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Crypto group loses bid to buy US Constitution copy
- johnnyo 5y agoNext week's news story: Individuals behind bid to buy Constitution copy have disappeared, and the money is gone.
- k__ 5y agoI think, they will pay it back, but it's rather sad for the gas fees of paying back all that money.
- yardie 5y agoWhatever ills Ethereum was trying to solve these gas fees certainly aren't helping. Even a slow transaction is averaging $120.
- Entwickler 5y agoI don't think this is correct. Are you confusing gwei with USD? A normal funds move is around $10 USD right now https://etherscan.io/gastracker https://etherscan.io/gastracker which, yeah, is high, but a lot less than $120
- Invictus0 5y agoImagine paying $10 to send money in 2021. Crypto is a joke.
- chrisco255 5y agoIt's 10 cents or less on layer 2 solutions like Polygon or zkSync. Ethereum mainnet has incredibly high demand for block space right now because there's hundreds of billions of dollars worth of value trading on top of it. And at that scale $10 is peanuts.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoNot if I'm trying to pay for something like a $10/month recurring fee!
- dreyfan 5y agoSo, you’re telling me there’s a massive inequality in the system controlled by those with wealth and everyday people basically can’t participate because there’s no room for their petty needs.
- rauljordan2020 5y agoThis is $10 for sending a transaction in the base Ethereum blockchain. Imagine you're sending millions, can do so quickly, only for $10, and without needing permission or paperwork from any bank? Also, most normal transactions should happen at Layer 2, which would cost orders of magnitude less. zkSync, which is a layer 2 solution for Ethereum, is incredibly cheap and inherits the same security as the base chain. The costs would be fractions of a penny.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoSo the blockchain is for the rich, got it.
- taylorfinley 5y agoThis is such a ridiculous take. Blockchain is completely fixing the remittence industry. It is one of the most empowering technologies for the developing world. And your statement isn't even true. On layer 2s like Polygon you can send $0.50 anywhere in the world for less than a penny in fees. Think of Ethereum like the New York Times. You want to place an ad--so do many other people, and page space is limited. It's a pretty ridiculous critique of the entire advertising industry to say it's only for the rich because placing an ad in the New York Times is expensive. You can post your ad on craigslist for free.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago> Blockchain is completely fixing the remittence industry. It is one of the most empowering technologies for the developing world. I'd love to see some numbers to that effect.
- taylorfinley 5y agoHappy to oblige: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/crypto-fast-becoming-a-preferred-payment-for-remittances-2021-10-26 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/crypto-fast-becoming-a-prefe... https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/09/crypto-remittances-are-a-lifeline-for-the-worlds-most-vulnerable/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/09/crypto-remittances-are-a-l... https://restofworld.org/2021/crypto-remittances/ https://restofworld.org/2021/crypto-remittances/ And a fun (mind-blowing, to me) demo https://twitter.com/jackmallers/status/1441089090628177933 https://twitter.com/jackmallers/status/1441089090628177933
- MichaelBurge 5y ago> Imagine paying $10 to send money in 2021. Your imagination is wrong in its estimate of absurdity: Western Union charges $60 to transfer $999 to the US: https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/send-money/app/price-estimator https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/send-money/app/price-esti... Up to $158 depending on what option you use, which is somehow even more than the claimed gas fees.
- unmole 5y agoMeanwhile Wise charges $7.5.
- exdsq 5y agoI get paid in the EU, move it to the UK, and then send it to my US account. All in all this takes around 2 days and costs around $60. Wish I was paid in crypto and had quick $10 transactions instead (albeit offboarding it into fiat would cost a bit too, because of exchange fees).
- 1ibsq 5y agoI don't understand what you get downvoted for. People in your replies are proving your point. Crypto is for rich people and the .01% who send money over borders regularly. Crypto IS a joke.
- Tenoke 5y agoProbably it's because of the generalization. Just because one store has a 2000% markup on an item, doesn't mean stores in general are a joke.
