9 ms·
Helium, Pump and Dump
- matrix_overload 4y agoIf you want to successfully "disrupt" the mobile network industry, you need to implement one specific regulatory change: force the networks to strictly bill people per use, with no minimums or monthly fees. So if you are making 90% of the calls from a dense urban area and 10% from occasional road trips or hikes, you can place these 90% calls through a cheaper local provider, and use your major provider for the remaining 10%. With the current "monthly plan" model it is simply impossible to launch a new competing service because your users will still have to keep their current subscription. You could argue that they would switch to a lower plan, but with the current plan prices, you could save like 10-20% by halving the amount of minutes/data you get, so nobody will do that. No way the founders did not understand that and no way they expected an average retail miner to think about that and start asking those questions. If you want an example how the below-inflation interest rates together with lack of antitrust enforcement create incentives for various grifts vs. long-term profitable businesses, you got one right here.
- uncertainrhymes 4y agoCarriers assume most people most of the time won't use their full allocation of minutes and data -- this is 'breakage' and is built into their pricing. If they charged on usage, the rates would look worse even if it was 'honest'. It is something I would love to see, but the market can never make it stick. I don't understand your point about a 'cheap local provider' -- they are all using the same towers, even if you get better rates from a cheaper Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) like Boost or Mint. Their rates are lower because they buy data in bulk and just manage sales and support. You don't arbitrarily get to choose city vs rural coverage, it is the same network infrastructure in the end.
- BenjiWiebe 4y agoThere actually are a few small local cellular providers with their own infrastructure. Then they have expensive roaming if you go out of their area, at least, that's how the local one to me does it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cliftonk 4y agoso far as distribution, 25% to early investors and founding employees seems pretty close to market. a "pump and dump" would insinuate that founders/other management sold significant holdings during the run-up and made fraudulent claims about the business (they might have! but you arent providing evidence of that). as for early investors, there is absolutely nothing wrong with those folks selling any amount of their stake as it becomes liquid. i generally agree it is scammy to give early investors short lockups on these token launches.... but the reality is that many of these projects do have short lockups and that should be part of your DD as an individual investor if you're investing in crypto.
- encryptluks2 4y agoI never understood why people were comfortable connecting these Chinese-made and backed black boxes into their Internet and also having them broadcast on wireless networks. Now it appears they want to mimic telecom networks as well. I am fine with this, but you need regulatory agencies actually hiring people checking the process and they should be able to be made out or standardized parts
- askvictor 4y agoHaving recently been investigating Internet connectivity options for our product, I don't see what the value proposition of Helium (for enterprise) is compared to M2M/IoT 4G mobile plans, which are surprisingly cheap.
- mmastrac 4y agoThe M2M plans I saw have always been expensive -- ridiculous prices for hundreds of kilobytes. I was tempted to jury-rig some eSIM plans into devices, but it's not terribly easy to do that right now with any off-the-shelf hardware.
- askvictor 4y agoVery cheap for small amounts of data (~$2 per month for 5Mb), which is heaps for our purposes. For larger amounts of data, I have my doubts that helium is in any way viable, since you're piggy-backing someone's home internet, and the speeds are probably too low to transfer much anyway
- ac29 4y agoI remember seeing advertised prices of around $1/month for 1MB, which depending on the application could be plenty of data (roughly 10,000 bits per hour).
- schmichael 4y agoI think from the beginning Helium targeted people who just didn't know anything about wireless. The economics have never made any sense, and I'm fairly sure reselling your ISP's Internet is a violation of their ToS. So the second this saw any actual adoption, upstream ISPs would probably start coming along to shut down the busiest nodes.
- wslh 4y agoRemember Fon (2006) [1] ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_Wireless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_Wireless
- renewiltord 4y agoHmm, the pre-mine lock-in problem is interesting. How do other crypto projects solve that?
- Ironchefpython 4y ago> How do other crypto projects solve that? By pre-mining the majority of the coins to ensure that the project owners collect the bulk of the profit of any token appreciation.
- renewiltord 4y agoWell that's the thing we want to avoid
- mrguyorama 4y agoThen you should stay away from crypto projects. Other crypto projects don't avoid this problem, on purpose.
- renewiltord 4y agoSure, that's one solution. I am curious if someone has solved this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- perilunar 4y ago
- fomine3 4y agothanks for saving a click
- viknesh 4y ago"What’s not part of it is insiders selling at the expense of investors." I was surprised to read that quote. If you ask me, that's the defining characteristic of crypto...
- topmannnnn 4y ago