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RadioShack – Bringing Cryptocurrency to the Mainstream
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoFascinating to watch cryptocurrency and blockchain become the go-to pivot for those who have run out of traditional ways to be profitable. Is this the original company transitioning to cryptocurrency? It was the RadioShack brand simply auctioned off to someone who wanted to use an established brand for their crypto project?
- kranke155 5y agoThis is unfortunately how people get into the habit of thinking all crypto and blockchain is a scam - because a huge numbers of scams and silly ideas are indeed running in the space...
- OnlineGladiator 5y agoWhat would you say is the ratio of genuine crypto innovation/research/companies compared to scams? Considering the signal-to-noise ratio, I don't think it's that weird to just say "it's all a scam anyway" since that rule of thumb actually works extraordinarily well. Unless you're talking to an expert or having a deep dive you've gotten the point across correctly.
- kranke155 5y agoI’m not sure what it is, it might be as high as 99-1. But the 1 is pretty incredible. Look at fxhash on Tezos, it’s created something truly incredible in generative art.
- AYBABTME 5y agoWhat's an actually useful, not-contrived use case that crypto enables that isn't otherwise possible _for the average resident of a stable/wealthy country_?
- dopidopHN 5y agoI work in crypto since a little while, and have following the tech since 2014 or so. I’m still really skeptical of that trash fire going anywhere. Including my day job. I can only thing of one application, and it still have to deliver: Providing mesh network of wifi, LoRA or 5g where the node are administered by individuals. The nodes are mining a proof of coverage. And effectively being payed to deliver a service ( providing wifi/LoRA/5g coverage ) The nodes cannot trust each other, and having a decentralized ledger help them split the bill and compensate the nodes for their work. In my view it would provide a “last miles delivery of coverage” I have a few project in mind that I won’t mention here. The crypto they are using is not subject to much speculation. That my favorite use of that tech stack. ( since the decentralized land ledger projects seems to not go anywhere )
- valzam 5y ago(I am hugely sceptical on most things crypto) generally speaking the view of a rich, stable country might make you blind to some real use cases because you just don't have them. But for people in less privileged countries having a permissionless system of digital dollars is actually extremely useful. Also my pet theory is that Bitcoin MIGHT suck money out of the property market and make home ownership more affordable.
- meowkit 5y agoDecentralized Identity for individuals and devices. I've found the images here to be a good quick and dirty summary: https://www.gsma.com/identity/decentralised-identity https://www.gsma.com/identity/decentralised-identity
- 65 5y agoMaybe I'm just dense, but this seems more like a centralized identity more than a decentralized identity. Which, if you lose, like I have with various wallets I've had over the years, seems extremely sketchy.
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- bredren 5y agoIt has been like this since the beginning.
- kranke155 5y agoThe space is in dire need of regulation. Sociopaths go for the lowest level of effort with the maximum level of rewards. Right now making a dumb crypto token and shilling it is likely the easiest immoral way to make money in this world.
- dekervin 5y agoThere was a similar trend in 2017 I think, but it died off with the bear market. It has scents of the original dotcom bubble. Slap a .com extension on your brand, collect the cash.
- paulgb 5y agoKODAKCoin (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin) seems to be the most literal 2017 parallel to this: old, nostalgic brand scooped up and used to rent legitimacy for a silly coin scheme. It’s weird how amnesiac the crypto market is, it feels like everything is a rerun these days of something we lived through just four years ago.
- chrisfrantz 5y agoThat was the first one I thought of as well.
- clpm4j 5y agoIf you scroll down and look at the 'The Team', you'll see it's two guys Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez. They bought the Radio Shack brand a couple of years ago: https://www.retaildive.com/news/radioshack-brand-acquired-by-new-owner-of-pier-1-modells-ip/589377/ https://www.retaildive.com/news/radioshack-brand-acquired-by... Tai Lopez is a motivational speaker celebrity (first I've heard of him). And Alex Mehr is apparently a former co-founder of Zoosk (a dating app).
- alphabet9000 5y agoUpdate: 'The Team' section was removed from the site.
- pdq 5y agoIt's savvy but pretty scammy, as people will assume the businesses are still alive, when they are just shell fronts, using the prior logo/branding/domain names. Here's Tai's parent company and their purchased brands: https://www.retailecommerceventures.com/ https://www.retailecommerceventures.com/ Some big ones that I recall going to back in the day are Radio Shack, Pier1, Stein Mart, and Linens N Things.
- oh_sigh 5y agoAbout 5 years ago literally everyone was being bombarded with youtube ads by tai lopez, where he is in his garage showing off a lambo and talking about how books are his most prized possession
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- computerliker 5y agotime is a flat circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin
- joebergeron 5y ago> RadioShack, and RadioShack alone, can bridge the gap and "cross the chasm" of mainstream usage for Cryptocurrency. This is it, folks.