- jdprgm 5y agoThis is focusing on the current worst case for sending money in all of crypto though. At the moment sending btc is about 50 cents and solana remains less than 1 cent.
- yardie 5y agoIt was gwei but this site never made it apparent https://crypto.com/defi/dashboard/gas-fees https://crypto.com/defi/dashboard/gas-fees And prices, in USD,were higher when I posted my statement earlier.
- chrisco255 5y agoThe move to rollups for cheaper transactions has begun but isn't fully distributed yet. You can use Arbitrum or Optimism for much cheaper transactions today. And transaction fees are free on Immutable X (NFT marketplace) and Dydx (perpetuals marketplace), which are zero knowledge rollups that leverage a clever compression technique to transact with 1/100th the cost or less.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoIf I'm a regular human being who's trying to purchase an actual product with Ethereum, is any of this helpful to me?
- rvz 5y agoThe translation from the GP comment is: No. You are better off using a different cryptocurrency that can scale and handle payments with extremely low fees better than Ethereum or failing that use something like Apple Pay. Even if you did all of those suggestions, you still need to pay the gas fees to put it on a layer 2 solution, or that rollup solution / zkSync contraption the web3 guys speak of in order to have 'less' transaction fees in the first place. After all of those steps, the gas fee will still cost more than paying for your groceries in the supermarket. Making it totally useless for paying for your food. One more thing: You better have enough to cover the gas fees for approving and transferring otherwise the transaction can 'fail' and is non refundable. No wonder the banks are still laughing at this 'payments' contraption.
- Tenoke 5y ago>Even if you did all of those suggestions, you still need to pay the gas fees to put it on a layer 2 solution, or that rollup solution / zkSync contraption the web3 guys speak of in order to have 'less' transaction fees in the first place. Not necessarily. Exchanges are starting to support some of these so you can skip the Ethereum mainnet completely.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bhouston 5y agoIf the Constitution sold for $42M in the end but this DAO raised $47M, why didn't they win the auction? I am confused honestly.
- theli0nheart 5y agoFees, funds reserved for transportion, safety, storage, etc. You can't just buy an original copy of the US Constitution, stick it in your carry-on, and drop it off at the local museum. From their Discord announcement: > @everyone Lots of questions coming up about why we stopped the bidding where we did. The proper care and maintenance of the Constitution requires a reserve that is needed to insure, store, and transport the document, and we calculated the absolute max we could go to while still meeting these requirements. The opposing bidder passed that max, and we were unable to go any higher while still ensuring that we could properly care for the document. Additionally Sotheby's takes a cut of every auction sale with their fees, and this amount had to be accounted for as well.
- k__ 5y agoThey said, after taxes they wouldn't have enough money left to care for the document.
- gonehome 5y agoStewardship has extra costs associated with insurance, safe transport, etc. They talked about this in the discord. Ultimately they went as high as they could go given these costs.
- levi-turner 5y agoA buyer's premium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer%27s_premium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer%27s_premium for background, https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/the-constitution-of-the-united-states-sold-to-benefit-the-dorothy-tapper-goldman-foundation?showDetails&locale=en https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/the-constitutio... for the details) ? Some quick and dirty maths suggest the final price to be $48,522,000.00
- rvz 5y agoETH price volatility with gas fees and auction costs is the reason. Downvoters: It's true. Otherwise, they would already be celebrating that they have won the auction and covered all the fees. Well I was quite surprised by this outcome and was actually expecting for them to win. [0] Looks like the problem always points to Ethereum (and its gas fees) which ruined it for them. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29258901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29258901
- nathancahill 5y agoThe effort fundamentally conflicted with auction dynamics. The DAO had a hard cap on the price they could bid, and the hard cap was publicly known. As interesting as the idea was, it was never going to be successful.
- gruez 5y agoWas it a sealed bid auction or something? If it was open bid auction, then knowing the hard cap isn't really an impediment to them winning the bid. If there was someone who had more money than them, they'll still lose, and if there wasn't someone with more money, they'll still win. The worse that could happen is them paying more than they needed to, by the seller pumping up the price with shill bids.
