really understand why this is the case, but I do understand that it is the case.

Traster 5y ago

Well, congratulations to those NFT scammers, it finally paid off. They got their Whale. The entire game of pumping up NFTs to try and pass them off as a useful tool that'll see widespread adoption has finally paid out. This is a small sum of money for Visa to throw away, but this creates a fantastic permission structure for unsophisticated investors to throw away their life savings on a set of worthless e-certificates. Time for me to start minting NFTs to represent ownership of plots of land on Alpha-Centauri.

garbagetime 5y ago
Would you mind explaining your comment a bit more? NFT "scammers" have made a lot of money recently, and this purchase doesn't at first glance seem such a great moment.
- Traster 5y ago
  NFTs are worhtless. They don't solve a problem, in fact they create a problem. They're like any other form of verified ownership except that you can't do all the things you want to do, like allowing established 3rd parties to protect the integrity of the market. So how do you make money from NFTs? You trick other people into thinking there's value in NFTs. That is literally the only use- trick someone into paying you for something that's worthless. Now they have a new string to their bow - if Visa say NFTs are legitimate, then they must be valuable right! Better hand my savings over to that scammer for that amazing mediocre peice of digital art. Never mind the fact that $150k is nothing to Visa.
seibelj 5y ago
Bitcoin crossed 50k (again), US senators are debating cryptocurrency regulation as part of historical legislation, and major global companies like Visa are making moves in the space. Is it possible the HN decade-long dismissal of crypto and blockchain has been totally wrong? Or is HN just a tiny minority of people who are simply smarter and wiser than the US government, Fortune 100 corporations, and hundreds of millions of people who own crypto?
- 5y ago

lottin 5y ago

Very disappointing to see a supposedly serious corporation giving legitimacy to such a blatant scam.

moate 5y ago
There's a point for me, difficult to define but obvious when seen, where a scam/project becomes SO obviously a scam that I no long feel bad about it. Like "nigerian princes" always felt this way to me. If some idiot wants to blow their money on this sort of thing (and IDK why brands are exempt from being run by idiots) that's their problem, and not something I'm going to waste mental energy on beyond a post like this.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Very disappointing to see a supposedly serious corporation giving legitimacy to such a blatant scam. This is marketing, and marketing can be one of the less legitimate corporate endeavours (being in most cases literal manipulative propaganda). Serious corporations don't really care what negative externalities they cause, just as long as they don't have to pay for them. They've bought a little cred with whoever they wanted to impress (be that the crypto kids, or olds painfully trying to be hip).

numair 5y ago

As someone who has spent a lot of time (15 years? Maybe more?) looking at “next gen” / mobile electronic payments, I find it amusing that the crypto crowd looks at Visa and MasterCard as the ultimate form of endorsement and embrace. Visa has the highest profit margin of any company among the largest 100 companies in the world — 49%, which is a significant leap over #2 (which might be MasterCard, at 41% — I forget if there’s anyone between them). When these guys give you a high five and want in on the game, you’re probably making the electronic payments landscape less efficient, not more.

celticninja 5y ago
>I find it amusing that the crypto crowd looks at Visa and MasterCard as the ultimate form of endorsement They don't. It's the non crypto crowd who do that. The crypto crowd look at them as the dinosaurs that need replacing, as the gatekeepers who can decide who can and cannot have access to online payments. For someone who has spent a lot of time looking at next gen payment options you seem to have missed the woods for the trees.

totetsu 5y ago

I feel like I'm living in the joke timeline looking at that price.. here I am still fretting over csgo gun skins.. and this sprite with literally nothing interesting about it is trading for over 100000 bucks...

wc- 5y ago

There's a lot of back and forth about the general idea of NFT's, why would visa do this, the usual HN pros and cons of crypto, etc, in this thread. To the software devs on HN that might scroll past this, before you close this tab because of all the crypto stuff when you want to read about coding, hang on a sec! There are some really really cool new user experiences being unlocked with so-called "web3" tech. Micro transactions, wallets embedded in your browser, these technologies offer so much potential for things far beyond a punk NFT or cryptokitty. Any front-end dev I talk to in person I urge to get in contact with some of these communities and try out a consulting project or two, so I'll urge the same here. The pay rates right now are outrageous and you will get to try out some tech that might end up being useless or might end up being the next major comms layer, exciting times! edit, adding some links here: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/learning-tools/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/learning-tools/ https://ethereum.org/en/community/ https://ethereum.org/en/community/ https://ethereum.org/en/learn/ https://ethereum.org/en/learn/ https://api3.org/ https://api3.org/ https://forum.w3f.community/ https://forum.w3f.community/ some of the above are ethereum specific, but there are always new communities popping up and out of ethereum. for example, Avalanche is ramping up their dev community funding right now with over $170m committed to the ecosystem. https://www.avax.network/developers https://www.avax.network/developers https://www.avax-projects.com/ https://www.avax-projects.com/

victor106 5y ago
Thanks for the suggestion. Any tips on how or where to find these communities?
- basch 5y ago
  https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer is a good article for this crowd. Besides Avalanche and ethereum, look at Cardano and Solana which are both having their moment (along with Avalanche) the last couple weeks.
capiki 5y ago
Any pointers to projects doing/enabling microtransactions in crypto?