- okareaman 5y agoThe Shack is Back
- ggfgg 5y agoAnd smoking crack
- shiftoutbox 5y agoAnd the bubble is at Maximum!
- DeepYogurt 5y agoThe grift continues
- dannylandau 5y agoGrift - is a small scale swindle. This is a large scale swindle, so need a new term that represents the scale.
- jerbearito 5y agoMacrogrift
- echelon 5y agoSince they stole web3 and crypto as nomenclature, I've started calling them croins and crokens.
- jagermo 5y agoMegagrift. So sad that Kimble isn't able to add to this...
- zbuf 5y agoMetagrift
- outside1234 5y agoIts just incredible to me that this is allowed to go on and on. It is clearly BS all of the way down - where are the regulators to stop this before the massive crash? This is two guys who bought a brand and are using it to defraud people out of their money - how is this legal?
- sswaner 5y agoThis will really help address the complaint that cryptocurrency is just a Ponzi scheme.
- echelon 5y agoThis feels like the era of webvan and pets.com, except those things were simply premature. A token defi swap of croins and crokens (crypto coins and tokens) brings zero value to the world.
- presspot 5y agoCan you say, "Jump the shark"?
- zanek 5y agoRelevant tweet with Tai Lopez explaining: https://twitter.com/tailopez/status/1333228688456904707?s=21 https://twitter.com/tailopez/status/1333228688456904707?s=21
- SamBam 5y ago> "Meet our Partners and Collaborators" This is literally just the list of defunct brandnames Tai has acquired.
- alphabet9000 5y agoRadioShack devolved in such a way, with a long dying death, that all of my memories of early radioshack have been replaced with later-year memories of their store, when they became a total joke. I have no nostalgia for the brand. I'm sure it would be different if they went out of business with dignity in like 2001. The last time I went into Radioshack to 'get something' in 2011, i needed to get a couple of cables to connect a mini HDMI cable to a full size connector. They didn't have the exact cable so I had to get several different ones to make the connection work. The price for the cables was literally $91, so I didn't get it, and ordered it online instead. Sad
- ghaff 5y agoAnd honestly even the memories of early-ish RadioShack involved a lot of rose-tinted glasses. Even in the 70s there was a lot of crap consumer electronics mixed in with the readily-accessible cables, components, and maker stuff (such as it was).
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- iamleppert 5y agoEven the corpse of RadioShack has been brought back from the dead with the promise of crypto riches. Scrolling through their partners is like a who’s who of old defunct 90’s brands. DressBarn?? It makes it crystal clear what their strategy is. I have fond memories of RadioShack, it’s part of what got me into computers and electronics. But taking those memories and weaponizing them against me to try and extract what I can only assume is money, feels wrong on so many levels. If anything (and I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment) I will avoid this new Frankenstein creation. That said, I’m sure it will still entrap enough people to make these two guys even richer while still being a net negative for society as a whole. File this under the same drawer as Mariah Carey partnering with McDonald’s to sell more junk food.
- zyemuzu 5y agoHard to argue with any of your points, their entire concept is absurd.
- weaponizedlinux 5y agoIs this a joke?
- pcthrowaway 5y agoMy first impression was that it might be serious (would sort of make sense for Radioshack to pivot), then I saw Tai Lopez listed on the team and assumed it was a joke. But it appears to be "serious" (inasmuch as anything involving the anthropomorphic joke named Tai Lopez can be) I work in the crypto space and am generally pretty bullish, but this is the biggest sell signal I've seen. I wonder if Tai took out a big short position and is now using his name to crash the market.
- filmgirlcw 5y agoYou had me at Tai Lopez. Honestly, I’m very sad this is real and not a pitch-perfect parody site because everything about it is literally satire. Tai Lopez shilling for some RadioShack coin. What a world.
- bredren 5y agoWhat a bummer for this brand. At one point, I had hoped that Amazon would buy up all the radio shacks and convert them into Amazon prime lounges and provide basically a sort of temporary workspace/island of calm you could escape to in any suburb.
- musicale 5y agoThis is not the RadioShack we need, but maybe it's the RadioShack we deserve. :(
- sergiomattei 5y agoThis is embarrassing.
- emerged 5y agoOne person, or group of people, realizes you can hash elements in a linked list and we get decades of bullshit. Wake me when this is all over.
- mmastrac 5y agoRIP beloved electronics brand. I used to love this store as a kid. I still have my RadioShack branded multimeter.
- gigatexal 5y agough the crypto virus is spreading to zombie companies