- _jal 5y ago>If there was someone who had more money than them, they'll still lose, and if there wasn't someone with more money, they'll still win. You're claiming there's no advantage to knowing your opponent's max bid? I wish all my eBay competitors agreed with you.
- gruez 5y ago>You're claiming there's no advantage to knowing your opponent's max bid? If there is, why don't you state what it is, rather than asking me?
- _jal 5y agoIf I know your maximum price before the auction, I can do whatever is in my power to be able to exceed that price, if I choose. Especially in auctions with multiple known bidders, collusion opportunities can arise to allow bidders to control the price, too. Look at GSA natural resource auctions for examples.
- gruez 5y ago
- pfraze 5y agoThis needs to be confirmed, but on the live event they said the loss was due to strict requirements around proper storage of the document which the seller didn’t feel the DAO had satisfied. EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29277129#29277637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29277129#29277637 This was an interesting ordeal. One comment on Twitter suggested we may have seen the start of a new phenomenon, “money swarms” [1], in which groups of Internet people can raise really large sums quickly for some goal. Bit of chaos energy to be sure. FWIW I think at least some of the people involved in this feel a very genuine connection to what they were doing. People who get excited about DAOs right now differ a bit from the earlier extreme-libertarian crypto; they’re into the idea of active participation in government rather than no government at all. It’s not much different than the 2010 conversations that Occupy folks were having on Reddit, when that seemed like a big novelty. 1. https://twitter.com/co_eq/status/1459987329511145477?s=21 https://twitter.com/co_eq/status/1459987329511145477?s=21
- pamplemoose 5y agoI think these "money swarms" will learn and be able to coordinate more effectively relatively soon. One of my favourite projects is pooltogether.com, a no-loss lottery where the prize is generated from the interest on the pooled money that is deposited. I can imagine similar efforts for crowdfunding projects where those that pool their money together don't actually have anything but the interest to lose. Maybe built on top of Alchemix platform? This will certainly be more likely once the transactions fees are lower and people are using layer-2s.
- adbachman 5y agoIsn't that just a mutual fund with 0% interest for all but one person?
- taylorfinley 5y agoThese actually exist in the fiat world as well, and have been shown to increase the savings rate. Interesting coverage on the Freakonomics podcast here: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/say-no-no-lose-lottery-rebroadcast/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/say-no-no-lose-lottery-rebr...
- rootlocus 5y agoFull screen ads after reading for 15 seconds with uBlock Origin active.
- quacked 5y agoDoing God's work here
- ifdefdebug 5y agoMeanwhile, firefox + ublock work so fine that I keep forgetting that ads even exist, if it wasn't for the casual reminder here at HN...
- pavlov 5y agoYour grandma’s landline rings. It’s some guy asking her to send money to a Delaware corporation's account “for the sick veterans.” Your Twitter feed lights up. It’s some guy asking you to send money to a Delaware corporation's account “to buy the Constitution.” These DAO tokens give no actual claim to anything. If the bid had succeeded, this museum piece would be owned by a private corporation. Not even a proper non-profit, just a guy who took advantage of the zeitgeist. Now that the bid failed, they're refunding the money, but donors have already lost millions on gas and exchange fees. The DAO creators were even bragging about how many of these donors were brand new wallets. So in all, a very typical crypto outcome: nothing actually happened in the real world, but the top of the pyramid extracted some more money from thousands of retail newcomers.
- rootlocus 5y agoAnd we taxed the planet a little bit as well.
- jondwillis 5y agoThat happens regardless of the number of ethereum transactions.
- h4kor 5y agoMore gas fee -> more profit for miners -> more miners -> higher difficulty -> more energy used
- cslarson 5y agoAnd will end entirely in a few months.
- gizmo385 5y agoEthereum has been saying that for years. Isn't the current timeline end of 2022? Also there are broader issues with crypto beyond its environmental impact and some issues with proof of stake specifically.