randomhodler84 5y ago

Remember, Visa are the jerks that stop your girlfriend from selling pictures of her butthole on OnlyFans. NFTs are worthless ephemeralia.

ffggvv 5y ago

not even kidding going to dump all my visa stock. was heavily invested in it too. sad

carlosdp 5y ago

It's wild to me the top comments on HN are still "crypto has no actual use case," despite the literal billions of actual dollars ($) being transacted every day through projects like Uniswap, Axie Inifinity (a video game), and the plethora of DeFi apps and NFT projects out there. Despite the massive UX problems that still exist. It's willful ignorance at this point. Like, I get it, I was a crypto skeptic for a good while, I still think Bitcoin on its own is massively over-valued and doesn't actually accomplish it's original stated goals. But we're way past Bitcoin at this point, the evolution has been neck-breaking in speed. At this point, it's pretty obvious what problems it solves if you actually take an hour to earnestly learn about what's in the space (especially outside of finance). If your best take on it is "it's all a scam", I highly encourage you to crack open some blog articles and actually explore some projects before writing off what I'm 100% confident at this point is the future of the internet.

mgh2 5y ago
Please enlighten us: provide resources I am sure the HN community will be open to actual proof - not marketing material please Note: The fact that this comment was downvoted says something
- TimJRobinson 5y ago
  Best resources I found for understanding Decentralized Finance (Which I think is the most interesting thing in decentralization right now, from a tech perspective) Finematics on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/finematics https://www.youtube.com/c/finematics Bankless Podcast - http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ Modern Finance (by Kevin Rose, also covers NFT's a lot) - https://modern.finance/ https://modern.finance/
- basch 5y ago
  an example of an interesting article from today https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer https://www.notboring.co/p/solana-summer the fourth picture down (the TPS Chart) probably has every current relevant name on it, from a current size and momentum perspective. binance smart chain, cardano, solana, avalanche, polkadot are all locked in a battle to dethrone ethereum. Now its a question of what wins, the incumbent, the fastest mover, the most advanced tech, the shiniest, the most colorful, the coolest name, the loudest. If/when multiple survive in the long run, which niche do they each occupy.

fleddr 5y ago

I think the NFT skepticism is understandable. All attention seems be going out to a very low amount of questionable art going around for a few 100K or even millions. Browse actual NFT sites and you'll notice there's zero bids on the typical NFT. Clearly, it's not really working as a new market model. Yet. Further, not really securing copyrights to the art itself I consider a design flaw. Without it, your ownership is make-belief. All of that said, I'd still advocate to zoom out a little and keep an open mind to the idea. The way I see it, these are some of the first experiments in applying digital scarcity to the creative space. This first version being admittedly terrible. Fast forward a few years and it may very well have evolved into something more sustainable and normalized. The reason I would hope for that to happen is that it may slash some very powerful gatekeepers. When you're a photographer, right now you may need to license your work to Getty images, for pennies, them fully dictating the terms. When you're a small musician, you need to get on Spotify, them fully dictating the terms. In theory, and hopefully in practice, next-gen NFTs can provide an alternative, a more fair market-based approach not depending on middlemen. Or at least less so. The other advantage comes from digital property being programmable. For example, when minting an NFT, you can indicate there to be 5 copies, and you want 10% of any future resale of the piece. You can't do that in any practical way using old school copyrights. Digital property is superior in that sense. And there's the potential of cross pollination. Say a popular game commits to supporting NFTs. And in this war game your tank has a unique skin, that nobody else has. Instead of the game maker deciding on all skins, anybody can make them and sell them. That would be another gate keeper slashed, and power returned to the community. Just this silly idea alone could create an enormous new market. There would be many more such new markets if/when NFTs become interoperable, instead of isolated. We really need to leave behind this thought that when it's digital, it's worthless. Our lives are digital now. In the future, you have a digital wallet on your phone containing lots of items. Your money. Digital creative works. Maybe tokens from your favorite football club. Who knows? Last, I find it really ironic how on an article like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28274026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28274026 ...consensus is that it's a very bad thing that 5 companies own all of the digital landscape. Uniform agreement. Whilst at the same time, rejecting anything "crypto". Crypto is the only technology and movement that I can think of to have a chance at breaking down oversized gate keepers. Half of hackernews is complaining about big tech: tracking, lack of free speech, milking users, oversized power, creators that can't monetize, killing competition by acquiring small players, hording patents, the list goes on. Can or will crypto fix all of this? No. Probably not even close. But it's the best chance we got. I'd like my downvotes now, please, am going to mint it.

bokohut 5y ago

The grand picture here is what many fail to see. The Starbucks proven payments model staging "unearned income" is what will continue to transpire as the payments world continues the devest control from the larger entities which will have no choice but to interface and interact with the changing tide. For those in the know we are seeing an explosion in demand of companies wanting to own and control the payments process as with so many middlemen in the fray everyone is being "fee'd to death". The card brands are becoming more and more like toll road operators which dictate who can use the roads all the while cutting off their own noses and therefore pushing adoption to the very thing that will challenge their superiority, the OnlyFans Mastercard impact on crypto for example. Exciting times in FinTech for sure as this window in time resonates with me just as the build up to the dotcom bubble was a blast too!