- encoderer 5y agoThe most amazing part is that the participants for at least an hour all thought they won. They were celebrating in a Twitter Space. I popped in for a few minutes, heard many people talk about how they were "literally shaking" from the excitement, and really playing up the significance of the constitution being "the first act of decentralization from English rule" and 2022 being "the year of the DAO". Nobody had the heart to tell him that the constitution was not the declaration of independence. But it turns out the "inner circle" running this Twitter space, who all had very official looking Lions and Apes as their avatars, was so far removed from the actual inner circle that they had no idea what really happened at the auction and instead were just LARPing as being insiders. I am not anti-crypto, but most of the crypto culture should probably be burnt to the ground.
- DantesKite 5y agoIt was amazing. I tuned in briefly. And really speaks to all the issues cryptocurrency has and its inability to find a use case. The only company that has found success is Coinbase. They’re the business selling shovels to the gold miners.
- Jonovono 5y agoThe only company that has found success? Umm, that was maybe true in 2012. Might want to check again. For example: * Axie Infinity (https://www.notboring.co/p/infinity-revenue-infinity-possibilities https://www.notboring.co/p/infinity-revenue-infinity-possibi...) But there are many.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoThe one example you cite has been called out as a ponzi scheme elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29245147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29245147
- Jonovono 5y agoThanks, ill look into it some more. I trust Not Boring but something could be up. tbh tho, people still call bitcoin a ponzi scheme. None the less, there are definetily more profitable companies in the space besides just Coinbase ;p
- aresant 5y agoI don't disagree with the pragmatic "moment in time" accounting and uncharitable view of this failed exercise that I am seeing reported (and in the comments). What feels missed, however, in these critiques is the recognition of the pure, unadulterated "product market fit" that is being signaled by crypto, DAOs, etc. Nearly 18,000 people, over a week, were hell bent on participating in this DAO and found a way to put up $$$. Users struggled through broken ass alpha-release-level tools available to them to participate, forewent concerns about taxation, ownership, environment etc Reacting with satisfaction about this failed outcome misses the opportunity to discuss and understand the pent-up demand and desire to rewrite the rules around ownership & sovereignty that critics dismiss as secondary to pyramiding / exit scamming / etc.
- cl42 5y ago100% agree with you. Crypto is as much, if not more, a social movement than a pure technology solution at this stage. Whether or not the blockchain, tokens, DAOs, etc. are the "right" approach to things, the fact that there are millions of users and many who are coming up with ideas, building products, etc. is something that is hard to ignore. I was in the Discord group for Constitution DAO and it was really interesting to observe how excited, hopeful, and positive about the future people were. I think the world needs that, especially post-COVID.
- dimgl 5y agoI'm not entirely sure I agree with you. Just because something gives people purpose doesn't mean it's positive... You can be excited, hopeful and positive about something that provides very little value.
- cl42 5y agoI don't think any of us can say whether any technology or product is inherently good, but if millions of people are using it, are happy doing so, and they say it's good for them, then that sounds pretty nice to me. I've heard similar arguments about movies and video games in the past, and it's never that clear cut.
- sporkland 5y agoInteresting... 1. I didn't know something like the US would allow the original US constitution to be privately held. But I guess it makes sense. The value is in the law it establishes and all of it's copies. The original is largely sentimental and doesn't need to be held by the govt. 2. I'm sure this is just naivete, but it made me think that going forward in digital media there aren't any originals to own. What even is an original? I'm sure this is all deeply obvious in NFT land.
- Yizahi 5y agoIt's even more hilarious - half of the funders (below median donation of 200$) will get absolutely nothing back, because their tokens will be eaten by transaction costs :)
- suikadayo 5y agoThere was some talk about moving the funds over to Arbitrum, which is Ethereum Layer 2 to save on fees, but not sure how ok the community would be with that.
- jcfrei 5y agoHow long until the first DAO attempts to acquire companies on wall street?